AN ESSENTIAL ARROGANCE

1959

     Loman and I were locker partners in the smelly, dilapidated Compton high locker room, where the shower floors were coated with piss from athletes and gym kids peeing for decades. Loman and I were practically panting with excitement for varsity tryouts. We walked onto the field together, warmed up and played pepper together, bantering about our shortcomings the whole time. He owned a rifle of a natural throwing arm from the hole between third and short, and labeled me a rag arm. But I covered much more ground in a low crouch and called him “turtle.” I was a line drive hitter, but he had more power, and called me a “punch” hitter. I called him Mr. Whiff. Two Mexican kids, a senior and junior who started the year before, also tried out for short, and they treated me with the scorn I had coming as the privileged son of an ex big leaguer. My attitude was one of essential arrogance implying they didn’t belong on the same field with me.

     I realized I did not have a strong arm, especially from the overhand release. I threw three-quarter arm and at times side arm if I was moving toward my target, and I had perfected from hours of practice a quick release of the groundball from the low fielding crouch that compensated for the lack of velocity in my peg. I seldom straightened to throw, but completed the entire process of catching and throwing out a base runner in one single motion, a no-brainer; an automation that enabled me to seldom think too much and commit an error. I didn’t even have to look at my target, knowing the ball would get there.

     After a couple of days, coach Edgmon moved the two Mexican kids off shortstop and began a competition between Loman and me. In an intra-squad game, a big Mexican pitcher named Castillo sized me up and planted a fastball in my back. I knew it was retaliation for his two pals being demoted and took it. I refused to rub. As I trotted to first, he eyed me and I ignored him. When I was on first, he still eyed me, and I took a good lead. He turned to get the sign, got into his stretch, and I took a huge lead. He threw over. I got back easily. I took another huge lead. Ron Bart, a senior, about 200 plus pounds, slapped another tag on me as Castillo came over again. Bart wouldn’t talk to me. He had marked his territory as a racist and had brawled with blacks trying to put a foot in Senior Square on the main quad, a place no black student had dared enter over the years. There had been near riots when a black girl had won out over four white girls for homecoming queen. Ken Bowlin had followed Bart’s lead, drove around with him in Bart’s car and had made varsity as a starting pitcher. If possible, he was more full of himself than me.

     I stole second easily, popped up, stared at Castillo, who stared back, and took another ridiculous lead. He threw over twice and then I stole third and popped up and smacked the dust off my pants and took another lead and yelled out at Cruz.

     “You can’t hurt me with your shit! Hit me again! It’s an automatic triple. I own you!”

      I sensed his hatred of me. I didn’t give a shit. The game was mine. He was an interloper. Nothing could stop me. Next time up he threw me a fastball tight, which I took, then ripped one down the line for a double and coach took him out. I was all about the game. Nothing else mattered, or interfered. Nothing.

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     I made varsity shortstop. Even with his strong arm, coach moved Loman to second. There was no gloating. We still picked on each other, but also spent hours after practice working on the doubleplay until we were slick. We talked baseball. Loman was calm and cool while I was fidgety and intense. When I made a suggestion on how he should hit, he just stared at me. I felt everybody should hit as I’d been taught by my Dad.

     The early morning of our first varsity game, I walked down Alondra boulevard with a few of my old neighborhood pals, cork-offs, clowns, card players, pussy talkers, virgins, all of us. We always passed Dad’s store, which was between a liquor store and insurance office and across the street from the Richfield gas station on the corner of Santa Fe and Alondra, a busy hive.

     Beyond the wide front window, behind a long waist-high counter, Dad conducted business with a crowd of shoemakers eating his donuts, drinking his coffee, buying his merchandise while he held court. Summers I’d worked for him as a stock boy and knew most of these customers and no matter how busy he was he always noticed us kids lollygagging by, and if he didn’t I’d pound on the window and double up my fist and shake a menacing fist and challenge the old man to a mock-fight. Right off he’d get the killer look and rush to the doorway and start taunting me.

     “Hey bird-boy, who’ve you whipped lately? You can’t whip nobody.”

     My friends, all of whom were terrified of Dad, the most notorious bad ass in town, watched me shadow box. “You’re old and slow, Dad. I’m Sugar Ray.”

     This morning I did the same. He stood outside the door in his boxer’s stance. “When you’re twenty, and I’m fifty, I’ll still whip you, bird-boy, and when you’re thirty, and I’m sixty, I’ll still whip your ass. And when I’m seventy, God willing, and you’re forty, I’ll STILL whip your ass!”

     “I’m too quick for you, Daddy-o. I got the quicker hands.” I threw a flurry of punches.

     He strode toward me in his menacing crouch, my friends backing away, kids ambling along behind us pausing to observe, kids on the other side of the boulevard pausing to watch as we squared off in a game of “hand-slap.” I held out my two hands locked together and he swung and missed and I gloated and when he put out his hands I whacked him three times and then missed and then he got me twice. It went back and forth. I connected more, but my knuckles were cut and raw while his were fine as he addressed the crowd and his shoemakers who came out to observe the contest.

     “You got no punch, bird-boy. You’re a slapper, a tissy-prissle.”

      I still frisked around, but clearly the crowd felt Dad had won, and he was in his glory, but I still talked trash, and he grinned, told his shoemakers, “that’s my boy, he’s crazy like his mother,” and as I walked off, he cupped his hands at his mouth and hollered. “Play it right, Dell, and rip that pea, boy!”

      He was still at the door grinning as we crossed the street in our mile trek to school.

     (Next Sunday installment: Varsity Debut)