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.
+
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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