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Poor Frank Smith, the last leaf on a barren tree. One by one, the major league talents on the Dodgers are shipped off to greener pastures, replaced by young players displaying promise for a future he will be no part of. I can only imagine him looking over a clubhouse filled with callow youths, many nearly young enough to date his 16 year-old daughter, and feeling that odd sense of displacement that comes in time to every aging athlete.
I sense a grim determination that this, his probable final campaign, will not be marred by the humiliation of a 20 loss record after so long a career filled with the calm assurance of victory, even as his team declined around him. Never an egoist, but always proud and determined to do his best, Frank is driven to go out a champion after playing in four decades with one team, his beloved Dodgers. In his letters to his wife Vivian, Dad said that all the new young faces made him feel terribly old, and that it looked as if his goal of 450 wins was just out of reach, but he wanted at least nine more, to finish with 100 more than his boyhood idol Andy Murphy. Once that feat was attained, he wrote, " it would be time for old 'Double Deuce' to hang 'em up."
Should be a bittersweet season.
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