(The beginning of this memoir goes back to 1949 for those interested in scrolling back)

                            WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING IN COLLEGE?

1962

     I visited Cerritos baseball coach Wally Kincaid in his office in the first-class athletic complex and announced I wanted to play baseball there. Kincaid leaned back in his chair at his desk, not quite prepared for me, then sat forward and shook my hand without a lot of conviction and removed a toothpick from the corner of his mouth. He was around 35, about 6 feet tall, with small features, short hair.

     “I watched you in a playoff game in high school,” he said. “You threw your bat after hitting a groundball and argued with the umpire after you got thrown out and I thought it was pretty bush. Frankly, Dell, this is not personal, because I think you’re probably a good kid, but you strike me as a hot-head and a bit of a hotdog. I don’t need that in my program.”

     I watched him replace the toothpick back and told him I realized I was all of what he described of me but that I was working hard to mature and was embarrassed at being a damn busher and that beneath it all I was a team guy who pulled for my teammates and “went to bat for them.”

     Kincaid was inscrutable as he moved that toothpick around, not really looking at me. He took the toothpick out. “There’s no doubt you can play. There’s a lot of kids in this area who can play, and I don’t recruit them all, because some of them don’t fit. Can you understand that?”

     “I sure can, coach.”

      He leaned back, sized me up. “I usually trust my first impressions.” He sighed. “I’m going to tell you right off there are no promises. But I’ll give you as good a chance to play as any of the kids I’ve recruited to play for me, because I do think you can produce. I like the way you run the bases. And you can steal. We can use that.”

       Coach Kincaid stood and we shook hands and he welcomed me aboard. Kincaid had already won several championships and, like an assembly line, fed players to major colleges and the professional ranks and in fact bird-dogged for the St. Louis Cardinals. Crew-cut, he wore sunglasses and positioned his cap just right. I felt his persona was one of darkly-shaded windows into which one couldn’t see, though he could see out. He talked slowly with no regional accent. He seemed methodical and meditative. He had not only established this baseball program, but pretty much designed their state-of-the-art ball park and clubhouse.

    Kincaid sent me to my class counselor, basketball coach Caine, who sat behind his desk studying my high school transcripts, then paged through my entrance exams, raising his eyes to survey me with some concern..

     “You scored in the 90 percentile in math and English.” He told me. “Those tests indicate you’re an extremely bright underachiever as a student. You won’t have to take bonehead English or remedial math, like a lot of these jocks. What happened with your grades? You kept going downhill from your sophomore year on and barely graduated.”

     “I didn’t study. Just read stuff I liked.”

     “Well, you don’t study here and maintain a C average, you won’t play ball.” After he got me my classes, he told me I should get a haircut the minute I left his office and then he led me through a tour of the athletic complex. While doing this, two scary-looking Marine-like football coaches snapped at me to “get a goddam haircut!”

      When school started I made sure to attend all classes and found studies more stimulating and the environment less restrictive. Certain classes were conducted in cavernous lecture halls and when the professor’s paused in a meaningful manner students scribbled feverishly in notebooks before looking back up, and I characterized these fellow students as on missions to earn diplomas that would enable them to find good jobs and become vital cogs in the machinery of American commerce or wherever their majors fit in, and I scoffed at them in a superior manner because I was going to be a professional baseball player so as to avoid this predictable path set down before me by my parents and the parents of all my friends and just about everybody else who preached education, career, family, suburbs, etc.

     My new teammates to a man were well groomed, neatly and smartly dressed, hair cut close at the neck and around the ears, polite, quiet, serious students. The only one who seemed to relate to me in even the most minute way was a third baseman named Fred Dyer, who I remembered as a fellow Anaheim tournament all star. Tall, rangy, muscular, with a blond bowl cut hairdo over a suspicious, worried face, Fred was from Whittier, where he’d been all league in baseball and basketball, a good prospect with a power bat. We shared two classes and struck up an interest in literature that led to exchanging books, as Fred was another serious student with a rare intellect among jocks. Early on I was able to coax Fred to a local pool hall in a slum and we both agreed we were wary of Kincaid. I asked him why he chose to play for Kincaid, who’d nicknamed him “Grumpy.”

     “He wanted me here. I was going to go to UCLA, and I could’ve signed, but I’m not ready to leave home. I want to graduate college. I think Kincaid’s the best coach around, and I can learn a lot from him. What I’m trying to figure out is what YOU’RE doing here. If anybody isn’t Kincaid’s type, you’re it. You’re an outcast, Franklin, an outlaw.”

     “I like going against the grain, Fred—doing it the hard way.”

     “Why? We’re talking about your baseball career, your future, your life. We’re talking about going where you’re wanted. Look at Mike Skoba at Fullerton. He doesn’t care if you grow a beard, as long as you can play. He’s a good guy. I almost went there. Why didn’t you, when he wanted you?” 

(Next Sunday installment: “Baseball 101”)