Brad Ausmus’ wife Liz Ausmus is standing by her man in these transitional times as he attempts to launch his stand-up comedy career. It’s been rough going because Brad is also managing a professional baseball team on the side, and coming up with new material to try out in front of sports reporters is brutally difficult. Part of the difficulty in becoming a stand-up comedian is talking about sensitive topics in a way that is genuinely funny, and Ausmus has thus far not found his groove. He has, however, been making in-roads with other more successful comics– networking, hanging out, taking notes, but generally speaking it’s been quite the uphill battle. Ausmus knows Adam Sandler is not going to come along and ask him to be his personal assistant and joke-writer. Though he’s not quite been able to elevate his game and get booked in a high-brow club like LA’s Comedy Store, there have been signs of improvement. The set he delivered on 6/18, though poorly written, did manage to squeek out a few sympathetic laughs. Uncomfortable and strained as some of them were, they were the first laughs he’s managed to wrench out of the audience since making the decision to try and go pro.
“I don’t know if this one’s gonna fly, Lizzy,” Brad told his wife as he rehearsed for the show that night, “It seems a bit insensitive towards battered women.”
“No, no, I’m telling you, hunny, it’s gonna be great!” Liz reassured her husband. She knew he was searching for that stage confidence that had thus far proved elusive. She recalled the last open-mic where he had reverted back to simply droning on about baseball, and she shuddered at the memory of the deathly silence in the room. Why did her husband always get the stiffest audiences? She tried to remember a time when she’d even seen one of them having a drink while he was fumbling through his set.
Brad is a believer in the sage words of Kobe Bryant, which I will now recite to you: “You miss 100% of the bowling pins that you don’t try and knock down…with your basketball.” What Ausmus takes it to mean is you’ve got to try out a joke to know if it’s a home run or a strikeout.
