Angry White Male

by Steven Travers

  When World War II broke out, cities located on coasts became shipbuilding centers. Jobs in this industry were plentiful, so much so that, with many young men fighting in Europe or the South Pacific, the call went out for manual labor to come to these cities and build ships.

  This began the second great migration of American blacks to the north. Blacks flocked to Los Angeles, where ships were being built in Long Beach, and an entire military industrial complex was sprouting up from Orange County to the San Fernando Valley.

  Buck Boswell had played in the old Negro Leagues, but now he had to find a “real job.” In Tennessee, where he had grown up, jobs were scarce. Life for blacks there was no bed of roses.

  Buck’s experience in the Negro Leagues had shown him a better life. Not that the league was easy. It consisted of 20-hour bus rides, triple-headers, and more meals in more greasy spoons than he wanted to think about. Buck loved every minute of it. The fact that he and his teammates could not stay in the same hotels or eat in the same restaurants as whites in most of the towns did not bother him terribly. He thought about life back in Tennessee, and knew he was better off than those he left behind.

  Until the Homestead Grays released him in 1942. Buck tried to sign up with the Army, but he had little cartilage left after several bad knee injuries incurred playing ball. That left him looking for a job in rural Tennessee, a bleak prospect. Tired of racism and poverty, Buck took a train to Oakland, California in 1943. He took a job at the shipyard in Sausalito. When he had some time off, he decided to take a train to Hollywood, a place he had obviously never been to.

  At a bar on Hollywood Boulevard, Buck met Stacey Wills. She was pretty and intelligent, and worked as a riveter at the Hughes Tool Company, making airplanes for the war effort in El Segundo. They hit it off, and over the next couple months he corresponded with her regularly. He asked her to see if they were hiring at the Long Beach Naval Shipyards, which they were, so he moved to Los Angeles.

  She became pregnant, and in 1944 they were married. That Summer, their first son, Al, was born in L.A. Al was a natural-born athlete. Growing up, he starred in every sport he participated in, and was an All-Southern Section baseball, basketball and football player at Locke High School, which also produced baseball players like Eddie Murray and Ozzie Smith.

  Upon graduation in 1962, Al turned down football scholarships from USC, UCLA, Washington, and several other top programs, choosing instead the life of a baseball gypsy like his old man.

  The Los Angeles Dodgers signed him to a $100,000 bonus, an enormous sum of money, especially in those days. The amateur draft was still three years away from implementation, so top high school players were the subject of bidding wars in the pre-cursor to free agency.

  Al had a sweetheart from Locke High named Nanette. She was a real looker, and had a future as an actress and singer. Nanette married Al shortly after his first year in the low minor leagues.

  In 1964, Al made his debut with the Dodgers. He hit a home run off of Milwaukee’s Warren Spahn, and Sandy Koufax pitched a shutout to lead the Dodgers to a 2-0 win at Dodger Stadium before a capacity crowd.

  Boswell did a stint in the Army Reserves, avoiding the draft and eventually the Vietnam War. The Dodgers had an arrangement with a unit in an unincorporated area near Westwood, next to the Federal Building, for their players to do easy assignments that would have minimal effects on their careers.

  Boswell was quickly hailed as the next great star of baseball, and an example of “National League style” baseball. 1964 was also the year that baseball and America experienced a turning point.

  In America, the Free Speech Movement, led by a Berkeley agitator named Mario Savio, took full form at the University of California campus. Civil rights became the main issue. The South, still dominated by Democrats, continued to block any efforts at civil rights legislation, as embodied by the new President, Lyndon Johnson. They had thwarted the civil rights efforts of Dwight Eisenhower a few years earlier

  LBJ was a flawed, yet courageous man. A Texan and a good ol’ boy, he nevertheless championed the cause of minorities, a plank in his Presidency lost in great part because of his poor management of the Vietnam War. In 1964, he was crafting the Great Society, a series of programs saturated with good intentions and mixed results. The Vietnam War started in earnest that year, although by the time 1965 rolled around, it still was an operation supported by a majority of American citizens.

  The Democratic Party had the appearance in 1964 of a party of new, exciting ideas, the wave of the future. Most Americans separated the national Democrats from Southern Democrats, who were stuck in a racial time warp that still had years to go before it would be broken.

  They were the party of the martyred President, John F. Kennedy, and his brother, Robert, who inherited the mantel of Camelot and rode it to victory in the New York Senate race, was inclusive of minorities, while fighting corruption and the status quo.

  The Republicans were stagnant, or so it seemed. Their standard bearer, Richard Nixon, chose not to run in ’64 because he knew it was a lost cause. A split emerged between East Coast moderates of the “Rockefeller wing” and Western conservatives in the Barry Goldwater camp.

  Americans viewed them as the party of resistance, of country club types who were out of touch with the needs of most constituents. In November, Johnson trounced Goldwater.

  Looking back, one finds interesting parallels, or even metaphors, that defined American politics and America’s National Pastime in 1964. In the American League, the New York Yankees represented the Republicans. The Yankees were rich country clubbers wearing pin striped suits. They were white, and the few blacks they did have fell in line with their image. Catcher Elston Howard had settled into the role of a New Jersey suburbanite. The quiet Howard made no waves, and was the perfect father, husband and Yankee. The rest of the American League tried to follow the Yankees’ example, with poor results. The Yankees played “long ball” with Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. They were conservative in their approach to the game, not stealing bases or stretching out hits. They preferred to wait for home runs and big innings, and more often than not found this strategy to be a successful one.

  Other A.L. teams lacked the Yankees money and talent, and of course their power. Their efforts at duplicating the “Yankee way” failed. They also emulated the Yankees’ racial policy, which was to bring minorities in ever so slowly. Not rocking the boat.

  The National League did it differently. Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier with the Dodgers, a National League club, in 1947. The league was now stocked with talented, exciting, aggressive black and Latino players who brought the Negro League style of play to the senior circuit.

  There was Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda of the Giants. In Los Angeles, Tommy Davis was a batting champion, and Maury Wills had revived the art of stealing bases. Milwaukee’s Henry Aaron and Pittsburgh’s Roberto Clemente were legends in the making.

  No team exemplified the new way to play in 1964 like the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals were a melting pot of talent and strong personalities, lighting up a baseball stage before their traditionally faithful fans, who would drive from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky and other points throughout the Midwest and Southwest. They were drawn like the swallows flocking to San Juan Capistrano by their super strong radio station, KMOX.

  The Cards had always been “colorful,” going back to Dizzy Dean and the Gashouse Gang of the 1930s, but now they were really colorful. At first base they had a college-educated black man, Bill White, who was of All-Star caliber. Second baseman Julian Javier hailed from the Dominican Republic, which was proving to be a treasure trove of baseball talent. Center fielder Curt Flood was one of those “California Negroes.”

  Flood was sensitive, intelligent and outspoken. He possessed considerable artistic talent, and was one of the first black players to be considered “militant,” because he dared to tell the truth about the treatment of black players i
n small, Southern minor league towns. Black athletes of that generation were expected to just be happy to have the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues, but Flood saw himself as a modern day Spartacus.

  A few years later, he would change baseball forever by challenging the Reserve Clause in Federal Court. The Reserve Clause was an un-Constitutional baseball rule that bound a player to his team even after his contract expired, and Flood felt that it made players indentured servants.

  “I’m a slave,” he told writer. “An $80,000 a year slave, but a slave nonetheless.”

  Players like Flood scared the hell out of the white power structure of baseball. They needed players of his ability, but if a player was marginal the nod went to a white player. The owners and general managers denied this, of course, but in 1970, Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four” exposed this truth.

  Bouton used statistics, showing that approximately half the players among the league’s batting leaders were black, but far less than half of the players in the league were black. A black player had to be a star, a starter, and a main contributor. If he was just trying to make the club, and it was close, the whites were favored.

  Harry Walker was a batting coach with the 1964 Cardinals. He was a Southern racist who was appalled at the attitude of the “uppity” blacks on the Cards, although he was able to separate their off-field actions with their on-field ones, at least enough to do his job, which was teach hitting. He was good at that.

  The symbol of the Cardinals was pitcher Bob Gibson. Gibson was in every way the New Breed of black athletes. He was a college man, smart, opinionated and articulate. He was a big, strong pitcher whose remarkable skills would take him to the Hall of Fame. Gibby through hard, and thought nothing of spinning a hitter off the plate with some “chin music,” or outright plunking a man who crowded the dish or was in the unenviable position of coming up after one of the Cardinals had been beaned.

  He had perfected the art of the scowl, with his hat pulled low on his forehead, creating a menacing visage. He was as competitive an athlete as ever lived. Gibson also carried a chip on his shoulder as a result of his race. He thought about being black, he was reminded about it all the time, and took it to the mound with him. He used the slights and the insults as ammunition. His competitive juices did not end when he left the stadium. Playing tiddly-winks with his daughter, he had the same desire to win that he carried with him against the Dodgers, Reds and Braves.

  Gibson was a uniter, however, and an undisputed team leader. In 1964, the Cardinals had a young white catcher named Tim McCarver. McCarver had grown up in affluence in Memphis, Tennessee, where his parents employed black servants. He never attended school with blacks, nor played against them in sports.

  Gibson sensed McCarver’s unease. Once, on the team bus, he saw McCarver sipping a coke. He asked if he could have a sip.

  It was like Samuel L. Jackson asking Frank Whaley for a sip of his “tasty beverage” in “Pulp Fiction”. McCarver reluctantly let Gibby take a big ol’ honkin’ sip. Gibby then handed the can back to McCarver, who had to contend with the image of this black man’s slobber on the Coke. Should he finish the Coke? McCarver decided to become a man at that moment. He finished the soft drink. He became Gibson’s partner, his battery mate on the field. They rode to great heights of glory together throughout the 1960s. He became his friend.

  The story of Gibson and McCarver is the story of America, as was the story of Harry Walker and Bill White. Years after White retired, and became a successful businessman and eventually President of the National League, Walker called him out of the blue, said he was in the New York area, and wanted to come by. White hesitated, because he was living with a white woman, and thought this would be a source of conflict, so he gave Walker the heads up.

  “Aw, I don’t care about that stuff anymore,” Walker said in his Southern drawl.

  So it was that that the patrician Yankees battled the rebellious Cardinals in the 1964 World Series, with St. Louis winning the seventh game behind Gibson. Gibson was nothing less than heroic in that Series, winning the championship on short rest, pitching with guts and little else. When asked why he refused to take his ace out of the game despite his obvious fatigue, manager Johnny Keane responded with one of the best quotes in sports history.

  “I had a commitment to his heart,” said Keane.

  The National League, like the Democrats, was successful for a while with their new philosophy. They dominated the American League in All-Star games for many years. The American League, particularly the Yankees, like the Republicans eventually changed out of necessity and became a competitive league and team, just as the G.O.P. would up-date and mesh good new ideas with traditional ones to forge the Reagan Revolution.

  It was this changing world that Al Boswell entered in 1964. The baseball of Willie Mays and Elston Howard would be replaced by the baseball of Curt Flood and Bob Gibson. Boswell, the Californian, was a modern man. He was not from Alabama or Tennessee, where his father was from. He was coming to believe that in America, a black man had rights, and had a responsibility to himself, his family and his people to stand up for those rights. He was in the Flood-Gibson camp, and felt that as a Major League player he was in the limelight and should use that platform to promote his cause. The New Breed.

  In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated and the streets near Boswell’s boyhood home went up in flames during the Watts riots. In 1968, Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists in a Black Power salute during the National Anthem after winning medals at the Mexico City Olympics. That same year, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

  On the field, Boswell was a wonder. He was a Gold Glove center fielder who hit .300, powered 30 to 40 home runs a year with 100 runs batted in, and stole 50 bases a season. He was the National League Rookie of the Year in 1965, the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1969, and an All-Star every season. He led the Dodgers to the 1965 World Championship. By 1970, he was the highest-paid player in baseball, and a future Hall of Famer.

  Boswell, now making $130,000 a year, moved his family from Torrance, where they had lived, to Palos Verdes Estates in 1970. Among the well-heeled white citizenry of Palos Verdes, a black man moving his family into their midst was cause for concern at that time. However, Boswell was a well-known Dodger star, and any nascent racism was quickly replaced by excitement over his presence in the community.

  Boswell, by 1970, was a man of duality. On the one hand, he was surprised at the reaction he received from his neighbors in Palos Verdes. Growing up, he had seen the hilly P.V. Peninsula, at least when it was not too smoggy. The place looked like Oz, a jewel on a mountaintop, completely unattainable to a guy like him.

  He had been there a few times, to play baseball, basketball and football in non-league games, or American Legion games, against Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills. He would stare out the window of the bus at the mansions that dotted the hillside. His black teammates from Locke would remark at the opulence, usually with bitterness and class envy that white folks could be allowed to live so well, while they had to survive the mean streets of the inner city.

  A small controversy had even ensued in that Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills High Schools, both top athletic programs who could compete at the highest levels, were happy to schedule urban teams like Locke, but only if Locke would come to their field or gym.

  Palos Verdes competed in the Bay League, and one of their opponents in that league was Centennial High School of Compton. Centennial was a baseball factory, producing the likes of Reggie Smith and Don Wilson, but Compton was a gritty center of street crime and drug trafficking. The white boys of Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills were never comfortable making the trek to Compton. Their cheerleaders refused to go, fearing the taunts of the black kids, or worse.

  They had to travel to Centennial because they were in their league, but since Locke was not, they eschewed any home-and-home arrangements for a “play here or not play at all” philosophy, which struck in the
craw of many of the Locke players and supporters.

  In the back of Al Boswell’s mind, riding the bus up Crenshaw Boulevard to the leafy environs of the P.V. Peninsula, he was formulating a plan. He would be a professional athlete and a superstar. Some day, just to spite these white snobs, he would move his whole damn family right into their neighborhood.

  This realization came true in 1970. Some people speculated that the move was not a good one for Al. That year, he saw his production drop dramatically. He had become militant with the press, a hard case, uncommunicative with the manager and all but a select number of his teammates.

  He also became fond of alcohol. From 1971-76, Boswell performed well for the Dodgers, but there was a sense that he performed just below his great promise. The Dodgers were competitive, but he had not taken them to the level they had hoped he would. He made the All-Star team in most of those seasons, but never approached his MVP year of 1969.

  He was traded by the Dodgers to the Chicago Cubs in 1977, and in each of the following three years, played for different teams (Cardinals in 1978, Twins in 1979, Padres in 1980). He retired in 1980. Still, he was great enough to make it into the Hall of Fame in 1991. Had he been as good as he could have been, though, he would have made it to Cooperstown on the first ballot, and he might have eclipsed many of the game’s most hallowed records.

  His alcohol consumption hurt him. He liked to drink at the waterfront bars of Hermosa and Redondo, but driving back to Palos Verdes on the cop-infested Pacific Coast Highway, then up the winding lanes of the hilly peninsula that overlooks the spectacular coastal L.A. Strand, was treacherous. Once during his career, and again after he retired, he incurred highly publicized DUIs while making this trek.

  Eventually, Al mellowed and became an elder statesman of the game. He was by nature a jovial guy, with a good sense of humor, a man who liked to sing and dance and tell jokes. His taciturn act had been a part of his youth, but to those who knew him in later years that part of him seemed to be someone else.

  Boswell was smart and hip to the world around him. As a black man coming of age in the 1960s, he had found himself in a time warp of sorts, a period in which many of his race had desperately needed an identity. The search for that identity had not been without landmines, but those like himself who had survived these years were wise in ways that cannot be learned in books.

  His marriage had survived baseball, infidelity and alcohol. He had broken up with Nanette on numerous occasions, but love had kept them together. To the extent that such a thing exists within the context of real life, Al Boswell had achieved the American Dream.

 

  CHAPTER THREE

  BROKEN DREAMS

  “…'cause he had hi-i-igh hopes, he had hi-i-igh hopes

  He had high apple pi-i-ie-in-the-sk-y-y hopes…”

  --“HIGH HOPES”

  By Frank Sinatra