On July 12, with D.J. on one side and Darren on the other, I carried Drew in my arms as we made our way to a designated area in the first pew at the Hall of the Crucifixion-Resurrection, an auditorium large enough to accommodate eight hundred people at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale. Several Dodgers had already been laid to rest at Forest Lawn. Three weeks earlier, Donnie and I had been there for Roy Campanella’s service. I remember sitting there with him, and for no reason, he suddenly turned to me and said, “Don’t hook me up to wires. When the time comes, let me go quickly.” Now I felt numb.
I walked up to the lectern to thank everyone for coming. Just focus on the words. I didn’t want to break. I read ten or twelve lines, never looking up, keeping my eyes glued to the paper that trembled with my hands.
Then Ueckie spoke. He talked about Donnie knocking him on his rear end, and what a great guy he was out of his uniform; but in it, how he’d bean his own mother if she was standing at the plate. He talked about how competitive he was and how if you put the two of us together, Donnie and me, you had yourself a small army. He also told the glass story, how Donnie would clean up after him whenever he came to visit. He made everyone laugh, and for a moment it felt like Donnie was right there alongside me, just like always. When reality set back in, the tears rolled down my cheeks. And then after a moment, a wave of peace crept over me, strong at first, then diminishing, as though Donnie were squeezing me tight and then relaxing his embrace the way he always did whenever I was upset. Whether it was the power of the mind, or the power of love I’m not sure. A little of both probably.
After Ueckie, Vin Scully gave a beautiful tribute. Vinny had watched Donnie’s career, calling his historic shutout for the fans, while marveling at the feat himself. Then, much later, Donnie would get a feel for Vinny’s side of the game along with Ross Porter. Game after game, the trio formed their own little rotating team of partners, a family wedded by baseball. Now Vinny and Ross had lost one of the family.
“The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives,” Vinny began, “There was only life in Don and an awareness to feel the pain and glory in others and himself.”
He went on to finish, and I know it was hard for him. It was hard for all of these guys. They had lost a close friend. I suppose everyone expected Sandy to speak next, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Donnie and he had practically been boys starting out, and they ended up changing the way players were treated forever. I imagine, for Sandy, it might have felt like losing a brother. Gene Mauch, who had been Donnie’s best man at our wedding, didn’t want to speak, either, but he did. It was tough for all of us when his voice started to crack a bit. Same thing with Tommy Lasorda.
Toward the end, we played Donnie’s favorite song, Frank’s version of “Fly Me To The Moon,” against a backdrop of video clippings and stills from Donnie’s years with the Dodgers and family snapshots.
It was a maze of sad faces who had come to honor a wonderful man—Al Michaels was there with Dick Enberg, Don’s family, my family, and all of Don’s teammates, Ross Porter, who had read a beautiful poem, Orel Hershiser, Duke Snider, and so many others I don’t even remember. After the service, we all filed into limousines and buses to make our way over to the Clubhouse at Dodger Stadium where a reception was being held. It was mid July. The sky was blue and everything else, green.
“You’ll survive this, Annie,” Mom said squeezing my hand. “I promise.” But we both knew there was no easy way she could rescue me this time.
The entire funeral had been orchestrated from beginning to end by Peter O’Malley and his sister, Terry Seidler—from bringing Don’s body back from Montreal, to arranging the transportation now. They had done the same for Campy three weeks earlier.
The Dodgers were family.
The next day, I contacted Tommy Lasorda. We all called Tommy, ‘Izzy’ because that’s what Donnie had called him, and asked if the boys and I could crash the team’s batting practice sessions.
“Of course,” he said. “And I’ll throw them pop flies.”
The boys loved Izzy, and he was remarkable after Don’s passing. While we were at the Pasadena rental house, we were close enough to visit him in the stadium every day until school started back up. Izzy would let the boys into the clubhouse and dugout before each game. It was as I’d hoped, Dodgers Stadium made me feel like Donnie was just away somewhere, working.
That first day, though, we did something Donnie would have never allowed. I palmed three baseballs in my left hand, and pitched them underhanded, one at a time to the boys who stood ready at home plate. Donnie never let the boys on the field while he was broadcasting. He felt that it was wrong, since he was no longer a player himself. But I sensed now he was giving us his blessing, Go ahead. Just this once. As we left the field, four-year-old Darren said, “Carry me like Daddy did,” loud enough for Izzy to hear, and it made him cry.
There was a lot of crying that first year. D.J. had refused to blow out the candles on his sixth birthday cake that bore both his and his father’s name.
And when we released white and blue balloons up to Daddy, one at a time, which was our way of blowing kisses to him in Heaven, D.J. decided he wanted to stop. He had also refused to take the mound in Palm Springs when we were invited to throw the first ceremonial pitch for the California Angels’ Class A Team.
“Why can’t I die and go to Heaven to be with Daddy?” D.J. would ask. It was the inevitable question. It must have seemed a logical solution to a six-year-old. Once he even tried to open a car door while it was in motion. “I want to die so I can be with Daddy,” he kept saying that first year.
I didn’t know how to console him. How could God take the only man I’d ever loved when we still had three young children who needed him? How could Donnie be gone when just a few months ago had been the happiest time of our lives? How can I console my young son when I’m inconsolable myself?
I don’t know how I made it through that first year. In fact, I don’t remember much of those first few years, except that there was an endless outpouring of kindness. Several NBA teams asked me to broadcast for them, including the Chicago Bulls. This was during the Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen era. The Bulls had just won the NBA championship two years in a row, and our dear friend, Jerry Reinsdorf, was offering me a huge amount of money—money that I was not currently making.
I liked Chicago and I loved Jerry. Heck, I’d grown up outside of Chicago and had lived there for six years with Don while he was broadcasting for the White Sox and I was broadcasting for Sports Channel. I loved it—even during the frigid winters, when a biting wind could whip over the lake and chill to the bone.
If I took this position, I knew I’d be committing to living in a city without the support of my family and Don’s. I knew I would be at the arena every day by 5:00 p.m. and not home until after midnight. I knew I would be in for long seasons because the Bulls routinely played well after the NBA’s 82 game schedule ended. I said no. Jerry continued to ask me and I’ll always appreciate him for that. There were other lucrative offers from several other organizations, and I said thank you, but no, to each of them. My children came first.
That autumn, Don’s daughter, Kelly was overseeing the Don Drysdale Charity Hall of Fame Golf Tournament in Newport Beach for a seventh time. Hall of Famers from every sport arrived to shoot fifty-six holes and to grieve. The kids and I had moved back to the desert home for school, but they came out to watch the tournament. Don’s friends meant well when they told D.J. that he was the man of the house now, but it was incredibly frightening and overwhelming to a six-year-old.
Meanwhile, the phone continued to ring with offers which I still felt I had to decline. And each time the president of some team called, he heard Don’s voice saying there was no one home and to leave a message. My excuse was that changing the outgoing message wasn’t a high priority. The truth was that I didn’t want to erase what I had left of him. I couldn’t touch his clothes, or get rid of any of his belongings. So
me nights I’d grab a sweater that still held his scent and hold it next to me in bed, and just cry until I fell asleep.
My dreams were much kinder. Donnie would appear vividly and I could feel him there with me. And then I would wake up and, just as quickly, he was gone. On those mornings it was especially hard to get out of bed.
I needed Don. But I had to go on because my kids needed me.
I had never been a stay-at-home-mom in the traditional sense, but without Don, I didn’t want to commit to anything that would keep me away from the children too long. I begged out of covering the ’94 Goodwill Games for TNT, giving them plenty of time to find another broadcaster. I knew I would have to do something to help support us and to help me move on. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything, though, especially that first holiday season.
In December, Mark and Frannie celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, and they threw a huge celebration. I knew I had to go, but it was difficult. The pain of losing Don was still so raw. I tried to put on a good face, and everyone was extremely gracious and conscientious of my feelings, but that almost made it worse. I could tell some of the guests felt uncomfortable about celebrating Mark and Frannie’s long, happy marriage in my presence. I clapped when they blew out the candles on their cake, willing a smile that didn’t want to be there. Guests came over and offered me their condolences, and it felt like each kind word was chipping away at my carefully constructed emotional dam, until I thought it might break. As much as it hurt, I told myself that this had to be part of the healing process.
On Valentine’s Day, friends dragged me out to the Charthouse, a one-time Rancho Mirage landmark restaurant that had been chiseled out of a large rock formation that hugged the hillside. The inside was dark wood and rock, keeping with the cavernous, inconspicuous feel, and I’m sure my friends figured it was a good place to bring someone who was reluctant to go out. They didn’t realize it was the first place Donnie had taken me back in 1980 when I visited him in the desert.
We hadn’t been seated long when I noticed Frank and Barbara Sinatra dining at a table nearby. I didn’t want to go up and say hello, even though I knew that’s what I should do. However, I had long ago promised myself I wouldn’t let opportunities pass me by so that I ended up thinking I wish I would have done this or said that. The little regrets that stack up during the first half of a shy person’s life can be wonderful motivators later on.
Frank and Barbara had always been very gracious when I’d visited their home with Donnie, or attended the Frank Sinatra Celebrity Golf Tournament. And when each one of the children was born, they sent beautiful Tiffany rattles and frames. But when Donnie died, Frank wasn’t at the funeral.
They were just now finishing up, so I knew I wouldn’t be interrupting dinner. I went over. “Hello Barbara, Frank.”
The way Frank looked up at me said everything. “It’s not the same without Donnie, Jilly, and Chuck.”
There was genuine pain in that deep wonderful voice. Jilly Rizzo passed in 1992 and was Frank’s closest friend. But Frank had carried special affection for Donnie and Chuck Connors, who went on to star in the long-running The Rifleman after ending his baseball career. I suppose Frank must have wondered how the three of them could be gone, when he was still there. As fitting, Frank mourned Don’s passing his way.
As for me, I decided that rather than mourn the future we had planned, I would watch the sunsets, make birdies on the golf course, and raise our children to be strong, capable, contributing members of society for both of us. I wanted my kids to remember their father, and I would often sit with Drew, who was still just a baby, and point at pictures of her dad. “Who’s that?” I’d ask her. “Is that Daddy? Do you see Daddy?”
21
Moving On
“Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.”
~ Faith Baldwin
In May of 1994, our business advisors suggested that I put the Rancho Mirage house up for sale. The annual air conditioning bills alone on an 8,000 square-foot home were enough to put one of the kids through college, never mind the cost of keeping over a half-acre of grass in the desert. Facts were that I wasn’t bringing in the kind of paycheck Donnie had commanded. Peter O’Malley had generously honored the rest of Don’s contract for the year, which was a huge financial help, and Don had left us well provided for. However, I knew that from here on out I would be the sole person responsible for everything. I didn’t want to uproot the children, but I was a thirtyeight-year-old widow with three kids ages six and under, and I felt the need to simplify our lives as much as possible. It was a lousy time for anyone to have to sell a house, though.
Home prices in Southern California had jumped during the 80s only to plummet in the 90s. The bubble popped in real estate, which affected affluent areas like Beverly Hills and resort cities, like Palm Springs. Clancy Lane in Rancho Mirage was, and still is, considered about as high-end as it gets in the Palm Springs area. Our home, along with all the others near Clancy Lane, had declined in value. Adding to my confusion was a condolence letter from a woman who lost her husband years earlier. She advised against making any big decisions in the first year of a spouse’s death because we’re grieving, and not emotionally stable or rational enough.
While I knew it was good advice, I ultimately decided to go with my gut. I loved Rancho Mirage; where Don’s parents, Scotty and Verna, had been a great help in providing love and support to the kids, but now Scotty and Verna had moved to Hemet to live in a house Don had bought for them two years earlier. Most of my family was in Orange County, and I needed to be near them. I also wanted to be near Dodger Stadium. I reasoned that spending time there would be like sleeping on the right side of the bed when Don was on the road. It would fill a void. Orange County was much closer to Dodger Stadium than the desert. I put the Rancho Mirage house on the market and kept my fingers crossed.
The kids and I stayed with Mom in La Habra that summer while my real estate agent/sister-in-law, Frannie, helped me find the right place for the four of us in the surf capital of the world. Huntington Beach wasn’t far from La Habra or Dodger Stadium, and I knew the boys loved the ocean. By the time school started, we were moved into our new home just down the street from Mark and Frannie.
We weren’t in the house long when Drew, who was a little beehive of activity, climbed up the stairs while no one was watching and fell, catching her leg between the banisters. There was my seventeen-month-old dangling from the second story, screaming. That night I kept her with me in bed. She was too young to communicate, but the way she whimpered I knew she was in pain. It was late, though, and I didn’t know any doctors in town and I didn’t want to call my family. I’d imposed on them so much already and, frankly, I didn’t want to hear any more disapproval. I waited until morning. When I took her into the emergency room, the doctor said the poor little thing had broken her femur. I couldn’t have felt like a worse mother. I knew if Don had been there, things would have been different. I wasn’t always good at making decisions by myself.
There were so many other mistakes I made. I’d pushed the boys into public schools with twice the amount of classmates than they were used to at their private schools. Poor Darren was only four and becoming more withdrawn, and D.J always seemed angry. To make matters worse, Drew’s cast from the accident on the stairs had barely come off when she fell while we were shopping at the South Coast Plaza and broke her arm.
I missed Don. I needed him to help me raise the children. I didn’t know if I’d be able to do it without him.
They say getting through the first year after the death of a loved one is the tricky part. But for me the first three years were so difficult. Amazingly, though, you somehow do it. You get up, brush your teeth, comb your hair, and go on. Some call it a testament to the human spirit. For me it’s a testament to my faith and my family. And every time it got really hard, or I screwed up, I thought of Papa’s words: “No Whining, No Complaining, No Excuses.”
I had to be there for
my children. I had to be strong. Moving into the new home in Huntington Beach helped, and with the kids enrolled in a new school, there were plenty of distractions. I continued to force myself to get out there. I’d already committed to doing the CGA Championship again up in Tahoe. This time I brought the kids along with family to help.
I’d begun preparing for it with Lou after Drew’s birth. The problem was that I’d stopped training when Donnie died, and I’d lost a lot of weight. If I could hit the ball 150 yards with a five iron before, now it was twenty yards short of that. Over the four days, I shot in the high 80s and 90s, but still finished ahead of plenty of the guys, including Bryant Gumbel and Charles Barkley, but beating those two might not have been that impressive. I won some cash, and along with it, bragging rights.
By now I was working with CBS covering the men’s 1st round of the NCAA Championships, and a job with ESPN doing color for the women’s games. It gave me flexibility. That March, I was in Kansas City working for ESPN and Mom was staying with the children. She called me to say that Darren had brought a knife to school and that the school was threatening to expel him. He was only in kindergarten. How can a child be expelled from kindergarten? Especially when all he did was share something of his father’s with his classmates?
Before I’d left, I took out Don’s toiletry set, which included a razor, a fingernail clipper, small scissors, and various other manicuring devices, and showed them to Darren. It was just one more way to keep the memory of their father alive. Once I removed the blade, I let Darren hold the razor, so that he could pretend to shave. “Remember how Daddy used to shave his face every morning?”
You Let Some Girl Beat You? Page 20