(Scrolling back to 1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of the game and the father/son relationship to it)

                                                DRINKING AND GAMBLING II

1968, South Lake Tahoe

     Now, when I got off work at eleven, I talked to nobody after sousing up my drink tickets at the Keno bar and went straight to the Harrah’s blackjack tables. One of the bartenders I worked with informed me that over 50% of what Harrah’s employees earned in salary and tips were lost to the casino, or casinos down the street. I gambled small, with patience, counting cards. Right off, I won $400 and gave it to Joe for my next 4 months rent, and he called me the “latest red-hot gambler and red-hot lover” in Tahoe, as he still hadn’t seen a woman come out of my apartment come mornings, only a hungover wretch sitting under a shade tree with the Siberian Husky beside him.

     Nights I was broke I ran a tab at a neighborhood bar a mile from my place on the California side. One of these nights a young local cook, after touching my thigh, invited me to his apartment.. I smacked his hand off and gave him a look. He smirked, implied since I couldn’t get laid he could show me a much better time than any woman. I got up and stumbled home.

     One night I cashed my paycheck and sat down at a table and ran my chips up to a grand! A crowd formed. I was in white heat, felt this jolt of adrenalin infused into my every pore. I ran my streak up to fifteen hundred and kept tipping the waitresses for free drinks and then suddenly I got cold and lost it by betting big, impatiently and stupidly while remaining frigid. I lost it all. I took out my tips and lost them. I borrowed twenty from a bartender at the Keno bar and lost it. I went outside into the blinding morning sunshine and got in my VW bug and drove to the bank and found out I had drained my account and showed up a few minutes later at the electric company to take out my deposit, which I took to the casino and ran up to three hundred before losing it. I went home, showered, shaved, dressed, went to work, impressed the bartenders with my good humor and occasional clowning, made $40 in tips, lost it at the tables, borrowed more from the bartenders and lost until they all cut me off and told me to go home and get some Goddam sleep for Chrissake!

      I abandoned my writing regimen. Without power, I ate to-go garbage. At the casinos I sat at the tables with my tips and bet small, trying to last, boozing. When I built my winnings, the jolt of adrenalin returned. I was captive of the mesmerizing highs and lows. One high for every five lows was enough to keep me gambling, no matter how far I fell behind—it was my single thrill and obsession. Even after I returned home drunk and broke I could not shut down the excitement coursing through my body like a current. I wasn’t eating or sleeping and was losing weight and whenever I lost my last dollar I was so demoralized I kicked and jumped on my VW in the parking lot at Harrah’s and came home to gaze in the mirror and ask myself why this was happening to me and what was my life coming to and I hated the sight of my face in the mirror, and I’d spit on the mirror and cuss the face and the person and call the face and person a worthless come-to-nothing piece of shit and punch the face and it felt good to see stars and I’d punch the face again harder, never in the nose which had been busted twice playing football and brawling in the army, no, I punched the forehead and jaw and cheeks, and soon the bruises swelled and I lay in bed trying not to cry while trying at the same time to climb out of my skin, because it was torture being Dell Franklin, son of Murray Franklin, and I dreaded coming out of the house and facing my neighbors and going to work and having my supervisor and fellow bartenders seeing me this way as I played the good time untroubled Charlie, always up, kidding, clowning, showing everybody there was nom pain, man, no pain at all, knowing that at least I’d take my tips and maybe eat enough to stay alive but certainly hit the tables.

      Had I not paid my landlord 4 months of rent, I’d have been homeless in the woods.

     (Next Sunday Installment: Big Moe Takes Charge)

     (Scrolling back to 1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of the game and the father/son relationship to it)

                                                  DRINKING AND GAMBLING

1968, South Lake Tahoe

     I was working the 3 till 11 evening shift at Harrah’s Club as a barboy hoping to gain enough experience to become a bartender, so I could gain the inside track on getting laid, as I’d been on a drought since getting out of the army and was currently having no success during the very height of the sexual revolution in California of all places.

     I had tried wooing Cindy, a pretty and prim recent college graduate from Portland who was going to be a high school English teacher after her summer of being a Keno runner and partying with her college room mate. I worked the busy Keno bar and after work we sat with our free drink tickets (I bought all our drinks) and had literary discussions and she was impressed I’d written a novel which I’d sent to a publishing house in New York. We drove around the lake one night and when I tried to kiss her she pulled away and said, “Can’t we just be friends?” When I drove her back to her apartment, where parties were going on all around us, I tried again and she said, “I really want to be your friend, but I’m not that kind of girl?”

     “What kind of girl is that, Cindy?”

     “The kind who sleeps around.”

     “All I wanted was a kiss, Cindy.”

     “Well…I have to know you better.”

     “We’ve been sitting drinking together every night for two weeks. How much more do you want to know me?”

     “Oh Dell, I don’t know…” She issued me a quick kiss on the cheek and disappeared.

     The following night she alit beside me at the Keno bar at 11:15. This time I did not light her cigarette or buy her a drink and she asked what was wrong and I told her I needed something more than a peck on the cheek, that I wanted a girl friend for more than just yakking, and she asked what that “more” was, and I told her I needed the warmth of a woman’s body and the affection and passion of her heart and soul; in short, I wanted to get laid. She told me she was not ready for that and just wanted to be my friend and I found myself accusing the poor thing of being a tease and sat and got drunk quick and she cried and left and I hit on another girl who wouldn’t talk to me and finally gravitated to the blackjack tables where I was plied with free drinks until dawn. I broke even.

      There was the cocktail waitress, the only one who wasn’t cold and cynical and older than me, Ginger, from Memphis, long-legged in fishnet hose, blond lacquered hair, too heavily made-up for as pretty and fine featured as she was, stacked, Monroe-like, evidently sleeping with a few bartenders. I bar b cued for her in the front yard of my little one-bedroom apartment connected to a triplex 8 miles from Harrah’s on the California side of the Y and highway 50. The steaks and potatoes came out perfect. Once inside, I got her drunk. I got to first base, second, when she shut me down, claiming, “Ah’m not that kind-a girl, honeybun.

     “That’s not what I heard.”

     “What y’all heard, Day-uhl?”

     “I heard you were giving it out.” I immediately hated myself.

     “Who said that awful thang ‘bout me?”

     “All the bartenders.”

     “Well, it’s a damn lie! Y’all take me home raht now!”

      I refused. Like a broken giraffe, sobbing, she set off toward her place 8 miles away on high heels. My landlord, a notorious ski professional and playboy, picked her up, took her home to his far end of the triplex, and walked her past me the following morning as I recovered from hangover.

     “How’s the latest redhot lover in Lake Tahoe today?” he grinned.

     I went inside, could not get my next novel going—The Woman Hater—and arrived at the conclusion I was repellant to women. At work, where I feared Ginger and Cindy had spread the word of my swinishness, I found myself striking out with all the girls recruited for summer jobs from colleges like Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa—cream of the crop—who were fucking the fraternity boys recruited from the same schools. I was odd man out. I sat in the employees cafeteria by myself watching baseball on the lone TV, saw guys I’d played with and against like Stephenson, Ollie Brown, my old pal Paul Schaal, Ed Sukla, Bob Bailey, half the guys from the Legion all Star team, and others, in the Big Show, and I felt like my life had finally come to nothing.

     At this point, it wasn’t getting any better. My parents, especially Dad, wanted to know how their kid was doing, but I purposely had no phone and refused to write. My only companion was the big 100 pound Alaskan husky belonging to a family across the street. He waited for me every night as I arrived in a drunken stupor and accompanied me on a walk to the lake, where I sat and considered what the fuck this was all about and how and where had I gone wrong and why, after at least a 4 year hiatus, I was starting to punch myself in the face again.

     (Next Sunday installment: Drinking and Gambling II)

     (Scrolling back to 1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of the game and the father/son relationship to it)

                                    THROWING IN THE TOWEL: ARMY BOUND

1963

     Vaguely, through the buzzing throb in my skull from the self-inflicted blows, I heard voices drawing closer as lights went out in the stadium. Before me was a deep gully. I started the car, gunned the engine, and dipped over the edge, the car dropping and bouncing with a jolting thud, as if falling from a precipice. The shocks and springs cracked as my head smacked the ceiling. I sat there, dazed, finally got out and stumbled around. A voice shouted down at me from the lip of the gully. It was the firstbaseman, bundled in his warm-up jacket.

     “What happened, man? How the hell’d you get down there?”

     “Who the fuck cares?” My voice came from deep inside a well, strange to me. “Want this fuckin’ car? You can have it.”

     “Hey, cool down, kid. It’s just a game, you know. Don’t go psycho on me. Everybody has bad games.”

     “Who gives a fuck? My life’s a bad fucking game.”

     “Hey, get your ass up here, man. Right now.”

     I clambered up from the gully. He helped me over the lip, checked me out. “Man, you’re all cut up and bleeding. What the fuck did you do to yourself?”

     “I’m taking off. You can have the car.”

     “No, man. I don’t want your car. I hate those bugs. I got my truck. Now settle down! You can’t go anywhere the way you are.”

     “Hey, I don’t give a fat fuck about nothin’, so back off.”

     “Brother, you are off your gourd.” He observed me staring back at him. He ordered me not to move. He pulled his truck over and backed it up to the lip of the gully, got out, withdrew a long chain from the bed. “Don’t move now.” He clambered down into the gully and hooked the chain to my rear bumper, clambered back up, and, after a bit of a struggle, a lot of noise and fumes, towed the VW up over the lip and settled it on flat ground. He got out of his truck and grinned at the car, which was sagging slightly. He smacked my shoulder playfully.

     “It can’t be that bad, man. It ain’t the end of the world. You can’t be throwing in the towel. I been where you’re at and worse.”

     “No you haven’t. Thanks for helping me out. I appreciate it.”

     He rolled up the chain, tossed it into the bed of the truck. “You weren’t trying out there. In fact, it was like you were TRYING to fuck up. What’s your problem?”

     “Don’t sweat it.” My voice was a flat, distant monotone as I looked at his plump, easy-going face.

     “I’m not sure you should be left alone. I don’t like the look in your eye. You gonna be okay?”

     “Yeh, thanks again for towin’ me out.”

     ‘Okay, I’m gonna get in my truck, and I’m gonna follow you out-a here, because I ain’t pullin’ you out-a that hole again. Okay?”

     “Okay.”

     He followed me out of the parking lot and pulled alongside me on Wilshire, rolling down his window, gazing down at me. “You stay cool, guy. Don’t do anything crazy. I don’t wanna be reading about you tomorrow in the paper, okay?”

     “Okay, thanks.”

     From time to time, cruising along Wilshire, I fought off the urge to gun the engine and slam head-on into a concrete light post. I wanted to drive and drive and never have to face anybody again, and especially Dad, who would hear from Jules and be waiting for me—waiting for his son, who was nothing, while he, the Dad, was everything to everybody, while his son hated himself, deserved to hate himself. Fuck Dad. Fuck Lentini and Doc Bennett and Fido Murphy and Jules and Kincaid and the whole fucking baseball fraternity. Fuck Edwards, too, for trying to convince a callow pile of shit like myself that I had the talent and depth and internal stuffing to write about fellow man. Fuck everybody. This is what it had come down to. Only the army would want me and take me, as they did all riffraff, washouts, losers, bums. Volunteer for infantry and combat; which was probably what I deserved and was destined for all along and just didn’t realize it.

     I ran out of gas somewhere on Pacific Coast highway, a long way from home. I began a jaunt down past homes to the beach, suddenly hungry, my stomach growling. It was very late and quiet. I ended up on a walking Strand and sat down and propped myself against a short cement fence facing the seawall and ocean. Gazing up at the dark, moiling sky, listening to the pounding and sizzling of the ocean, it occurred to me that nothing had prepared me for this day, and where I was, which I’d never seen coming.

     It was chilly, and I shivered. I didn’t care. A frowsy dog holding a saliva-coated tennis ball in his mouth materialized beside me, his eyes meeting mine, hopeful, eager, his tail wagging very slowly, as if his tail itself was checking me out. He dropped the ball in my lap, almost tenderly, then tensed, his eyes imploring, begging me to throw him the ball, and I did, tossing it against the seawall so he could catch it on the rebound, and he scrabbled and snatched it and dropped it at my feet, sensing my kind, and I sensed his, having entertained myself for hours tossing a baseball or tennis ball against the house or garage door for hours, retrieving and releasing it in one quick motion, quicker and quicker, so my hands were a blur, like a machine, with growing confidence and pride, pretending I was a big leaguer in a big game, never tiring, perfecting my flawless technique of staying low  and scooting from side to side, arms hanging loose, hands soft, oh so soft, in my private world of glory, untroubled, mother smiling at me from the kitchen window as she prepared dinner, so grateful her son could amuse himself for hours and never get in trouble.

     A pearlescent glow lightened the ocean like ball park lights coming on in a twilight game. The eastern sun spread a dim light over the sand. I stood, the dog at my feet, both of us waking from a brief snooze. He took off, ball in mouth, knowing where he was going. I had no idea where I was going, except that there was a diner down the street and I would eat a big bunkhouse breakfast like the ones I ate on the road with dad and Dixie Upright when he was playing ball. I would somehow find gas and drive to Mr. Edwards’s eleven o’clock class, the only class I’d ever cared about in all my years of schooling, and let him know I was joining the army and refuse to let him talk me out of it.

     Now matter how tough the obstacles that lay ahead of me, I was somehow released from a terrible burden that filled me with such dread that I would never go near a baseball diamond or attend a professional baseball game for years. I suddenly felt strong and reassured and determined, and, for the first time in my life, prepared for anything.

     (Next Sunday Installment: (1968: Drinking and Gambling)      

(Scrolling back to 1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of the game and the father/son relationship to it)

                                               MEXICO, CUBA AND CASTRO

BIG MOE

     A bunch of us jumped to play ball in Mexico, including Mickey Owen, and a close friend of mine, Sal Maglie, who looked mean as a mafia killer but was as sweet and gentle a guy you’d ever want to meet. You were usually the only American player on your team, and winters, when I played in Cuba, you were usually the only white player.

     In both countries, the fans were wild and packed the stadiums, and no matter where you played, that city pretty much closed down for the ball games. Nobody loved baseball like these people. Shops and government offices shut down, and people who didn’t go to the games listened to them on the radio, and the fans bet on every game, every inning, every player; they were madhouse crazies, but great fans, fine people, and if you played well they treated you better than you’d ever been treated before in the states. You were a hero, never paid for a thing, and lived like a king.

     But if you stunk it up and choked a few times in the clutch and lost them money and let them get to you, the boos and catcalls and insults and the garbage they threw at you, like rabid animals, they’d run you out of town, out of the league, have you on the first train home, like they did with Dino Restelli, who came in with a big reputation but never got going. A lot of guys with big names quit and went home, because they couldn’t take the fans, couldn’t take the poor conditions of the ball parks and transportation, were scared they get lynched or shot, and they bitched about everything—the food, water, heat, humidity, language, the people, you name it.

     I loved Mexico, and I loved Cuba. First thing I did was make sure to learn the language, and if you tried hard to learn the words, well, these people bent over backwards to work with you, and you could do no wrong, they would take you into their homes and hearts like you were family, because they were the warmest, most generous people…poor as they were they’d literally give you the shirt off their backs, or their last dish of black beans, if they liked you. I made good friends with my teammates and the people, associations I’d never forget and always cherish.

     You can’t imagine what places like Tampico and Mexico City and Havana were like in those days. Havana was bursting with life, never went to sleep, it seemed. You could walk down the street and every café, every cantina was full, the streets crowded, the trolleys running, the parks packed, and there were little bands everywhere, on street corners, in parks, in the cantinas and cafes. The music never stopped, and the people loved to dance and sing, there was such happiness, like a festival that never stopped. A very romantic place for Rose and me.

      I had some of my best years down there. I was still in my prime. I hit for power and average, led my team. Rose and I had the greatest time of our lives. We were together again after being separated for two years in the war, and we really learned to appreciate and enjoy the little simple things, like sitting outside a café drinking a rum and coke and watching the people. It was probably the happiest time of our lives, and we both knew it, and milked every minute together.

     There were some fine ball players, and some real characters down there. Minnie Minoso was one of the most fearless, flashiest players on the field and the splashiest off and was just a great kid, always in a jubilant mood because he was playing a game he loved and would run into walls to flag down a fly ball. Bobby Avila, who later won a batting championship with Cleveland, adopted a style of hitting I taught him and learned to make the doubleplay as a secondbaseman when early on he was “spike shy.” One of the best pitchers and hardest throwers was a mean Cuban with a missing front tooth replaced by a diamond. And there was this tall skinny kid with high pockets who hung around the ballpark in Havana, wanted to be a ball player in the worst way. His father was some kind of bigwig at the university and the kid was studying to be a lawyer, a very polite, bright kid, very respectful and eager to learn, followed me around like a puppy dog. I worked with him. He had a pretty good pair of hands, a decent glove, but he couldn’t swing the bat, and you can’t really teach that if the reflexes and hand-to-eye co-ordination and wrist-action isn’t there, and so the kid went on to bigger things, a kid by the name of Fidel Castro.

     I don’t know how long I would have stayed down there, because after all I am an American, wanted to come home at some point, and when the President of the league, Jorge Pasqual, a very rich man who bankrolled the league and paid us all our bonuses, died in a plane crash, the league fell apart. I had to get out of there anyway, because we played in tropical places like Tampico and Vera Cruz, and the malaria I caught in the South Pacific came back and nearly killed me. I lost 30 pounds and nearly burnt up, was weak as a kitten. So I went home, waited for my suspension to life, and when Danny Gardella challenged major league baseball and got us all reinstated, I started out all over with Hollywood in the PCL.

     It’s funny, but sometimes events in your life, and especially in baseball, take you to places you wouldn’t dream of going to, and those places turn out to be the most pleasant surprises, the fondest, warmest memories. I think everything I learned down there, everything I experienced, made me a better, more thoughtful person, and helped prepare me for life after baseball.

     What Rose and I experienced in Mexico and Cuba was a lot of love, a lot of joy, pure and simple.

     (Next Sunday Installment: Throwing in the Towel.”

     (Scrolling back to 1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of the game and the father/son relationship to it)

                                                                MEMTAMORPHOSIS

1963

     I drove out to the ball field at Sawtelle for a night game in an old VW bug I’d borrowed from mother after blowing up my Chevy. Before reporting to Fido Murphy, I stood looking at the field. Some form of metamorphosis was going on within me, tugging me away from the field, infusing me with a nameless lethargy. But I dragged myself onto the field, where Jules met me, clapping his hands; excited, telling me this was “my big chance, go get ‘em, tiger!”

     I sought out the burly firstbaseman who’d played pro ball and been released and was trying to hook on again, and we warmed up. He’d been friendly in a big brother way, encouraging me, but this evening I didn’t say a word, and before we took infield he observed me closely and remarked that I didn’t “look right.” I shrugged.

     Taking infield, the inertia continued to infiltrate me. My arm, from trying to put too much on my throws the day before, felt like a rag dangling from my shoulder by a single tendon. It throbbed. I didn’t care. I didn’t care.

     “Come on, fer Chrissake, let’s see that arm!” Fido barked, scowling. “Let’s see some hustle. LOOK like a ball player!”

     My first time up, I faced a pitcher with average stuff. With men on first and second, I fouled off a couple pitches I should have nailed and finally bounced a ball to short. My journey to first base—where scouts had once time me below 4 seconds—was one of those dreams where somebody is chasing you and the legs lose traction and you wake up in a cold sweat just as you’re about to be chased down by a monster. I hit into a doubleplay, which I never did, unless I drilled a rope at somebody. And I didn’t care. 

     Fido, pacing the dugout, was incensed. “Speed? Where’s yer fuckin’ speed? Yah LOAFED down the line. Yer a dog.”

     I booted one in the field. I came up again with men on base and hit into another doubleplay, found myself slowing down as I approached first. Fido wouldn’t look at me. I didn’t care. My last time up I took a quick weak swing and dribbled one back to the pitcher and jogged down the line, holding onto the bat, wanting to smash something with it, anything, but mostly myself.

     Returning to the bench, head down, Fido met me, bottom teeth bared over his upper lip in a vicious cast, as if I had personally insulted him and his way of life of some 60 years in the baseball business—surely sacrilege, a willful desecration, akin to burning the American flag. I snuck a pitiful glance at him, and his look said it all—“Get off the field you fucking disgrace!”

     What he said was, “I seen enough of you, boy. Go sit on the bench. They sold me a bill of goods. You ain’t got it. Yer no ball player. Yer wastin’ my time. I got kids here wanna play ball, not stink up the field. I can’t believe yer Franklin’s kid.”

     Jules would not look at me as I sat at the far end of the dugout. I didn’t care, and something was very wrong. I observed my temporary teammates and felt a continuing disaffection for the game I had aspired to and been obsessed with since I was a tyke slapping a ball into my glove in the Hollywood Star clubhouse as an 8 year old. As I sat, something was terribly wrong. I gritted my teeth. I hyperventilated. Players along the bench stared at me. What, really, was baseball, I asked myself, in comparison to the vast, complex world we lived in? Conformity. Uniformity. Racism. Nepotism. A culture saturated with Kincaids and Bufords, Fido Murphys and the mindset ostracizing any denial of its importance, any mocking of its precious sanctity. My spirit was vanquished, dead. Something terribly, terribly wrong was gaining on me, a cold black cloud moving in, and I relived my lifeless slogs down the first base line and winced, cringed, almost sobbed. Hitting into two doubleplays? Something was terribly, terribly wrong.  

     I rose and walked out of the dugout and without meeting the eyes of anybody headed straight to the restroom where I took off my uniform as quickly as possible and along with my cap tossed them in the trash can and walked out in my sliding pads and undershirt toward my car, hurling my spikes and glove into a thicket of bushes. I opened the trunk and found my shorts, put them on, closed the trunk, then swung my bat against a tree, my entire body vibrating with the impact, and then hurled the bat with my Dad’s autograph on the barrel like a javelin into infinity. Inside the car, I pounded the steering wheel and dashboard, then clenched my fists and punched myself in the head and face, bashing at my cheekbones and jaw, the hard clouts dazing me. I tasted blood. Slumped over the wheel, I unleashed a prolonged wail, a yowl, a scream, until my throat burned raw. Then I settled into quiet sobbing that would not stop.

     (Next Sunday installment: Big Moe jumps the Big Leagues for Mexico.)