God, if only he could know whether the impassioned letter he had earlier slipped beneath that door had been noticed by the VIP. His future was in that envelope. Were the pages of that letter scattered beside that VIP on his queen-size bed as he napped or were they still sealed in an envelope near the door, unnoticed and destined to be obliviously stepped on when check-out time came?
How about tempting fate and simply knocking on the door? No, that would risk irritating a man the unemployed umpire could not afford to irritate.
As he sensed time slipping away on a miraculous opportunity, not to mention what was left of his career, the unemployed umpire’s eyes became transfixed on a fire alarm in that stylish sixth-floor corridor. Maybe Phil Cuzzi should just pull the lever on that fire alarm and force sleepy NL President Leonard Coleman to emerge from Room 624.
That way, Cuzzi could look into Coleman’s eyes and with all the passion that was pent up within him, tell him that he lived to be an umpire, that he felt he had received such an unfair shake three years earlier when he was terminated by Major League Baseball and that he would do anything — absolutely anything — for another chance.
That way, he could leave the Short Hills (N.J.) Hilton, where his sister gave him a job after his release from baseball in 1993 — and where Coleman happened to be staying for a night on the way home from the 1996 All-Star Game at Philadelphia — and resume the only career that ever mattered to him.
All Phil Cuzzi wanted was another chance.
“It meant so much because my love of the game was never gone,” Cuzzi said five years later. “All I wanted was another opportunity. I was going to do whatever I had to do to get it back.”
But, no, Cuzzi wasn’t going to pull that fire alarm. That just wouldn’t be right. Instead, another brainstorm erupted in his head and he dashed off to the front desk. Did Mr. Coleman, he asked a clerk, happen to request a wake-up call?
Indeed, he had, Cuzzi was told — at seven o’clock the following morning. And then Cuzzi went home, went right to bed, set his alarm for 5:30 a.m., showered, put on his best suit, hurried back to the hotel, went straight to Room 624 and waited for Coleman to emerge.
“I was getting very, very impatient, but I heard him rustling around in there, so I knew I didn’t miss him, which was the most important thing,“ Cuzzi said.
Never did he feel his heart pound harder than it did that morning, when he waited for the door to Room 624 to open.