Octogenarian Out-Smashes Nadal
Today’s theme is tennis, but only loosely. So if you are not a sports fan keep reading anyway. The plot includes stinging suspense and fright in the night.
To begin, poor Novak Djokovic. You had to almost feel sorry for the world’s top-ranked tennis player in the finals of the U.S. Open. At times during his recent 6-2, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 loss to Rafael Nadal inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, Djokovic looked like a guy swinging a broom at an angry wasp inside a family room.
In other words, Djokovic looked like yours truly. Remarkably, no light fixtures or picture frames were harmed in my showdown; more remarkably, the wasp eventually was by a two-handed swat.
Pops “The Bat Slayer,” right, with grandson Greg and me.
While visiting my dad later that day, before I even mentioned my Man vs. Wild victory he nonchalantly one-upped me by a mile.
Switching channels between an old Western, a baseball game and the U.S. Open, Pop turned down the TV volume from its normal “Jet On A Runway” to “Leaf Blower” so I could hear as he filled me in on what he’d been up to the past few days.
After current events were exhausted, I nudged him into retelling some of his favorite old stories. This is kind of like putting on an old Bill Cosby album – you know the routines by heart, but you smile and laugh each time anew anyway.
Only a month ago, I would have told you I knew every single one of my dad’s stories word for word. Then out of the blue in a span of 48 hours I heard two new ones that had escaped my ears for 53 years: my dad had been a mailman a couple years during the Christmas rush while in college and that he nearly got a big tattoo of a panther on his shoulder while in the Navy but decided not to for fear of hepatitis.
The latter story was prompted by a heavily tatted football player on TV, so now as my dad casually asked, “I told you about the bat, right?” I naturally assumed the Dodgers game on the screen had reminded him of yet another story I had never before heard.
Perhaps the bat in question was related to his boyhood, like the time he met Babe Ruth but didn’t have a baseball to get autographed? Maybe in the attic he had just found a baseball bat signed by Ted Williams?
“No, you didn’t tell me about the bat,” I replied.
I was right about the attic, but wrong about what had triggered the story. It had been the tennis match (I’ll soon explain the connection) on TV, not the baseball game. The bat in question was a . . .
. . . BAT! Of the pointy eared, sharp-fanged variety.
Pop had been watching a movie – he forgets which one, though it is as safe as gold in Fort Knox to say it was filmed before 1960 – and after seeing that it didn’t end differently on his 57 th viewing, went to bed. No sooner had he turned off the lights when a black bumblebee on steroids started zooming around overhead.
A wasp in broad daylight made my pulse rev like racecar, but a bat in his dark bedroom didn’t make Pop’s 86-year-old heart with a decade-old stent so much as skip a beat.
“I’ve never had a problem with bats,” he said surprisingly given that rats give him the heebie-jeebies.
This bat soon had a problem with my dad.
After shooing it into the bathroom and shutting the door, Pop fetched a tennis racket from the attic. Specifically, a Jack Kramer wooden model more suitable for appraisal on Antiques Roadshow than battling a bat in the belfry – or bathroom.
Armed with the old-school racket and limping slightly on an old leg that required total knee-replacement surgery a few months ago, my dad rushed the net so to speak by entering the bathroom.
As I said, Nadal couldn’t have done any better. With one swing – “kind of an overhead smash” the victor recalled – it was game, set and match.
“I gave it a pretty good pop!” Pop said proudly.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME comes later this month and is available for pre-order at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.