The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [60]
“I am totally cool with selling balls to kids, but I’ll bet we get into trouble for it,” Slappy said.
“What if we made a game out of it?” I said.
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of this before. Like make them pay for a chance to win a ball,” Rosco said.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of other teams doing something like tossing a quarter in a cup.”
“It’s called quarter toss. I’ve heard of it too. Oh shit, we totally have to do it! I heard some team made enough money to buy a ping pong table for their clubhouse doing this,” Slappy said.
We took one of the plastic cups next to the bullpen’s watercooler and filled the bottom of it with a little bit of dirt so it wouldn’t tip over when struck. Then, we counted by paces from the railing of the seats to a spot in the pen, about eight feet. We placed the cup down. That was as elaborate as it got.
“So who’s going to be our salesman?”
“Slappy, that’s all you, baby.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s fine. I’ll keep all the money we make, though.”
“No, come on, this is reliever money. It’s bullpen cash. We can use it to pay fines in Kangaroo Court on—”
“To buy dip!”
“Or a night out.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, we haven’t even made our first quarter yet.”
“So, before I start selling this, what are the rules?”
“If you toss a quarter in the cup, you get a ball. If you miss, we keep the quarter—simple.”
“Fuckin’ all right then.” Slappy turned to the audience. He didn’t see kids; he saw dollar signs. “Step right up for quarter toss. Everyone’s a winner! Only costs you a quarter to win a baseball. Step right up!”
“Wow, he was made for this,” I said to Maddog as we watched Slappy go.
“Can I have a ball?” our first customer asked.
“No, but you can win one,” Slappy beamed.
“What do you mean, win one?”
“Well…” Slappy explained the rules. He pointed out the cup and to our bag of balls. The kid’s face turned skeptical, but Slappy assured him in a “just get in the car and I’ll give you candy” kind of way. The kid produced a quarter and set his feet at the edge of the stadium’s railing, teetering over, dangling into the pen. He tossed his quarter, which twirled through the air and landed with a dull thud in the dirt near the cup—a miss. We were one quarter richer.
“Darn it!” the kid said. His hand shot into his pocket.
“If you have another quarter, you can try again, as many times as you got quarters for. I believe in you!” Slappy was a regular carnie.
The kid tossed and missed again. Fifty cents richer. Another miss followed shortly, 75 cents. Then another. One dollar.
“Oh, you were so close. I thought for sure you had it that time,” the consummate tempter hissed.
More kids came down. They lined up, taking turns tossing for a chance at a ball. As they missed, Slappy played devil’s advocate and assured them it was only a quarter, or a dollar, or five measly bucks. So many children began to congregate that the stadium’s ushers had to shoo them back to their seats.
“Hey you’re killing our business here!” we protested.
“I’m sorry boys, we can’t have them blocking the view of paying ticket holders.”
The kids all took seats near the bullpen. But when the ushers left, we encouraged them to toss again.
“Wow, this is amazing,” we remarked.
“I know, and profitable. Why didn’t we think of this sooner?”
“What if they drain one?” Pickles asked.
“We’ll just give them one of the scuffed-up balls.”
“Slappy, what’s our total up to now?”
Once Slappy had four quarters, he started changing in dollars. Once he got five dollars, he started changing fives. “About $17.50,” Slappy replied, as he sifted through the wad of dollars and quarters in his pocket. We had only been playing for about thirty minutes.
“I love opening night!”
One little boy came up and confidently declared he wanted a dollar’s worth of quarters. Slappy happily obliged him. The new boy set his feet, stuck his tongue out like Kobe Bryant, and shot his first quarter with both hands, free throw style. The silver circle