Turning Pro -- Rocking the Scrabble World (Cigar Smoke 3-6-08)

Remember last week I told you that I wouldn't write about my knee operation. Well, I'm going to keep that promise but I don't want you to get lazy and complacent and overly expectant about your expectations of me. So I'm going to write yet another column about Scrabble.

For those of you who are still reading this and, by the way, I never really liked those other so-called readers all that much anyway, I have to tell you about my becoming a professional Scrabble player. Yes, professional. I am now actually making money at this game.

I've been playing Scrabble for about two years now, I guess. I play in weekly club games and a monthly club where you can win real money, and I go to tournaments where the first-place check is, maybe, $1,200. Hey, that's not bad. You can buy a lot of M&Ms and corn nuts for that, baby. But I had never won a damn thing. Nothing. Nada.

Until ... until a few weeks ago, when things started to change. I was playing down in Orange County and I came up with the word "meataxe" and I scored 116 points on that one play. (I'll pause for the cheering to wind down.) At the awards presentation at the end of the tourney, I received a check for $10 for the highest scoring play. It's a good thing I was sitting down or I would have fallen over.

Ten bucks! Dammit, I had actually won real money. I was now a professional Scrabble player. A pro. A moneymaking damn pro. And I felt good about myself. Real good. Randy Newman good. And even though the word "meataxe" was a phony, I didn't care. It was my moneymaking phony word and I loved it. I would have kissed myself if I could.

So with this new confidence, I went to my Saturday Scrabble club out in West LA and damned if I didn't win all four games that day. I only tell you this because if you win all your games, you get your $4 entry fee back. So I got four actual dollars back.

And I'm counting that as winnings, now that I'm a professional Scrabble player. (Have you noticed how I love to italicize professional?) It just makes me feel so cool. Now I know how Tiger feels.

Now my winnings had shot up to $14. I was on a roll. So on Wednesday night I went to my other Scrabble club out in West Hollywood. And yes, you guessed it, I increased my winnings again. I got the highest opening play, a bingo for the word "weekend" that gave me 84 points. Because of that stellar achievement, I won a $1 Lotto scratcher ticket. My winnings pot had semi-skyrocketed up to $15.

And that was not the end of it. When I scratched that scratcher I won another $3. Holy professional moly, I had now won a grand total of $18. In only two weeks. I was a comer, a phenom. I was ready to rock the Scrabble circuit. So I entered a tournament that I had come across out in Westchester. For those of you who don't know, I grew up in Westchester. I went to Westchester High School, I played baseball there, and I was in the Boy Scouts there. I worked on Christmas tree lots there, I read all the adventure books in the library there, and I was a Comet, baby. A Westchester Comet.

So I went to the tournament. It was on a Friday night; just a small tournament, maybe about 30 people. And most of them were what we professional Scrabble players refer to as recreational players. These people, although nice people, good people, fine people, do not know their Qis from their Zas. That's a professional Scrabble joke for Scrabble snobs. Oh, how we laugh.

There were maybe eight other pretty good players there. So we played the tournament, three games of incredible tension and word-wielding expertise. I'm not going to tell you all the details except I did play this really nice young high school girl, and I mentioned that I had gone to Westchester High 50 years ago. (Yes, 50. I graduated in 1958 - a proud Vanguard, dammit.) When I said that to the girl, she looked at me like "Thanks for the info, Grampa, you want me to send out for some Metamucil?"

Anyway, I won the tournament - the first Scrabble tournament I have ever won. And I was feeling proud. I really was. I was standing up there ready to receive my winnings when the director gave me a bag of stuff. There was a coffee cup, a T-shirt in there and something I think Homeland Security should look into. I asked, "Where's the check?" He laughed his director laugh, and said "There's no check. You get to have your name inscribed on a trophy." I said, "Has the Scrabble investigatory commission heard about this?"

He ignored me and he held out the trophy in front of us so they could take a picture. And then he said - and I am not making this up, Dave Barry will even tell you it's true - he said "We had a little accident and the ‘L' and the ‘E' fell off the trophy." So I was standing up on this stage holding a trophy that said Westchester First Annual YMCA SCRABB Champion.

Yes, I was the Scrabb champion. And I was proud to be the Scrabb champion. I would have been a little prouder if the trophy came with all the letters attached and came with a check. Yes, that would have been better, and a nice shot in the arm to my ever-growing winnings pot, but I'm still pretty happy.

Yes, I am now a professional, and I am looking forward to a lucrative career. And yes, my Scrabble tiles now have to be registered as lethal weapons, but that's OK with me. Because when you are a professional Scrabb player such as myself, a professional Scrabb champion actually, you have to be able to have the "ell" knocked out of you once in a while. And sometimes even the "eee."