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…)
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