Broadway Show League West
- Posted on 13th March 2017
- in Entertainment, entertainment books, Hollywood books, Hollywood memoirs, Las Vegas
- by Ben
The Broadway Show League is a summer showbiz tradition in New York City.
In the early 1950’s the casts and crews of Broadway shows would often walk up to Central Park on Wednesdays for picnics and softball games between the matinee and the evening performances. In 1955 they established a formal league that played on Thursday afternoons and called it the Broadway Show League.
Many of the stars from Broadway, movies and TV have played in the league at one time, as well as thousands of folks from “backstage”. Teams are made up of people who work on Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, casts, crews, and orchestras, as well as union teams and theatrical organizations.
Somehow the singular event from the title of this post escaped my memory when I was writing Three Stages, the first volume of my memoirs.
In the early summer of 1963 someone in either South Pacific (my show at the Thunderbird) or Guys & Dolls (my girlfriend’s show at the Dunes) thought we ought to have a “Broadway Show League West” series and since there were only two Broadway Shows in town it would be a short one.
When our stage manager came into the men’s dressing room with this announcement one night the guys all were eager and excited. Everyone but me. I was a good athlete; football, track and diving but softball just wasn’t my game so I declined to join the team.
This did not go over well with my colleagues and over my protestations of incompetence I was pressed into service and a practice was scheduled.
You know how when you haven’t done something for a long time and you get into it and it feels surprisingly easy? That’s what happened to me with this softball business. In practice I snagged long fly balls, scooped up grounders and hit the ball like I should have been playing for the Yankees. I had never been even close to so good at this game. I was the best fielder and hitter on the playground and the only one who was shocked by my performance. I got a lot of ribbing for my (suspected) modesty about my skills even though I protested vigorously that this was all an aberration.
Then Game Day came.
I reverted to form. Struck out, muffed easy grounders; name an error, I committed it multiple times. My defense mantra became. “I told you I can’t play this game!”
As it turned out neither could anyone from South Pacific. Everyone in the show pitched to at least a couple of batters. Once in a while someone would throw a strike but it made no difference. By the end of the first inning – which took over an hour – the score was something like Guys & Dolls 18, South Pacific 2. The ineptitude of both teams was magnified by the desert winds that often turned a pop fly into a home run, carrying the ball into the next playground.
My dim recollection tells me that we gave up after three innings (four + hours with a score of around 44 to 6) because we had to eat supper and do two shows.
Thus ended the short happy life of Broadway Show League West. A good time was had by all. Except me.
For more funny tales of showbiz in general and Las Vegas in particular click here and get Three Stages.
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