The Stadium That Launched The Space Age

Every right-thinking Met fan misses Shea Stadium. Not a lot of good has happened to this franchise in the five years (five years!) since old Shea closed, and the old dump looks rosier with every passing year. For Sports on Earth, I dug into the history of Shea's construction, when New York City sold itself out to build a space age stadium that would be obsolete within a decade—signs of a city suffering stadium fever, a malady that continues to afflict the nation more each year.

“On April 12, 1960, the mayor of New York called a press conference to show off a new $14,000 toy. One hundred reporters crowded around to get a glimpse of the plastic model, as tall as the mayor’s hand, which showed a C-shaped baseball stadium with symmetrical dimensions and an outfield open to the sky. Flashbulbs popped as Mayor Robert Wagner turned to a second model, a complete circle, with a gridiron on the field. Two models, two sports, one stadium: A miracle structure that he promised would cost taxpayers a mere $12 million.

”We are going to see this through,” Wagner announced, with the blind confidence of every mayor who has ever caught stadium fever. “We couldn’t turn back now if we wanted to.”

Four years and five days later, Shea Stadium was open for business. It wasn’t the first multi-use ballpark, but it was the benchmark for those that followed — Three Rivers and the Vet, Oakland Coliseum and Busch II — as sports teams forever lost the habit of paying for their own stadiums. Today, they are remembered as an embarrassment, called cookie cutters or concrete donuts, but in 1960 they were the future. As reporters crowded around, the mayor’s message was clear. There was a new world waiting for us, and this ballpark would take us there. ”

By The Numbers, Tales Of Love & Lasers = 100% Awesome

Tales of Love & Lasers opens tonight—dear god, tonight!—and as I explored yesterday, this has left this playwright with little to do. Rather than twiddle my thumbs, I turned my attention to something that has kept playwrights amused since the days of Aristotle: the statistics report offered by Final Draft, which gives all sorts of information about scene counts, word counts, and profanity counts. How can a sabermetrically-inclined playwright make use of this raw data? I ran the numbers and tried to find out.

(Before we get into this silliness, do remember that you can buy your tickets here.)

Tales of Love & Lasers is 5.206% about baseball. 

This, I think, is a safe amount. Although the baseball-chatter in the play is concentrated, heartfelt and important to the plot, there's not so much of it that it might overwhelm the sensibilities of the baseball-adverse. By setting these three short plays in the early '70s—a spaceship-heavy version of the early '70s—I'm able to resist my natural urge to chatter infinitely about the New York Mets. Instead, I rely on memories (not my own) of the New York Giants, achieving something closer to universal interest than any of my Metsian blabberings. So, if we were to break this down further, I'd say this play is probably 1% Mets, 4.206% New York Baseball Giants. This is a playwright demonstrating restraint.

Tales of Love & Lasers is 72.498% science fiction.

This feels like a bit of a cheat, since I've been promoting the play as straight sci-fi comedy. The fact is that, while not every moment in the play is death rays and turbolifts, on balance it is a piece of science-fiction. The remaining bits…well, you'll have to come see and find out what they are. Some are real world-ish, some are more fantasy, and some have the air of a Robert Louis Stevenson acid trip. You know—your standard theatrical experience. If I wanted to improve the play, would I look to increase or decrease the sci-fi percentage (SFP)? Rather than up this base number, I would look to improve the sci-fi density in the 72.498%—adding lightsabers and Klaatus and frivolous Rod Serling-type characters, who wander around the background intoning about the grave doings that have been presented for your approval.

Tales of Love & Lasers features two "bullshits," ten "damns," and fifteen "shits."

Again, a special thanks to Final Draft for providing the endlessly amusing profanity report. Special recognition to Stella Starlight—our oft-mentioned queen of space—who is the only character who gets to say motherfucker. (That's according to the script, anyway. Once they get out on the stage, I can't control them any more.) A slightly less special mention to Wayne, who has the less satisfying distinction of being the only character to say "Crap"—not because he's so special, but because it's simply not a very popular curse word. While shit is the most common Final Draft-approved swear in the play, the 24 variations of the word "Fuck" beat it out. Those 24 words make up just .194% of the play, but I promise they'll be your favorite part.

Tales of Love & Lasers is only 12,370 words long.

Playwrights don't think a lot about word count. We may scramble to get under a certain page count, or snip tiny bits from our stage directions so that the phrase The End doesn't appear, forlorn, on its very own page. But we seldom get so nitpicky as to worry about the raw number of words. This is good, since we don't actually write that many of them. It had been a while since I ran a word count on a play, and I was startled by how short it is. 12,370 words? The New Orleans murder story I wrote for Narratively in March came in around 5,000 words, and took only a couple of weeks (and a month or so of research) to turn out. Writing plays, on the other hand, takes fucking forever. Perhaps if the public libraries were good enough to corral all the information I need for one and put it on microfilm, I'd be able to churn through them faster.

Tales of Love & Lasers is 1.083% sword fights. 

As far as words on paper, the swordplay segments of Tales of Love & Lasers occupy just under a page. In an art form where you only need 12,370 words to make up an evening of theater, some words count more than others. While uhs, ands and mmms can be dispensed with in a moment, those pesky words "They fight" can eat up quite a bit of stage time. When I started working with the good women of Squeaky Bicycle on this production, my only request was that we shell out for a fight choreographer. We got a good one, and it shows. That 1.083% of the play will hopefully stick in your memory more than the stage direction itself sticks on the page.

So, Tales of Love & Lasers is 5.206% baseball, 72.498% sci-fi, .194% fuck, and 1.083% sword fighting. That adds up to a scant 78.981%. What makes up the remaining 21.019%? You'll have to come tonight and see for yourself.

You Can Tell It's A Good Play Because It Has Blasters

A playwright gets very used to seeing things happen only in his head. A massive space battle runs through your head for a few nights while you're trying to sleep, and finally you decide to set it to paper. "He explodes and exits," reads one stage direction. "They fight. It's very, very exciting," reads another. In your mind, this is all very clear—a dreamy hybrid between fantastic science fiction and the reality of what it might really look like on the stage. And then, once a group of very kind people spend a couple of months actually putting it on the stage, it doesn't look how you imagined it at all. It's real, now, and that's better than any nonsense you could ever dream up.

We had our dress rehearsal yesterday for Tales of Love & Lasers. Opening night is tomorrow. I'm less nervous about this than I have in the past, and I'm not sure if that's because I'm getting more used to opening nights, or because this has been a nearly painless process. (Of course, like painless dentistry, painless theater is an impossibility.) The production team is extremely talented, and has worked together before. The actors are game, hardworking and fun—which is to say, they are actors. And because we're squatting in another play's space, the set was built when we walked in. (Thankfully, it's just a few abstract metal sheets, and not the set for a revival of Superior Donuts.) And because we've been developing these scripts for the last year, I was called on to do no late-night, post-rehearsal rewriting—a shame, if only because nothing makes me feel more like Moss Hart.

So at dress yesterday, I sat and drank a very large cup of tea. And then I drank another very large cup of tea. And then I snuck out to go to the bathroom. At this point, that's all that's required of me. 

If you haven't bought tickets yet, shame on you. Get them here. We're running from tomorrow until May 21st, at the Drilling Company, a cozy little theater on 78th Street, just east of Broadway. If you come by tomorrow, say hello. Look for the slightly drunk man trying not to laugh at his own jokes. 

Lastly, we had an excellent production photographer, Joshua Sterns, in yesterday. He took several hundred pictures, and I've included my favorites below. All photos are Sterns', and the actors are Kate Garfield, Nathan Brisby, Kevin Russo, Monica Jones and Jeff Johnson. Look on our work, ye mighty, and despair. 

WARNING! This Play May Contain Nuts

We are just a few days away from opening night of Tales of Love & Lasers, and something has become disturbingly clear: this is a silly play. What's more, it is all my fault. Where a normal playwright would be kind enough to restrict his actors to sitting, crossing slowly, and speaking quietly, I have forced five good souls to make fools of themselves. I've got them jumping around, making silly noises, even cursing—and all so a few dozen anonymous audience members can enjoy themselves.

It's sick.

In case you're one of those parasites who's planning on coming out next week—and if you are, you should really go ahead and get your tickets here, you twisted monster—I think it's fair to warn you of a few things. Although it only runs about 80 minutes, Tales of Love & Lasers may contain the following:

• Power tools covered in colorful duct tape
• Voices, each sillier than the last
• Spells performed badly
• The entirely accurate but potentially hurtful phrase, "A lot of shit happened in Boston"
• Three or more spurts of dancing
• Debates about the intergalactic importance of Willie Mays
• Cardboard used fancifully
• Jars
• Three references to buckets
• A cadre of swamp monsters
• Ships of sail engulfed in flame
• A menacing black hole
• Hesitant references to vending machines
• Tubes of cake, consumed with abandon
• Baseball cards that are not as old as they look
• Cannons

If I cared about my actors, I would have kept them safe in the living room of a tumbledown family mansion, where they could silently fume about unspeakable secrets that threaten to drag them all back into the past. I would have kept conflict buried in subtext. I would have restricted any excitement to an area just off-stage, allowing my protagonist to lean wearily against a window frame, intoning stately dialogue like, "Ma, ma. Look out the window. Once again, the universe has exploded."

Instead, we've let the universe explode on stage. Everyone's going to get hurt, and I hope you're there to see it.

The Stunning Return of Stella Starlight: Queen of Space

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Hooray!

The world's prayers have been answered. Children sing in the street. Trees erupt into bloom, and not because it's springtime, but because of theater. And by all that I mean, I've got a goddamned play going up! Once again, I've combined forces with the brilliant women of Squeaky Bicycle to bring you theater the likes of which you've never seen, unless you've seen some of our work before.

And not just one play, but three plays. Three not-very-long plays which, like Voltron, combine to make a supercharged evening of theater that can crush monsters and knock over power lines. Three plays which operate under the combined title of:

Tales of Love & Lasers

Sounds pretty all right, right? I thought that baby up myself. So, just what are these Tales of Love & Lasers? They are as follows:

—Hyperion Calling: A saga of a woman stranded in space, with nothing to comfort her but the knowledge that this 10 minute short is way better than Gravity. 

—R. For Roxy: First produced in last fall's Bad Theater Fest, this story about love aboard a derelict space cruiser will make you laugh, cry, and hunger for liquified cake.

—Stella Starlight: Queen of Space: Oh boy, this is the big one. The one y'all have been waiting for. The one with jokes, and fighting, and dancing, and leaping, and, oh my god I'm just too excited.

So, when does this magic come to pass? Just under two weeks from now, at the Drilling Company on the Upper West Side. We'll be running Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays (May 6 - May 21) at 7 PM. Come on May 6, and afterwards you can watch me get drunk around the corner at The Dublin House. I promise, it's just as exciting as the play will be.

For more details, see the Facebook invite here. Please do RSVP, so we can let you know when tickets go on sale, and so on.

Radio, Video Games, And A Beloved Doomed Ballpark

I realize I've plugged this piece before, when it first ran in the inestimable Classical Magazine, but last month it ran online in its entirety. Read up!

Two hours before first pitch, Brad Tammen combs his stadium for peanut shells. He sees one wedged into a seat back, and points it out to a staff member, who prises the stubborn, seemingly-fossilized shell out with his fingernail.

"I swear, I thought we had every one of them," says the general manager of the Nashville Sounds. It's peanut-free night at Herschel Greer Stadium, which means no peanuts, Cracker Jacks, or (oddly) Dippin' Dots. Tammen has faith in his grounds crew getting the stadium clean. He's worried about the sky. "I don't need another thunderstorm," he says. "We don't need any more rain."

Not bad stuff, eh? I bet you want to find out what happens next, eh? Well click up there! Click click click!

I've had some other odds and ends run in the Classical this month, all quite heartfelt. The first is an appreciation of the most wonderfully verbose-named video game I've ever played: World Soccer: Winning Eleven 7 International. Just rolls off the tongue, don't it?

It was not a functional relationship. I gave and gave, time and energy and effort, and got nothing back but hurt. But we do not always have a say in such things, and the video game that stole my heart was Winning Eleven, a mid-2000s soccer franchise that was, for all its mastery over me, as awkward as my fifteen year-old self.

Its cover was ugly, its graphics were bland, and its generic team and player names ranged from forgivable (Merseyside Red, for Liverpool) to absurd—meet Ruud Von Nistelroum, star striker for, um, Trad Bricks. Even the name was clumsy, as the European Pro Evolution Soccer 3 was rebranded as World Soccer: Winning Eleven 7 International.

And yet, as with many early-life relationships, I saw something in the object of my affection that was, maybe, not there. It was janky and goofy and unconvincing, but beneath the surface was one of the smartest soccer games of all time. I have found healthier relationships since then, in life and on various gaming platforms, but I still believe that bit to be true.

If so inclined, you can enjoy that beauty here.

And last, out of fear that the Mets ace radio partnership was on its way to being broken up, I wrote a plea for continuity in an organization that has none.

What's the best season to need crutches? Look out your window at the blackening New York slush, and it seems reasonable that, if one absolutely must spend three weeks Rear Windowing inside a walk-up apartment, January would be the ideal time to do it. Why waste summer sweating in your bandages, staring out at clear blue skies and aching to be in a park? Only a fool, you’d think, would prefer crutches in July.

Unless that fool was backed up by Howie Rose.

Crutch-bound for three weeks last summer, I left my apartment only four times. Once was for lunch, when a foolish attempt to crutch my way to a nearby park left me feeling like I'd attacked my arms with a meat tenderizer. The other three excursions were for baseball. I'd slide down the stairs, crutch to the bench in front of my building, and spend three or four hours breathing and smiling, the Mets chirping from my transistor.

A person on crutches wants to vacate the body, head floating off cramped shoulders and away into the blue. Sports, at their best, make that possible—and nothing can deliver us from our blighted physical form quite as well as good sports radio. In the world of good sports radio, I know of no pairing so transporting as Josh Lewin and Howie Rose.

Behold! Stella Starlight: Queen of Space!

Good news, everyone! On Sunday afternoon, the inestimable women of Squeaky Bicycle Productions are producing a staged reading of my superexciting new one-act play, "Stella Starlight: Queen of Space." As a bonus, you will receive a helping of "Private School," a long one-act (or short full length?) by the supremely talented actor/playwright/Minneapolitan Dylan Lamb.

Dylan may insist that because his play is the longer, and comes second, it is the main event and mine is the opening act. But like most playwrights, he is a scruffy-faced lie machine, and should not be trusted.

I wrote "Stella Starlight" as a present to my then girlfriend, now wife, last year for her birthday. It's personal in a way that I often have trouble making my work (but am trying to get better at!), and also includes lasers and sword fights and all that good stuff. It's probably the best thing I've ever written, and if you miss it, your life is null and void.

The reading is at 3 pm, which will happily allow me to miss most of the Titans game. It's happening at:

Joria Productions

260 W. 36th Street, 3rd floor

New York, NY

Make reservations here. Make them! And if you can't make it for some probably deceitful reason, email me, and I'll send you the script. You can produce a reading in your own home!

Does Anybody Want A Play About The Mets?

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Ain't no pathos like Stengel pathos.

This post is not a joke. Bronx Bombers closed Off Broadway Saturday, and though it was been dismissed as (big surprise!) hagiographic pap, it is on its way to Broadway come January. This play, which centers vaguely around the 1977 Bronx Zoo, but features ghostly cameos from Ruth, Jeter and all the rest of the fresh faced Yankee heroes, is not a play for people who care about plays. It is probably not really a play for people who care about baseball, either, since those in the know understand that the only important lesson to be drawn from the sport is how to deal with heartache, 162 games at a time. There is no possibility of heartache in a Yankee story, and so (it seems, anyway, to me) no possibility of real drama.

But there is heartache in Flushing. Permanent, asinine, endlessly churning heartache. A cycle of disappointment and false hope and disappointment that has gone on for some time now—climaxing endlessly, like a bad piece of organ music or a particularly drawn-out high school break up. I speak, as I do too often, of the New York Mets—a team bad enough, beautiful enough, interesting  enough, to deserve a spot on the stage.

Does the horrifying futility of the New York Mets make them a more worthy baseball team than the Yankees? Of course not. Although at this point I'm more comfortable with a losing franchise than a winning one, I'm not Stockholm syndromed enough to suggest that failure is superior to success. (Though some May nights I think it may be.) But as far as tragedy goes, the Mets are Death Of A Salesman . The Yanks are a second rate middle school Thanksgiving pageant. 

Bronx Bombers has a good shot at a long, healthy Broadway run. There are enough fans out there of inspirational codswallop to keep the theater lit up. And the longer it reigns on Broadway, the sharper acid reflux will hit theater-minded Met fans, who expect the offseason to be a time when Mets and Yankees are equal, and will instead be confronted endlessly with nightmares about the pinstriped minstrel show on 50th Street.

So it seems right to even the score. The Mets don't need a play on Broadway, and they certainly don't deserve it. But somewhere in New York there is a 99 seat theater perfect to host a play about misery and meaningless failure and ceaseless anxiety which is a good thing only because it keeps us from worrying about the real problems that life has a habit of tossing our way. The potential topics are endless. Some pitches:

120: A riff on crinkly-faced Casey Stengel and his 1962 Mets, who lost more games than any team in modern history but won the city's heart. 

SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE: While the boys of the Bronx Zoo were jibing and jawing and winning championships, the Mets imploded, trading Tom Seaver for peanuts after a nasty Dick Young column soured him on the city.

THE COLLAPSE: A collection of 162 vignettes, telling the story of the Mets' epic 2007 collapse. Or maybe just an hour in the life of a family watching Tom Glavine implode. (Couldn't find a clip of that, so enjoy this vintage Carlos Beltran.)

THE PASSION OF JOHN MAINE: A moment in the life of declining Mets prospect John Maine, whose fastball deserted him just two years after a near-perfect game at Shea Stadium. Based on an article by Patrick J. Flood.

LET'S GO METS—A TRAGEDY: A fantasy based on one of my recurring nightmares, when I'm at a stadium but can't find my seats or see the field. So it's the Inferno , but set on the escalators of crumbling Shea Stadium.

I'm not interested in putting famous sports heroes on stage. What could be more boring than a not-quite-portly-enough Broadway star trying to cigar chomp his way through an impersonation of the magnificent appetites of Babe Ruth? I'm interested, as ever, in the fringe players, the grounds crew, the sportswriters and the fans, whose stubborn refusal to quit on a lousy franchise—badly run, badly managed, badly owned—is a testament to all that is great and stupid about mankind. 

This is not something I want to write on spec. But if there are any Met fan/theater producers out there, or directors, or actors, or anyone who's interested in providing some counterprogramming to Bronx Bombers,   drop me a line.  We can bat around ideas, come up with an outline, get started on a workshop. I like to write about the universality of sports pain, the sadness that comes even in success, the pleasant futility of the whole mess of corporate nonsense. I think it could make for a cathartic night at the theater.

This play is not meant to be self-flagellation. Met fans love to harp on their failures, picking at them like old scars, but most of us understand that this is how most fans feel, most of the time. Most people, even. Like Jimmy Breslin asked in 1962:

“The Mets lose an awful lot? Listen, mister. Think a little bit. When was the last time you won anything out of life?”

Did You Miss Me? No? That's Fine. No Biggie.

I've returned to you, good people of the Internet, and not a moment too soon, I'm sure. What was I doing while I was away? Well, mostly, thinking about baseball.

In a Mediterranean country, not very long ago, my sunburnt family chugged its way through pasta and a €7 jug of rosé and I banged my head against a foreign wifi connection, struggling to tune in New York’s sports radio station WFAN. This was not a good look, maybe, but Matt Harvey was considering throwing a no-hitter and everyone at the table understood. By the time the connection crackled to life, it was clear from Howie Rose's gutpunched tone that something Metsian had happened, and another near no-no was gone.

So: deep breath, and back to vacation mode. Harvey has carried three no-hitters into the seventh this year, and looks sure to throw one at some point this season. Of course, I thought the same thing last May about R.A. Dickey, before Johan Santana’s duct tape shoulder beat him to it, suggesting that Flushing may yet be due for a Shaun Marcum perfect game. What worried me, as I returned to slurping pink wine and slapping away high-class European mosquitos, was the name of the man on the mound. Not his stuff, which flattens hitters like a boulder does Wile E. Coyote. Not his future, which appears bright enough to confound every pessimistic Mets fan urge imaginable.

No, just: he’s Matt Harvey, alias Matt, alias Harvey. Nothing more. No nickname, nothing for short. Full stop.

How can we solve this great player's nickname drought? Read on, at the Classical.

And now it's Friday, it's four o'clock, it's hot as hell in my apartment—I'm gonna take a nap and then make something yummy to drink. Happy weekend, all! 

Last Week I Was Cold, But Not Too Cold To Type

Continuing my tradition of breaking news, last week I covered the shocking development that it is no fun to be cold at a baseball game.​ Seriously, though, it was goddamned freezing:

How cold was the stadium on Sunday? The weatherman says 54 degrees with winds gusting as high as 44 miles-per-hour. To get a sense of how that felt, try this: encase your genitals in ice, dangle them in front of a battery of leafblowers, and see if you feel like watching Lucas Duda stumble after fly balls.

Despite the gale, the upper deck was crowded, because the Mets had spent the week giving away tickets on Twitter. No strings attached—follow @Mets on Twitter, get a ticket to watch the actual Mets play the Marlins. The unpaid crowd got its money's worth. Dressed for a sunny spring day, they found instead that they had joined the Shackleton expedition. Children shivered through plastic hats full of ice cream. Whirlwinds of garbage swirled ghostly across the infield. Pigeons fought to stay aloft. It was baseball in April, and that is what it’s like.

​Check it out if you want to shiver a little. Amazingly, as cold as that game was—and it really was awful, the coldest I've ever been at a sporting event—the Mets are currently a bit chillier. They nearly got snowed out in Minneapolis last week, and are now in Colorado, a famously warm place. Last night they got snowed out, today they might get snowed out, and if they are able to play at all, it could get down to as little as 9°. Jeepers!