You're a Special Guy

 

I was perusing the offerings on my Amazon Prime and lo and behold I saw that they had the first season of The Apprentice. You know, the series that really introduced President Trump to the American People. It was filmed in 2004 and it was a revelation. New York never looked so beautiful. It was the Bloomberg era where the effects of the Guliani reforms were still evident. Very little crime. Much cleaner streets. Very few homeless people in your face. A paradise compared to the hell hole you see now.

You know how it worked. A bunch of aspiring businesspeople try to be picked as The Apprentice to work in one of Trump's properties. He was using it to promote all of his businesses and his triumphs like the skating rink. They showed his buildings. His airplane. Even the water company he had for a hot minute. But that wasn't what threw me for a loop. Now it was the grace notes.

I got emotional at the littlest things. A shot of the dirty water hot dog stand. One of the tasks was renting an apartment on the street where we had our last apartment in Brooklyn on 3rd Street. But I wasn't devastated until Trump took the winning team to Yankee Stadium to meet my personal hero, George Steinbrenner.

The Babe Abides

"Ok fella's squeeze in to the photo."

"Hey Babe we are gonna take another photo sitting on a beam at the construction site of the Empire State Building. Wanna be in that picture?"

"Sorry keed I'm too fat for that.'

WKRLEM: The Natural

In this scene from the film Roy Hobbs strikes out the Whammer who is an obvious stand in for the Babe. There are many legends of the Babe being struck out by this guy or that guy when he barnstormed across America to make money between baseball seasons. They are all bullshit. Don't get me wrong. They might have struck out the Babe buy he might have been drunk or hung over or his penis might have been burning because of his ninety seventh case of the clap that year. So they might have got him here or there but there is one thing that you can't ever forget.

There was only one Babe.

The story of the Natural was based on an actual case of the Eddie Waitkus who was shot by a deranged female fan on June 14, 1949. She lured him up to her hotel room by leaving a note pretending to be a high school girlfriend. He survived and played again for the Phillies and Orioles but he never was what he once was before he got shot. He later died of throat cancer from all the cigarettes he had smoked.

Bernard Malamud stole his life for the story behind the Natural. He never got a dime for it.

The Babe Abides

 "Hiya Keed. You got a good grip on the ball there. There is nothing I like more than a woman that likes to play with balls."

"Oh Mr. Ruth I am not that kind of girl."

"Common Keed. You are all the kind of girl. After you finish filming why don't you come up to my room. I will order a couple of dozen hot dogs and a gallon of gin and we can see what you can do with two balls instead of one. You look like a Natural."