Dr. Z

by Paul Zimmerman

  “You turned me down for a job five years ago,” I said. Georg Myers, sports editor of The Seattle Times. He quickly changed the subject, talking about the basketball team’s chances or something. I changed it right back.

  “You told me not to try to get in the business because it was too crowded.”

  Next day he had his seat changed.

  Seventeen and a half years later he got even. This was at the 49ers-Bengals Super Bowl in Detroit after the 1981 season. It was my brush with serious fame, the kind enjoyed by Al Capone and John Gotti. I had ripped the idea of a Super Bowl in Detroit. The worst thing about it was that I had ripped it on national TV, Good Morning America. The city rose up in a frenzy. Editorial writers outdid each other in eloquence, basically proclaiming that New York writers had no business crossing the Hudson and invading the territory where decent people lived. None was more animated than Georg Myers, who launched his tirade on a personal level, “The whale that walks like a man,” was one of his phrases about me that I remember. My wife, now my ex-wife, thought his description was fairly accurate.

  My first newspaper job, on The Bee, was, in retrospect, a dream job for a young writer just starting out. The paper was scrupulously honest. You were held strictly accountable for every quote, every fact.

  There was an odd, old fashioned, conservative strain to the paper, too. The saying around the city room was that the style guide was written by someone who had been dead for 50 years, old C.K. McClatchy, the founder and owner. There were some weird rules it was necessary to remember. The high school, for instance, always has to be referred to as The C.K. McClatchy High School, never just McClatchy. So, in writing out stories, we would use the full designation the first time, to get it out of the way, and from then on, it was The Lions in every reference.

  You weren’t allowed to use contractions. The old man just hadn’t liked them, make that had not liked them. This was a stunner, the idea of filling your story with “had not,” and “can not,” and “did not,” but that was the rule. You could never write that it was hot in Sacramento, and that included all derivatives. It was “warm,” even though people were dropping from the heat, which could get up to 110 degrees.

  When you were on the road, covering something up in Sup Cal, for instance, you always had to dateline your story with the name of the county attached, after a comma. The standing joke was that a gunman jumps into a cab in downtown Sacramento, sticks his gun in the driver’s ribs and says, “Roseville, comma, Placer County.”

  High schools would be my major beat, but since I came there in the summer, school was out, and I worked the night desk. A couple of days after I started, city-side was running short so they asked to borrow me from sports. I was given a story on which to put a headline. The story involved a guy named Marelli, the Human Fly, who would scale building walls with suction cups on his feet. Well, one day he was scaling a wall in Quebec and a cup broke and down went Marelli. Morto. My job was to write a one-column, three-line head for the story, very tricky, very cramped character count, something impossible, like five or six. This is the head I came up with:

  “‘Fly’

  Flies,

  Dies”

  No indeed, that style of smart-alecky Columbia J-School stuff did not go over on the city desk of The Bee, and the piece was given to someone else to work on. My next one, though, was my last. Elizabeth Taylor, whose husband, Mike Todd, had recently died, had announced her engagement to Eddie Fisher. This time I had more room to work with, a 24 head, two lines, two columns. At the J-School we got applause for wittiness. Old habits die hard, and my deucedly clever head was:

  “Philadelphia Singer

  To Wed Widow Todd”

  I was sent back to Bill Collins and the sports desk. Here, you take him. The Bee’s city desk fascinated me, though, because of the collection of characters who manned the slots. My favorite was a real old timer named Wayne Slick Selleck, who actually wore one of those green eyeshades that were known as the trademark of ancient newspaper men. Slick had some great stories about the old days, but the best thing he had was a scrapbook he had compiled of the bizarre and outlandish, much of which was of a smutty nature. On the few occasions that he’d bring it to the office, I used to pass up my dinner break to find a corner and go through it. I’d beg him to let me take it up to the library where I could be alone with it, in peace, but he wouldn’t let it out of his sight, and I didn’t blame him.

  My favorite item, out of a spectacular collection, involved a large photo that led the features page of The Bee, mid-1920s. It showed a movie actress who was passing through Sacramento by train. She was posing at the station, posing very prettily, with a stylish dress and hat and veil, in front of a background that was bleak desert, which I guess was much of the area in those days. And in that barren background, two dogs were humping. I laughed every time I looked at that thing.

  I was single and caught up in the excitement of actually doing newspaper work. I was making $85 a week, and it seemed that I always had money in my pocket. My little duplex in North Sac cost $61 a month, later lowered to $60 by my Polish landlady because I was quiet and paid on time. My big meal of the week was the $2.99 All You Can Eat, Roast Beef and Shrimp Newburg special at Sam’s Rancho Villa in Carmichael. It would hold me for 24 hours.

  On Sunday during the football season I’d drive up to The City, to San Francisco, and root for the 49ers in Kezar. On Tuesday, I’d either go up to The City again and visit my buddy, Al Ginepra, my former teammate at Columbia who worked there, or I’d drive up to Amador County and check out the old gold country towns. Arthur Robinson, a former writer for the New York Journal-American, lived there, in the little town of Volcano. He’d do occasional guest pieces for The Bee, “This was old New York,” type of stuff, and I was fond of visiting him and hearing stories of the old days.

  It was 88 miles from my house to San Francisco, on 1-80, and I’d enjoy the Tuesday trip, going, but the return was brutal, mainly because it was late at night and I was fighting sleep. I had a whole bag of tricks designed for staying awake. Some worked, some didn’t. I’d pick up any and all hitchhikers. Hell, I’d welcome them. They usually hung out around the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge, except when it was too late. Then I was on my own. I felt like making a sign, “Conversation is required.”

  One night I was heading back in the wee hours, and I’d just about given up on the idea of having any companionship, when I spotted an air force sergeant with a duffel bag. He was going to McClellan Air Force Base, near Sacramento. Perfect. I tried some conversation, and the guy was just about a mute. He’d offer a one-word answer here and there, but basically he just stared out the window. Approaching Martinez, I felt sleep overcoming me. I pulled the car over and tried the surest prescription, push-ups, which supposedly lowered the head and got the blood rushing there and gave you some measure of wakefulness. I did all this without a word to the sergeant. When I got back in my ’57 VW, he was checking me very carefully. Yes, quite carefully indeed.

  I made it as far as Vacaville, where you’d smell the onion from the fields. I went through the same drills, this time grunting a bit as I did it. Might as well put on a show for this guy. Now there was a bit of panic in his face. Everyone knew about weirdos who hitchhiked and picked up hitchhikers, I started up. He reached a decision.

  “You can let me out here,” he said.

  “Oh noooo,” I said, doing my best Vincent Price imitation. “You’ve got to go to Sacramento.”

  “I’m getting out here!” He said and tried to open the door while the car was moving.

  “OK, OK already,” I said and let him out.

  Another time I had almost given up when I saw a guy in one of those collegiate jackets with the leather sleeves, thumbing it. Great, we’d talk about sports or something. We had gone about a mile when he said, “Have you thought about your relationship with Christ?” Then I noticed that his jack
et was from some bible college. Well, what the heck, conversation is conversation. He kept it going, with an occasional interjection from me, for almost the entire ride.

  When we arrived, he said, “I can see that you’re certainly interested.” I assured him that I was.

  “Do you mind if I send you some information?”

  I forgot to mention that my day off usually would start in the early afternoon because they had in Sacramento something that plugged right into my gaming instincts, and that was house poker, the card rooms. These were days long before the Texas Hold ’em craze, in fact Hi-Lo was just coming into vogue. But the downtown parlors featured three games: five-card draw, lowball and something called pangani that I never understood. Every New York kid knows poker especially if he’s worked summers as a busboy or waiter in the Catskills or Poconos. Man, this was for me.

  I limited myself to two nights a week, the nights before my day off. I played only draw, table stakes, which sounds rougher than it was because no one really had much money. Two hands are imbedded in my mind. They’d play with a bug in the deck, the joker, which was wild for use in straights and flushes; otherwise it was an ace. I got to know the players after a while, and one element to avoid were the fruit pickers. Old men mostly. They’d work in the fields all day and they’d come into the card room, seeking to score just heavily enough to buy a good meal and a bottle. They were the most conservative players in the game. They’d wait forever for that one hand that would put them over the top, then they’d push their chair back and leave. Two of them at your table would just about kill a game. Three and you’d be better off waiting for a seat to open up somewhere else.

  Well, I was in a game with one old picker who’d been quiet for almost an hour, I was sitting under the gun, to the left of the dealer. I looked at my hand and I had aces over 10s, two pair. So I opened for a few dollars. Everyone folded, except for the old guy about three seats down. He raised a few dollars. I knew exactly what he was doing. He’d caught a pat straight or flush and he was only raising moderately, so as not to scare away any fish — such as me. I was tired of the game. I wanted to leave anyway, so I called a stupid play. An 11-1 shot to fill up, one chance out of 12.

  I drew my one card. He stayed pat, as I knew he would. I sweated in that card, opened the corner a tiny amount, then a little more, and more. I didn’t see anything. Still blank. Then I opened it all the way. It was the bug. I’d filled up aces. I gave it the schoolboy Hollywood bit, the light grimace of disgust, then I looked up to see if he saw me flinch, etc. I checked, he bet moderately, maybe $5 or so. I pushed in all I had in front of me, which was maybe another $20.

  He stared at me for a good 30 seconds. “You young son of a bitch!” he yelled and flung his cards on the table and stalled out of there. What was revealed was a bust. Nothing. He was trying to steal one. Poor old guy. Must have gotten hungry and impatient, and if I didn’t hit, I wasn’t going to call him, no way.

  I did all right in games in downtown Sacramento. Then I’d always make the same mistake, I’d be standing out on the corner of 2nd and A Street at 3 a.m., when the city card rooms closed with my modest winning, maybe $30 or so, and I’d be faced with the same decision. Do I go home with my loot or do I go across the river into West Sacramento, West Sac, where the all night card rooms were, where the big boys hung out? I’d always think it through and make the wrong choice. Over the river I’d go, and very few times would I emerge with what I came in with.

  Second memorable hand. My first hand in West, Sac, which served to define the whole thing. I was dealt trips. I drew one card, kept trips and a kicker, trying to fool ’em, checked and raised, did my kiddie magic, took home a small pot. Across the table a beady-eyed little guy with a toothpick in his mouth removed the toothpick and muttered, “Big fuggin play.” He’d read me all the way. It took him about 40 minutes to clean me. That’s the way it went in West Sac.

  I’d bounce back from those nights. I’d put a limit on my losses and I’d just cut the food intake until I caught up, and, of course, there was always the monumental foodfest at Sam’s to look forward to on the weekends. The cafeteria at The Bee was dirt cheap, and I’d cook my own dinners during the week.

  Someone sent me an Adelle Davis book about eating healthy. I became not exactly addicted but interested in health foods. I’d make my own yogurt, I’d buy abalone — that’s right, you could buy it fresh in those days in any fish store for less than $3 a pound — and bread it with wheat germ and deep fry it in safflower oil.

  It was a nice life. One night someone abandoned a black kitten on my doorstep. I called the local SPCA. Do you take in stray kittens? Yes we do. What do you do with them? We try to find homes for them. What if you don’t? Then they’re put to sleep. Pause.

  “You mean you KILL THEM?” Intake of breath on the other end, followed by “Goodbye, sir.”

  Not supposed to say that. It’s got to be a euphemism, put ’em to sleep, lay ’em to rest, something like that. Well, I didn’t want that on my conscience, so R.C. and I became roommates. That’s the name I gave her. She was a fantastic leaper, and that’s when the Niners’ R.C. Owens was making all those leaping end zone catches they called the Alley-Oop.

  We had an interesting relationship, and I use the term “roommate” advisedly. I’d never had a cat before. I grew up with dogs. But life with R.C. couldn’t have been easier. I’d let her out in the morning. I didn’t know what she did with her day; she didn’t know what I did with mine. When I’d return in the evening, I’d whistle and I’d hear pat-pat-pat, and she’d pitty-pat across the low roof, jump down and wait for the door to open. Have a meal, take a dump, go to sleep, that was it. Minimal affection, but tolerance. That was the key to it.

  Once I came back early and checked to see if I could find out how R.C. spent her time. She was up on the roof … she seemed to like the way the sunlight reflected off it … hanging out with a small cat group, her social set, just enjoying each other’s company.

  When it was time to go home, I had to find a home for R.C. I wound up giving her to my best friend out there, Nick, the tennis pro at the Arden Hills Club. He had three daughters, 12-year-old twins, plus nine-year old Denise, who later was ranked the No. 4 woman player in the U.S. A lot of, “Oh please, daddy,” and then he and his wife finally consented after I swore that R.C. was a male. I got a letter from him a few months later.

  It ended, “R.C. is fine. By the way, HE’s pregnant.” I had occasion to visit them a few years later. The girls had changed R.C.’s name to Mandy. She was lying in a fluffy cat bed when I looked in on her. She didn’t know me. She had gained weight and she had that dopey, sleepy, fat-faced look that house cats get sometimes. The girls talked baby talk to her. I thought of the old R.C., the tough, self-sufficient street cat, the fantastic leaper. Ah well, as long as she was happy.

  I covered tennis, which was how I got to know Nick. I got to love the sport. I did a serious mood piece on Rosie Casals, aged 10, outlasting Leslie Abrahams, 13, in a three-hour marathon. In the Central Cal juniors, the blistering heat, uh, warmth, sand flying, getting in their hair, their eyes, the two kids racing around the court, tears streaming. The best match I ever saw. I remember interviewing little Rosie afterward, a tough Mexican-American kid, going around to the tournaments with her white-haired father, the two of them shunned by the fancy clubs, which wouldn’t put them up overnight, having to sleep in their old jalopy of a car.

  “It was the gear shift that killed me,” she said.

  I covered stuff other people didn’t want to cover. Sammy Weiss, a high-level midget race car driver, was a story. I knew nothing about auto racing. Sammy led me through it, fed me vital information, checked my copy to make sure I hadn’t screwed anything up. A few weeks later, he was killed in a practice run. I had written the last story on him. I was getting calls from all over, from both wire services, from car magazines for technical information. I could tell them nothin
g more than what they’d already read. They must have thought The Bee had some real idiots on its staff.

  Every once in a while, I’d get on a crusade. The McClellan Air Force Base football team was one of them. In 1959 they went unbeaten in the regular season. They were an active, overachieving bunch of guys who hadn’t played anybody. Their record looked impressive with victories over teams such as Santa Clara and San Jose State. The problem was that it was the jayvees, not the varsities of those schools, that they had beaten. But their PR releases never mentioned that part of it.

  I got on the directors of the armed forces sports programs for ignoring this eager bunch of hard­working guys. “They’re unbeaten … they deserve to play in the Shrimp Bowl,” I wrote in many different ways. The Shrimp Bowl in Galveston was for the service championship. Someone must have listened because, all of a sudden, McClellan was invited. The opponent was Quantico, typically the Notre Dame of the armed forces. It was rumored that Billy Vessels, the former Oklahoma All-American, was on that team. There were other college stars, a lot of officers who’d been in ROTC programs in school. Quantico was loaded.

  The final score was 90-0. You could look it up, Shrimp Bowl 1959 season. Oh my God, had I done that? I was at the airport to meet the McClellan team on its return from the game. It looked like a troop transport bringing back the wounded. Guys were coming out in casts, on crutches, all bandaged up. I talked to one poor guy who had his arm in a sling.

  “When we came out for the warm-ups, they had so many guys that they circled the entire field,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh oh, we’re in trouble.’”

  I led a healthy life. My work shift during the week, when there wasn’t an event to cover, was 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. I loved those hours. It meant I had the whole afternoon off. So I’d go down to the Y and go through a workout routine (we got free admission) and maybe play a little half-court hoops if there were enough people there and then I’d go over to Arden Hills and play tennis all afternoon, courtesy of Nick, even though I wasn’t a member. I weighed around 250 when my VW first had rolled into town. In a few months, I had lost 35 pounds and was right around my old college playing weight. One workout day particularly stands out.