Chapter 16

The long-anticipated All-Star break, the supposed halfway point of the major league baseball season, finally arrived. I felt as if I had just finished running a marathon while carrying an elephant on my back. It was as if I had been through at least a hundred games instead of about half that number. In fact there were already stories comparing the Nats to the most horribly bad teams of all times such as the Baltimore club that started a season with twenty-one losses. Casey Stengel's Mets had lost 120 in '61, and the Nevada odds were five to one that we could beat that dismal record, two to one that we would drop at least a hundred and ten, and even money on losing a hundred. It was embarrassing.

The standings looked like this:

W L GB

Phillies 46 34

Mets 45 35 1

Braves 41 40 5 1/2

Marlins 27 55 20

Nats 23 58 23 1/2

Mrs. Jepperson and Mr. Ambrose and I had a long meeting to discuss future plans, and in general, I liked what I heard. A real farm system was in the works, and Ambrose had hired both a college and a minor league scout with good credentials. Floppy Hat Day, an old Senators Day that might bring Frank Howard and some other popular players to the park and a Free Coke Day were all in the works. I had vetoed bat day having had some bad experiences with that promotion in the past.

Then we talked about radio and TV contracts. I had been offered some money to do a weekly sports show with Mike Herzog, a veteran broadcaster, and they both liked that idea. Attendance had leveled off since the season began to about 21,000 per game so anything that got our name out there was probably good. Ambrose told us that he had tried to get Jon Miller for our TV coverage next year, but that he had a long-term contract with ESPN. The on-air team we were using, a local talk-radio blabber and a gabby ex-Baltimore pitcher, pleased none of us so we put that one in the "to-do" basket.

The business end of the team was very happy with pennant, t-shirt, bobble-head dolls and hat sales, Andrea told us, and the concession folks were curing some of the food problems. I thought their prices were still way too high.

While we were discussing the work of our PA announcer, whose Southern accent seemed to annoy some folks, the phone buzzed, and Andrea nodded at me. "Lucy wants you outside," she said.

I would hardly have recognized my son. He had grown a lot taller and good bit heftier since the last time I had seen him, a rather acrimonious visit with his mother and grandmother two years before. We grinned at each other and shook hands. Under the terms of the divorce, I had no visitation rights.

"Found you on the Internet," he said. "You ought to get somebody to update your website."

"I'm in a meeting," I said. "This is Lucy, and she can answer any questions you might have about what's going on in D.C. I'm sure. I don't even know what's at the Kennedy Center much less Wolf Trap, but I'll bet she does."

The young blonde frowned at me, smiled at my boy, and I went back to my meeting.

"That your son out there?" Andrea asked, arching an eyebrow. I nodded and she said, "I want to meet him before you get away from here."

Then we agreed to cut down on the recorded music the PA system was using and the phony hand-clapping and trumped-up cheering, all the rah-rah stuff. "How about the bugle call?" I asked. "That 'charge!' thing?"

"I like it," Andrea said, leaning back, waiting for reactions.

"We'll keep it then," said Mr. Ambrose, "but we'll try to use it with some discretion. Back in Rex Barney's day over at old Memorial Stadium, he used to give out what he called contracts to fans that made a good catch. Would you like to try something like that?"

"We can't say, "Give that fan a contract'," I said loudly. "The Birds probably have that copyrighted, or we'd get struck by lightening."

"No," said Ambrose with a smile at my bad imitation, "but the announcer might yell, 'Great catch! Sign him up.' What do you think?"

"Make sure it's both him and her," said Mrs. Ambrose.

"And if he can't tell, he could say, 'Sign up that fan.'" Ambrose made another note to himself.

"Sometimes it is hard to tell," said Andrea Jepperson. "Give Lucy a sample, and we'll have some fan contracts printed, maybe laminate them. Now how about Ladies Day as a promotion, let women in free. I asked about that before."

"I don't think so," Ambrose said. "Men would howl unless you planned to have an equal number of men's days. I doubt that it's even legal."

"Family day," I suggested. "One or two adults plus up to, say, five kids for twenty bucks, something like that; maybe free hot dogs too. They used to do that back in the Sixties when it was D.C. Stadium."

"Sounds good," said Andrea Jepperson, smiling at me.

"I'll see how others are handling that," Ambrose said, and the meeting wound down with both of them saying they were satisfied with my work despite our dismal record. My son displayed good manners and shook hands properly with both Mrs. Jepperson and Mr. Ambrose, both of whom said nice things about me and my efforts.