Plot
Nicky Rogan has written several plays and has achieved success. It is now opening night of his latest effort, and all around him assure him that this one will be the best yet. But as opening hour approaches, Rogan falls prey to doubts and fears, egged on by another playwright whose last work was trashed by the local newspaper's new drama critic, Steven Schwimmer. He eventually lets those fears drive him to adopt a resolve to kill the critic (who he assumes will also trash his play), and he procures a handgun with which to perform the deed.
Instead of attending the play's opening night Rogan spends the time in a bar, accompanied by a lady cab driver and her grandson; earlier in the evening the lady misidentified Rogan as a local small-time hoodlum, and Rogan does not correct her misidentification.
They watch the most crucial Game 6 of the World Series playoff between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets. The Sox had won 3 games and could clinch the title by winning Game 6, but Rogan, a lifelong Sox fan, knows how easily they can lose when they should win. He spends the evening waiting for the inevitable, even though the Sox are ahead most of the time. When the inevitable does occur (due to an unexpected pair of errors at the end of the final inning), he snaps, and heads out to take out his rage on the newspaper critic.
He not only finds the critic, but finds him in the early stages of deflowering the playwright's daughter. He begins firing wildly, but is finally calmed when he learns that the critic is equally devastated by the Sox's loss. They end up together, watching an interminable rerun of the final error on a small television set in the critic's apartment.
Read more about this topic: Game 6
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)