A NEAR RACE RIOT AT CRESSY PARK

1959, Summer

     My parents were discussing moving out of Compton to a safe all white suburb 20 miles away. They fretted over our house going down in value due to the influx of blacks in town, and they feared for Susie going to Compton High, where black girls beat up nice white girls. When they asked me about moving I went into a rage. We had a nucleus of players at Compton High that could win everything. Moving was unimaginable.

     Meanwhile, the Compton American Legion post refused to sponsor our team, which infuriated Dad, who called members “pompous cheapskates and phony patriots.”  Some of the Compton and Dominguez high players signed on with Legion teams in LA and Long Beach, while my team mate Paul Schaal (who would play a decade in the big leagues) and I signed on to play third base and shortstop for the Bellflower team, 10 miles away.

     Bellflower was all clean-cut white kids, a former farm community. Paul owned a black ’51 Ford coupe and drove us to games all over San Gabriel Valley. Right off we produced. Our coach, a father of a senior pitcher, was overjoyed to have us, left us alone. Except for a powerful but slow-moving left-handed hitting catcher named Milt Swift, who was a prospect, Paul and I were their best players. We were free agents having nothing on our agendas but baseball, talking baseball, so dedicated that the Compton Connie Mack League team, led by the great Jim Rooker, picked us up to play our positions among kids up to 19 years old. Now Paul and I played weeknight games and weekend day games, including Sunday doubleheaders.

     Dad wanted me to get a driver’s license and an old jalopy like Paul’s, so I could help him out with deliveries at his store, where I was working part time stocking, writing out orders, waiting on trade, and trying not to fight with him when he warned me to not “go so goddam fast!” I agreed to get a license and it took about a week of Dad teaching me on his stick-shift Rambler before I almost crashed the car as he yelled at me for grinding the gears. Mother taught me on her automatic transmission Pontiac, and much to Dad’s sourness, I passed the driving test, and with my savings I paid for a 1952 Chevy Powerglide coupe, a real pig, according to my cousin Bob

     So now I was making deliveries and alternating with Paul on our baseball excursions. We played our games, stopped for burgers afterwards and discussed our dreams. Paul had a rifle arm at third and a quick release, great wrists, and, like me was an instinctive player though his swing was loopier than mine and thus more powerful when he connected.

     Our Connie Mack team was superb and stocked with some tough kids, including the toughest fighter I knew, Jim Rooker, our pitcher/firstbaseman/outfielder/leader. We shared Cressy as home park with an all black team in the same league from South Central LA and Watts, and, since most of the guys on our team were racists, the rivalry was especially vicious. Many of the players on the black team were from Centennial High, including the bruiser who intimidated me at second base. We beat them our first game and in the rematch a couple weeks later Dad coached, because our regular coach went on vacation.

     The desire to beat us by the all black team had that summer turned into a rabid and savage crusade, similar to the old Hollywood Star/LA Angel rivalry at its most heated, and on this night we had trouble keeping our poise. From their dugout they blistered us with personal abuse. Dad instructed us to ignore them, but it seemed these guys, without supervision from their coach, were obsessed with erasing centuries of white man’s abuse of their race on our cocky white asses. Ron Bart was ready to do battle, however the odds, with the crowd ten to one black over white—in their territory.

     I came to bat in the bottom of the 9^th with the score 3-2 in their favor with runners on second and third and two out. Dad was coaching third and hollering down to me to “get a good pitch!” I stared at the lanky black pitcher and fouled off a pitch that was eye-high. I was a notorious “bad-ball hitter” hitter, and Dad hurried down the line to meet me at the plate.

     “Relax. Be patient. Slow down,” he advised, white spittle caking the corners of his lips. “Don’t get behind and hit HIS pitch!”

     “I hit best with two strikes, Dad. Leave me alone. I know what I’m doing.”

     He grimaced, gritted his teeth, jogged back to his coaching box. The next pitch was a snake of a hissing fastball at my knees, on the inside corner, an area that generally gave me trouble, but this time I lashed it on a rising line between the left and center fielders. I tore down the line and rounded first as the center fielder gave chase and Dad waved our runners around the bases, the ball rolling toward the fence on the dew-chilled grass. I was churning hard around second base when the left fielder blind-sided me with a vicious football block at my knees, sending me airborne, head-over-heels to land face-first on the dirt infield.

     When I looked up, Dad had the kid by the throat with his left hand and was smacking him hard in the face with his right hand as the kid back-pedaled into centerfield, his head bobbing back and forth like a speed bag in a boxing gym. Finally Dad dropped him in short centerfield, where he lay like a broken doll, and turned to hurry back into the infield, where our entire team had gathered; some wielding bats as Jim Rooker pulled me to my feet, a wild, gleeful look in his eye. My legs were fine. Jim’s older brother Wayne was with us, bat on shoulder as the black team and their fans trickled onto the field, out-numbering us five to one. They milled ominously, many in trench-coats. Then Dad was among us, gesturing us to close ranks, like a western movie where cowboys were surrounded by a whole tribe of Indians. He instructed us to drop our bats and form a circle. The massing blacks, moving toward us, were cut off by their powerfully built catcher, George Hill, an all league lineman on the Centennial football team. I’d played against him in junior high. He grabbed me by the elbow, faced my father. “Mr. Franklin,” he said. “You folks line up behind George, and he get you out of here.”

     We quickly gathered our equipment at the first base dugout and in single file followed big George through and past the growling, baleful mob, out to the parking lot adjoining the spacious park and jumped quickly into our cars and in a caravan moved out onto Rosecrans boulevard as the mob stood looking on.

     Driving slowly, Dad said, “He was just a kid, Dell, but I did what I did because nobody messes with anybody on our team, whether it’s you or anybody else. There’s no place in the game for what that kid did. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.”

     A week later we were slated to begin the regional playoffs at Cressy, but only a few players showed up, including Rooker, Schaal, and Ron Bart, and Jim’s brother and Paul’s Dad and brother as our only fans. There was a good crowd. Our cast of five sat in the dugout while the opposing team from the Valley warmed up. A bunch of kids from the black team we’d beaten on my winning hit entered our dugout in humble posture, including the kid Dad had bopped around and nearly strangled. He walked directly to Dad, who stood, and apologized, head and eyes lowered, voice a feint rasp from Dad’s throat gouging.

     “Sorry, sir, I lost my head.”

     The black kids, one-by-one, approached Dad and apologized, caps off. None of them glanced at me or my team mates, and the kid who’d cut my knees out from under did not apologize. One of the kids asked where the rest of our team was, and when Dad said he didn’t expect them to show, he said, “We play for you, Mr. Franklin. We play for you anytime.” His team mates nodded. Dad thanked them, said he’d like to coach them, but explained it didn’t work that way.

     We forfeited the game.

    

(Next Sunday’s installment: Big Moe beaned in the big leagues.)