Ode to Morganna

Ok. Lets Get it Over with: Ladies and gentlemen, here they are... Morganna. Yes, they are real. That's right, John Candelaria, "The Candy Man," they're all her. All, indescribably delicious, her own Mounds. No, she doesn't have to sawtwin cavernous holes in the mattress to sleep at night. Yes, she eats gobs of junk food and then works it off on the rowing machine. No, she has never had her rib cage removed. Maybe they are the advertised, incredible 60 inches--that's six-oh, my goodness--all the way around. Most definitely, if not the eighth Wonder of the World, they have to be way, way out there with anything else you might nominate.

Want to get personal? The lady herself refers to the brassieres that cover the things as "my pup tents." Want an autograph? Breast Wishes, Morganna, she'll write. Or Thanks for the Mammaries. Of course, long ago, she started spelling her name with two Ns to, she submits, "get more ink and fill up the marquees." But the more remarkable aspect of her signature is the capital M, the top of which she curls into two round mounds, just like the Golden Arches themselves, and then finishes with two dots at the twin peaks, so that the result resembles the view of her magnificent chest from the Goodyear blimp. "Just think," says Morganna, "if I ever get old and droopy, I can change my name to Wanda."

When the last great scorer comes to write against the game, when the time capsule is finally sealed up for baseball in our lifetime, let's be sure not to omit the true artifacts of the sport: Lite beer, arbitration, pine tar, tobacco, the split-finger fast ball, cocaine, maybe some tail feathers from the Chicken and a little piece, uh, a sigh and whisper of Morganna as well. Even as hard as they may be to come by, she'd undoubtedly offer up one of those pup tents--a tight fit, to be sure--but let's get it done anyway. For, as a distinguished participant in the national pastime once said--maybe it was one of the Parkers, Wes or Dave, or somebody else she has targeted on her splendiferously crowd-enthralling, rear-end-hauling, glamorous kissing forays--"Morganna great for baseball? Morganna is baseball."

Truth be told, Morganna has lip-sticked types of all stripes--football coaches, basketball people, a jockey, the Chicken himself, Tom Selleck, even a minor-league hockey coach, for God's sake. Not to mention a bedraggled cornucopia of your basic sleazeball kiss-and-tell journalists. She kisses, they tell. But her stock in trade remains the men and boys of summer: Pete Rose, Fred Lynn, Lance Parrish, George Brett (twice), Steve Garvey, Don Mattingly, John Candelaria, Nolan Ryan and Otto Velez, who, not long after the magic moment--he must have read Paradise Lost--upped and retired from his game. Then there's Mike Schmidt, who to this day insists he got smooched by a Morganna impostor. ("Mike probably wants seconds," says Morganna.)

All have felt the lollipop lips of Morganna brush their cheeks and then ... alas, and then move on to other cheeks, other parks. Having attempted a sneak attack last August on the Cubs' Ryne Sandberg--she was intercepted on the pitcher's mound during the first inning of the first night game at Wrigley Field, hauled off to the slammer, booked and fingerprinted before being released amid the shutter-popping dazzle of police-force Polaroids--Morganna has expanded her puckered-and-delivered roster to players from more than 20 teams. A picture of her reaching high on her tiptoes to kiss Frank Howard of the Washington Senators actually hangs in the Hall of Fame in Coopers-town. The Washington Senators are no longer with us; Morganna--please keep your gasping to a low wail as you peruse some of the portraits here--obviously, still very much is.

But let's not make molehills out of mountains. Morganna's self-description: "The chest of Dolly Parton, the face of Loni Anderson, the legs of Colonel Sanders." Miss Parton? C'mon. The score is 9--5 before the national anthem starts. All seriousness aside, folks, if Dolly is, say, a D cup, Morganna whups her in the tale of the tape by six sizes. We're talking I here. Oh-me-oh-my.

Everything's relative, of course. Morganna says that if nudity were wrong, we'd all have been born in trench coats. She says no religious group or women's lib organization has ever protested against her--what's the big deal? She couldn't burn her bra, anyway, or half the major leagues would go up in smoke. Naturally, she must have those undergarments specially made--by the same guy "who builds domed stadiums," according to Morganna. who calls her show clothes "skimpy attire." She calls her show not exotic dancing, not stripping but "a celebration of bobbing."

Morganna and her husband, Bill Cottrell, as plain, uncomplicated and down to earth a couple as any dastardly duo in the eye of a maelstrom has ever been, are rabid TV watchers, especially of TV comedy. They are constantly trying to one-up each other in dialog borrowed from Saturday Night Live's inveterate fibber, Jon Lovitz. "Yeah, that's it," Morganna says in wide-eyed imitation of Lovitz. "That's the ticket. I'm Morganna, the baseball showgirl, and I kissed Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb... yeah, sure... and then I, uh, I married George M. Cohan and went to live in, let's say Oahu, yeah, Oahu, and then I invented the microwave oven. Yeah, and these aren't really breasts, they're, uh, wings... yeah, wings... filled with helium... yeah, that's it. That's the ticket."

Dallas Times Herald, August 3, 1984. "Metro Roundup." "Morganna Busted":

Morganna Roberts, known as "Morganna, the Kissing Bandit," was arrested Thursday night at a Dallas night club on a public-lewdness complaint. Police said Ms. Roberts, 33, of Columbus, Ohio, was arrested after allegedly beating a customer over the head with her breasts during a striptease performance at about 11:30 P.M. at 10's for Gentlemen at 9410 Marsh Lane. The customer, identified as Kenneth Crowder, was arrested on the same complaint for allegedly cooperating with the stunt, police said.

Talkin' baseball, dum-de-dum.

Well, you can imagine how Bowie Kuhn might have reviewed this performance over his morning croissants, remembering how he once rode in a convertible with this same Morganna Roberts at a little-league parade. Or how Peter Ueberroth might have felt out there at the old Olympic games as he contemplated the changes inherent in a major lifestyle switch from Joan Benoit's lap times to Morganna Roberts' lap. Not to mention what those coconuts would do to his chances of getting elected President of the United States. Might Morganna even have the chakskas to kiss a commissioner? A President? A. Bartlett Giamatti? George Bush? Who might be next? God and Presidents... and Morganna... at Yale?

You can imagine, too, how Joe Bob Briggs, Big D's notoriously sensitive drive-in critic, was rankled by that 1984 affair, which he claimed to be witness to. He variously described Morganna's two enormous talents as "nuclear garbanzos... we're talking deadly weapons... those bazookas... those hooters." Joe Bob said he didn't think they were even legal unless "you mount yellow warning flags on both sides for oncoming traffic." Also, he pictured Morganna's anatomy as "unlicensed atomic duffel bags unleashed on an unsuspecting public." Unsuspecting? Under what rock has Joe Bob been living? "Not many people know it, but more Americans die every year from breast attacks than get killed in their bathtubs. It's one of those facts we don't like to think about. I'm sorry," the critic concluded, "but Morganna has got to learn to either find a leash big enough for those B-52s or else get a safe-deposit box at Fort Knox and keep 'em under armed guard at all times. We don't want another Three Mile Island.... If Morganna turns sideways, the world disappears."

Of course, Morganna was found innocent, cleared and freed of all charges by Judge John Orvis, known ironically by locals as "the hanging judge." Moreover, no sooner did she get off than she merrily stepped out of the courtroom and invited the public to "come and see exhibits A and B." The bad publicity--well, bad in some precincts--was the thing. Morganna considered all that ink negative when it got back to her adopted home town of Columbus, where the wire reports zeroedin on the "public lewdness." Then again, when she opened the following baseball season, both barrels firing, by brashly announcing she would crash the Houston Astrodome to kiss Nolan Ryan, more than 40,000 spectators showed up. On opening day a year later, sans Morganna's dual promotions, the 'Stros drew 23,000.

One mercy victim, Seattle Mariners catcher Steve Yeager, had always polled high in Morganna's consumer research when he was with the Dodgers and, sure enough, our heroine finally nabbed him on opening day in 1986. When the TV screens relayed the kiss to thunderous ovations, Morganna thought she'd slugged a grand slam; Yeager was ecstatic. "It was entertaining and I enjoyed it,"he said. "I'm glad it happened to me in my career."

Yeager had been with the opposition Dodgers in Houston on opening day in 1985, when Morganna created her first and only twin killing by kissing the Astros' Ryan and Dickie Thon, so he knows what it feels like to be left out. So does the Angels' poor Bobby Grich, who once was quoted as saying his most embarrassing moment as a ballplayer came the night he waited for the onrushing Morganna with bated cheek, only to watch her pass him by and kiss teammate Fred Lynn. That was in 1983. Lynn struck out on three pitches and proceeded to bat three for 40. But later that season, he hit the only grand-slam home run in All-Star-game history. It took Lynn a while to get his eye back. "After seeing Morganna," he said, "the ball looked like a pencil dot"

"Listen, I don't try to offend or humiliate anybody;" says Morganna. "I had Dale Murphy on my list until I found out he would be sincerely embarrassed by a kiss. I read where Dale doesn't even pose for pictures with girls.

"I try to stay on the good side of the wives, too," Morganna says. "Fred Lynn's wife had a T-shirt made commemorating his kiss. Nolan Ryan ... you may remember that Nolie's wife publicly thanked me. I understand Don Mattingly's wife was furious, but Dons family is from Evansville. I know his dad, Bill, and he loved the idea. He says if I don't get Don, he'll volunteer his own face. So I may come up with something special for the missus."

For all of Morganna's warmth, joyfulness, cheery disposition and indomitable munificence--she has appeared at benefits and does more charity work than you can bump a grind at--Mrs. Mattingly, Mr. Gibson or anyone else who may dare to cross her should realize he will be dealing with one rough, street-tough momma, a survivalist supreme who knows how to dish it out. probably because she had to take it for so long.

Not long after she was born, Morganna's father. Dean Rose, separated from her mother and eventually became a key grip in Hollywood at the Hal Roach Studios. Her mother quickly abandoned the child, so other relatives had to pass her around like an old umbrella.

It kept on raining. Born with a bad kidney, Morganna had to have it removed at the age of five and almost died. Item for Ripley's: Throughout her grade school years at Mount Mercy, a boarding school for girls in Peewee Valley, Kentucky, to which her grandmother, Virginia Blackerby, had shipped her. Morganna was underdeveloped. Everywhere but between her neck and navel.

Morganna was already half-stacked at (continued on page 152)Ode to Morganna(continued from page 126) the age of nine, but her grandmother still forbade her to wear a bra. "Tie 'em up with a tight T-shirt, nobody will notice," said Mrs. Blackerby. Uh-huh. The older woman regaled Morganna with stories of how she was related to Robert E. Lee and other deceased monster celebs. "The more grandmother hit the highballs, the more famous we all got," Morganna says.

She ran away from boarding school and wound up in Baltimore's infamous Block, sleeping in alleys and eating out of garbage cans until she could afford a flophouse. She broke into show business nearby, at a seedy strip joint frequented by tattooed merchant marines who greeted her act with cries of "Take it off." Morganna was crushed; she thought the "it" was her. From there, there was nowhere to go but up.

Armed with ingenuity, some funny little puppets, a flair for comedy and promotion and, of course, her deuce in the hole, Morganna and those phenomenal Himalayas of hers became the most popular act in the genre. She was "Morganna, the Wild One" back then, resplendent in a long jet-black fall and a variety of leathery, tiger-striped jungle outfits, sometimes dripping fake blood to whip up more audience frenzy. Ford Frick would have agreed that she was totally awesome.

Well-publicized trials such as the one in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1971 didn't hurt the cause, either, especially when the charge against Morganna of "performing simulated sexual acts with an object resembling a reptile" was summarily struck down. The reptile in question was "Herman," a large sequined artificial snake. A prosecuting attorney asked Morgannaif she had exposed her hypogastric region in the act. "Hypogastric region?" Morganna said. "I thought I had that removed."

Nonetheless, a girl can't live on breasts alone. Nor publicity. Boredom having set in, Morganna took to the old ball yard. In 1970, answering a "double-dirty dare" from some of her stripper friends, who were sitting in a box and not being noticed enough, at least not by the right fielder--"He wasn't spitting tobacco our way, so we knew he didn't even see us," says Morganna--the then-ebony-haired ecdysiast climbed over the railing at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati to kiss the great Rose, making Charlie Hustle a party to yet more history.

Several other attempts followed that season until, trying to get Johnny Bench at the All-Star game, Morganna was stopped cold and rudely manhandled by some rent-a-gendarmes.

It seems unfathomable to imagine that baseball went seven years without Morganna's smooches, but it wasn't until 1977 that she felt secure enough to go over the railing once again--which is not always easy.

At the 1984 All-Star game in San Francisco, Morganna set out to nab Ryne Sandberg for the first time, but while negotiating a wicked fence, she unceremoniously toppled onto her tops and came up with a gravel sandwich. Bleeding profusely, she was easy pickings in the relay race with John Law and retired on cuts. "After the kiss, they usually take me straight to the security office," Morganna says. "This time, I went right to first aid." Cottrell, her partner in crime, didn't locate his wife for an hour.

In Houston, in April 1985, however, everyone knew where to find her. Morganna was back in the slamma. That was the opening-day caper she had promoted seemingly all over Texas; the one during which the Today show strapped her with a wireless microphone; the one for which the authorities claimed they had "Morganna-proofed" the Astrodome; the time Morganna pulled off her first double-header, Ryan and Thon. (Lucky those dome fellows weren't guarding the Treasury Department whenWillie Sutton was alive.)

After the embarrassed establishment pressed charges--the cops pressed Morganna, the Astros charged her with trespassing--and kept her in jail for seven hours, Morganna hired the famous criminal trial lawyer Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, who proceeded to take his client's fee--you guessed itmdash;up front and then to make a mockery of the case.

I failed to see that gross a trespass on our great American game," Racehorse says. "Juries do the right thing and they would obviously have seen there was nothing artificial about Morganna. Nobody really ought to be against anything that inspires the Astros. [Ryan had pitched masterfully in the Houston victory.] And there must be a quarter of a million women who would like to kiss Nolan Ryan. I've considered kissing him myself, and I'm a confirmed heterosexual."

As it was, Harris County prosecutors dropped the case like lead balloons upon discovering that Racehorse intended to plead the dread gravity defense to explain how his client had come to be on the field.

"We could easily have demonstrated that the law of gravity will prevail any time a one-hundred-and-twenty-eight-pound woman with fifteen-pound breasts"--Morganna once weighed them on the fruit scales at an all-night grocery store--"leans over the rail," says Racehorse. I had professors of physics and engineering ready to go. I was considering asking Morganna to lean over the jury railing. I think we could have made the case clear.

Has Morganna lived happily ever after? So far, so good. Cottrell, an accounting major and numbers whiz, has managed her finances into high cotton, not to mention into her own Keogh plan. They spend Christmases in Hawaii and take vacations around the globe.

Morganna also has a day job: She has purchased a "limited partnership" in the Utica (New York) Blue Sox of the Class A New York--Pennsylvania league. Yeah, that's right; she's an owner. A couple of sportswriters in Florida, the general partners of the Utica partnership, having whetted her interest, Morganna plunged in, $5000 worth.

Regularly now, she takes a break from stripping, teasing and thwacking customers in the head with her breasts to journey to far-off, cold and windy Utica-- a living, heaving Daisy Mae come to baseball Dogpatch.

"Morganna brings new dimensions to Blue Sox baseball," the honorable Sherwood L. "Sherry" Boehlert, U.S. Representativefrom the 25th district of New York, wrote in a letter of greeting from his office in Washington. "How can anyone say she'slimited? With her help, we'll make a frontal attack on past attendance records. We're going to disprove the old theory that the way to succeed is by putting your best foot forward." Representative Boehlert is a Blue Sox owner and also, obviously, a humorist.

"Here comes Morganna," Vin Scully once intoned over the airwaves, "preceding herself by five minutes."

And now there she goes ... to untold islands of possibility. Morganna, the Kissing Bandit ... no, baseball's showgirl ... uh, wait. baseball's showgirl ... owner. Yeah, that's the ticket. Uh, tickets.

"While negotiating a fence, she toppled onto her tops and came up with a gravel sandwich"