As previously mentioned, I'm working on a play presently entitled David Ortiz is God which I'll periodically be posting pieces of here. Here are two monologues, one short one from Keith Foulke, forever my hero and the true World Series MVP, the second about Nomar Garciaparra, based on a dream a friend of mine had. Enjoy.
TITLE CARD
Keith Foulke, RHP
5-3, 2.17 ERA, 32 Saves
Keith Foulke, serious and somewhat ill-tempered, with the top button removed from his cap, speaks.
KEITH
I’m not gonna tell you it’s just a game. That’s not my job. My job is closing the game. I’ve got a fastball slow but accurate and a changeup slower but impossible to hit you think the not-fast fastball’s coming. I tread the line. A good team loses 62 games; a good closer loses three at most. If we get credit for a win, we usually blew the lead and didn’t get the job done right.
Excerpt from Scene 4.
Okay, okay. (breathes deep) Evil dream. Reaaallly evil dream. I can’t remember how it started, but where it ended was, well, I was a serial killer on the lam, running from like a hardcore police pursuit, and I looked the part, kinda like John Malkovich, but with a beard. They were chasing me down a this wooded area near some river, and at first it was lightly wooded. I grinned a crazy grin, taunted them, like (pig call) “Sooo-eeey! Can’t catch me now.” But oh how hubris comes before a fall…so then I tripped over a branch, and it hurt. I got up, but there was this one lone cop, right? Slim. Athletic, I mean, not fat like the others. I couldn’t care less about who the cop was when I first arrested me, of course, ‘cause fuck the po-lice, but…as we walked to the wagon, I asked, for some reason or other, “You got a family, officer?” And he said, “Not yet, but I’ve got a wife. I love her. She’s a renowned soccer superstar.” That hit me as strange. So I looked up. And it was none other than Nomar Garciaparra, wearing a police uniform with a Sox cap. He was firm but gentle as he walked me over. He kind of stroked my wrists around the handcuffs, even, sort of doing that (mimes some of Nomar’s at-bat routine) OCD thing he does, like, at the plate? And it wasn’t so gay…well, it wasn’t that not-gay, but the consolation was nice.
We got to the van, and I began to bawl as the enormity of what lay ahead of me…death penalty…started to dawn on my crazy bearded ass. I turned to Nomar, who sat behind me, and said to him, weeping, "I don’t wanna die. I don’t. I just wanna live. That's why I ran. I JUST WANT TO LIVE."
He just looked at me for a moment, almost lovingly, and asked the obvious question: "If you care about life so much, why'd you kill all those people?" I tried to tweak him with the response, "Murdering people was the only way I could really feel alive." But his expression didn’t change. Nomar’s face never moves. Then I bawled some more and contemplated suicide as we rode.
BELLA
You need help.
DAVE
Least I've never dreamed of Paul O'Neill.
