This week we meet Larry. Lar, like crazy armed nut-jobs from sea to shining sea, owns a Bushmaster XM-15 with a Vortex Spitfire scope and plenty of ammo. All legally obtained.
It's a beautiful spring morning. Opening Day of a brand new baseball season. The sun is shining. The grass is green. The boys are ready to play ball.
But unless sanity suddenly intervenes, unlikely, it’s best to prepare for more American carnage.
Welcome to the ten Minute Storyteller. That's me Bill Simpson, your host, narrator, and author. We hear at the ten minute Storyteller endeavor to entertain you with tall tales or rendered swiftly and with the utmost empathy. We pledge to pack as much entertainment, emotion, and exploration into the human condition as ten minutes will permit. Mini novels on steroids. This week we meet Larry Larr, like crazy armed nut jobs from Sea to Shining Sea, owns a Bushmaster XM fifteen with a vortex spitfirescope, and plenty of ammo, all legally obtained. It's a beautiful spring morning, opening day of a brand new baseball season. The sun is shining, the grass is green. The boys are ready to play ball. But unless sanity suddenly intervenes unlikely, it's best to prepare for more American carnage playball. Larry sits in the modified deer blind on the edge of the woods, just beyond the outfield fence. More than just a platform twenty feet up in that old oak, this deer blind has canvas sides and a plastic roof to protect the hunter from the elements and to better seclude him from his prey. It is not deer hunting season. It is opening day of the Triborough Little League season. The grass is green and the sun is shining, and the banners have been hung. The snackshack is open. Burgers and dogs on the grill. Opening game on this spectacular Saturday features Coach Rizzo's Mad Dogs against Coach Peterson's River Rats. Larry watches warm ups through the one inch gun hole in the canvas side that faces the field. He spots Coach Rizzo standing outside the home team's dugout. Larry has a massive hard on for coach Rizzo, has had it now for almost six years. Longer longer if you go back to the miners. Stooge, Yo stooge. Coach Rizzo called that very first day of miner's practice, Larry stooge, Yo, Larry stooge. No one responded, stooge, come on, is there a stooge among you? Young Heathen's mo Larry Curly, come on, step up. Larry didn't respond. He didn't shout here because his last name wasn't stooge. His last name was stage. Larry Stage, Lawrence Allen. Stage. Stage like the place where bands play and actors perform, not stooge. Still the name stuck stooge. It was that first day of Miners and Stooge. It would be right up until his final strikeout on the last day of Majors three terrible years later and now almost six years ago. Larry hates baseball. Hates it, has always hated baseball. Stupidest goddamn game invented. He'll tell you if you give him half a chance. What Larry really likes to do is hunt. He likes to track animals, ravens, bluejays, crows, squirrels, coons, track them, sneak up on them, and blow them to Kingdom Come wherever that is. Larry tries not to think too much about why he likes to track and shoot animals, but when he does think about it, he thinks maybe it's because of Coach Rizzo. The way Coach Rizzo called him stooge and told him he threw like a girl and hit like a wet mop and generally had the baseball prowess of a bluefin tuna. It was true, Larry had a hard time judging fly balls and gathering up grounders, and yeah, okay, he struck out just about every stinking time he stepped into the batter's box. But still still did Arizzo have to point it out, rub it in? Did he? Ha? Did he? Ha? Huh? Although, although maybe Larry will on occasion admit, at least to himself, maybe the real reason he likes to kill shit is because his father hits his mother and sometimes him and sometimes his brother Hal. Well, not his brother Hal anymore, because how last year joined the Marine Corps and is now a big, badass corporal killing sand niggers and Baghdad and cobble. I don't want to play baseball, dad, Larry said in the car on the way home from that very first minor league practice. He already knew he couldn't hit, and couldn't field and couldn't throw, And now now all the other kids on the team were calling him stooge, just like coach Rizzo. You down, huh? You don't want to play? Not really? Well, too bad, kid, I already paid for the goddamn uniform and a bat and a new glove. You're playing no two goddamn ways about it. Larry knew better than to argue with his father. Arguing with his father could lead to a backhand across the cheek, and so by the following spring, when it was time to become a major leaguer, his father and coach Rizzo had become best buds, went hunting and killed deer and drank beer together, which meant Larry would not only be playing baseball again, it also meant he'd once more be suffering the rising and heckling of coach Rizzo. Oh Christ, Larry, come on, don't be such a goddamn baby, grumbled his father. Rizzo knows the game. He knows the game. He played double a ball for the He'll make a ballplayer out of you. Yet, well, Larry didn't want to be a ballplayer. He wanted to take the dog in the twenty two and go out back, cross the river, into the woods and shoot anything that moved. But nope, the old man delivered him sad faced to coach Rizzo practice after practice, game after stinking game, where Larry always played right field and always bat at last, except once when he pitched an inning well part of an inning, gave up six runs on three walks, two hit batters, and the longest homer of the season over the center field fence three years three fucking years of dropped fly balls, errant throws, strikeouts, unabated failure, and that asshole Rizzo calling him stooge. Three years of that bullshit, and now almost six years, with a simmering desire for revenge, he kneels in the deer blind out in the woods beyond that same center field fence. The blind is well back in the woods, at least one hundred feet from the edge, one hundred and fifty feet from the outfield fence, three hundred and fifty feet from home plate. But still Larry has a clear view of the field. He's been trimming branches for years, patiently waiting now coach Rizzo. He has two sons, two ballplayers. The older one, Ryan, is Larry's age. The younger one, Tommy, is several years younger and so just now beginning his baseball journey. Larry has been waiting a long time for that journey to begin, and today Today's the day Larry, not so long ago, purchased his Bushmaster fifteen at Gray's Gun Shop over on Main Street, same shop where his father buys all his guns and Ammo. Larry walked right into Gray's on the day he turned eighteen and made the purchase with no hassle at all. Said hey to mister Gray, provided a valid driver's license, and away he went with his used Bushmaster and several boxes of AMMO in tow. Taking mister Gray's advice, Larry went with the spear gold fifty five gram shells. Perfect, said mister Gray for bringing down those big bucks. Now, for the past few weeks, Larry has been practicing. Every morning, he drives his old pickup out into the country to shoot miles for many homes or businesses. He started with targets at close range, just fifty feet or so, but with his exceptional shooting skills learned from his father and his steady nerves, he quickly pushed those targets farther and farther into the distance, and now opening day underway, he's ready to fulfill his dreams. He pokes the barrel of the Bushmaster through the gun hole and presses his right eye against the vortex spitfire prism scope. In an instant, those eager young ballplayers loom just inches away heads fill the glass viewfinder. He can see mole's eye color, even a little cut on one kid's lip. The game begins. Things move slowly, the kids suck. They're just beginning to learn to play. Lots of walks and strikeouts and errors. In the second inning, little Tommy Rizzo walks. The next kid hits a little squibbler down the third baseline. Tommy moves to second Coach Rizzo coach'es third. He stands there, clapping his hands, clapping and shouting orders, just the way, just the way he always used to do. Come on, kid, come on kid, hit the ball. Now, come on up there to hit up there to hit. Not the walk, not the walk, Come on, hit scores, Tommy, Tommy, be ready, kid, be ready on contact, You're moving. Larry watches the action through his scope. In that clear glass, Coach Rizzo's face is as big as a full moon on a dark winter's night. Larry can see the bushy eyebrows and the bushy mustache, and the scar on his cheek where supposedly Rizzo had gotten cut with a knife in a bar fight years and years ago. Suddenly, the ball contacts the metal bat. The sound echoes around the ballfield and out into those woods beyond the center field fence. Run, Tommy shouts, Rizzo, run, kid, come on run, Tommy runs, and just before Tommy reaches third base, Larry pulls himself taut and gently squeezes the trigger of the Bushmaster x M fifteen, and an instant later, Coach Rizzo, his body sprawled out, unmoving along the third baseline, shouts no more. Well, that should have been the end of it, the fulfillment of Larry's dream, But no, his adrenaline pumping and blood now a boil, Larry keeps popping off shot after shot, picking off kids and their panicked parents, running willy nilly across that ball field, and in the end, six dead and eleven wounded, enough to make the evening news, the national evening news, enough to once more stop Americans in their tracks and mutter, oh my God, not again, When, oh when will it end? Thanks for listening to this original audio presentation of Playball, narrated by the author. If you enjoy today's story, please take a few seconds to rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast, and then go to Thomas William Simpson dot com for additional information about the author and to view his extensive canon. The ten Minute Storyteller is produced by Andrew Pleiglici and Josh Colodney and as part of the Elvis Duran podcast Network in partnership with Iheartproductions. Until next time, this is Bill Simpson, your ten minute storyteller,