Babe Ruth and Billy Martin Talk Baseball in Toots Shor's Sky Saloon

The scene: A saloon in the sky where the baseball boys of days gone by sit and scan ESPN while talking baseball. The smokey sky saloon has a big round bar and old oak tables scattered haphazardly throughout.

The decor is simple.The fare bar food. The drinks be beer and hard booze sipped mostly straight or with a shot of water or a splash of soda.

Smoking is allowed.

Step inside Toots Shor's Saloon in the Sky.

Ye never know who ye will find.....

Toots is standing, chatting, scrubbing the bar. A small crowd sits around the bar. A few folks sit quietly talking at tables. One man sits stoically alone, save for a single rose and two glasses of fine wine. One glass for him the other sits full above an empty chair. He stares solemnly out the window silently looking...quietly waiting for someone.

Toots: So anyways ya heard about the mess didn't ya? One hell of a mess I tell ya.

Billy Martin: Toots I was here when it happened. I..hey fill me up. [pushes a frosty mug forward]

Toots: I know YOU were, but Babe wasn't? Were ya Babe?

Babe: Of all the days to take a train across town. I mean any type of excitement up here is good. I mean it gets kinda of monotonous sometimes. Say them hots dogs soon done?

Toots: Yeah Lefty's cooking in the kitchen. A dozen be done soon for sure. Lefty loves the kitchen. Anyways I'm sitting here we have those clowns on ESPN on. Them guys can never shut the hell up. They never give a man a moment of silence to savor the game. Always babble, babble, babble.

So anyways, Teddy Ball Game, Ted Williams, is sitting right there talking mostly fishing but also bringing up the finer points of hitting. Pointing out how poor the players today and how over fishing is killing his Keys.

Everyone's having a good time and Ted's going on a bit when suddenly for no reason Ty Cobb yells from the corner that he forgot more about hitting then Ted knows.

Babe: That little ass. I thought you threw him out.

Toot: I did. Twice. But he begged back. This time no way. He's out for three hundred years. So anyways Ted just glares at him and Cobb grins and glares right back and says something smart ass about the Splendid sphincter and laughs loudly to himself cause you know mean old Cobb no one sits anywhere near him.

Babe: What an ass...

Toots: So Ted ignores him, like most everybody else does and I tell Cobb to knock it off and he tells me to go screw myself and calls me a fat ass to boot. I'm about to smack him myself when he yells Hows the Head, Ted? And howls with wicked laughter. Laughs so hard it looks like he's gonna piss himself.

I mean he's howling like a banshee. Ted's face goes beet red and Cobb howls Hell My kids hated my guts but at least they didn't chop my damn head off and freeze it. Teddy Vampire! The Mexican Magician...and then Ted grabs a shot glass and fires a fastball straight at Cobb Cracks him square between the eyes.

If he was alive he would of been dead.

Babe: What an ass..what did Cobb do?

Billy: He's a mean little bastard...

Toots: The little bastard fell right off his chair. Then after a moment got up and charged right at Teddy. Tore the whole damn place up they did. Oh it was a mess...see right before the shot glass and right after the frozen head wise crack.

Well Billy here...and his buddy Munson spit their beers up at the head joke which made Cobb cackle more. Egg 'em on didn't ya Billy? Still can't help yourself can ya?

Billy: Well it was damn funny. I mean Ted takes himself pretty damn serious still.

Toots: So Ted slams his beer down and says I don't need no shit from some dumb ass Yankee that can't fly a small plane correctly. And Munson gets mad. But then Cobb fires another Ted Frozen head wise crack and all hell breaks loose.

I mean Cobb's outside ranting and of all things he pulls a German Luger and begins waving it around like a lunactic...I mean how in the hell do you get a gun up here? How did Cobb the crumb do that?

Ted says he's gonna shove that gun right up his Georgia ass and then boom boom Cobb vanishes in a cloud of smoke. I expect he got himself in trouble with the big guy again.

Babe: Toots your cursing is gonna get you in trouble...I better go check those hot dogs.

[Babe drains his beer and exits into the kitchen yelling Lefty! Hey Lefty!]

Toots [filling Billy's beer]: So Ted stormed off too. Said the hell with this he was going fishing and that he can't stand watching baseball let alone talking about for eternity. You heard about Babe and Cobb didn't ya?

Billy: Toots I was here. I'm always here. Seen the Mick lately...

Toots: Nope not for awhile. Mick won't touch a drop. Says it just makes him sad and that he had enough to last a few lifetimes...He walks a lot.

Anyway Cobb was sitting there and the ESPN boys were babbling about these baseball players taking them lady shots, pills, and potions and growing them selves magnificent man boobs or something bizarre like that and Cobb yells to Babe. Look at Babe he got his man boobs the old fashioned way beer and burgers.

And Cobb just howls...even Dimaggio had to hide a grin. Babe goes red walks over and just starts strangling the son of a bitch. Jackie Gleason was sitting right here and he goes aw let 'em go they can't kill each other there already dead.

And Gleason says grinning it is fun to watch. But I can't have this stuff in here. I mean the old man will shut us down.

Billy [whispers and points to the man alone in the corner with the wine and roses] How's Joe?

Toots [whispering]: Aww the same. The poor guy got it bad. He's like a sick puppy just sits there and stares. She stopped once. Laughing and giggling but after awhile they got to fighting. Seems he saw her with those Kennedy boys and throw a fit.

A pure Sicilian rage. And she spat it right back at him. I warned him about her but he didn't listen. Hell he was stewed at me for decades and all I said was what do you expect from a Hollywood Whore? That's it! And Joe blew up...never came back in until he was dead.

Now he sits and sips one glass of wine...sometimes two and waits with that damn rose everyday. It's sad...Hemingway came in and tried to talk him into fishing, or fighting, or anything but he just shook his head no. Papa tried and tried to shake from his rut but no luck. He sits, he sips, he stares. He got it so damn bad its sad.

Babe [sitting down with half a dozen hot dogs]: Finally...another beer, Tootsie. This crap in here keeps up your gonna have to hire Dempsey as a bouncer. Its turning into some rough gin joint.  I heard Hemingway was here? He leave any good Cubans?

Toots [pulling a box of cigars from behind the bar]: Here ya go Bambino. Just don't ask Papa about Cuba or about the snow melting off Kilimanjaro or about the fish and game disappearing or about this so called Me Generation or Boomers or what ever the hell they call themselves. I don't understand them.

But Pappa is pissed. He's despises them calls them whiners, moaners, cowardly self-centered complainers...I say Pappa have a drink lets talk boxing and that calms them him. Until he says boxing is terrible, too.

The heavys are horrible and the sport is greed diseased and I say Papa what about fishing and he says the fish are dying. True Sportsmen don't exist anymore and he rages on and on and on.

So I try women and I ask him about that Jolie dame and that calms him a bit. He likes her. Its that French fetish  thing of his...Paris, the Lost Generation, and all that jazz.

Billy: Who doesn't like that broad? Another beer there Toots...I always liked that story of his where the lady that was banging this other big game hunter fellow blows her husbands brains out while hunting. Right after he was feeling good about facing that lion. Damn broads...the problems they cause.

Toots: Look at Jolting Joe. But Papa just ain't been right lately. Why he bashed John O'Hara right in the mouth behind the saloon the other day. Sure O'Hara was harassing him but still he's gonna get himself Cobbed by the sky cops.

Hemingway's been hanging with that Hunter Thompson fella too damn much. What a wacko...what a card that one is.

Billy: Cobb is such an ass. How about when he was railing on old Satchel the other day. About how he'd hit all day and all night long off him and on and on about how bad the Negro leagues were.

And Satchel says Listen you better look around because if you don't shut up something is gonna be gaining on your cracker ass and they almost went at it.

Toots: It's good Dempsey was here. He sat them both down. Even Cobb is cautious around Dempsey. And I don't blame him.

Babe [looking at the television]: Look at these bums in New York. Ten bucks a beer? Can you imagine? What the hell is a PSL? A hundred grand for a seat? The world's gone nuts, I tell ya. What would I make today?

Billy: It's George and his boys. The Steinbrenner's are a pack of vicious thieves...Criminals. Look at those wee wolves he raised. Soon as the old man goes for the dirt nap  they are gonna be clawing each others eyes out. I can't wait.

Toots: To see George? Maybe he can hire ya up here to run a team one more time.

Babe: And fire ya.

Toots: And hire ya..

Babe: And fire ya..

Toots: And hire ya...

Billy: What a pair of comics. What Chaplin have ya in training or are ya natural clowns?

Babe: Natural.

Toots: It ain't just George. See its everyone. Look at the Mets, screwing the senior citizen ticket days. Look at football. That money hungry squirt in Washington. That greedy weirdo in Dallas. Charlie Conerly told me the other day that he won't even watch the Giants anymore with what they are doing to the fans in that stadium.

Billy: Everything twisted in Texas.

Babe:Everything twisted everywhere. Them folks that leave Yankee stadium I bet they bleat because they just been fleeced.

Toots: These fellas making millions and filling themselves with female hormones? Who the hell would have imagined that? I mean I won't even let them weirdos in my place. No way...shooting each other in the ass. Growing boobs bigger then Bridget Bardots.

Billy: She around, Bridget?

Toots: She ain't dead knucklehead...

Billy: Oh...

Babe: And they cheat. Look at that A-Rod fella signaling the other team what pitch is coming then having them flag him back. That's worse then what Pete Rose done. I mean at least he was betting on his team to win.

Billy: As a player or a coach if I caught a man doing that I would have punched him in the mouth.

Babe: Me too. The damn pretty boy...

Toots: Well he ain't getting in here I tell ya.

Babe: He's an uptown guy. Movie stars, Singers, social status, super stars red carpets, highlights, glitz and glamor like that Gatsby fellow. No ARod ain't coming in here. Hell I wouldn't even know what to say to them fellas.

Billy: It ain't even baseball anymore.

Babe: It ain't even like life anymore. Or any life I knew. Well maybe it is. Billionaires, millionaires, moral majorities, movie stars, crashed stock markets maybe things have not changed that much after all. Still sometimes It makes a fella feel good to be dead.

Billy:Don't say that Babe you give anything for one more swing. One last swat.

Babe: Sure, I guess, Sure. But they tore my house down you know.

Toots: Aw Babe it will always be your house.

Babe: Nah...change is the only sure constant. No, everything changes. Sometimes its just so damn sad.

Toots: Aww Cheer up you crumb. Your starting to sound like sick puppy Joe. And Al Jolson is coming in to sing later..if Al don't do it for ya well ya might as well be dead in the dirt..

Billy[looking out the window]:Damn that's Dom.

Toots: It sure is. Maybe that'll cheer up Joe. Drinks for the house. Drinks for Dom!