Lemonade!

• Twins: 4
• Orioles: 5
• Sold: 60 lemonade

Still too cold for lemonade, and a night game, so I didn't dump but three loads on the people. Also no kids, who love that sugary stuff: they load up 20 cups into a four by five square wire rack, squeeze in a token half lemon and drop the rind carcass in the bottom, fill to the brim with ice, and run the rack under a sugarwater dispensing spigot, filling four at a time. Tops snapped on, straws shoved in the pocket, and I'm ready to sell three dollars of expense for 80 bucks a rack.

Because the lemonade wasn't enough to interest them tonight, I had to jazz it up a bit, shoving the straws under the hats of the kids, walking around with a couple shoved under my own hat, and stealing a line I picked up from the primo lemonade man at Cactus League Spring Training: "Lemonade, lemonade, just like Grandma made!" Works like a charm for a chuckle, even if it doesn't rope them in.

Down near the right foul pole someone stopped me and asked, "Where's the guy who does the shaking thing?"

Then it happened again behind homeplate: "Hey, what happened to the Shakey guy?"

And to them both I told them, "No more lemonade for him. Shakey sells Coors down the third-baseline."

Mark, or Shakey as he's known for his sales style, is somewhat of a local celebrity for selling lemonade at Camden. Most vendors (yours truly included) will tend toward a mostly direct sales approach, holding up the item and calling it out for sale ("Lemonade!" "Hot Diggity Dog, here!"). But Shakey adds a certain brio to it, raising it to the level of performance. He races, and sprints, shouts himself hoarse, goading the audience to indulge and "Get fired up, now!" and asks, "Are you ready to party?" He's a little guy* who can fill a couple of sections at a time with this wild energy.

Though he now applies this approach to beer sales, where the money is, he developed this manic persona on lemonade. As the story goes, he was trying to help a friend out at the ballpark, schlepping loads of lemonade up the high stairs, when someone mildly complained that he hadn't shaken it.

"You want it shaken? I'll shake it for ya!" And, a fit of pique, started pumping it crazily, gyrating his body, vibrating his head, and greatly amusing the customer. His frustrations released, Shakey realized that this -- putting all of himself into a three-hour performance and making it his own -- was how to turn this labor into fun. The kids loved it especially, and it drew plenty of tips from parents happy to see their kids entertained. He's also turned it into a cottage industry; he gets plenty of press, he's got his own website, glossy promotional brochure, and business cards that label him "Lemonade Shaking Guy," and he rents himself and the routine out for corporate events, bartending gigs, and golf tournaments. Good money for being a spaz.

By the end of it, he's lost his voice and wrung himself out completely, night after night, staggering limply back to the stockroom, and trying gamely to keep his eyes open. Now that I've gotten to know him, I realize that this up-tempo act is based on some aspect of his genuinely hyperactive personality.

Shakey and his routine also play some role in my beginnings as a vendor. It was in the months leading up to the Nationals' arrival in DC back in 2005 that I read an old article** in the Washington Post about him and his contribution to the ballpark experience. It was one of those life-changing couple of minutes spent: here was a guy who got to work at the stadium, made a good bit of money for a couple hours' worth of work, and developed a performance routine to add to the whole thing. Then I decided that, by hook or by crook, I was going to do the same thing for the Nationals. Now I work with the guy.

*His small stature, which I'd estimate at about 5'5", allows him to pull off this aggressive routine. He once told me and Neal that we could never really make it work for us, that at our size trying to shout and yell and flail wildly would only be off-putting, rather than appealingly clownish. Seeing the Shakey routine from my vantage point selling in the same aisle is quite a treat, and I have to acknowledge that he's right about that. While he's shouting "C'mon, let's party! Get a fired up beer!" I could only offer some counterprogramming, stepping by in relaxed fashion, holding the peanuts low in my hands, and saying in a low tone, "Casual, low-key peanuts."

**I feel validated in perpetuating one of my odder habits: reading from the pile old newspapers that I haven't gotten to yet. I've endured some understandable ribbing for this, but I contend that the newspaper isn't really just about the 'news' but also about features, long-form articles, the comics, essays, and columns. There's evergreen stuff in there, and having a yellowed page of a 2001 copy of Post help direct me, four years later, to my current avocation seems to bear this out. At least that's how I justify this obsessive quirk.