When the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks staged their street fight at Chavez Ravine last Wednesday, I imagined Daddy's scorn. His words would echo what he'd said decades ago about a similar shamefest. Though my adoptive father, Paul French, didn't exactly exude charm and loving-kindness, he held tight to his principles with an unshakeable grip.
Happy Father's Day, Daddy. RIP, Paul A. French, 1910 - 1983
Daddy and the Dodgers
By Terri Elders
Daddy never minced words when it
came to his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. The old Ebbets Field fans mantra of hope,
“Wait until next year,” never crossed his lips. “Those damn Dodgers,” he’d
growl instead, “They deserved to lose. They threw the game away. You've gotta
earn the victory. It doesn't just get handed to you."
He espoused an equally no-nonsense
approach to child-rearing. After he and Mama adopted my sister and me in
l942, whenever we would visit Newberry’s or Woolworth’s and plead for a new
toy, Daddy would quote the slogan, “Use it all, wear it out, make it do or do
without.” Daddy could have written that World War II motto himself. “You
each already have a doll,” he would say, shaking his head at our grandiose
expectations. Mama tried to make up for it, spending long December evenings
ripping up our outgrown blouses and nightgowns to make new doll clothes, hoping
to counter any Christmas morning disappointment.
Raised in Kansas,
the son of a prison guard and a mother who would later become the president of
the Los Angeles
chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Daddy frowned on
frills. Because he worked two jobs, as a diesel mechanic by day, and a
shoe salesman on Friday night and Saturday, he had little spare time. He and
Mama traditionally spent Saturday night together, visiting friends for a
Pinochle game. That left just a few week nights and Sundays for family
activities.
By the time I was starting junior
high in l948, I used to beg Daddy to take us all to the Sunday
matinee. All my friends had gone with their families to see The Red
Shoes or Portrait of Jennie. “Just listen to the radio,” he’d
say. “It’s free and good enough.” So instead of heading for the Temple or the Rialto,
we’d chuckle along with studio audiences at The Jack Benny Show.
When Benny got the biggest laugh
ever registered on radio by replying “I’m thinking it over,” when a mugger demanded,
“Your money or your life,” Mama said that sounded just like Daddy. Daddy
scowled at first, but then nodded, as if these were words of praise. Mama also
used to joke that when Daddy opened his wallet, moths would fly out. Daddy
would counter that he was frugal, not stingy; thrifty, not a
spendthrift. But he would turn his back to us when he opened his wallet to
fish out some change
The Dodgers were his one
indulgence. Whenever the reception from the east coast was strong enough,
Daddy hunkered down in front of the Philco, munching on a peanut butter
sandwich, scribbling on a sheet of paper he called a scorecard. Seeking a
way to get his attention, I, too, became a fan. I checked out stacks of
library books to learn about the infield fly rule and why triple plays are so
rare.
In the late afternoon I would
hover by the front porch, watching for the Herald Express paper boy so I could
follow the daily recounts of the Dodgers’ battles. Though Daddy and I
admired Jackie Robinson, we especially cheered when Duke Snider, deemed the
Duke of Flatbush but actually a native Angeleno, hammered in another homer.
Soon we expanded our fandom to the
Pacific Coast League Hollywood Stars, as well, and doubled our evening
listening time, tuning out complaints from Mama and my sister about missing Your
Hit Parade and Lux Radio Theater. When we weren’t nodding our heads
in approval over the feats of outfielder Frankie Kelleher, Daddy would help me
with my geometry homework. “I don’t know why they make girls take this stuff,”
he’d say, as I struggled with lengths, areas and volumes. “It’s not as if
you’re going to be an engineer.”
“But, Daddy, I need to understand
math if I’m to figure out the baseball odds and understand the stats.”
“Well, that’s certainly true,” he
conceded.
Once I started high school, I
began a series of evening and Saturday jobs as a waitress, a sales clerk at a
hosiery counter, a bus girl, so could no longer join Daddy in listening to the
games. By then we had a second radio and even a television. And my
interests had expanded beyond baseball, mostly to boys.
So when Daddy asked me to
accompany him to Gilmore Field one Sunday to watch the Stars play a
double-header against their archrivals, the Los Angeles Angels, I was both
astonished and ambivalent. Sundays I usually went to the bowling alley or the
miniature golf course with my boyfriend. On the other hand, Daddy had
never asked me to go anywhere with him before. I hesitated only a second before
accepting.
That Sunday game turned out to be
one that became infamous as “The Brawl.” The popular and usually mild-mannered
Kelleher took an Angel pitch to his back after a pair of close brush-backs,
strode out to the mound, and threw a punch, setting off a violent brawl that
lasted over half an hour and required fifty police officers to break it up and
restore order. A second donnybrook erupted a little later. And that was
only the first game of a double-header.
I spilled my popcorn when I jumped
up to cheer when Kelleher decked the pitcher, but Daddy told me to sit down and
refused to buy me a second bag. And when I wanted to stay for the second
game, Daddy shook his head in disgust. “It’s bad enough that the players
were behaving like hooligans,” he said, “but that the audience was endorsing it
makes it worse. And that includes you, young lady.”
On the
long drive back from Hollywood to southwest Los Angeles, Daddy asked,
“What if the Dodgers behaved like that? What if they had spilled off the
bench and ambushed Bobby Thompson when he hit that homer off Branca back in
’51? Would you have cheered just because they were Dodgers?”
“No,” I
said, “But that’s different. Thompson hit ‘the shot heard round the
world.’ Kelleher got hit by a ball.”
“How do
you know Hatten hit him on purpose? Didn’t look like that to me.”
Daddy
shot me a sideways glance. “Terri, one thing you have got to remember,
both in sports and life. You have to earn everything fair and square. It’s
not fair to take advantage of somebody else’s mistakes. The better team should
win. The better player should prevail. And hard work will pay off,
not cheap tricks. There’s no room in baseball for brawls.”
“Well,
the Stars did win. So I guess they’re the better team.”
Daddy
shook his head and drove the rest of the way home in stony silence.
A few nights
later I started to tune in the Stars game. “Turn it off,” Daddy
ordered. “I’m through with those guys. And they call the Dodgers
‘bums!’ That should be the name of the Stars.” We never again
listened together to the Hollywood Stars.
It was
that simple for Daddy, no ambiguity, no shades of gray, and no mitigating
circumstances. A couple of decades after his death, in this era of
corporate corruption, political chicanery, and athletes who lie, cheat and
steal, I often think of his old-fashioned principles, and how he tried to use
sports as a metaphor to teach me about right and wrong. Not that Daddy
would ever use a word such as “metaphor.”
Not
long after he died, Mama told me he had never stopped talking about the day he
took me to Gilmore Field and how upset he was about that legendary brawl. I
reminded her that a few years later he escorted me to Chavez Ravine to see our
newly relocated Dodgers.
I well
remember both of those days. And I especially recall his words when we sat
down to watch our beloved boys from Brooklyn.
“Now,
Terri,” he said, “You’re going to see some class.”
(Published 2009, Literary Cottage, My Dad is My Hero.)
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