| | | Editor's Note: When we got to work today, we found another e-mail from that bartending, skateboarding buddy of ours in California. We decided to pass it along again. A word of warning: always wear a helmet.
Chapter 17
... in which our hero gets fashion pointers from Dick Vitale
Janine's plan was, I'd get off work at Lore's and we'd head up to Tahoe with our snowboards. We needed to get our blood pumping, she said.
But it was a busy night. The busiest until the NCAA hoops tournament gets going. We were doing a special promotion, one I had thought of and proposed to Stu Getzler. He's always looking to bring in more clients.
Last Sunday, he offered Quesadillas Ruiz on the menu, in honor of that dude who took Evander Holyfield's heavyweight crown. He paid David Tua, a real heavyweight, to show up at Lore's, and anyone who could take Tua's best shot below the belt and not cough up his Quesadillas Ruiz would get free drinks for a year. The place was packed. Tua told me he had the best time of his life.
Incidentally, nobody won. Especially not me, since I had mop duty that night.
Anyway, I suggested a new promotion: drinks for everybody on the house if anyone could predict the dirt that Gary Sheffield has been threatening to unload on the Dodgers and Bob Daly.
Stu was nervous about losing a lot of money. But I reassured him there was no way anybody could guess Sheffield's dirt. I told him that after four Margaritas a couple weeks ago, Gary leaned across the bar and whispered the dark secrets he had up his sleeve:
Adrian Beltre suspects that during his offseason appendectomy operation doctors secretly inserted a Little Leaguer named Mel Hickham.
And Chan Ho Park once ate a dog he caught in the bullpen.
Needless to say, nobody comes close to predicting any of that. But we have a huge crowd, and David Tua comes by again and Stu Getzler is looking at me
like there's this sign, "raise for Wheeler," blinking on and off in his head.
Janine is standing in the doorway with a look on her face that is the equivalent of a horn honk, because I'm too pleased with myself to want to leave for Tahoe.
Just then a tall, bald, skinny dude walks in and stands at the head of the crowd and starts working the room, glad-handing people like he's a Presidential candidate. Instantly, I see it's Dick Vitale. For a second he is the center of attention, shouting, "Hey, bay-bee!" and slapping everyone on the back.
Just as suddenly, though, the whole thing crashes and burns. People shrink back from him. Everything gets real quiet. My promotional night is going down in flames.
|  | | Talking fashion got Dick Vitale mired in controversy just before the Big Dance. |
I go over to Vitale, who has grabbed a stool at the end of the bar and is looking like he's been shot. He scarfs down a plate of Lore's Extreme Nachos with Steve Lavin-recipe salsa and then erupts: "I knew it. I knew he'd screw me, bay-bee!"
"Who screwed you, Dick?" I ask. I'm trying to calm the dude down before he wipes out the rest of the evening at Lore's.
"Are you blind, Wheeler?" he starts barking at me. "Look at me! Tommy screwed me!"
Vitale stands so I can inspect him. He's wearing a loud blue, four-button suit jacket with red pants about as noisy as the student section in Cameron. One jacket sleeve is two inches longer than the other and one lapel is missing. One trouser leg has a cuff, the other, two inches shorter, doesn't.
"So that's why things in here got kind of freaked," I say. "Who's Tommy?"
Vitale nearly chokes on his nachos.
"Tommy Hilfiger, bay-bee," he says. "Last week, I telecast the North Carolina-N.C. State Game. I mention how Matt Doherty's stylin'. How Matt told
me that Tommy Hilfiger always takes good care of him. This week, Matt calls me. He's absolutely steaming, bay-bee. Claims I should never have mentioned that on the air.
"He says he's in trouble with the NCAA and with the school. They're investigating him for taking illegal gratuities. The IRS is on his butt. He might have to fork over taxes. Or pay a fine. Might even go on trial. Accuses me of sabotaging him. Says I'll never have access to Tar Heel basketball again. He's gonna organize an all-ACC Dick Vitale boycott. I say, how the heck am I supposed to do my job, bay-bee? He tells me I should have thought of that before.
" 'I know why you did it, Dick,' he says. 'You did it because you wanted a little bit of Tommy yourself. So you got in a plug for him on the air. Well, it's costing me, so now it's gonna cost you.'
"Then he hangs up. Anyway, a few days later this suit comes in the mail. 'Compliments of Tommy,' the note says. So tonight, I figure I'll try it out
and come into Lore's with my Tommy. But look at me, Wheeler. He made me a joke suit, bay-bee! Matt got to Tommy! I'm a prime-time air ball with my
Tommy! An all-American laughingstock, bay-bee!"
I'm trying to think what I can say to make Dick feel better. Which is when some guy stops off on his way out and says, "Dude, those threads are making my eyeballs bleed."
Then, one of Vitale's loyal fans snaps. The fan throws his drink in the dude's face. Before I can get over the bar to calm things down, all hell breaks loose. The crazed fan and the guy are punching and tearing at each other in the sawdust on the floor. Chairs and stools are flying. Glasses and bottles are breaking.
This isn't exactly the way I want my promotional idea to turn out. My raise from Stu Getzler is history.
But it's a learning experience. If you can relax and get into the flow, kind of let the brawl come to you, it isn't much different from any form of Xtreme Sports.
I'll always remember one image from it: Vitale emerging from the chaos with his Tommy Hilfiger suit in tatters, then crawling out of the bar through the legs of David Tua.
Tua must have been programmed from Stu Getzler's promotion a couple of days earlier. As Janine and I follow Vitale out of the bar, Tua is unleashing a series of low balls on some of Lore's best customers.
"Did you see the way that guy went down, bay-bee?" I keep laughing to Janine as we grind up the mountain to Tahoe that night.
"Wheeler," she says, "I'm just glad we got out of there alive and are heading someplace where we can get our blood pumping."
Me too.
Next Week: In chapter 18, our hero and Jeannie Buss strike up a fast and dangerous friendship
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