EPILOGUE

1978

When Dad died too young at 63, I had no choice but to take over his business. I had to collect money, pay bills, reassure customers of continued loyal service and special discounts, make deliveries, deal with worried salesmen who feared I’d stiff their suppliers and run down the inventory, maintain the stock and premises, and try and sell the kind of enterprise being squeezed out by major corporations in a town that had become a rundown dangerous ghetto.

At the time I was a carefree bartender in Manhattan Beach, 12 miles down the road, living the good life. Nobody expected me to succeed, except mother, but I managed to hold the business together for 2 years while working full time at the beach, then sell it and the building, turn the money over to mother, and get the hell out of a situation I hated and go on with my life as a good time Charlie and aspiring writer just beginning to place articles in the local alternative weekly.

At Dad’s funeral, a young rabbi urged me not to attempt the eulogy, explaining that “these things tend to be very difficult when one is too close to the deceased.” His face was full of careful sympathy and understanding.

“You give the standard eulogy,” I told him. “But I’m giving mine. I know him in a way nobody else does, because we both played baseball.”

The Jewish chapel at the cemetery was packed, every seat taken, people standing in aisles and in the back. Only three old baseball players attended—Chuck Stevens, representing baseball, and his two closest friends in the game, Tom Morgan and Jack Paepke. Besides relatives, the throng was made up mostly of shoemakers in their Sunday best and salesmen in their elegant suits.

I wanted to tell the throng about Jack Fessel, a kid who played on dad’s championship American Legion team back in 1955, but realized it would take too long. Fessel was a dead-end kid, wrong side of the tracks, already in trouble at school and with the law, unruly, lost, spawn of lowdown white trash. Fessel, hearing Dad was coaching the team, showed up with his bulky body and ill-fitting uniform and wild blond spiky hair sprouting out from under his cap. He drove a dilapidated pick-up truck.

“Don’t let him on the team,” warned local coaches, and Dad’s assistant, who’d booted Fessel off his junior high team years back. Fessel was an unorthodox, awkward player, but he threw accurately from the outfield, had a left-handed woodchopper swing, and good judgment of fly balls. The team, composed mostly of reasonably straight-arrows considering this was Compton, and a few golden boys, and four kids who would go on to sign professional contracts, sighed and rolled their eyes when Fessel showed up.

Dad watched him hit in the cage. He made one adjustment—hold your bat lower on your shoulder and swing from there. Fessel hit ropes. He was stocky-strong. Dad encouraged him, smacked him on the ass after BP and then hit him every kind of fly ball and line drive in left field. Then he trotted out to left and talked to Fessel. He faced him, touched him occasionally on the shoulders. Showed him how to charge groundballs and get off his throws in one motion.

From this point on, Fessel was the first player to practice and the last to leave. He hustled like a madman. He was a smart base runner. He was always looking over at Dad, wanting to please, and Dad clapped his hands, nodding, calling him “Big Fess,” though he was only about 5’11.” Big Fess turned out to be our best clutch hitter. He hit a ton. He dove after fly balls, threw people out. He became part of the fabric of the team and the golden boys with nice cars and cheerleader girl friends accepted Fessel, and Fessel, morose, kicked around like a dog with his tail between his legs when he first showed up, was happy. He was Dad’s bobo.

Later, toward the end of our Anaheim tournament triumph, I asked Dad why he was so good to Fessel and so hard on everybody else.

“Dell,” he said. “Always treat the underdogs with care, the black sheep, and they’ll come back and pay dividends. You’ve got to give a kid like Fessel a lot of love, because a blind man can see he never got much at home, he was neglected, probably beaten. To see that kid blossom, it means more than winning. I don’t know what will become of Fessel, he’s a pretty scarred kid, but one thing he’ll always have to lean on is that Murray Franklin, a big leaguer, liked him, believed in him, and he’ll know he was a big part of winning a championship.” He looked me straight in the eye. “Sometimes in life, things get tough, you feel like the world’s got it in for you and you lose heart, and a kid like Fessel can look back at this summer, and, well, it might make a difference whether he sinks or swims.”

                                                                      ******

Dad fought a virulent form of cancer. His 17 inch neck became a saggy beanpole, his blacksmith forearms sticks. His voice reduced to a whisper. Before we ordered the doctor to withdraw life support systems, Dad asked me if he had any chance, and I told him he did not, and he nodded and whispered his thanks for my honesty and claimed he’d see me “down the line.” I spent hours with him at his bedside. Even when he was totally incapacitated, he knew I was there, always reassuring him I’d take care of the business and mother.

So at the funeral I was long past tears. And in the eulogy I told the sea of mourners that the manner in which my father played the game of baseball was a reflection of his strong character, a quality he carried through life as a family man, veteran of war, businessman. More important than the surety that every ball player who’d ever played with and against Murray Franklin respected him, was the surety that every one of these men sought his respect. My father was incapable of letting a friend or even some helpless soul down, just as he was, as mother said, incapable of an indecent act.

When I stepped off the stage, the rabbi’s eyes were strangely bright as he grabbed my arm and nodded solemnly. “You were right,” he said. “You did well.”

Goddam right.    

There was a sort of wake. Friends and relatives drank and nibbled appetizers at the house on the hill in San Pedro with the panoramic view of LA and the Pacific Ocean, Dad’s dream house, in which he loved to entertain, and of which he was so proud. My girl friend at the time, an artist/atheist/animal rights zealot with several cats, who felt close to Dad, repeatedly claimed to see a tiny light bobbing just over my shoulder, and she assured me this was my father watching over me, a guiding light. I believed her, and still do.

When all the guests were gone, mother, who had nursed, bathed, dressed and fed my father the last months of his life, and witnessed the day-to-day disintegration without once breaking down or losing her tenderness, or complaining, finally collapsed in grief. My sister Susie and my girl friend tended to her. I wandered into the living room to finally inspect the numerous cards of Dad in his Detroit uniform that had been accumulating for weeks on the front table. They were from cities and small towns throughout the country, sent by fanatical baseball card collectors to be autographed. Enclosed in all the envelopes were five and ten dollar bills, as payment. Dad always signed the cards and added his best wishes to the names of all senders and returned them, via stamped and self-addressed envelopes, with the money included.

“I’ll never take money from a kid for my autograph, Dell.”

“Well, everybody’s doing it, Dad. It’s become a racket, a business, even an investment. Grownups are in on it, too. Lot of the old players didn’t make much, so they’re making up for it now. Like Feller, your old republican pal.”

“I don’t give a damn. It’s horseshit. Your father never took anything out of the game he didn’t deserve, and he’s not starting now. I make enough money. Sure, I used my name to help get the business started, but that’s different. I had associations with people. We were friends. I’ll never take money for autographs. It desecrates the game and stinks of freeloading, and I’ve always hated freeloaders.”

When Dad took his last breath in my arms, and the life went out of him, I removed from his finger the 1949 Hollywood Star championship ring he had been trying to give me without success for 20 years and placed it on my finger. I felt an immediate surge of strength, and hope. At the table I squeezed the ring and sat down and began answering the autograph seekers with small notes explaining my father was unable to sign their cards because he had died on March 16, 1978. I returned the cards and all cash, sealed the envelopes and walked down the street to mail them off.

I was a ball player’s son, Murray Franklin’s son, and this was the way we did things.           

                                                            THE END

     (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)

                                                        BIG MOE TAKES CHARGE

1968, South Lake Tahoe

      “Who’s the dog?” Dad wanted to know

     We were driving along the lake on route 50, halfway between the clubs and motels where I worked and my apartment, where I was headed. He had picked me up, much to my surprise, around one in the morning, after finding my apartment empty and after asking the bartenders at the Keno bar in Harrah’s where I might be. They told him they had no idea and so he searched the Sahara and Harvey’s and was finally headed back to my place when he picked me up hitch-hiking home.

     “That’s Duke, my new best friend. Siberian husky.”

      “He stuck that cold nose up my ass when I was looking in your window to see if you were alive and I thought it was a goddam bear.”

     He glanced at me, trying to get a good take on my condition, explaining he’d come up after discovering I’d drained my bank account and quit writing mother and chastising me for refusing to have a phone so I could stay in contact. Mother was worried sick about me. When we rolled up to the apartment he finally got a good look at me and almost gasped as he stepped close. There was a lot of moonlight.

     “You look like you lost at least twenty pounds, boy. You look like a goddam scarecrow and your nose sticks out like a goddam beacon.”

     He got his overnight bag from the car he’d rented at the Reno airport as Duke greeted us, up on his hind legs to nestle my chest, then repeating the overture with Dad. “Jesus, great dog. We had a little talk earlier. Is he yours?”

     “Lives across the street, but he’s adopted me.”

     I opened the door and Dad came in and hit the light switch and asked, “Where’s your goddam lights?”

     “I gambled away my deposits. Gas and electric.”

     He sighed as I lit a candle. He peered around. “Jesus Christ, this place is the black hole of Calcutta. I’m almost glad I can’t see anything, but I can smell it. What the hell’s going on with you, Dell?”

    

    I suggested he stretch his legs and we walk Duke down to the Lake, explaining this was a ritual. After the walk, he sat on a chair in the kitchen and said, “You have running water?”

     “Yeh, it’s cold. Tough shaving. Like the army.”

     “I thought the army might give you some direction, do you some good.” He yawned. He looked beat. “Well, you get some sleep. I’ll take the sofa. We’ll hash things out in the morning.”

     I collapsed in my uniform. I needed a year of sleep. Somehow, having Dad here allowed me to sleep and sleep and sleep, and when I walked into the kitchen around noon there was light, everything working, and the place had been cleaned, immaculate.

     “Take a shower, dummy, it’ll be a real luxury after the way you’ve been living.” He stood, walked over. “What happened to your puss? You been fighting? Your eyes are piss-holes in the snow.”

     “You don’t wanna know.”

     My voice was dismal, and the statement bludgeoned Dad like a body blow and he sat down and hung his head and placed his hand over his eyes and looked away and tried not to cry as I stood and went to the shower and soaked up the soothing hot water and dressed in clean clothes and came out. Dad sat at the kitchen table holding the manuscript I’d sent to a publishing house in New York months back.

     “I’m sorry,” he said. “They rejected it. Hell of a birthday, huh?”

     I realized yesterday had been my birthday. “Ah, don’t worry about it, Dad. I expected it. I’m not ready. I just wanted to test the waters. It was a shot in the dark.”

     “You put a lot of effort into this, son, and I read it, and I think it’s good.”

     “It stinks. It’s amateurish gibberish.” I walked over, snatched it from him, proceeded to tear it apart, and dropped it in the trash can. I sat back down. Dad stared at me, and his face was something I could not look at. I had made this man suffer, this man who was a man loved by all, who made decisions and built a business out of nothing to support his family and loved his family and was always there for his family and who had become involved with people in business and helped them out when things went bad and was admired and in some cases worshipped by them and whose team mates in the baseball world regarded him as the first guy they’d want to be with in a foxhole, this Jew, this Mensch, my father, crying, and why had I done this to him, why was I putting him through this?

     “Dell,” he said, looking up at me. “I think I probably screwed up pretty bad raising you…”

     “No! You did the best you could, the only way you knew how. You always put me first, were always THERE for me. You were mostly right about a lot of things. I realized that in the army. It’s me, Dad, I’m a different kettle of fish than you, or Mom, I just am, and it’s got nothing to do with you, and I’m not trying to get back at you, hell, not at all, no, I’m just trying to grind my way through things, and it’s gonna be the hard way, it’s not gonna be an easy path I’ve chosen, and it has to be if I’m gonna be worth a shit as a writer. Look, I don’t want you or mother worrying. I’m gonna be okay, Dad. Trust me.”

     The way dad looked at me, I knew I must go to him, and I did, and we hugged, and he hugged me hard and told me he loved me more than anything on earth and respected me for the path I’d taken an wouldn’t trade me for any son in the world, and I said I knew that, had always known that, and we disengaged and stood awkwardly and then we sat down, and when things calmed down and we sat drinking coffee, he said, “We better go  your car running.”

     He was aghast when we reached the Harrah’s parking lot and he observed the dents and ball bat, his model, in the back seat. He got the VW towed to a garage where a mechanic installed a new battery and generator while across the street at a diner he bought us bunkhouse breakfasts which as always tasted extraordinarily good.   

      We drove back to the apartment. He handed me a twenty. “This is to eat on. Don’t gamble it.”

     “I won’t. Gonna ask for extra shifts. No boozing.”

     “I don’t want to see any more bruises on your face either, Dell.”

     “You won’t.”

     We shook hands. He hugged Duke, the dog, got into the rental, beeped, and took off. I went to work and asked my supervisor for extra shifts and worked 30 straight shifts, some overtime on weekends, walked straight through the casino after work every shift, went home, cooked a steak for Duke and myself, took him on a walk, went to bed. I made back all I’d lost, paid back everybody, built a moderate nest-egg, and left in October, ready to hit the road ala Jack Kerouac, and try and find out if I had what it took to be a writer.

     I never gambled again, not even on a game, and nobody ever witnessed bruises on my face again unless I got in a good bar fight

     (Next Sunday installment: Final epilogue in 1978)