(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)