Episode 98 -The Legend of Ali

What do a mysterious deer and a legendary wiffle ball tournament have in common? As it turns out, everything.

*This story was remixed in collaboration with musicians TJ Duke & Ben Gmetro

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Story created & performed by:

Aaron Calafato

Podcast Coordinator: Cori Birce

Audio Production: Ken Wendt

Original Art: Pete Whitehead

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 98 The Legend of Ali.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

Hey, everybody Aaron here. I'm really excited to share this upcoming episode with you. It's really special. But first, let me give you a little bit of a back story. This is a remastered, new version of a story that I told sometime ago. We're titling it "The Legend of Ali". But what makes this special is that this is a collaboration between myself and musician T.J. Duke and his musical collaborator Ben Gmetro. Now, T.J. and Ben have been creating soundscapes for some time, and you can follow their work and take a musical journey with them, really, I recommend it, by visiting them at weareanaturecamp.bandcamp.com And that link will be in the description box of wherever you're listening to this podcast at. But specifically, T.J. and I have been dear friends for a long time. I mean, I think junior high or high school and he has had an incredible musical journey. He's the bass player in a popular group called Cloud Nothings. They are widely popular in the U.S. and around the world, and they've appeared on shows like Late Night with Jimmy Fallon...and so he's got this incredible success with his band. But individually, TJ has a real knack for creating soundscapes for short films and movies and sound, and I think storytelling..and that's where this conversation started. I reached out to him and I was like, we should from time to time collaborate on some of these episodes, maybe ones I've done before, that we can remaster or ones that are upcoming. And so we're excited to do this and we plan to do this moving into the future, because sometimes stories, you know, are great without sound, without music. But there's some that really, having that element, especially from a musician and an artist like TJ, having that element, it creates a whole new soundscape and a whole new experience for you. So, I can't wait for you to listen to this and make sure and tune in next week, because next seven minutes story is actually going to be a special guest, seven minute interview between me and T.J. And I'm going to be having a conversation with him, asking him about his process, scoring this story that you're about to hear, what he went through, what the collaboration was like, and what we plan to do in the future. So without further ado, enjoy "The Legend of Ali".

It's the bottom of the ninth bases loaded, two outs, two strikes, one more out. This thing is over, the crowd is cheering. You got to feel the anticipation in this ballpark. You could cut the tension with a knife. And there I stand, at home plate, with a big red baseball bat at the annual Wiffle Ball tournament. It all depends on me. Now, you have to understand, I take this tournament very seriously. It happens once a year on Memorial Day. And my friend Dave, he hosts it at his family's house in our hometown. And in their backyard, it's like an actual ballpark, like a mini-Fenway with manicured grass, a diamond, the home run fence, scoreboard and everything, it's really beautiful. And Dave invites his family and extended friends and family. And come to think of it, most of us don't even know each other. We're just called there every Memorial Day to the suburban ballpark and we play Wiffle ball from sunrise until sunset. Men and women and boys and girls and grandma and grandpa, we all play all day. And this was a midday game. So, a lot of young adults, men and women, it's very competitive.

And there I stood at home-plate feeling the pressure of this moment. I had played terribly all game. It was unlike me. I looked out into the crowd. There's Cori, my then girlfriend, my now fiancee. She's cheering for me. Got to show off to her...I look at third base on my team and there's Dan, one of my best friends, and he's cheering for me. He goes, "There's no one else I'd rather be out on that field with. There's no one else I'd rather have at this moment. Let's go!!!" He's trying to fire me up. Everyone knew something was off. I wasn't performing like I usually do. And I thought to myself, maybe it's because of what happened with me and Cori earlier in the day that caused some sort of psychological block. But I didn't have time to think about it because the pitcher released the Wiffleball and floated up in the air. And all of a sudden that fear just changed into utter hope and focus. And I turned and torqued my body and wrenched that red bat and made perfect contact. Next thing I know the sound was like "crack".... silence over the crowd. And I just saw this white lightning of a wiffle ball fly out into left-field just over the outstretched arms of the outfielder...and as I'm rounding first, I realize I just hit a walk-off Grand Slam home-run to win the game. It's one of the greatest athletic achievements of my entire life. I nearly cried. I'm rounding second. I can hear the cheers. I see Cori out..out there just jumping up and down. And as I'm rounding third, a very confident round of third mind you, I see Dan at home plate and he's waiting for me with a big smile and he hugs me and high fives me and I'm jumping up and down in my glory.

"This one's for Ali!"

Now, see, you don't know who Ali is and you also don't know what happened earlier in that day, that could have been the spark for this very moment.

So you see, earlier that day, Cori and I, we went out and it was just beautiful, Sunny, we wanted to just enjoy the weather before the tournament and we ended up going to this elementary school park. Now, I know it's a little weird, but there was no kids there or anything was just us going to the playground. Just a couple of kids ourselves, were playing on the monkey bars and swinging on swings, were laughing. I'm trying to flirt with her and show off, make her laugh. And I jump to, you know, one of the top of the contraptions, pretend to be Rocky. And I'm going across the monkey bars. It was awesome. She was smiling. Time flew. I mean, so fast that we realized, oh, man, we're not going to make it to the WiffleBall tournament. We're going to be late. And so we start walking away back to our car....

And as I take one last look at the playground, I notice on the wood chips, there, underneath some of the playground equipment. There was like this animal. It was breathing really funny, but it looked really beautiful. And it sounded though, like it was struggling. And we both were like, "what the?" We start going towards it. And I thought, it's a cat. And Cori's like "nah it's not a cat" and we got closer and closer and I realized it's a baby deer. And it was just kind of moaning in pain and it was breathing heavy, and its eye was wide open and it was glazed over, but it was struggling. I didn't know what to do. So, Cori's like "just try to talk to it and see if it'll get up." So I start talking to it. I say, "Hey, deer, hey, deer". She said, "well, don't call it deer. Give it a name. Like, it's probably scared."

So I said, OK, "hey, Ali!". She goes, "why did you call it Ali?" I said, "I don't know. that's just the name that came to my head." So there it is. We called him Ali. I named him Ali, I said "Ali, don't worry, man. We're going to take care of you. It's all right. I know you're scared, but we got you, man. Don't worry." And so I, like, tried everything. I tried to clap to scare him. I tried to throw a wood chip near him, you know, and to see if he would run. And he didn't. And I didn't know what to do. So we called like the animal control, or whatever you call for animal, people who know animals! right? That you're supposed to call. And so we called. No one's there. And ends up forwarding us to the police station. So I'm talking to police station and they send an officer out. So, I got this twenty year old officer who pulls up in a cruiser. He goes, "what's going on?" I said, this, Ali is laying. I think he's really hurt." He goes, "Who's Ali?" I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, it's a baby deer." And he comes up, he says, "Oh, man". And now he's in it. And he does know what to do. And we're all feeling for this deer. And he goes, "well, maybe if I pull its leg, it'll jump up and some adrenalin will hit it." He goes, "sometimes that happens and he'll run off into the forest." And so the officer pulled its leg and nothing. He just cried out in pain, the deer, and the officer looked at me and said, "hey, I don't know if there's anything else we can do, but what I'd suggest is you and your girlfriend just please walk to your car and don't turn around, because I don't think you're going to like what you see..."

And I said, "what? What are you thinking about? Like, what I see..?" It didn't even register and Cori took my hand, I turn around. I didn't want to leave Ali, but I had... I just walked. And I wasn't 10 feet away. All of a sudden, I turned around. I saw the officer with a gun to its head and heard bang, bang, bang, shots rang out! He shot Ali!

And I just felt terrible...terrible.. I was sitting in the car with Cori, she was in tears and it was traumatic, it's very traumatic. And I was like, I felt like I had sentenced this poor animal to death. But Cori told me she's like, "look, you know, this animal was suffering anyways. It was really in pain. It was probably the best and only thing you could do. Now, he's not in pain anymore".

But it stuck with me. You see? It stuck with me and it stuck with me on the car ride there. And it stuck with me when we got to the WiffleBall tournament and all through the game because I didn't perform well, and it stuck with me until it was the bottom of the ninth with two outs until I channeled Ali and I freakin turned on that ball and I hit a GrandSlam game-winning home run because of Ali!

And that's why I pointed to the sky, we're full circle now in the story, as I crossed home plate, I pointed to the sky and I said, this one's for Ali!

..and it was. And it was weird because even when I left the Wiffle Ball tournament, I'm sitting in the car with Cori and I said to her, I said "You know, can we just put on some Joni Mitchell?" She said, "Why?" I said, "I don't know. There's just this one song that she sings. And I remember the lyrics so clearly it says: "something's lost when something's gained when living life every day."

And this was one of those days....

7 minute stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Audio production by Ken Went, you can connect with Ken at media216.com . Original artwork done by Pete Whitehead. See Pete's work at petewhitehead.com . And lastly, I'm Cori Birce and I coordinate the podcast! Make sure and tune in next week for another story.

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