Jerry From Yonkers

I used to work with this young guy, let's call him Jerry From Yonkers because, well, his name was Jerry and he was from... You know the sort, knew everything about everything, especially sport. His passion was The Yankees but, thankfully, we only worked together, or rather we worked in the same building, briefly, during the off-season. For the duration of our acquaintanceship  he had to make do with basketball. That wasn't a problem for him because he knew everything about The Knicks too. His talents seemed sadly wasted running the freight car in an apartment building. If it wasn't for the fact that Charles Oakley, Patrick Ewing, John Starks and the rest of the New York Knicks had to settle for Pat Riley as a coach while Jerry From Yonkers was busy putting out the garbage who knows how many championships they might have won?

Jerry From Yonkers was a regular on sports radio phone-ins. I forget the show but, it's not important, they're all pretty much the same. At least three times a week the presenter would announce, 'And our old friend Jerry From Yonkers is on line two.' Jerry From Yonkers 'Coulda been a Contenda!' He had 'an arm.' He had two, like most of us but, apparently, according to Jerry From Yonkers, one of his could toss a mean curve ball. Somehow or other though he managed to slip through the scouting system of every major league, every minor league and every college baseball program in America. They really should fix those programs because talent like that of  Jerry From Yonkers, as described to me by Jerry From Yonkers himself, is something the American public should not be denied.

As well as 'an arm' Jerry From Yonkers also had 'a voice'. Jerry From Yonkers had a little girlie voice in fact, a little girlie voice that I just couldn't take seriously. No one could. For some reason, and I'm not sure why, I've started to listen to sports radio phone-ins on my drive to work of late and, 19 years removed from my time working alongside Jerry From Yonkers, I still hear his voice and find it hard to suppress a smile. It's not a smile born of affection rather it's born from the memory of a prank call made by another coworker. We'll call him John because, well, you get the picture... You see, John phoned up Jerry From Yonkers' favorite sports phone-in show and did a more than passable impression of Jerry From Yonkers while I was sat in the workshop with Jerry From Yonkers drinking coffee as we both listened to the same radio show...

JL