BIG MOE’S CRUSADE AGAINST JEW BAITERS

     Playing for Beaumont in the Texas League, we had a pitcher on our team named Stith, a big stocky farm-boy who belonged to a Nazi Bund. He knew I was a Jew and he started in early in the season baiting me, trying to goad me into a fight-- Jew this, Jew that, sheenie, kike. I decided to take it. I didn’t want the reputation as a troublemaker fighting with team mates, because it was hard enough in those days getting to the top, and I was on my way. But Stith wouldn’t let up. It was 1939, and the things going on in Germany and Europe, with the anti-Semitism, were still going on in this country. Stith kept putting Nazi arm bands and literature in my locker. He taunted me. There was still the stereotype that Jews wouldn’t fight back, and Stith, a bully, had no idea I could fight, and I let him and all the guys on the team who felt that way think that, played possum.

     Only a pitcher and pal of mine, John Gorsica, a Jersey guy, knew, and he wanted a piece of Stith, too.

     I had broken my leg earlier in the year and was not myself, and Stith knew this, too. Our manager, Al Vincent, knew Stith had been riding me all year with the Jew baiting and Nazi bullshit, and he and his coach let it go. Every night I came home from the park and let the rage build. Then, in Tulsa, on one of the hottest days of the year, we were staying in a hotel downtown and had just finished a series and were waiting for the bus to take us to the train station. The bus that picked us up carried the visiting team that was going to play Tulsa.

     As I came through the swinging glass doors of the hotel with the rest of the team, Stith, waiting for me on the sidewalk, ambushed me with a wild sucker punch and knocked me down. This was what I’d been waiting for. I jumped up and squared off with him just as the bus pulled in from the train station.

     Stith kept charging me, and I boxed him—jab jab jab. He was sweating and snorting like a damn pig, trying to get his hands on me, but I kept moving from side to side, hitting him with both hands until his nose and mouth and eyes were bleeding, and then I started teeing off hitting him as hard as I could. One of his eyes was in trouble and I went after it with one straight right after another until I had him out on his feet against the building.

     By this time Vincent was yelling at me, trying to pull me off Stith, and I turned on him and told him to get the hell out of my way, and then I went back to work on Stith, holding him against that building and carving out that eye, until the eye was dangling by a thread and his nose was busted flat, and I wouldn’t let him go down until his face looked like mush, and then I threw the bastard across the sidewalk into the gutter where he lay with his eye out and a black hole in the socket, and then the trainer and a few players were there, and Vincent had hold of me. I shoved him off and told him I wanted him now, because he’d condoned Stith’s Jew baiting all year, he’d enjoyed it, and Vincent, seeing the look in my eye, didn’t want any part of me, but I was just getting warmed up. I was soaked in blood and sweat and didn’t have a mark on me. By this time some of the players were filing off the bus and it was dead quiet and I looked at my team mates and some of the players getting off the bus and told them if any of them had any problems with Jews to get it off their chests and settle it right now, because I was good and warm.

     A few of the players were green around the gills at the sight of Stith. Nobody wanted any part of me, and I don’t blame them, because I was as mad-dog crazy as I’d ever been. Since the beginning of my career this had built up in me.

     “We’ve settled our differences,” Vincent said. “Let’s get back to baseball.”

      Gorsica was grinning at me. As for Stith, he was finished. He lost that eye. He never played ball again. And I feel good about that. Never regretted gutting that pig, and if I’d killed the bastard I wouldn’t have lost a nights sleep, because it would be a better world without Stith and his kind.

     (Next Sunday installment—The Phee-nom starts high school)

The Ball Player's Son

                           THE PHEE-NOM HITS A ROAD BLOCK

1957

     The Anaheim American Legion Tournament consisted of 80 teams throughout California and was the most prestigious of its kind, arguably, in the country. It was played at La Palma Park, a beautiful, sculptured stadium with stands and outfield bleachers like a minor league stadium.The tournament drew huge crowds throughout August, and scouts and bird-dogs from every big league team sat in their plaid shirts and straw and linen hats and alpaca sweaters with note pads and time-watches up and behind home plate below the press box like birds perched on rows and tiers of telephone lines. In 1955 Dad coached Compton kids to seven straight wins and the championship, our reward being seven days in a paid hotel in Catalina the week before Labor Day, with $5 a day for expenses. Most of  the players on that team were playing out their last years of Legion ball (a few signing big league contracts) and while in Catalina completely tore the place apart and were kicked out of our hotel the second night, kicked out of our second hotel the third night and kicked off the island the fourth day.

     Dad’s words to the boys when they got off the ferry at the dock in Catalina were, “You boys get as much snaff and boogair as you can, but don’t get thrown in jail.”

     I tagged along with my best friend, Jimmy Henrich, son of our Junior High coach at Roosevelt and Dad’s assistant, Ed Henrich, (His oldest son, Bob Henrich, signed a big bonus with Cincinnati) and watched these guys get drunk, peroxide their hair blond, chase women, brawl with guys from certain parts of LA, and generally represent rowdy Compton in a manner described by islanders as “the most horrible representatives of American youth ever seen.”

     In 1956, Dad and the team nearly repeated, and this year, with a thirteen year old at second base on our first game before a full house at night, Dad was introduced to the crowd from the press box as former Detroit Tiger and Hollywood Star and coach of past Anaheim tournament champions and received a rousing ovation to which he came out of the dugout and doffed his cap; the Dodgers hadn’t come out from the east yet and he was still a hero.

     So far, his kid had held his own. I was choking up on a 35 inch 35 ounce Nellie Fox    coke-bottle shaped model bat, standing on top of the plate like Nellie, and chipping away, not quick enough yet to pull heat but managing to whack a few shots up the middle and into right field. When I came to bat my first time, I was introduced as the son of Murray Franklin, and I ground my teeth and seethed. My Dad coached third base. He clapped his hands. His uniform fit him perfectly with his socks high at the knees, while his kid wore his uniform baggy with his socks low like Mickey Mantle. Our relationship had evolved to my working for him in his store as a means of learning the business and earning a little money, which gave me independence, and realizing I was not in agreement with everything he said and did, and thus we argued, and I was accused of being disrespectful and a wise-ass and when he snapped and snarled at me suddenly spurting venom, I felt myself gorged with visions of retaliation but had none, and therefore talked back and was chased, gleefully discovering that since I had become the fastest white kid of my age group in Compton, he could no longer catch me.

     Yet all was different on the ball field. Dad was king and never to be disputed. You gave him a long look when he gave signs. Just by watching him coach and talk throughout the game you learned invaluable baseball knowledge. Of this I was still in awe, and after grounding out my first time at bat, I settled down and played well enough as we won our first two games with a younger team lacking the older prospects of the past two years.

     Dad was coaching several young kids around my age, including Jimmy, and two of our team mates, Pat Pomeroy, who Dad felt was a natural hitter with a major league arm, and Ken Bowlin, a rangy pitcher, already a prospect with a live fastball and good control and a cocky attitude—quarterback on our Roosevelt football team, on which I was a halfback. The four of us hung together and played over-the-line baseball at Roosevelt, two-on-two basketball and tag football, cussed and talked pussy though only Jimmy seemed to be getting anywhere with the budding teenage girls in skintight skirts who chewed gum and tried to ignore our awkward and obnoxious attempts at conversation. Among the four, I was by far the most backward and ineffective, a drooling drooler..

     Dad referred to us as “The Four Stooges.”

     Bowlin and I did not like each other, though we weren’t enemies. He hinted I was the privileged son of a former big leaguer and had all the advantages. The fact we were team mates was our only bond, unlike with Jim, who was my best friend and fellow baseball junky. We were playing a heated football game at Roosevelt the day before our third game when Ken and I, opponents, got into a vile argument and he said something referring to me and my father and I attacked him, had him back-pedaling as I snorted fire, and just as I was about to punch him again he threw the football as hard as he could at my face and when I put up my hands to block it red hot pain seared through my thumb as I hit the ground clutching my wrist and staring at a thumb that had dislocated to the other side of my hand—a sight so grotesque nobody could look at it.

     In agony, I sprinted a half mile to my dad’s store, barged in and he took me immediately to the emergency room, where the doc took an x ray and then lay me down while the three stooges looked on as Dad held me down. The doc pushed and jiggled until he wrenched the thumb back into place. I took no pain killers. He put a cast on me. Bowlin delivered a weak apology. Dad just stared at him, said nothing. He knew about Bowlin—he hung with Ron Bart, now 16 and huge, our first baseman and starting tackle going both ways on the Compton High football team, and now a virulent racist whose hatred of blacks was never hidden as he referred to and used the word “nigger” like a bludgeon. He had a car, and Bowlin drove around with him.

     So I sat in the dugout with a cast on my left hand while Dad coached our young team to the final game, until we were beaten by a huge bonus baby from Chaffey, Larry Maxie, who threw big league heat and was headed straight to the big time until, like a lot of kids, hurt his arm and labored in the minors for years.

     The kid who took over second, a Mexican kid named Franco Cruz, played great, and Dad asked at the dinner table, “You think you’d’ve held up to the pressure like he did?”

Franco played great defense, turned double-plays, but couldn’t hit, and didn’t hit.

     I wasn’t sure, but of course I told him yes.

     “I think so, too,” Dad said. Then he stared at me for a few seconds. “You think you could have hit that big kid, Maxie? He struck out seventeen of us and we only got two hits. He throws as hard as most big leaguers.”

     “Well, he wouldn’t strike me out.”

     Dad glanced at mom and Susie, winked; then offered me the slightest of grins. “That’s my boy. Guard that dish!”

     (Next Sunday installment: Big Moe’s Crusade.)

The Ball Player's Son

                                       BACK TO THE BASICS

1957

     “Murray, he’s not ready for Legion ball,” mother insisted. Dad had coached the Compton American Legion team the last two years to championships, exciting everybody in our sports fanatical town, and felt I was ready for bigger competition. “He’s not fourteen yet, you’re pushing him too hard!”

     “ Dammit, Rose, he pushes himself hard. That’s the way you gotta be if you wanna be any goddam good. Let him play. He wants to play. I think he’s ready. I wouldn’t play him if I didn’t think he was.”

     “Murray, those are men out there. Eighteen year olds. Did you face eighteen year olds when you were thirteen?”

     “Damn right I did. So you stay out of this. If I think he’s ready, and he thinks he’s ready, he’s ready. We don’t need any goddam mollycoddling.”

     All the kids in Compton wanted to play for Dad, and I knew they resented me—a thirteen year old taking their position. They idolized Dad, who went out of his way to encourage and praise the poorer, underdog kids, and cracked the whip on the talented kids who were full of themselves. I heard some of them muttering that I was getting to play only because I was his son, and should be playing Colt League or Babe Ruth League with kids my age. Just a year or two ago, as an eleven and twelve year old, I’d been batboy and mascot, and now that the older guys who’d adopted me were gone, I was this child among physically mature teenagers with cars who drank beer and whiskey and talked about pussy and regarded me as an unproven punk

     All I had was baseball, and the fact that at Roosevelt junior high I played football, basketball, baseball, and ran track, and started and succeeded in all of them to the degree I was known as an athlete already coveted by Compton High coaches as a future star. So early on, I was dead set on impressing my older team mates. I felt exposed, on stage. A strange new urge tugged at me—to drift away from my environment of Compton and show up somewhere else where nobody knew me and I could be Dell Franklin, hotshot phee-nom, and not the son of Murray Franklin playing for Murray Franklin. Start new and clean.

     I was gritting my teeth a lot. And, most agonizing, I’d suddenly begun booting ordinary groundballs. If there was any part of my game that brimmed with confidence no matter what, it was my ability to gobble and snare any kind of grounder, looking slick. I loved taking infield, loved flashing my talents. It was me.

     But now I was booting everything, and my team mates were snickering and nodding. Nor was Dad pleased, and he made it a point to be harder on me than anybody else, and Christ, I was so bad, so off balance, that balls were playing me instead of me playing them, and I found myself flinching. I felt shaky, my confidence shot. I couldn’t sleep at night, thinking about this. I was especially shamed when Dad, trying to show his players there was no reason to be gun-shy at the plate, allowed our hardest thrower, Dave Skaugstead, who would later sign for a bonus, to nail him on the backside several times, and Dad claiming “the mosquitoes are biting early this year, ey, girls?” Later, at home, I saw his backside was purple and red with welts.

     Finally, in a game, at second base, I muffed two easy groundballs and stood in the corner of the dugout on the verge of punching the wall, fighting my temper, which had been flaring up, knowing it looked bush and nothing infuriated the old man more than his kid behaving like a busher—an immediate reflection on him and a desecration of what he was proudest. Dad said nothing, he wouldn’t look at me, until the drive home.

     “Tomorrow,” he said grimly. “Tomorrow we’ll see what you’re made of.”

     We walked across the street to the Roosevelt Junior High baseball diamond, where I’d been a star on an undefeated team. The infield, this time of year, was a neglected rock pile, as Dad described it, full of pebbles, clods and bad hops, which Dad wanted. First off, soon as we got there, he scolded me vehemently for jogging out to shortstop—“YOU WANNA PLAY THE GAME YOU DON’T SLOUCH LIKE A GODDAM SADSACK-- YOU HUSTLE OUT TO YOUR POSITION LIKE AN EAGER BEAVER—NOTHING LOOKS AS BUSH AS A LOAFER AND THAT’S WHAT YOU ARE RIGHT NOW, A QUITTER AND A GODDAM LOAFER!” And then, before I could even get set, Dad, fungo in hand, laced a rope that short-hopped and glanced off my bicep, stinging, and I flexed it, and before I could get set again he laced me a ground-hugging top-spinner that ate me up and bounced off my shin, which ached deep in the bone. “Ha ha ha,” he jeered. “Two balls, two boots!” Another rocket smacked hard off my chest. “That’s three! I’m gonna get your hair-lip next. You stink! You’re stinking up the game. Wanna quit? Go on, gutless, crawl off the filed like a whipped cur.”

     I heard myself bellow, “FUCK YOU!”

     The next few minutes Dad blistered me on the foot, shoulder, ankle, shin, nose and finally ripped another grass-skimmer that took a wild hop and popped me directly in the balls. I went down in an agonized heap while half the kids in the neighborhood who hung out at the playground, looked on as I writhed and rolled around on the ground. Then Dad was standing over me, leaning on his fungo, a gloating mean grin on his face.

     “Where’s your goddam cup, dummie?” Before I could tell him I forgot it, he went on, “What’s the first thing I taught you as an infielder?...Now go home, put your cup on and get your ass back out here. Then we’ll really find out what you’re made of. Go on.”

     Mother cringed as I stormed into the house limping, bleeding, bruised. I slammed the door of my room shut, put the cup on and sprinted back to the diamond where Dad waited, still leaning on his fungo, grinning, about ten kids surrounding him in an adoring circle, obviously having listened to his humorous stories.

     “Well, kid, there’s no reason to be scared any more. I’ve bunged you up everywhere and you’re still here.” He glanced at the kids, who’d been retrieving balls I’d muffed, then at me. “What’s happened, meathead, is you’ve grown like a weed overnight. You’re going through what we call the ‘young colt stage’. Your legs are longer. You’re not as low to the ground as you used to be. You’ve got to get back to the basics—stay low, on the balls of your feet, charge the ball with long, smooth strides, always low, because, like I’ve always said, every hop’s a good hop when your ass is down. Glide. Light on your feet like a boxer. Stop thinking. Nothing dumber than a ball player who thinks too much. You got the best pair of hands around, Meat. Okay? Let’s go.”

     He hit me several easy choppers, which I charged and lobbed back, urging him to hit ‘em harder. Scorch ‘em he did, and I began trapping and short-hopping violent top-spinners and grass-skimmers and one-hop rockets at my feet. He hit blue-darters to my left, my right, straight at me. I found a rhythm. No matter what he hit me, I flagged it down. As I gobbled ball after ball as fast as he could hit them, I became lathered in sweat, panting like a dog and grinning like a stooge as I began quick-releasing throws to a kid at first base, and the old man, he was grinning back

     “That’s my boy! Can’t keep a Franklin down. Way t’ scoop that ball, Digger O’Dell!” He hit me about a hundred grounders before I muffed one. At that point he was worn out and flipped the bat away and walked out to me. By this time half the neighborhood was at the cyclone fence bordering the school, watching this brutal exhibition, curious about the Franklins, that family where the husband and wife yelled at each other and sometimes the father chased the son halfway down the block, infuriated at his hotshot insolence, shaking his fist, the son taking refuge at his mother’s parents a block down the street.

     Now Dad had his paw on my shoulder. “You might not boot one the rest of the year. Nobody’s got better hands than you. You’ve always had the stuffings to play this game. Every ball player goes through tough times. I helped you get out of it, but later, when you grow up and play a higher brand of ball, you’ll have to learn to work things out on your own.”

     I couldn’t wait for the next game, and my next groundball, and when it came, it was like I’d never had a doubt, making it look easy.

     (Next installment: The kid plays Legion ball, until…)

The Ball Player's Son

                                        BIG MOE GOES OUT IN STYLE

      1953

         

     Dad continued to hit well and make plays at three positions. On my birthday he took me to a weeknight game at Wrigley, got me a box seat behind the Angel’s dugout, and went 4 for 4 and made a great catch against the wall in left field. On the way home he said that game was dedicated to me, a birthday present. “Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want, but tonight everything turned out as well as I could’ve asked for—might be my last time.”

     I never wanted much from Dad on my birthdays. He always wanted to take me shopping and buy me nice clothes, but I hated clothes, preferring to wear old rags until they disintegrated, which seemed to bother him, because the way a person dressed, according to Dad, showed one’s pride. He said that part of being a father was giving kids nice things. But I told him I didn’t need anything but baseballs, a glove, a bat, a football, a basketball, an old radio to listen to games in my room, and nothing else except going to the ball park with him. What else was there?

     Dad kept hitting the ball well, until September, when he began tailing off. One Saturday afternoon he dropped an easy fly ball in left field, which just popped out of his glove. He displayed no anger or disgust as boos rained down. During the drive home I asked him what happened.

     “I just dropped it,” he said, annoyed.

     “Did you lose it in the sun?”

     “No. A good ballplayer knows how to shade out the sun.”

     “Did you lose it in the high sky?”

     “That high sky bullshit is for Alibi Ike’s.”

     “Then how could you drop an easy fly right to you? a can of corn? You never had to move!”

     “Dell, you don’t go a whole season without booting one. Sometimes you make a good play on a tough chance, rob a guy, and then you turn around and boot an easy one. But I will say one thing: I never make an easy play look hard.”

     “How many balls you dropped in the outfield, Dad?”

     He winked at me. “Today was my first.”

     Even as the sports pages revved up the Angel-Star rematch to a fevered pitch, the series was without incident. Before the first game, Jack Phillips of the Stars, a big man at 6’ “4 and over 200 pounds, one of the easiest going guys around and perennial peacemaker, asked Dad why he clobbered him, and Dad explained, “Jeez, Jack, I was hitting anything in a home uniform, sorry about that.” Cops still stood near both dugouts throughout the series. The Stars showed themselves to be the superior team, the best in the PCL, with players like Dale Long, Lee Walls, Kelleher, Phillips and Tom Saffel putting the slug on the Angels. And the last road trip of the season was the end of Dad’s career. Mother, Suzie and I drove up to San Francisco to meet him on a Monday evening. Right off, Dixie Upright took charge of me so Dad could join Mom and take Suzie shopping and out to eat seafood on the wharf.

     “Where we goin’ today, Meat? Ride the cable cars? Hit the snake-pits? How about a double-dipper at the movie house? It’s yore day, kid. Y’all and Dixie, that’s a team, boy.”

     Dixie treated me to bunkhouse breakfasts, hot beef sandwiches at Tommy’s on Van Ness, all the coke and popcorn I could hold and, all week long, took me to shoot-em-ups and war movies. We were not about to have anything to do with dramas, musicals or romance. It was like being with another kid, only a full grown one. I told Dixie that Dad cried when they shot the dog in “Old Yeller.” Don’t tell nobody, but old Dixie bawled too. Ain’t nothin’ worse’n seein’ a dog get it.”

     During games, Angel management allowed me into the dugout, in street clothes, for the season ending series. The team was still fighting with Portland and San Francisco for third place. Dad was exhausted. He’d played almost every inning of every game since coming out of retirement—but he kept plugging away, and the Angels plugged away and ended up in third place, which ensured Hack the Cub job.

     “Can’t happen to a nicer guy,” Dad said. “But Christ, Chicago’s a horseshit club. Dumb organization. Stan won’t last long there and he deserves better—he’s a good baseball man.”

     Dad’s last time up in professional baseball was a clear sunny September afternoon. Tony Ponce was pitching for San Francisco. Seal Stadium, spacious, known for its fog and damp air, often deadened long fly balls and kept them in the park. But on that day the ball Dad hit exploded off his bat as if whopped by a golf club. The crack of the bat resounded throughout the ball park and the little white pill arced to impossible height as it climbed toward and then hit the top of the light tower beyond left-center field. The Angels jumped off the bench to follow the flight of the ball as it soared and Dad rounded first base hard and then slowed to a trot refusing to smile or show any emotion as he crossed home plate, where he shook hands with the next hitter, finally smiling, then getting butt-pats and back-slaps from all his team mates, really grinning big and proud.

     Later, strolling through the lobby of the downtown hotel where we stayed, Dad picked up a newspaper and found an article on the front page of the sports section claiming Mickey Mantle had hit the longest tape-measured homerun ever—565 feet! He grinned at me. “Mine would’ve gone farther if it hadn’t hit the light tower.”

     I browsed the paper. “The Mick’s hit a beer sign after clearing Griffith Stadium, Dad. They call that the airport, don’t they?”

     “Best ball I ever hit today. If I’m at the airport, I hit the beer sign.” He clenched his fist to show off his bulging forearm. “I’m still learning. What I learned today is you don’t have to take that big a hard swing to hit one out. It’s like that short, compact punch that always knocks a guy out. You hardly feel it it’s so light. That’s how it felt today when I hit that ball off the light tower. Hot damn! It’s a helluva feeling to get a hit your first time up in pro ball, and then go out the same way.”

     When the Angels had their after-season awards banquet, Dad and Mom dressed up in their best, taking turns at the mirror and checking each other out and making a huge deal about what to wear before finally deciding. They smelled of cologne and perfume and were brimming with happiness, and in the morning, when I woke up, they were in the kitchen, all lovey-dovey, and sitting on the kitchen nook was an ashtray with a trophy on it of a boxer, and beneath it, on a brass plate, were the words—“Puncher of The Year.”

     Dad leered at me. LAPD Chief William Parker, evidently having listened to his troops describe the great battle between the Stars and Angels, presented it to Dad. I guess his team mates gave him a pretty good ovation.

     (The next installment jumps ahead to 1957, with the Ball Player’s Son trying to play American Legion ball at 13 for his Dad)

The Ball Player's Son

                                        BEAR TRACKS GREER              

                                             

BIG MOE

    After my big year at Beckley, Detroit moved me up to Beaumont in the Texas League, the last stop before getting called up to the big leagues. It was a tough pitcher’s league and the weather was something you couldn’t get used to--ninety-plus degrees every day four months straight, humid, you never stopped sweating (there was no air conditioning), that heat sapped you and you lost weight, and didn’t sleep well, so you were fighting it, and there was no use bitching, everybody was in the same boat.

     Houston had a pitcher, a mountain of a man with the biggest goddam feet I’ve ever seen, Ed “Bear Tracks” Greer. He had a lantern jaw that stuck out like Senator Claghorn, and I guess you could say he looked intimidating. They say he was crazier than Bobo Newsome, who I played with and against—a pretty crude guy—and I think Bobo hung on because he wasn’t dangerous, and ended up pitching for just about every team in both leagues.

     Greer had real good stuff and threw hard, but as a person he was so wild and unpredictable that even in those days they couldn’t bring him up to the big club because there was no telling what he might do. Hell, he might strangle a team mate, or throw somebody off a building, or go to a bar and get stabbed by a woman or get himself beaten to death by a mob.

     For some reason I had Greer’s number, and I nailed him pretty good. Sometimes baseball is just that way. We had an outfielder at Detroit, Bruce Campbell, a left-handed hitter, who wore out Feller while other guys looked helpless against him. The Yankees had a tough lefty named Marius Russo, and he had hard stuff that bore in on a right-handed hitter, and he jammed the hell out of me, and I hated facing him, couldn’t hit him with a paddle. But Greer, only time he got me out was when I hit one right at somebody.

     One night, after I racked him around and ran the bases like a maniac, I got up to the plate and he took his time, looking me over, and I knew he was going to dust me, and he did. Okay. I got up. He stood out on the mound, peering in at me with these spooky eyes, holding the ball in his big paw, flipping it and catching it. Well, before I settled in, he quick-pitched and dusted me again and I went down in sections, my heart in my throat. The crazy bastard was trying to kill me! So I jumped up and gave him a look. By this time I’d established myself as a guy who could take care of himself and never backed down from anybody, but Greer didn’t give a damn if I was King Kong, and the crazy sonofabitch was grinning at me. He had these fangs. Christ, what a mug!

     Well, I started to go after him and their catcher snagged me from behind. “Don’t go out there, Franklin,” he said. “Bear’s crazy. He’s not like other people. He’s from the hills. He doesn’t abide by normal rules of combat.”

     “I don’t give a damn,” I told him. “I’m not gonna be target practice for that sonofabitch.”

     “Listen to me, kid,” he said. “Bear knows he can’t get you out. We’ve tried everything all year and nothing works. If he can’t get you out, he doesn’t want you to around. That’s how Bear thinks. It’s not personal. He’d probably like you if he got to know you. You seem like a pretty good guy.”

     “To hell with him. Nobody knocks me down twice without a fight.”

     “Kid, you go out there and Bear’ll dehorn you.” I looked out there. Greer was in front of the mound, still flipping the ball, grinning at me with those fangs, a dark person. “I heard you just got married to a beautiful gal,” the catcher told me. “You’re a helluva player, got a big future with Detroit, leading the league in hitting. Don’t throw it away. You go out there after Bear, he’ll tee off from two feet and plant that ball right in your kisser and hair-lip you. Stay here.”

     I stayed. Bear dusted me two more times, one ball a yard behind me. When I walked to first he kept his eye on me, grinning, flipping that ball. Later that year I ran into Bear Tracks at an all star game. We were on the same team and he was scheduled to start the game. When I got to the clubhouse he was drunk, had a jug of whiskey, came right over and gave me a big hug, wanted me to take a slug of the rotgut. Christ, he had his arm around me like he wanted to kiss me.

     “I like you, Franklin,” he told me. “Nice college boy. I’m glad you didn’t come after me, cuz I didn’t wanna kill you or make you ugly. Shit, I can’t get you out. What am I supposed to do? I see you up there again, I’m gonna stick one in your ear, even if I do like you.”

     Tracks never made it to the mound, never made it out of the clubhouse. They tried to get that jug away from him, but they couldn’t, so they waited until he passed out on the training table, and they still couldn’t get that jug out of his grip.

     (Next installment: Big Moe finishes in style)