Angry White Male

Angry White Male Page 9

by Steven Travers

  Dan and Stan continued to go to lots of games together. Their favorites continued to be the Dodgers and the Trojans. When they did not go to games, they watched them on television and listened to them on the radio, often to Shirley’s consternation. Her birthday fell in October, when the play-offs and football are in full swing. She had a fit if it fell on a Saturday when USC was playing a big game at the same time that a post-season baseball game was going on. Stan and Dan did not think twice about going to a football game at the Coliseum, then driving to Dodger Stadium to see baseball.

  Stan loved watching sports with his father, but was frustrated at how terribly negative he was. USC could be undefeated, but if they fell behind in the first quarter, he came down with a serious case of negatives.

  “Oh, shit,” he would moan, “this isn’t their day.”

  After the Trojans had scored four straight touchdowns and led, 45-7, at the end of three quarters, Stan would lean over and say, “Gee, Dad, imagine what the score would be if this wasn’t their day.”

  If the Dodgers gave up a run in the first inning, the pitcher “just doesn’t have it.” Same thing. He would settle in, and in the eighth Don Sutton or Clause Osteen would be working on a four-hitter, winning 6-1.

  “Holy cow,” Stan would say, “I can’t believe how good a game Sutton woulda pitched if he had it tonight.”

  If one of their teams really did play a bad game, then Dan was the mayor of Misery City. It could make for a long, long day. What Stan could not figure out was Dan’s apparent lack of understanding of the nature of sporting contests. Here was a guy who had pitched at the highest levels and had been intimately involved in athletics all his life. Even if he had not been a player in his own right, Dan had watched enough games as a fan to gain an expert’s understanding of the ins and outs.

  Despite that, he had a confounding black-and-white view of the contests. A pitcher who gave up runs simply had pitched poorly. Even when he was a little kid, Stan watched athletics with the practiced eye of a coach or scout. He could see if a pitcher had made a good pitch, but the hitter had either guessed, gotten lucky or was just zoned in. Dan did not.

  “Aw, shit,” he complained. “He can’t you get anybody out.”

  “Dad,” Stan said, “for a guy who’s watched as much baseball as you, you sure do act like you don’t know what the heck you’re watching. That was a great sinker that Rhoden threw, but Madlock had the hit `n’ run going and had to protect. That was a good pitch.”

  Dan did not seem to take into account the factors and variables that shade the final result of athletic endeavors.

  When little league was over, Stan moved to the Babe Ruth League. This was the jump to the big field. It is a major separation point for many kids. Every year, little league heroes have their hopes for success in baseball shattered when they move to the Babe Ruth League. They find the long throw from shortstop, the relay from the outfield, the 60-foot, six-inch distance from the mound to home, and the distant fences, to be their personal Maginot Lines. These would be obstacles that they would never be able to cross.

  Stan barreled through these imaginary Maginots like the tanks employed by his hero, Patton. Stan was 13 and still a star. That year, a fellow named Dave Rancid, a taciturn truck driver and, according to him, a one-time pro ball player, volunteered to assist Dan with the team. Dan followed his son to Babe Ruth League and was still the manager. Rancid brought his son, Dave, Jr., along. Dave was a big, tall, blonde kid who looked like a Viking warrior. He was an excellent athlete, a star in football, track and wrestling. However, he was not very good at baseball. He struck out almost every time up and just did not possess developed baseball skills.

  He had natural tools, though. By season’s end he had mastered baseball and was challenging Stan for team stardom. Hard feelings developed between the two boys, and between the two fathers. It was ugly and typical of youth sports. The petty wars, one-upmanship, rivalry, jealousy, and horrible favoritism took much of the fun out of baseball.

  Babe Ruth League is for 13- to 15-year olds. The children range from seventh graders to high school sophomores. If a seventh grader turns 13 in the first half of the year, he is assigned to the Babe Ruth League. If he turns 13 in the second half, he will be assigned to his last year of little league, since for this reason he would have started in the third grade instead of the second. Stan had started in the second grade, since he had a February birthday.

  Stan was a seventh grader. Dave Rancid was a 13-year old eighth grader, but he would actually turn 14 in July. He was, for all intents and purposes, a year older than Stan, but considered 13 for purposes of league classification. Sometimes, a 15-year old high school sophomore, if he was really good, made the varsity and possibly even excelled at that level. Then he would then play his last year of Babe Ruth ball. This was joke. If a guy was good enough to compete with 18-year olds, to play with young men who were being scouted and offered college scholarships, he was much too advanced to be competing with 13-year old seventh graders.

  Some communities eschew the 13-15 Babe Ruth League for Pony League or some other leagues. There are 13-year old leagues, 13-14 leagues, and some leagues even devise a smaller playing field, which is between the size of the little league and Major League diamond.

  The Palos Verdes Babe Ruth League featured a kid named Eddie Andrews, who was 15 when Stan was 13. Andrews was unbelievable. He had no mother. His father was an alcoholic who spent time in and out of jail. Andrews lived, more or less by himself, in an apartment, which was paid for by the baseball coach at Rolling Hills High School. He was basically shacked up with his girlfriend, Kim. Kim was a surfer girl who was built like a brick outhouse and was the inspiration for Stan’s fantasies. She was a year older than Eddie, and would miss her senior year of high school to live with her grandparents and have his child.

  Eddie was a superstar who had dominated every level of ball since little league. He was already 6-4, 220 pounds, and he threw smoke. He was one of those rarities who played on the varsity as a freshman, where he made a strong contribution towards Rolling Hills’ 1976 Bay League championship. He was All-Southern Section as a sophomore, and had thrown a perfect game under the lights at Long Beach’s Blair Field against Millikan in a play-off game. Millikan had several players who were drafted and offered scholarships. They were a Southern California power. They had produced shortstop Doug Stokke, who would be an All-American on USC’s 1978 National Championship team.

  Andrews’ perfect game came on a Saturday night before several thousand fans, and dozens of scouts. It established him as one of the prep prospects who would receive national attention over the last two years of his eligibility. He was dominating young men like Stokke only a week before he took up the roster spot waiting for him with the Taco Bell team in Babe Ruth League, where he would be competing with 13-year olds like Stan Taylor. Andrews had no business playing in the Ruth League. He should have been pitching for the Palos Verdes American Legion team, which consisted of players from Rolling Hills and P.V. High. However, Legion rules state that the league is eligible only for 16- to 18-year olds. That meant that some teams had players who were just coming off their freshmen years in college. Other teams, usually the ones managed by the local high school coach, refused to use these college-age players, sometimes even banning recent graduating seniors. This was because they viewed Legion ball as training for the high school season, and gave up the glory of winning in the Summer in favor of preparation for the Spring.

  Legion ball is supposed to be district-based. If a player lives in the district boundaries of the designated Legion post, he is supposed to be able to play for that team. The district usually encompasses several high school districts, plus there are players from private schools. Some high school coaches who are Legion managers will exclude players who do not attend the high school where they coach, which helps to create hard feelings, cheating, lying, and all the other wonderful off-shoots of modern youth sports.

  Santa Mo
nica had won the American Legion National Championship the previous year, led by a wunderkind named Tim Leary. Leary would go on to make All-American at UCLA, and would be a 17-game winner on the Dodgers 1988 World Championship club. Palos Verdes might have competed for national honors in 1977 if Andrews, another July birthday boy, was pitching for them that Summer instead of Taco Bell.

  Andrews was over pitched at Rolling Hills High. He probably threw harder his sophomore year than he did his senior year. Still, he was an All-American his last two seasons there, and was drafted in the second round by the Houston Astros. He would have gone in the first round, but the scouts’ radar guns told the story. His consistent 94-mile per hour heater was down to the 89-90 MPH range.

  Eddie was a tragic figure. On the field, he was a coach’s dream. He worked hard and was a leader. In football, he starred as a linebacker and running back. He was as tough as they come, felt no pain, and seemed indestructible. Eddie’s girlfriend was nice, but nasty. At a football party one night, girls watched in horror and guys watched in awe while she deep throated Eddie’s impressive nine-inch schlong in full view of everybody. Her mother was a member of the Junior League, and her father was with the FBI. Kim was a very friendly and intelligent girl. She kept score for the American Legion team. She was an expert at keeping score, which is a rare quality for a girl to have. Eventually, she would become a successful rock ’n’ roll disk jockey.

  The day of the junior prom, Kim scored the game in the dugout in her prom dress while the team stared at her rack. It was not particularly different from when they stared at her rack on other days, when she would wear a halter-top. Eddie pitched the first game of a twi-night doubleheader. He had his tuxedo in the dugout. Eddie was a “sweat hog.” Some guys really sweat more than most. Eddie was one of those guys. He changed into the tux right there in the dugout, and off they went. Later that night, Kim went down on him for some sweaty deep throat.

  Eddie lived for baseball, because every other aspect of his life was screwed up. His father had beaten him up until Eddie became old enough to knock the old man out cold. He was an F student, but his coaches begged, pleaded and cajoled the teachers for four years to keep him eligible for sports. He never would graduate. Once, he was sleeping through a Spanish class. Everybody had headphones on, listening to the conjugations of Spanish verbs. Eddie’s snores became evident to his laughing classmates, until the teacher, a hard-faced German-born lesbian named Miss Bernstein, screamed into the microphone for all to hear, “Andrews. Andrews. WAKE UP, ANDREWS!”

  Eddie woke with such a start that he broke his desk and injured himself, but it was not enough to keep him from pitching when he should have rested. His valuable right arm was badly overused by the coach, Jim Ambers. Ambers was a bad man who was more interested in his own glorification than the welfare of his players, and Eddie was neither the first nor the last prospect whose career was hurt by him.

  Eddie was dumb and could be manipulated. He hung out with younger kids. One of those pals was a budding drug dealer named Skip Beam. Beam’s father was a doctor. His brother would go on to Harvard. Beam would go on to inspire the TV show “Miami Vice”. Not Don Johnson’s Sonny Crockett role.

  Beam found out about a guy who was growing a big marijuana harvest in a green house near the beach. He and Eddie went there at night to steal it. Actually, Eddie broke in and pilfered the pot, while Beam waited in the car. If Eddie had been caught, Beam would have split, leaving Eddie hung out to dry. They were supposed to split the harvest equally, but Beam kept the quality stuff for himself, leaving Andrews with buds and seeds. Beam sold his for a nice profit. Eddie had trouble selling his stash, so Beam offered to sell it for a commission, and in the end Eddie saw almost no money. Confused by numbers, he thought Beam had done him a favor.

  Eddie’s pro career came to an end after five years. Ambers had sapped his best stuff out of him, and by the early 1980s Eddie was no longer a prospect. He went from Houston to the Yankee organization, and finally an independent league, until his final unconditional release.

  Back in L.A., he went to Skip Beam, by then a millionaire cocaine dealer after a daring Colombia-to-Miami run in which he had smuggled several kilos of the white powder under the noses of DEA agents. Beam gave him a go-fer job, running errands. One day, Eddie tried to sell some drugs to a black dealer in Watts named Omar Miles. The dealer was an old pal of his, an ex-football player from Centennial High who had played against Eddie. Eddie was ignorant enough to call blacks “niggers” in their presence, but he was such a lug head that his racist remarks were often dismissed.

  “That cracker, he’s a dumbass,” Omar said.

  Omar paid Eddie for the pot. Eddie handed him the stash.

  “Wanna smoke some, man?” Omar asked.

  “No, blood, gotta go,” said Eddie. He then turned and high-tailed it out of there. Eddie was a bad actor. Skip Beam could double-cross anybody and keep his cool. Eddie had no poise for that kind of thing. Omar had him figured out immediately. He did not even need to look at the lid. The decent weed was on top, and the rest was all seeds and sticks.

  “Motherfucka,” Omar muttered. It was not a big sale, and Omar might have sought retribution at a later time. But Eddie had called him a nigger to his face and behind his back. Something snapped in Omar. He had a Saturday Night Special under his coat. At Centennial, he had been an all-league cornerback. After playing at L.A. Southwest JC, he had even gotten letters from Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton. His failure to pass a single class ended that possibility. In high school, he had chased down Eddie Andrews on numerous occasions. Eddie was tough and strong, but not blazing fast.

  Omar took off after Eddie. Eddie turned and saw him. Just like the Centennial-Rolling Hills game in 1978.

  Shit, thought Eddie.

  Omar had caught his ass at the 10-yard line that night. Eddie remembered that he could not outrun the ex-corner, so he stopped and decided to just kick his butt instead. Normally, he could accomplish this easily. He was a great street fighter, and utterly fearless. The scars on his face made him look like Frankenstein, but they were proof that he had made his bones in the jungle, so to speak. He had a knife and knew how to handle it. Eddie was a nice guy, ready with a smile. He even helped old ladies with their groceries. But he was a psychopath who felt no remorse slicing another human being like a piece of meat.

  Omar Miles knew this. There were black gangbangers on the street watching, and they would take Eddie down if he got into it with Omar. But this was no comfort to Omar, who would be cut in half by the time they got to Eddie. What did give him comfort was the Saturday Night Special.

  Eddie produced the knife, but Omar killed him with a shot right through his forehead.

  “Damn,” said the first gangbanger on the scene. “That’s a dead white boy.”

  “Motherfucka don’ call me nigger no mo’,” said Omar. He had liked Eddie, but he needed to justify his actions. Under street rules, this seemed to be a reasonable motivation for killing a man in a drug-deal-gone-bad.

  “Motherfucker,” said the gangbanger. He and Omar slapped each other five.

  The L.A.P.D. eventually arrived on the scene. Since Eddie was white and had been a baseball and football star “on the hill,” as the P.V. Peninsula was called by flatlanders, that spurred them to give the case more than the usual drug murder courtesy. Omar was identified, sent to San Quentin, and died there three years later when an Aryan Brotherhood member knifed him in the open yard.

  It was said the killing was revenge for Eddie, who had known some of the Brotherhood during his jail stints, as well as a lot of Hell’s Angels. The authorities were never able to determine what the true reason for Omar’s murder was.

  Within the circles of the Palos Verdes baseball community, Eddie Andrews’ legend was already established in June, 1977. Stan Taylor was moving up the ranks himself. He had pitched the Major League All-Stars to the Little League World Series championship the previous year in Williamsport, Penns
ylvania. In his first Babe Ruth League game, he had started on the mound against a 14-year old ace named Paul Krill.

  A big, expectant crowd showed up to see how Taylor would do on the big diamond. Most rooted against him. Actually, he did have admirers and supporters, those who valued his hard work, his serious approach to baseball, and the obvious success he enjoyed. They were the silent minority.

  His pitching opponent, Krill, was an interesting case. A quiet, unlikable kid, he dressed well and was smart. He admired Stan, and they often had walked home from school together. But in mixed company, he taunted Stan. He was the subject of taunts himself, so he did this to deflect attention. When Stan batted against him in the first inning, he verbally challenged the 13-year old, catcalling him all the way back to the dugout after striking him out on three hard fastballs.

  At first, Stan was out of his league. Krill’s heaters were untouchable. On the mound, the new distance slowed his fastball down. He was uncomfortable and could not find the plate. He walked hitters, and was knocked out of the box in the fourth inning. When he went to shortstop, he muffed the first grounder, then after fielding another, threw the ball in the dirt. The first baseman was unable to scoop it, and Stan’s error let a run score. The long throw from the hole at shortstop looked to him like the Grand Canyon.

  Three times Stan batted against Krill, and three times he whiffed air. Entering the bottom of the seventh (and last) inning, Stan’s team trailed 6-2. Dan was in full pissed-off mode, his usual reaction to his son not pleasing him. Stan’s teammates were making snide remarks about the 13-year old who thought he would be a big star, but was getting his comeuppance. Krill and his teammates were jeering him unmercifully, as were the crowd. Almost every player in the Palos Verdes Little League and Babe Ruth League was there, and they smelled blood.

  “Go home, Taylor.”

  “Stan-leee.”

  “You suck, Taylor.”

  “Hey Taylor, take your kid and fuck off.”

  Stan had struck out to end a first and third rally to end the sixth. He glumly sat in the dugout. He took off his spikes to put on his sneakers, because the game was over for him.

  After the first batter made out, the next made first base on an error. The dugout began to take on a semblance of life, but Stan had no encouragement for his teammates.

  “C’mon, Taylor,” one player said to him. “Stop sulking and root for your team.”

  Stan ignored him. Dan was quiet, too, but Dave Rancid was leading with hopeful shouts. The team rallied. Stan sat there. He could not care less about the rally. He had failed and that was his primary concern. The other kids were furious with him for just sitting in a dark corner of the dusty dugout.

  But the rally kept up, and with one out, Rancid’s kid came to the plate with a runner on first. Krill was clinging to a 6-5 lead. Stan was on deck, but he had not paid attention.

  “You’re on deck,” Dan suddenly told him. Stan had to find his spikes, remove his sneakers, and lace himself back up.

  Krill smoked three fastballs by Rancid. Two outs. Stan emerged from the dugout. His own teammates shouted a word or two, but remained mostly in silent judgment of the prima donna. Krill was tired. It was a hot day and he had thrown a lot of pitches.

  Stan dug in at the plate. The other team was jeering him, using foul epithets, and so were the hyenas in the stands. It was Stan vs. the world. For some reason, he liked it that way.

  Krill’s first pitch was a straight fastball, right down the middle, without the hop that he had exhibited earlier in the game. Right in his wheelhouse. Stan swung, made solid contact, and started running with his head down. He heard shouts and yells and screams. Then there was silence. He touched first and dug in for second. Then he looked up. The second baseman was standing in front of him with his hands on his hips.

  “It’s a home run, asshole,” he said disgustedly. Stan stopped. The other team was walking off the field. He looked at the outfield fence. Beyond, he could see kids on bikes chasing his home run ball, which had cleared the fence in straightaway center.

  Then he heard his team shouting like there was no tomorrow, led by his father, who was whooping and hollering to beat the barn. Paul Krill was walking off the field dejectedly. Stan then went into his patented home run trot. When he got home, his teammates were the only ones cheering him, save for his mother and a few of his teammates’ parents.

  His team lifted him on their shoulders and carried him to the dugout. Then Dan lifted him on his shoulders, parading him around in front of the dugout, in front of the people in the stands, the hating kids, and the resentful parents. His son had shut everybody up. Their display was anything but sportsmanlike.

  The losers had to wait for the Dan and Stan spectacle to end to engage in the post-game handshakes, and Dan was as smug as could be when he made his way through the line. When he came to Krill, Paul had tears in his eyes, but he shook Stan’s hand and showed real admiration for him.

  “You’re a son of a bitch,” Krill said, but it was meant as a compliment. Stan smiled at Paul.

  “You pitched a helluva gave, asshole,” he said.

  Stan’s team, Tarridge Sporting Goods, was undefeated, as was Eddie Andrews and Taco Bell, when they first played each other. Eddie and Stan would duel each other on the mound. Eddie was a figure of almost god-like dimensions to Stan, just as he was to everybody else. He was a full-grown man. Stan was tall, but still painfully thin.

  At school and throughout the league, the talk was about this game, and how Eddie Andrews would show Stan up for what he really was. Nobody was rooting for Stan, except of course for that silent minority of admirers that was growing every day. The prick Rico played for Taco Bell, and he would have it in for Stan.

  The stands were packed for this game. Several high school coaches from the area came to see it, including Eddie’s own coach, Jim Ambers. Stan was totally pumped. He was confident and loved the pressure. He felt like he was David and Eddie was Goliath, but he had that rock going for him. In the top of the first, Eddie struck out the side, including Stan, who hit third in the order. He threw three heaters that Stan never saw. In the bottom of the first inning, Rico led off against Stan. Stan poured that “rock,” intentionally, right off Rico’s helmet on the first pitch.

  Rico went down like a pile of bricks. There was silence on the field. Stan took two large steps towards home plate. Rico looked up at him, stunned and in pain.

  “Fuck you,” Stan said to him.

  “What did you say?” was Rico’s incredulous reply.

  “What the fuck did you think I said?” replied Stan. “I know Goddamn well I said it in English. You unnerstan’ English, don’tcha? Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you, you - ” Rico tried to say.

  “I didn’t give you permission to speak, asshole,” Stan said, and by this time he was half way to home plate. Players were starting to leave their dugouts, which is unheard of in the Babe Ruth League. “Get your ass to first base and take notes. I won’t even charge your sorry ass for the lesson.”

  Rico was beaten. He trotted to first base. Stan stared down the entire Taco Bell team. There was momentary silence. He focused on Eddie Andrews. Eddie was not somebody he wanted to tangle with.

  “I’m gonna kick your ass, then I’m gonna kick your old man’s ass,” came a voice from the Taco Bell dugout. It was not Eddie. It was Wayne Fingers. Fingers was 15 years old, but he was just finishing the eighth grade because he had flunked it. Fingers was a full-blown juvenile delinquent. He and Eddie smoked pot together. Fingers had been busted for smoking dope. He also had a rap sheet for various assaults and robberies. He was from a Portuguese fishing family that had lived in the same old house since the 1920s, although his father ran an auto shop in downtown L.A. The shop was right next door to Joe’s, and Dan had brought his car in for repair on numerous occasions. They had developed into friends, of sorts. Dan would listen to Mr. Fingers lament about what a loser his boy Wayne was, and how he wished his son’s could st
ay on the straight and narrow like young Stan.

  Wayne was Rico’s best friend.

  Stan was so pumped with adrenaline that his skin was ready to come off his body. He had a wonderful quality, the ability to rise to a challenge. When he was like this, he did not feel fear. He felt invincible.

  “I’m here, Fingers,” Stan yelled. “Come and get me.”

  “Go back in the dugout, Finger,” Shirley Taylor was yelling from the stands. When she got excited she mispronounced names, and in this case omitted the “s.”

  “You’re mama can’t protect you, Taylor,” Fingers screamed.

  “I hear a police siren, Fingers,” retorted Stan. “Better run.”

  “You’ll get yours,” Fingers yelled.

  By this time, everybody on both sides was getting into it. Dan was yelling across the field at Fingers’ dad, who was Taco Bell’s assistant coach. The elder Fingers was cussing right back. The stands were getting heated.

  Stan went back to the mound. Rico took his lead at first. He was screaming vehement hatred at Stan. Stan had opened himself up. Now he had to put up because he had not shut up.

  Stan struck out the second batter. Next up was Eddie Andrews. He hit a shot right back at him, past the mound and into center field. Rico advanced to second, and was taunting Stan from there.

  “Yer gonna get yer tits lit, pussyboy,” he was yelling.

  Stan came this close to walking to second and telling the little pissant to take advantage of his vantage point from second base to watch Stan, and therefore to learn something about the craft of pitching. But he was a little bit scared. Wayne Fingers was coming to the plate. Stan knew that if he fared poorly today, he would not live it down. He already knew that Fingers was out to get him. Fingers was Taco Bell’s second pitcher. He threw sidearm, and brought pretty good heat. He liked to bean guys, and Stan knew he would be a target. Not to mention, Fingers would be waiting behind a tree some time to beat the crap out of him. Stan was not afraid of a physical beating, but rather the result of getting his smart aleck ways thrown back at him if he failed to pitch well.

  Stan had taken his shot. He was an object of derision. He decided that steering clear of controversy had not worked, so he would make it work for him. He would shove it up their asses. He had to do it, though.

  Fingers batted right-handed. He was a power threat; a big, mean bastard, standing 6-1 and 200 pounds. He wanted to get a hit off Stan Taylor so bad he was almost grinding his bat handle off.

  Fingers hit a rocket down the third base line. Rico rounded third and head for home. Then the home plate umpire called it foul. Fingers worked the count to 2-and-1. Then Stan sawed him off. Fingers hit a two-hopper to the first baseman. He had an aluminum bat. If it had been wood, it would have broken. The awkward swing at the up-and-in pitch, which would not have been a strike, caused him to lose a step or two coming out of the box. Stan immediately directed the first baseman to get Eddie at second, and sprinted up the first base line. The play worked perfectly. The shortstop stepped on second.

  “Double play,” Stan was yelling. He was ahead of Fingers. The shortstop made an errant throw to first base, just up the line. Stan was drawn off the bag. If Fingers had slid, he could have avoided the tag, but he ran straight into Stan. His desire for revenge made him try to knock the tall kid down. Stan had the ball in his glove and came around with a hard, wicked, ball-in-the-glove tag right on Fingers’ ugly face. It immediately caused his nose to bleed, and the umpire called him out for an inning-ending double play.

  Stan spiked the ball like a pro football player after scoring a touchdown. Fingers had murder in his heart.

  The events of the first inning laid the foundation for a game that would go down in P.V. legend. Eddie was unhittable. He pitched a no-hit game. An error by Rico at second prevented it from being a perfect game.

  Stan had worked out of that first inning jam, and that had taken a load off his mind. Now he could settle down. He knew he had the goods today. He just had to concentrate. Over seven innings, he gave up seven hits. Andrews had four of them, but Fingers and Rico were held hitless all game. At the plate, Stan never saw a thing big Ed threw at him, and he struck out again in the fourth and the seventh.

  At the end of seven, the score stood 0-0. Babe Ruth League rules stated that a starting pitcher can only pitch seven innings, so both Andrews and Stan had to come out. Eddie went to first base, and Stan moved to shortstop.

  In the top of the eighth, Tarridge Sporting Goods scored a run to take a 1-0 lead. The eighth inning is extra innings in the seven-inning league. Tarridge sent Rusty Potter to the hill in the bottom of the frame. He was a lefty who threw junk. The first hitter was Andrews, and against all odds, Potter struck him out. Eddie threw his helmet and bat at the bat rack.

  Taco Bell’s coach had forgotten his team’s batting helmets. They had to borrow Tarridge’s. Dan Taylor had paid for the helmets. Taylor saw Eddie throw the helmet.

  “Hey, Fingers, tell your guys not to throw my helmets,” he yelled. “I paid for those.”

  Predictably, Dan’s request was met by derision.

  “Low class bastards,” he said to nobody in particular.

  One of Fingers’ pals was standing near the fence and overheard the remark.

  “He called you low class bastards,” the kid yelled out to the Taco Bell dugout.

  More derision hailed back at Dan, who was beyond caring. The emotions of the day had drained him of normal feelings.

  Fingers came up and drilled a line drive single.

  The next batter popped out. The next hitter was Jerry Lowell, who had been a rival of Stan’s throughout little league. He was one year older and a dangerous hitter. Lowell parked a long drive to left center field, in the gap. Fingers was off and running. Stan ran way out to the outfield to get the cut-off. He knew he had to get as far out as possible to get that throw. Fingers picked up steam past second, then rounded third and headed for home. The throw came in to Stan.

  Stan turned to throw home to nab Fingers. It was the most perfect moment of his life, as if he was One with the Universe. Athletes talk about the zone. Nobody, except really good athletes who have experienced it, knows what the hell the zone is. Stan was in it. He knew, he just knew he was going to throw Fingers out at home plate.

  Stan had never made a throw this far before. He had lacked the arm strength until now. The ball flowed off his fingers. Stan calculated in microseconds where Fingers was, how fast he was running, and when the throw would arrive at the plate.

  He could have turned around and shut his eyes, and he would have known the results. It was too glorious to miss, however. The ball sailed as if on wings, and landed a perfect strike in the catcher’s glove. The catcher was a husky kid. Fingers tried to run him down, but the kid held on to the ball to tag him out to end the game.

  Fingers exploded at the umpire. He pulled Dan Taylor’s bought-and-paid-for helmet off his head and threw it to the ground so hard that it shattered, causing Dan to run out and get in his face.

  Tarridge’s players jumped for joy. Stan ran past the pitcher’s mound celebration to home plate. Fingers was trailing the umpire, challenging the poor bastard to a fight. Dan Taylor was right behind him, screaming at him for breaking his helmet.

  Fingers turned and was ready to strike Dan, when Stan arrived. Stan went right up to him and put his face half an inch from his. They were eyeball-to-eyeball.

  “You are…OUTTA HERE!” he yelled. Fingers was too shocked to do anything at first. Stan taunted him. He was not smiling. He had assumed complete smartass mode, and was talking in a weird monotone, meant to illicit full irritation from Wayne Fingers.

  “Outta here,” he said again, in a way that sounded as if he had known all along exactly how Fingers would lose, as if there never had been a doubt. He was backing off just a bit.

  Fingers lunged for Stan, but Dan grabbed him. Fingers managed to get a punch in on Dan. Then Mr. Fingers interceded, and grabbed his so
n very roughly. He violently wrestled and hit him. It was obvious he had been forced to put some hurt on his boy to keep him down in the past. Dan escaped with a swollen jaw. Stan stood pointing at Wayne. Now he was smiling and laughing at him. Rico and a few others were trying to taunt him, but their words were rendered meaningless.

  Stan raised his arms in triumph. The clique of Tarridge’s family and friends accorded him hero status. Stan just reveled in it. What a game. What a day. Talk about validation!

  Stan was worried about Fingers, who threatened great bodily harm to him, to Dan, to his mother, and to their house. His father apologized for his son. Fingers was arrested a couple of weeks later for breaking and entering into another house. The ensuing investigation found that he was part of a crystal meth ring, and he went away to spend more time at juvie. Stan never heard what happened to him beyond that.

  Stan continued to lead his team throughout the Summer of 1977. At the end of the season, all-star teams were selected. The Babe Ruth League has a 13-year old all-star team. Very few 13-year olds are good enough to make the regular all-stars. Stan was an exception.

  Dave Rancid’s kid had picked up his game nicely in the second half of the season. He played third base and played it well. He still struck out a lot, but hit with good power. The better he got, the more he started to get on Stan’s nerves. Stan was a chatterbox, and Dave Rancid, Jr. was very quiet. He seemed to garner more respect than Stan, which rubbed Stan and his father the wrong way. Friction developed between the families.

  By the time the all-star selection process came around, there was talk of Dave making the regular all-star team. Although there was no official rule, the league’s managers always had said that in the rare case of 13-year olds making regular all-stars, there should never be more than one from any single team in the league.

  Stan was by far the more qualified player, but Rancid was popular. The fact he never smiled and was still popular bugged the hell out of Stan and Dan. By this time they had become obsessed with those damn Rancids. When the league’s managers and coaches met to vote on all-stars, somehow Rancid had become a favorite for regular selection. The vote came down, and it was tight. Dan held his vote back. Finally, he was the last one to vote. It was tied.

  Dan voted for his son. An audible moan went up. Dave Rancid, the father, cussed him out. The legend of the Dan and Stan show was ratcheted up a notch, and not for the better.

  “Those two deserve each other,” Dave Rancid, Sr. remarked.

  Stan took sports seriously. He started to realize that he took it too seriously. Having a father like Dan opened his eyes to the kind of obsessive behavior that can happen in sports, and Stan sensed that he did not want to become like that. Stan began to question the meaning of life. By that, he began to question the game of baseball. He and his dad tended to go down and practice less than before. Going to the park was more of a chore. The burden of being the “bad guy” and the son of Dan Taylor in the Palos Verdes baseball community was wearing him down. He rode the exhilaration of his on-field triumphs. However, the treatment of his “enemies” was breaking him down, at school and at the ballpark.

  Shirley was a tennis player, and she had always encouraged Stan to play that game. Being tall, strong, and angular, he was a natural athlete, agile and quick, although not actually fast. Stan took to the game. He enjoyed it as a diversion from baseball, perhaps because he felt less pressure. The Taylor’s belonged to the Palos Verdes Racquet Club, a tony establishment filled with overstuffed grown-ups and obnoxious teenagers. He would go and play tennis. He regularly beat these tennis snobs.

  Stan’s abilities were obvious. Shirley took him to a local pro named Bruce Damon. Damon taught Stan the American serve, the volley game, the topspin backhand, and many other aspects of strategy and technique. Stan kept improving. After only a few sessions, Damon took Shirley aside and told her that she had a prodigy on her hands.

  “He can play at the highest level,” Damon told them. “He can become a professional, but he’ll have to give it everything he’s got. He needs to quit baseball and basketball and concentrate on tennis year-round. If he does it, with proper instruction, he can be a champion.”

  “I think I can play professional baseball,” was Stan’s reply. Somehow, telling Damon this re-affirmed his love for baseball. While he may actually have been a better tennis player than a baseball player, his heart was in baseball. Baseball was not much fun lately, but he had committed to the game. He felt a loyalty to the game, and in choosing not to give it up, he confirmed something that he felt about himself. Damon told Shirley that it was his way or the highway. Stan refused to give up baseball. Damon resigned as his coach.

  Still, Stan played for fun. First, his junior high school set up a challenge match with another junior high. The other school featured a kid named Pat Sanguillen, a local junior Davis Cup contender, considered one of the best players on the peninsula. Stan was the best his school had to offer, but he was given no chance to beat Sanguillen.

  Few at Stan’s school even knew he played tennis. His classmates derided him, as usual, and offered that he would lose - big time - to Sanguillen. When the match came around, the court was packed. There were whistles and catcalls, and Stan’s classmates continued to make fun of him.

  This, of course, was Stan’s place to shine, because he was a gamer and a winner. He thrived on challenges and, as usual, used nerves and fear to his advantage. Sports were the place he would show all the boneheads who was in charge, and so it was - again - on this day. Everybody could sense it right from the get-go. Many of the kids were watching Stan play tennis for the first time. Warming up, they were amazed at his smooth, powerful strokes, and his heavy topspin backhand.

  Then he practiced service, and put on a display that awed everybody, most of all Sanguillen. Stan’s opponent was beaten before the match started when Stan pounded searing line shots that stuck into the fence on the other end of the court. It was an incredibly impressive display.

  Sanguillen was tough, but Stan was tougher. In a close match, he held on and beat him. He turned his detractors around and had them rooting for him. He could hear the pretty girls who never gave him the time of day whispering, “C’mon, Stan.” He just excelled.

  Shirley enrolled Stan in the Daily Breeze Tennis Tournament. This included the best talent in the South Bay and beyond. Players from Long Beach to Santa Monica, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, all the way to San Marino, competed in this prestigious event.

  Stan was unknown and unranked. He had spent his Summer playing Babe Ruth League baseball while the other kids were playing tournaments, traveling to places like Kalamazoo, Michigan to excel against top competition.

  The competition on the peninsula was excellent. Tracy Austin and Pete Sampras earned their spurs there. Stan had to face seeded players from the very first round. The marquee matches were played on center court before larger crowds, while he was relegated to playing on court 10 next to the overgrown weeds.

  Still, every opponent fell like Eastern Europe under Stalin. Stan drew attention and created fear. He created fear because he was not known, and his opponents, who knew how to play all the usual suspects, were taken by surprise. His photo adorned the Daily Breeze sports page. His game was not hard to figure out. Stan dominated with serve-and-volleys. He rushed the net every chance he got, and with his agility and reach turned the angles in his favor. He won the Daily Breeze tournament and was heralded as the next great junior star.

  If he had taken up tennis full-time, and followed Bruce Damon’s advice, Stan Taylor might have gone onto greatness, or semi-greatness. However, it was not in him, which was curious. Stan was a “me-first” kid, a guy who lorded over others and brought enmity upon himself for it. He was a soloist, a prima donna, a star. Tennis was perfect for his kind of egocentric personality. Yet, he chose baseball, a team game.

  Baseball is a game of individual performance, but one player cannot make a team a winner, no matter how good he i
s. In little league, maybe even in high school, a dominant pitcher can do just that - dominate - but the game requires back-up; teammates who can field and throw, hitters to score runs.

  Tennis is one-on-one. Stan would look at his fielders, glaring at them after they made errors that cost him precious, glorifying shutouts. He had one fat-ass catcher who, Stan was sure, allowed passed balls with a runner on third to break up his shutouts.

  Stan would scream at him, and the fat ass would just reply with “Ah, who cares about the shutout? We’re up by 10.”

  This, of course, infuriated Stan, who would demand that his old man remove the malcontent. The fact that Dan would do that just made it worse for Stan, who was seen as a glory hog, with his father right there with him.

  But in tennis he could make his own glory without anybody else raining on his parade.

  Stan knew a kid named Dave Dolmite. Dolmite was, like Stan, an excellent athlete. He was one of those guys who at one time might have been considered to be Stan’s equal in sports. He played baseball, basketball, football and tennis. Dolmite played in a different little league than Stan, but they competed on the same CYO basketball team. Dolmite and Stan were the only non-Catholic kids not attending St. Cecilia’s who played for the school.

  They were not exactly friends. Dolmite had it together. He was confident and popular. Stan’s confidence manifested itself as arrogance. But they both played tennis. Stan started to invite Dolmite to the tennis club. Dolmite was the perfect opponent for Stan. He was a good, competitive, worthy opponent. He also could not beat Stan in a million years. Stan loved playing him. Dolmite accepted defeat graciously. Stan hated to lose. He took it personally. Anyone who could beat him was an object of hate, not a worthy opponent. Somebody that Stan would obsess over. Beating Stan in tennis, or any sport, was cause to go on his personal “shit list.”

  Dave had the gift of maturity. He made good grades and was a clean-cut, All-American type. Stan admired him. Dolmite also had a girlfriend, which put him in a different social league.

  One day, Dolmite’s baseball team practiced at Stan’s junior high school. Stan saw Dolmite, but some of his classmates were still hanging around. The catcalling was happening. Dolmite saw how unpopular Stan was, and if Stan could have dug a hole, he would have. He desperately wanted to hide the fact that he was so hated. Now, Dolmite saw the way it was, which just killed Stan.

  Stan knew a lot of kids who went to other schools, but they would all be attending Palos Verdes High together. Stan dreaded the day this would happen. The kids who knew and loathed him would continue with their harassment. He knew when this happened, some of his sports associates would see this. Not everybody knew the full extent of his reputation. At least, he did not think they all did. He was repulsed by the prospect of full disclosure of his “dirty laundry.”

  He did not look forward to attending Palos Verdes even though he knew he would be a sports star. Success in sports had not overcome his unpopularity. He knew the only way he could change things would be to get his father away from the action, where his crazy antics, his yelling and screaming, his swearing and high-ventilation act would no longer be the big issue that crowded the way everybody felt about his son.

  In Stan’s mind his father was a bogeyman. Stan overlooked his own actions. Hiding his stature among his peers was one of Stan’s great pre-occupations. If he befriended somebody outside school, or found somebody who saw anything redeeming in him, he strove to keep his “other life” secret.

  Stan had a cousin named Cathy. She was a shy girl, quiet. She had her own demons to worry about. Somehow, while the two were never close - they had little in common - there was an unspoken bond between them. They were both outsiders.

  Cathy would stay at the house on occasion. Stan always made an effort to preen about and try to impress her in some way. He had her going for a while. She seemed impressed that he was such a good athlete. Stan even had a friend over to the house once who said the right things, making Stan look good.

  Everything came crashing down one day after CYO basketball practice. Dan was coaching the team. He was a taskmaster. He yelled and screamed at the kids, and had quickly worn out his welcome. Parents were complaining about his methods. Dan would just reply that they were all a “bunch of assholes.” He openly favored his son. Since they were the non-Catholics, this did not go over well.

  Stan took the brunt of it, just like he always did. In the locker room, on the road trips, in the car. He was egotistical, but Stan never hurt a fly. He never meant to harm anybody (except when he put an 83 mile per hour fastball in Rico’s ear). Furthermore, he was smart and funny. He had a great sense of humor. Somehow he could not get past the open hostility, to the point where his jokes, his easy-going style, could let him be one of the guys. He so desperately wanted to be one of the guys. Outside of the strictures of actually playing the games, he was an open and friendly soul. This aspect of his personal nature had always been held tightly shut, not allowed to explore and expand. He was caught in the middle, unable to break free.

  So his teammates made fun of him. They threw garbage at him. They tweaked his ears when he wasn’t looking. They stole his gear, threw his stuff in the garbage, hid things. Life with the CYO basketball team had become almost as unbearable as school. Worse, Dan Taylor saw it all.

  One day they came home from a practice in which his own son had been the open butt of jokes. They just rode in silence, and the anger in Dan was palpable. There was anger at the pissants who tormented his son, but there was hostility at his kid for being the object of that torment. Dan was exasperated at him for taking it. He was psychologically blocked from realizing that he was part of the reason Stan was so badly mistreated.

  Cathy was staying at the house on this particular night. There were cursory hellos when the “men” arrived, but it was in the air. A “shit storm” was brewing. Dan was on the warpath, and when that happened Stan Taylor was going to get it. It was inevitable. Especially after Dan started drinking. That was when the silence turned into barbs.

  What made it worse on this night was Cathy’s presence. Stan came to realize something that he had seen before, at practices, in groups, and when his friends were at the house. Dan liked to embarrass him in front of people. He did it in front of grown-ups. He did it in front of his peers. He liked to jump on an imaginary stage, when people were watching and listening. He would do it in restaurants, talking loudly, drunkenly, making fun of his son in such a way that anybody within earshot knew that STAN TAYLOR was getting ridiculed.

  Dan ridiculed Stan in front of Cathy, because they were in front of her. He said things he normally would not have said. Cathy’s presence meant that the words would cut like knives. Stan saw it coming, but was helpless. To argue or spar insults would only exacerbate the situation. He knew his best course was just to take it. So he did, as long as he could.

  Then Dan started in on the treatment Stan received from his teammates. He began to detail the torments, the indignities, making sure Cathy knew and understood his meaning. He wanted his son to feel that extra red blush of embarrassment because of it.

  “Those kids don’t like you,” Dan said. “They make fun of you.”

  Stan wanted to scream back that they did not like him because they hated Dan. He could not. It was a futile statement, and it would only reinforce the facts. He could see Cathy staring at him. In reality, Cathy felt sorry for him. She knew what Dan was like, especially when he was drinking, but Stan only felt singled out for humiliation.

  Eventually, it got the best of him, and he started in on his old man

  “That’s a load of shit,” he said.

  His use of swear words infuriated both Dan and Shirley.

  Shirley by this point had lost all semblance of what she had once been. The vibrant college student and freethinker was now Mrs. Dan Taylor in thought, word and deed. Her natural tendency towards being nice in situations such as this had been replaced by a terrible gang mentality. When Dan ju
mped on Stan, she jumped on him, too. She never defended him. She was Dan’s backup, and she was good at.

  She no longer seemed to have a hold on reality, or so it seemed to Stan. She misunderstood things, always to Stan’s detriment. Stan would accidentally hit his funny bone, and yell out in pain. Ray Charles could see what had happened, but Shirley would just say, “What’s the matter, you idiot?”

  Stan would accidentally bite his tongue, and his face would grimace in pain.

  “Are you an idiot?” was her standard response to this, and a million other things.

  Stan became convinced that he lived in some kind of parallel universe in which white was black, black was white, and the idiots ran the asylum. He knew he was not the idiot. Shirley would be driving her car. Stan was sure some unseen force was the only thing that kept her alive. She would approach green lights and stop. She would drive through a stop sign.

  “What…are…you…doing?” Stan would squirm. He looked and saw other cars come to screeching halts, fists of drivers raised in anger.

  “Why are you acting like an idiot?” Shirley would ask him impatiently. Her face would pinch in a way that just disturbed Stan.

  There must be some explanation for this, Stan would think to himself, but it was beyond his understanding. If he had a dollar for every time his mother called him an idiot, he would have had $207,113. If he had a buck for every time the old man called him an “asshole,” that would have garnered him an additional $311,419. “Cocksucker” was a rarer epithet, but he could have picked up a grand if the gods had been paying for that wonderful phrase.

  This caused great frustration for Stan. He wallowed in this hell, fighting with parents he could not beat. The last essence of manhood and dignity was stripped away from him in the presence of his female cousin. Any chance that Stan had of portraying himself as a knight, a man, and a winner, was stripped away by his father.

  He hated him. He loved him. His mother, the same. The man who went out of his way to make his son look bad in front of his peers was the same man who went out of his way to do anything for the boy. He was generous, he had tremendous love in his heart, and he had that quality of puppy dog vulnerability. He would yell loudly, with such a foul mouth, using horrendous language in a judgmental rage. Still, he could stand there, his foppish hair askew, a look of wonder on his face.

  Stan was the boy of conscience. He hated himself for the feelings he felt for his dad. He could not stay with these feelings for a long time. He blamed himself. Surely, it was his fault. The problems of his world were his doing, and he would just accept the blame.

  Stan’s rival on the St. Cecilia’s team was a transfer student from back east named Jack Tibbetts. Tibbetts was almost perfect. He was attractive, a great student, the son of an Air Force officer who dressed impeccably. Jack acted like an adult.

  Tibbetts was immediately accepted and respected by his teammates. This made Stan green with envy. The only thing he was recognized for was athletic skill, but that was not enough.

  Tibbetts replaced Stan as the leading scorer on the team. Stan was obsessed with statistics, so this was almost too much to accept. Stan had a great way to change all that. Just as he had Start-O-Matic baseball, Foto-Electric football, and had played that college football game with Dave Bailiff, he also had an NBA board game. It was a couple of years old, and contained cards for each player - John Havlicek, Pete Maravich, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Rick Barry, and so on.

  Each player was rated for various skills, like shooting and rebounding. Stan’s answer to Jack Tibbetts was to create cards for each player on his CYO team. Stan rated them all, going over their skills. He gave himself the edge on Tibbetts in several important areas, particular as it pertained to scoring. Then he created opponents, using various teams from around the local CYO league. Once he was done with that, he started playing games. Naturally, Stan outscored and out-rebounded Tibbetts. It made him feel superior.

  On his first day of junior high school, Stan saw a girl named Jo Petrini. She was absolutely beautiful, the first girl he ever knew who was his age and had breasts. In his mind, she was way out of his league. She dated a kid named Ray. Ray was a pipsqueak, but a good-looking pipsqueak. He was tanned with dark hair. Ray and Stan had nothing to do with each other, and Stan felt no particular anger towards Ray. He was just grateful that Ray was not one of the kids who did not make his life miserable.

  However, Ray’s best friend was a kid named Lou. Lou was one of Stan’s tormentors. One day, Shirley was driving Stan home from school, and they passed Ray and Lou. Stan was afraid that Lou would yell something at him, but figured he might not, since he was with Ray, and Ray was quiet.

  They were in a conversation and missed Stan’s car driving past. Ray and Lou had gone to a different elementary school than Stan. Stan picked up a snippet of their conversation. They were talking about “sixth grade girlfriends.”

  This had a strange effect on Stan. Stan never had a girlfriend, much less one narrowly classified as being a sixth grade girlfriend, as opposed to other girlfriends. He despised Lou because he was popular with girls. That was salt in the wound. God, life was unfair.

  When Stan was 14, he heard an older kid tell a bunch of his CYO teammates a dirty joke, about the sperm that is set on impregnating the egg first. The sperm buys a new set of running shoes, trains for the event, and on the big day, when he is launched forward on his quest, he gets way out ahead of the pack. Then, the sperm has a terrible realization. A few stragglers can hear his last words.

  “Oh, nooo,” the sperm is heard exclaiming. “It’s a blow job.”

  Every kid laughed knowingly. Stan smiled and pretended to think it was funny, but he was not sure what the joke meant.

  The CYO kids seemed to be more sexual than his public school counterparts. They were always talking about “getting on” some girl. Girls were usually referred to by their last names, as in, “I got on O’Reilly last night.”

  They claimed to be getting more ass than a toilet seat. The reality was that all but one of them was a virgin. Some occasionally got into some kissing or petting, but it never went beyond that. This did not change Stan’s perception that all of them were John Holmes.

  The CYO cheerleaders were fantasy objects, in their Catholic girl uniforms. They were better looking than the junior high girls. At first, they had shown him some interest, but that faded after a while. Stan was too weird, too unsure of himself with girls, too uncool.

  It was not his looks. He was not popular with the boys, and lacked the kind of sympathetic, rebel-like quality that would make him a James Dean figure with girls. At the games, he would look at the girls gyrate during their cheers, and all he could do was imagine. In the eighth grade, Stan read “Ball Four” by Jim Bouton. It was much more influential on him than “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger. “Ball Four” opened up a world of possibilities to him, about sex and baseball. He imagined that some day he would play in the Major Leagues, and then he would live out the fantasies Bouton wrote about in “Ball Four”.

  Bouton wrote about “beaver shooting,” which is essentially men looking up the dresses of women, in various forms. Stan had a biology teacher named Miss Ovis. Miss Ovis was in her 20s, not a bad looking woman, although no beauty queen. She had a shapely body, and wore short skirts.

  One day in the library, Stan walked by Miss Ovis and purposely dropped something on the floor. He bent over to pick it up, and started staring up Miss Ovis’ dress.

  “What are you doing, Stan?” Miss Ovis asked him.

  “Beaver shooting,” replied Stan confidently.

  “I read ‘Ball Four’, Stan,” said Miss Ovis.

  Stan was mortified.

  It was around this time that Dan represented Mike Lodeen on child molestation charges out in Barstow. Dan had to make numerous trips to the high desert town, and he would come back filled with inside, attorney-client-privileged information about Lodeen, which he shared with Shirley. Stan heard most
of it.

  Lodeen was as “queer as an eight-dollar bill,” a habitual drug abuser and child molester. Dan did an excellent job as his attorney, and got him off with a suspended sentence. Lodeen never paid Dan a dime. Dan whined about it for years afterward. Stan thought his father had no reason to complain. He knew what the Lodeens were. They did not have a speck of honor, so why would he have ever expected to get paid?

  Lodeen had been the coolest of the cool when he coached in the little league. All the kids looked up to him. His brother Rickey was a good pitcher and also considered cool. When Stan discovered that Lodeen was the worst kind of sexual deviant, an actual “faggot,” the worst thing one could be in the lexicon of adolescent vocabulary, he felt better about himself. Here was a guy who everybody thought highly of, but he had fallen. Nobody outside the Taylor’s or the Lodeen’s knew he was gay or a child molester, except for Dick Maslin, who prided himself on inside information.

  Stan knew. He wondered why Lodeen had never tried his molesting ways on him, and smiled because he did know. Lodeen knew Stan was straight and not “in play.” This was good news for Stan. Lodeen’s low rent mother occasionally worked as a yard monitor at his junior high, and when the child molestation case came up, she started to act hatefully towards Stan. She knew the kid knew about her beloved son. How dare this kid have knowledge of what we are? she thought to herself. This would be a persistent theme that Stan understood. If somebody knew you had knowledge of something negative about someone, that someone would hold it against the person who had the knowledge. It did not really make sense, but was a fact of human nature.

  One day, Maslin was at Stan’s house. He told Stan that he knew Lodeen was “queer,” and he knew Stan knew. Stan never found out how Maslin found out, but if anybody had a way of getting this kind of stuff, it was Dick.

  “Wanna play a good joke?” he asked Stan.

  “Sure,” said Stan.

  Maslin picked up the phone and dialed a number.

  “Mrs. Lodeen?” he asked, changing his voice into that of a convincing adult authority figure. “This is John del Greco with the California Highway Patrol…Yes, I’m afraid so, ma’am. I regret to inform you that your son, Mike, has been killed in an auto accident.”

  Maslin had to hold the receiver away from his ear, and Stan could hear the shrill shriek of “Miiiiikeeee,” from the phone.

  “My condolences, Mrs. Lodeen,” said Maslin/del Greco. “Somebody from our department will be in touch with you about the remains.”

  Maslin just loved himself when he pulled these kinds of stunts. Stan was repulsed but impressed. Stan was always searching for competence. The kids who made fun of him were, in his view, inferior. He was beset by the duality of trying to be one them, and looking down on them. Maslin was worthy in his view because he possessed a certain wit and humor that was above the ordinary.

  Stan was friendly with another kid named Carl. Carl was a blonde cherub, the only son of Norwegian immigrants with chips on their shoulder. Carl was open and friendly, however. He was one of those guys who went through life unnoticed, as opposed to Stan, who seemed to wear a sign on his chest that read, “I’M IN THE SPOTLIGHT.”

  Stan was attracted to people like Carl, who were usually not in sports. Smart students but not prominent, with quiet personalities. These types were not likely to join in the chorus of boos that he heard every day. Carl sympathized with Stan because of the way the others treated him. Carl got his jokes, enjoyed his quirky personality, and understood his peculiarities as being plusses, not negatives. Carl could not understand why Stan put himself out there so nakedly, seemingly asking for abuse. He could not relate to the desire for recognition that was in Stan, which was so strong that he was willing to place himself in the crosshairs of juvenile putdowns. Stan was proud and strong enough to withstand it, which amazed Carl, and was the source of his admiration. He could never have taken one-tenth of the treatment himself. He did not see behind Stan’s blue eyes, into his inner psyche, which suffered far more than anybody knew. Nobody, not Carl or anybody else, truly knew what it was like to be faded, to be baited, to be hated.

  One day, Carl told Stan that he was a pretty good tennis player. Even though they had known each other all their lives, this fact had somehow had escaped Stan. Stan was elated, and arranged to hit with Carl. What joy, a chance to play meaningful tennis with a nice friend.

  Then they started to hit. Carl had no athletic ability, not for tennis or anything else. Stan was deflated. Carl simply was so clueless about sports, that he thought he was good.

  “So, what do you think,” he asked Stan?

  “Hey, you’re good,” Stan smiled. He did not like to hurt anybody’s feelings.

  Before Stan started the eighth grade, Dan had occasion to meet Jim Ambers, the baseball coach at Rolling Hills High School. Ambers ran a top program. It was an era in which players wore funky uniforms. Players had long, flowing hair coming out of their caps.

  Not if you played for Jim Ambers. Eddie Andrews played for Ambers. Left to his own devices, Eddie’s hair would have grown to his butt, but under Ambers he looked like a Marine, just like everybody else on the team.

  Ambers ran a year-round program. He managed the American Legion team in the Summer, and in recent years had run a top notch “Winter league,” otherwise known as Fall ball because it actually ran from September to Thanksgiving. Ambers had once played briefly for the 49ers, too. He had been asked to take over as the defensive coordinator for Rolling Hills’ football team. That meant that he needed somebody to coach his Winter league team. The subject came up with Dan, and it was agreed that he would coach the team.

  They played every Saturday in the Fall. Stan was not yet in high school, and not even slated to attend Rolling Hills, but he was given a uniform and a spot on the roster. There was a little grumbling among the Rolling Hills players, and a lot of grumbling from everybody who knew the Taylor’s from P.V. youth baseball.

  Taylor and Eddie Andrews immediately hit it off. Eddie admired the kid who had beaten him earlier that year in the epic Babe Ruth game. Once the games started, there was no more grumbling amongst the Rolling Hills crowd. Stan pitched, played first base and shortstop, and handled himself very well. He loved playing with older kids, and competing evenly. In fact, he was better than most of them. He was quickly treated as a phenom, a rookie who was way ahead of his age group.

  The team traveled, and it was all great fun. What was really great about it was the fact that he was accepted and treated as an equal by the high school kids. They laughed at his jokes. They did not taunt him. Stan felt like he was out of place with his peers. He was ahead of them in many ways. He was not mature as much as he was advanced. He just felt comfortable with the older guys. Back amongst the rabble at school, with the pissant coaches in the Babe Ruth League, and that crowd, he was not viewed the way he wanted to be. The general consensus there was much different.

  “They all think Taylor coaches the Rolling Hills team so his kid can play,” Dan said to Stan and Shirley. The way he said it implied that all blame should fall directly on Stan.

  Stan was a lover, not a fighter. When he got his back up, he would take action, but it always took a lot to move him to that point. The “Charlie Weener” punching incident, the aggressive baseball actions in the game against Rico and Wayne Fingers; these were isolated incidents. If life were a movie, he would have earned his spurs, everybody would have accepted him, and he and his new girlfriend would live happily ever after.

  Stan’s athletic prowess had not gotten him any closer to a girlfriend or peer respect. He could not understand why he could make the high school kids on the Winter league team laugh, while he engendered continual enmity from those who were his own age.

  Dan was peeved and perplexed. He was amazed at the way Stan went after Rico and stood up to Fingers, but was frustrated at the way his son would revert to timidity at school. Dan befriended Dan Colgate, the physical education teacher at Stan’s school. Dan w
as a big, beefy ex-wrestler who resembled Hoss from the old TV show “Bonanza”. He liked Stan, and was also frustrated at the way he let himself get kicked around the schoolyard. Mr. Colgate was a good guy, and thankfully did not focus on Stan’s treatment from the other kids. He treated Stan like an equal and took an interest in his athletic ability. Stan impressed the hell out of him. He enjoyed talking sports with this tall, smart kid.

  Dan approached Mr. Colgate, and used him as a psuedo-spy. Mr. Colgate gave him detailed descriptions of Stan’s playground problems. The two of them could not understand why Stan did not stand up for himself. He had size and strength, but lacked the mental toughness. He was intimidated. Finally, when the weather started to turn hot in the Spring of his eighth grade year, something snapped inside Stan. He engaged in not one but two knockdown, drag out brawls on school grounds, both within a week of each other.

  The first was with a kid named Stillian. Stillian was tall, thin and dumb. He had known Stan his whole life, since kindergarten. They had never been friends. Stillian possessed no athletic skills, was a weak student, and simply envied Stan. This was the conundrum of Stan’s youth. On the one hand, he envied others for their popularity and social skills. On the other hand, others envied him for his sports skills. He was shy because he wanted to hide his unpopularity, and a showboat who enjoyed demonstrating in front of others.

  Stillian was like Frankie Yagman. Both of them were frustrated that no matter how much heat came down on Stan, he refused to yield. He had taught never to quit. Stan took this advice to heart. Stan realized that most kids are not taught this philosophy, especially in the cut `n’ run 1960s and ‘70s. New Age parents in California were telling their children that if it hurt their feelings, it was okay, do something else, and pass the tofu, please.

  Stillian was not the toughest kid in school. He was a target Stan could deal with, and so he did. One day Stillian got on him with the usual crap.

  “Pussy boy,” Stillian called him. This was a typical kind of expression, along with “mama’s boy,” “faggot” and the normal putdowns. They were down by the tennis courts. Stan started to return the verbal volleys, and Stillian did not relent. The others were laughing at him, the usual scene. Then he punched Stillian in the face.

  Ka-pow!

  Stillian was stunned.

  “Oh, Stan hit me,” taunted Stan. “Try this on for size.”

  Stan then punched Stillian again. Stillian had no chance. Stan beat him to a bloody pulp. He did it quietly and efficiently. Finally, Mr. Colgate pulled him off of Stillian. Colgate did not say a word to Stan, and did not punish him.

  About a week later, a younger kid named Trey Brien taunted Stan. Brien was a rich kid. His dad was a doctor. He was smart and utterly obnoxious. He had gone to another grammar school, and the minute he arrived in the seventh grade he saw the way the eighth graders treated Stan. He was more than happy to jump in with both feet.

  They were near the bathrooms when Brien started to make fun of Stan. This time, Stan put on a performance that made his beating of Stillian pale in comparison. He went after Brien, bitch-slapping and punching him. That was not the half of it, though. He gave commentary on it.

  “Feel this,” he said, then punched Brien.

  “Did that hurt?” Stan asked.

  It obviously had.

  “The reason it hurt,” Stan told Brien, “is because I wanted it to hurt. Here, how ‘bout this?”

  Again, a whack to his face, drawing blood. Brien was in serious pain. A crowd had gathered to observe Brien’s humiliation.

  “Do you like getting your ass kicked in front of girls?” Stan asked. Many girls were present.

  Bam.

  “Now I know that hurt,” Stan said. “I wanted it to hurt, ya see. So, understand this, you are in pain now because I have decided for you to be in a pain. Now look at me.”

  Brien stared at Stan.

  “I’ve decided I want you to feel more pain,” said Stan. “So, in a few seconds, you’re gonna feel more pain. Again, the reason you’ll be feeling this pain is because I just want you to.”

  With that, Stan rocketed Brien with a series of shocking strikes to his face and upper body. Brien dropped to the ground. Stan gave him a swift kick in the ribs.

  “I’m done with you,” he said, and walked away.

  A few days later, Dan came by to pick Stan up from school. He arrived early and found Mr. Colgate, who told him about what happened. Both men thought it was great.

  A kid named Kyle Manson had grown up with Stan. Manson’s father was a banker. The Manson’s hated the Taylor’s. They despised the entire concept of “playing to win” in youth sorts. This was because their son was one of the worst athletes in U.S. history.

  Occasionally, the Taylor’s would run into the Manson’s at a restaurant, and the Manson’s would not acknowledge them, even after Dan smiled and offered a big handshake. Mrs. Manson’s face would have broken if she smiled.

  Kyle was, like Stillian, a thorn in Stan’s side, until one day Stan had enough of him. Stan did not kick his ass the way he had with Stillian and Brien. Instead, he humiliated him by slapping him upside his face, hard and consistently, while telling him how stupid, slow and useless he was. Manson never said another word to Stan.

  Apparently he did not tell his parents about his humiliation, either. A few years later, Dan went to Mr. Manson for a bank loan. Mr. Manson, who got a commission off the deal, suddenly became the Good Humor Man.

  Stan was not the only kid who got picked on at school. One was Katie Winthrop, otherwise know as “Windbags” because she was fat. Poor Katie had little going for her, and was unable to defend herself from the boys or the girls, who ganged up on her equally. Stan felt sorry for her, although he sometimes found her to be convenient. When the kids were taunting her, they laid off of him. Katie never would recover from her childhood. She overdosed on drugs in her mid-20s, and went in to a coma for six years before finally dying.

  Another kid who got the treatment was Laura Hoskins. Stan only knew her for the two years he was in junior high school. Laura’s parents were divorced. Her stepfather, a stockbroker, had molested her. She was a bitter, broken person by the time she was 13. She came to school smelly because she did not bathe regular. She had bruises. She was somebody who could not feel friendship.

  There was another thing about Laura. She had enormous breasts. Stan loved her breasts. Stan fantasized about them, and tried to make friends with her. His efforts were rebuffed. She could not understand that the attempts were real. Then Stan tried to woo her. His efforts were not good.

  “It’s `Big Tits’ Hoskins,” he announced when she entered the room.

  Stan, in his stupid junior high mind, actually thought she might like having her large rack recognized. Instead, she attacked him, hitting him with her purse.

  Laura would drop out of high school and became a street hooker.

  Finally, there was a gay kid name Albert. He was totally effeminate. Whether Albert knew he was gay or not at the time was not known, but everybody else knew.

  “Did you have a gay time this weekend?” kids would ask him on Monday mornings.

  Even Stan, who was sympathetic to ostracized kids, asked him this question. Like Katie Windbags and Big Tits Hoskins, Albert deflected his own problems. Albert, the son of a top executive at Hughes Aircraft, thought about suicide about once a week until he was 19. He eventually found happiness and learned to live with himself. He became a millionaire record producer, although his career ran in to a roadblock when he was involved in a nationwide payola scandal.

  Stan finally graduated from the eighth grade in 1978. As Spring turned to Summer, he fretted about what high school would be like. He would be meeting a lot of new people. He would also be in school with people who knew him, but had not been in school with him previously. This included some of his baseball partners and CYO teammates.

  At the end of the 1978 Babe Ruth League season, before the Taylor’s
took off for their Tahoe vacation, Stan spent two weeks at the Loyola Marymount University Athletic Camp. Few knew him there, except for a few kids who had seen him in the Little League World Series.

  Stan figured it would be a good chance for a fresh start. Things did not work out for him. The kids stayed in the dorms, and within days Stan was the object of catcalls. This was a major disappointment for him. He had vowed to stay out of harm’s way, to avoid making an ass of himself. Somehow, he had managed to brag, tout his record, and predict his success. Whatever he did, he quickly became unpopular.

  The Loyola experience was tough because Stan could not blame Dan. He did it to himself, and he had done it in record time. He just did not pick up the ebb and flow of early teenage humor, sexual innuendo, and bathroom grunge.

  Stan was viewed as effete, a rich kid, somebody not willing to get his hands dirty. He looked down on other kids and could not hide it. One incident occurred at the camp that formulated a kind of Karma, a destiny that Stan would feel followed him for years. One of the most popular players at the camp, a kid named Dusty, had brought his brand new baseball glove to the camp. Everybody liked Dusty immediately. He was kind of a little guy, and not a great player. He was the kind of guy the kids liked almost as if he was a mascot. He had what it took to “hang” with everybody. He was one of the guys.

  Dusty’s glove disappeared from the bench one day. It was after a practice, and there were a handful of kids who were at the field, raking and dragging it.

  Dusty discovered that his glove was missing. Nobody knew where it was. Dusty started to cry. Stan was one of the kids dragging the infield. He had nothing to do with the missing glove. He immediately felt that all eyes were on him. He could not shake the feeling that he was being accused.

  Back at the dorms, it happened. A dirty, foul-mouthed kid named Jack just plain accused him.

  “I saw Taylor take it,” he announced.

  “What?” said Stan, incredulously. “I didn’t take it.”

  It did not matter. Jack made people laugh with his horrid descriptions of taking a dump, his ability to fart and burp at will, and his filthy sex jokes which made it look like he actually was getting some.

  Dusty jumped in, as if Jack’s accusation was proof that Stan stole his glove. Nothing Stan did or said could change the flow of events. Now he was a thief. Stan never did find out who stole the glove. It was Jack.

  On the field, Stan starred at the camp, which had the same, weird effect it had throughout his “baseball career.” The fact that he was a good ball player frustrated his “enemies,” and created a quiet core of admirers.

  The camp also changed his life. Jim Ambers was one of the coaches. He had scouted Stan since he pitched in the Little League World Series. He had seen Stan beat his own ace, Eddie Andrews. Recruiting was illegal in the California Interscholastic Federation, but it was a common practice anyway.

  Stan wanted to impress Coach Ambers. He knew he would be facing Ambers’ team in the Bay League. He was horrified at the possibility that Ambers was aware of the stolen glove accusation, and the general antagonism he engendered at the camp. Ambers was above all of that kind of stuff. He had an imperial way about him, and carried himself like a god.

  Ambers had a way of walking on his tiptoes, strutting about as if he was Doug MacArthur. He was tall and built, tanned and leathered from years working outdoors. He had been a fine athlete in his day, and was a very handsome, youthful powerhouse of a man in his mid-40s. Ambers was married, but openly flirted with women. He was a man’s man, but the kind of guy who caused his contemporaries to be envious. Ambers was a strict disciplinarian who could cut a kid down with his mean yells. He would put his fingers in his mouth and whistle loud enough to drown out a foghorn, or a stiff wind. Off the field, he made colorful jokes, liked to drink Bourbon, and smoked a pipe. He liked to say, “This program’s not a Democracy. It’s a dictatorship.”

  On the last day of camp, Ambers called Stan over.

  “Are you going to P.V.?” he asked him.

  “Yes, Coach,” replied Stan.

  “How would you like to go to Rolling Hills?” asked Ambers.

  “I’d like to,” replied Stan. That was it. When Dan arrived, Ambers got together with him, and told him he wanted his boy to play for him. Dan agreed. There were a few administrative hurdles to cross, but nothing that could not be handled. Instead of attending Palos Verdes, Stan would be a Rolling Hills Titan.

  Palos Verdes Estates and Rolling Hills Estates border each other. There were a few kids who lived on the border, and a small group of kids Stan had played with in the P.V. youth leagues actually went to Rolling Hills. Eddie Andrews, who switched residences constantly because he lived in apartments with his drunken dad, or with Kim, or wherever he happened to be staying, was at Rolling Hills. Nobody really bothered to try and enforce his situation.

  Stan was ecstatic. Rolling Hills would be his salvation. He would be playing for the legendary Jim Ambers, who wanted him there. He would not have to face his go to school with his junior high tormentors anymore. He could start fresh.

 

 

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