Pinch-hitting in my brother's big-league dream
As Vin Scully famously said, “It’s time for Dodger baseball!”
Only it’s not.
Dodger opening day would have been late last month, on March 26, a Thursday afternoon game against the dreaded divisional rivals, the San Francisco Giants.
I probably would have taken a half day off, padded into the house from my Las Vegas home office and turned on the TV.
By then, I would have luxuriated in some pre-game color commentary, hashing out predictions with my younger brother, Frank, who lives in Los Angeles and has a far longer history with this team we both lovingly refer to as “the Dogs.”
(We call the Giants the “Evil Empire.”)
Frank grew up a Dodgers fan back in our paneled living room just outside Syracuse, N.Y. Who knows why a kid would attach the fragile kite of his sports affiliation, his boyhood dreams, to a team that played on the opposite side of the country?
I’ve always thought that reading the local sports pages glued you to the home team, like baby ducks imprinting on their waddling mother.
You’d read the daily game coverage and player features. get to know the men and their batting averages, strengths and weaknesses, superstitions and tics at the plate.
But my brother’s sports devotions stretched far afield: He’s been a fan of both the Dodgers and the LA Lakers for 50 years.
My fandom was more fickle.
I was a Mets fan as a kid, only to abandon them in adulthood. Then, in 2001, I spent a summer working in New York City and read the daily Mets coverage.
By the time I left, I once again cared about that team.
I still care about baseball.
I miss it.
So I am reading Roger Kahn’s moving elegy, “The Boys of Summer,” about two seasons in the 1950s when he covered the old Brooklyn Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune.
A lifelong Dodger fan, Kahn lived out a dream, writing about his heroes, including a young Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider and Pee Wee Reese.
One day in April 1997, I lived a baseball dream, but it was somebody else’s.
My brother’s.
This is a story about pinch-hitting. It's about taking out the girl the other guy had always pined for, buying the sports car he had long coveted, living out his fantasy.
That day, I was on the field with Frank’s beloved Dodgers.
I came face-to-face some of his sports heroes.
I didn’t plan it that way.
I wasn’t even a Dodgers fan back then, not like I am now.
But I was a Metro reporter for the hometown Los Angeles Times.
One morning, I happened to be in the main newsroom when an editor bellowed my name.
“Glionna!" came the command. "What are you doing?”
I froze, helpless, like a batter unable to escape the sting of a 100-mph fastball.
"Gulp, nothing."
“You’re covering Dodger opening day. Take a cab to Chavez Ravine. Go now.”
Every year, the metropolitan staffs of newspapers cover their local baseball team's opening day, which for one shining moment crosses from the sports pages to the news pages.
If the story is particularly good (mine wasn’t) or real news takes place, the piece might even land on the front page, like the year Dodger stadium food vendors added sushi to their game-time fare.
Thing was, I wasn’t a sports writer.
I was afraid that I might embarrass myself, like a foreign correspondent en route to war: Worried not that he’ll get killed, but that he’ll somehow miss the story.
My instructions were to meet Times staff photographer Paul Morse at the stadium. A veteran of several opening days, he’d set me straight.
First thing I did when I saw Paul near the Dodger dugout was to try and bum $20 so I could get something to eat.
He told me not to worry, that the press ate for free.
I already liked this sports writing trade.
Paul gave me some pointers: Wander. Talk to people — players, coaches, fans. Find that person no other reporter has ever thought to interview.
“But do not — and I repeat — do not interview the organist."
Everybody did that.
Lucky, or unlucky, for me, the Dodgers were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the year that Jackie Robinson had broken baseball’s color barrier in 1947.
What a gift!
I had my angle.
Up in the clubhouse, I spotted venerable Dodger announcer Vin Scully.
As he turned down a hallway, I pounced.
Problem was, I hadn’t thought about what I was going to ask him.
My mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Finally, I blurted, “Vin, do you think Dodger fans are going to be thinking about Jackie Robinson today?”
Scully, always the gentleman, gave me a quizzical look.
“John, I have no idea what’s going to pass through people’s minds.”
Then he excused himself. He had a game to prepare for.
Great. I blew the Scully interview.
I had his words, sure, but no usable quote.
A swing and a miss.
Whiff!
Things got better.
I collected the essential information: The day's announced attendance was 53,709, a critical fact for any baseball opening day story, as important as what a condemned man ate for this last supper.
That Tuesday afternoon contest was the 36th opening day game at Dodger Stadium and fans were greeted to new quarter-pound hot dogs.
And the final score: the Dodgers lost 3-0 to the Philadelphia Phillies.
On the field before the game, I introduced myself to former Dodger Coach Tommy Lasorda, who shook my hand and treated me like a long-lost favorite bullpen hurler.
He dragged me over to introduce me to his wife Jo.
Due to health reasons, Lasorda had left his coaching job the previous year.
But he still bled Dodger blue.
“You look forward to opening day all your life,” he said moments before he took the field to a standing ovation. “But this is the first one in an awful long time that I’m not in a Dodger uniform.”
Fans were just happy to be back, skipping work and school for the privilege.
One guy got Dodger coach Manny Mota to sign his program.
“I grew up watching Manny play,” he said. “He was the all-time greatest pinch-hitter.”
He gave the autograph to his nine-year-old son, who examined it like he would broccoli on his dinner plate.
“This is OK,” he sighed. “But I wanted Hideo Nomo.”
A peanut vendor said he'd seen prices rise to a buck-fifty from fifteen cents in 1958, and a ticket scalper named Oregano bragged that he'd made $300 that day.
And a utility worker who called in sick to make the game, said, “I should have been digging a ditch today.”
A young usher told me that it broke her heart every time she had to chase young kids from seats they schemed so hard to grab.
But I had yet to find the interview.
And then, just like that, there he was.
The team's uniform washer revealed his secret to getting out all those stubborn stains from sliding into second base.
Snuggles fabric softener.
I hurried back to the office to write a very pedestrian story, trying to summon a baseball wisdom I did not possess.
Under a headline “Fans Honor Spring Ritual at Old Ballgame,” the local-front story began, with a nod about a team up for sale:
“Some things don’t change in baseball, that sometimes grand game of youth, loyalty and obsession: Young boys reach for autographs and fly balls, Dodger caps stay blue, the peanut man runs clean out of bags just as he reaches your row.
Other things change like the fickle stadium winds come October: the names on the uniforms, the price of the nosebleed seats and, in Los Angeles, maybe even the owner of the team.”
And yet my finest moment that day never even made it into the story.
During the singing of the national anthem, I sat inside the Dodger dugout, soaking in the atmosphere of the place, perhaps an attempt to relive the Peeping Tom naughtiness of Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four.”
Next to me sat a squat-looking man dressed in street clothes.
I leaned over and extended my hand, supposing he was, like me, another poser, another shameless dugout trespasser.
“John Glionna from the LA Times,” I said.
“Ron Cey.”
My mouth dropped.
This was the beloved former Dodger third-baseman, whose physique and gait gave him a famous nickname likening him to a cold-weather bird.
“You’re the penguin!”
He gave me a half-smile and then turned his attention back to the field.
I’d blown my cool in a nanosecond, going from professional journalist to blabbering fan.
Sure, I was living my brother's dream.
But as Frank's stand-in at the plate, the not-so-mighty older Glionna had just struck out.
