(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.)