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

                                                          BASEBALL 103

1963

    

      Bill Lentini, who had been talking to Angus, contacted me. He said he’d sign me right now if he could, and mentioned a few teams that were still interested in me, though nobody was going to give me any money after getting kicked off a college baseball team—unless I was King Kong. He felt I made a mistake not signing out of high school while I had a chance to, but what was “done was done” and now it was time for me to “get back on track.”

     I visited him at his tire store and the diminutive Lentini put me in a bear hug. His big brown eyes were soft and melting. “How’s my guy? Why haven’t you called or come see me? I miss watching you play. You know I’m your biggest fan, Dell. You’re like my kid.”

     “Awh, Bill, cut it out. You’re killing me.” But it was good to see him and receive his always sunny support.

     He laughed, poked me in the chest, kept his finger there firmly. “I know what’s inside you, Dell. Going to play for that cold fish at Cerritos, you broke Bill Lentini’s heart.” He withdrew his finger. “I talked to Doc Bennett. I’m his right hand man, his bird-dog. I told him I wanted you to come out and play for the White Sox winter league team. They play next Saturday.’

                    

     Bill was the most impressive and relentless salesman and schmoozer this side of my Dad. He convinced me to get myself in some sort of shape while Angus went under the knife. I quit Disneyland and decided to re-enter Cerritos and change my major from physical education to English Literature. When I informed Dad that Lentini had gotten me a try out, he grumbled, “I don’t trust that guy. I’ve seen a thousand like him. They never played ball but they want to hang on and butter up the front office stooges.”

     “He’s a good guy, Dad. He’s intimidated by you. Everybody is.”

     My first game was to be played almost 40 miles away, out in the San Fernando Valley. When I got to the ball park in my new heap, a dented VW, the White Sox were playing a team similar to those I’d played against with the Red Sox, who no longer had any interest in me, though I wore the same uniform Marco had given me. My hair stuck out from under the back of my cap. I saw a lot of decent prospects playing catch and partaking in exuberant chatter and kidding. I had not worked out or picked up a ball. Doc Bennett spotted me and barely nodded, a small, blunt-faced man with a fringe of white hair under a brimmed, light-weight hat of the like scouts wore. I felt he was not originally impressed with me and had been coerced by Lentini to give me a shot. When I reported to him he dismissively told me to report to Don Buford, who was running the team and riding herd on the players in a no-nonsense authoritative manner. I felt Bennett’s attitude a calculated treatment of me, a time-tested test old-timers employed with new prospects.

     Buford was a small, muscular black man with the legs of a whippet. His uniform fit him perfectly, as if tailored. I remembered him as a terrific gutsy football player at USC, and as a baseball player he was an over-achiever, a Nellie Fox-like self-made holler guy. Currently he was a highly regarded AAA player soon to be a big leaguer who’d paid his dues. Upon observing him this first time, his persona seemed fearsome, the kind of guy who had scrapped for everything and demanded nothing less from the kids now playing for him.

     When I reported to him he sized me up from top to bottom. “Who the hell sent you?”

     “Doc Bennett.”

     “He never said anything to me. Go warm up.”

     I got loose and fielded some grounders at second. I was rusty but strong. In the cage I dropped two perfect bunts down each line, and after fouling off a couple pitches I began lacing line drives to left, wanting to put on a show, for this was my showcase. Buford did not look at or talk to me or start me and I sat on the bench at the far end of the dugout with my cap low over my eyes, bored, not knowing anybody or wanting anything to do with anybody, listening to the little rooster talk baseball and display his keen knowledge of the game, which was exactly like mine. He was all business, treating this meaningless game as if it were the final of a World Series. In the 8^th inning he told me to grab a bat, pulled me aside at the bat rack. “I want you to lay down a bunt.”

     “I didn’t drive forty miles to lay down a goddam bunt.”

     “Either you bunt or sit down. We’re trying to win a ball game.”

     I thought of flubbing two bunts so I could hit away, but a guy like Buford would see right through that ploy. Up at the plate, the first pitch was in my wheelhouse and I drilled it on a line into left field for a single. I hadn’t returned from rounding first hard when Buford sent down a pinch runner. I hustled off the field into the dugout, found my bat and glove.

     “You’ll never be a ball player,” Buford barked at me. “Get the hell out of here.”

      I was happy to leave on these terms and didn’t bother to check out Doc Bennett in the stands. When Dad asked how it went, and I told him, he grimaced, told me he didn’t care how goddam far I drove, I should have bunted. Dad once said, “The game I love is not run by people I like, but if you want to play, you have to deal with it.”

     (Next Sunday installment: Creative Writing 101)     

     (The beginning of this memoir goes back to 1949 for those scrolling back.

                                                      BASEBALL LIMBO

1962

     I had not picked up a ball, bat or glove in months. Nights after work, and mornings when I awoke, were spent reading excessively and exhaustingly, with a newfound hunger for literature akin to eating. Steinbeck, Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Herman Wouk, Thomas Wolfe, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Faulkner (with great difficulty), Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Bertrand Russell, Somerset Maugham, D.H. Lawrence, Mark Twain. Grampa Charley on mother’s side donated old, dusty paperbacks by the Russian masters. I was not ready for “Crime & Punishment.” Dad was stumped at my hermetic reading discovery. It took him three minutes to fall asleep reading Harold Robbins blockbusters at his bedside table.

     “So what are you going to do with yourself, Dell? Work at Disneyland until you get drafted? Go back to school? What about baseball?”

     “I need some time off from it, Dad. I’m waiting for the old itch to grab hold of me.”

     “You let me know when that itch starts. I know some people. All you’ve got to do is get on the field and show ‘em what you can do.” He smacked my knee in a fond manner. “And look, if you don’t want to play ball, well, far as I’m concerned, it’s all right with me.”

   “Mother’s been talking to you, huh?”

    “No, I’ve been thinking. I know it hasn’t been easy for you, being a ball player’s son, and especially a ball player like your old man. I’ve been hard on you, but it was always because I expected so much from you. What I didn’t mean to do was make you so damn hard on yourself. I was always hard on myself, but in a different way, I guess. My Dad was no athlete, so there was no pressure. Maybe things were less complicated for me. I could just go out and play, with nothing to lose, nothing expected of me. I was always loose in my approach to the game. I know baseball is a simple game, Dell, and it’s not for a complicated person, who can’t shut things out and thinks too much and lets the game drive them crazy. I could always concentrate on the game, and nothing else interfered or mattered. Then I became a professional when I’d never really considered it as a kid, because I loved it more than anything in the world. If it’s no longer that way with you, well, like I say, that’s okay with me, but if you still got that fire in your gut like you used to, I’ll find a way to get you back in the game—if you miss it? Do you?”

     I shrugged. Then: “Don’t try and do anything for me, Dad. I wish it was like Little League, when nobody knew who I was and I made it. I feel like driving to Florida when spring training starts and just showing up to see what I can do and what they think of me. Just some walk on. I’d even consider switch-hitting at this point. I don’t know why. It’s just a thought.”

     He was staring at me. “Damn boy, you’re making a habit of doing things the hard way. There’s a limit to that. I know. I tried it and you’re working against near impossible odds.”

     I thought to myself, “If I don’t play ball, it’s the waste of a lot of talent for a game I love and know how to play, and of all the years I dedicated to it.”

     “We’ll see how it goes, Dad.” As I watched him walk away, not happy because his kid was not happy and on an unsure path, I felt bad for him, felt like asking him to play a little catch and pepper in the front yard, but it was far too late for that now.

      (Next Sunday installment: Baseball 103)

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

                                     FACING FELLER WITHOUT A HELMET 

BIG MOE

     When Feller warmed up on the sidelines near the dugout before a game you actually saw his fastball rise about a foot, and the sound it made when it popped into the catcher’s mitt was a sound unlike you heard from any other pitcher, even the hardest throwers in the league, guys like Virgil Trucks, who I played with, and Newhauser and Phil Marchildon. Feller threw harder than the legends old timers talk about, and probably harder than Drysdale and Koufax and Herb Score or anybody around today. The closest to Feller is Nolan Ryan and Satchel Paige, but Paige’s  ball didn’t have the late movement Feller’s had, and nobody cracked the catcher’s mitt like Feller and had it echo all through the stadium…it was like the difference between Marciano or Joe Lewis punching the heavy bag compared to some light heavyweight, like Billy Conn.

     Certain guys got that “green-around-the-gills” look—like they were going into combat the first time—and came up with mysterious ailments on days Feller was scheduled to pitch, and certain guys up at the plate, you saw their knees shaking and knocking from the dugout. They were paralyzed with fear, couldn’t get their bats off their shoulders. Other guys went up there and swung like they were going through the motions and in a hurry to get the hell out of there, because Feller was wild as hell and put the fear of God in you. He had this high leg kick that hid the ball until the last possible second, and his curve ball broke about nine inches to a foot very sharply when it was right on top of you at nearly the same speed as his fastball, making it hard to distinguish what was coming at you, so a lot of guys were bailing out.

     I always felt the advent of batting helmets ended the separation between the men and the boys. Without batting helmets you took your life in your hands when you faced Feller, and Feller knew that, fed off it, fed off the fear. He was cocky and arrogant and ornery on that mound, had a big mouth, which he constantly shot off, even in the Navy, where it was common knowledge nobody popped off unless you wanted the brass to give you the shaft.

     I faced him in service games on the east coast before we all shipped out. We had great players on our Navy team—Hugh Casey, Peewee Reese, Phil Rizzuto. One game we turned six doubleplays. The best ball in the country was probably being played along the east coast among service teams. Once, late in the game, I was up, Feller was pitching, with men on base, and an admiral, who pretty much put his team together and liked to have his say, like they all did, and bet on the games with all the other brass from all branches of the service like they all did, came out to the mound. This admiral tried to get Feller to walk me and load the bases, so he could face a weaker hitter he owned, a guy who couldn’t touch Feller with a paddle.

     I’d had fair success against Feller. I was a dead pull hitter and liked the challenge of hitting off him and you had to be that way or there was no use playing the game. But Feller was as stubborn a sonofabitch as there was in the game, and no goddam officer was going to tell him what to do on a ball field. He chased the guy back to the dugout in no uncertain terms and was so distracted he piped me a fastball down the middle on the first pitch and I sent it on a line right past his ear and drove in the winning run. This felt good, because he’d dusted me a week earlier.

     He stormed off the mound, and that night on Armed Forces Radio he popped off about how no Navy big shot was going to tell him how to pitch and who to pitch to and so on and so forth, and a few days later they shipped him out on a battleship, headed for the South Pacific like the rest of us, and I hear he gave a pretty good account of himself out there, which doesn’t surprise me. He was never short on guts or heart and he always stuck up for the black players during barnstorming days when other guys wouldn’t. He’s what you call a good American, a patriot, and you have to say overall he’s a good man, despite being a goddam mule-headed Republican and as tough to take off the field s he was on it. He was self-righteous as they come, and he could never keep his foot out of his mouth.

     (Next Sunday installment: Baseball Limbo)

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

                                      ANGUS AGAIN TRIES TO SET ME STRAIGHT

1962

     Angus was back in town after a summer of playing ball in Harlan, Kentucky, where he had a respectable year considering he was hobbled by a bad knee. The swollen, ugly knee needed surgery, which would be paid for by the White Sox, who had released him (as Dad had predicted) and the organization was peeved because they felt Angus’s knee was damaged before they signed him, a secret he kept from Bill Lentini and Doc Bennett. Angus played the whole season on a bum knee he’d originally hurt playing hockey,

     Always up and optimistic, he was a little subdued but not disillusioned or demoralized. He conceded there was very little glamour in the bushes, only hardship. In Harlan he could be playing a day or night game and hear gunshots from some of the Hatfield/McCoy-like mountain people downtown shooting at each other over century old feuds in front of innocent bystanders who took it all in stride as a way of life in that blighted region of America. Angus described Harlan as poverty-stricken, poorest of the poor, meanest of the mean, kindest of the kind, all in all good folks.

     “What about the girls, big A?”

     “Awh, Jesus, Dell, you could spend a lifetime there and never find a girl half as good lookin’ as the average ones back here. Yah gotta feel sorry for ‘em, havin’ to hook up with the uncouth bastards gonna end up treatin’ ‘em like shit. The half decent ones’ll do anything to get knocked up by a ball player and get out’a that poor coal mining area.

Yah gotta feel for those folks, but I’m glad I’m out-a there and back home.”

     He’d lived in a boarding house with several other players who were either hicks or city kids and they had little in common but their individual ambitions to make the big leagues. The bus rides were miserable, the food terrible, the caliber of ball probably no better than college, the life draining, sleep-deprived, no privacy, lonely. He was almost glad it was over.

      “I only saw one player on our team with a real chance of makin’ the White Sox, a guy named Ken Berry, the best outfielder you’ll ever see. He could play center in the big leagues right now, he’s that good, but he doesn’t have much of a stick. You’re a much better hitter. I didn’t see a guy in the league any better than you. I can’t believe how yah fucked up, and went and played for that poop at Cerritos when yah could-a signed or played for Mike Skoba. I never seen a guy fuck up his career worse than you. It just makes me sick. I talked to Bill Lentini and he just shakes his head. I thought you had some brains. I mean, you’re twice as smart as me, cuz I’m just a bloody hard-headed hockey player from Moose Jaw, but you don’t have a lick of sense, Dell. Jesus fucking Christ!”

     When I got off work, we shot pool. I told him about Dawn Meadows giving me the boot and he issued me the usual razzing over my stupidity and ineptitude around girls. Already he’d set up a date with an old flame still in high school. He was going to “make up for lost time.” I warned him to be careful, but he laughed me off. On my lone night off he set me up in the back seat of his clunker on a double-date, fogging up the windows as he fucked in the front seat and I necked in the back seat with a 16 year old but was terrified of getting a girl pregnant and facing the consequences of having to get hitched and ruining my life more than I already had.

     Angus claimed I was a “lost cause.” After dropping off the girls, we drove around, drinking, talking. Angus had made up his mind to use his experience as a pro ball player to try and get into radio and TV broadcasting. He could do hockey and baseball. What about an education? Angus flashed his winning smile, pointed to his noggin, winked.

     “Don’t worry about old Angus. He’s got an education all his own upstairs, and he’ll come out smellin’ like a rose. It’s you we gotta worry about. I gotta get you playin’ ball again. It took me about a month to see I’d never make the big leagues, not with my abilities. If I hung on as a player I could maybe reach double A ball and later be a coach. But I don’t want that low-payin’ dog’s life. But you? Except for yer arm, you can go all the way, and there’s ways to cover up the arm if you can catch up with the high heat and run the bases and play like you do. I’m gonna talk to Lentini. Yer a sorry-ass excuse for what yah used to be right now, but big A’s gonna take care of his buddy. If I gotta get yer ass signed, I bloody well will. Yah fuckin’ weasel, yah don’;t deserve as good a friend as me.” He grinned and chucked my cheek like a big brother. “Fuckin’ Disneyland. What the hell yah doin’ out there—imitatin’ Mickey Mouse?”

     I shrugged. “It’s the cleanest, most wholesome place on earth, A. Totally synthetic.”

     “Synthetic?”

     “Artificial. Phony.”

     “Yeh, well, now yer talkin’ about the world we live in, Dell, in case yah haven’t noticed. Better get used to it or find a way to play the game, or yer in deep shit. Between that, and the bloody crooked politicians, that’s life.”

     “Well, I don’t seem to fit in anywhere.”

     He placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eye. “We gotta get you signed to play ball. If yah don’t play ball, or at least give it a try, yah’ll regret it the rest of yer life and wonder if you were good enough to make it.” He squeezed my shoulder for emphasis. “We gotta get yah signed, if it’s the last thing either of us do. You not playin’ ball, lovin’ it like yah do, and workin’ at Disneyland, that’s bloody criminal. It makes Angus sick in the gut.”

     (Next Sunday installment: Big Moe: Facing Feller—without a helmet)

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

                                               MY OWN PRIVATE DISNEYLAND

1962

     I quit school and applied for a job at Disneyland, presenting myself to the interviewer as a clean-cut college student, and was hired as a sweeper at the “Happiest Place on Earth.” I was issued a white uniform and clip-on black bow tie and handed a broom and dustpan and sent to scoop up butts and all small debris in Fantasyland, my territory as one of the employees keeping Disneyland spotless and wholesome for swooning, camera-toting tourists. My supervisor, Roy, was a clean-cut guy around 30 in dark slacks, dark string tie, black shoes, white short-sleeve shirt, with a chain of keys dangling from his belt and a row of pens in his breast pocket. He was an intense team player who immediately set forth to motivate me: “If you work out, Dell, there’s no telling how far you can go. This is the greatest place to work in America. You could end up a ride operator, or a supervisor, like me. Sky’s the limit!”

     Since Disneyland was non union, everybody was underpaid but supposedly ecstatic because it was a privilege and honor and a status symbol to work at Disneyland. I was paid $1.67 an hour to sweep. Right off I found myself gravitating to implement my new trade at an area close to the Fantasyland snack bar, which was operated by a crew of pretty college girls with chirpy, upbeat attitudes, like Dawn Meadows, who was engaged to a fraternity boy and informed me I was an “immature child who needed to grow up and be a man!” She refused to acknowledge me.

     Occasionally I spotted a lonely butt perhaps 20 feet from the snack bar and jetted across the near spotless pavement, niftily skirting tourists like a field hockey player, and pounced like a dog chasing a ball upon this butt and snapped it up. The snack bar girls found this entertaining. When the coast was clear of snitches, which Disney employed in touristy disguises, I swept in pirouettes, behind my back, or fiendishly swept at nothing, flying back and forth before their area while they pointed and laughed. Later, when I ordered lunch, they lay extra cheese and onions on my burgers and piled on the fries. Still, when I cornered them in conversation at the lunch area and asked them for dates, they backed off warily and made excuses while refusing to meet my eyes.

     These girls were interested in male ride operators and supervisors and there was a pecking order involved in the mating ritual, which included Snow White and Alice in Wonderland, two beauty contest winners that had the employees in shirts and ties fawning over them like pandering lackeys. I made it a point to ignore them.

     To keep my mind off the demise of my baseball career I volunteered to work 6 ten hour shifts a week and Roy was very pleased, though he warned me to cease hovering around the snack bar and distracting the girls who were there for customers only! Every evening I witnessed tourists oohing and aahing at the sight of the sizzling, soaring, popping constellation of fireworks filling the Orange County sky just before closing. The deadening, mindless job was transforming me into a detached, robotic dullard. I began to despise Disneyland and its contrived, aggressive PR campaign of wholesomeness. I made no real friends and sought none. I worked, went home, ate, read in my room, avoided my parents; spent my day off body surfing in Huntington Beach.

     One day Roy called me into his office. “Dell,” he said, bouncing up from his desk. “We think you’re a good worker, a real go-getter, great enthusiasm, we are happy with your performance, and we love it when our employees are happy, enjoy their job, but you seem to think having fun is your full time privilege. Our customers, who are precious, are the ones supposed to be having fun and are entertained by Disneyland, by the fireworks and rides, and our ride operators…not our janitors. You have to cease putting on a show for our customers, even if they do like snapping pictures of your…uh…act.” He issued me an understanding, uncle-like smile. “It’s not a good reflection on our park. Okay?”

     “Sure, Roy. Sorry. I get carried away.”

     “Otherwise, you have an excellent work ethic. We like you. Okay?”

     “Thanks, Roy.”

     We shook hands like earnest grown-ups. I became a model Disneyland employee.

     (Next Sunday installment: Angus again tries to set me Straight).