by Mike Murphey
A couple of years ago, I watched a baseball movie which, through a convoluted blend of legend and circumstance, declared Saint Rita as baseball’s patron. Rita’s Google makes no mention of baseball. She is the official patron saint of abuse victims, sterility, loneliness, difficult marriages, infertility, sickness, widows, spousal abuse, forgotten causes, impossible causes and desperate causes.
Desperate causes.
Okay. Maybe Rita is my baseball angel, after all.
Conor liked the idea of saints. Confession rested among the most comfortable aspects of his Catholicism. Not only had confession gotten him off the hook on any number of occasions, he liked it because it demanded the spoken word. As a boy, Conor’s wit and emotion were consigned to the silence of thought. His stutter left his brain racing ahead of his words, and his mind became a prison of those things that made him laugh and feel. As he defeated his stutter, he basked in gregariousness. Conor needed words the way most people needed oxygen.
He raised the bottle toward the blue Arizona sky and spoke to Rita, his angel, who, if she were real, had a lot to answer for.
Bless me, Rita, for right now things are pretty fucked up.
This will be part conversation, part confession. You damn well better listen. I climbed this rock to reflect and remember, so you will hear it all. Line by blessed line. You might have anointed my arm, but all that came after? All I can conclude is, a hell of a lot of the time, you just weren’t paying attention.
Conor regarded his bottle. After sixteen years under God-knows-what conditions, suppose the champagne had gone flat? What an anticlimax that would be. He peeled its metallic wrapping, already more than a little tattered, released the wire bail, then carefully set to work with his thumbs, rocking its cork from one side to the other until it leapt away with a satisfying pop. Energized by the jostling climb, liquid erupted into white bubbles that flowed over his hand and wrist. He did his best to catch the overflow by holding the bottle high and swallowing the stream as it dripped off the base.
He waited for the eruption to subside, then drank deeply.
Here’s to you, Dad. God, how I wish you could have been there.
three
Port of Oakland
1964
Conor and Sam were being punished.
They’d accompanied their father to the Oakland trucking terminal he supervised where they’d been sentenced to wash semi-truck cabs. The day was hot and the work hard for a nine-year-old. Hugh periodically checked on his sons to shout dire threats when their work assignment deteriorated into water fights with the heavy hoses.
While he scrubbed, Conor took note of the sway his father held over this rugged kingdom of drivers and mechanics and loading dock workers. They made their respect for Hugh obvious. That he savored the crudeness and masculine camaraderie was equally apparent. Hugh did not require these workers to alter their comfortable profanity and blue-collar humor as an accommodation to his sons.
Early that afternoon, a truck pulled in, hissing its brakes and adding a loud blast of its horn. There followed a stream of livid epitaphs and accusations issued by the driver as he descended from his cab. Angry over the way his trailer had been loaded, the driver’s curses spared no one. Until Hugh clasped a hand on the back of the trucker’s thick neck, directing him toward an office one story up with windows overlooking the yard. Hostile, knowing eyes watched this little ceremony from all corners of the terminal.
Conor crept to the front of the truck he washed and watched as Hugh shoved the trucker inside. Conor rubbed an imaginary spot on the truck’s front bumper as he checked the office windows.
Five minutes later, the trucker made his way downstairs, one eye swelling shut. He bled from his nose and from a cut on his forehead. Wearing a grim silence and ignoring grins of those he’d earlier berated, he climbed into his truck cab. The diesel shuddered to life.
Hugh reappeared several minutes later. As he descended the stairs unmarked, he caught Conor’s wide-eyed stare. He walked directly to his son, squatted to Conor’s eye-level, and said, “Nobody treats my people like that. Now get back to work.”
Hugh grew up in East St. Louis among a family of Irish-Catholic brawlers. He loved boxing and country music, and none of his five sons feared a fight. Several of Conor’s brothers were good at it. Conor wasn’t, and Hugh didn’t fault him for it.
But he wouldn’t allow Conor to shrink from confrontation.
Conor remained smaller than most of his sixth-grade classmates when Gary Shaw picked him as a target. Conor came limping home one afternoon, displaying a bloody nose. Hugh placed a meaty hand under the boy’s chin and issued an order. “If you don’t stand up to him now, he’ll never stop picking on you. Go wash your face. Tomorrow, after school, go to his house and fight him again.”
Convinced his father knew something he did not, Conor accepted this assignment and hiked the two blocks down and one block over to Gary’s house. Again, the bigger kid beat him up.
“Fight him again tomorrow afternoon,” Hugh ordered.
Conor found himself uncertain of his father’s strategy.
On the fourth day, Gary met Conor at his door. “Quit coming over here. My mom’s getting mad!” He pounded Conor into submission once more.
Six days Conor trudged to his adversary’s door. All six days, he lost the fight. The seventh day, Gary’s mother answered.
“Gary,” she called, “Conor’s here.”
Gary’s voice carried from somewhere inside. “Tell him to go home. I don’t wanna’ fight. I’m tired of this!”
As San Carlos Farm League champions, the Braves’ 1961 season culminated with a game against an all-star team comprised of the rest of the league’s best players. Conor was mowing them down. Second-grader after second-grader trudged back to his bench under Conor’s deft mixture of strikes and not strikes. The All Stars’ frustration grew with each futile inning.
Conor’s pitch count neared three hundred or so when the All Stars sent their last substitute to bat. The kid might have been the only boy small as Conor. He scowled his determination, pushing his glasses higher on his nose after each pitch, then sinking into an exaggerated squat that reduced his strike zone to the size of an index card.
With the count fifteen and two, both umpire and hitter became surly.
The batter squatted, pounded home plate twice, and screamed, “Throw strikes!”
Conor sneered and hurled a high, tight fastball, sending the batter diving for cover.
“Ball,” sighed the umpire.
The thirteen-year-old base umpire called time-out and summoned the twelve-year-old plate umpire. They met halfway between home and the mound. Conor overheard their conversation.
“Score’s twelve to three. We’re gonna be here all night. How about expanding the strike zone a little? Like, anything close?”
The umpires returned to their respective posts. Conor kicked and fired a ball that skipped off the plate into the catcher’s glove.
“Strike Three!”
The batter’s mouth fell open in disbelief. He glared first at the plate ump, a boy roughly twice his size, then turned to the mound. Emitting a ninja scream he raised the bat high over his head, and charged, mayhem blazing in his eyes.
“Notfairnotfairnotfairnotfair . . . !”
Conor required a few seconds to process the intent of this miniature bat-wielding maniac.
“Notfairnotfairnotfairnotfair . . .”
My God, this kid’s trying to kill me.
“Notfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfair . . .”
Conor ran, dodging and weaving with the kid on his heels. The other second graders watched in stunned silence until they got into the spirit of the chase. They began cheering each juke and jive as Conor fled his attacker. The umpires, who had not been instructed by their adult supervisors regarding felonious assault, hesitated to intervene. A chain-link fence separated the adults from any opportunity for direct involvement.
Finally, their journey took
Conor and his pursuer onto the infield dirt where the kid tripped over second base. Conor’s shortstop had the presence of mind to disarm him. He pounded the second base bag twice with his fists, and yelled, “Not! Fair!”
The umpires escorted him to the All Star’s bench and left him in the custody of his teammates. Conor dispatched the game’s final hitters.
The kid didn’t participate during their end-of-game handshake ritual. Conor found him, disheartened and alone, in his dugout. He approached cautiously.
“Hey,” he said.
The kid looked up and said nothing.
“Do you want t . . . t . . . to fight?” asked Conor.
“I dunno,” the kid said, then squinted one eye and added, “Do you?”
Conor considered his options. “Not if you don’t.”
The kid said, “You talk funny.”
“Yeah. I st . . . stutter. Sometimes.” After another pause, he added, “I’m Conor. What’s your name?”
“I’m A.J.” He extended his hand. “A.J. Cohen. Goodtameetcha.”
By the time they were fourth graders, Conor and A.J. were inseparable.
A.J.—the second son of Myron Cohen, a well-to-do Jewish merchant—and his older brother shared an intended destiny in the carpet business.
Hugh came home from work one day to find Conor and another boy playing back-yard whiffle ball. The minute Hugh stepped onto his porch, the game halted as Conor’s new friend marched toward Hugh with extended hand and determined stride.
“Howyadoin, Mr. Nash. A.J. Cohen, greattameetcha.” He offered a firm and enthusiastic handshake. “Conor’s told me all about ya. You gotta great kid here.”
Hugh immediately liked A.J. As a sharp counterpoint to Conor, A.J. displayed an abundance of self-confidence and social ease. Hugh believed A.J. offered a good example for his son, who too often hid from his stutter.
Hugh understood that words flashed through Conor’s brain while his tongue tripped like a scratched record over his g’s and hard t’s. At home, his brothers didn’t call him by his name. They called him Guh . . . Guh. Hugh could have intervened. He didn’t. The stutter presented another battle Conor must fight. Hugh knew, though, if any other kid made fun of Conor’s stutter within their hearing, his brothers would pound the living daylights out of his tormentor. Conor bore the inevitable teasing with silence. Hugh and Nadine knew the tragedy of this self-imposed isolation, because at home, Conor fought past his stutter to constantly make his parents and brothers laugh. He displayed a rapier sense of humor, and all the makings of a first-class smart ass.
By sixth grade Hugh accorded A.J. the privileges and expectations of a Nash. A.J.’s parents were similarly welcoming of Conor, although Myron Cohen believed in more sharply defined lines between children and adults. Myron raised his sons within strict adherence of Jewish religious tradition. Though not a particularly religious man, according to his Catholic upbringing, Hugh herded his sons regularly to Mass. He granted Conor dispensation to occasionally attend A.J.’s Sunday School.
“Why do you want me t . . . to guh . . . go t . . . to Jewish Sunday school?” Conor asked A.J.
“Because Jews are lousy basketball players. Anyway, the ones who go to my temple are. And if you come to Sunday school, they’ll let you play on our church team.”
As they walked together to the synagogue, A.J. gave him a heads-up. “Some of the stuff’s in Hebrew.”
“I don’t know Hebrew.”
“That’s okay. I’ll get a cup of ice. When it comes your turn to read, fill your mouth with ice and stutter a little. It’ll sound just the same.”
Along with his outsized self-assurance, A.J. enjoyed a curiosity urging him beyond his father’s religious and social boundaries. So, he welcomed the chance to accompany Conor and his family to Mass as the Cardinal presided over Conor’s Confirmation. When their pew stood and filed toward the altar, twelve-year-old A.J. surpassed the line of people waiting to receive the sacrament and marched directly to the Cardinal with extended hand.
“A.J.,” Hugh called with a harsh whisper. “A.J., get back in—”
“Howyadoin’, Cardinal. I’m A.J. Cohen. I’ve never attended one of these things. I’m Jewish, so I didn’t take one of the crackers, but I want to tell you how impressed I am with the way you handled yourself up there, how you said it.”
“Um . . . well, thanks very much, A.J . . .”
“One question. I noticed a lot of these people are kissing your ring. What’s that about?”
Hugh clamped a hand on A.J.’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Your Holiness. A.J. is . . . well, he’s . . . I apologize.”
At about this same time, another boy, who would play a leading role in Conor’s life story, fell under the paternal surrogacy of Hugh Nash—Basil Doan, a gangly, pimpled, buck-toothed kid who could hit a baseball out of sight.
Conor and Basil became friends as teammates during the summer of their thirteenth year when, eerily foreshadowing his professional career, Conor’s mother negotiated his first release.
“You made the team,” Nadine said, “but now you don’t want to play?”
“Yeah, I want t . . . to play. But they’ve already guh . . . guh . . . got their pitchers,” Conor explained. “I won’t guh . . . get t . . . to pitch on this team. And I need t . . . to pitch. So I need t . . . to guh . . . go to the minors.”
The summer program included both a major and minor league. Making the majors afforded more prestige than being one of the kids judged not quite ready for that level of competition.
“Don’t you want to play in the best league?”
“No. I want t . . . to pitch.”
His mother called Conor’s coaches and arranged the transaction.
So, like A.J., Baze became a fixture at our house. And though he was quiet, the sincerity and determination with which he approached both baseball and life impressed my dad
The depth of my ineptitude always amazed my father. He saw Baze as my exact opposite. Baze could do anything, fix a car, build things. Hugh hoped some of that would rub off on me.
Our ultimate bond, though, has always been baseball.
As you get older, the game becomes less an exercise in varying degrees of ineptitude and acquires sophisticated nuances that make it so difficult. And Baze and A.J. were way ahead of me. While I remained trapped inside a hundred and thirty-pound body, they grew. A.J., a catcher, and Baze a third baseman, both displayed raw power at the plate.
On our high school freshman team, I was a slap-hitting center fielder and third-string pitcher with a mediocre fastball, which meant I hardly ever pitched. Adults considered me highly coachable, though, because when they told me to throw strikes, I did.
The fourth and least likely member of our crew showed up during that freshman year. Brad Grady, two years older than the rest of us, couldn’t have been more different. While A.J., Baze and I approached academics with varying degrees of apathy, Brad focused on straight A’s. In a few years, Brad looked old enough to buy us beer using a fake ID. When we caroused and drank on weekend evenings, though, Brad went home and studied. A.J. and Baze fought at the drop of an insult—either real or perceived—and because I accompanied them, I often got caught in the storm.
I don’t remember Brad ever hitting anyone.
A.J could talk people into anything, including girls. Girls liked me, because I made them laugh. Despite his awkward looks, Baze met girls because he hung with us. Brad never had a bit of luck dating. Not ever.
Brad and I did share the gift of dogged focus. At about the same time I declared I’d be a major league pitcher, Brad decided he would attend Stanford Law School and become a judge. Granted, an odd ambition for a fourth grader, but it’s true.
Despite Brad’s utter lack of athletic ability, he loved baseball every bit as much as the rest of us. And he understood baseball on an intellectual level we didn’t.
We met Brad at freshman baseball practice. He’d been cut from the varsity team where he tried to be a l
eft-handed pitcher. The coaches felt bad because they liked Brad’s enthusiasm. So, they gave him a uniform and made him assistant student coach of our freshman squad. And they gave him a scorebook. Brad kept the most detailed and accurate scorebook they’d ever seen.
Odd as this association among us three jocks and Brad might seem, his relationship with my dad appeared even more unlikely. Hugh, a blue-collar guy with hard fists and hard attitudes, believed his sons must be hard as well if they were to make a place for themselves in a demanding and unforgiving world. Yet, he accepted this soft, cerebral boy into the family circle just as he had A.J. and Baze, giving the same degree of attention to Brad’s ambitions as he did to ours.
This is who we were—four friends, bound for eternity. Lots of high school buddies graduate and go their separate ways. Not us. To this day, we remain vital pieces of each other’s lives. Somehow, my dad saw this future. I think he liked them so much, because he felt I’d surrounded myself with three guys who would always have my back. A.J, the brains and the dealmaker, Baze, the muscle, and Brad, the voice of reason.
four
Seattle Mariners
1991
We each had our little boy dreams of playing professional baseball, Rita, but for some reason you picked me. And as their realities set in, they placed their hope and confidence in me. They kept faith during my failures. I included them in all my successes. My friends on all my teams were their friends, too. When I finally made it, I passed them off as relatives, so they had access to major league clubhouses.
