The Ball Player's Son

1953

     Little League tryouts were on the other side of Compton at Colin Kelly Park. I refused my mother’s offer to drive me and rode my bike across town, my glove hanging from the handlebars, bat on shoulder, steering with one hand—a hotshot. There were about a hundred kids warming up, a lot of fathers. Nobody knew me. I was the smallest, youngest kid on the field. I sized up my competition and felt I belonged. There were to be eight minor league teams, which took on big league names—Yankees, Indians, etc.—and four major league teams sponsored by the Lions, Rotary, Kiwanis and UCT

     One of the coaches looked me over and commented on how small I was and asked my age. And when I lied and said ten, he told me he was going to try me out with a minor league team. I told him I was going out for the majors like everybody else. He smiled and told me I’d have to grow and earn my way to the majors, just like pro ball. “I oughta know,” he said. “I played pro ball.”

     There was a dozen or so kids trying out for each position and the best players were at shortstop, and so was I. We lined up behind each other for our chances at groundballs. They tried the eleven and twelve year olds first, then us smaller kids. I charged my first grounder, snared an easy hopper in my crouch and snapped a sidearm throw to first. When they hit me one to deep short, I planted my back foot, fielded and threw overhand in one motion, hitting my target. A bunch of coaches clustered at home plate looked at each other, nodding.

     One of the coaches along third base asked another coach, “Who’s the peewee with the good glove? Kid’s slick.” I refused to look at or talk to the other kids trying out for shortstop. Dad had explained to me that when he went to Spring Training with the Tigers there were dozens of players fighting for that position in the farm system, working their ways up to the big leagues, and it was dog-eat-dog, and “somebody trying to beat you out was trying to take food off your plate. They were the enemy.”

     The coach with the fungo, who’d played pro ball, tried and failed to hit a ball through or past me. My throws were on target. When I stepped into the batting cage to take my three cuts, I turned to bunt as I’d been instructed by Johnny O’Neill, deadening the ball, dropping a dead fish on the third base line. Then I choked up and smacked three knockers between third and short, into left field. The coach who’d been hitting grounders stopped when I finished. “I don’t know who you are or where you’re from, Peewee, but you’re a ball player, a natural. We’re gonna find a spot for you somewhere.”

     When I got home I tossed my bike down in the yard, busted into the house and told mother I thought I’d made the majors. And if I didn’t, well, they could jam it. She made a long-suffering face. Then she looked into my eyes, smiled and roughed my hair. “You’re my little brown nut. I’m sure you’ll make the majors. You’re a chip off your father’s block. He’ll be so proud of you.”

     Next day, Mr. Roark, coach of Kiwanis, called and welcomed me aboard. I was going to be his shortstop

                                                              *

     Dad was overjoyed I’d made the majors as the youngest kid.. He and mother agreed he shouldn’t meddle with the team. If he had a night off, he’d sneak out and watch me play like any normal father in the stands.

     The Lions and UCT had the best, oldest players, and the Lions coach was the son of the league president. The Kiwanis and Rotary were allotted kids who were better than those in the minors but nowhere as good as the Lions and UCT players, including Jim Rooker, an obvious star. Our first baseman, the twelve year old coaches’ son, looked like he belonged on the last place team in the minors. He could hardly catch the ball. Coach Roark was a kindly, pleasant man, but knew nothing about baseball and depended on his stocky assistant, Mr. Fletcher, who claimed he played semi-pro ball and had a tryout with the Chicago Cubs. He and I took an instant dislike to each other when I refused to alter my hitting style at his urging.

     “Who the hell are you that you know so much?” he wanted to know.

     “My dad’s Murray Franklin. He played for the Hollywood Stars and the Detroit Tigers and now he plays for the San Diego Padres, and he knows more about baseball than you’ll ever know,” I told him.

     His dislike turned to hatred and he grumbled to Mr. Roark that I should be moved to second base, but Roark refused. Fletcher was a hard-ass, he had this technique on batting where you kept your elbow cocked up, but I was taught to keep my elbow down, so the bat lays level on the shoulder and not jutting up vertically with the elbow up. Fletcher had all the kids hitting with the elbow cocked out, but I continued to refuse. His kid was as terrible a player as Roark’s kid. He seemed to be miserable playing baseball, his old man critical and demanding and embarrassed by his play; while Roark knew his kid stunk, yet encouraged him even when he dropped easy throws to first and looked like a dizzy clown on pop flies.

     We all hated Fletcher and our team played badly. UCT skunked us by 20 our first game. We were inept clowns. I was furious and felt helpless. I hated losing and was already a bad sport at any game on the playgrounds. When dad came home from a road trip I told him how awful we were, but he didn’t seem to want to get involved. In a way, I was disappointed. Yet in a way, I was relieved, for kids at school and on the playgrounds and in Little League were telling me that their dads were saying my dad stunk as a ball player and so did I, because my dad had struck out in a televised game. “Yer dad’s a bum.” I was getting in fights.

     The Lions skunked us. Though Rotary was little better than us, they had a good coach and edged us out. When UCT skunked us again we were a laughingstock. So far, at bat, I had walked a lot because I was short and Fletcher urged me to take pitches until they threw me a strike. His base signs were un-baseball like. I was hitless. We were all flailing hitless wonders.. And while UCT, Lions and even Rotary and minor league teams went out with parents after games to Foster’s Freeze or A&W Root Beer for burgers and shakes, we straggled home, tails between our legs, whupped dogs without treats.

                                                                     *

     The Kelly Field stands extended from behind both dugouts and climbed to a small press occupied by a man who announced the names of each hitter and always mentioned I was Murray Franklin’s son when I came up—“Murray Franklin, formerly of the Detroit Tigers and Hollywood Stars and now with the San Diego Padres.” I felt like a giant searchlight was singling me out. A roaring like the ocean filled my head and I chewed gum furiously and pumped my bat repeatedly like I was not supposed to, and I ground my teeth and felt humiliated when the son of Murray Franklin dribbled or struck out.

     One night the umpire called me out on strikes. Next time up he continued to call strikes on balls just over my shoe tops. The second time he called me out the ocean roar in my head was so loud I panicked and found myself, bat discarded, pushing the umpire in the chest protector. His eyes widened in shock as I pounded on his chest and called him “a fucking blind Tom.” Mr. Roark was on the field pulling me away. Mother was in the stands and hurried down to the dugout in tears and dragged me to the car—the crowd eerily quiet and still. We drove home in silence, and then she began to weep as we pulled up in front of the house.

     “I don’t want you playing Little League,” she said firmly.

     That night, Dad called from Seattle (he called every night) and mother railed at him on the phone, sobbing, then she put me on the line. Dad wanted to know why I hit the umpire. I complained he was cheating me. Mother grabbed the phone and railed at dad some more, claiming I was imitating him by going after umpires. “He sees you do it, so he does it. But Murray, you’ve never touched an umpire, and never would. Your son punched an umpire tonight! I don’t think he should be playing. He feels too much pressure to do well and be like you, and he’s so young and so much smaller than the other kids. I’m just sick, honey. I can’t eat. I just want to throw up.” And she sobbed.

     I was suspended for a game. When dad came home he sat me down and explained that from now on I was never to question an umpire, no matter how bad he was. These umpires were not professionals. And from now on I was NOT to listen to or look at anything going on in the stands or anywhere else, but concentrate only on what I was doing on the field, if I wanted to be a ball player and not a “busher.”

     “You can’t get the rabbit ears, Dell. You’re going to have to listen to a lot of ugly garbage because of who you are. Mostly they’re just jealous because you’re a good player and I’m a professional. From now on, don’t worry about anything except playing the game. The game’s for you.”

     Mother still wanted me off the team, insisting it would not hurt me a bit to wait another year, especially since I had three more years of Little League.

     “Rose, sooner or later the kid’s going to have to face what he’s facing now. He has to start working things out on his own or he never will. He needs to play, not be coddled..”

     I was feeling blue. For the first time, I didn’t want to go to the ball park with dad, because I knew his team mates and especially Tobin would want to know how I was doing, and I couldn’t bear to face them when we’d lost every game and the son of Murray Franklin was hitting .000.

Big Moe

                                               

BIG MOE

     “I didn’t have baseball idols when I grew up, and I didn’t pattern myself after any of the Cubs players when my dad took me to Wrigley Field. My father was from the old country in Russia and didn’t know a thing about baseball and didn’t care about sports. Sports were something that interfered with business. In those days, the Irish kids idolized the Irish players and it was the same with the Polocks and Italians and Germans. All I had was Moe Berg, and he played across town for the White Sox

     “As I developed, I worked out my own techniques and simplified hitting and fielding. I didn’t want to be a power hitter who hit long fly balls, because fly balls were almost always easy outs in the big parks, unless you hit one out, but most of our games were played in sandlots, and if you had power, like I did, they played you a hundred miles away and allowed you singles and doubles. I practiced a level swing that was slightly down on the ball, my right wrist on top, so I hit everything with a topspin and made ground balls hop and skid and take wild bounces so it was tough for outfielders to stay with the ball. When I hit the ball on the meat of the bat and pulled it, the ball curved toward the line, and because of my short compact swing, I stood close to the plate and pulled the ball while protecting the outside of the plate. I learned to hit down on the low ball and drive it on a low rise or a high bounce. And I tomahawked the high pitch and hit sinking liners. When I played pepper I choked up on the bat about six inches and made sure as I followed through with my swing that the knob of the bat passed between my wrists and forearms, which automatically kept my right shoulder level. This way I never dipped my shoulder or hitched. This little exercise developed strength in my wrists and shoulders and quickened my bat, and the quicker my bat became the more confident I was I could hit anybody, no matter how hard they threw. This confidence allowed me to keep my weight back and my bat cocked until the last split second, so I didn’t lunge or get off balance against curves or off-speed pitches. I learned to NEVER look for a curveball, because if you guessed curve and was wrong, the fastball was by you no matter how quick your hands were. And you could get beaned. But if you looked fastball, you were always ready, could adjust, and as far as I was concerned a curveball was easier to hit than any other pitch, because you picked up the spin halfway from the mound and waited, and always slowed yourself down and tried to go up the middle, like hitting off a tee. Even at a young age, I was developing what you call ‘a philosophy of hitting.’ I adopted a style that fit my physical abilities. I was an infielder, and infielders didn’t hit for power. Just hit line drives and drive everybody nuts. Be a tough out. Choke up on the bat an inch or two with two strikes and don’t strike out. Guard the dish and bow your neck. Wear the pitcher down, discourage him by fighting off his best stuff until you get a fat one you like and drill it.

     “One afternoon at Wrigley Field I saw the greatest right-handed hitter of all time, Rogers Hornsby, and watching him gave me another piece to add to my philosophy of hitting. He stood deep in the box in a closed stance and hit every ball where it was pitched, and his style was like a ‘second coming’ to me, a revelation, like some people get religion. He hit the outside pitch down the right field line, in the gap between right and center and up the middle. He sent the pitch up the middle anywhere he wanted to. He took the inside pitch down the line or between third and short or into the alley in left-center—blue darters. His hitting was like poetry and the next day I went to the sandlots and kept my old stance and mechanics but instilled some of the things I’d seen watching Hornsby. He wasn’t that big a man but his swing was level and uncomplicated and leveraged from his ass and legs, and his bat was lightning quick and he hit the ball so hard he froze people in the field. Now I was able to get more of my body into the ball and began to drive it farther, and hit rockets that dehorned infielders—and I noticed people were playing me deeper in the field. I became a terror. Everybody wanted me on their team. I felt strong and unbeatable on the field. I had my own style. Walking down the streets of Chicago, or riding my bike five, ten, fifteen miles across town looking for a bigger, better game, I had a sense of who I was—a hitter. A ball player. People waved to me on the streets and asked about my game. At synagogue all the Jewish kids and their parents treated me like a crown jewel, because already I had a reputation as a good ball player going places

     I’d found my calling.

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The Ball Player's Son

                                       THE BALL PLAYER’S SON

1952

     I woke up in the wee hours and found dad swinging his bat in the living room after another game where he’d taken the collar, going 0-4. He was thirty eight, and told me he’d been fouling off pitches he used to hit like “blue darters.” He didn’t know whether to switch to a lighter bat or choke up more. My father, who always had the answers, was totally befuddled and said, “I’m not going to bow out as a Punch and Judy hitter.”

     The next day he was traded to the San Diego Padres along with Herb Gorman. Dad was reluctant to go south because he wouldn’t be home much or be able to stay in touch with the shoemakers who bought from him, but Padres manager, Lefty O’Doul, and his coach, Jimmy Reese, urged dad to come down and play second base and work with a young shortstop prospect named Al Richter. Dad considered O’Doul a prince of a man, and Reese, a fellow Jew, talked him into playing for the Padres

     He found a small apartment near the water, in Mission Beach, not far from Lane Field where the Padres played. Mother drove my sister and I the three hours down highway 1 to Mission Beach on a weekend, and dad took me to the park, where O’Doul, a stately man, winked at me and said I could take grounders from Reese, who immediately took me under his wing and hit me grounders before the players took the field. Reese used a strange looking fungo bat with the barrel shaved flat on one side and taped. Dad said nobody in all of baseball could handle and control a fungo bat like Reese, who consistently lifted fly balls a foot from the fence and made every grounder do any trick he wanted. He had me lunging and staggering with wild bouncers, skidders and short hops.

     Dad yelled at me to stay low, stay on my toes, and adjust!

     I had to get used to a new bunch of players, and they had to get used to me. Every organization was different when it came to kids hanging around the clubhouse, and dad warned me not to rampage through the new one like I did at Gilmore, pestering players. This clubhouse was more cramped, older, moldier, smellier, and missing the intimacy and family atmosphere of Gilmore, which was a unique situation that would probably never exist at any level of baseball again. I hung out with Gorman and Salveson, whom the Padres had also picked up.

     Right off, I found a nemesis in Jackie Tobin, a lean and fleet outfielder who liked snapping his towel at my fanny and testing my toughness. “You a fighter, Meat, or a lover boy?” he sneered. He pulled my cap down over my eyes and squeezed my bicep so hard it hurt, grinning meanly. Tobin, a left handed hitter, exploded out of the batters box on grounders and picked up momentum down the line, his legs pumping like pistons as he leaned forward to hit the bag on throws to first. He was an adept bunter, always a threat to drag one down either line. He was a world class needler and agitator.

     Dad warned me, “Don’t get on the bad side of Tobin, he’s meaner than a rattlesnake and not like the guys on the Stars—he hates kids.”

     Dad’s expression was grim as a few players nodded at me, just as grim.

     “Why’s he hate kids, dad?”

     Dead serious, dad nodded toward Tobin who was fooling around at his locker across the way, and said, “Look at Tobin. If you looked like that you’d hate kids too. You’d hate everybody. You’d hate life. He’s funny looking. Look at those ears and that schnozz. Teeth full of tobacco. Tobin’s captain of the all-ugly team.”

     Every player within earshot nodded agreement.

     Dad nudged me. “Thank your lucky stars, Dell, you’re gonna be a handsome man, like your pappy, and not ugly like Tobin, and have to go through life hating everybody, and everybody hating you. Poor Tobin, he’s never had a girlfriend. He’s no lover boy.”

     Tobin, needing a shave, leered crookedly in my direction. His long, humped nose seemed to start from the top of his forehead. His ears jutted out from the sides of his long, narrow face, like an elephant’s.

     Salveson said, “Meat, go ask Tobin if he can fly away on those Dumbo ears.”

     Dad, the devil’s advocate, said, “Go ahead. Just because he’s ugly and acts mean doesn’t mean he’s tough.”

     I walked toward Tobin who was looking away. A yard or so from him I uttered, “Hey Dumbo, you’re on the all ugly team…” And before I could continue, Tobin was chasing me through the clubhouse snapping his towel, staying just far enough behind to keep me skidding and dodging among chairs and trunks and tables as players jumped out of our way.

     “Gonna get yah, MEAT!” Tobin shouted. “I HATE KIDS!”

     Lefty O’Doul, who paced the dugout during games with his hands tucked under his belt to keep his hands warm, used dad like a coach on the field. O’Doul was no taskmaster, didn’t over-manage or dress down his players unless they were young and stupid, and then he was fatherly. O’Doul preferred experienced players he could trust and leave alone. His name alone was a draw at Lane Field, for he’d been a PCL star, as well as a man who hit .398 in the big leagues and owned a .349 lifetime average—a legend.

     The Padres were the oldest team in the league, a bunch of “old cockers” according to dad. The infield, comprised of dad, Lou Stringer (who’d also come over from Hollywood and had a pretty daughter on whom I had a secret crush but, of course, couldn’t mention), Jack Graham, who’d had big PCL years as a first baseman but hit poorly in the majors, and Al Richter, all in their late thirties, except young Richter.

     Early on, the Padres played inspired, intelligent, nearly flawless baseball and led the league for almost two months. Dad, though still struggling at the plate, hit in the clutch--his trademark. The old cockers were confrontational, aggressive, under-handed cheaters hell bent on winning at any cost. Every game was a crusade, and O’Doul allowed the team to pretty much run by itself.

     Jimmy Reese was always clapping his hands and encouraging players, loved baseball players, had no aspirations to ever manage, was too nice a man to rule a bunch of ball players who saw him as a beloved icon and uncle figure. Dad claimed Reese was as fine a person who ever existed in this world. He was the first man to enter the clubhouse and the last to leave. He didn’t drive a car. Somebody on the team, Gorman, Dad, Salveson, would pick him up at his apartment and drive him to the ball park, or he took a bus. He framed pictures of ball players who’d played with and for him, and in his life there was no other alternative to baseball. He regarded every day at the ball park a great day, never complained and he was always positive and cheerful. I pumped him about Babe Ruth, his roomy on the 1931 Yankees.

     “What was he like? Well, The Babe could consume a dozen hot dogs and a dozen Cokes before a game and still hit two homers and party all night, and come right back and do the same thing the next day.” Reese, a “clean liver,” couldn’t keep up with him, was supposed to be a good influence on him, but nobody else on the team could keep up with The Babe or temper his huge appetites for fun and pleasure.

     “But what was he LIKE?”

     “He’d like you, Dell. Babe Ruth loved kids more than anybody I’ve ever known. He had a big heart. He was just a big kid who never grew up. That was the beauty of The Babe. There will never be another like him. He was a sweetheart.”

     When I asked dad about The Babe, he always said the same thing” “He wasn’t just a power hitter, he was sneaky fast in the outfield, a good base runner, a hell of a pitcher, a great instinctive ball player.”

     Dad fit in with the Padres. Gorman was his roomy on the road, but he was also fond of his doubleplay partner, Al Richter, a Maryland transplant who lived downtown in the San Diego Hotel, where a photo of Al was displayed in the big lobby window beside the front entrance. Dad didn’t think this was a wise thing for Richter.

     “Hell of a nice kid and a pretty fair shortstop,” Dad said. “But I don’t know if he has the stamina. Short’s a tough position and he already looks pooped after two months. When I played short for Beaumont in the Texas League I was leading the league in hitting half the season, but after a while the hot humid weather and the traveling and the doubleheaders wore me down, and I ended up hitting .298 after hitting around .330 most of the year. I started out the season weighing around l80 and ended up at 165.”

     “What’s that got to do with Richter’s picture in the window, dad?”

     “Well, I think that goddam picture’s getting Al too much snaff and boogair.”

     “Snaff and boo-gair? What’s that?”

     “You’ll find out some day. Richter’s got some pretty hot snappers hanging around in the hotel.”

     “Snappers…? What are snappers, dad?”

     “You’ll find out. You gotta watch out for the hot snappers. They’re the ones make you crazy, get you in a slump. Richter looks like he’s gassed half the time. I’ve seen the strongest guys in baseball fade in August because of snaff and boogair and the hot snappers.”

     “What about you, dad? Do you stay away from the snaff and boogair and hot snappers? That why you been in a slump?”

     “Dell, I’ve played every inning of every game for two months and I’m thirty eight years old, and I’m not half as tired as Richter. What does that tell you?”

     “You aint been messin’ with the snaff and boogair and hot snappers.”

    Dad nodded at me, grinning.

     “What about Gorman and Salveson and Tobin and Earl Rapp and Graham and Stringer, dad? Do they stay away from the hot snappers?”

     “Uh…that’s enough on that subject. Let’s go play pepper.”

     The team started fading, and then went down quick, dying. And sure enough, the bachelor Richter, a lean man with a crew-cut and handsome mug, looked sluggish in the field and his bat went to sleep. Dad, who’d started to regain his batting form during the Padre rise to first place, was out of gas too, his bat in a worse tailspin than Richter’s. The clubhouse went from a happy place full of humorous horseplay to a glum collection of players cursing, punching lockers, kicking over chairs and tossing gloves after each loss.

     To give the Padres a boost, Long Tom Alston, a pheenom from the next level of the minors, was called up. Tall, black, a left-handed power hitting firstbaseman, he joined three negro members of the team: a burly outfielder named John Davis, the stout starting catcher Lenny Summers, and old Theolic Smith, a crafty pitcher dad knew from his days playing in Mexico and Cuba. Those three men kept to themselves like a separate enclave in the clubhouse, and took the young raw Alston , who was from the deep South, under their wing. Alston towered over his new team mates and was quiet, averting his eyes when I stared trying to figure out what to say to him. The local sportswriters had written him up as a hopeful savior, but dad had already expressed doubts to Gorman and Salveson.

     “The kid’s got a pretty swing in the batting cage. He’s a big man with a hitch and he’s gonna have a hell of a time hitting the high inside fastball, and he won’t be able to hit big league lefties with a paddle. I think he’s gonna end up one of these batting practice hitters.”

     Sure enough, Alston was vulnerable at the plate, failing to give the team the boost it badly needed

     Dad was disappointed in Alston. “I tried to talk to him about his hitch. He’s strong enough he can shorten up his swing and still hit with power. But he won’t listen. I guess he doesn’t trust me, and I guess I can’t blame him. God knows I want him to get going so we can win some goddam games and stop stinking it up. The kid’s not ready for this caliber of ball. He’s got a great pair of wrists, but what is he? Twenty? Twenty one? He’s not ready. A firstbaseman HAS to hit, and he won’t cut it.”

     Dad was one of the few white players to go out of his way to be friendly with black players on the team. The usually hard kidding didn’t involve the black players because of obvious reasons. Dad seemed comfortable around them, probably because when he played in Cuba he was the only white player on the team, and his team mates had been warm and friendly, brought him and mother into their homes and taught him the language. Maybe he liked blacks because he was a Jew and understood what it’s like to be hated and treated like shit for no good reason. He claimed black ball players got a screwing. He’d played against them all when he and Lou Boudreau were standouts at the University of Illinois and barnstormed for side money against Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige and all the great black players of that era. Dad claimed there were a lot of horseshit players who would’ve been squeezed out of the big leagues if black players had been allowed to play.

     The Padres ended up slumping to fifth place. When the season ended on that dismal note, dad and mom had a serious discussion on whether he should continue his career “hurting all over” and with a .227 average, a humiliating embarrassment and by far the lowest average of his career—he, a man who had been the gem of the Detroit minor league system and in 1938 had led the world in hitting with one of the highest averages in baseball history.

     The last two months of the season Les Cook, the trainer known as “Cookie,” a bit of a grump, spent half hours before and after games trying to keep dad whole. Dad wanted to hang on and atone for his rotten second half of the season—“a Goddam disgrace.” He believed he could still produce, if he could stay healthy. And he did need the money to get his business going. And O’Doul wanted him back.

     But watching him play, and go downhill, and listening to the fans boo him and yell at him to hang it up, cut me to the core.