In the 18 years I’ve lived in East Hampton, there hasn’t been one time, surprisingly, I ran into a former teammate from all the teams, basketball, baseball, and football, I played on in my ol’ neighborhood of Queens, but that changed last week when I stopped in the sporting goods department at Target in Riverhead and fondled a $49.99 Wilson “The Duke” leather football.
“Well, well, well, if it ain’t the best quarterback in all of Queens, Frankie Vespe,” shouted a familiar voice I hadn’t heard in 50 years.
“Mario?” I asked.
“Who else do you think it is? The best middle linebacker in all of Queens,” he said as he hobbled close to me with a slight limp, an engraved wooden cane in his right hand.
Mario was the middle linebacker on my Y.M.C.A. and pickup game team. Tough as nails, looked like Clark Kent, strong as Superman, although in my class at Long Island City High School as delicate as Lois Lane. But during one practice scrimmage game, he barreled straight at me, helmet to helmet, knocking me out cold; I only came out of it when a small, cracked bottle of smelling salts was waved under my nose, with my coach asking weird questions: “What’s your name? What day is today? Where are you?”
It was the only time in five years of quarterbacking that I thought I would never play, or walk, again.
“Thanks for knocking me out, Mario.”
“C’mon, it wasn’t that bad. We knew you’d get up and throw five touchdowns.”
“Six,” I countered.
“Haha. Anyway, we were all certain you’d get drafted, make the pros, at least a college scholarship. Right?”
“In a perfect world, yes, but I got distracted big time.”
“Booze?” he asked.
“No thanks.”
“Don’t tell me. Drugs?”
“Never in a million years,” I answered.
“What’s more addictive than those?”
“Girls.”
“Are you serious?”
“Coach Rivkin called me into his office, told me the Detroit Tigers were sending someone to scout our baseball team, and I needed to be there, good chance I’ll get an offer.”
“So, what happened?”
“I never showed up. I was with Debbie in her apartment on 12th Street.”
“Ya know, Frankie, some of the guys on the team thought you were on the fence.”
“What fence?”
“You know . . . the other fence.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Your long blond hair sticking out of the helmet, some of the guys started calling you ‘Farrah Pretty’ instead of Frankie Pretty.”
The football fields of Queens — Flushing Meadow Park, Victory Field, and Astoria Park — were battlegrounds, where ambulances always idled close by, but none were more chilling than Elmjack, a Pop Warner field in the shadow of Rikers Island, near LaGuardia Airport, where the toughest of the toughest played, but on one snowy, icy day in December, only the real players came out to play, and I wasn’t gonna miss it. (I loved playing in snow.)
My brother usually drove me to my games, but this day he was stuck at his girlfriend’s house in Whitestone, bad weather, so I had to catch a ride in a player’s father’s station wagon, where 10 of my teammates huddled close. As I left, my mother unexpectedly opened a second-floor window of our house on Crescent Street in Astoria and called to me, “Hey, Frankie, stay pretty!”
That’s all my 10 teammates needed to hear, and for the next three years, that was my name, Frankie Pretty, when linebackers twice my size would line up on the scrimmage line, inches from my face, screaming, “I’m gonna take you down so hard, knock that pretty right off your face, Frankie Pretty!”
For those few years, I disdained that nickname, often crying in my basement when I got home after a game, even when I threw four touchdowns and we won. But soon after football, I embraced it, recalling the friendships and connections I oddly gained, such as Mario, thanks to a name some would consider mocking, but which helped me grow as a quarterback and as a person.
And to those young boys, young girls, and whoever might be mocked or ridiculed with insulting, derogatory nicknames, I assure you, there isn’t anything more embarrassing than my being called “pretty,” especially when I was on a date with a girlfriend in the Loews movie theater on Steinway Street and someone shouted, “There goes Frankie Pretty,” but it made me stronger, wiser, more confident, so that when I threw a touchdown the next Saturday, I knew I got the last laugh.
“Perhaps we all can get together, a game of touch football, Astoria Park?” Mario asked.
“Could be a plan, Mario,” I answered.
“Can you still bring it?” he asked.
“Bring what?” I answered.
“The bullet.”
And with that, he grabbed the boxed football out of my hands, tore it apart, and pushed the football into my gut like a handoff, then dropped his cane, shuffled down the center aisle, 20 yards, his right hand waving over his head, and, as if in the pocket, I dropped back a few feet and threw a perfect spiral to Mario, who snagged it with one hand, chest high, then hobbled back to me, holding the ball high above his head, all in the center aisle of Target.
“Touchdown . . . again,” he proclaimed.
Then we chatted and laughed about our lives and families for a few precious minutes, exchanged cell numbers, and promised to get together, hopefully, with the team.
As he walked away, he turned back, hugged me close, kissed me on the cheek, and whispered in my ear, “You’re still kinda pretty.”
Frank Vespe has been a contributor of “Guestwords” for many years.