Sut more than held his own. He shut out the Indians on Opening Day 2–0, the first of sixteen wins he racked up that season. Baseball bard Thomas Boswell wrote in the Washington Post: “Sutcliffe is an anachronism—a pitcher who’s all heart. He always takes the ball. He never confesses an injury. He pitches until his arm falls off. Then he expects you to wait until he’s healthy and can ring up some more big numbers. Of course, nobody waits. And he returns.”1
He played two more seasons, then shut it down in 1994 at age thirty-eight. Out of the game for a year, he got restless, wanting to give back. When Larry Lucchino, president of the San Diego Padres, called and offered him the Padres pitching coach job, Sut’s response nearly floored him: “I don’t want to go to the big leagues. I want to go to rookie ball.” It was the equivalent of getting offered a full ride to Harvard and opting instead for Bunker Hill Community College. Sut reported to Idaho Falls, Idaho, as the team’s pitching coach on a $15,000 salary for the 1996 season. “Honestly, Brad, I never enjoyed having a uniform on more.” A couple years later, he joined the Padres and ESPN broadcasting teams and never looked back.
But his biggest comeback was yet to come.
“So, uh, you probably read it was seven years ago now I got diagnosed with colon cancer,” he volunteers. “I had a routine colonoscopy. I didn’t want to do it, but Robin forced me to. I had had no issues,” he says. My thoughts drift to Gini and Jaime Cocanower.
Doctors removed a single cancerous polyp, and Sut endured chemo and five days a week of radiation. He ended up having to wear an ileostomy bag for eight months. “Radiation was the worst. That was unbelievable. I literally spent, a lot of times, half a day just sitting in a bathtub because the radiation was around my rear end,” he says.
Sut faced his fears head-on. Before he got the biopsy results, he gathered Robin and Shelby together at home. “Somehow we ended up in a closet, and I said, ‘If it’s [the cancer] all over, I’m just telling you right now, it’s not gonna be a lengthy deal.’ We all started bawling, and I looked at my daughter, and I said, ‘Hey, I know where I’m going. I know where I’m at. I know I have been so blessed. I’ve done more things than most people get to do, and I’m adamant about you introducing your mom to your stepdad.’”
It thankfully didn’t come to that—Sut remains cancer-free—but he was ready no matter what the test results.
“I’ve got to run pretty soon. Have a tee time at 11:15,” he says as I finish my Chicago omelet, in honor of the Cubs.
Still, I feel like something’s missing.
We get back in the car and head back to Dixon’s Famous Chili to retrieve the Accord.
“Tell me a little more about your relationship with your parents,” I say. He had mentioned that they divorced when he was fairly young, but he had hardly spoken of them since. Everything was about his grandparents.
“Um, I don’t know if my dad is dead or alive,” he says softly. “He took off when I was eleven, never sent child support or alimony or anything. My grandparents raised me. My grandpa has always been my dad,” he says.
His dad was a race car driver who went by the moniker Mr. Excitement. After he ran off with another woman, Sut and his siblings moved in with their grandparents. His mom remarried but died young, at fifty-five.
The more we discuss his dad, the more the hurt creeps back into his voice. I share Don Carman’s story with him, about how Don still carries that trauma. I want Sut to know that his experience is sadly common in the baseball fraternity.
“I’m seventeen, eighteen years old, at my first big-league camp, and there are all these great players, Hall of Famers [Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, etc.], and I wasn’t in awe of any of them. I wasn’t afraid of any of them,” he says. Just like Carman, Sut weaponized his anger. On the mound, the cheerful gentle giant transformed into a warrior, the hurt and pain from childhood channeled into every fastball.
“My dad, being Mr. Excitement, the great racer, my dad was my idol to begin with. I wanted to be just like my dad,” he says, some moisture appearing in the corners of his eyes. “But I never looked up to anybody after what my dad did to me. I know what a piece of shit is. I know what not to be.”
With Shelby, Sut has done everything his father never did for him. He clears his throat. “I tell her every time I talk to her that I love her,” he says, pulling back into Dixon’s.
Excitement, after all, is overrated.
* * *
*
Over a thousand miles later, Las Vegas gleams in the desert like a neon warning sign, a symbol of humanity’s brutal dominion over nature. It is at once the loneliest and most connected place in the country. It was not on my original itinerary, certainly not in the last days of a forty-nine-day sprint across more than eleven thousand miles, when I figured I’d be dragging to the finish line.
Except here I am, standing on Las Vegas Boulevard, developing a kink in my neck from staring up at the Stratosphere Tower, a 1,149-foot poor man’s Space Needle at the end of the Strip.
I plop down my credit card for $180 (so much for cheap Vegas hotels) and haul my suitcase up to the room. I have no interest in gambling, but the nightlife, the promise of adventure, calls to me like an old friend.
Speaking of old friends, my phone chimes with a text. It’s Jesse, the same Jesse who was there almost seven weeks ago as I passed out on the side of the freeway in Visalia.
“Any shenanigans?” he asks.
“Getting ready in the hotel,” I type, adding, “it’s on,” our signature phrase for mischief. I peel off the T-shirt I’ve been wearing all day and unfold the ironing board from the closet.
I stand shirtless in front of the bathroom mirror. My trim torso is now interrupted by a bloated gut, all definition gone from my abs. Small bulges of fat hang over the crease where my upper thighs meet my hips. I probably haven’t gained more than ten pounds, but on my slight frame, it shows. I suck my stomach in, trying to remember what it used to look like.
Memories of past debauchery in Vegas flood back: waking up next to a woman I didn’t recognize in a motel I didn’t remember entering; trying cocaine for the first time in a hotel bathroom with people I had just met; having sex in a stairwell railed out of my mind. In our twenties, Vegas was the ultimate escape. But what is it now?
I finish getting dressed, rub some gel into my hair, and check myself in the mirror. My eyes are bloodshot and ringed with dark shadows. Who am I kidding?
I laugh and throw down my room key, face-planting dramatically on the bed, rolling around and laughing harder. The thought of going out right now, doing a bunch of shots, getting hammered, and hitting on girls couldn’t be less appealing.
“Fuck that,” I say out loud. All I want to do is lie in this bed and read my research notes on Al Cowens, the last of the Wax Packers, write in my notebook, and fall asleep with the lights on.
Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be back in California (but not San Diego, thank God). I’ve got one card in the Pack to go, and in just under seven weeks, I’ve managed to retrace much of my life, from fishing in Greenville to driving in OCD-addled circles in LA to seeing the woman I once thought I’d marry. I’ve redefined what the word “hero” means to me and created some new villains in the process. And I’m not done yet.
Tomorrow, crossing the Golden State border, I’ll recognize home; but will home recognize me?
17
Straight Outta Compton
I’ll never forget this. There were six of us, six blacks, that went to this place that was really close to the stadium in St. Pete. We went over there because some of the white players told us they had more rooms. We introduce ourselves, say, “We’re part of the St. Louis baseball club and we heard you have some apartments for rent.” The guy says, “We don’t have no apartments.” We say, “One of our guys said you did.” I had never seen a Ku Klux Klan hood in my life. He opens the door to show me.
—Billy Cowens
Days 47–48
August 4–5, 2015
/> Miles driven: 11,341
Cups of coffee: 123
Las Vegas NV to Compton CA
Everything changes.
In 1867 Griffith Dickinson Compton, a gold rusher originally from southern Virginia, led thirty pioneer families from Stockton, California, south into the coastal plains of Rancho San Pedro in search of a new start. The settlers purchased some land and began farming the area that later incorporated as the city of Compton. Two years later, the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad was completed, revolutionizing transportation and access to the area. Forty years of agricultural production ensued, with the railroad eventually yielding to the automotive and aviation industries in the early twentieth century, developing Compton into the Hub City for its geographically central location in Los Angeles.
15. Al Cowens
During this period of growth, Compton was almost all white—in fact, in 1949 and 1950 the Bush family lived there (including future presidents George H. W. and W.). As the defense industry took off during World War II, Compton changed once again, with the population exploding from 16,198 in 1940 to 47,991 in 1950 to 71,812 in 1960. The demographics shifted dramatically during this time period as well; in 1948 there were only fifty African Americans in the entire city, but when LA’s black population started gaining affluence and sought life in the suburbs, Compton’s black numbers swelled. By 1960 blacks composed 40 percent of the population. The end of discriminatory housing laws led to massive white flight, and by the late 1980s, the city was almost three-quarters black, with its white population at a mere 3 percent. The once-lily-white city of Compton became a hub of black culture, spawning the West Coast hip hop movement and giving rise to such groups as the N.W.A.
But everything changes.
* * *
*
I’m back in California, where it all started.
I walk into Centennial High School, the alma mater of the last Wax Packer, Al Cowens, on Central Avenue. A black iron fence rings the campus’s perimeter, and above the entrance a bright white sign reads “Home of the Apaches.” There are a couple of desks set up in the lobby and plenty of foot traffic for the teachers’ summer professional development activities, branded as “Taking Action on Academic Literacy.” Centennial has produced many star athletes over the years, several of whom are commemorated in yellowed photos on the walls, but there’s no sign of Al. I linger for several minutes and notice that not only are there no black people, I am the only non-Latinx person in sight.
Inside the school office I approach an older Latina. “I’m writing a book about one of your alums. Is there an administrator I might be able to speak with?” I ask. A few moments later, a black man wearing a gray Apaches T-shirt and jeans emerges from the bank of offices in the back and introduces himself as Doug, the new school principal.
“I’m writing a book and doing some research on one of your alums, Al Cowens,” I say.
“The O.J. guy?” he asks. I laugh. It isn’t the first or last time someone will confuse Al Cowens for Al Cowlings, the driver in the infamous white Bronco chase. I correct the record.
“Oh yeah, sounds familiar. Did he play with the Royals?” He walks me back to the front of the high school, telling me he’s only been on the job for seven months.
“Is the school mostly Latinx?” I ask.
“It is now,” he replies. “This school used to be 99 percent African American.”
“What changed?” I ask.
“People moved,” he says with a shrug.
I ask if he knows of anyone who might have known Al, and it turns out I’m in luck.
“You know what you should do; the alumni association is meeting here at six, and a lot of guys from his time will be there. Come on by,” he says.
Back out on the street, I’m surprised by how spacious Compton’s main drag is. I had expected bleaker, cramped streets based on its reputation for crime; in a city of fewer than one hundred thousand, there were eighty-seven homicides in 1991. But crime has dropped, and Central Avenue is a wide thoroughfare, two lanes in each direction, with single-family homes set back from the road without fences. Straight Outta Compton movie posters are everywhere, promoting the release of the N.W.A. biopic in just a couple of weeks. It’s a gorgeous summer day with a light breeze tickling palm fronds overhead, the perfect temperature for maximum comfort.
Al went to high school in Compton but lived in nearby Watts, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was the oldest of four; his parents, Peggy and Al Sr., met in the LA projects when they were in high school, and both became school janitors. He spent his childhood walking everywhere, even as the social upheaval that roiled the country in the 1960s made the streets unsafe—Al was thirteen when the Watts riots tore through his neighborhood, destroying many businesses that would never return. Baseball was his outlet and his ticket out. A third baseman through high school, he was converted to the outfield for his strong arm when the expansion Kansas City Royals drafted him in the seventy-fifth round in 1969.
Although his high school sweetheart turned wife, Velma, had to talk him out of quitting a couple times (she knew he would always regret it if he quit too soon), Al worked his way through the Royals farm system, debuting with the big club in 1974. Three years later he was one of the best players in baseball, the runner-up for the American League MVP Award after crushing 23 home runs and 112 RBIs and posting a .312/.361/.525 slash line. His manager, Whitey Herzog (remember him from the Garry Templeton incident?), loved him, calling him “the ideal player.”1 Respected by his teammates, Al kept his head down and went about his business. “Quiet” was the adjective always used to describe him in media accounts. In the 1977 playoffs against the Yankees, his teammate Hall of Famer George Brett said Al should be the MVP. “But he won’t be, for three reasons: He’s black, he’s married, and he plays in the Midwest.”2 Brett was right.
But Al was unable to sustain his play at that level, and his career took a sharp turn in 1979 when pitcher Ed Farmer hit him squarely in the face with a pitch, breaking his jaw and causing him to miss three weeks. Farmer claimed it was unintentional, but the circumstances were fishy: Farmer hit the first batter he faced, Frank White; he had been knocked around by the Royals hitters; and he had already given up a run-scoring single to Al before he beaned him in the fifth inning. Following the incident, Al ate through a straw for three weeks, quietly seething. Things turned even uglier when he sought a dish of chilly revenge more than a year later. Now playing for the Detroit Tigers, Al came up to face Farmer in the eleventh inning. He hit a ground ball to shortstop, and rather than run to first, he bolted for the pitcher’s mound, where he greeted Farmer with a right hook. Al was tossed and suspended for seven games, and a warrant was even issued for his arrest. Some say he was never the same after the incident.
But he did come back, playing several more years of productive ball with the Seattle Mariners before being iced out in the collusion scandal in the mid- to late eighties that similarly victimized Wax Packer Steve Yeager. Released by the Mariners in 1986, Al was done at age thirty-four.
Later that evening I return to Centennial High, where I meet a friendly group of alums, most of them from Al’s era, just as Principal Doug had suggested. A woman named Vivian tells me she knows Al’s brother Billy and will have him give me a call. It’s the best lead I’ve got so far on finding Al.
* * *
*
The phone rings at 8:00 a.m. It’s from a 310 area code. Los Angeles.
“Hello?” I say, willing the grogginess out of my voice.
“Hey, is this Brad? I was told to call you. This is Billy Cowens.”
“Oh hey. Thanks for getting back to me, Billy. I’m writing a book that includes a chapter on your brother Al, and I was hoping I could talk to you about him today if you’re around,” I say.
“Well, first off, he’s not my brother. He’s actually my first cousin,” Billy replies.
Apparently Al and Billy duped the baseball world for years, telling everyone they were brot
hers. When I met Garry Templeton at the start of the trip and showed him Al’s card in the Pack, he said, “I roomed with his brother Billy in the Minors!”
I get dressed and meet up with Billy at the Elephant Bar in Torrance, near Compton. Recently retired from the Compton Fire Department, Billy’s about six feet tall, with a thin white beard. He’s wearing a plain red hat and red shorts. He’s fresh from a water aerobics class, rehab for his second hip surgery, which needed to be replaced after years of pounding on the job. We ride together through the streets of Watts, Billy navigating and pointing out the projects where he grew up.
“I was raised on welfare as a kid,” he explains. “I have a deaf sister a year younger than me. My mom couldn’t go to work because there was nobody else to take care of her. She had a lot of medical issues. And my dad, he was a sanitation worker, but he didn’t support the family. He had another wife.”
I’ve become sadly numb to the stories of negligent fathers.
Billy was three years younger than Al and looked up to him.
“What would you guys do together?” I ask as we pass by row after row of automotive repair shops where the steel industry used to be.
“Throw rocks,” Billy replies.
I laugh, not expecting that answer and not sure if he’s being serious.
“Rocks?” I ask.
“We just liked throwing rocks, man. We’d go down by the railroad tracks and throw rocks. Al, he had an accurate arm too,” he says. Everywhere they went, school, baseball practice, friends’ houses, they would walk and throw rocks, testing their arms by making targets out of trees, signs, each other. The buses were too expensive.
“What he got into, I got into. What helped us out was sports. We were athletes, and for some reason gangs didn’t bother athletes,” Billy says. Toward the end of their high school days, gang warfare laid siege to Los Angeles as the Bloods and Crips rose to prominence. Although the Cowens boys were generally able to avoid that scene, they were still in South-Central LA, and fights were part of life. Although he was always quiet, Al was never afraid to defend himself: “Al was the best fighter. He didn’t pick fights. But he could fight.” When Ed Farmer beaned him in 1979 Farmer had no idea who he was messing with. “That’s the only time I ever saw him really angry. That summer [following the incident], that’s all he talked about. He said, ‘I’m gonna get him,’” Billy says, limping along with his cane for support.
The Wax Pack Page 25