Karen langway
Karen has been married to Ron for almost 20 years now after wedding in their early 20s.
They live comfortably in South Florida with their daughter Kaitlyn in West Palm Beach Florida. Karen hasn’t worked a full time job in over ten years now ever since her husband opened up his own Baseball Card Memorabilia shop.
She instead contributes to the shop in a major way, using her expert penmanship to serve as Ron’s signer.
She can replicate any athlete’s signature effortlessly, and this skill proves to be the life blood of Ron’s entire fake sports memorabilia operation.
Karen is invaluable by keeping him endlessly supplied with fresh “game-used & signed” baseballs to sell at the store that have some of the best-looking fake signatures out there. Not even the most credentialed experts can usually spot one of Karen’s signed balls.
But Karen isn’t satisfied by any of it. Actually she’s pissed. All the time. At pretty much everything that isn’t her cat, Doctor Wangles.
She just sees Ron as the vessel of all her disappointments, to her he is the most pathetic man on Earth. She’s lost all respect for him and resents everything he stands for. And, being removed from regular human contact by withdrawing from working life for so long now, she lost any filter or ability to control her raw emotions in public.
She’s not only out of touch with herself, but reality as well. It’s a dangerous, fragile cocktail.
Ron langway
Ron Langway is an obsessive sports memorabilia collector who opened his own baseball card shop about 10 years ago in a West Palm Beach shopping center.
Everything was floated financially by his mother, Mary-Anne Langway, who set Ron up with his dream baseball shop after remarrying into money later in life. Ron has nearly ran the shop into the ground so many times through his own incompetence, though, his Mother now keeps him on an extremely short leash.
Mary-Anne peers over the sales of the shop and demands Ron drive over to her house so she can hand deliver him his pay-check only after she approves the sales for the week. It’s an extremely humiliating process for him, one which leads him to shadily try to pocket backdoor sales in cash and hide them from his Mother.
Ron grew up idolizing Ken Kammanucci, he was his hero as a little boy and Ron obsessively collected all his baseball cards. When he got older, he tried to imitate his hero by playing College Ball but didn’t have the skill or the right drugs to make it to the big leagues.
Ron quit and settled in to being a mid-level sports memorabilia salesman in Flordia. The shop has always been a mediocre success, barely floating by. The recent revelations of Ken Kammanucci’s steroid use have devastated the value of his memorabilia, putting a huge dent in the “market value” of Ron’s collection.
It seems like Ron is always watching enviously as his biggest rival, Scout Bailey of the Bailey Boys, does something to show off his dominance of the sports memorabilia market in the area. Whenever there is a local sports star looking to pocket some extra cash by signing balls, they usually turn first to the Bailey Boys, not Ron.
In fact, Ron’s reputation has been sullen as of late as rumor has spread throughout the industry that he sells fake autographs. Ron has had a harder and harder time landing names to come into his shop to draw in the juicy sports memorabilia sales. Lately, he has turned to selling Japanese Ninjunto Cards & weird random oddities like “Dinosaur Bones” and pieces of “Alien Spacecraft” to kids in order to keep his shop afloat.
Scout Bailey
of the bailey boys
Scout is usually the biggest, loudest voice in any room in he’s in, instantly demanding attention to himself whenever he opens his fat mouth no matter the shit that comes out it.
He know how to charm anyone with a pulse, and that has been his only discernible skill that has served him well his whole life.
Scout is a reformed ex-dog-fighting champ who served two and a half years in jail before coming out reformed in Christ’s image. Ever since then, Scout has been grinding Florida’s Sports Memorabilia scene with reckless abandon.
Scout started off waiting around after practice for hours so he could get a few athletes to sign some balls that he could flip on eBay and has since expanded into opening up two mega-stores with ultra-cold air conditioning running all day long.
Scout is the top dog when it comes to Sports Memorabilia now, and he tries to usually do whatever he can to spite his rivals, no matter how petty it may be.
He uses his hulking cousin Billy-Bob Bailey as his personal muscle whenever things run into a jam. Billy-Bob’s mom drank too much Jose Cuervo when he was in the womb, leaving his brain permanently fried with Fetal-Alcohol syndrome.
Scout has hated Ron for years, the two of them have a feud that goes back to the moment Ron entered the business. When it comes to Sports Memorabilia, Ron and Scout are really the only two guys left in the area working exclusively in that field.
That also means, that when Karen wants to go sell Ron’s stuff behind his back, she really only has one viable option. And that’s Scout. And hell if you think he’s going to pass up on an opportunity to completely fuck over them both.
kaitlyn langway
Kaitlyn is Karen and Ron’s early twenties daughter who’s still living at home. She goes to community college and doesn’t really know what she wants to do yet for her career, so she’s been floating by and dating local Floridan white-men with her similar socio-economic upbringing.
Kate recently fell head over heels for Morgan, a guy she met on dating apps last year and has been a fixture in the Langway home ever since.
But, as the story begins, Morgan breaks up with Kate unexpectedly, leading her into a serious depression. She truly thought he was the man of her dreams and was shocked when he hit her with the news.
Karen is extremely annoyed by the all the crying and somber attitude, within a few days of the break-up Karen steals a few photos of Kate and starts a Tinder profile in Kate’s name.
All Kate wants is to get Morgan back, but Karen instead lines her up with dates using extremely provocative and forward language immediately telling all the guys she talks to she wants to “Sit On Your face”.
Kate finally strikes up a deal with Karen to go on one of the dates with the guys she messaged, reluctantly letting a young chubby but rich-looking med-student take her out on a date.
Ken Kammanucci
Ken Klydus Kammanucci stormed the Major Leagues in 1989 with arms the size of watermelons and a bat that could smack a ball further than anyone had seen before.
Over the next decade he shattered every home run in the league, culminating in a ridiculous 92 Home Run season that literally broke baseball. He was a star idolized by millions of young boys around the country, seemingly destined for eternal greatness in the Baseball Hall of Fame where his legend (and the value of all his memorabilia) would only grow with time.
However, it was shockingly revealed that Ken was actually completely juiced up on steroids and a total complete racist scum bag.
As Baseball came to terms with The Steroid Era, his former teammates came out exposing Ken’s rampant drug use and threats to all of his teammates if they ever revealed his secrets.
Ken’s former black teammates piled on with accusations of despicable levels of racism, specifically claiming that Ken would refer to all his non-white teammates as “Monkeys”.
With one chance to publicly apologize and save his reputation, Ken holds a press conference and pathetically cries and refuses to address whether he took steroids or not. He instead defends his blatantly racist actions, claiming ignorance and saying that his Grandmother taught him that “Monkeys are great.”
After the dust settles, Ken is completely cancelled from baseball. Despite once being the biggest stars in the game, he now has no chance of ever managing a team or working in broadcasting. When the vote came up, his name didn’t even get a single ballot for the Hall of Fame. Ken was done. Finished. And more importantly to all his fans, so was the value of all of Ken’s signed Jerseys and bats and balls that they collected over the years.
Nobody wants an autographed Bobble-Head of a racist cheater who isn’t even in the Hall of Fame.
Hiding away in shame, it’s been a few years since Ken has been seen out in public.
Mary-Anne langway
Mary-Anne lives comfortably in a house that’s way too big for a single woman without any children, but at her age and with her money who really cares anymore. She is grouchily retired and can afford to pay for others to keep the place running while she lounges by the pool.
She grew up with modest means and spent the overwhelming majority of her life without much money. After divorcing Ron’s father when he was a young boy, she raised him as a single mother until Ron was an adult.
After Ron had left the house and went off to college, though, Mary-Anne decided to allow herself to date again and opened herself up to the male suitors in the area around her age.
Mary-Anne hit the jackpot when Hank Thawton fell head over heels for her and offered his hand in marriage.
Hank was a rich Commercial Vacuum Salesman, owning a medium sized business that sold large commercial vacuum cleaners to malls and local businesses. He was an extremely boring guy, but cleaning floors for big companies hat netted him a small multi-million dollar pile of cash to enjoy his retirement with.
Hank worked his whole life saving ruthlessly and living frugally. As soon as he actually retired and sold his business and settled down with the woman he loved - Hank’s heart gave out and he died suddenly from a massive heart attack.
Mary-Anne was left really the only beneficiary of all Hank’s hard work, absorbing a couple million bucks to play with for the rest of her life.
Her first order of business, of course, was to finally get Ron a real job. Ron had been floating around with crappy jobs he could barely hold down ever since he got out of college, Mary-Anne instead offered to fund his real dream: opening of a new Baseball Card Memorabilia Store.
Ron opened the shop, but instead used it to fund stupid personal purchases for things he wanted to keep for himself. He eventually resorted to selling fake and stolen sports memorabilia, scuffing up balls to make them look aged and “game-used” and having Karen sign them as if she were a baseball player.
It all was very lucrative, but it ended up getting them in trouble with customers and other people in the industry numerous times. The finances of the store were always terrible, leading Mary-Anne to start watching the books like a hawk.
Now, Ron can’t do anything without her express permission. She has to approve all spending with the company and makes him come pick up his weekly paycheck from her home only after she approves everything.
Siah Javont-Lewis
Siah is a Guard for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in his third season with the team. He barely made the squad last season and is on the last year of his expiring contract.
His roster spot was hanging on a thread last season after his numbers dipped and his play on the field took a step back.
This current season started out really well for Siah, he was third in the league in tackles before suffering an over-extended MCL knee injury.
Because of the injury, Siah has been on the Injured Reserve for the last few weeks hoping to heal up to be ready in time for the playoffs.
When he hears the Team’s personal trainer pushing a cash-only side hustle to go out to a local Sports Memorabilia show and sit for a few hours signing balls, Siah is eager to jump on the opportunity to earn some extra money.
Not a star by any means, Siah is your average Football player trying to make a career selling his body to the corporate sponsors of the NFL. He lives in a modest condo with a couple of his other teammates and after taxes makes a lot less money than you’d expect.
Unable to drive due to his knee injury, Siah needs transportation to and from the venue covered so he can get there.
When it’s time to go to the show, Siah hobbles out on crutches of his Condo to find Karen waiting in the parking lot, ready to pick him up.
Floyd Derber
Floyd is Karen’s father, an Ex-Navy Sea Captain now living in retirement in West Palm Beach.
Floyd divorced his wife fifteen years ago and has since been living alone enjoying his retirement in South Florida. Floyd gets a hefty pension from the Navy, but he spends a good chunk of it on his hobby of buying and flying expensive, fancy drones that look like small model airplanes.
Floyd achieved notoriety and fame during his time in the Navy for captaining the ship the USS Vincennes in 1988. The ship accidentally shot down Iran Air 655, killing hundreds of innocent civilians with a million-dollar-American-made cruise missile.*
Instead of apologizing at the time or receiving condemnation for pulling the trigger on hundreds of innocent people’s deaths, Floyd was actually praised and even received a medal from Ronald Reagan for his heroism.
Floyd never really took to receiving all the attention and eagerly faded into obscurity. He only wore the medal that the President gave him once, at the ceremony. Instead, he gifted it to his daughter, Karen, who idolizes him to this very day.
Despite being an absent parent who spent most of her childhood abroad in other countries, Karen eagerly and openly brags about her Father’s service to anyone who will listen. She wears the medal he gave her as a child on her neck every single day, but isn’t really aware of what her Dad actually did to get it all those years ago.
When Karen hits rock bottom and she has no where else to turn, Floyd is the one who she calls first. And when her plans to divorce her husband go awry, she calls up her Daddy to come help her figure things out.
*This event actually happened. 290 Innocent People were killed in 1988 by an accidental cruise missile fired by the USS Vincennes.