(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)