Friday, June 24, 1927: Boston
“DEVO PISCIARE!”
1:30 a.m.
There’s a knocking on our door in the Statler Hotel. It’s not a normal knock. It’s like a machine gun. And it just won’t stop.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Hang on! Hang on!” yells Benny, getting out of bed.
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
“Jesus, hold on!” I shout, as Benny makes his way to the door.
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
Tony Lazzeri comes staggering into our room. The W*p is completely lit. Unable to stand on his own, Lazzeri holds onto the door knob with one hand, swinging back and forth, his other hand still knocking. Apparently he doesn’t realize he’s already inside the room.
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
“Cut that crap out!” I yell from my bed.
“W*p, you’re a mess!” says Benny. “And you reek of beer!”
I turn on my bedside light and instantly see that Lazzeri’s wearing one of his favorite evening outfits: a canary yellow suit, a green shirt with a purple tie, his favorite white fedora with a crushed flower in it, and white spats over purple shoes. It looks like an elephant vomited a rainbow on him.
“Nice outfit, W*p,” says Benny.
Lazzeri’s in bad shape. He looks like he’s been tumbling inside of a washing machine — his clothes are all untucked and unbuttoned.
“Mamma Mia! Devo Pisciare!” he shouts.
“What devil?” asks Benny.
“Devo! Pisciare!” Lazzeri shouts into Benny’s face, one word at a time. “Devo! Pisciare!!!”
And with that he unzips his fly and pulls out his Johnson.
“Whoa! Whoa! W*p!” yells Benny, as he quickly steers him into our bathroom. “Hold on! Hold on!”
“Devo Pisciare! Devo Pisciare! Mamma Mia! I gotta piss! I gotta piss!”
Benny stands him in front of the bowl and then walks back into our room.
“Che Forza! What a stream! I’m a firehose!” Lazzeri shouts from the bathroom. “I had-a so much of the beer tonight! All night, I was drinking the beer. Che Pisciata! Whatta piss!”
Whenever he’s drunk, which is often, the W*p’s Italian starts to kick in in crazy ways.
“How’s his aim?” I ask.
“Not too bad,” says Benny. “He started on the wall, but he found the bowl pretty quickly. Some of it landed in the tub, which is where he was initially aiming, till I rotated him.”
“Che Pisciata! Che Pisciata! Whatta piss!” the W*p shouts over and over, having the time of his life.
“Hey, W*p! Why are you in our room?”
“I lost Koenig. I lost the room key. I lost — Devo Pisciare! — I gotta piss bad, so I knock on your door. If you hadn’t answered I would-a had to piss in the stairway,” he says, like he’s done it before.
I can just imagine: The W*p, his Johnson flailing, pissing, slipping and tumbling down the stairs, a wet ball of yellow, green, purple, white, and red from the blood. It would be interesting to see how his injury would be reported in the papers. Mostly likely as: “Abdominal strain. Hurt in practice.”
“Jesus, how much beer did you drink?” Benny asks. The W*p’s been pissing for over a minute.
“Oh! Oh!” he moans. “I was drinking all night. I was with this girl, Mamma Mia! She was so beautiful, I didn’t want to leave her, not even to piss.”
Benny and I just look at each other. It’s close to two minutes now, and all we’re hearing is pissing and now moaning — and the occasional “Che Pisciata!”
“Should we check on him?” asks Benny.
“Check on him? We’re ten feet away from him, for Chrissakes. What’s to check on?”
“But listen to him? What if there’s blood?”
“That’s the last thing I want to check on,” I say.
At this point Hoyt walks into our room. He’s wearing an evening jacket and carrying a lit cig.
“Evening boys. I saw the door open, what’s going on?”
“Che Pisciata! “Che Pisciata!” Lazzeri yells again.
“What’s the W*p doing in here?”
“Pissing,” says Benny.
“Che Pisciata!”
“For how long?” asks Schoolboy.
“Jesus, it’s got to be almost three minutes,” says Benny, beginning to really panic. “You think we should get Doc Woods?”
It just goes on and on. About every twenty or thirty seconds it stops — just for a second or two — but then the Lazzeri starts moaning again, and the stream starts back up.
“Che Pisciata!!!”
“What’s up?” It’s Dutch Ruether. He and Pat Collins walk into the room in their pajamas and bathrobes. It’s getting awfully crowded in here.
“The W*p’s pissing, again,” says Hoyt.
“Christ. How long this time?” asks Ruether.
“Benny says almost three minutes.”
“That was almost a minute ago!” says Benny, nervously.
“Che Pisciata!!! My God! Make it stop!”
“You guys called Doc Woods, right?” asks Collins.
“I certainly would have,” says Hoyt.
Benny looks at me like we’ve both done something terribly wrong by not calling Doc.
“What the fuck’s going on?” asks a new voice.
It’s Dugan.
“The W*p’s pissing. He’s in bad shape.” says Ruether.
“Someone getting Doc Woods?” asks Dugan.
That’s not helping.
“Hey, guys!” It’s Koenig. “I just got in, anybody seen the W*p?”
“Che Pisciata!!!”
“Oh, shit. Is he taking one of his pisses?” Koenig steps into the room and calls out to Lazzeri:
“Hey, W*p! You okay?”
Lazzeri just moans.
“Make it stop!”
“How often does this happen?” asks Benny, now a massive ball of panic with visions of blood all over our bathroom.
“Whenever he thinks he’s got a sucker,” says Koenig.
“What the — hey, wait a second,” says Benny.
Benny opens up the bathroom door. There sitting down on the side of the tub is Lazzeri. He’s got our bathroom waste basket in his hands — and it’s filled with water, which the W*p has been very slowly pouring into our toilet for over five minutes now, while shouting, “What a piss!” in his parents’ mother tongue.
“Very nice,” says Benny.
“Well done, W*p!” I shout from the bed.
And with that, Lazzeri walks back into the room to applause from myself, Hoyt, Ruether, Koenig, and about a dozen other Yankees who are standing out in the hall.
Including Doc Woods.
