GROWING OLD IS...
A FUNNY THING. When you're young, it seems that folks always want to listen to your stories, especially if you happened to have played professional baseball like I did. But when you're young like I once was, you don't have the time nor the inclination to tell them because you're far too busy dating girls and hanging-out with the guys. And now I've got all the time in the world, it seems that nobody wants to listen. And yet, I still like to think about them. So I am about to tell you an awful story, but those are the ones that last the longest, and it is my hope that you'll stick around long enough to hear about the end of a dreadful year I once had many years ago in the minor leagues, and about an older guy by the name of Barton Faraday, who was one one of finest position players I have ever seen...
...It was only ten years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier when it all began. The rules were still the same. They don't change. And the little rituals were pretty similar, too. Back then, nobody would have been allowed to wear their cap cocked to the side, or curve the brim, and your hair had to be neat and short, but some players still crossed themselves before they stepped into the box, or drew in the dirt with the heads of their bats before taking up the stance, or jumped over the baseline when they were running out to take their positions. Nobody wanted to step on the baseline, it was considered bad luck to do that; and in those days the uniforms were made of wool and we scratched where it itched the most, which happened to be around the jockstrap area but were too embarrassed to give it a truly good scratch. Television had started to come in, but only on weekends. Compared to the way they do today's games, it was all pretty amateur. Radio was better, more professional, but of course it was local, too. No satellite broadcasts, because there were no satellites. The Russians sent the first one up on the 4th day in October of 1957, during the Yanks-Braves World Series.
A FUNNY THING. When you're young, it seems that folks always want to listen to your stories, especially if you happened to have played professional baseball like I did. But when you're young like I once was, you don't have the time nor the inclination to tell them because you're far too busy dating girls and hanging-out with the guys. And now I've got all the time in the world, it seems that nobody wants to listen. And yet, I still like to think about them. So I am about to tell you an awful story, but those are the ones that last the longest, and it is my hope that you'll stick around long enough to hear about the end of a dreadful year I once had many years ago in the minor leagues, and about an older guy by the name of Barton Faraday, who was one one of finest position players I have ever seen...
...It was only ten years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier when it all began. The rules were still the same. They don't change. And the little rituals were pretty similar, too. Back then, nobody would have been allowed to wear their cap cocked to the side, or curve the brim, and your hair had to be neat and short, but some players still crossed themselves before they stepped into the box, or drew in the dirt with the heads of their bats before taking up the stance, or jumped over the baseline when they were running out to take their positions. Nobody wanted to step on the baseline, it was considered bad luck to do that; and in those days the uniforms were made of wool and we scratched where it itched the most, which happened to be around the jockstrap area but were too embarrassed to give it a truly good scratch. Television had started to come in, but only on weekends. Compared to the way they do today's games, it was all pretty amateur. Radio was better, more professional, but of course it was local, too. No satellite broadcasts, because there were no satellites. The Russians sent the first one up on the 4th day in October of 1957, during the Yanks-Braves World Series.
Baseball players weren't such a big deal. There were stars like Musial, Aaron, Burdette, Williams, and of course The Mick - but most weren't as well-known coast to coast like Alex Rodrigues and Barry Bonds are today (who turned out not to be all that spectacular when it came to being men of honor). And most of the other guys? They were pretty much working stiffs. The average salary was fifteen thousand dollars, less than an average retail worker makes today. If you were a 30 year-old outfielder with a wife and 3 children and maybe had another 7 years to go before retirement. Ten if you were lucky, and didn't get hurt. Carl Furillo, who played right field with the Brooklyn Dodgers during their glory years, ended up installing elevators in the World Trade Center and moonlighting as a night watchmen after his career had come to an end. The deal back then was simple: If you had the skills and could do the job even with a hangover, you got to play. If you couldn't, you would get tossed back to the minor league scrapheap and be forever forgotten.
We had a catcher by the name of Bobby Donner on the Kearney, Nebraska Cubs when I was playing. He had been sent back down to the C league minors after having 1 good year in AAA ball in the Pacific Coast League and 2 bad years after that. Bobby was also a big drinker and quite a womanizer. He loved the ladies and his rum and coke. And one afternoon he ran over a woman on Main Street and killed her while his girlfriend was attempting to give him a blow job as he drove along the street. Bobby then tried to run. But there happened to be a County Sheriff's cruiser parked on the Corner of Elm and Main, and the deputies saw the whole thing. There wasn't much doubt about Bobby's state either. When they pulled him out of the car, he smelled like a brewery and could hardly stand-up. One of the deputies bent down to cuff him, and Bobby upchucked on the back of the guy's head. His career was over before his puke dried.
Bobby's backup happened to be a guy named Aubrey, whose last name I cannot for the life of me recall. Aubrey was not bad behind the plate, but a lousy hitter. His average at the plate was about .150, which put him at risk. Aubrey also happened to be a compulsive masturbator who loved to whacked-himself-off on our bus road trips because he said he couldn't think of anything else to do with his hands. But Aubrey was all we had, so we called him either "Mister Sticky Finger" or "The Kid with the Come-stained Skivvies," and put up with his rather odd behavior, which is why I probably cannot recall his last name. Anyway, Aubrey was behind the plate when we played the next game, which was near the end of the season, against the McCool Junction Reds, whom we were tied with for last place in the league. There was a squeeze play put on. The Reds best hitter was at the plate. Another of their players was on third base. Their best hitter punched the ball right at the pitcher, as the hulk of a player broke for the plate, all 250 pounds of him. Aubrey was as skinny as a man could be, and was standing with one foot on home-plate as the pitcher grabbed the ball and tossed it toward Aubrey.
Boy oh Boy, what a play it was! Aubrey hung on to the ball and got the out. I'll give him that, and although it was only a baseball game, not important in the great scheme of things, but our team was at last out of last place. It was, however, the end of Aubrey's baseball career, too. He had one broken elbow and a concussion and a smashed nose after he had tossed his mask aside in order to make the play and was smacked in the face by a cleat. I do not know for certain what became of Aubrey, other folks later told me that he had wound up washing windshields at an Esso station in Omaha before he was forced to take a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation and then sent away for awhile, but I am not certain whether or not that was true.
But the point was this: We had lost both of our catchers within the space of 48 hours and still had several games to play before the season's end. What our manager Mike Mullins did was get to work finding us another catcher, since we happened to have one facing manslaughter charges; another in the hospital, wrapped in so many bandages that he looked like Boris Karloff in The Mummy; a pitching staff either not old enough to shave or about ready to go on Social Security; God-knows-who the manager could find to put on the gear and squat behind the plate for the remainder of our season.
Oh, for the life of a manager, huh? Mike Mullins had a thankless job; things only got worse as the season rolled-on. Walking back and forth with his arms folded so tight he looked like he was trying to keep from exploding, he was mad as hell as we lost game-after-game, tearing off a fresh piece of chew while he was drumming his fingers along the side of his pants, then chewing the wad of tobacco so hard and fast the juice would squirt from both sides of his mouth and then run down his chin just before he would look up-and-down the bench at each-and-every-one of us and yell, "You guys have any idea how bad you are?! No?! I'll tell then! You guys stink!" But by the next day, before one of our final series of the season with the McCool Junction Reds, Mike said that he had hired an older guy who had been with the Davenport Cardinals until they gave him his unconditional release, saying that his speed was gone and his arm was about to go, too.
Boy oh Boy, what a play it was! Aubrey hung on to the ball and got the out. I'll give him that, and although it was only a baseball game, not important in the great scheme of things, but our team was at last out of last place. It was, however, the end of Aubrey's baseball career, too. He had one broken elbow and a concussion and a smashed nose after he had tossed his mask aside in order to make the play and was smacked in the face by a cleat. I do not know for certain what became of Aubrey, other folks later told me that he had wound up washing windshields at an Esso station in Omaha before he was forced to take a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation and then sent away for awhile, but I am not certain whether or not that was true.
But the point was this: We had lost both of our catchers within the space of 48 hours and still had several games to play before the season's end. What our manager Mike Mullins did was get to work finding us another catcher, since we happened to have one facing manslaughter charges; another in the hospital, wrapped in so many bandages that he looked like Boris Karloff in The Mummy; a pitching staff either not old enough to shave or about ready to go on Social Security; God-knows-who the manager could find to put on the gear and squat behind the plate for the remainder of our season.
Oh, for the life of a manager, huh? Mike Mullins had a thankless job; things only got worse as the season rolled-on. Walking back and forth with his arms folded so tight he looked like he was trying to keep from exploding, he was mad as hell as we lost game-after-game, tearing off a fresh piece of chew while he was drumming his fingers along the side of his pants, then chewing the wad of tobacco so hard and fast the juice would squirt from both sides of his mouth and then run down his chin just before he would look up-and-down the bench at each-and-every-one of us and yell, "You guys have any idea how bad you are?! No?! I'll tell then! You guys stink!" But by the next day, before one of our final series of the season with the McCool Junction Reds, Mike said that he had hired an older guy who had been with the Davenport Cardinals until they gave him his unconditional release, saying that his speed was gone and his arm was about to go, too.
I got to the park early the next day and there was an older-looking guy sitting on the bumper of an old Chevy truck in the player's parking lot. An Iowa license plate dangled from the back bumper on chicken-wire, and he introduced himself as Barton Faraday, as he shook my hand. As he let go of my hand he said, " I'm 39 years-old, I know I look old and beat-up, but I'm better than I look." Faraday was slim like Aubrey, and slim is the way you want your shortstop and second baseman to look, but not your catcher. Catchers should be built like fireplugs. That was not Bart. Not by a long shot. He was skinny from the waist up, but looking at him going away, I recall thinking that he reminded me of an aged plow boy with a somewhat wrinkled-sun-tanned face and bowlegs who had recently arrived in town straight from a day of picking corn under the blistery sun of an Iowa field.
There was something distant about him, something a bit off, something that made the rest of our team a little nervous probably because he was older than most of us were...but something that made people take to him, too. Bart had a great smile and a good laugh and a wonderful sense-of-humor; and with Bart behind the plate, we won the next 8 games in a row, mostly due to the fact that the players on the other teams could not steal home like they had done with both Bobby and Aubrey, due to the fact that Bart would knock them flat on their asses or step on their leg with a cleat whenever they attempted to do so. It didn't seem to matter to Bart how big the other guys were, and he didn't seem to mind that there were bruises over certain portions of his body after each and every game, as long as he got the other guy out.
With only a couple of games to go before the season ended, we had risen from 7th place to 3rd place in the 8 team league and were only 1 game behind the Ogallala Braves, the team that was in 2nd place. We would be playing our last 2 games against Ogallala. Bart was like a ballet dancer behind the plate. No balls got past him. He threw one base stealer out after another. And, of course, no one even dared to steal home. We won both games and ended the season in 2nd place, 1 game out of 1st.
Barton Faraday was the best catcher I ever saw and one of the nicest men I had ever met. I honestly think that I might have known that the first time I laid eyes on him, sitting on the bumper of his beshitted old truck with his worn-out gear stowed in the back, and to this day I have still wondered why Bart never made it up to the Big Show, even though he had been a decorated hero as a bomber pilot in World War Two, and perhaps his best years lay behind him when he arrived back home in 1947; and if so, that is a real shame because he was the best all-around baseball player I ever saw with my own eyes...
...You bored yet? No? Good. Me neither. I'm having the time of my life, awful story or not.
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