Before During

Bill Vaughn’s Incredible Butt-Kicking Machine

While I try to get my body in shape for sport by stretching and running, followed by a nice Bombay martini for the heart, I discovered that the best way to prepare my mind for competition is the Incredible Butt- Kicking Machine (patent pending). On the day before a tennis match, for example, I’ll slip on my Butt-Kicker, crank the kicks-per-minute gauge to a leisurely four or five, and go about my business with a regular reminder of what I have to do to whip the guy on the other side of the net. It’s a sort of note-to-self, without the relentless monky-business of putting up sticky-backs all over the place. The Hunger Artistes 7

The Hunger Artistes

It is the life-affirming genius of baseball that the short can pummel the tall, the rotund can make fools of the sleek, and no matter how far down you find yourself in the bottom of the ninth you can always pull out a miracle. But it’s the mathematical potential for a single game to last forever, in a suspended world where no clock rules the day, that aligns baseball as much with the dead as the living. And so one tempestuous afternoon in May it seemed right and proper that we should spend three hours at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, home of the much-loved Cubs, then drive through twenty miles of urban wasteland to a vast necropolis called St. Mary’s Cemetery in order to search among the graves for a former midget named Eddie Gaedel. The drizzle was chilled and the wind was gusting, but we were snug and perfectly self-contained units, zipped up as we were in our Amazing and Versatile Food Suits (patent pend- ing). And this was why the Mexican groundskeeper and his wife were staring at us wide-eyed from the safety of their pickup. Poking among the headstones, our hoods up to keep our heads dry, our suits gleaming white even in the demi-light, we looked a little like ghosts, and a lot like toxic waste workers. Although I had long since quaffed all the beer in my Brew Bladder, I still had enough icy Bombay in the flask stored in my Cold Pocket for a very satisfying martini. And the Chicago-style Brat I’d 8 First, a little Chee-Chee

Then, as I was pouring draft into the bladder strapped around my chest, two thirty-something sisters in blue Cubs caps began reading in unison the words silk-screened on our backs. “Ask me about the Amazing and Versatile Food Suit,” they chanted, lingering on the last two words, possibly because they were formed from graphics of sliced melons, cheeseburgers, and franks. When we turned around to face them they began laughing. But as we unwound our spiel, walking them through the many fine features of the Suit, they became all-business. “But dis, dis is just wrong,” the shorter one said in that caustic, sibilant accent you can only acquire by growing up within an El ride of the Loop. “What is?” Victor asked. She patted the Spalding out­ fielder’s glove attached to a clip on my chest. “See, you’d never get dat mitt offa dare in time to snag a foul.” “Yeah, you gotta get dat glove on a bungee,” the taller one said. “Sumpin dat stretches. Udderwise, yer gonna take one upside da noggin.” Victor and I stared at each other. Insights like this, demon- strations of how little the minds of two self-absorbed middle- aged men can accomplish, even when given a limited task and years to finish it, were exactly why we had decided to take the Food Suit to the people. Another woman in the clot of fans who had gathered around us stepped forward to get a better look at the Brew Bladder. “At last,” she said, nodding her head in approval, making the storm of Irish-red hair there shudder like a prairie fire. “Some- body’s done something interesting with catheters.” At this point in our development plan the bladder was actually only a cheap medical product called a “center entry bedside drainage bag.” “Of course, it’s just a model,” I offered. “Our bag will be insulated and a whole lot bigger.” The Hunger Artistes 9

packed into my Hot Pocket was, indeed, still toasty, although I wished then that I had refilled my Condiment Dispenser with more of that good deli mustard they lay on at the ball park. Victor Lieberman was sipping a vile blend of Cuervo and Coca-Cola from his suck tube, and snacking on the Pig Sand- wich he’d bought at Wrigley on the way out. Although the Food Suit was still a flawed invention we re-created every time we put it on, we were exuberant about the excellent results of the day’s shakedown cruise. While the purveyors of sports cars and cologne paid focus groups to determine how best to peddle their wares, the Food Suit guys went forth boldly into the maw, the very stadiums where we intended our product would be used. Here we harvested ideas from its actual future customers, the fans who would joyously wear the Suit themselves one day or buy it for their loved ones. Although possessed by a random and antic genius, Lieber­ man is no different than me—he puts his Food Suit on one leg at a time. And when we’re done putting our Food Suits on one leg at a time, filling our Brew Bladders with beer, stuffing our Hot Pockets with grilled meats and our Cold Pockets with dessert, then topping our flasks with liquor and securing our outfielder’s gloves to our persons, we are better prepared for a day at the ballpark than any other baseball fans in the world. And the way they had been staring—those Cubs fans streaming by us toward the gates of Wrigley—they seemed to know they were in the presence of a bleacher revolution. “You got balls, man,” a twenty-something thug had in- formed us the moment we stepped through the turnstile into the friendly confines. “Coming in here like that.” I had the sense that this guy, who was built in the statuesque manner of Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa, might enjoy taking a swing at me. But when he stepped closer and I flinched, he only smiled. “I got to have me one of them.” 10 First, a little Chee-Chee

don’t think you’d much care for. Or—” “Depends,” Victor said. “Depends on what?” Red said. “No, the adult diaper.” “You’re wearing a diaper?” “They’re great,” Victor said. “Wicks moisture away from your skin. And I would say it has a ten-beer capacity. End of the day you just toss it.” “This is what fly fishermen back home in Montana wear,” I explained. “They put on a Depends, slip into their sweats, pull on their waders, load up their float tube with brewski, and fish away.” Red was sold. “You on the Web?” “Go to foodsuit-dot-com,” Victor said.

There is, of course, nothing new under the sun. Innovations are simply rearrangements of the same old matter, or more of the same old matter heaped on. Take the Mach3 razor, for example. Or Big Bertha, the golf club. Meld a picnic basket with a cooler, refabricate this hybrid into a garment, and you’ve got the Food Suit. Apply for a patent and suddenly the Food Suit is an in- vention that at least on paper is as capable of transforming the world of garments as much as Ron Popeil’s Vegematic changed the act of chopping. Our idea was born in a sudden drugged brainstorm that struck Victor and myself in 1981, a year after we met during a poker game at his Studio City condo on the other side of Hol- lywood. We were following the Freeway Series, a California classic pitting the Dodgers against the Angels in the best of three preseason games. We’d driven to Palm Springs for game one, where I had yelled out to Reggie Jackson how sharp he looked, and the Angels’ famous designated hitter had yelled The Hunger Artistes 11

“In order to get by the two-beer rule,” Victor added. This announcement met with general merriment. In May of 1999, when 75 fans were ejected from Wrigley after the bleacher bums littered the field with garbage in response to an umpire’s bad call, Cubs ownership announced that brewski sales would be limited to two per customer instead of the previous four. But since you could always go back to the concessions for another double, and many fans enjoyed getting hammered before the game at sprawling sports bars in the neighborhood such as the Cubbie Bear, the rule was widely considered a joke. Just two days before our visit to Wrigley, during a night game Victor had attended, a drunken Cubbie fan had leaned over the short wall beside the enemy’s bull pen, and allegedly punched Dodger Chad Kreuter in the back of the head before snatching the man’s cap. Kreuter responded by going into the stands after the guy. When the rest of the bullpen waded in as well, where they were instantly soaked with beer and ice and pelted with food, a hockey-like flurry of fists ensued resulting in the arrests of three civilians and the suspension of 19 Dodger players and coaches, although the league chickened out and overturned 12 of those suspensions a month later. “You like catheters,” I said to Red. “And who doesn’t? So you might enjoy what we’ve done with the old, you know, plumbing.” “Shut up,” she said. I crossed my heart. “No, really.” I reached down and jacked up the cuff of one leg to show her the plastic bottle strapped to my ankle. “You use it, you step to the gutter, you open the spigot. Voila.” “Oh my God,” someone said. “Well that’s great for you guys,” Red said. “But what about the ladies?” “You insert,” I said, “If you want to go that route, which I 12 First, a little Chee-Chee

us. I managed to bench my beer in time to throw on my glove but I was too slow to get the glove into play. As I lunged for the ball I stumbled in the mess we’d made at our feet, and the ball winged a small boy. “What the hell’s wrong with you!” his mother whooped as I got to my feet. “You brought your glove, you’re supposed to protect us.” “And we’ve got to have our hands free at all times,” I told Victor. He nodded. “It’s about freedom, man!” Our next planning meeting took place at the ballpark in Mazatlan, Mexico, where the Culiacán Tomateros, the famed Tomato Pickers of the Mexican Winter League, were in town to play under the lights against the Mazatlan Venados, the Stags. My wife, Kitty, had joined us, and Victor had brought a date, a troubled young Kate who couldn’t seem to remember which of her stories she wanted to stick with. Had she been a head chef, or the bass player for a famous L.A. club band? If she’d been brought to the States when she was two, why did she still speak with a heavy Irish brogue? Whatever, she’d also invited along Terry, our cabdriver, and his young son, explaining to us that her encyclopedic understanding of Spanish had revealed that Terry’s first language was actually German and that’s why that morning he had taken us south along the coast instead of north. Terry stared at her. We gorged on tacos, hot dogs leaking mayonnaise, tortas made from pulled pork with salsa, tamales wrapped in corn husks, chorizo sausage on a bun, and that pickled fish dish called ceviche, washed down by Modelo beer served in bottles, and numerous shooters of tequila brought around by a man with a sandwich cart who waited for us to drink so he could take back the shooters. All this glassware seemed at odds with the stadium itself, which was constructed entirely of concrete, The Hunger Artistes 13

back “And you are looking sharp, too.” The next day we picked up four other guys, distributed enough psilocybin mushrooms to get everyone effervescent, bought a flock of broasted chickens in Chinatown, drove up into Chavez Ravine, and diverted a river of beer and a herd of cattle to ourselves in Dodger Stadium as we watched the home team demolish Reggie and his bunch. At the seventh inning stretch I noticed that the thinning crowd we had been packed among had found new seats as far away as they could. One young Korean couple was still glaring—I had slipped on some chicken bones and spilled an entire 16-ounce cup of beer on the back of their Dodger windbreakers. My hands were soaked with cheeseburger grease, and I really needed to take a piss—but I knew if I left now I’d never find my way back, temperamentally addled as I was. Worst of all, the beer I’d been nursing had become insipid. “Food Suit,” I muttered. “Holy shit,” Victor said. “Of course.” A guy who tends to eat big and jump around, Lieberman was covered with smears of mustard and ranch dressing, crushed peanut shells, chicken glop, drooled beer. In fact, his clothes were so filthy he’d been wiping his hands in his hair. I had a sense, then, that we might be friends for a very long time. On day three we went to the drawing board, which was conveniently located at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, where we had tickets for the rubber game in the Freeway Series. “The fabric has to be waterproof,” he suggested. “But it’s got to breathe,” I said. “Otherwise, you burn up.” Here was the very riddle Victor had been placed on earth to solve. A men’s clothing salesman who booked $5 million in orders for men’s trousers in 2001, he is the fifth generation of Lieberman in the rag trade. Suddenly, a booming line drive off the bat of Rod Carew came screaming down the left field foul line headed straight for 14 First, a little Chee-Chee

then another. Suddenly, the area between home plate and the pitcher’s mound was littered with footwear. After the announcement that the game would be suspended until everyone retrieved their shoes, and we were back in our seats pulling on our sneakers, we turned to each other. “Bigger bladder!” Victor shouted drunkenly.

You wonder how many inventions, artistic epiphanies, and really productive criminal schemes have been hatched at the ballpark. After all, your senses are more alive there than they are at home, and there are so many hushed, contemplative lulls, as solemn as the spaces between the stars. Indeed, of the magnificent sports spawned in America only baseball moves at a pace leisurely enough to earn it the title of national pastime. A contest back on May 11, 2000, for example, between the Cubs and the Brewers, the longest nine-inning game in major league history, lasted four hours and twenty-two minutes. And so there have evolved two worlds at the ballpark: one on the field and one in the stands. I have grown fond of my belief that the widespread use of the Food Suit will be seen as a watershed event in this second world. These languid nineteenth-century rhythms, in which of- fensive success means you’ll finish no farther than the exact place you started, cry out for pleasure-extenders, for fun-elevators, for games outside the game. Enter the Food Suit. And enter, of course, gambling. There is no higher form of gambling on the sport than playing Rotisserie baseball, in which your fantasy team, composed of actual players drawn from actual major league teams, accumulating actual hitting and pitching statistics over the six-month season, compete for shares of a juicy pot with other teams in a paper league. After Victor and I decided to build such an organization we recruited a dozen owners and appointed Kitty The Hunger Artistes 15

from its walls and columns to the very benches under our butts. In the eighth inning the hated Tomateros hit a three-run homer. Kate began sobbing. Victor tried to wipe away her tears, then turned back to us. “It’s got to have a top-loading pocket over your solar plexus so you can eat ceviche with a spoon. And it’s got to have another pocket with plenty of wipes.” In Seattle, at a game between the Mariners and the Bos- ton Red Sox, surrounded by the city’s politically correct and emotionally inert “fans,” we sketched the Food Suit’s pocket arrangement, which began to resemble that of NASA flight garments. Scorecards and pencils in one breast pocket, condi- ment dispenser in the other. Zippered hidey holes in the arms for flasks, sunglasses, napkins and wipes, credit cards, cash, and identification. More on the belly and hips for cameras and radio. Large hot and cold pockets on the front and sides of the thighs, and an extra large receptacle from knee to ankle for refuse. Between ideas we were screaming at the Red Sox pitchers from our seats in the first row behind third base. “Throw the scumball, gomer, the hairball, it’s all you got! Your momma eats kitty litter!” And, as these pitiable hurlers slunk off the mound, withered by our scorn, “Write if you find work, green card!” When we saw that their starting pitcher had rabbit ears, we began really pouring it on. The home town fans around us got all embarrassed, especially after Seattle lost in extra innings and we fell into the aisle, forcing people to step over us, disemboweling ourselves with imaginary seppuku knives. At a Rookie League game in Helena, Montana, we had just decided upon the volume and placement of the Brew Bladder (a sprawling, shallow bag baffled like an air mattress that’s worn in the same manner as the chest protector of an ump). And then came the announcement that the concession stand had run out of beer. Someone threw a shoe onto the infield. And 16 First, a little Chee-Chee

siderations, and wool, polyester and nylon because they’d be too hot. Meanwhile, Victor married Marcia, whom he’d met while the two of them were swimming illegally across the Sacramento River in California, following drinks with a crowd of people at a waterfront bar. Within the minimum time allotted they would have a baby boy named Satchel, after Satchel Paige, the legendary Negro League pitcher, and later a girl, Elizabeth Paige. Then, while searching southern California for a crib to house his little clan, Victor was literally blinded by the light, by the sun glaring off a big Mission Style manse under construc- tion that had been wrapped with a waterproof synthetic called Tyvec, an extruded Dupont product that’s tough and light and inexpensive and so simple chemically it turns into carbon dioxide and water when burned. He delivered a roll of it to a Lebanese tailor. Two weeks later we had Prototype Numbers One and Two. The lucky fans who got America’s first glimpse of the Food Suit were those in the crowd of 8,000 at Cheney Stadium in Washington State watching their Tacoma Rainiers do battle with the Tucson To- ros in a Triple-A matchup. When we walked in we were a little bit jumpy. Would people become hostile, seeing us as members of a death cult or homoerotic cabal, or would they misread us as the avatars of some nuclear Armageddon or a chemical spill on the Puget Sound docks? But despite the fact that they had a baseball game to follow, plus an NBA playoff contest between the Chicago Bulls and the Seattle Supersonics to monitor on the big-screen TV in the Beer Garden, the crowd loved us. The first fan to come up wanted to know how many orders of Cheney Stadium’s famous Chicken Tenders we could stuff in the Hot Pocket (five). And how many Eskimo Pies we could get in the Cold Pocket (seven). A guy who was so drunk he kept stepping on his own feet inquired with impeccable diction if the Food Suit could stand up to vomit (in double-blind trials involving beer and The Hunger Artistes 17

our commissioner. Turning to the matter of a name we thought immediately of Bill Veeck. President of the St. Louis Browns dur- ing the 1950s and the craziest and most inventive of baseball’s promoters, Veeck was a shameless huckster who courted fans with fireworks, giveaways—a live horse, pigeons, orchids flown in from Hawaii—and a revolutionary scoreboard that exploded into light and color when the good guys hit a . Veeck would have grasped the implications of the Food Suit the mo- ment he saw it. However, he would never have become immortalized had he not hired one Edward C. Gaedel to bat in the second game of a doubleheader between his Browns and the visiting Detroit Tigers on April 19, 1951. In his only major-league appearance, Gaedel, who stood three-feet-eleven and weighed 65 pounds, walked on four pitches and was replaced at first by a pinch- runner; Bobby “Sugar” Cain, the Tiger pitcher, was laughing so hard he just couldn’t seem to find the little man’s inch-and- a-half strike zone. In honor of Veeck and our games outside the game we chris- tened our new baby Eddie Gaedel’s Baseball League, The League for People With Short Attention Spans. In our minds Gaedel, Rotisserie and the Food Suit would become fused forever.

When the day finally came for the Food Suit to move from the drawing board to the cutting table the first fabric we examined was Gore-Tex, a waterproof yet breathable material that’s used in everything from tents to pants. We ordered a swatch, which was white and virgin, but ultimately rejected the stuff because it would push the Suit way over our retail price target of $29.95 and because the H. L. Gore company demanded approval of any product we fabricated from their material. We vetoed cotton and rayon and silk, of course, for similar price con- 18 First, a little Chee-Chee

spill-repellent and actually soft against the skin, and we were inspired to cover the Food Suit with graphics as well. Not only a name for every pocket and feature, but messages to the cognoscenti. “The pace of this game amuses me. Bring me your finest meats and cheeses.” And “Move aside—let the big dogs eat.” Or “America’s smartest invention: Hot comes out hot. Cold comes out cold. How do it know?” “What about a slogan?” I asked Victor. “The Amazing and Versatile Food Suit: Is that a Dodger Dog in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?’” “Oh, mamma. And when we sell it in Philly we’d substitute Cheesesteak for Dodger Dog.” At another Rookie League game I attended alone, this time on opening day in Butte, Montana, I discovered that while two men wearing Food Suits make a bold statement that attracts fans, one man wearing a Food Suit says “I’m a pervert: keep your kids away.” The Butte Copper Kings had been recently purchased by Mike Veeck, son of Bill. A true chip off the old block, Mike had been banned from baseball for a time after his orchestration of a 1979 promotion called Disco Demolition at Chicago’s first Comiskey Park, in which thousands of Donna Summers records were blasted to smithereens with dynamite in center field. When Veeck the Younger halted ticket sales after the stadium filled up, a riot ensued outside, complete with police dogs lunging at the mob. For the debut of his new club in Butte Mike Veeck had brought in Bill Murray, the actor, to throw out the first pitch— which he heaved over the grandstands and out of the park—and to personally serve beer, which he was happy to do since he was a part-owner of the Copper Kings himself. Murray’s presence had drawn a crowd of 3000, ten times the normal pull for a game in Butte, and I was unable to force my way through the crush in the concession area before Murray disappeared. The Hunger Artistes 19

pizza, we had determined that it was indeed barf-resistant). A guy who would have been perfectly round if he were an inch shorter begged us not to tell him that one size fits all (we did not). And a pair of big-eyed teenaged girls suggested that we install a popup umbrella on the back and hooks or snaps all over the outside of the Suit so items like our disposable cameras and radios would be in easy reach. “Fag tags,” Victor said. “You can’t say that,” I advised. “Fag tags are what they’re called in the trade,” he told the girls. “Those loops.” “Jesus,” I shouted at home plate. “There’s Tony Eusebio!” Eusebio had been a hugely talented but vastly overpriced catcher in the Eddie Gaedel League, owned and then traded by almost every club because he was injury-prone. Assigned to the minors by the for rehabilitation yet again, on this day he would have four solid hits. “You broke my heart, Tony!” Victor screeched. That very week Victor discovered an object at a fast-food joint called Burgerville outside Portland, Oregon, that would galvanize our faith in the Food Suit with the sort of spiritual jolt Christians get when they touch the Shroud of Turin. This was the Lapkin. “You will not believe it,” he said, calling breathlessly from his cell phone. The Lapkin is a bib attached to a fabric tray made rigid by an interior wire. The fabric was something we’d never seen before: garment-grade Tyvec, a soft and pliable and much cooler version than the industrial stuff. It was printed in four colors with lines and words, in the manner of a basketball court, showing where different junk should be placed: there was an area called the Fry Zone, for example, and the No Fry Zone. We now had the perfect material, something dirt-cheap and 20 First, a little Chee-Chee

crew covered the infield, most of the crowd retreated down into the concession area. This was a major stroke of luck. For the next three hours, while everyone waited for the skies to clear, we had a captive and increasingly jolly audience. Even after the game was finally called and the Dodgers slunk off to the airport, people seemed reluctant to leave the park. We joined a raucous bunch in covered seats, and they were all over us at once with questions about the Food Suit. “Look,” Victor offered when the talk began to ebb, “Sammy has to practice, right?” “So?” a guy said. “Are we not fans? Should we not practice?” And so we practiced the Wave until Victor tried to lead us onto the waterlogged field, where security people ordered us away. At last, as the sky turned a darker shade of gray, we re- luctantly pulled ourselves from Wrigley and headed out onto Addison Street. As we wandered around trying to remember where we’d parked the rent car, Victor began nodding his head. “Now we’ve stepped in it.” What he meant was that at long last we might have to look at the Food Suit as a serious product instead of our own private pleasure. Doing so would force us to act like real businessmen, and that would cause stress, something the Food Suit was intended to eliminate. For one thing, we’d have to repair the ideological rift that had widened between us. If we were going to market, Victor wanted us to handle the marketing ourselves. We would pre-sell the product to active wear and sporting goods wholesalers, fabricate the units in China, and finance the deal through a factor, one of those outfits that lend money using ac- counts receivable as collateral. I wanted to approach , which had amalgamated the sale of all Major League products bearing the logos of individual clubs into a monopoly The Hunger Artistes 21

“Bill, fill up my bladder!” I managed to shriek over the din. “Meet me halfway!” Murray shouted back. “Buy a beer.” Back up in the bleachers for the game I was astounded to discover that Howard Johnson had been hired as the batting coach for the Copper Kings. Johnson, an infielder for the Mets when he was at the height of his many powers as a hitter and a base-stealer, had been a much sought-after player in the Eddie Gaedel League. After my team, the Mo Better Vaughns (and later the Nomo Better Vaughns, when we signed the enigmatic Japanese hurler), had landed him in a trade, his skills quickly eroded. “HoJo,” I screeched into the dugout. “You broke my heart!”

Now that we were wedded to garment-grade Tyvec we saw it everywhere. Victor found hooded coveralls in a hardware store priced exactly right at $12. We brought two of them to a Viet- namese seamstress named Huynh Thi Chau, of Carlsbad, Cali- fornia, who assembled the pockets from bright red neoprene, the material that makes wet suits insulative, and attached the fag tags for us. Then, bedecked with our gloves, cameras and walkie-talkies, our pockets loaded with fine ballpark eats, we unveiled these Prototypes Three and Four on a balmy night at Edison Field, the remodeled home of the California Angels, the stadium where we first began our serious work so long before. The crowd was buoyant and studded with other silly people wearing things on their heads such as stuffed chicken toys. Of the hundred fans we talked to fully half wanted to know only one thing: Where could they buy their own Food Suit? We were wearing these very Prototypes, Three and Four, that cold day at Wrigley. Just minutes before the game between the Cubs and the Dodgers was slated to begin, the heavens above Chicago opened and the rain fell down. As the grounds