SOME DAZE ARE DIAMONDS: NO LADLING OF GRAVY EVER ENOUGH FOR BROOKLYN’S GREEDY BIMBOS IN TEN-GAME GAUNTLET FUCKATHON

Jeffrey Bomber  •  September 19th, 2020

BROOKLYN – “I love the smell of tennis balls in the morning,” said Wasabi Harmless, huffing the new car smell out of a freshly cracked Penn can and chasing it down with a whiff of the old shnoz salts.
“I love friendship,” I whispered to myself. A sad, nervous habit I picked up during my New England solo quarantine days.
“Shut up,” everyone chimed.
“They have ears like bats,” I whispered, quieter yet.
“Shut up,” they echoed.

Having set our alarms the night before for 4:30 a.m., a few of us gathered in the dark dugout at the crack of our Lord’s ass. “We’ll fight in the shade,” I meekly offered, which was deservedly met with yet another resounding “shut up”. Though at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m. York Field was more dungeon than cathedral, the Doctor was prudent to glop some sort of nuclear, semeny paint on the Penns that made them harden into spunk rocks and shine like little white suns. For such an occasion as this, he custom-built an incubator to activate their luminescence. No one failed to notice that some of us make better sans-sunlight jissomball players than we do stickball dipshits.

The day’s schedule was simple: play as many games as we can before the cops shoot us. Fifteen minute breaks between games, no more, no less, no exceptions. Merriam-Webster defines gauntlet as “a double file of men facing each other and armed with clubs or other weapons with which to strike at an individual who is made to run between them...” But I prefer the pithier alternate definition: “a severe trial.”

After our sarcastic rendition of the national anthem, Monk in the Trunk felt he should say a little prayer over us. “Good morning, God,” he began. “Hope things are chill up there, or whatever. Give Prince my best. Tell Bush Senior to go screw. Anyhoodles: please keep us toasty within the folds of your divine, gilded, undeflatable bosom, Big Dog. We are cold, it is dark, and we are children to believe we will live through this day. So, see ya soon, I guess. Amen.” We each gulped, watered our whiteys a little, dropped a reticent fuck-bomb, and hit the field. 

There were ample instances of altruism on both sides of this marathon war. Between games 3 and 4, the Person Doctor took pity on the yipsy Reds. He crossed enemy lines to perform open heart surgery upon we whose hearts – having just distinguished ourselves with a flaccid, scoreless, practically hitless nine innings – were just, not, in it. When the Car Doctor saw that one of his clutch-ass BQE blastoises (stay with me, oldsters) had lasered through a hapless motorist’s hood and broken the carburetor, did he laugh triumphantly? He did not. The Automobile Midwife scaled that 40-foot left field wall like some lovechild of a grease monkey and an actual monkey and fixed the carburetor right on the fucking spot with nothing but his bare hands and huge brain. To inspirit us in our peak time of need, the Goatherd AKA Lefty Bo Peep [*] procured Americanos and suds for his woefully uncaffeinated and underliquored flock. Skee-Ball had the foresight to bring Charmins for our not-so-narrow asses – much to Premarital Sex’s relief, who spent two of the fourteen hours of play looking for the port-a-potty and another two hours sitting in it. So, thanks to Skee-Ball’s T.P. delivery, nobody had to use the pages of the romance paperback on top of the backstop. And the H8ful Space did me the honor of coining me a wholesome sobriquet: Bomb Wayne Gacy.

The less altruistic Rhinestone, on the other hand, spent his day flipping me the bird and muttering falsehoods about my mother that I simply will not repeat here. Dear reader, the Rhinestone, with his fork of a tongue and profane dance numbers, makes the Devil look like the Beaver from Leave it to Beaver. He’s the guy in the series finale the Eisenhower administration hires to sneak into the Cleavers’ house in the middle of the night, place a pillow over the Beav’s sleeping face, and make it look like pneumonia to cover his tracks. 

The fifteen minute breaks were a godsend for those partial to walking tacos, substance abuse, flirtatious banter, sorority hazing, brotherly spankings, and the water closet AKA fence. We sat in the bleachers while Professor Stork Meat gave a beautiful, if oddly enthusiastic lecture on holocaust cinema. As Pork Porpoise has done for me on subsequent Sundays, Stork Pork’s cousin Nagini AKA Mister Rattles AKA Snake Peligroso taught me how to properly swing a bat without looking like a – his words – butt clown. “Listen, B.W.G.,” hissed the Serpent, “Just because your namesake dressed up like a clown and buried kids beneath his floorboards like a clown doesn’t mean you have to swing like one.” Sigh.

As for in-game goings on, who can recall? The Man Doctor slimjimmed a clean non-baker’s dozen of meaty balls over the rumble strips. Rizzness Casual, Secret Chamber AKA Fire Goblet, and Monkey Tank pitched nonstop banana bloops ripe enough to bake a meringue pie for dessert and have nanner pancakes the morning after. Loco Boi and Lefty Jesus took turns flickin’ beans off the wall like they were playing ping pong against themselves on a fold-up table. Now, I blacked most of this out, but I foggily remember When Life Gives You Remons AKA Remonade AKA Blood Magic AKA Magic Carpet Ride, while riding on Wasabi Boi’s shoulders no less, dealing a near-mortal frozen rope off my dome piece while I was playing shallow center. “Did the Unabahmer order some head trauma?” he asked, moments before seeing the pitch. Left fielder Bo Peep AKA Lamb Doctor AKA Leopard Mechanic [*] stopped to see if I was still breathing, and seeing that I kinda was, shrugged, gave my limp bod a swift kick, incantated a halfhearted “Hail Satan, Full of Grace,” and went on with his day.  Aside from that, the details of the Gauntlet are as blurry as the day I was born.

We were on our best behavior once Ms. Christmas “Can-Kicker” Sex and Mrs. Ro-Ro “Rainbow Magic” Rizz AKA Mrs. Bizzness made their appearance in the first base dugout. Upon their arrival Risky Bizz – darling of the Rust Belt, “Best Dressed” favorite, Cy Young candidate, and Rainbow’s beau – was forced to hurriedly holster his ding-a-ling which for the past few seconds he’d been using like an untamed fire hose to whiz on the rookies in territorial fashion. He was reprimanded on the car ride home, I am sure. Dear reader, it bears mentioning that this was the first time Rookies Gordo AKA Mordor, David AKA Goliath, or I had ever seen a woman. Like a gaggle of pubeless, pizza-faced pre-teens at our first junior prom, the rooks migrated to the third base dugout so as not to humiliate our ungainly, punch-stained selves in front of the alliteration ladies.

By the time Jack King Cole arrived on the scene we were thoroughly in our cups, wallpapered really, and well into our tenth and final matchup – another glow-in-the-dark jizzball game, thus poetically completing the circle. Sascha the Professional AKA Gyrokinesis somehow managed to tattoo a Penn into the stratus with nothing but starshine to aid his laboratory-rendered eyeballs. Some say the ball is still in orbit. Others believe the ISS caught it in the tailpipe, which I suppose would technically make it an out. This wouldn’t affect the outcome, though. In Game 10 the Reds’ errors were nigh as plentiful as their at-bats, and the Black squadron put them to bed safe and sound and lullabied them to sleep like the sweet little boys they are. The fat lady sang (AKA whimpered)! End of story!

All in all, your Brooklyn Bimbos had one diamond of a day. They raised 500 greenbacks for wildfire relief whilst breaking the league record for number of consecutive games played (10). Four of us played all ten of those games (Bomb Wayne Gacy AKA Large Virgin, Limp Rizzkit, Sascha the Professional AKA Mister Roboto, and Drunkster Fire AKA Prayer Master AKA Crunk Donk). The Gravy Gauntlet lived up to its name.

Weeks later I asked Snow Ball if, like me, he was sore the next day. He said, “I was tired, and sweet Christ, I was sore. I’ve only been sore like that three other times in my life: once after I climbed Patagonia, once when I botched the triple axel that would ultimately end my Olympic figure skating career, and once after your pillhead brother ran me over with an ice cream truck. Fuck-nut still owes me a thicc wad of dinero for those hospital bills.” You can imagine my surprise upon hearing the bit about the ice cream truck. Patagonia, sure. Storied figure skating career – of course. But what was Meaningful Sex, pillhead though he may well be, doing in an ice cream truck – let alone one that scratched the Cue Ball bad enough to land him in a hospital bed? My questions were endless, but I could do little more than stare down into my empty Penn can and breathe out of my mouth.

Needless to say, given that my brother and I serve as each other’s legal counsel (Dahm and Dahmer, Attorneys at Law), the Voluptuous One and I had ourselves a little chat about the ice cream incident. My client denies the allegation.

The Red squad were: 8 Ball (Cue Ball), Deep Space (The H8ful Space), Secret Agent (Secret Chamber), Soy Peligroso (Wasabi Harmless), Shepherd (Lefty Bo Peep [*]), Rookie Gordon (Mordor), J Cole and the Sugardoll 5 (Jack King Cole), Drunk Tank (Prayer Master), Stinkmitt (Stork Pork), Rookie David AKA Eraserhead (Goliath), Cobra Hai (Serpent Peligroso), and Jeffrey Bomber (Bomb Wayne Gacy)

The Black squad were: Solo Shot (Risky Bizz), The Surgeon (Person Doctor), The Mechanic (Car Doctor), Notorious ODC (Gyrokinesis), The Diamond (Rhinestone), Local Boy (Loco Boi), Magic Man (Magic Carpet Ride), Lefty Moses (Lefty Jesus), and Big Sex (The Turbulent One)

G1 – R: 13, B: 12 (Pitch black for half of game)
G2 B: 17, R: 10
G3 R: 0, B: 13
G4 B: 3, R: 4
G5 R: 3, B: 10
G6 B: 12, R: 10
G7 R: 8, B: 4
G8 B: 5, R: 3
G9 R: 3, B: 12
G10 B: 14, R: 6 (Pitch black for entire game)

 HRs: Surgeon, 12; Solo Shot, 8; Notorious ODC, 8; Big Sex, 6; Mechanic, 6; Jeffrey Bomber, 6; Drunk Tank, 2; Stinkmitt, 2; Soy Peligroso, 2; Secret Agent, 1

[*]: AKA Sheep Space AKA The Wool-Moose Party AKA Sheep Teacher AKA Hot For Sheeper AKA AKA Ram Beasley Shear Pong AKA Ed Shearan AKA (Don’t Shear) The Reaper AKA I Don’t Remember Asking You a God Lamb Thing AKA Mint Jelly AKA Mutton Pusher AKA Johnny Cashmere AKA Def Sheppard AKA Led Sheplin AKA Ewe-2 AKA Salt ‘N’ Shepa AKA Leopard’s Pie AKA The Lord is My Leopard AKA Staff Infection AKA Shepatitis AKA Sheep It’s What’s For Dinner


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