The Wax Pack

by Brad Balukjian

  My mom now lives near me in California, thrilled to be a grandmother (my sister’s two kids have taken the pressure off me to reproduce). My dad remarried and moved to Chicago, but I’ve struggled to acclimate to our new dynamic as adults. Our conversations, mostly done via phone these days, orbit around some emotional sphere, occasionally scratching the surface but never blasting into its core. We discuss business and politics and movies but rarely venture into the intensely personal territory where I like to be. When he asks about my life, which he always makes a point of doing, I hear myself parroting back to him, talking about everything except what really matters. I think I do this out of some deep-seated respect for the boundaries of our old relationship, because I still want to be the ten-year-old who thinks the Soviets are evil and the Americans are good and who idolizes his dad, not someone who makes him feel uncomfortable.

  When I see him in a few short hours, I know we’ll talk baseball. But this time, when he asks about my life, I want to blast into that emotional sphere, to honestly answer that most basic of questions: What’s new? I want to tell him who I really am—a thirty-four-year-old liberal with Buddhist leanings who might not want to follow the seemingly preordained path of marriage and kids and who thinks Reagan wasn’t that great a president after all. And I don’t want his approval or even a response. I just want him to listen.

  June 5, 1973

  Back behind the baseball field of Abraham Lincoln High, or rather the patch of dirt and weeds masquerading as a baseball field, Lee Mazzilli is hiding with his buddies. Although school isn’t quite out yet, summer is here, and Maz can’t be happier. The country may be in turmoil, haunted by Vietnam and the looming specter of Watergate, but for Maz, summer means nonstop baseball here in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, only a couple miles northeast of Coney Island.

  Maz is a good student with a bad case of senioritis, seeing no harm in cutting class now and then to enjoy the sunshine, like he’s doing now, sitting under a tree near home plate.

  Across the field he sees a figure approaching and within moments recognizes the aggravated march of his baseball coach, Herb Isaacson.

  “Shit,” Maz says to his friends. “Coach sees me.”

  Isaacson stomps closer, stopping a few feet away and peering hard into Maz’s face, turning Maz’s olive complexion slightly pink.

  “Hey, Mazzo, you hear anything?” he asks gruffly.

  “What do you mean coach?” Maz musters.

  Shit. I’m fucked, he thinks.

  The old man’s face breaks into a grin.

  “Mets.”

  He puts up a single finger.

  Once again: “Mets.”

  Maz’s eyes grow wide. It finally registers.

  He has just been taken in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft (the fourteenth overall pick) by his home team, the New York Mets.

  He takes off running. He runs and runs and runs through the cluttered city streets, past local markets and street vendors, straight through blinking orange Don’t Walk signs, dodging cars and smiling at the honks that follow. He doesn’t stop until he reaches East 12th Street between Avenues Y and Z, dashing up to the second floor and bursting through the door of the three-room apartment he shares with his parents and older siblings, Joann and Freddy. It’s a modest dwelling for the second-generation Italian American family, space at such a premium that the bathroom is located outside and down a hallway.

  His father, Libero, hears him before he sees him. A welterweight boxer turned piano tuner, he knows nothing about baseball but everything about fatherhood, taking Maz to countless speed-skating practices and competitions in the winter and baseball games in the summer. Years from now, when Maz is an established Major Leaguer, Libero will frame each of his baseball cards as a reminder of his youngest son’s success.

  The whole family knows that Maz is going places, knows that he won’t be in Sheepshead Bay long, not with that speed and athleticism. Scouts have been over to the house for his mom June’s famous chicken cacciatore, and multiple teams have shown interest. Maz just wanted to get drafted, let alone in the first round. But first round and taken by his home team? Too good.

  “Dad!” he gasps, trying to catch his breath. “Mets! First round!”

  His dad rushes forward and squeezes his son, kissing his cheek and telling him how proud he is. They hold each other, tears streaming down their faces.

  * * *

  *

  I’ve lived in or near cities all my life, but nothing compares to New York City. After having spent only $8.75 on tolls the entire trip, I drop $35.10 to get across the maze of bridges and expressways guarding the Big Apple. Driving one of the perilously narrow, perpetually-under-construction expressways choked with traffic, I pass old brick apartment building after apartment building stacked close together, dressed with steel fire escapes. I marvel at the mass of humanity contained within a single block, vertical row after row of windows and air-conditioning units. And this isn’t even Manhattan. This is Staten Island.

  Maz now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a five-bedroom, four-bathroom Colonial with a large backyard perfect for Wiffle Ball games and Easter egg hunts. The wealthiest town in the state, Greenwich, a haven for hedge funds and private equity firms, is only forty minutes from the heart of Manhattan. This may be where Maz ended up, but it’s not where he started. To trace his roots, my dad and I are staying in a Comfort Inn in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, spitting distance from Coney Island.

  Maz is now a spring training instructor and special advisor for the Yankees, and we’ve made plans to meet tomorrow night in the town of Rye for dinner. With his son, LJ, a prospect in the Mets’ Minor League system, Maz spends much of his time watching him play, and since it’s the heart of the baseball season, that time is limited. Still, I’m grateful that he is willing to set aside a couple hours for a complete stranger with no book contract or baseball writing credentials. After I left a few messages on his home answering machine, Maz had called me back right before the trip, deeply apologetic: “I really apologize. I know you called a couple of times. I’m not normally like that,” he said in a thick Brooklyn accent, leaving me stunned that this ex-ballplayer would think he had anything to apologize to me for. His wife, Dani, a former broadcaster, was also super helpful in arranging our meeting. While I was in Florida a couple days ago, I reached her on the phone. “I’ll help you set it up,” she offered. “Lee’s a private guy; if you want to know where he is at a party, look in the corner of the room,” she said.

  I meet up with my dad in our hotel room. I’ve conscripted him to be my research assistant for the next couple days, figuring this trip will serve as our annual father-son road get-together, a tradition that goes back several years.

  I walk in the room and give him a big hug.

  “Hey, big guy!” he says, his usual greeting for me. “How was the New Jersey Turnpike? Was it jammed?” he asks.

  “Not too bad,” I reply.

  “I’m so glad I MapQuested my route,” he says about his drive. “I would never have found this place. That MapQuest is pretty good.”

  Yes, MapQuest. He’ll discover Google Maps in about 2020.

  The British Open golf tournament is on TV (golf is his other favorite sport). “They had to delay the tournament due to high winds,” he says as we sit on our respective beds, facing the tube. He’s almost seventy but could pass for a decade less, his brown hair flecked with gray and cut short. Unlike Rance, his eighties mustache is long gone, and he’s wearing a gray Duke shirt (my alma mater) tucked into dark blue jeans. We fall right back into our old pattern, talking about weather and traffic, circling that emotional sphere. And, of course, our ever-reliable go-to: baseball.

  “I was trying to watch the Dodgers-Nationals game last night,” he says, eyes on the TV. “They had to suspend it because the lights went out twice. The Dodgers were winning 3–2.” He pauses, then continues: “I was watching this thing on 20/20 about this
kidnapping in Vallejo. That’s kind of near where you live, isn’t it?” I nod, and we move on to a vast range of topics, from the odd shape of the state of Maryland to the paucity of black hockey players to the socioeconomics of Jacksonville. We don’t talk about his relationship with my stepmom, Katina, or my dating life or how my mother is doing out in California. And I’m just as much to blame as he is, too uncomfortable with the thought of making him uncomfortable. I sip my hotel coffee and stare at the screen while we chat, our eyes in parallel.

  Given that we have a job to do, I debrief my dad on Lee Mazzilli. Growing up in blue-collar Sheepshead Bay with two working parents, Maz was a natural athlete. He was ambidextrous, giving him the unusual talent of throwing equally well with both arms (although he wasn’t particularly strong from either side—the “weak arm” label followed him throughout his career). When he was ten, he started fatiguing quickly and falling often when competing, and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Arthur Michele diagnosed him with a muscle imbalance caused by an atrophied left hip, affecting his balance. “I came to the conclusion that Lee possessed total physical unfitness,” said Dr. Michele.1 Maz learned an early and important lesson in humility. Accustomed to winning at everything, he suddenly had to undergo painful physical therapy sessions every morning and evening to strengthen his left side, a ritual that would last for eight years. By the time he was twenty-one, he was playing center field for the New York Mets, and a few years later, he was one of the best players in the National League and the sole bright spot on an otherwise pitiful Mets team. This is the Maz whom my dad remembers playing center field in the 1970s, winning the 1979 All-Star Game for the National League with a walk-off walk, of all things, which he accentuated with a spectacular bat flip, decades ahead of his time.

  Every newspaper article from that era referred as much to Maz’s good looks as to his baseball prowess; playing in New York meant constant media attention, and his tall, dark, and handsome profile made him a crossover celebrity. He signed a contract with the William Morris Agency, read for TV and movie parts, and was constantly compared to John Travolta; even Frank Sinatra brought him onstage during a show at Caesars Palace. But while the spotlight was flattering, Maz was never comfortable in its glare—he never stopped being the quietly confident, always generous kid from Sheepshead Bay. “I had a very hard time dealing with that [the fame]. I look at myself as just a guy from the streets of New York,” he said.2 When twenty-two-year-old clubhouse assistant Charlie Samuels needed a place to live in 1980, Maz, then a bachelor, invited him to crash at his house on Long Island. “I don’t put myself on a pedestal. I am no better than the man cleaning the ballpark or the woman selling hot dogs. I just happen to be an athlete,” he told the New York Times.3

  Maz’s time as baseball royalty was short-lived, however, as injuries slowed him down. He was traded to Texas, then to the Yankees, then to the Pirates within one season. He spent the rest of his career as a role player, albeit an important one, delivering key hits upon his return to the Mets in 1986 in their championship season. He retired following a stint with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1989 at thirty-four, the same age I am now.

  * * *

  *

  My dad is not a shy man.

  We’re walking the cramped streets of Sheepshead Bay, the worn asphalt baking in the hot summer sun, passing row after row of old brick apartment buildings mixed with delis and small groceries. The diversity of the neighborhood resembles the United Nations chamber and reminds me of my home back in Oakland. We’re outside for only a few minutes, my nose in my notebook, when I hear my dad mumble, “If I see somebody a little bit older . . .” Then I hear his voice: “Excuse me! Are you from this area?”

  Here we go, I think, remembering all our family vacations, when my dad would talk to everybody, always super cheerful and positive.

  I look up and see him in front of an older woman with dyed red hair wearing a sundress. She’s carrying two plastic bags of groceries.

  She stares at him with the compassion of a pitchfork. The look is so hostile, so truculent, that I wonder if I had misheard him. Had he asked what kind of underwear she had on? How much money she makes?

  He repeats the question, and her face hardens more. She glares another instant, spins on her heel, and marches off.

  “Dad, remember, we’re in New York,” I say.

  He just laughs and looks for his next opportunity. We’re now outside a supermarket, where he approaches another older woman, this one pushing a cart. She has bright blue fingernails and is wearing white pants. I stand to the side, half smiling, half cringing.

  “Are you from this area?” he asks her.

  “Yeah,” she replies curtly. A large nose dominates her narrow face.

  “Is this a big Italian area?” he asks.

  “Used to be. Now it’s Russians, Muslims, Jews, and some Italians,” she says, all business. “It’s changed a lot.”

  “My son here, he’s writing a book on Lee Mazzilli, who grew up around here,” my dad says proudly, motioning toward me. I give a meek smile.

  “Oh yeah, his mom used to go to the beauty salon down there,” she replies, her face softening. “I knew of her but didn’t know her personally,” she says. I’m amazed that the Mazzilli name is still known on these streets. I thank her for her time and ask her if there’s any place to get lunch nearby.

  “Yeah, Emmons Avenue,” she says, launching into a long set of directions that has me reaching for my phone.

  “Are there any places closer?” I ask.

  “What’s wrong with you? You’re young, you walked all the way down here!” she says, then pauses and adds, “Go and call a taxi, or an Uber, whatever you kids use,” before waving good-bye and walking away.

  “You’re right, we are in New York,” my dad says once she’s gone, cracking us both up.

  A few hours later we walk through the turnstiles at MCU Park to watch the Single-A Brooklyn Cyclones take on the Vermont Lake Monsters. This is baseball at its roots, a sleepy game played on a languid summer night in front of a few thousand people with the Thunderbolt rollercoaster visible beyond the left-field fence. Twelve bucks gets us excellent seats down the first-base line, where we sit side by side reading our programs, studying the rosters like homework. It’s hard to tell if the people are here for the game or the nonstop entertainment on the sidelines—it’s YMCA Night, Fireworks Night, Princess and Pirate Night, Honeymooners Night (the TV show), and Bus Operator Sandy Bobblehead Night all in one, the last of which appears to be the Cyclones’ seagull mascot, Sandy, dressed up as the Jackie Gleason Honeymooners character. Between innings, Gong Show–type entertainment distracts the crowd (the PeeWee dance crew! whack an inflatable baseball with a golf club!), and between pitches, the players lining the top step of the dugout peek back to scan the crowd for attractive women, as timeless a baseball tradition as the hot dog. My dad and I trade observations on the game, sprinkling the conversation with politics.

  “What do you think of Bernie Sanders for president?” I ask.

  “I think he’s a good candidate if you like not having to work for a living,” he says.

  “Who do you think the Democratic nominee is going to be?”

  “I think it’s going to be Joe Biden,” he says.

  Baseball is a game like no other. It’s my favorite for the same reason that it’s many others’ least favorite: it’s long and ponderous. For those prone to boredom, baseball is excruciating; but for those who relish stillness, it is exquisite. Those long lulls, anathema to the always stimulated, provide the ideal setting for building relationships. Baseball is the backdrop for self-discovery.

  Somewhere in there, the Lake Monsters beat the Cyclones 4–3, but the final score hardly matters. For three hours I am that ten-year-old in our living room again, and there are good guys (John Kasich, Jeb Bush) and bad guys (Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden). Three hours sitting side by side, and yet I still haven’t worked up the courage to really talk to him.

  Maybe tomorrow
.

  * * *

  *

  I’m sitting across from Maz in the back of Ruby’s Oyster Bar and Bistro in the tony suburb of Rye. My dad sits to my left, and Maz is leaning over a plate of liver, bacon, and onions.

  “My wife’s liver is better,” he says in that thick Brooklyn accent.

  I now see what all those writers were talking about in the 1970s describing his “matinee idol looks.” Even at sixty, Maz is debonair, his black hair slicked back, his tanned skin glowing from his six-foot-one frame. He’s wearing a snug black T-shirt that conforms to his thick upper arms and chest and a pair of black jeans. As he talks, a tattoo on his left bicep peeks out from under the edge of his sleeve, but not enough for me to identify it.

  Maz is an active listener, his dark brown eyes rapt, completely present in the moment. It’s the skill that made him such a good coach and manager once he finished playing. For the first time on the trip, one of the Wax Packers seems as interested in me as I am in him.

  “What made you decide to write this book?” he asks.

  It’s a simple and obvious question, yet I’m so accustomed to steering the conversation that it throws me a bit.

  “As a kid, you know, my first baseball cards were around 1986. I’m thirty-four,” I begin.

  “That makes me feel old. I’m probably your dad’s age, right?” he replies.

  I explain the premise of the book and my experiences thus far.

  “Are you surprised how big leaguers turned out?” he asks, flipping the script some more.

  “It ranges a lot. One thing I’ve found interesting is that players aren’t nearly as into baseball as the fans are,” I reply.

  “Why is that?” he asks.

  I start to respond, and he adds, “I know why, but I want to ask you why.”