The Ball Player's Son

                                          FACING LEFTY GROVE

BIG MOE

     It was common knowledge Lefty Grove was the meanest man in baseball. Grove’s own team mates feared him, because if you booted one and cost him a game, or a shutout, he’d give you a look that would kill, and there were those who said Grove hated to lose even more than he liked to win. He was the best pitcher in baseball for nearly ten years, winning 30 games one year and leading the league in strikeouts and everything else year in and year out, a “stopper” who ended up winning 300 games and was an easy Hall of Famer.

     Though Grove was known for threatening team mates when they cost him a game or even a run, if you made a big play for him or got a big hit in a tight game, he’d give you a nod of approval, and that little nod meant more than all this hugging and kissing you see with these modern ball players. And if you were his team mate and somebody on the other team took liberties with your health, Grove was the first to retaliate, and word was—“nobody messed with Grove.”

     The first time I faced him as a rookie in an exhibition game, Grove was an old man, around 40. He had snow-white hair, had put on weight. The Red Sox were using him mostly as a spot starter and reliever. He no longer threw hard enough to scare people, but still, he had that aura, a big vulture, and he awed you. He acted like he owned the field, owned the game, and you were some interloper, and everything he did on the mound was effortless grace, like Williams hitting. A legend.

     My team mate, Schoolboy Rowe, a pitcher, told me Grove’d been washed up for years and couldn’t get off the mound any more. “Get yourself a hit,” he told me. “Drag a bunt.”

     Jim Tabor was at third, and he was slow as an ice wagon, and Jimmy Foxx was at first, looking ragged from another hangover. So I stepped in there. Lefty glared in, looking bigger than I imagined. He threw me a fastball and I dragged it down the third base line and ran like a bat out of hell down the line. As I crossed first base, Foxx never made a move toward the bag. He stood there, watching me fly past. When I got back to the bag there was a hush on the field and in the stadium. Our first base coach wouldn’t look at me. Foxx sidled up, arms folded, stinking like a distillery, with those big arms, biggest in baseball. He talked to me out of the side of his mouth.

     “Jesus, kid, what the hell you doing?”

     Over at third, Tabor stood near the bag, the ball sitting untouched between home and the bag, a perfect bunt. He was staring at me, too. “Nobody bunts Grove, kid,” Foxx told me. “It ain’t done.”

     Now I had to look at Grove. He was halfway between the mound and first, scowling right through me. He growled and turned around and took the ball from Tabor, who looked at me and shook his head, as if to say, “Boy is that stupid ass in for it.” All the guys in our dugout were having a big time falling all over each other, and the guys in the Boston dugout were quiet and grim, like they were waiting for somebody to stick my head in the chopping block.

     “You’re hitting a thousand against Grove, Franklin,” Dizzy Trout yelled from our dugout. He and Rowe jostled each other.

     I kep my head down, took a small lead, while Foxx toed the bag and smacked his glove. “Lefty don’t forget,” he said. “Better hope he’s gone next time you’re up, kid.”

     Sure enough they left him in there and I came up again. Lefty’s glaring at me when I stepped into the box. I played it meek, knowing I was going to get knocked down and deserved it for being dumb and listening to guys like Rowe and Trout, goddam pitchers. So I braced myself to take one on the backside and Grove floated a slow curve down the middle. Strike one. Well, he’ll get me now, I thought, he’s setting me up

     “Hey bush!” somebody yelled from the Boston dugout. “Drag another bunt!”

     I got ready to duck again and he floated I another slow curve down the middle. Strike two. I got out of the box, stared out at Grove. To hell with him, I thought. I don’t give a damn what he does, I’m hitting. Next pitch he comes in tight with a fastball and I whack it off the fence in left and pull into second with a double. I stand there, proud as a peacock, and Lefty’s got the ball back. He steps off the mound and gives me a tiny nod, no smile.

     “Thattaway to swing that bat, kid,” he growled. “You don’t ned to bunt.”

     (Next Sunday installment: “An essential arrogance.”)

                                                       RIP CITY

1958

     The following Saturday after my debut in winter ball, Marco picked me up and drove to the ball park at UCLA. Again I struggled in batting practice, took a snappy infield at second base, pinch hit against a minor league lefty and roped a shot into left center for a long single. The guys in the dugout jumped up and cheered me. Then, after tearing around the bases and sliding under the catcher’s tag to score, they were all laughing. Marco exclaimed, “Some guys are batting practice hitters, some guys are gamers. Franklin’s a gamer, the kid’s hitting a grand!”

     Next at bat I walked and scored again. I made plays in the field. When Marco dropped me off at home, Dad, after working all day (he was putting in close to 70 hours a week), was waiting. “Kid’s doing great,” Marco told him. “Takin’ some good licks at the plate, like his old man.”

     After Marco left, Dad asked me what I hit. I told him fastball.

     “They probably figured they could throw it by you, because you look like a pipsqueak. Now that they know they can’t, they’ll start curving you. You’re hitting minor league heat. You’ll tear it up in high school.”

     The following Saturday Marco drove us to Amerige Park in Fullerton, a spacious yard with long fences. I hit better BP and this time faced a young prospect with serious heat and chipped off several pitches before lashing a blue darter between third and short. High-tailing it down the line, I heard one of my team mates shout, “Nobody can get that child out!”

     Jerry, who went to Anaheim high, pitched well, a prodigy. Joe, watching both of us, nodded at me, puffing his cigar. So far he’d said nothing to me—man was like a Buddha.

     The following Saturday we played at Blair Field in Long Beach, a beautiful facility that was the first that winter to have a clubhouse. Marco claimed it was as good as most Triple-A league ball parks. Walking into the clubhouse, I felt a keen sense of excitement, as if I was back in the Hollywood Star clubhouse, only this time as a player. We were to play the Pittsburg Pirate winter team.

     “Gonna face some real heat today, Franklin,” Marco told me. “Couple of their pitchers are on the Pirate roster. I’ll get you in against them, see if those guys can get you out.” He grinned at me.

     My stomach rumbled. As always, I sat with Jerry, watching the game, talking baseball, chewing my gum furiously. The Pirate pitcher was a lanky black man, a spot starter and reliever with the Pirates.

     “This guy throws harder than anybody we’ve seen all year,” Jerry told me. The Pittsburg team built an early lead. The Pirate shortstop, Bob Bailey, was a local Long Beach phee-nom, a high school sophomore like me, but a year older than me and already fully developed and built like a grown man. He was better than his reputation as a future bonus baby and hit a towering homerun to left-center and ran it out like it was no big deal. Meanwhile, the Pirate pitcher stayed in the game, because he was mowing people down and throwing a no hitter. They brought me in to pinch hit in the top of the eighth. I choked up on my 35 inch 35 ounce bat two inches and nicked a whistling fastball at my chest. I figured he had no respect for a skinny kid with a uniform hanging on him like sack-cloth, and could blow me down with heat. I fought off several fastballs and finally sliced one foul down the right field line. My team mates rooted me on.

     I was beginning to time him and worked the count full, still waiting for his big curve and excellent change-up, but he threw me another chest-high fastball and I tomahawked it on a vicious line over the shortstop into leftfield, a one bounce single. I grabbed my cap as I tore down the line and rounded first, which I’d never done before. I’d vaguely heard whooping from my team mates. Jerry, from the top step of the dugout, yelled, “Franklin, you’re the worst looking ball player on the field, but nobody can get you out!” The pitcher glowered at me as he shuffled off the mound, shaking his head. Bailey stared at me from short. “Christ, the worst hitter on the team breaks up the no hitter.”

     The umpire at second based sidled up to him. “Hey, nobody’s got that kid out in a month. He’s the real thing.”  Up in the stands, where I shouldn’t have been looking on strict orders from my Dad, I spotted Dad sitting beside Joe Stephenson and Ed Hughes, a big nosed rumpled man who was the head Pittsburg scout. The game went into extra innings. I walked twice and scored twice. We won. Afterwards, Dad drove me home. It was the first time he’d managed to get to one of my games, because he was making a delivery to a shoemaker in Long Beach.

     “I got there just as you broke up the no-hitter. When you rounded first and took off your cap, I got chills up my spine, because that’s what I did when I got a hit off Satchel Paige and broke up his no hitter as a twenty year old college hotdog. That’s the only time I took off my cap. I’m still tingling. It’s all in the genes. I’m a believer in that.”

     (Next Sunday installment: Big Moe faces Lefty Grove)

The Ball Player's Son

                                  UP AGAINST THE BIG BOYS

1958

     I was nervous about my debut against grown men in winter league ball. I was still a skinny kid of around 145 pounds and what had saved me as a coltish brat playing against fully grown teenagers was my ability to hit a fastball with the quick level compact swing my dad had taught me and stressed over and over; a philosophy of hitting that was simplified to succeed in the hardest, most complicated endeavor in all of sports—hitting a baseball hurled at you at various speeds from various angles involving curves and drops meant to baffle and defeat you. I stood close to the plate to protect the outside corner. My bat was ready just above my shoulder, wrists cocked, elbow down. I took a short stride. I kept my back foot planted. With two strikes I choked up on the bat and “guarded the dish,” determined to fight the bastard on the mound as a mortal enemy. I seldom struck out and felt almost deranged with anger when I did. To me, the batters box was my private domain. My identity was of a hitter, a “stick,” even if I had not yet acquired power

    “That’ll come,” Dad told me. “Take your vitamins and swing the weighted bat and the line drives’ll carry farther.”

     A huge ex catcher in the Boston organization named Marco, who ran the Red Sox winter league team for Joe Stephenson, picked me up at our house in Compton. A kindly man, he looked me over and fished a Red Sox uniform out of the trunk of his car. It was at least a size too big for me, but I was awed by it. He drove to a stadium in Huntington Park, explaining I would hit batting practice, take infield, and probably get in the game around the seventh or eighth inning.

     When I jogged onto the field, after meeting and shaking the hand of the large, bearish, cigar chomping ex catcher and now head scout, Joe Stephenson, who was in street clothes, I felt like a skittish ragamuffin among grown men who’d played in the low minors and were still members of the Boston farm system. Marco told me some of the players had already been released and were trying to hook back on and re-sign. They were slick and quick and had stronger arms than me, and glanced in my direction with what I felt was amusement tinged with disdain. I wore my socks low and pants baggy. My cap fit low over my eyes. I needed a haircut. Dad sometimes mentioned that I did not take enough pride in looking like a ball player in my uniform, which was “bush,” and perhaps a negative reflection or perhaps an embarrassment on him.

     A tall skinny kid who could have been my age but did look like a ball player in a perfectly fitting uniform, stared at me in a slightly irreverent manner as he warmed up with a catcher. Watching him throw, it was evident he was a pitcher, and there was about him an aura of cocky confidence, like HE was destined for greatness. I had to step in and warm up with two infielders to get loose, neither of whom invited me. I relished the idea of being seen by fellow players as a joke; I would show them!

     After watching the pros whistle line drives all over the field, and fly balls to and over the fences, and flagging down their hard grounders at second, I tried too hard in batting practice and felt embarrassed at pulling so many high bounces and foul balls. I was over anxious. Marco, pitching BP, kept urging me to relax, stop trying to kill the ball.

     When the game started, I was on the bench, and sat in a far corner of the dugout away from the bat rack and the horseplay among tobacco chewers and cussers who’d played together for years. Finally, the lanky kid who’d sized me up in a superior manner sat down beside me. A left-handed hitter, and right-handed thrower, he’d hit the ball well in BP. He offered his hand, and we shook. “Jerry Stephenson,” he said. “I’m Joe’s kid. You’re Murray Franklin’s kid, huh?” When I nodded, he smiled. He had fine features and intelligent eyes and beneath his coolness a high-strung energy. “Ball player’s son, like me. They kind of resented me at first, too,” he said, nodding toward the players. “But now they’re cool. Don’t sweat it. You got a nice stroke at the plate, very unique. Your Dad teach you that?”

     I nodded. We started talking, like instant good friends. Jerry, too, played Legion ball at 14 and held his own. He said his Dad started him out as a pitcher as soon as he could walk. As we talked, we watched the game, and, as innings passed, tension rose as I anticipated my chance. In the seventh inning, Marco called us over and told Jerry to pitch and put me at second.

     Jerry showed unusual poise and command of his pitches. His technique was perfection and his fastball had movement and his curveball was more a slider and had bite. Nothing was hit to me. At the plate I faced a hard throwing right-handed low minor leaguer. After timing his warm-ups, I choked up on the bat and rifled his first pitch past his ear into centerfield and tore down the line, rounding first and faking to go to second. Marco, coaching first, clapped his hands.

     “That’s the stroke, kid. You’re a singles-doubles hitter.”

     When the game was over (I did not get up again) Marco told me to keep the uniform and he’d pick me up the following Saturday; Joe Stephenson, standing beside Jerry, puffing his cigar, meaty face inscrutable, nodded at me. Later that night, at the dinner table, I was nonchalant when I told Dad I was one for one (a rope). Ho looked at my mother and nodded, then winked at me.

     “That’s my boy.”

     (Next Sunday installment: “Rip City.”

 

                        THE PHEE-NOM STARTS HIGH SCHOOL

1958

     I walked around with this feeling that great things awaited me, and were expected of me. I awakened every morning exhilarated by the prospect of being a great ball player, a big leaguer with his own baseball card who signed autographs and lived the life his father and those who reached the top experienced. I had recently turned 15 and not only held my own in American Legion ball between my freshman and sophomore years, but had discovered as I matured that I possessed what the assistant football coach and head baseball coach at Compton High, Ray Edgman, described as the quickest acceleration of any athlete in town, including the black kids who eventually beat me during the last few yards in the 100 yard dash in citywide track competition. I could steal bases and run between holes in football and elude tacklers—a gift that boosted my already bursting confidence.

     Coach Edgmon wanted me to play football, but Dad discouraged it, and in truth I had no stomach for the barbaric grind of the game that would threaten my knees as a future baseball hero. Instead I went out for basketball and was the only white kid to make the junior varsity, and right off I felt in over my head. The Compton High basketball team, its players culled from a huge population of kids, was the best in the state, and the coach, Bill Armstrong, was establishing himself as the Johnny Wooden of high school basketball and building a dynasty. One of the stars was big Marvin Fleming, a former basketball player of the year who would go on to win four super bowl rings for legendary coaches Vince Lombardi and Don Shula as a football tight end. His cousin, Roy Jefferson, was a starting forward on the JV basketball team and would go on to be an all pro wide receiver in the NFL and, like Marvin, win a super bowl ring.

     The guard I had to beat out, Freddie Goss, would go on to be the player of the year and start on a UCLA national championship for Johnny Wooden, and was already a varsity first string guard—a sophomore phee-nom!

     The black kids on the team, members of junior highs across town that thrashed us at Roosevelt, held an almost contemptible attitude toward me, implying it was their game, and I didn’t belong. The only kid on the team who seemed to have a friendly nature toward me was Loman Young, who, unlike the rest of the black kids, couldn’t jump, but, like me, could handle the ball and shoot. He was a junior. When the season started, Mr. Armstrong, who coached the JVs and varsity, played us only during “mop up” time after our team demolished everybody by 40 points. Loman and I, inglorious subs for the first time in our young athletic careers, sat together in the back of the bus during road games while the kids up front joked and shouted at each other, oozing victory adrenalin, ignoring us. Coach had already warned both of us that our JV team could beat most varsity teams in the area, and that our chances, even though he liked our games, were slim with more good players coming up through the junior high system—kids already seen as “blue chippers” for college careers.

     Loman had started as JV shortstop his sophomore year and informed me he was going to beat out a senior for shortstop. I quickly alerted him that I, too, was a shortstop and would beat both of them out. We began joking and joshing, picking on each other. Whenever we ate lunch at the benches just off the main quad, where racial tensions were already building, I over heard some white kids I’d known for years at Roosevelt, including Bowlin and Ron Bart, muttering “nigger lover” when they passed by.

     When my gorge rose, Loman clamped my arm. “Pay ‘em no mind, Dell. They’re too ignorant to know better.”

     “They used to be my friends, Loman.”

     “Used to be. Don’t need them kind of friends.”

     I had not told Loman or anybody that in government class there was a black girl named Jane who was very bright and studious and cute and laughed at almost everything I said and smiled at me with genuine warmth and allowed that smile to linger, and that I always waited for her to get up first at the end of class so I could walk behind her and marvel at her ass, which was unlike any ass I’d seen on any white girl and had me swallowing hard. There was no mixed dating on campus and if there were riots would be ignited instantly. At the lunch tables, Walter spotted me gawking at everything in a skirt, black, white or Mexican, these fully developed high school girls having changed my mind about not being a lover boy, though I’d never admit that to anybody, not even Loman, to whom I felt comfortable enough to tell anything.

     “I see you got your eye on the hot stuff.” He grinned, a very well-knit, fine-looking kid, perfectly groomed and dressed, from a family of many. “You ain’t about to get to first base with any of ‘em the way you dress, Norman.”

     “You keep callin’ me Norman, I’m gonna start calling you Amos.”

     “Lookin’ like you do, in them old man’s rags, ain’t no girl gonna give you the time of day, Norman.”

     “I ain’t a dandy like you, Amos. I don’t need fancy clothes to get me a woman.”

     “Shoot, you ain’t gonna get no woman the way you carry on, Norman. You need new rags, new ears, them rotted out fallin’ apart tennis shoes is gross, and that dumb-ass white-boy crew cut don’t look human when it grows out six months; looks like God done made you bald and glued up your skull and tossed a bunch-a hay on top. You need new hair, new attitude, new jumpshot…”

     “Amos, Norman’s gonna run circles around you when we go out for shortstop.You know how good I am? I played Legion ball at thirteen. A scout from the Boston Red Sox called my Dad and wants me to play winter ball with minor league professionals and college prospects. I’M a prospect!”

     He put down his soda pop. “You foolin’ with me?”

     “Nope.”

     “Then you best play, Mr. Ragman. You crazy if you don’t. Why you wanna play hoop when you the white flunky nobody pass to? If you good as you say you are, you got to go find out.”

     “What about you? You gonna stick it out and be the black flunky nobody passes to?”

     He laughed. “Think Mr. Cool Babe Young gonna get a head start, too, Mr. Ragman.” He clamped my forearm. “Gonna beat your sorry ass out.”

     (Next Sunday installment: Facing the big boys)