HIGH SCHOOL SHOWDOWN

1961

     The showdown with Anaheim for the league championship at LaPalma Park was a huge Orange County event. The O.C. Register sports page ran a feature story on both teams with pictures up front. The stadium was packed with parents, boosters, students and scouts and fans interested in both teams. There was a special feeling of excitement in the air of a big game, where your ass was on the line and you were tested before a sold-out crowd.

     As Stephenson warmed up, I considered dragging a bunt on him, especially since their thirdbaseman played me deep. When I just got on base it unnerved him, because I knew his move to first and took liberties on the base paths that might embarrass him. I felt base running, more than any aspect of the game, defined a ball player, and that scouts often missed out in judging a player only by size, power, arm, and straightway speed instead of instinct and instant acceleration—my fortes. I felt my instincts were a weapon enabling me to single-handedly intimidate and disrupt a team, especially in a close game, where my daring base running and taunting inspired my team mates and excited the fans, and that every eye was on me when I got on base.

     But bunting Stephenson implied I couldn’t HIT him. Anaheim scored 3 runs on us in the first inning. When I came up to the plate there was nobody on and two outs. I took a fastball on the outside corner and lashed it into right field for a single and rounded first hard, skidded to a stop, staring at Jerry, who stared back. I took a ridiculous lead, bluffed a steal, drew several pick off throws; then stole second easily. But he struck out Angus.

     That afternoon I got two hits off Stephenson and ripped two other pitches right at somebody. We came back to go ahead 4-3, but ended up losing 5-4. Stephenson, arm-weary from carrying his team all season, went all the way and had just enough to beat us—the best hitting team in the league. After the game Jerry and I visited. Both our teams finished with brilliant records of over 20 wins and were going to the playoffs as favorites. Our Dads stood nearby conversing as folks filed out. Several young kids sought and got our autographs. Jerry was contemplating signing a big bonus with the Red Sox back in Boston. He suggested I play Legion and Connie Mack this summer and build up more of a reputation and sign the following year. After we parted, Dawn Meadows tried to pigeon-hole me, and I was squeamish and gruff.

     I bridled at the conformity of kids like us coupling up and preparing for a future as husband/wife at such an early age when we had no clue as to what we were doing. I only wanted to fuck some of the girls Angus was fucking. I was embarrassed by my warm feelings for a girl and feeling also that their knowledge of this gave them the upper hand. I had the feeling Dawn was luring me, laying a trap, and I was unable to cope with my increasing need to be with her. Angus was right—I had a crush on a sweet girl who was good only for one thing—marrying, having kids, and facing a world of prediction and conformity. So I shook her off, stood by myself as Bill Lentini, my puppy-dog friendly and excitable American Legion coach approached me, grinning like a child, shaking my hand with genuine enthusiasm.

     “I know you lost the game, Tiger, but you were magnificent today and you been magnificent all year. Nobody attacks the game like you do. You play with a vengeance. The game is yours. You’re exciting. Nothing can stop you now. I can’t wait ‘til Legion season. You got it all, kid.”

      I knew Bill believed everything he said. I knew he was going to be a birddog for the White Sox. Still, I couldn’t quite believe him. When I ate dinner that night, Dad said, “You need a haircut. Your hair sticks out of your cap. It doesn’t look good. It’s bush. All that stuff matters to scouts.”

      “Yeh yeh,” I muttered derisively. No way I was going to get a haircut when one of Angus’s girls said she liked it.

     (Next Sunday installment: The Big Dago—Joe DiMaggio)

                                              MEETING TED WILLIAMS

1961

     Dad had no interest in going to ball games, did not follow the big leagues, but conceded to take me to a Red Sox/Angel game at Wrigley Field when Joe Stephenson left us box seats. The game was unexciting, and Boston, with Ted Williams recently retired, was an uninspiring team. We left in the 7^th inning to avoid traffic so Dad could get home early and sleep before going to work in the morning. The bowels of the dank old stadium were near deserted, concession stands closing as we hurried toward a ramp that would take us to the parking lot. Near a concession stand I recognized a tall, familiar figure talking on a pay phone attached to a post. I grabbed Dad and pointed.

     “Dad, that’s Ted Williams over there.”

     He halted, peered. “I think so. I think that’s Ted.”

      “You know him, right?”

      “Well, we said hello a couple times, twenty years ago. He’s a loner, Dell, doesn’t like to be bothered. He can be a real pain in the ass.”

     “I thought you said he was a good guy.”

     “He is…”

     “I gotta meet him! He’s the greatest hitter of all time. You said it!”

     We walked up to him as he talked on the phone. Williams wore a loose fitting sport coat over a plain white shirt open at the throat. He alertly eyed us, looking trapped and edgy, like a cornered animal. He finished his conversation and stared at us in a confrontational manner. Dad quickly told him he’d played against him before the war, with Detroit, and introduced himself. Ted’s face softened and he smiled, shaking hands with Dad.

     “I remember you, Franklin—line drive pull hitter, good anchor, level swing. I always played you near the line.” He relaxed, asked Dad what he was doing these days, and when Dad told him about his business, Williams said he was glad to see a fellow ball player doing well, and then he glanced at me, as if he’d just noticed my presence, winked at Dad, and nodded toward me. “Who’s the kid, Franklin?”

     “That’s my son Dell, Ted.”

     “Ball player?”

     “Helluva ball player. Good prospect. Infielder. Got the good hands.”

     Williams appeared insulted. “Hands? Hell with the hands. Can the kid hit?”

     “Got a double, triple, homerun today, drove in six runs. Hitting over .400. Great pair of wrists.”

     Ted’s face lit up and he offered me his paw, which shook mine lightly while I squeezed hard. “Thattaway, kid. Keep swingin’ that bat.” He shook Dad’s hand again. “Good to see yah, Franklin.”

     Then he was gone, like a phantom. Dad placed an arm around my shoulder as we walked out of the stadium. “Quite a day, huh? You drove in six runs, saw a big league ball game, and met the greatest hitter of all time.”

     “He played you on the line. He knows your game.”

     “He knows everybody’s game. He probably remembers every goddam pitch he ever hit or didn’t hit. He’s a mad scientist. That’s why he’s great.”

     (Next Sunday installment: “High School Showdown.”)

                               BIG TED KLUSZEWSKI SHOWS ME HIS KNUCKLEBALL

1961

     Scouts from the newest expansion team in the big leagues, the LA Angels, asked me to work out with them at Wrigley Field during their first series with the fabled New York Yankees. I got to the field early, and dressed beside Ted Kluszewski and Steve Bilko, two immense firstbasemen, possibly the strongest in all of baseball, who platooned against right and left-handed pitching. Both men were late in their careers and weighed around 250 pounds of solid muscle and nodded at me in a kindly manner as I slipped my 160 pounds into an Angel uniform. As a child, I had baseball cards of both behemoths. Kluszewski was one of the great power/high average hitters of his generation, a borderline Hall of Famer with a perfectly level pendulum swing, while Bilko languished though still popping prodigious tape-measure home runs.

      I hit early batting practice against their pitching coach, Marv Grissom. I was over anxious, trying to hit balls out, kept pulling low line drives foul, hitting the fence twice. Grissom gestured for me to calm down and then threw me pitches that dove or rose, grinning as he tied me up in knots. I hit the fence twice more at 340 feet and then went out to shortstop as the Angels hit BP and began flagging down their wicked shots, wanting to impress whoever might be watching me.

     Kluszewski, wrapped in an olive-green nylon sweat jacket, glove in his back pocket, walked out and stood by me as I pretended I was in a big league game. Somebody hit a hard groundball his way and he skipped out of the way, grinning at me.

     “Pretty dangerous out here, kid—a guy could get hurt.”

     I found my voice. “I figure I got to stop the hard ones if I’m gonna be any good, Mr. Kluszewski.”

     “Klu,” he said. “They call me Klu.” He watched me. “You got a good pair of hands, kid, and you swing level.” Then” “I got a helluva a knuckleball. Maybe some day they’ll let me pitch.” Then he wandered out into leftfield, where a cluster of pitchers kibitzed with outfielders, snuck up on Art Fowler, enfolded him in a headlock, talked casually to the group, then dragged Fowler by his neck into centerfield to discuss something with diminutive outfielders Albie Pierson and Lee Thomas, and then continued into right field, where he released Fowler and resumed conversations with other Angels.

     When starting shortstop Joe Koppe joined me at short, I moved over, and the first ball hit to him took a crazy hop and broke his nose. Blood spurted and he hustled into the training room. When we finished BP and I ran to the dugout, Angel manager Bill Rigney asked me if I wanted to take infield at 7:45 while they set Koppe’s nose. Of course I did! He grinned at me. The Angels retired to the clubhouse while the Yankees took the field and I remained in the dugout to watch them hit BP, their power hitters like Skowron, Maris, Berra, Howard and John Blanchard popping flyball homerun after flyball homerun into the stands or over the leftfield fence. When Mantle came up, there was an electric buzz around the cage as sportswriters closed in and Yankees joked with Mantle after he missed the first pitch. He grinned and then, left-handed, launched a ball that left his bat with a different sound than the others and cleared the right-field scoreboard like a golf tee shot. Nobody else had even reached the towering scoreboard wall; his blast had gone a hundred feet farther than the rest. His show of power was otherworldly.

     Sitting on the front step of the dugout, I snuck glances at move star Angie Dickenson, who sat in the adjoining box seat and occasionally met my sneaky glances with knowing grins. The Yankees left the field. I returned to the clubhouse while the ground crew dragged the infield and re-entered the dugout and ran onto the field to take infield in front of a full house. Kluszewski was at first. I fired the first ball over his head and nearly hit somebody in a box seat and he told me to calm down. From then on I was snappy and accurate, except on the 3-6-3 doubleplay, when Klu had me lurching awkwardly trying to corral his knuckleball and remain slick on the return throw. He gave me the knuckler on every throw and kept a straight face, and when we ran off the field he slapped me on the ass with his glove. Rigney nodded at me, very affirmative.

      I showered and joined Angus and a couple team mates and their parents high up in the stands, including Angus’s Mom and Dad. I asked Angus if he’d watched the Angels take infield.

     “Of course I did. Watched everything. Some arms out there, ey?”

     “That was me at short—all alone.”

     “Yer bloody full of it.”

     “Joe Koppe broke his nose. That was me, Big A, throwin’ to Big Klu, my buddy. How’d I look?”

     “Tell yah the truth, yah looked as good as any of ‘em.”

     Angus’s Mom chimed in” “He looked slick as the pros.”

     I nudged Angus. “Angie Dickenson’s sitting in a box seat next to the dugout, and she gave me the eye.”

     (Next Sunday Installment: “Meeting Ted Williams.”

                        ANGUS STEERS ME THROUGH THE FEMALE LABYRINTH

1961

     Besides winning a championship and signing a baseball contract, Angus’s major mission was getting me laid. He now had a main girl friend named Tammy and two others who were after him, and he was trying to palm them off on me, but it was obvious that girls who were hot for Angus had no interest in me.

     “Yah know, Dell,” he told me, the wild glint in his eye. “If rogues like us make it to the big leagues we’ll be fightin’ off the pussy, and they’ll be cream of the crop. Any guy ever wore the big league uniform’s had more women than he can count.”    

     On the ball field, we continued to win. The O.C. Register wrote up our team, and the student body, always obsessed with football and sometimes basketball, filled LaPalma Park for the first time ever. Walking down the corridors with Angus, fellow students—even girls!—smiled and waved at us like we were celebrities. The most popular pretty girls began to show up at our games with members of the political class of strivers and achievers, stomping during rallies and cheering our successes.

     One afternoon, sitting directly behind my Dad and a cluster of scouts, was Dawn Meadows. As always, she was clad in billowy ankle-length skirt revealing nothing, high-necked sweater, hair perfect, posture prim and self-assured, legs crossed, occasionally clapping, a smiling queen paying homage to her minions. We won the game, and I hit some rockets and ran the bases like a wild man, dirtying my uniform.

     Next day in English class I slouched in back studying her white neck in the front row. She had the clearest, pearliest skin, the bluest eyes, wore no make-up. When she talked she looked right at you. She listened intently and liked to smile. When class ended, she stopped me outside the door.

     “Dell, I just wanted to tell you what a good game you played yesterday. You are such a good baseball player.”

     I shuffled and grunted as she held her books against her ample chest. “I also think you’re a very good writer, and should be in Mrs. Rogers creative writing class.”

     “Yeh well.” I shrugged. Angus lurked down the hallway, holding hands with Tammy, who he was fucking on a regular basis in his brother’s car at the drive-in movie, and his eyes twinkled with lascivious mischief.

     Dawn stepped closer. “Dell, I don’t think you’re anything like you act. You put on this tough-guy act, so gruff, but inside I think you’re soft as a marshmallow. The act is just a cover-up, because you’re afraid of being sensitive. I think deep down inside you’re really a nice guy.”

     “I ain’t so nice.”

     “Why must you talk like a…street thug? You’re not fooling me one minute, Dell Franklin.” She smiled at me in a very wise and knowing yet fond manner. “I’d really like to be your friend. I think you’re an interesting person.”

     “I blushed. “Yeh? Well, yah wanna go out some time then, ey?

     “I like to have men friends. Sometimes girls are so…catty.”

     I turned abruptly and walked off. Angus winked as I passed by. From this point on, I went out of my way to ignore Dawn. Once, when I passed her in the hall, she slowed down and her eyes widened and pinned mine, as if to seek some explanation for my swinish behavior, but I huffed on by, snorting disdainfully. Later on she spotted me with Angus at the lunch benches and came right over. Angus leered and walked to another bench to observe the proceedings. Dawn was upset.

     “Why do you hate me, Dell?”

     “I hate everybody in this stupid school except my team mates, so don’t feel so isolated.”

     “Oh that’s a bunch of nonsense and you know it.” She thrust her delicate chin at me, blue eyes fiery. “Know what I think? I think you’re afraid to really like a girl, because Angus over there’ll make fun of you. And I think that’s so pathetic and spineless on your part. I thought you were your own man, but you’re just another follower, bending to peer pressure.”

     She walked off with haughty dignity as I stared at her white calves. I’d spied on her in gym class, and, though totally un-athletic, her boobs jounced and her legs rippled in her blue shorts, a sure sign that beneath the matronly attire was the voluptuous body of a blossoming woman at its most tender.

     “Yer bloody sweet on her,” Angus said after she stalked off. “Look, she’s the kind’ll get under yer skin and fuck with yer baseball. She’s a bloody virgin, I’d bet, the kind yah take home and marry. Yah pop her cherry and yah gotta marry her. And I’ll bet my ass and yer ass that once yah giver a good ram she’ll turn into a fine piece of arse, because that’s the way it is with the ones holdin’ back waitin’ for the right guy.” He pinched my cheek, leered. “She’s comin’ to all yer games, ey?”

     We continued winning, and I continued ignoring Dawn. One of her poetry class friends stopped me in the hall and asked who I was taking to the prom. I informed her I didn’t go to proms. She said a bunch of guys, including one of the brainy social climbers, who was going to Yale, had asked Dawn, but she hadn’t yet made a decision. At dinner, Dad asked, “Who’s the girl with the flawless skin and pretty blue eyes?”

     I shrugged. “Just another devoted fan.”

     He winked at mother. “Nice girl, Rose. He’s like his old man—good taste in women.” He glanced back at me. “You still a fighter, or you a lover?”

     Dawn finally pigeon-holed me outside English class. “Who are you taking to the prom—Angus?”

     “I hate proms. I ain’t wearin’ a damn monkey suit for nobody. I hate dancing. I hate everything about the whole stupid tradition. I’ll go to the all night party and get drunk.”

     She rolled her eyes. “You takin’ Angus to the all night party, too?”

     “Angus is taking Tammy. Maybe you can give him a big graduation kiss, ey?”

     She stormed off, but came to my game the next afternoon, sitting directly behind my Dad and the scouts, and when I happened to glance over at her she looked right at me, and smiled knowingly.

     (Next Sunday installment: Big Ted Kluszewski Shows Me His Knuckleball)

                                        COACH MAKES ME RESPONSIBLE

1961

     Coach Merk pulled Angus and me into his office before our first practice, and sitting at his desk, feet propped up, said, “I know you two don’t give a hoot and hell about school and I know you’re running amuck. Well, here’s my advice: If you’re going to skip class, don’t get caught, and make sure you do enough to stay eligible. We’re going to have a great team this year if we get any kind of pitching and you two knuckleheads stay out of trouble.” We promised in unison to stay out of trouble. Then coach looked me in the eye. “I’m moving you to second base, so you’ll be more relaxed. At second, you can become the best ball player in the league, in any league anywhere. Dell, you have unique insights into the game, a second sense, so I’m giving you the green light at the plate and on the bases. I’m also making you, along with our catcher, Gary Martin, co-captain. I expect you to lead this team and set an example. You know what to do. I believe in you.”

     All business, I began running practices for coach. No more clowning. Angus, Martin and I were the first ones on the field, hauling out the equipment, playing pepper while the rest of the team straggled out. I pitched batting practice until coach had his pitchers prepared. Some of the JV’s who played Legion ball were improved, and we had some decent arms on the mound, though nobody special. When the pre-league schedule began, we pounded good teams from large schools. I hit third and Angus clean-up. I held my temper at all costs but still cussed and drew complaints from a couple religious members who recoiled with distaste when I wrathfully informed them cussing and talking about pussy and insulting team mates was a vital part of the game.

     Coach remained mum when I blistered team mates for dogging it or playing stupid. I began to execute with discipline and key into every situation, every hitter. I crowded the plate with belligerence. Our flashy new shortstop, Roy Nash, who had good hands and a cannon for an arm, grudgingly accepted my harsh goading as we worked for hours on the doubleplay. I encouraged and chastised him. A finicky switch-hitter with a picture-book swing but a hole in it inside, he took too many good pitches, and I knocked him down in BP when he took a strike and nagged him constantly to be a “fucking hitter and swing the bat, stop being a goddam beggar!”

     In games, I took gigantic leads and either bluffed a steal or stole. My speed had improved, allowing me to challenge and outrun all the top sprinters on the track team in spikes. The game was mine again. I was on a mission, riding the crest, capable of doing magical things. I was a frothing animal on the field, wishing to cut the guts out of my opponents, bonding with my team mates like a fanatical Marine. Coach nodded at me, winking. He knew me inside out, knew the best way to handle me was to leave me alone.

     Dad said, “Looks like you’re finally maturing.”

     Our league was one of the strongest in Southern California. Every team had prospects drawing scouts—Stephenson, Peters and a pitcher named Ron Yett at Anaheim; pitcher/shortstop Ed Sukla at Huntington Beach; Rich Rison at Newport Beach; Jim Campanis and a catcher named McCauly at Fullerton; hulking pitcher/outfielder Roy Gleason at Garden Grove; Angus, Nash, myself and a tall, goose-necked outfielder named Tom Quick who had blossomed at Western.

     We started out winning in league and ran neck-and-neck with Anaheim, a team on a crusade as Stephenson dominated like a colossus. Before our first game against them at LaPalma, Peters sidled up to me, unaware I’d made it my personal agenda to hate all opponents, and said, “Guess you’re doing it all this year. Must be less pressure at second, huh? Maybe short was too much responsibility.”

     I walked away. We battled Stephenson and beat him in a tight game. I walked and reached first on an error and unnerved him on the bases, causing a wild pick-off throw, though I still hadn’t got a solid hit off him. After the game, I went out of my way to avoid Jerry and Peters. I was one hard-bitten motherfucker.

     I was choking up on one of 6 of my Dad’s model bats from Hillrich & Bradsby in Louisville that he’d ordered straight from the manufacturing plant and pounding out a plus .400 average, balls exploding off the major league grain and finding gaps in the outfield, my level top-hand swing creating topspin on hard grounders that ate up infielders. I was on a tear. Guys pitched around me, and the Big A feasted—a one-two punch.

     I had not forgotten the day I lost my guts on the doubleplay against Centennial as a sophomore at Compton, a bad dream that still haunted me in the middle of nights. Late in the game against Huntington Beach at La Palma Park in which I’d already pivoted on two doubleplays, a burly football player named Tom Parker—a notorious hard slider—was on first base. Sure enough, our crack thirdbaseman, Mike Mathias, fielded a bouncer and flipped me a strike at second. Parker was on top of me with a big jump, yelling like a Kamikaze and neglecting to slide in an attempt to run me over. I straddled the bag and in one motion turned and released the ball at his face, causing him to dive just short of the bag as the ball carried to first to complete the DP. Parker lay on his side. I stepped over him and jogged off the field as Angus, on the run, slapped me hard on the ass.

     “Fuckin’ A!” he shouted.

     The following day the Orange County Register had a front page photo in the sports section of Parker hurling his body at me while ducking at the last minute as the ball flew an inch from his ear. Under the photo was the caption: “Tom Parker’s rough tactics go for naught as Dell Franklin completes his third doubleplay of the game.”  An accompanying article went on to report I led the league in DP’s, doubles, stolen bases, had made only one error, and struck out once this season. The same game of the three DP’s I roped two doubles. Dad was at the game, sitting with Baltimore and Milwaukee scouts. When I got home that night, he said, “You’re really wracking that pea, but you’re not getting enough steam on your doubleplay relay. You can nail these high school kids, but in the big leagues you need more carry on your peg.”

     “I thought I hung in there pretty good.”

     “You’re supposed to.”

     (Next Sunday installment: “Angus Steers me through the Female Labyrinth”)

                                              TED WILLIAMS DOES IT HIS WAY

Big Moe

     Sometimes Ted would go to a bar in Boston and order milk and wait for a sportswriter to come by, maybe looking for some dirt, and if he was in a real surly mood, being the surly guy he was, he’d show the writer the glass of milk and pour it on his head.

     “Write about that,” he’d say.

     This was one of the few ways he could get back at them. He was fair game, and didn’t play up to anybody, especially writers. Some guys, like Boudreau, went out of their way to accommodate writers and never had anything bad to say about anybody, knew how to hold court and schmooze, and in the long run it helped him and his team, but Williams was the opposite, wouldn’t bow down to anybody and let his hitting do his talking. He didn’t care about getting along with people. He was his own man, and refused to wear a tie and nobody could get him to wear one, not even the President, who he didn’t like anyway, being a dumb-ass republican like Feller.

     As players, we mostly liked him. He was a good guy, a stand-up guy. You couldn’t help but like him. He was like a big kid that wouldn’t grow up, looked like a big gangly kid, even after he hung ‘em up and started getting all those wrinkles from hunting and fishing. He was always gung-ho about the things he liked, and pooh-poohed what he didn’t like, and that was the way it was with him—obstinate, opinionated as hell. If he was going to do something for somebody, he didn’t want anybody, and especially the press, knowing about it. He got enough glory being the greatest hitter in the game. He liked to hobnob with the trainer, the clubhouse man, the grounds-keeping crew at Fenway. He could be himself around those guys, and he made sure to help them out when they had family or financial problems. On the other hand, if you were a big general in the Marines, or a politician, and wanted your picture taken with him, well, he didn’t come to you, you came to HIM, because he kissed nobody’s ass.

     When I played short against him I positioned myself behind second base, because as a left-handed pull hitter he refused to hit to left field, disdaining the “Williams shift” that was originated by Boudreau, who knew Ted was too stubborn to do anything but blast the ball right by you or through you. When I played second I was always in short right field, while York played deep behind first base along the line, and he still ripped rockets by you, hit the ball so hard you had trouble reacting. He hit the ball harder than anybody, and hit it with a topspin that caused the ball to explode off the ground and eat you up, and you’d better by God wear your cup when Ted was hitting! I’ve seen him hit line drives at Briggs Stadium that never got over 12 feet high, caromed off the right field wall and bounced back into the infield for a stand-up single! I remember Ted hitting balls that ricocheted off infielders’ chests and knees, nearly dehorning them, and afterwards he’d stand on first looking up at the scoreboard, knowing the official scorer was a sportswriter, and sure enough the scoreboard would put up an E-3, or E-4, or E-6, and the crowd booed, and he’d glare up at those guys in the press box—Knights of the Keyboard” he called them—and he’d spit in their direction, because he hated them, hated them because they never got it right and were always stirring up trouble and blamed him for everything, including losing to the Yankees year after year when everybody knew the Yankees at that time had the greatest team in baseball and maybe the best ever.

     When the scribes came around the clubhouse fishing for stories, if he wasn’t in the trainer’s room, he insulted them with profanity, called them gutless, stupid, you name it. He always did things the hard way, his way, on purpose, it seemed, losing MVP awards when he hit for a triple crown, and my God, can you believe that? And God knows how many points they took off his lifetime batting average screwing him on errors everybody in the ball park knew were hits. But he didn’t give a damn, because he knew who he was and how good he was. Ted was as difficult as he was brilliant, and who knows, maybe all geniuses at their trade are temperamental pains in the asses.

(Next Sunday installment: Coach makes me Responsible)

                                      ANGUS TAKES CHARGE OF ME

1961

     I was eating lunch at a bench by myself at school when a kid who looked to be around 25 came up and introduced himself as Angus Taylor. He’d heard I was the star baseball player on campus and informed me he’d moved down here from Moose Jaw, Canada to pursue a professional baseball career as a centerfielder. He was stocky with a husky voice, wavy black hair, heavily lidded eyes and a bold, direct manner. I invited him to sit down. He told me he played junior hockey and had a chance to turn pro in that sport, but, much as he loved hockey, he loved baseball more. His family had sold their home and moved everything they owned to this area because it was a baseball hotbed where he had a better chance to “sign.” He said there were hardly any scouts in the vast regions of Calgary, so his family had taken a big gamble for him. His Dad, a plumber, had managed to find a good job and his older brother, a roughneck, worked and lived at home.

     We began hanging out and one afternoon pitched batting practice to each other. He was strong, fairly fleet and graceful, had a level pendulum swing, and did things right. He didn’t have a strong arm. He poked me in the chest afterwards.

     “I hear yer a fuckin’ prima-donna, throwin’ bloody temper tantrums like a little kid. Christ, I wish I had half yer talent. An idgit can see yer a fuckin’ natural. But I ain’t  playin’ with a bloody flake. This is our senior year, and I’m shapin’ yer ass up, because this is OUR team, your team and MY team, and since yer gonna be my best friend, I’m gonna take yer sorry ass under my wing, and we’re gonna win this league and we’re both gonna sign and be playin’ pro ball…okay?”

     Okay. I became his personal project. Right off he accused me of having a negative attitude toward women; and right off it was obvious he had a way with the girls, like it came second nature. “Listen, I’ve got more pussy than you might get in your whole life. I been at it since I was thirteen. I already got my eye on a couple hoo-ers. These babes down here are dynamite compared to the farm heifers back home.” He poked my chest. “Yah just gotta know how to talk to ‘em. You don’t. Yah never look at ‘em when yer talkin’ to ‘em, because a blind man can see yer afraid of girls.”

     “Bullshit.”

     “Oh yes yah are. First of all, yer a decent lookin’ guy, but yah dress like a bum. First impressions mean a lot. And I seen the way yah gawk at that goody-goody Polly Puritan Dawn Meadows. Stay away from that wench, and follow the big A, and I’ll set yah up with a bloody hoo-er, and once yah nail one of them, all ‘of ‘em’ll be after yer scrawny ass if yah throw ‘em a good fuck. All yah gotta do, Dell, is hang out with the big A and let me do the talkin’, and yah’ll get laid.”

     The Big A, like me, didn’t give a hoot for school. We spent our time in pool halls in bowling allies in Orange County, where the big players shot for money. Angus grew up above a tavern and was a crack shot able to run rack after rack in straight pool. He corrected my bridge and taught me how to hustle and soon we were gambling every weekend. Angus befriended perfect strangers with his big innocent and disarming smile and instant charm. We began making money, the Big A always making the final kill against older, more experienced players. “Don’t mess with the A,” he whispered to me after each conquest, his eyes dancing with mischief and conquest.

     When we hunted down girls—mostly gum-chewing twitchy-hipped sophomores in tight dresses who seemed drawn to Angus as if he was Elvis--he watched me act interested in them and try to make friendly conversation, and chastised me afterwards. “Just feed ‘em the Southern Comfort,” he urged. “They don’t give a flyin’ fuck about what you got to say. What yah do is give ‘em a buncha shit, keep ‘em off balance, maybe make ‘em cry, then make up, and then they’re fulla passion, and yah nail ‘em like yah love ‘em, only yah never get stupid and TELL ‘em yah love ‘em, because then they either get bored and drop yah, or they try to trap yer ass in marriage.”

      I didn’t dare admit to him I couldn’t stop thinking about and keeping my eyes off Dawn Meadows of the porcelain skin and perfect posture and prize-winning smile that oozed easy self-confidence and was pursued by student presidents and those already headed for the American Dream success story. I hated myself for being attracted to her and thus ignored her when she said hello to me like I was special--like she did everybody else--and actually snickered, following the Big A’s advice, causing her to pause and stare at me in shock and then purposely ignore me in English class, which I relished.

     Since my Chevy was filthy and cluttered, Angus borrowed his brother’s big roomy smoke-spewing, clanging Packard with the big back seat after he convinced one of his squeezes to talk a friend into going out with me on a double date. When he came to our house my parents looked him over pretty well and he talked baseball with Dad. Mother winked at me and said Angus had “the devil in his baby blue eyes.” Dad was thrilled I had a baseball buddy, mentioned that Angus was much more mature than me, felt he was “good for me.”

     “Yer Dad, he’s something,” Angus said, heading to the home of a couple sophomore vixens with a trunk full of Southern Comfort and Beer bought by his brother Bill. “I can see how yah ended up such a great ball player with a Dad like that, but Dell, if I were you I’d sign and get out from under his shadow and play ball a thousand miles away.”

    (Next Sunday installment: Ted Williams Does it HIS way).

                                        MR. KORFMAN PLANTS A SEED

    

1960

     Without consulting Dad or Joe Stephenson, I decided to take winter ball off, but Dad was more disgusted with my grades in school than not playing baseball, wanting me to go to college like he did. My grades sunk to below C as I shirked my studies. I wanted no part of school. My only meager talent seemed to be in English, where my teacher, Mr. Robert Korfman, a square fuddy-duddy in vested suits and bow ties, exercised no-nonsense control over his class while verbalizing a passion for literature that was not to be compromised. He shocked me by reading one of my compositions of fans at a ball game to the class. Students roared with laughter and hung on every word, unlike with other readings, where they yawned and dawdled. Girls, and especially a popular beauty named Dawn Meadows, who’d previously cringed at the sight of me as I slouched in the back, actually turned to smile at me, like I was an actual human instead of a deadly disease.

     Mr. Korfman, a Kansan, had me stay after class and looked me in the eye and chastised me gently for being so “tunneled into baseball at the exclusion of everything else,” an anti-intellectual charade he found “childish and mindless.” Wow!

     “Sit down, Dell Franklin.” I complied, clutching my ragged notebook. “You, my fine-feathered friend, are NOT just a jock. You’re a writer, whether you like it or not. You possess all the sensibilities and instincts of a writer, even if you are so confined in your development you can only write about buffoons sitting in the bleachers at ball games. You have a rare gift. Don’t waste it being a one-dimensional person. The fact that you’re a terrible student should not matter if you pursue a passion for reading and writing. You might even surprise yourself some day. Sometimes the most errant kids, the worst students, the most mixed up souls, go on to do great things in the arts.”

     Despite myself, I was flattered. “So what should I do, Mr. Korfman?”

     “There’s a creative writing class run by Mrs. Rogers. I can recommend you and you can pay her a visit. The class has been going on for a couple months, and some of the students are skilled and been writing seriously since they were young. But none of them have what you have…” He smacked his gut. “I see a seed growing there. Water it. And when you report to Mrs. Rogers, be sure to make an effort to be humble. Tell her you want to write. I’ll put in a good word for you. I’m counting on you now.”

     I was inspired by Mr. Korfman. I did like writing. It went hand-in-hand with my propensity to entertain, embellish, fabricate, relate stories from what I’d observed on a daily basis, like Dad, who was a riotous story teller at Hot Stove meetings. Often I amused Sturrock and Shaw with tales of the shoemakers at the store and off-beat characters I’d seen in Compton.

     When I reported to Mrs. Rogers, a heavy woman who wore baggy dresses, she immediately informed me it was too late to enter her hand-picked class of budding prodigies who worked on the school paper, the yearbook, were members of the poetry club, and entered fiction contests.

     “What have you written so far, Mr. Franklin?”

     I explained my baseball piece written for Mr. Korfman. She sighed, rolled her eyes. “There’s simply too much work to make up.”

     “Ma’am, how many assignments would I have to make up?”

     “Several essays and two short stories.”

     “I’ll do them all tonight. I’m a fast worker. I’ve got ideas.”

     “I’ll have to talk to Mr. Korfman.” She dismissed me.

     Next day, Mr. Korfman informed me Mrs. Rogers wanted no part of me in her class. He was smiling at me. “She finds you exceedingly arrogant and feels you’ll be disruptive. So you see, Dell, perhaps you will learn a lesson. You should have said you’d TRY and write the assignments you were behind on in a few days or a week, and you wished to write about subjects other than baseball, instead of bowling her over with your confidence.”

     “I was going to write about a bunch of shoemakers, sir. With all due respect for one of your fellow teachers, Mrs. Rogers is a pompous snob.”

     He erupted into laughter. “Well, whatever your views on that subject, it would have given you the opportunity to write.” He placed the tip of his pencil against his chin, scrutinizing me severely, yet with a glint of humor in his eyes. “You could have LEARNED something. It would have been a good experience to get thrown into a different mix. Now I can only implore you to write on your own, and to read voraciously. Read the American masters first—Twain, Steinbeck, Hemingway. Read everything you can get your hands on. I can recommend other writers as you grow. Good literature will train you to think and force you to feel, and you will become more in touch with your emotions and intellect, and better able to cope with what life throws at you. I’m counting on you to read and write, young man.”

     “I promise I will, sir. And thank you.”       

(Next Sunday installment: “Angus Takes Charge of Me.)

 

                                                   A WASTED SUMMER

1960

     During the summer I worked for Dad and played American Legion ball for West Anaheim. Three mornings a week I followed Dad in my Chevy to arrive at the store at 7:30, where a dozen or so shoemakers awaited him in eager anticipation of donuts, coffee and kibitzing, Dad’s mood was instant sunshine the second he arrived, no matter how worried or pissed off he was about other matters. These men were not customers of Dad, but friends whose life breath was attuned to their morning visits, which were lively and full of laughter and gossip, led by Dad, who always had new stories, jokes and “hot poop.” He made a fuss over each shoemaker, as if they were special, and it occurred to me that they were, and that he found something in everybody to appreciate or like, even his so-called “Cheap Sams” who squabbled over every cent and felt they were getting screwed; even the characters lacking any amiable traits, even the assholes.

     When Dad became nervous and flustered during hectic rushes when we wrote up orders together, I often went too fast and he occasionally lashed out and sometimes exploded at me to “slow down and stop making mistakes,” because any tiny mistake was a catastrophe of massive proportions and drove him into rages. I yelled back at him and he threatened me and I held my ground, knowing to back off from the beast was total submission, and we went chin to chin in blood-curdling, snarling-dog screaming matches, driving his beloved shoemakers outside or to the back of the store until the two of us cooled off and acted like the confrontation never took place, like a switch was turned on and off, and as the shoemakers trickled back to the big wide counter up front business resumed as usual, as if nothing so volatile had occurred, almost as if these grimy, hard-working mostly Italian American men were used to it and even understood and enjoyed the spectacle.

     When Dad asked what I wanted to be paid, I told him to give me what I deserved or the minimum wage. He insisted I was worth more than the minimum wage despite being a chronic pain in the ass because I did work hard and besides needed a little extra money—for the girls. But I had no girl friend. Most of the girls at Western High looked upon me as a clown-around-baseball player or a morose idler in class, staring at breasts and asses and fantasizing. Whenever I worked up enough courage to talk to a girl in hope of perhaps making a date, I was gruff and blurted out questions or statements, not about to be some mawkish lover-boy kissing ass, and was doubtlessly regarded as a pestilence. Oh well.

     I began boozing with Sturrock, who’d graduated and worked steel downtown days, and a Legion pitcher named Mike Shaw, who worked for his Dad who managed a drugstore. We found any number of local drunks to buy us beer and Southern Comfort and drove around with no special destination or direction in the flat drab O.C. wastelands, chowing down on burgers and talking sports and women, though both these guys were already hog-tied by girls who had planned their lives together since junior high and kept a tight wary eye on them to make sure they didn’t stray, distrusting me as a threat to their dreams.

     Our American Legion team was as big a mess as the high school crew, with a sprinkling of Junior varsity players and John Huarte, a jut-jawed All American high school football quarterback from a nearby Catholic school. A pitcher with mediocre stuff, he was a phenomenal football player headed to Notre Dame and the Heisman trophy and became our unquestioned leader who tried not to show his disgust when we flailed miserably and I continued kicking at things and flipping my bat and cursing savagely, feeling like a penitent little boy beside John, who was the epitome of excellence and character. But I couldn’t help myself, was like a tortured dog biting himself up and down

gnawing at fleas.

     Our coach, Frank Blunt, a tall bulgy man who loved baseball but had never played much and knew less, was too intimidated by my being the son of Murray Franklin to offer me advice on how to play and conduct myself. He’d enlisted an assistant coach named Bill Lentini, a small, curly-headed man with intense brown eyes who owned a tire store in Stanton. Lentini was a street guy who knew little about baseball, had never played much, but, like Blunt, was so in love with the game he donated free balls and bats and helped run practices. He was excited about all aspects of baseball and indeed possessed a visceral instinct about the guts inside a player, and a person, and stroked me with flattery every time I screwed up, almost as if he was trying to single-handedly rebuild in me what had been reduced to ashes. Bill became friends with and worked as a bird-dog for Chicago White Sox head scout Doc Bennett and reiterated to me over and over that “You have everything there is to be a great big leaguer—those wrists, those wheels, your instinct…”

     I felt he was making this up to salvage me, but much later I learned he meant it. Meanwhile, I began to consider getting away from baseball for a while and was forced to suspect I lacked some vital ingredient to succeed in this game, a mental make-up that held me back, which caused me to lose hope when things went bad, to get too down on myself and distrust the encouragement of a generous, compassionate man like Lentini. 

     But without baseball, what would I do, and what was my life, other than a passage not worth living? And how would Dad feel about his son being a quitter?

     (Next Sunday installment: Mr. Korfman plants a seed)

                              BIRDIE TEBBETTS—BENCH JOCKEY

BIG MOE

     Birdie Tebbetts was a fine catcher and a pretty fair hitter and knew the game inside out, and especially pitchers. He knew just how much gas a guy had left in his tank, when he was losing his stuff and ready to get shelled, and he could get on guys pretty good, really get under your skin. He was smart and had a piercing, twangy voice, which was why they called him “Birdie,” an obnoxious, irritating voice that carried all over the field and cut right through you, and he had a sarcastic way of saying things that always got your goat—he was a first rate needler, a sniper, an original, maybe the best in the game. He was what you call a bench jockey, a lost art these days, what with all these guys making so much money and swapping teams and having agents and fraternizing like bosom buddies, being so sensitive and all and not wanting to hurt each others feelings.

     One day in St. Louis Tebbetts was on a pitcher with the Browns named Vern Kennedy, a guy he’d caught a few years earlier with Detroit, a strapping guy from Kansas, a former track star and football player. It was very hot, sweltering, and it doesn’t get any hotter than it does in St. Louis in the summer. You can’t breathe on a day like that, the outfield grass is baked brown and the field hard as concrete, almost like the field breathes fire. Birdie was riding Kennedy. At first it was playful, because they were old team mates and all, but then Kennedy started struggling, and Birdie’s saying he ain’t got this and he ain’t got that, “you’ll be gone by the fourth inning, Kennedy, your fastball’s straight as a string, you’re dead meat…,” just sniping away, and sure enough Kennedy doesn’t have it that day, gets knocked around, and by the fourth inning he’s gone, and Birdie’s crowing and gloating, and Kennedy, he’s sopping wet, got beat up for a bunch of runs suffering in that heat, watching line drives whistle past him and bounce off the fence and guys circling the bases, and he gets an unmerciful booing when he walks to the dugout.

     Birdie’s on the bench that day, not catching, and he keeps right on crowing and gloating when Kennedy walks to the dugout. But instead of leaving for the clubhouse and taking an early shower, like all pitchers do after they get their brains beat out, Kennedy sits down in that stifling hot dugout with a towel around his neck and takes his cap off, and he sits there like that for the rest of the game, and all during that time Birdie sees him over there and stays on his ass. Well, out ball club has to get to our clubhouse through their dugout, and when the game ends and we pass through their dugout, it’s empty except for Kennedy, who’s still sitting there, towel around his neck, a very quiet and polite gentleman who minds his own business and never has anything bad to say about anybody. He stands up and asks Birdie if he has anything more to say, and before Birdie can open his mouth Kennedy decks him with one punch, knocks him down and out, hits him so hard that for a minute or so we think he might be dead.

     Kennedy picks up his glove and cap and walks out of the dugout, the towel still around his neck, and we carry Tebbetts into the clubhouse and lay him down on the training table where the doc attends to him, gives him the smelling salts. He’s pretty groggy, and the next day he’s pretty quiet, and misses the game, and everybody on the club’s on his ass, calling him “:one punch Tebbetts” and “Old Canvas back.” He took it pretty well in stride. Birdie knew the business and took it as well as he gave it out, and the next time we played the Browns and Kennedy pitched, Birdie got on him again, but he made sure to stay away from the personal stuff, and nothing came of it.

(Next Sunday installment: A Wasted Summer and a respite)

                                           TRYING TO BE THE MAN

1960

     The ball field at Western High was second rate and the school without athletic legacy, had been converted from a junior high. Our first practice coach Merk put me at shortstop. I felt quicker, faster, stronger, and watched my batting practice grounders eat infielders up. We started out the pre-league schedule winning four straight and because we had nowhere near the talent of Compton, I felt it was my responsibility to lead the team by example and production. I was an established prospect and played with swagger, knowing I made a difference. We were excited about being league contenders instead of perennial doormats. I was the “Big Dog,” perhaps to my new team mates a savior, seasoned by continuous winter league play with the Red Sox, with other prospects like Andy Etchebarren. I was almost “there.”

     We continued winning in league play and were to play undefeated Anaheim at La Palma Park—their home field—in a game highly publicized in the Orange County Register. Anaheim was strong, with a great tradition, led by Stephenson and a gifted shortstop, big, raw-boned Frank Peters, a kid with enormous hands and a cerebral application to the game. Frank, a power hitter, also played winter ball for Boston and alternately exchanged banter with me as we vied for playing time. He accused me of being a “punch hitter” and told me before the big game, “I got six homers to your one,” and then: “Jerry says he owns you—he knows your weakness.”

     “We’ll see about that,” I countered. “And by the way, how many stolen bases you got? I got twelve.”

      I was so pumped for Stephenson, with whom I’d been talking trash for two years, I could hardly breathe when I came up to hit, batting third. As expected, Jerry brushed me back on the first pitch with a ball that hissed by me like a freight train. I grinned and made a show of digging in. He threw me a bunch of sliders away, which I fouled off. He jammed me with a fastball, which I fouled back. Then he froze me with a perfect fastball on the low outside corner, the first pitcher to strike me out all year.

     I was furious, my brain roaring. Anaheim bombed our pitcher. Frank hit a homer into the stands, lumbered past me at short, head down. Stephenson shut us out, got me to hit two weak ground outs. Afterward, Peters paused as he headed toward their team bus as we racked up our equipment. I was smoldering. “Don’t feel bad, Franklin,” he said. “Nobody’s touched Stephenson all year, except me in intra-squad games. Someday I might give you my secret.”

     The Anaheim loss burst our bubble. We went on a losing streak. Our pitching fell to ruins. I tried to do too much, began pressing at the plate and went into a tailspin, feeling responsible for each loss. The more I pressed and fought myself, the worse I played. The stunned and disbelieving looks on my team mates faces gave me pause as to my own sanity when they watched me kick and throw things, fulminating, cursing savagely, losing control of myself and entering a mindless derangement I felt consuming me and which I was helpless to combat or escape. Coach Merk came over and told me to calm down. He seemed concerned, peering at me as if I was some new person he did not recognize. I found myself panting like a mad dog on the verge of frothing at the mouth. What the fuck was happening to me?

     I needed Loman Young to set me straight, as he always had, but now I was the “Man,” a supposed leader, and only Sturrock, whose batting helmet we shared, was furious when I kicked it so hard the bill tore off and he had to face a pitcher with a helmet looking like something a Nazi troop would wear. He let me have it, calling me a “goddam spoiled baby.” This stopped me. He also came over later as I sat seething quietly in the corner of the dugout, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, “I know it means everything to you, but it’s just a game, and I’m worried you’re going to seriously hurt yourself, the way you’re thrashing around.”

     Dad, not able to catch my games very often now that he was working 20 miles away, finally sat me down one night. “You’re so goddam herky-jerky and nervous, I’ve never seen anything like it. Since when do you start throwing things around like a half-cocked busher? You can’t throw your goddam bat every time you make an out. You’re gonna make out six or seven times every ten times at bat, even at this level, because that’s just the way it is. You’re up there fighting yourself after one pitch. You’ve got to stay on an even keel if you’re gonna play this game, Dell. You can’t let the highs and lows destroy you, or you’ll never snap out of a slump. You can’t go hangdog when you’re stinking it up, and you can’t think you invented the game when you’re going good. And goddammit, the worst thing about you acting like a fucking maniac is it’s selfish, you’re only thinking about yourself, and your team mates and your coach’ll end up hating you.” He put a hand on my shoulder. He was genuinely worried. “If the game’s gonna drive you crazy, don’t play, or take a little rest. I mean it.”

     To counter-act what was happening to me—I felt like a prisoner to my moods and emotions—I found myself clowning. In practice, I ran the bases backwards; I imitated a penguin and made crazed slides into bases and had my team mates laughing, though strangely. I realized I possessed a slapstick talent that had people rolling over, holding their bellies. This act seemed to relieve the pressure somewhat and turn my game around, even as my new team mates called me “Cut-up, Flake, Clown, Mad-dog, and Psycho.”

     When we played Anaheim the last game of the year, I no longer felt like the “Man.” I had become over the course of the season some other person. Peters launched another homer and Stephenson shut us down. I made three outs, none hit hard, but didn’t strike out. Anaheim won the league, and it was announced by the public address system after the game that they would enter the state playoffs, representing our Sunset League, and that Peters and Jerry made first team all league. They posed together for the photographer from the O.C. Register. I scooted quickly to the bus, avoiding them.

(Next Sunday installment: “Birdie Tebbetts—the Sniper.”)

                            OFF THE BLOCK AND INTO THE SUBURBS

1960

     There was sudden upheaval in my life as we moved into a 3 bedroom home in the planned suburb of Rossmoor, which was on the fringe of Orange County and had no downtown, no community center, no churches or stores or gyms, no blacks, Mexicans or hooligan white trash, no crazed dogs chasing you or your car down the street, only identical freshly minted homes in a perfectly symmetrical town-size grid—a sprawling mosaic walled in and isolated from the world. All the trees were new and small. The streets seemed deserted and devoid of the hum and babble of block life, where everybody knew everybody. There was no visible dissension among the white collar families slipping in and out of electrically opening and closing garage doors in their shiny sedans and station wagons. I was exiled from all I’d ever known and sentenced to this strange and utterly vapid utopia that had me unnerved  and feeling like I’d lost all individuality and identity. Nobody waved to me, asked how I was doing in baseball, or how my parents were. I had no crew to run with.

     Worst of all, I would not be playing at Compton High, beside my pals, Paul Schaal and Loman Young, where I was established as an important entity.

     I now attended Western High in Anaheim, a cross town rival of Anaheim High, where Jerry Stephenson starred. I drove eight miles to school in my jalopy. The Orange County kids were cheerful, wholesome, directed, white, the school work harder than at Compton, where many of the black kids migrated from inferior black schools in the south. The baseball coach, Roy Merk, a compact, bald man, rose quickly when I entered his trophy laden office and shook my hand, welcomed me to his program, informed me Coach Edgmon had called and given him a glowing report on my character and baseball skills.

     “He didn’t need to,” Coach Merk said, smiling. “I saw you play in the Anaheim tournament. You’re a helluva a ball player. We’re more than pleased to have you aboard. I think you’ll like our kids and we’ll have a pretty good team.” I was already aware that their team last year had been terrible.

     While we talked, a stocky kid with coke-bottle glasses and a big friendly grin came into the office, and I was introduced to the football team starting guard and baseball catcher, Dave Sturrock, a senior. We shook hands.

     “I saw you play at LaPalma. You’re a great player. I can’t wait for baseball season to start. And hey, I grew up in LA and idolized your Dad when he played for the Stars. I’d be honored to meet him. I’ve still got his autograph from Gilmore Field.”

     It wasn’t long before Sturrock was at the house meeting Dad, who now drove 20 miles to work. By the time baseball season arrived, I’d met all the varsity players through Dave, my immediate good friend, and more than a few of them made the pilgrimage to meet Dad, who regaled them with baseball stories while they admired his silver bat. Gone from our walls were the framed baseball pictures that filled our den in Compton. Our new modernistic furniture was uncomfortable. Mother was now school nurse at Bolsa Grande high school in nearby Garden Grove. Susie took a bus to school.

     In Rossmoor, everybody seemed well dressed and well off, except me, as I still wore rags. Our neighbors prevailed in a sort of smugness, as if they had achieved a level in society higher than ordinary folks like those in Compton. I felt alienated. Something brewed inside me that I was struggling to comprehend—an attitude of denial I was part of this plasticized cornucopia, and a rancorous disdain for what so many had aspired to all their lives—the American Dream and all its luxurious trappings. I despised this place; it made me feel squeamish. I wanted no part of it. I itched to get away from it so I could breathe again. I refused to go into our pool, of which Dad, though no swimmer, was so proud.

      When I tried to explain my new feelings to Mom, she said, “You’ll adjust and make new friends and everything will work out. You’ll discover that people are essentially the same everywhere and observing them and getting to know them will enlighten you. Change can be good.”

      When Dad sensed my discontent and asked what was eating me, I shrugged, and said I couldn’t stand Rossmoor. He seemed confused. “All I ever wanted is to give you a better life, Dell, and better things than I had.”

     “I don’t want any of it, Dad—it’s bullshit.”   

     He just stared at me, as if to say, “Is this my fucking kid?”

     (Next Sunday installment: “Trying to be the Man.”) 

                                                    BEANED

1959

     Our Bellflower American Legion team played a little better than .500 ball and finished in the middle of the pack in our league. Not much was expected of us in the 80 team prestigious Anaheim tournament at La Palma Park. We didn’t have enough pitching, or a prospect at that position. Our prospects being scouted were Schaal, Milt Swift and me. At bat I had run into a brief slump and Dad had me hit an hour of pepper, just meeting the ball, running the choked up knob end of the bat through my wrists and forearms, a training exercise to induce me into keeping my right shoulder level and my top right hand following through. He told me I was being too anxious, and although it was alright to be aggressive, I didn’t need to be jumping at the ball with my quick wrists; I could wait.

     We won our first two night games and I hit several line drive singles and doubles and the scouts in the stands picked me as shortstop on the regional all star team. I stayed overnight at Jerry Stephenson’s house the night before our next game. We spent the entire day working out. I had dinner with his huge family. Then we were up all night talking baseball, baseball, baseball. I got very little sleep. We kept going on and on about our dads, this player, that player, whether they were in high school, college, the minors, majors. Both of us wanted to sign baseball contracts out of high school. Jerry was an excellent student, I just got by making B’s.

     That night we played Torrance. They had a very tall right-handed pitcher who threw hard, but he couldn’t get his curve over and my first two times up I whistled line drives past his ear into center, knocking in runs. He had a slow move to first and I stole bases on him. My third time up I didn’t pick up a fastball high and in quick enough and the ball smashed into the bottom-back of my head and helmet and sounded like an explosion going off inside my skull. Next thing I remember was sitting in the dirt trying to get up, my Dad and coach urging me to stay down, stay down…I refused and stood up when a doctor came down.

     I was not wobbly. My helmet had ended up at the screen behind home plate and was partially shattered. Dad and coach wanted me out of the game. The doc wanted to look into my eyes. We were ahead in the game. I don’t know why, but I started to go after the pitcher, who was apologetic and back-pedaled. Dad grabbed me.

     “He wasn’t throwing at you. You lost the ball in the lights. Leave that kid alone, he’s as shook up as you are.”

     I shrugged Dad off and sprinted to first base. The ump came over to ask was I okay. I told him I was fine. My ears rang and my brain buzzed, like a faraway ocean. Otherwise I was fine and stole second base. The pitcher, a prospect, was so shook up he walked three straight hitters, not coming close, always outside, and they took him out. When I came up next, I felt my ass oozing out of the box. I didn’t step out. I swung at the first pitch and blooped the ball into right for a single. But I realized I was flailing to get the hell out of the box as the public address announcer boomed out I was the son of Murray Franklin and I got a huge ovation from a packed house as I stood on first.

     After the game, Dad told me I should have taken the first pitch. Mother was irate at my staying in the game and wanted to take me to the hospital for x rays. I refused.

     “You don’t have to be like your Dad!” she scolded.

     Dad said, “He’s okay now. He knows what to do. This might never happen to him again.”

     My pals who didn’t play baseball were often in awe of my style of hugging the plate and almost daring the pitcher to come in tight on me. I tried to explain to them that hitting and all that went with it, including getting away from balls at your head and body, were just part of it, and though a huge part of it, something I was used to, and that wearing a helmet added a whole new dimension to fighting the fear every hitter felt when he watched a hard thrower warm up or stood in against a wild flame-throwing prospect where the ball literally hissed as it jumped that last foot into the catchers mitt and made that resounding pop echoing throughout the stadium.

     This was the ultimate challenge and why I played, why I could not wait to test my courage and dig in against these pricks with the “serious terrifying velocity and heat,” and who reveled in intimidating you, like Jerry Stephenson, who told me more than once that he would “dust” me if he faced me because of my aggressive, arrogant crowding of the plate. Jerry, while warming up before high school and American Legion games, always fired a wild pitch over the catchers head from the mound as the first hitter stood by, to “plant a seed” in that hitter and his team mates minds.

     Our next game I was fine. I took a pitch. I realized my initial response would be to jump at that first pitch to convince myself and whoever was watching that I was not frightened, but I was frightened, and fought it off. I pretended I was playing pepper, just tried to calm down, stay back and meet the ball, and stroked a single to left.

    But we lost the game and were eliminated from the tournament, and so I did not make the all tournament team as the only shortstop out of 80, and realized also that though I had more range and quickness than the other shortstops in contention, and had a quicker release of the ball, they all had stronger arms than me, powerful “major league ready” arms, which I did not. I had big time major league speed and range, something Dad said could not be taught or coached, but he also added you couldn’t teach or coach a stronger arm either—you either had it or you didn’t. I was determined to overcome this deficiency. At any cost.

     (Next Sunday installment: Off the Block and into the Suburbs)

                                     BEANED IN THE BIG LEAGUES

BIG MOE

     In 1942 I got beaned by Phil Marchildon of the Philadelphia Athletics, one of the hardest, wildest throwers in the game. His fast ball clipped me on the top back of my head as I ducked down and away and caromed to the screen, so I didn’t get hit flush. But I was out for a few seconds and woozier than hell and they took me out of the game, sent me to the hospital, where the doctors cleaned the cut on my head and bandaged me up with one of those things that wrap around your ears, like the guys who got head wounds in the war.

     They wanted to keep me overnight for observation, said I had a concussion. I had a pretty good headache and Rose was very upset, didn’t want me to play, but hell, I’d worked my way into some steady playing time after five years in the minors and waiting my turn behind a bunch of donkeys, I was going good, and you didn’t want to get the reputation of a guy who couldn’t play hurt or lost his courage after a beaning, because we had guys on Detroit that were waiting to take your job, you didn’t want somebody coming in and getting hot and putting you on the bench. So I talked our manager, Del Baker, who wasn’t my greatest supporter and who I didn’t care for because he never went to bat for you, was strictly a front office stooge, into playing me the next day.

     Well, in those days we didn’t wear these protective helmets, you took your life in your hands when you hit, and as I stood at the plate  I could feel my ass turning to jelly and easing out—it was like I couldn’t control my ass or my legs, they were pulling out. So I had to step out and gather myself, talk to myself, knowing everybody was watching and wondering, and force myself to keep my ass in. It was a real struggle. I took a pitch and got my bearings. Soon as you take that first pitch you’re back to being familiar with things. I literally pushed my pelvic in and sucked in my ass and moved up on the plate, and settled my legs, and worked the count, and I knocked a single between third and short.

     I was okay after that. I always knew how to get away from the ball, how to pivot on my back leg and duck, taking it on my hide. I had that confidence in my reflexes, and in all my years of playing ball that was the only time I got beaned, and I was dusted dozens of times, but I never got hit that much, even standing close to the plate.

     The guy who got hit the most, the bravest hitter I ever saw, though, was Minnie Minoso, a team mate when I played in Cuba. One of the top pitchers in the league, a very hard throwing Cuban who had a diamond in one of his front teeth, beaned Minoso on the side of the head and he went down like a sack of potatoes, and he lay there motionless. We thought he was dead. The ball park was quiet as a morgue. Minoso was a tremendous ball player and should’ve been in the big leagues years earlier, and he didn’t move. The docs gave him the smelling salts for about a minute and suddenly he jumped up and ran down to first base. He stole second and third and next time up he stood on top of the plate, like he always did, leading the league in getting hit by pitches, and drilled a double off the wall.

     Every time you start to think you’re tough, you look at a guy like Minoso, and it humbles you.

(Next Sunday installment: The Kid gets beaned)                              

                                  A NEAR RACE RIOT AT CRESSY PARK

1959, Summer

     My parents were discussing moving out of Compton to a safe all white suburb 20 miles away. They fretted over our house going down in value due to the influx of blacks in town, and they feared for Susie going to Compton High, where black girls beat up nice white girls. When they asked me about moving I went into a rage. We had a nucleus of players at Compton High that could win everything. Moving was unimaginable.

     Meanwhile, the Compton American Legion post refused to sponsor our team, which infuriated Dad, who called members “pompous cheapskates and phony patriots.”  Some of the Compton and Dominguez high players signed on with Legion teams in LA and Long Beach, while my team mate Paul Schaal (who would play a decade in the big leagues) and I signed on to play third base and shortstop for the Bellflower team, 10 miles away.

     Bellflower was all clean-cut white kids, a former farm community. Paul owned a black ’51 Ford coupe and drove us to games all over San Gabriel Valley. Right off we produced. Our coach, a father of a senior pitcher, was overjoyed to have us, left us alone. Except for a powerful but slow-moving left-handed hitting catcher named Milt Swift, who was a prospect, Paul and I were their best players. We were free agents having nothing on our agendas but baseball, talking baseball, so dedicated that the Compton Connie Mack League team, led by the great Jim Rooker, picked us up to play our positions among kids up to 19 years old. Now Paul and I played weeknight games and weekend day games, including Sunday doubleheaders.

     Dad wanted me to get a driver’s license and an old jalopy like Paul’s, so I could help him out with deliveries at his store, where I was working part time stocking, writing out orders, waiting on trade, and trying not to fight with him when he warned me to not “go so goddam fast!” I agreed to get a license and it took about a week of Dad teaching me on his stick-shift Rambler before I almost crashed the car as he yelled at me for grinding the gears. Mother taught me on her automatic transmission Pontiac, and much to Dad’s sourness, I passed the driving test, and with my savings I paid for a 1952 Chevy Powerglide coupe, a real pig, according to my cousin Bob

     So now I was making deliveries and alternating with Paul on our baseball excursions. We played our games, stopped for burgers afterwards and discussed our dreams. Paul had a rifle arm at third and a quick release, great wrists, and, like me was an instinctive player though his swing was loopier than mine and thus more powerful when he connected.

     Our Connie Mack team was superb and stocked with some tough kids, including the toughest fighter I knew, Jim Rooker, our pitcher/firstbaseman/outfielder/leader. We shared Cressy as home park with an all black team in the same league from South Central LA and Watts, and, since most of the guys on our team were racists, the rivalry was especially vicious. Many of the players on the black team were from Centennial High, including the bruiser who intimidated me at second base. We beat them our first game and in the rematch a couple weeks later Dad coached, because our regular coach went on vacation.

     The desire to beat us by the all black team had that summer turned into a rabid and savage crusade, similar to the old Hollywood Star/LA Angel rivalry at its most heated, and on this night we had trouble keeping our poise. From their dugout they blistered us with personal abuse. Dad instructed us to ignore them, but it seemed these guys, without supervision from their coach, were obsessed with erasing centuries of white man’s abuse of their race on our cocky white asses. Ron Bart was ready to do battle, however the odds, with the crowd ten to one black over white—in their territory.

     I came to bat in the bottom of the 9^th with the score 3-2 in their favor with runners on second and third and two out. Dad was coaching third and hollering down to me to “get a good pitch!” I stared at the lanky black pitcher and fouled off a pitch that was eye-high. I was a notorious “bad-ball hitter” hitter, and Dad hurried down the line to meet me at the plate.

     “Relax. Be patient. Slow down,” he advised, white spittle caking the corners of his lips. “Don’t get behind and hit HIS pitch!”

     “I hit best with two strikes, Dad. Leave me alone. I know what I’m doing.”

     He grimaced, gritted his teeth, jogged back to his coaching box. The next pitch was a snake of a hissing fastball at my knees, on the inside corner, an area that generally gave me trouble, but this time I lashed it on a rising line between the left and center fielders. I tore down the line and rounded first as the center fielder gave chase and Dad waved our runners around the bases, the ball rolling toward the fence on the dew-chilled grass. I was churning hard around second base when the left fielder blind-sided me with a vicious football block at my knees, sending me airborne, head-over-heels to land face-first on the dirt infield.

     When I looked up, Dad had the kid by the throat with his left hand and was smacking him hard in the face with his right hand as the kid back-pedaled into centerfield, his head bobbing back and forth like a speed bag in a boxing gym. Finally Dad dropped him in short centerfield, where he lay like a broken doll, and turned to hurry back into the infield, where our entire team had gathered; some wielding bats as Jim Rooker pulled me to my feet, a wild, gleeful look in his eye. My legs were fine. Jim’s older brother Wayne was with us, bat on shoulder as the black team and their fans trickled onto the field, out-numbering us five to one. They milled ominously, many in trench-coats. Then Dad was among us, gesturing us to close ranks, like a western movie where cowboys were surrounded by a whole tribe of Indians. He instructed us to drop our bats and form a circle. The massing blacks, moving toward us, were cut off by their powerfully built catcher, George Hill, an all league lineman on the Centennial football team. I’d played against him in junior high. He grabbed me by the elbow, faced my father. “Mr. Franklin,” he said. “You folks line up behind George, and he get you out of here.”

     We quickly gathered our equipment at the first base dugout and in single file followed big George through and past the growling, baleful mob, out to the parking lot adjoining the spacious park and jumped quickly into our cars and in a caravan moved out onto Rosecrans boulevard as the mob stood looking on.

     Driving slowly, Dad said, “He was just a kid, Dell, but I did what I did because nobody messes with anybody on our team, whether it’s you or anybody else. There’s no place in the game for what that kid did. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.”

     A week later we were slated to begin the regional playoffs at Cressy, but only a few players showed up, including Rooker, Schaal, and Ron Bart, and Jim’s brother and Paul’s Dad and brother as our only fans. There was a good crowd. Our cast of five sat in the dugout while the opposing team from the Valley warmed up. A bunch of kids from the black team we’d beaten on my winning hit entered our dugout in humble posture, including the kid Dad had bopped around and nearly strangled. He walked directly to Dad, who stood, and apologized, head and eyes lowered, voice a feint rasp from Dad’s throat gouging.

     “Sorry, sir, I lost my head.”

     The black kids, one-by-one, approached Dad and apologized, caps off. None of them glanced at me or my team mates, and the kid who’d cut my knees out from under did not apologize. One of the kids asked where the rest of our team was, and when Dad said he didn’t expect them to show, he said, “We play for you, Mr. Franklin. We play for you anytime.” His team mates nodded. Dad thanked them, said he’d like to coach them, but explained it didn’t work that way.

     We forfeited the game.

    

(Next Sunday’s installment: Big Moe beaned in the big leagues.)