The Ball Player's Son

BIG MOE

       

                                   “FACING SATCHEL PAIGE”

     I took a football scholarship to the University of Illinois in Champaign so I could play baseball. They didn’t give baseball scholarships in those days. Wally Roettger was my baseball coach. He’d just finished a big league career and knew the game—refined me. Believe it or not he had Lou Boudreau, a future hall of fame shortstop, at third and me at second. Even as a kid Boudreau knew where to play the hitters and where everybody should be playing. He understood the subtleties of the game. He was a gifted schmoozer and a good psychologist and a natural politician. But he was also a guy who knew when to be tough and demanding. Lou and I worked as a doubleplay combination when we barnstormed against negro league teams for side money, and the one weekend I came down sick as a dog and couldn’t make it, Lou got caught taking money and had to leave college. He was already prepared for the big leagues. Nobody could bunt or control a bat like Lou. He became a playing manager at Cleveland at 24 and devised the Williams shift.

     I played football for coach, Bob Zupke—a legend. Hard and cruel as they come, he didn’t like me because he knew I wasn’t a football player at heart and got the scholarship on my speed. I was not the type of athlete to give his life for the coach and love the hitting and pounding. I liked boxing because the opponent was always right in front of you, where in football you could get blindsided and get your knees taken out by a dirty player. Zupke didn’t give a damn about his players. We had a big Swede on the team, Knudson or Swenson?....a gung-ho Boy Scout type who’d gladly give up his body for his coach and the team. He wasn’t much of an athlete but he gave it everything he had and was the kind of guy to lay his life down for you in combat. And one afternoon he got his knee torn up and lay writhing on the field, his knee twisted back and contorted like a chicken leg. So sickening you couldn’t look at it without getting green around the gills. The poor kid was pounding the turf in agony and Zupke never even came out to see how he was—when they carried the kid off the field on a stretcher, they passed Zupke, and the kid apologizes to him for letting the team down, and Zupke practically spits on him and  says: “Get him outta here.”

     Zupke used me as a practice dummy. I took it pretty well until the day I ran a punt back in practice and half the defense piled on and smothered me and wouldn’t let me up. They were purposely squashing me. One guy was bending my knee back and I panicked and grabbed a leg and bit through the Achilles tendon of a big moose of an all-league tackle named McMillan, one of Zupke’s pets. McMillan screamed bloody murder and was out for the year with surgery and Zupke kicked me off the team. Which was fine with me. because now I could play baseball.

     If you were considered an outstanding prospect, you got to play against the great negro league players of that time and that’s where I got to face Satchel Paige. Probably around 1935. Satchel was in his prime, and to this day, after facing Feller, Grove, and those great Yankees, Satchel was the toughest. He had a high leg kick that hid the ball and pin-point control. Without ever seeing you before, he could size you up right away and knew how and where to pitch you.

     Josh Gibson was behind the plate, a powerful man with shoulders like a damn bull, he could sit on his haunches, and without rising, peg a ball to second on a straight line. An arm like a damn rocket. He swung hard and he swung big, and he could be pitched to. But his bat was alive. By that I mean his swing was quick. You thought the ball was by him, but his bat was so quick he picked the ball up before it passed and rifled it. Gibson had a big arc on his swing and the balls he hit climbed like golf shots, getting incredible distance. Everybody stood still when he hit batting practice, like Ruth in his day, and Mantle now.

     Well, I was a tough out. I knew Satchel liked that. He liked to toy with kids who thought they were great hitters and teach them a lesson, and at the same time, let them know Paige was the best in the business. Un-hittable. He was a man with a lot to prove when negro players were barred from the big leagues and organized ball. I battled him all afternoon, and he started talking to me, and he got me out, but he couldn’t strike me out. He broke my bat once. Got me lunging, made me look bad. But he couldn’t strike me out and he knew I was up there with one thing on my mind: Not strike out. If a blind squirrel could find an acorn, I’d manage to get a hit off him.

     Sure enough, the last inning, he knew when I’d be coming up. There were two outs and three batters ahead of me. Satch walked all three and then waved his team off the field except Gibson. He’s on the mound staring me down with this sneaky sliver of a grin when I come up to the plate. Well, now he’s really coming after me. He tells me he’s been using his “back yard stuff” and now he’s going to use his “good stuff.” He threw one right by me. Up and in. Then he nicked a corner. Strike two. Then I started battling. I fouled off a bunch of pitches, inside high, low and outside. I’m on top of the plate and he  brushes me back. I worked the count two and two. I’m up on the bat a couple inches and the last two foul balls I hit were just off the right field line. I was beginning to time him. His ball ran in, and moved out. I knew he was stubborn and too proud to throw me a hook. He was gonna blow one by me one way or the other—and he came in just a little fat with a waist-high fastball and I got decent wood on it and laced it right past his ear into centerfield and hightailed it down the first base line. I was so excited that, for the first time, I took my cap off as I rounded first. As I started for second, Satchel was running alongside me. He followed me around second and was still with me at third, and the whole time he’s talking to me—“You hit Satchel, kid. Way to hit that ball. Tell your kids some day. You hit the great Satchel Paige.”

    When I crossed home plate he smacked me on the ass and everybody in the dugout went crazy and even the black players were laughing and having a big time of it. I’d just gotten a legitimate hit off the greatest goddam pitcher in the world, a living legend.                                     

The Ball Player's Son

                                    “HEARTBREAK IN LEFTFIELD”

     “There he is! Slasher!”

    
     “Heard yah got in a brawl, Meat.”

     “Meat ain’t no lover boy, he’s a fighter.”

     I was a clubhouse hero, disappointed Tobin was gone because he’d of been proud of me. But Herb Gorman wasn’t. He gave me a long look and told me to sit beside him at his stall. He was one of the few players who read the front page of the local newspaper. He gave me a stick of gum. He’d been banged up and smelled of logangesic. Dad had confided to me that Gorman’s chances of making the majors were pretty much over. At twenty eight, without much speed or power, he’d have to resign himself to a career as a solid AAA player, which meant in a year or two he would get his release and have to find something else to do in life. Dad said that Herb had an “old body” and was already past his peak.

     Herb patted my knee and smiled. “Dell, your father is my best friend in this world, and there is nobody I like more, along with your wonderful mother. But you are not your dad. You are yourself. You don’t need to fight to impress your dad or me or anybody else in here. You understand?”

    I shrugged. He grinned, roughing my head. “You know, Roselee and  me, we’re going to have a child, and we want a boy, and if we do I want him to be just like you—a real boy.”

     We walked out onto the field together and started playing pepper. Herb tapped balls to my right and left, moving me around, an expert with the bat; and when I hit he changed speeds and even threw me a knuckleball. After pepper I sat in the dugout watching batting practice. Later I joined the team in the clubhouse, installing myself beside Gorman at his locker, polishing his spikes with a can of black wax dad had given him from his shoe supply business. He promised to share his ham sandwich with me between games of the coming Sunday double-header. Before I left he snagged my arm. “No fighting,” he said, dead serious. Then he laughed and smacked my ass when I walked off.

                                                               *******

     The first game of the double-header, dad was at third, Gorman in left. I watched part of the game, at their urging, with mother and Roselee, Herb’s twenty year old fiancé who was beautiful and smiled at me in a manner that disarmed my tough guy act and melted me into a blushing softy. I couldn’t take any more of it and started out toward the leftfield bleachers where I planned to sit with an old retiree who wore a straw hat and was a regular at the ball park. We’d meet and talk baseball. He was from Cleveland and saw dad play for Detroit before the war, and was thrilled to have me join him. He always ate a hotdog with everything on it and insisted on buying me one and smoked stogies. We sat together anticipating bunts, hit-and-runs, steals, plotting strategy, so immersed in the game that people sought us out for our predictions. He never missed a game, never failed to mark a pitch in his program scorecard, read the Sporting News religiously and knew about every baseball player in every league in the country and never left the ball park until the last out no matter what the score. His name was Mullins and he said, “Everyday is a good day at the ball park, I don’t care if it’s snowing, kid.”

     I was almost to where Mullins sat when there came a long, low sigh from the crowd, and then everybody stood up. The stadium went dead quiet. I jumped up and down to get a better view, and I saw Gorman sprawled in left field, not moving. Somebody said: “He just toppled over.” Dad and the shortstop, along with the centerfielder, sprinted over to him. They checked him briefly and then together hoisted him on their shoulders and ran to the dugout with him. The entire Padre team followed.

     I pushed my way back to our box, where mother was holding Roselee. Her eyes were wild as she clung to mother. I tore down to the area under the stadium leading past concession stands to the clubhouse, where I pounded on a big heavy door. A cop there tried to restrain me. A padre official opened the door and told me I couldn’t come in, but I broke free from the cop and dashed by him, and when he saw me run to my dad and hug him, he didn’t intervene. There was a crowd of ball players in the training room and I heard players weeping. Dad knelt down, his face wet. His voice was strained and hoarse as he whispered in my ear that I had to leave the clubhouse; then he took me by the hand and led me to the door. “Go to your mother. Tell her I’ll see her as soon as I can. You can’t be in here.”

     Mother stood with a crowd of newspapermen and ball player’s wives and kids at the door. I watched, helpless, as Roselese screamed and collapsed while my mother held her.  Roselee kept sinking to her knees and another wife stepped in to help mother hold her up. Mother’s eyes met mine and they were so sad I could not look at them. Roselee’s wails echoed throughout the stadium. Then she broke loose and tried to get into the clubhouse. I don’t know if they let her in.Everything blurred when the announcer’s voice thundered over the confines of Lane Field that the double-header was cancelled out of respect for leftfielder Herb Gorman, who had passed away.

     Mother collected Suzie and I and drove to the apartment. We sat around crying and holding each other. Dad came home later, and explained to mother that Gorman had died of a heart attack. Dad said that as he helped carry Herb off the field he heard him grunt and shudder and then his grip went limp and dad knew Herb was gone.

     Later that night, he came into the living room and sat on the sofa and put his arm around me “We lost our dear friend today, Dell. I was looking forward to having him as a friend for the rest of my life. We have to be thankful for the short time we had with Herb.”  He sighed and shook his head. His eyes were raw. “He was twenty eight years old, had a beautiful girl…sometimes life just isn’t fair, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

The Ball Player's Son

1953                      THE BATTLING FRANKLINS

     “You’re Franklin’s kid, ain’t ya?” said Mike Dugan, a high school senior who ran South Park and the surrounding neighborhood. “We got a park team here, we play kids from other parks in town. Sometimes we go to their park, sometimes they come to our park.” Dugan was big, with black hair and a tough, chiseled face. His Nemesis was Joe Krause, who had his own South Park team. Krause was a bully, but Dugan could kick his ass. They both went to Compton High. They were not really good athletes, but organizers. Both planned to join the Marines after graduation. Dugan, the toughest guy in the area, grinned down at me. “You’re playing for me, little Franklin, and not that asshole Krause, right?”

     “Right.”

     I liked playing park games, competing against older kids. I yearned to hang around the older guys, picking up their jargon, their swagger. Dugan became my neighborhood idol, especially after I quit Little League after my second year. Even though I’d led my team in hitting and out hit all the shortstops in the majors, I was left off the All-Star team because I was ten years old. They could stick Little League up their asses. The kids I hung out with were close to junior high age, and I adopted their cynical attitude and disparaging talk about girls. I acquired a smart-ass persona that was probably insufferable to my parents and teachers. So be it. I played in the parks and streets. Mother never worried about me even if my new friends were “dead-end kids” and I was always late for dinner. We were a pack, on bikes or afoot, and above all, we were up and coming athletes of the type only a tough, blue-collar town like Compton can produce

                                                               ******

     When the 1953 season started, Richter, Salveson, Graham, Stringer and Tobin were gone. Of my old buddies on the Padres, only Gorman remained, and he was coming off a disappointing year that had probably dashed any hopes of his making the big leagues. The Padres, with the acquisition of PCL mainstay and always productive outfielder, Earl Rapp, a quiet lanky hawk-faced slasher, and the emergence of Tom Alston, who’d found his power stroke, were still no better than the previous year. Dad’s decline continued. His batting average hovered at .220. One game, when the starting catcher was pinch-hitting for an ejected backup, Dad volunteered to catch and ended up with a busted finger on a foul tip. Cookie came onto the field, jerked the mangled digit back into its joint and taped it to another finger, and Dad gripped the bat with the finger extended. For the first time, I saw my father visibly depressed and even demoralized. He was in a constant pain. No longer was baseball any fun.

     After a series at Gilmore, where the Padres took a thumping from the Stars, the club was slated for a home stand. Mondays were always a PCL off day and the team gave Dad permission to drive our family down to the apartment in Mission Beach. We left early in the morning. Mom and Dad had a heated argument the night before, and Dad was edgy and morose behind the wheel, because Mother gave him the silent treatment. Her face was cold, wounded, persecuted, unforgiving. As we passed out of Long Beach on HWY 101, Mother sat as far as possible from him in the front seat, her body and face turned away gazing out the window. Dad chewed furiously at his fingernails. One of the reasons for their fight was my roguish attitude and foul behavior. Mother blamed Dad’s influence for it; that, and my teasing and torturing Susie, my younger sister. We were riding in the back seat. I pinched her and burped in her face, which prompted her to cry hysterically and climb over the seat to cuddle against Mother. Dad eyed me balefully in the rearview mirror and barked that if I continued teasing my sister he’d ban me from the ball park and that wasn’t all!

     “I’ll pull over right now and so help me God I’ll break you into a thousand bloody pieces! Goddammit I’m in no mood!”

      I went silent, and we drove on down the coast. Peering at Dad’s mug in the mirror, I sensed his frustration and anger, the rapid darting of his eyes indicating a frantic search for a strategy to get mother to cease her brutal silence. The air between them was so tense that any look or word from either would have sparked a full scale war. I knew without a doubt that Dad could not in a lifetime win an argument against her. And he knew it, and it galled him because he couldn’t stand to lose at anything, let alone to Mother, who had his number and knew she was punishing him with each passing moment of her loaded silence.

     Finally, Dad couldn’t take it anymore. “Yeah, it’s always me. Always my fault. I’m always the villain. One hundred per cent wrong, hey? Guess I’m just a terrible person. You can always find a better man out there,” he said, bitter, sarcastic.

     Mother made a face indicating his statement and perhaps his very presence left her nauseous.

     Dad went on: “Yeah, I get blamed for everything. In thirteen years of marriage I’ve never been right about anything. I’ve been wrong a thousand times and you’ve been right a thousand times. I’m O for a thousand. If it’s dark out, and you say it’s light, you’re right, because you’ve never been wrong once in your life! You’re perfect! Just like your family! You’re all geniuses! World beaters! Beauties! Too good for me and MY family. Even if your old man did desert the family during the Depression and you’re the biggest bunch of goddam know-it-alls and leeches in the fucking world!”

     “Pull over,” Mother snapped, her lips compressed to a tight line. “I want out of this car right now!”

     Dad wrenched the wheel, jerking everybody around, bounced over a shoulder and skidded onto the dirt beside the beach. “Go on, get out,” he snarled. “Goddam fishwife, harpy, witch, lousy carping fork-tongued shrew, rotten gutter whore! Go find a man!  You’re on your own!”

     Mother, petite, uncommonly beautiful and feminine, proud virgin before marriage, calm though her eyes brimmed with tears, said, “Murray Franklin, I can’t stand the sight of you. YOU are an ugly man. I no longer love you.” She calmly stepped out of the car and commenced marching down the dirt shoulder, heading south.

     Dad gunned the engine and veered toward her, and I feared he was going to run her over, but he veered away at the last moment as she jumped away, her eyes frozen in disbelief as Dad aimed the Pontiac onto the highway drawing honks from drivers. I looked back through the rear window—Mother marching on, head high, wearing jeans, a white turtleneck sweater, blue denim jacket and Dad’s old sailor cap. Susie was sobbing and hysterical, yelling “MOMMY! MOMMY!”

     Dad slowed down. “This is the last straw. Alright I’ll leave. That’s what she wants. She doesn’t love me. She can go live with her family of deadbeats and parasites and starve! I’ve always been a good husband, a good father, a good provider.Who you think bank-rolled her family’s move out here from Wisconsin? Me! I did! They’re lucky they got a pot to piss in. Well, now they can have their precious daughter back Let her test the waters and see what kind of man she finds.”

     I tried to imagine a life without mother and felt immediate panic. “Dad, she could go back to nursing and find a doctor. All kinds of rich Jewish doctors wanted to marry her before you met her.”

     He bit savagely at his upper lip, glaring at me in the mirror.

     “I want Mommy!” Susie wailed. “Please Daddy, I want Mommy!” She was sobbing.

     Dad made a U-turn, again peeving honking drivers. “Okay, for you, honey,” Dad said. A mile or so down the road we spotted mother, who refused to look at Dad, who made another U-turn, again drawing honks and shouts, and crept alongside Mother, who continued marching. He leaned across the seat, rolled down the window and while steering with one hand implored her to get back in the car “for the good of the kids” even if she hated him and no longer loved him. Mother increased her marching pace. Dad kept alongside her, and she whirled on him, “You tried to run me over! If I hadn’t moved you would have run me over! How dare you!”

     “Rose, goddammit, if I’d wanted to run you over I would have.” She turned and marched on as Dad steered along shaking his head. “Maybe I should-a ran her over,” he said. “then all my problems would be over. They put me away for life and she can support the family. Her family can support youse. HAW!”

     “Dad, you better go get her,” I said. “She might walk clear to San Diego and never stop.”

     He stopped, turned the engine off, sat there a moment, sighed, then got out and loped after her. She saw him coming and tried to scurry away, but he caught up and blocked her path, pleading, gesturing. Mother, hands on hips, looked away as he talked, remaining stiff, unresponsive. Dad looked like the most miserable human on the planet.

     Finally, she turned to face him, and he had to listen while she let him have it. Head hanging, he nodded in accord with her tongue lashing. When she eventually stopped, he put a hug on her. Her arms went around him. He kissed her on the forehead, the cheeks, and they held each other for a long time. She was no longer crying as they returned to the car holding hands. It was obvious they had both been crying. They got into the car and sat close together like sweethearts.

     Dad drove off, Susie curled up against Mother. Their faces in the mirror were serene, content. Dad caught my eyes. I grimaced in disgust and silently mouthed the words: “Real corn.” He looked sheepish. But I was relieved. Nothing could be worse than not having Dad around to tell me about facing Feller and playing against DiMaggio and Williams when I pumped him for stories.

     As we drove on, they chirped and discussed pulling over at one of the little beach towns for a picnic. It had been foggy all morning, but now the sun shone. We pulled off the highway, found a corner grocery store, drove a couple blocks to a spacious park. Mom spread a blanket. We had ham sandwiches, sodas. Dad mentioned how the picnic reminded him of when they’d done the same in parks in Havana. Real mush. I finished quickly and excused myself to go to the bathroom, when in truth I was drawn to the distant sounds of a baseball game.

     Not far away I found a diamond where a game was being played by a bunch of kids older than me. I decided I was easily the equal of these players, walked up and announced I wanted to play. A kid who seemed in charge flashed me the stink eye and said I couldn’t play. I told him I was better than any of them and would prove it if they let me play. The big kid puffed out his chest and said I couldn’t play and if I didn’t like it I could do something about it. So I slugged him, knocking him down, and then I jumped on his chest and pummeled him. He tried to throw me off, but I was crazed and crying, and now the kid was crying because I’d bloodied his nose. He quit struggling and all the kids around us were pulling and screaming for me to stop, but that only inspired me to continue hitting him—with a sadistic viciousness that was new to me. I was flailing away when I was snatched off the kid and held in the air swinging wildly, crying—and it was Dad, carrying me away, his eyes wide and concerned as he urged me to cool off, asking me what was wrong and why was I fighting strange kids? I wiggled free and ran toward the blanket, where Mother sat with her face in her hands. She looked up. We were both crying.

     “Oh God, what have we done,” she wailed.

     “For Christ Sake. Why were you fighting with that kid?” Dad wanted to know.

     “He wouldn’t let me play ball.”

     “Oh God,” Mother cried, and started collecting the picnic items.

The Ball Player's Son

BIG MOE                          “THE GOLDEN GLOVES”

     My mother had no idea I was boxing in a gym across town and running around with Al Capone’s son, Brian. He lived in this big house with all these tough looking guys in suits hanging around. They were very nice to us and you’d never know they were gangsters shooting people. The most important thing I learned at the gym was how to throw a left hook. Short and crisp. Torquing my hips and shoulder and planting one in the ribs where you can tear cartilage or paralyze a guy with a shot to the liver, or to the side of the jaw so you can snap a guy’s neck. When you hit somebody on the side of the jaw all the gray matter slides over to the other side of the brain and the lights go out. I was blessed to be light on my feet and moved well laterally, side to side, and had good footwork. I had quick hands and developed a pretty good jab. I found that the right hand was not that important, especially in the streets where kids were always trying to sucker punch you with a big right hand. Nobody looked for the left. I pumped that hook into the heavy bag over and over and learned how to set up the left hook and straight right with my left jab, and later I set up opponents for a counter-punch by teasing him into a punch I anticipated. I liked the cat-and-mouse aspect of boxing, where you looked for a weakness and capitalized and were always competing, trying to out-smart the other guy.

     Everybody at the gym told me I had a natural punch, what we called “the heavy hands.” They urged me to get into the Golden Gloves, so I took an Irish name and started my amateur career. I had a killer instinct and started beating people up pretty good. I liked it. I had a lot of anger. I had a shock-absorbing neck, long arms and a knack for moving my head and slipping punches. And my balance kept me from lunging and getting nailed in the kisser coming in, like a hitter lunging off his front foot instead of staying back After I won a few fights I decided to make up for all the beatings I’d taken from the Polocks and Germans. I wanted the older kids who’d run in packs and bullied and tortured me and spit on my sisters a few years back, before I got used to fighting. They’d forgotten, but not me. I hung in the park, and when I caught those bastards alone I beat the living hell out of them, broke their noses, knocked out their teeth. The Gorski brothers were the worst sadists. I got one of them in the lavatory at the high school and when I got through beating him bloody I shoved his face in the urinal and told him if any of his brothers and Polock friends wanted to mess with me or my sisters I’d make them eat shit the next time. I ended up getting all the Gorski brothers. Word got around. I had a reputation.

     Not everybody can fight, has the heart or attitude or the physical tools for it, but I did. My parents had no idea I was boxing in the ring and never would have allowed it. I made up lies during bouts. Told them I was visiting friends, doing homework at the library. The more I boxed, the more I learned, the more I appreciated the art of it, the strategy. The great Barney Ross worked out in our gym, and just watching him you could learn all there was to know—how to neutralize power, cut off the ring, set a guy up for a punch, make a guy miss. He was a master. You couldn’t hit him, yet he could hit you all day. He was somebody to admire, a fighting Jew. Those were different times than today. You had to do what you had to do, to survive. Survival of the fittest. I found out one thing: everybody looks up to a guy who can and will fight to the end. The guy in the street can smell it a mile away.

The Ball Player's Son

1953

     When dad pulled a muscle and went on the disabled list, I asked him to please help our team. We were winless and desperate and I was walking around like my whole world was falling apart. So dad called Mr. Roark, who said he’d be thrilled to have Dad come out and “shore up the team.”

     When Dad arrived at the practice field there was an atmosphere of excitement. He shook Roark’s hand and then Fletcher’s, then picked up a bat and swung it like a golf club and addressed us kids. “I hear we’ve got a lot of aardvarks and goony birds on this team,” he grinned. “Any of you kids know what an aardvark and goony bird is?”

     Nobody knew.

     “Aardvarks and goony birds are somebody who can’t win at anything. They’ve always got excuses. Their feet hurt. They didn’t get enough sleep last night. The ump’s make bad calls,” Dad recited in a namby-pamby voice.” That’s what we call an Alibi Ike. Any of you kids Alibi Ike’s?”

     “NO!” came the chorus.

     “Okay, you bunch of aardvarks, get your gloves and pair off and warm up those hoses, and then we’re gonna hit pepper. Any of you clowns know what pepper is? My kid—the umpire beater—thinks he knows. Let’s hope he’s no Alibi Ike.”

     Everybody gawked at each other. Then we warmed up. Dad strode along, fungo bat in hand, watching us. When warm, he separated us into groups of four and showed us how to hit pepper. Right off he told us all to cease cocking the elbow up. He told us we were looking good, that we weren’t aardvarks and goony birds after all. He gave every kid individual pointers. He said we were going to make UCT and the Lions and Rotary look like a bunch of donkeys

     “Pepper covers all aspects of the game—hitting, fielding, throwing, footwork. Before every game, before you hit, play pepper so you sharpen your skills. Thattaway ,boys. Keep your eyes on the ball. Watch the ball into your bat. Watch the ball into your glove. Make good, accurate throws. It’s a simple game. You aardvarks are a lot better than you think you are.”

     Instead of our usual infield practice, he put us all at shortstop and slashed us grounders. After watching us muff just about everything, he grabbed a glove, strode out and demonstrated the correct way to field a grounder—ass low, on the balls of your feet, legs spread, knees bent, glove down. “I don’t care where you play, you gotta be able to field a groundball.”

     Roark retrieved balls while Fletcher moped on the sidelines. “Remember, asses down, like ducks. Arms low and loose like monkeys. Let’s hear you quack! Quack, quack, quack, come on you goony birds, get those spindly asses down and charge everything!”

     We responded, quacking, skittering like monkeys, gobbling Dad’s grounders. He hit a few pop-ups to see who could shag, then assigned positions, changing everybody but myself at short. Denny Long, now known as “Whitey,” was moved from second to catcher. Roark was stuck in right field. Our thirdbaseman, Kenny Lighthouse, became our pitcher. After Dad settled everybody at their positions and hit us grounders and fly balls, he worked with Lighthouse, teaching him a straight change-up. Then we had batting practice. He taught everybody to swing level and slightly down on the ball, and had us choking up on the bat an inch or two, and delivered a pep talk about being “battlers at the plate.”

      “You kids are gonna rip shots and dehorn people. They’re gonna boot your grounders. They’re gonna be scared of you and then you’re gonna run those bases like wild Indians.”

     Next evening we played the Lions. Dad stood behind our dugout as we faced the biggest, most terrifying pitcher in the league, Red Burke, a lefty who popped the catcher’s mitt. Dad told us to “chip away at him.” Meanwhile, Dad kept subtle eye contact with Denny Long and frequently signaled him to throw the change-up to their biggest, hardest swinging hitters. The Lions hitters lunged and popped up and struck out; and we made the plays in the field as Dad clapped his hands and encouraged us. Mr. Roark was smacking us on the butt while Fletcher sat silently on the end of the bench with his kid.

     As instructed by Dad, I fouled off one after another of Burke’s pitches then hit a line drive over their firstbaseman and tore to third for a triple. Everybody on our team choked up on the bat and met the ball. We kept hitting grounders that produced dropped balls and wild throws and indeed we ran the bases like wild Indians as our dugout and rooters in the stands went crazy. We ended up beating them, 9-1. Afterwards, Denny Long ran over and hugged Dad. He was crying.

     “That Lighthouse kid’s a natural,” Dad told me later. “A dummy can see it. The kid’s loosey-goosey and he’s got a lotta guts.”

     The Lions were in shock. Their manager, Burke’s father, a tall, red-faced man, stormed off. We were jubilant, celebrating our first win, and my first two hits. Our parents came down to hug us. Then we piled into cars and in a caravan drove to Foster’s Freeze.

     When we got home, Dad roughed my head. “Attaway to rack that pea, Meat. You took that big kid down and the whole team followed. That’s being a leader. That’s my boy.”

     We skunked the Rotary and followed with a near perfect performance in edging the powerhouse UCT. Dad came to both games and stood behind our dugout conferring with Mr. Roark and giving signals to Denny behind the plate. He’d taught Lighthouse a sidearm delivery that had right-handed hitters “stepping into the bucket.” Dad’s strategy bred confusion that led to panic and finally a loss of confidence in our opponents.

     As my confidence grew, I developed a feel for the game, sensed where to play hitters, anticipating where they were going to hit the ball. Dad noticed this and after games he warned me not to anticipate too much and gamble, but that he saw I had “baseball in my blood, an instinct that is rare.” He was so pleased with me he bragged to his team mates on the Padres, and when I entered the clubhouse with a swelled head they patted my ass and roughed my head and called me Slasher and Scoop and Scooter. Dad even bragged of my getting kicked out of the game and somehow a reporter for the San Diego paper mentioned it in his column.

     When Tobin asked me my average, and I told him, he flashed his crooked grin and said, “Thatta boy. Any ball player says he doesn’t know his average is fulla shit.”

     Dad, who always said, “you could drive yourself crazy thinking about and adding up your average, and that the team came first,” glanced at Tobin, and winked at me.

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     On a rematch with the Lions, Dad in his Padres windbreaker, was pacing and agitated with the proceedings. He began badgering the umpire, a kid around sixteen who nobody had seen before. He called me out on high pitches and did the same with our other hitters. Then he called the same kind of pitches Lighthouse threw for balls, loading the bases. We fell behind. The Lions whooped it up and their crowd rooted them on.

     Dad started talking softly to the ump from behind the backstop. “I know what you’re up to, kid. Don’t for a minute think I’m not wise to you. Who the hell got to you?”

     The ump stayed mum.

     “Who’s paying you off, son? And then, after another pitch, Dad, irritated, barked, “You call that a strike? Shame on you! Cheating little kids! You’re a disgrace! Turn around. Turn around. Look at me!”

     The umpire took off his mask and turned to face Dad.

     “How the hell can you go home and look yourself in the mirror?” Dad demanded to know, the vein in his neck pulsing, his bald head turning red.

     The ump turned around, refit his mask.

     “I thought I’d seen it all, but in thirty years of baseball this is the lowest, rottenest thing I’ve seen…”

     A booming voice from the stands interrupted what had been stunned silence of the crowd as Dad berated the umpire. “Shut your big mouth, Franklin! Pick on a man, not a boy!” The voice thundered.

     Dad turned and searched the packed crowd for the face belonging to the voice. “Who told me to shut my mouth?” Dad growled, the vein in his neck pulsing. “Show your face if you’re gonna challenge me,” he called up to the stands.

     A man bigger than Lindell, wearing a bulky black tanker jacket and owning a tough, meaty mug stood up, halfway up the stands beneath the press box. “I told you to shut your mouth Franklin,” he growled back. “You don’t belong here!”

     Dad walked over to Mother, who was scrunched up in the first row behind our dugout, pealed off and flipped her his watch, then returned to the area behind the screen and, a mad grin on his face, pointed a finger at the man. “You wanna shut my mouth, come on down here!”

     I felt myself shrivel in fear at the immensity of the menacing figure in the stands. But then the menacing scowl on his face began to wither.

     “I know who you are, Franklin,” said the man, softening his tone.

     “You told me to shut my mouth, so you better get down here and do it, buster.”

     The man began to shrink. “I know about you…yer a ball player…yer in shape...yer a boxer…” He was blubbering.

     A group of fans surrounded and stood before the man, making a show of restraining him from coming down after Dad, who motioned him to come on down.

     “Let’s go behind the barn and fight like men!” Dad yelled up at him. “You’re the one asked for it, bub!”

     The man made a half-hearted attempt to break through the shield of men, but he said nothing. Mother by this time had Dad by the arm and warned him he was a professional ball player in the spotlight and could not get into fights. I was beside him and he ordered me to fetch my gear. The look in his eye was terrifying. He issued the big man one last look of disgust and mother led us to the car.

     During the ride home he was bristling with anger and claimed the Little League officials were a “pack of gutless cowards who’d bribed the umpire.”

     At home, Mr. Roark called to explain that Dad was banned from coming to our practices and games because it was “unfair to other teams to have to compete against a Kiwanis team with the advantage of an ex big leaguer and current professional coaching them.”

     “It’s never about the kids, huh?” Dad said. “What horseshit.”

     Mr. Roark felt terrible because the kids on our team were having such a great time, improving their play, loving the game, loving Dad. Dad told Roark to stress the points he’d been making—but from that day on our practices were lifeless and we went into a tailspin losing again to everybody. The man who challenged Dad turned out to be the nephew of the league president, a truck driver, and both were related to the Lions coach. Dad healed and went back to the Padres, and the rest of our season was no fun without him. He’d made things exciting, made us all laugh, made us like ourselves and the game to such a joy that we showed up a half hour early for practices, eager puppy dogs ready to play.

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