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
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
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.
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