Fiction: “Now listen fellas, you gotta be pretty lousy to lose a hundred games. You gotta really stink up the joint, and that’s what we did. We stunk up the joint.
“We couldn’t hit, couldn’t field. Couldn’t do nothing right. The only thing we were good at was fighting. We sure were good at that. Down in Tacoma, we heard the stories about our guys brawling in hotel lobbies, beating the shit out of each other in the dugout.
“And, oh boy, the freak injuries we had.
“Our star reliever, Minton was his name, Greg Minton, hurt himself shoeing a damn horse – and hell’s bells, spring training hadn’t even started.
“Then old Chuck Hiller, our third-base coach – remember his four-bagger in the ’62 series? – got himself hit in the neck with a line drive down in Phoenix. He had surgery that March, I remember, and never put on a Giants uniform again.
“Yeah, fellas, the 1985 season was a bloody nightmare. It got so bad that I got the September call-up. Packed my bags in Tacoma and Roger Craig, the skipper, put me in at third the day I arrived. I guess they figured anything was better than Joel Youngblood.
“Ya see, even a ball as big as goddamned bowling ball got through Joel’s legs. Nice guy, but a freaking butcher at the hot corner. And here I am, 34 by then, a damn minor league lifer.”
“Maybe they felt sorry for you Billy,” cracked Jack Ortmeyer.
“Maybe they did, Jack. Or maybe they’d just given up.
“And so, they put me out there in windy-ass Candlestick – God, I loved that park – and the peanut bags are blowing around, and a deep drive to Jeffrey Leonard in left ended up a pop fly to Johnnie LeMaster at short, and you had Shag Crawford out there calling strikes on anything close to get the game over with.”
Billy Jensen drank back his beer and the bar was quiet, except for the tick-ticking of the rain splashing the greasy windows at Vera’s. A soft breeze rattled the row of plastic trout that dangled from a rusty rod.
It was late October, 2008. The Phillies owned the World Series and Obama was cruising and Billy had turned 58 the night before. And his legs felt good and he was glad about that. He spent his birthday on the Nestucca and had hooked two handsome steelhead.
“You know, I remember one day when the season was almost over. Hardly a soul in the stands, as usual. Guys in the dugout were fighting and grab-assing.
“Our best pitcher, Mike Krukow came up to me and he says to me, ‘Billy, if you want your time in the big leagues to last longer, be on a last-place club. Because it’s an eternity to get through the season.’”
A small appreciate chuckle rippled across the barroom.
Someone asked then, “So, Mayor Jensen, what was it like, to play your first game in the majors after all those years in the minors?”
Billy smiled at that. He was the most popular man in Rainy Springs, certainly its most eligible bachelor. He discovered this windswept hamlet on a fishing trip on the Nehalem back in ’75. He vowed to himself he’d be back when his playing days were over.
“It was like what old Churchill said when asked what it was like to meet FDR for the first time. He said it was like your first glass of Champagne.
“It was September 17, a Monday day game against the Padres. It was warm. Hardly a breeze. We were probably a million games out of first by then.”
Billy sipped his beer. No one said a word. He’d never before talked so much about baseball and the young life he gave with all his heart to the game.
“So, I’m trotting out to third, and I look up into the stands. And my father is there. He used to get box seats at the Marines Club, always Section 12, and that’s where he was that day.
“And I’m out there at third, and I’m remembering that first time he took me to the ballpark. It was 1958. The Giants had just moved from New York and were playing at Seals Stadium while they were building Candlestick.
Billy’s eyes filled with tears.
“I had this leg disease as a little kid. I never went to kindergarten or first grade. I had to wear a built-up shoe and a brace that weighed a ton.”
“My father carried me down the steps into the park. And it was so green and beautiful. I loved it. And there was Mays and Cepeda and Jimmy Davenport, and the organist was playing the Giants fight song – ‘Every time the chips are down, it’s bye bye, baby!’
“I just loved it.”
Ellis is a longtime journalist who worked primarily as a political reporter at the Anchorage Times, UPI, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He retired several years ago and, after decades of vacationing on the Oregon coast, finally settled in Manzanita with his wife Lynn and Piper, their ocean-loving Australian Shepherd.
