I'm sorry it has been over a week since my last post. But as we are winding down the basketball season it's time to think of baseball and here is a baseball story from my younger years. It will be in two parts... I hope you enjoy it.
When I say that I grew up in the small town of Ferndale, California it could be misleading. Although most of my formative years, as they say, were spent in the charming Victorian Village, there was a period of four years we were exiled to parts elsewhere in this fine Golden State. This was due to my step father being in the Navy and his having to work at two other naval stations prior to his retirement and our return to the north coast. Two of those years, my fifth and sixth grade years, were spent in the town of Dixon, California. It was a town of tomato farmers and Almond growers and like its nearby neighbors, Davis and Vacaville it was quickly becoming a bedroom community for Sacramento. It had a main street, one elementary, one Jr. High and one High school, a town library and like Ferndale it too was home to the county fair. It was on the fairgrounds that my Boy Scout Troop, Troop 72 met regularly and it was through my Scouting I picked up a newspaper route for Mr. Collins who was an assistant Scoutmaster and local distributor for the Sacramento Union.
My life in Dixon was as near to the “Rockwellian,” existence I knew in Ferndale. It was there I developed an appetite for music by playing the coronet. It was in Dixon that I took interests in photography and science and it was there that I discovered baseball. Unlike most, I didn’t play Little League. When I was in the third grade I didn’t have a ride to the tryouts and by the time I was eleven I was too old to start. So I, like a few other of my friends, started collecting baseball cards and following the local teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. It was during these years that the A’s developed its most illustrious history. Charley Finley was the eccentric and wildly popular owner of this bay area team who was only overshadowed by his talented players: Players such as, Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Campy Campaneris, Rollie Fingers and of course Reggie Jackson.
One of my friends was a kid named James. He too had recently moved into town and as boys will be boys James became the target for their typical pre-adolescent cruelty. Not claiming sainthood myself, I dished out my fair share of immature verse. I can remember relishing in the self exalting pleasure of humiliating a girl named Georgia. A homely girl everyone knew in the fifth grade, she was a loner, different and unwilling to defend herself. So during recess some of us would gather around where she would be playing tetherball by herself and recite, “Georgia, Peorgia, puttin’ in a pie. Kissed the boys and made them die. When the boys came out to play Georgia Peorgia ran away.” And then she would.
James was a target because of his cleft pallet. He talked and looked funny and that alone was enough for any fifth grader to craft his assault. However, James didn’t help himself either. Because of his looks and nasally lisp he was equally rude in defense of himself. But because James came to school near the end of the school year I easily remembered the ridicule I, as a new kid, received at the beginning of the year. And had he not joined Troop 72 and likewise become a paperboy I could have easily kept him at arms length.
James was the one who got me to start collecting Tops Baseball cards. Today I’m sure he still has all of his, mine however decayed decades ago as they were gathered in old shoe boxes sitting in a drafty and wet garage out on the farm. However, it was James who had all the stuff a boy could want when it came to baseball. As an only child from an upper middle class family, he had the jackets, the caps, the pennants and frequent trips to Candlestick Park. I on the other hand got to watch the games on television.
To get new subscriptions the Sacramento Union would run promotions urging their paperboys to canvas the streets and solicit what they called “starts” door to door. Each new subscription was one “start” and collectively you could redeem them for various prizes. One morning on top of the stack of papers delivered to our doorstep, yet needing to be folded, rubber banded and put in the canvas bag stretched across the handlebars of my bicycle, there was a bright yellow sheet announcing for only a ten new starts you could be treated to a one day trip to Oakland Alameda Coliseum and see the A’s play the Chicago White Sox’s on “Bat Day.” Ten “starts!” I thought, “I already have six. Getting four more is a synch.” So, I went out and hustled and with in a couple of days had what I needed to sign up… So did James. Which was alright, but I thought it would be nice to able to do for once something that he hadn’t.
The day arrived and James’ mom drove us into Sacramento to catch the bus. Little did I realize that in the sixth grade this was the first real adventure I had ever taken without my parents. Although, it was exciting and freeing, I was still a bit intimidated and unsure of myself to even order a hamburger at McDonald’s. When we arrived at the ballpark there were people everywhere all filing into the tunnels that bore through the concrete to the green grass yet unseen. At the turnstile I handed over my ticket granting my entrance and in step was quickly handed a shiny, kelly green, 28 ounce Louisville Slugger. I quickly looked at the signature on the bat. It read, Catfish Hunter. Without thinking I started asking around all the other boys who had been on the bus, “You got a Joe Rudi? Joe Rudi, do you have one?” “Yeah,” one replied. “Trade ja!” “Whatdya got?” “Catfish Hunter.” “Sure.” And the deal was done as we walked into the stadium lower deck, right field. You think I would have been happy, that’s were Reggie Jackson played but Joe Rudi was the left fielder… and he was my hero. Quiet, humble and a steady player he was a recipient of three golden glove awards, was runner up to the league MVP in 1974 he had a knack for doing the right thing at just the right time…especially in the World Series. But my hero wasn’t flashy and unlike many of his colorful teammates he was content to be just a plain ol’ Joe.
I couldn’t tell you won the game, although I’m sure the A’s did, but I do remember getting one last hotdog for the road and with bat in hand started walking back toward the bus ready to go home. What I wasn’t ready for was the thief who quietly ran up behind me and yanked the bat from my unprepared grip and in stride darted through cars and busses. Pathetically I ran after him shouting, “Give me that back!” But losing ground all I could do was feebly throw my hotdog at him. But having never played Little League my aim was no where close to a strike so, in the middle of the parking lot of the Oakland Alameda Coliseum I just stood there and cried.
On the bus the other boys were understanding, in fact one who had more than one bat, don’t ask me how but I was suspicious… gave me one. The signature on the bat: Dave Duncan. “You don’t happen to have a Joe Rudi do you?” I asked. To which I got a, “Nope” and no one offered. I sat quietly by myself the whole way back.
Several months later my step father had signed off his twenty three year career with the Navy and I’m sure through the prodding of my mother we were packing up and heading back to Ferndale just in time for me to enter the seventh grade. On the morning of our departure James showed up like a stack of papers on our door step he didn’t knock, he just sat there. When I walked outside he was holding a green bat. “Trade you for a Dave Duncan.” And he held up a signature Joe Rudi. I had no idea that he had one. When we made the trip into Oakland he quickly made friends with another paperboy who wore leg braces and had to sit at the front of the bus. “But,” I said, “You don’t like catchers.” “I don’t like the A’s remember. I’m a Giants fan.” And with that I ran to the box where my bat was packed and we made the exchange and that was the last time I ever saw or heard from James.
