CHAPTER 9:
The Off-Season
Hinesville underwent quite a change when the season was over. The Gents were the biggest attraction for the little town, except perhaps for high school football, which was only just starting. Things got quiet. Life settled back into patterns. Without Gents games to come to, people saw less of one another, had less to talk about. I lived in the little house on Bagley Avenue, paid my rent, and went to church with Miss Draper every Sunday. I could have gone by myself, but I sensed she looked forward to talking to me each week. Theo didn’t require winter workouts from us: “If getting out of this hellhole ain’t incentive enough to work out on your own, then I can’t help you.” I still went to the gym, jogged each morning and did my grocery shopping at Wyler’s. Autumn in Georgia is beautiful. Even my personal pond glimmered at night when reflections of the headlights of passing cars raced across its gray-green surface. The lightning bugs played pickle in midair.
I missed my family, but I didn’t miss Southern California, with its traffic and smog. In fact, I really enjoyed being on my own. My folks were understandably concerned to have their 19-year old son living alone so far away – what with the world all around and all its temptations, but I guess I wasn’t like other 19-year olds. I never went in for the really crazy stuff. Sure, I got smashed with teammates a few times during my career, but I never sang fight songs from the tops of trees. I was content to live a solitary life. It was a little lonely, but peaceful. It was a nice change from all the attention I would have had if I had gone home for the off-season. Late at night, though, I often wished to have someone with whom to share the quiet.
As Thanksgiving approached the weather began to get colder, the nights a little crisper. The furnace in the little house would bang away for a minute or two before the heat started coming out in warm waves that smelled like lamp oil. It could never heat the bathroom, though. I remember that. No matter when you went in there the antique ceramic floor tile was cold as ice. The tiny shower took exactly one minute and fifteen seconds to heat up.
I looked in on Cliff from time to time. I’d go by the feed store once in a while and he’d always have a few minutes to talk. I saw him most when I was out on the back porch writing in my journal or just watching cars go by on Highway 84. He made me a small bookcase for my growing collection of baseball books. I bussed at Fiddler’s five nights a week. It was a good job. I didn’t need it, but it was something to do. I got to know the regulars and they got to know me. Everyone called me Davey.
One night right before my folks came to spend Thanksgiving with me I was cleaning up at the end of the night and Mooney Copell was closing us down, as usual. Now I must say that most of the time Mooney was a polite, if slightly obnoxious drunk. He used to come to games and sit behind our dugout with Cliff and just get hammered. Cliff would always walk him home. He’d get a little mouthy, then everyone would tell him to be quiet and that was the end of it. Mooney getting drunk was just part of the game. He was one of those men who always seem to be drinking.
It became part of my evening to take him out through the kitchen where his dog was tied and see him off. But tonight he was just mean. Mean to everybody, even to me, who he said he liked. I finished up and came over to his seat at the bar.
“Mooney, it’s time to go, man.”
“I’ll go when I’m damned good and ready.”
“Mooney, we’re closing. It’s two o’clock.”
“Get me another drink, Davey boy.”
“No,” I said gently. “No more drinks. Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
“I said get your hands off me!”
Now I had a standing order to call Mike, the bartender, if anybody wouldn’t leave. He’d get somebody to move them. It happened more than a few times, but never with Mooney. Normally I would have called Mike, but this was Mooney and Mike had long since gone home.
“Mooney, we gotta go. The night’s over.”
“No it ain’t! Not tonight it ain’t.” Then he picked up his head as if it weighed a hundred pounds and looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot from crying. “C’mon, Davey boy. Can’t you see I need another drink?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see that.”
I should not have done it, but I gave Mooney one more shot of bourbon and called Cliff. “Is tonight the seventeenth?” Cliff rasped into the phone, still half asleep. “I’ll be over right away, Davey.”
Cliff came over, walking in through the kitchen in his big black coat, gray fedora on his head, pajama bottoms and leather slippers. It was strange; Cliff never looked at me, only at Mooney. In the dim light of the bar he looked like a giant shadow.
“Charles,” came Cliff’s deep baritone. Mooney looked up.
“Time to go home, captain,” Cliff repeated.
“You know what today is, Cliff?” said Mooney.
“Yes, sir, I do. And so do you. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s time to go home.”
A sad kind of pride breathed into Mooney just then. He slowly raised his head and straightened his shoulders. He put down his drink.
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing I can do. I know what I’m about.” He slowly raised himself from the stool. “Home,” he muttered. “Why would I want to go there?”
And he got up and shuffled out. Cliff went out behind him, gesturing to me to follow. I quickly locked up the bar and together Cliff and I walked Mooney and his dog home. Mooney shuffled his way down the lamplit street, his tiny dog trotting next to him, looking back worriedly and often. Mooney’s was a small house a couple of blocks from the stadium. It was simple, with old furniture and faded yellow wallpaper. After we had put him to bed, Cliff and I talked on our walk back.
“Why did you call him captain??” I asked.
“Did you know Mooney was in the army?” asked Cliff.
“No.”
“Well he was. He was a good soldier, too. Did you see those photos on his wall there?”
“Yeah. Were those his buddies?”
“Not buddies, really. They were his men, the men he commanded.”
“Those looked like old photos.”
“Those photos were taken while he was in Korea. Most of those men died, many of them in an ambush that happened on November seventeenth.”
“Oh, man,” I said quietly.
“Mooney felt responsible, but there was nothing he could do. Eleven men died in less than four minutes. He drinks to their memory every November seventeenth.”
“It seems like he drinks to their memory every night,” I said.
“No,” said Cliff, stopping and turning to me. “”Every other night is for himself.”
The lessons we learn, the lessons that shape us, don’t often come in nice square packages. Most of the time they hit us like muggers, unexpectedly, like a punch in the stomach, leaving us confused and vulnerable. Mooney, old drunk Mooney, was a soldier. You could never tell to look at him. Mooney wasn’t a bad man because he drank, he drank because he had bad memories and couldn’t get rid of them. Mooney had no happy anniversaries. Some people are like that. Sometimes you just can’t tell about people until something happens. Ever since that night I have always tried to really listen to people and never make assumptions. I always listen to fans when they speak. I look into their eyes, if I can, to see what I can learn about them. That night wasn’t to be my last encounter with an angry drunk.
For me, the really important things I learned always came like sucker punches. Pow! Wake up, idiot! Like an experienced boxer, as I got older I was able to spot them coming. Even now, though, one can sneak through. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had a big one coming, bigger than Mooney. My parents were driving it all the way from California.
Let me stop here and say that my first year in baseball became perhaps the most important year of my life. While I realize many of you bought this book to read my versions of the things for which you know me (the triple play, the fight with Marcus Barrows, the Castle Cove scandal), I would not be doing justice to my time in Hinesville if I didn’t at least try to convey the importance of the things I learned while I was there.
Theo Garner and I saw little of one another. He was on the other side of the county, near Savannah. It wasn’t very far in distance, but distant in economics. Spring Hill was large houses and country clubbers and nice cars. I lived with the working folk. Besides, to be honest, Theo wasn’t really my kind of people. The generation gap aside, Theo could be harsh, abrasive and imposing. I just wasn’t like that. It made me uncomfortable, all his in-your-face tactics. Funny, now that I look back on it, it was probably the one thing I needed most.
One thing I didn’t need was a call from Sergeant John Draper of the Hinesville Police telling me my manager was in jail. “He doesn’t have any family and I didn’t know who to call,” he said over the phone. “Sorry to put you on a spot, Davey. I know it’s late, but can you be down here in fifteen minutes?”
I was there in six.
Next Week:
The Off-Season, Part Two