Pagan Heaven

by Ruth Rouff

  For most of the Phillies’ history, their fly-by-night owners had been content to field lousy teams and earn a small profit. As their fans used to say, the team stank despite a sign in the Baker Bowl outfield proclaiming “The Phillies Use Lifebuoy.” Now, at least, the ownership appeared committed to winning baseball. As the neighborhood around Connie Mack Stadium became overwhelmingly African-American, poor, and resentful of the white crowds who trespassed on their turf, Philadelphia politicians decided to underwrite the construction of a new stadium in another location. They didn’t want to lose the Phillies the way they had lost the Athletics.

  Of course, I knew few of these facts in 1964. As Steve, Ed, and I negotiated our way to our seats along the third base line, our shoes stuck to concrete that had been christened many times over with spilled soda and beer. Then we gingerly stepped over a mound of squashed French fries. As we took our seats, sharp-eyed vendors climbed steep steps, bellowing “Hey, Hot Dogs!! Hey Peanuts!!” as if they were calling people by name.

  I looked out and took in the outfield . . . the stately, roofed left field bleachers, the bright signage, including the Goldenberger’s Peanut Chews sign that looked to me like a giant candy bar in left field, the Ballantine Beer scoreboard topped by the Longines clock, and the high blue wall in right. And then to see the players . . . their crisp white uniforms with red pinstripes and bright red caps, vivid against the deep green grass. You could have your “House That Ruth Built.” On this sunny afternoon in early September, Connie Mack Stadium was good enough for me.

  I remember the ambience more than the action. I remember that the Phillies won the first game behind the strong pitching of Dennis Bennett and lost the second game behind rookie Rick Wise and veteran Bobby Shantz, who came on in relief. Steve told me that before injuring his arm years earlier, Shantz had won the MVP award as an Athletic. It was nice to see him do well.

  That evening, our parents greeted us, relieved that we had returned safely from the wilds of North Philadelphia. As we ate pot roast around the dinner table, I reflected on the games I had seen. Despite the dispiriting second game loss, I felt that the Phillies were still in great shape to win the pennant. They were still something like six games in front. This happy circumstance made the grim thought of starting school the next day that much more tolerable for me.

  I won’t dwell on the details of the Phillies’ collapse because they’ve already been repeated ad infinitum. As every Phillies fan of a certain age knows, the team wound up losing ten straight and finishing second to the St. Louis Cardinals. It was an event both sickening and humiliating.

  The next several years were worse for the Phillies from every standpoint. Not only did they fall out of contention, but the racial animosity surrounding them only grew worse. Most black baseball fans didn’t follow the Phillies because of the club’s reputation for racist hiring practices, while the white fan base resented having to travel to a simmering ghetto to see the games. The fans began venting their spleen on an easy target—Dick Allen, who had let it be known that he no longer wished to be called “Richie.” It didn’t matter that Allen hit monster homeruns that soared over the Coca Cola script topping the left field grandstand and arced through the humid North Philadelphia night. He wielded a huge, forty-two ounce bat—said to be the heaviest in the majors. That mighty bat was in itself provocation to a certain type of white man.

  In 1965, when Allen got into a fistfight with Frank Thomas, who had called him “boy”—the Phillies traded Thomas, but the white fans blamed Allen for being “uppity.” My younger brother Sam confirms that when he attended a Phillies game in 1969, fans were shouting racial epithets at Allen. Some even threw batteries and other hard objects at him, forcing him to wear a batting helmet when he played first base. Allen compounded matters, it was said, by behaving “erratically.” There were missed practices and rumors of drinking. A white superstar like Mickey Mantle could and did get away with a lot during his playing career. A black superstar couldn’t. Not in Philadelphia at least.

  Meanwhile, the Phillies front office continued its generally unenlightened ways. In 1966, General Manager John Quinn traded a promising black pitcher, Ferguson Jenkins, to the Cubs in exchange for two veteran pitchers . . . Bob Buhl and Larry Jackson—who happened to be white. Call it kismet: Buhl would win all of six games for the Phillies before retiring at the end of the 1967 season. Jackson did better, but retired at the end of 1968 rather than report to an expansion team. Jenkins, on the other hand, would win only 284 games in the course of his Hall of Fame career.

  So bad was Philadelphia’s reputation around the National League that when the St. Louis Cardinals traded Curt Flood and some other players to the Phillies in 1969 for Dick Allen and some other players, Flood refused to report. He later filed the famous lawsuit that helped pave the way for free agency. So, one could say that, with the worst of intentions, Phillies fans ultimately did a good thing for major league players.

  The Phillies played their last game at Connie Mack Stadium on October 1, 1970. It was an event that novelist Nathaniel West should have written about—a real day of the locust type of affair. Even before the last out had been made, fans began stealing anything they could get their hands on, including seats that had been bolted to the concrete. (Even now you can buy wood from these seats on eBay—two red slats sell for $78.00.) At the time, the wholesale plundering left a bitter aftertaste. It was like desecrating a temple, albeit a seedy one. Weeds sprang up in the field that had once been beautifully tended. The next year the place caught fire, and in 1976 the twisted mass of steel and concrete was demolished. Today an African American church sits on the site.

  After the Phillies moved to antiseptic new Veterans Stadium in South Philadelphia, Steve, Sam, and I used to shiver through chilly April games there that featured such luminaries as Billy Champion, Roger Freed, and Joe Lis. In the later innings, we usually moved up to the box seats because a lot of fans had left. But, to paraphrase Eliot, in the Phillies’ nadir was their rebirth. A more enlightened owner, Ruly Carpenter, had taken over from his father. In 1972 the Phillies finished dead last, but future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton won twenty-seven games, and sluggers Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski began to establish themselves. Together with other talented young players, they would lead the team to years of excellence culminating in the 1980 World Series title. The Phillies’ first-ever championship was sweeter for being so long in coming.

  So what has following the Phillies taught me? American history, for one thing. Being exposed to Camden and North Philadelphia at an early age made me curious to learn why these places were the way they were. In studying urban America, I learned how patterns of discrimination perpetuated poverty. I also learned about the white flight to the suburbs and the impact of globalization on American manufacturing. On a purely sports-oriented note, I learned that racism hurt the Phillies by making them less competitive. It wasn’t luck that led the Cardinals to overtake the Phillies to win the 1964 pennant. It was Gibson and Brock and White and Flood, among others.

  On a more elemental level, following the 1964 Phillies made me realize that disaster can occur when you least expect it. Nothing is a sure thing. But there are fleeting moments of bliss, as when a veteran pitcher no-hits the Mets.

  My father died in 1966 and so never lived to see the Phillies win the World Series. He wasn’t a real baseball fan, but he had worked at the Navy Yard with a lot of South Philly guys, and I think he would have enjoyed the moment. My mother, who lived to be ninety-five, saw two. Each one pleased her. My sister Laura, who moved out to Los Angeles in 1976, has grown much more open-minded about sex roles. She still can’t fathom sports, though, and has never been to any kind of professional game. We like to joke that she becomes despondent whenever the Dodgers lose. And my brother Steve still watches every game he can.

  After some great seasons with other teams, Dick Allen returned to the Philadelphia area. For years he helped the Phillies with community outreach in urban neighborhoods. H
e still does baseball memorabilia shows and appears from time to time at Phillies-sponsored events.

  As for me, I like to recall my greatest Phillies memories. There are three. Watching Mike Schmidt hit a homerun into the cold October mist of Montreal, defeating the Expos and sending the Phillies back to the playoffs in 1980.

  “He buried it,” announcer Andy Musser cried.

  When Schmidt crushed that ball, I knew that the ghosts of futility would finally be laid to rest.

  And Brad Lidge, after striking out Eric Hinske to win the 2008 World Series, falling to his knees and looking up into the chill Philadelphia night, as fireworks shot off and the electronic Liberty Bell rocked in victory.

  And of course, my first sight of the playing field in Connie Mack Stadium that Labor Day long ago. In memory still green.

  Mess with Texas

  I’ve taken three vacations in the past six years, and two of them have been just awful. They weren’t awful for the usual touristy reasons—missed connections, bad hotels, passport theft, bad weather and the like. No, the reason my vacations were terrible is that I went with the wrong person. That is, I didn’t go with someone I was attracted to. I went with someone whom I tried to be attracted to. If you’ve ever done that, you probably know that it just doesn’t work out.

  Let me tell you about my Alaskan cruise. I went with Connie, a perfectly nice middle-aged lesbian. I’m a middle aged lesbian, too. I don’t know how nice I am, but I try to be. Connie and I had been going together a little less than a year when we went to Alaska. The thing was . . . I should never have dated Connie in the first place.

  The first time I set eyes on her, she was standing in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn on Route 70 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She had cropped brown hair, and she was wearing an Oxford-type shirt and men’s trousers.

  “Oh, no,” I thought to myself, “men’s trousers.” I tend to prefer women who are more traditionally feminine—I guess one would call them “lipstick lesbians.” But I was hungry for companionship, so I thought, “What the heck.”

  Connie had seen my profile on an online dating site and had e-mailed me to ask for a date. She was working in Moorestown as an information systems consultant for a huge defense contractor. She worked in South Jersey during the week and then flew down to her home in San Antonio on Thursday afternoons. I was amazed at her grueling schedule, but she said that it wasn’t that uncommon these days.

  “There’s plenty of us,” she told me. Connie had good incentive to commute halfway across the country. She said she made $130 an hour. This was about what I made in an entire day, working as a freelance educational writer.

  “Isn’t it kind of strange being a liberal lesbian working for a defense contractor?” I asked her over dinner at an Indian restaurant.

  “Oh, I don’t work for the weapons side of the business,” she assured me. “I work for the procurement side.”

  “But you’re still working for a defense contractor,” I thought to myself. On the other hand, who was I to be judgmental? My father worked as a metallurgist for the U.S. Navy for thirty-five years. You might say that my upbringing was paid for by the military-industrial complex.

  As we continued to talk, I decided that Connie had a nice personality. I was also intrigued by the fact that she was from Texas. I had never met anyone, gay or straight from the Lone Star State. She had that Texas twang, though since she had lived in California for a while, it wasn’t too pronounced.

  As we kept chatting, I learned that Connie liked baseball and reading about dead presidents. That was funny . . . so did I. Since she had lived in San Francisco for a number of years, her favorite team was the Giants.

  “I can’t stand Barry Bonds,” I opined.

  Connie shrugged. “In San Francisco we just say, ‘that’s Barry being Barry.’”

  As the evening wore on, the thought occurred to me that I should try not to be turned off by superficial things such as personal style. My pattern was to be attracted to women who weren’t emotionally available. My therapist had suggested that this was because I had had to care so much for my mother, who had been chronically depressed for years. Apparently, children who have to nurture their parents tend to view intimate relationships as oppressive. That’s why they develop unrequited longings for people who never give them the time of day. Hence, my goal was to have a relationship with someone who was actually available. Perhaps I would grow to become attracted to Connie . . . that is, if she was attracted to me. At our first dinner, I wasn’t so sure.

  But a few days later, the phone rang. It was Connie, asking me if I wanted to go out to dinner again. I thought, “Why not?” No one else was beating my door down, as they say.

  “Sure,” I said.

  So we dated for a month or so. We were sitting in a coffee shop near Rittenhouse Square in Philly when Connie invited me down to San Antonio for a long weekend.

  “I’ll pay for your fare with my frequent flyer miles,” she said. After I overcame my surprise, I agreed. The fact that I hadn’t known her all that long didn’t deter me. She seemed nice. She was nice. In some ways she was nicer than I was. She was much more outgoing, anyway . . . always talking about her co-workers and her friends at home with genuine warmth. I found this refreshing. Besides, I had never been to Texas. And I had heard that San Antonio was by far the prettiest city in the state.

  Since there is no direct service between Philadelphia and San Antonio, I had to change planes in Houston. When I landed in San Antonio, Connie was standing near the exit, a big smile on her face. After driving me to her home, a two story, vaguely Spanish style tract house, we had dinner at a nearby restaurant. The next day, she showed me the sights. We strolled around San Antonio’s famed River Walk, which was colorful and busy. We toured the site of the 1968 World’s Fair and saw the Tower of the Americas. And of course we saw the Alamo. It was smaller than I had imagined it, but impressive nonetheless. Since there were now tall office buildings all around it, it was hard to associate with a bloody battle.

  That evening, Connie introduced me to her friends. We sat around a fire pit at her neighbor Danny’s house and drank wine. Danny was a government worker who was married to Laurie, a nurse. Their friend Mark worked in communications for the University of Texas, San Antonio. He also played bass for a jazz combo that performed at the River Walk. Mark was divorced. Danny and Mark were good guys. They were both that endangered species: Texas liberals. Neither had a problem with gays; however, Connie said that Laurie was a devout Catholic and did not really like her. Connie had known them all since high school. It said something about them that they had remained friends. Connie said she didn’t have any gay friends in San Antonio. She missed having gay friends. Evidently the gay scene in San Antonio wasn’t all that hot.

  That Saturday, we drove to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch in the Hill Country. On the way, I asked Connie about the phrase, “Don’t Mess With Texas.” I said it sounded belligerent.

  “Oh,” she laughed. “That was just a slogan from an anti-littering campaign.”

  I was a little relieved. You never knew about Texas, what with that disaster, George W. Bush.

  When we got to the LBJ Ranch, We saw the tiny house where LBJ was born and the Pedernales River, which twisted like a corkscrew through the property.

  “You call that a river?” I kidded Connie. I guess I was chauvinistic about the Delaware.

  “Sometimes it floods,” she replied. As our guided tour bus pulled closer to the Texas White House, we saw a group of people sitting out front on the porch. The bus driver mentioned that Lady Bird Johnson—who was now in her nineties—still came out here from time to time. Just then, from out of the crowd, a woman waved to us. Although we weren’t close enough to get a really good look, for all we knew it could have been Lady Bird. For a lifelong liberal, this was about as good as it gets.

  “I read that LBJ’s mother was extremely religious and that his dad drank too much,” I told Connie.

  “That describes
half the couples in Texas,” she replied.

  I laughed.

  That evening, Connie and I sat drinking beer on her couch and watched comedy videos on her hi-def TV. Connie was a big fan of certain stand-up comedians.

  “Is Wanda Sykes gay?” I asked Connie.

  “I don’t know,” Connie said. This was before Wanda had come out.

  By the end of the weekend, I had come out. Although the plan was for Connie to sleep on the couch and me to sleep in her bed, we began getting intimate on the couch. It was probably the alcohol. Also, I hadn’t had sex with anyone for ten years. Ten years!

  I was kind of shocked at myself since I had made the first move. Afterward, I felt like throwing up.

  “I kind of feel queasy,” I told Connie.

  Needless to say, she was disconcerted. She had probably never met anyone whom sleeping with had made physically ill. It wasn’t her, per se. It was nerves. The whole thing had been too abrupt. Here I was 2000 miles from home, having sex with a woman I hardly knew. I hastened to assure Connie that I wanted to continue to see her.

  So we did. Connie would come up to South Jersey on Sunday afternoons and leave for Texas on Thursday afternoons. Sometimes I’d spend the night with her at her room at the Holiday Inn.

  “You live an anomic life,” I told her. I told her that anomie meant disoriented and disconnected. But she didn’t mind her life. It didn’t seem to bother her to spend so much time in hotel rooms and airports and rental cars. In fact, she seemed rather proud of being able to commute such a long distance. She spent a lot of time listening to podcasts on her iPod. She was a big fan of NPR. Also, she said that if she continued earning good money as a defense consultant, she could retire in a few years.

  As our relationship continued, I became much more comfortable around Connie. But it was clear that I was never going to become passionately attracted to her. I liked her, but she wanted more. She had every right to expect passion. So, for that matter, did I.