Once, after
being discharged from the Army, I looked Lelonie up. I was sitting in her living room visiting
when I noticed this huge patch on the ceiling. I asked her what happened. She told me that over a period of time she and
friends would notice nail-size holes mysteriously appearing in the ceiling. Finally one evening during a friend’s visit,
they were sitting in the living room when an old boyfriend, "Barefoot"
Larry, came crashing through the ceiling, landing on the living room floor in
front of a startled Lelonie and her friend.
Larry got up and ran out the front door. "Barefoot" had been
living in the attic unbeknownst to Lelonie and spying on her.
***
Henry Aaron/Buddy Dooley
In 1980 I researched and wrote a series of historical
pieces on the Portland Beavers while working for a community monthly in
Northwest Portland. I dug into a trove of microfiche files at the Portland
library to find material dating from turn-of-the-century newspapers, and I
leaned heavily on many stories by a long-time Oregonian writer, a legend in Oregon named L.H. Gregory, whom I
could remember reading as a kid.
Gregory was among the
last of the old-time sportswriters. He referred to the ball players as "lads"
and extolled their virtues as "fine young men," and once described a
manager as having a "Romanesque stature and nose," a man whose
"dignity" surpassed even his managerial skills, etc.
A night on the town
would include players under Gregory's watchful gaze "ice-skating in
Fresno" on an off day, and "cutting manly figures" as they
circled around the rink and "impressed the local ladies."
It was good stuff.
I used as much of the
material as I could find and put together six pieces covering professional
baseball in Portland between 1901 and 1980.
Lo, I had a minor hit in
the community! One friend urged me to start going to spring training in Arizona
and freelance baseball stories. People, generally old men, but a few old women
as well, wrote to the newspaper thanking us for the memories of Vaughn Street
Park, Portland's home field for over fifty years. Built in 1901, Vaughn had
once been the finest ball park on the west coast, people said. Everything
changed when they tore that old stadium down in 1956. It just wasn't the same.
Baseball is American
society's biggest nostalgia hook, even when the nostalgia is phony and
trumped-up by baseball's never ending self-promotion. Or George Will, the
waxiest of the baseball philosophers.
I understood baseball
because I played the game. I played Little League, Babe Ruth, high school and
junior college ball. But I swear to God baseball doesn't make me nostalgic at
all. In fact, I don't even care for the game today. It's too money-centric now, and as with every
professional sport most of the players are all about the money and little else.
When Curt Flood sued baseball to free players at the negotiating table, the
game changed, not just the ball parks, which always get rickety and old.
Curt Flood started
free-agency rolling. That was good for the players, but bad for the fans. I
knew Pete Ward, who played for the White Sox and Yankees for a decade, from my
work in the bar business. He was a beer
rep for a Portland distributor when I met him, and we once talked about the big
money that came into baseball after he retired. He seemed a little wistful
about the entire situation.
The baseball strike in
the '90s was the last straw for me. I've seen a couple of games since then, but
honestly the game bores me to death now, in part because I don't have the
interest one must have to keep up with the revolving door of trades and salary
disputes and drunken driving charges and dugout tiffs and on and on.
Throw in the
"juicing" controversies of recent years and you have a yawner.
I wrote a small book
about the Beavers, which in hindsight isn't really a very good book at all, and
then I essentially lost interest in the team. Over the ensuing years I watched
a handful of games, and I didn’t miss the game at all. Just a year ago the
team's final owner, a rich kid whose father is Henry Paulson, and who is a
soccer fanatic, sold the team out of town.
He reconfigured the old baseball park into a futbol stadium.
But to get back on
point, my baseball history was noticed. The Beavers' organization in 1980 had
just switched hands again, this time falling in the lap of a young, aggressive
Philadelphia native named David Hersh. Hersh favored long, thick, expensive
cigars and nicely tailored suits and had a promoter's sensibility, like Charlie
Finley, the then owner of the Oakland A's, and like one of the game's
greatest-ever promoters, Bill Veeck (as in wreck).
Veeck, owner of the
Chicago White Sox, made an early name for himself in 1951 when he hired 3'
7" Eddie Gaedel to pinch hit against the Detroit Tigers. The opposing
pitcher walked him, of course, unable to find the six-inch strike zone a
hunched over midget presents. For their part, Finley's Athletics kept a mule as
a mascot at the ball park in Oakland, a symbol of the owner's stubborn
personality they say. Finley's teams were the first to wear white shoes and
lobby for orange baseballs, which never happened thank the good lord lollipop.
David Hersh was 23
years-old when he came to Portland.
Never mind his relative
inexperience, Hersh had somehow managed to find a list of investors who backed
his dream, for a while, of placing Major League Baseball in Portland within a
few years.
Like orange baseballs,
it didn't happen, and Hersh moved on, dashing the hopes of Portland's
smattering of hard-core fans.
I liked Hersh for his
brashness and early willfulness to get it done and bring real ball to Portland.
The Triple-A Beavers were good, but there is a considerable fall-off between
the second highest level of baseball and the pinnacle league Babe Ruth helped
build while nailing the grandstands together in Yankee Stadium. Anyone who
knows baseball understands this, so the excitement Hersh brought to town was
tangible.
I met Hersh at the
stadium, where I'd been summoned by his Director of Communications, a Rick
somebody (I've managed to inconveniently forget his last name; perhaps because
he was somewhat of a dweeb). The organization was interested in my baseball
history. I let them use whatever text they wanted to promote the team in their
program, and in return they issued me a press pass, which I used sporadically
for the next couple of seasons. I had asked for money, and Rick had said,
"We're not that interested!"
The pass gave me access
to the press box behind home plate, where I sat and daydreamed throughout the
few games I attended. I may have even fallen asleep on occasion, to tell you
how interested I was in the proceedings. I didn't write any more baseball
stories that year.
Hersh walked up and down
press row at times, doling out free food to the writers, which must have
included me because when I was there I ate really well. Big, tasty sandwiches
and all the pizza I wanted. Plus salads
and savory desserts, cakes, trays of donuts, veggie plates--damn, I'm getting
hungry recalling it all.
Hersh was a hand-shaker
of course, moving around the ball park in an effort to meet as many paying customers
as he could. He was a back-slapper, touchy-feely, spreading his warm dreams to
the writers and fans in the sincerest terms, with a perfect white smile,
billowing cigar smoke as he laughed needlessly hard at poor quips--an honest to
God salesman.
Hersh the promoter had
worked out an affiliates' agreement with the Pirates, the team he brought to
town for an exhibition at mid-season his first year. He held a home run
contest, and the sight of Willie Stargell hitting the ball over 500 ft. to a
balcony overlooking the ballpark in right field was an
unforgettable sight, it really was. Hersh, smoking his cigar, stood near the on-deck
circle with a wad of hundreds in his fist, and every time Stargell or the other
derby contestants hit one out the kid would make a show of giving the batter a
hundred. Two hours of this during pre-game, and the tab ran into the thousands.
A year or two later,
Hersh brought Mickey Mantle and Henry Aaron to town for a special promotion. I
heard later that Mick had been in Joe's Cellar on 21st Ave. with other
baseball-types the night before and had drank a few and made an ass out of
himself, which might explain why I didn't see him at the park the next night.
But I'm not absolutely
sure he wasn't there, all I know is he didn't make it down to the press box, or
I didn't see him at any rate.
I ran into Aaron after
the game. The stadium offices were under the grandstands and I was down there,
had just turned a corner out of the press box and I practically walked into
Hammerin' Hank.
You know, Aaron wasn't a
very large man, which was surprising given the number of homers he hit—755.
They say his power came from his wrists. When I saw Hank I naturally looked at
those wrists, and I said, "Hello, Mr. Aaron."
He nodded and kept
moving, until I said, "Could you please sign this for me?" I was
holding a scrap of paper I'd just ripped from my notebook.
Hank looked at me with
curious discernment and said, "Aren't you a little old to be asking for an
autograph?"
Perhaps I was at 29.
After that I don't remember what else I said, or how I justified myself, but
Hank signed.
I owned that autograph
for 20 years before losing it in a move. I should have given it to someone more
responsible than I.
***
The Huncke Poems/Sam
White (RP Thomas)
Herbert Huncke
where is
your
soul?
through
the sunny fog
i heard
your horn pass
by my
cheap
hotel
window
on a
stolen
rug
guided by
a rudder
that
i swore
was
a shovel
just a
glimpse
reflected
my eyes
from the
neon
sign that
flashed
through
silver
and light
Dutch Schultz Hotel
and you
murmured
in search
of
your
published
book
not alone
in
that
seizure
as others
were
laughed
at
in city
lights
bookstore
Herbert Huncke
where is
your
soul?
is it not
on that stolen rug
where the
cheeks of
your
ass so
paregorically
rested?
Herbert
your soul
lost
forever
but
herbert
where
are
you?
Texan Herbert
you know
how
low the
wind
can
stream
in the
boxcamera
texas
the land
at your
feet
plugged
in by
your
magic shovel
your most
intense
connection
with
the earth
another
spike
and the
camusian
sun
boiling
your face
Herbert
never in
a
bath tub
but on
the
wall i
saw your
picture
you on
the
land with
hungry
cells
waiting
for
“god’s
medicine”
the sun
hit
you in
the face
like a
nuclear
neon
Flash
filtered
by
sweat in
your
hollow
eyes
the smile
stayed
deep
left with
the soul
a fix to
mourn
***
An Interview with Charles Deemer (Video)
A Deemer Essay
This is the journal of a disturbed, sometimes proud, but often humbled and disappointed University of Oregon football fan.
