Ricky The Swing
(EXT. Minor League Baseball Stadium. Lights up on Ricky ‘The Swing’ Lombardo and the Commissioner of Minor League Baseball, standing with a microphone between them. Fan noise is heard in the background)
COMMISSIONER
Alright everyone, let’s hear it for our grounds crew and their performance of the YMCA, a contractually mandated charade that’s as demeaning for us to watch as it is for them to participate in. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Fluor Field at West End, home of the Greenville Drive, the Single-A farm team of the Boston Red Sox. Now, as every Red Sox fan knows, the next best thing to having your jersey retired and hung in Fenway Park next to Ted Williams’, it’s to have your number retired here, in Greenville, South Carolina. “Greenville: Hey, we’re better than Summerville.” And we’re here today to bestow such an honor upon on one of the greatest players in minor league baseball history. A utility player in the truest sense of the word, and a man who needs no introduction. Ladies and gentlemen: Ricky ‘The Swing’ Lombardo!
RICKY
Thank you Commissioner. It’s truly an honor to be receiving this award today. I think that somebody else once said it best. “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
COMMISSIONER
That was Lou Gehrig.
RICKY
Gehrig, huh? Never heard of him, but he sounds like a real prick.
(Beat)
Ladies and gentlemen, the years I spent playing baseball in this stadium were some of the best years of my life. I was fortunate enough to be able to play alongside some of the best players, and best men, that I’ve ever known. Good men. Strong men. White men. Of course, that was a different time, a time when the Negro Problem was still nothing but a rumbling in the distance…
COMMISSIONER
(Quickly jumping back in)
Ah…Ricky, it is my pleasure to present you with this jersey with your old number that, as of today, will be retired forever.
RICKY
Wow. Seeing this uniform brings back so many wonderful memories, Mr. Commissioner. Memories like hitting that inside the park homer that clinched the pennant for us back in ’41. Making that impossible diving catch in left field in ’43, the one that kept us in the series to live and fight another day. The time Phil Rizzuto and I got way too jazzed up on crystal meth and ended up double-teaming a confused Hungarian midget in a Lower East Side bathhouse while Abe Vigoda took pictures…
COMMISSIONER
(Quickly interrupting again)
Yes — the 40’s truly were your shining years, Ricky. The country was engulfed in a terrible war and baseball provided a much needed distraction from the fighting.
RICKY
And why wasn’t I fighting overseas, you ask…
COMMISSIONER
…no I didn’t…
RICKY
…it was because off the field I was living life as Miss Molly Shebeen, Irish fish-monger and dockside prostitute. You’re not up for the draft if you tuck in your shaft, I always said. And it worked. They even wrote a song about me. ‘Oh have you seen the balls on Miss Molly Shebeen…’
COMMISSIONER
Hey Ricky — why don’t you tell everyone the story behind your famous nickname?
RICKY
Oh, Ricky The Swing? Most people think it’s because of my batting average, but really it’s because I refuse to have sex with anyone who isn’t already married.
COMMISSIONER
You know what? Why don’t we just go right to the slideshow?
(A slide-show showing photos of Ricky in a baseball uniform, posing with his team, in the batter’s box, running from the police, guarding a Japanese internment camp, stealing from an orphanage, etc.…until the lights come back up on the Commissioner, looking defeated.)
Ladies and gentlemen, Ricky ‘The Swing’ Lombardo.
RICKY
Hey, this isn’t going to be in the papers, is it? Because I can’t have my wife and kids finding out that I’m still alive.
Lights
