Small Portraits of Everyday Things

We passed through the iron gates for what seemed like the thousandth time. I hadn’t seen Cheech for over 2 years, and we agreed to meet at our lucky cemetery (we’re obviously individuals with an aversion to group activities) on a soggy, overcast day for some beers and conversation. I walked the 15 blocks there for some fresh air and to reminisce, and lo-and-behold my hometown of Sacramento was still trashy and rough around the edges. A homeless-enclave-hellscape with a Cheesecake Factory and a state capitol. 

“Man, we haven’t been here since you were dating Alice,” Cheech said as he took a long, sudsy swig from his expensive craft beer while leaning against the ornate headstone of some guy who had died of tuberculosis in the late 1800s. Oh, the brevity of existence.

It was true, and I remembered Alice very well even though she was galaxies away from my everyday thought process. She was Nordic pretty like the blonde in Abba: same nose, toothy smile, and almond-shaped bedroom eyes. On one particularly boring Sunday, she asked me if she could read my horoscope. Out of all the things to structure personal identity around, the random date you were born on seems the most boring, I said flippantly. We had good times together, but It’s funny how you only seem to remember moments that have the earmarks of being insignificant in the long run.

We stumbled out of the land of the dead before I mentioned that there was a baseball card shop a few blocks away where I impulsively spent 25 dollars on a Jose Canseco rookie complete with a pre-pubescent mustache encased in hard plastic. It’s really, really minty, I said over and over. And it was. It looked as if it had never been touched by greasy human meathooks–a pristine piece of Americana.

More cardboard treasures were purchased, and we proceeded to Cheech’s house where we decided on a lark to eat some “magic mushrooms.” Maybe it was the booze talking, or maybe it was because we were becoming less young and more old, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’ve been told that psilocybin cures emotional conditions and anxiety–and I refuse to argue with that analysis as we sat there for hours talking about hair metal videos (Stryper sucks and that is nonsubjective) and just laughing hysterically at nothing in particular.

Gibberish, Nonsense, and Baseball Cards

Every night, around 10:00, I swallow melatonin and then turn off my phone. Soon after, I jump in the shower so the melatonin has some time to set in. After the shower, I lay in bed and do some light reading–nothing that requires active thought or making difficult conceptual connections (in this case it was Stephen King’s son who goes by the nom de plume Joe Hill) as the goal is to wind down. Yet despite this fickle routine, sleep eluded me and I tossed and turned all night before finally deciding that it just wasn’t going to work out. I resolved to watch some Japanese baseball and it was a moment of perfection as the Chunichi Dragons and the Yomiuri Giants were headed into extra innings. Watching baseball seems to liberate me from the emotional tangle of subdued melancholy and the long-ago forgotten past that is so scratched up that it skips when played, always materializing to haunt me in the witching hour when one should be dead to the world and swimming in the abstract. Ultimately, the Dragons pulled it out 3-2 in 10 innings as the players felt compelled to run choreograph routines while clutching stuffed animals and bowing to the fans in a light-hearted and victorious fashion. What’s the point of all this? Nothing. Just….nothing.

My buddy Mark over at the impeccable Retro Simba sent me a bunch of 1970s Oakland A’s baseball cards in the mail, and I had the right mind to send one out to Darold Knowles to be autographed before receiving the cardboard beauty back 3 weeks later. The highlight of Mr. Knowles’ career would probably be the World Series in 1973 against the Queens borough Mutts (I can still hear the echo of esteemed baseball writer Roger Angell in my head, resentful about Willie Mays’ exit from the Giants and condemning him in a NY pinstriped, double-knit polyester uni) in which he became the first pitcher to appear in all 7 games and had a sparkling ERA of zero. That’s pretty good stuff right there.

Knowles was on the mound for the last out, (retiring Wayne Garrett on a looper to Campaneris–his only batter–with the tying runners on) relieving Rollie Fingers and earning the save. Other notables: Clint Eastwood threw out the first pitch, Lou Rawls sang the National Anthem, and the number one hit was Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia.” In another strange twist– while researching this piece, I was jolted into remembering that I met the loser of this game, John Matlack, 30 years earlier when he was a pitching coach for the now-defunct Las Vegas Stars. I still have that autograph, permanently pressed onto a flimsy 1981 Fleer, stashed away somewhere.

Ex-Oakland Athletic Brian Kingman Talks About Books, Baseball Cards, and Mortality

(Author: Brian Kingman)

Ok, so what the hell does Don Mossi have to do with Billy Martin, Cal Ripken Jr. Durwood Merrill, Rickey Henderson? (editors note: the Cal Ripken incident will be discussed in a future post.) I want to say absolutely NOTHING, but I would have been wrong. As it turns out, Mossi was traded to the Tigers, along with his good friend and roommate, Ray Narleski, in a November 1958 deal that sent Billy Martin to Cleveland. No that’s not the reason for Mossi’s appearance here either. 

The reason I posted Don Mossi’s baseball card is all about the book someone mentioned, The Wax Pack. After reading their description of the book I was intrigued and checked out a couple of reviews. I then ordered a copy that should arrive next week.

It appears that The Wax Pack covers several of my favorite subjects: The afterlife, the loss of innocence, and of course, baseball. Impermanence is just a more sophisticated way of saying  “Nothing lasts forever” or ‘A constant state of change”. Impermanence only becomes a “gift” when we learn to understand and accept the constantly changing, fleeting nature of life and appreciate what we have. All things good and bad eventually come to an end.

The Afterlife

Is there life after baseball? I am going to say yes, mainly because I am currently living it. It has been said that athletes die twice so I presume I’ll be dying at least one more time. Athletic careers imitate our life span. The life span of an athlete’s career is an accelerated version of our real lives. It mimics the process of development and decay we experience throughout our lives at a faster pace. As we age our performance declines  It’s the curse of mortality, a symptom of impermanence. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, polishing your skills, then your body begins to fail. You remember yourself in your prime and wonder where that person went. The wear and tear of training and competing, combined with the physiological changes that naturally occur as we age, conspire to slowly diminish our physical skills…..nothing lasts forever and careers come to an end.

Then in “real” life, you repeat the process only at a slower pace. If you have come to terms with the inevitability of impermanence then you will be better prepared to cope with it. I guess you could call it a gift as the L.A. Times review did, but I think if you have managed to come to terms with the inevitability of impermanence, you likely earned it the hard way.

The Loss of Innocence

As it pertains to baseball the loss of innocence for many of us the transition from the joyful innocence of playing the game as a youngster to professional baseball where it was much more of a business than it was a game. Then there comes another transition from doing something that you had worked hard at and has been a major part of your life since childhood quickly deteriorate and leave you facing a fate that apparently can be the equivalent of death! This is why they say athletes die twice because for some, getting a job in the real world after living in a fantasy world can be very traumatic.

Back to Don Mossi

About 10 years ago my friend Steve Ashman (High school & Senior league baseball teammate) was staring at Don Mossi’s baseball card commenting about the size of his ears and said “You know we should go visit him, he only lives a couple of hours away” It sounded like a good idea to me. We made a list of players we wanted to meet in addition to Mossi. I added a pair of 20 game losers, Don Larsen, Roger Craig, and Vida Blue even though he only lost 19–never mind being an MVP, and Cy Young award winner! Steve added Alex Johnson and Willie McCovey to the list along with Rusty Kuntz. Rusty Kuntz? I asked Steve ‘Why Rusty Kuntz?” He replied “I always wanted to ask him what his parents were thinking when they named him Rusty”

So we planned a trip for “sometime in the future” and as you might imagine we never got around to making that trip. Life got in the way. Alex Johnson passed away in 2015, McCovey in 2018, Mossi in 2019, and Larsen in 2020. They were victims of impermanence as we all will eventually be. 

 

Ken Phelps is ready to rock your world

“You’re under arrest, son.”

“How do you trade Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps!?”–Frank Costanza, Seinfeld

Ken Phelps has the look of the quintessential “80’s dad,”  bringing to mind my cousin’s father-my uncle through marriage-who was known to wear a beat-up, snap-backed San Francisco Giants baseball cap, and on special occasions a cowboy hat with a feather band not unlike a member of Charlie Daniel’s raucous honkey tonk band. Now every time I see this archaic piece of Americana I can almost imagine the beer bottles breaking against the protective fence set before the band in some small, backwoods shithole in Texas not unlike the scene in the brilliant Patrick Swayze flick, Roadhouse.

I had been to his dad’s home on a few occasions and we would play Nintendo or try to quench our biological imperative and devilish curiosity by looking for his porn stash in the grease-caked garage. When that sticky-page endeavor got boring we would play baseball among the cow patties and various livestock in the fields. (His father lived on a farm in a very rural area) My cousin would get a kick out of me slightly touching the electrical fence, giving me a sudden jolt whereas I would balk at “pissing on it” to his dismay. I was always a bit saddened to disappoint his infectious and sophomoric sense of humor, but an electrified dong just didn’t sound appetizing in any event.

When you take a look at the last 2 N.L. MVPs (Bellinger and Yelich) you see a couple of baby-faced guys who you might partake in a doobie with at a keg party–they bear no resemblance to Phelps, who looks like he should be either dishing out benevolent fatherly words of wisdom while gutting a fish, flashing ass crack while under the hood of a classic car, or arresting fratboys outside the aforementioned kegger for possessing a bag of recently purchased purple kush strain of mar-eee-wanna. He doesn’t look like he survived in the league on any sort of pure talent, just the ability to use “grown man strength” on the occasional mislocated fastball.

Phelps had only had 12 hits for the Oakland ballclub as he was an aging DH who was nearing the end of his career (until being sold to the Cleveland Indians for a bag of nickels) and had lost the only valuable asset he had–occasional power. Phelp’s baseball life was coming to an end as my pre-teen years were just beginning, and thus far was relegated to a baseball card that was never really examined or loved and tossed into a box. Forgotten until unearthed.

Sometimes life is the Pitts

Card courtesy of whentoppshadballs.blogspot.com

Is hitting zero home runs in the big leagues like being a writer who was never published? Or is it about the experience? The tactile thrill of putting pen to paper and seeing jumbled thoughts form on the page in a cohesive unit without fan-fair, without a record of speech.

Done with love unrequited.

There is a collective, who? from the crowd and a lot of head-scratching. The pitcher sneers, why are you here? this refugee from the bush leagues. The player goes through automated motions before digging in, slicing dirt and skipping pebbles; stepping into the box without adulation. No one scurries from the beer line to watch your at-bat. Persona Non-Grata. No one writes about and examines your life and travels, quoting you endlessly. You are no Joe DiMaggio or Ernest Hemingway or any other black and white face on a postcard. 11 career base-hits. I’ve had more lovers than that. Every one categorized and resonated in my mind’s eye with a dying quail, a check-swing squib, a flare here and there, or a hotshot that juuuuust went foul. Our struggles happen concurrently with everyone else’s — and sometimes done with love unrequited.

2 boys trading baseball cards, Summer 1974.

Looks like he’s, well, you know.

Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” poured out of the Mustang in the driveway as Pete and Nick sat on the front porch. They had just torn open a few packs of baseball cards and decided to make a few swaps before the cards were relegated to a rubber band and the back pocket of faded dungarees.

“Ok, you like the A’s right? I’ll give you a Dave Hamilton for George Brett.”
“Are you kidding me! You must think I’m a fucking idiot. That’s not a fair trade; and besides, it looks like he’s taking a shit!”
Pete’s older brother, Craig, stopped washing his black treasure and walked over with kinked hose in hand.

“You turds need to shut the hell up before I hose you down. Besides, I got Amy coming over and you two dumbasses aren’t gonna ruin my chance at getting some trim.”

“You haven’t got a chance in hell,” Pete spat, shoving a brick-hard powdered slab of gum in his mouth.

“Keep talking big mouth and I’ll give both you and your stupid friend knuckle sandwiches. You’ll be spittin’ out teeth for a week”

Craig continued washing his car, alone with the hose, the suds, the black beauty and the privacy of his own young and perverted mind.

“He thinks he’s such a big shot.”

“Yeah, I can’t wait until I get older so I can kick his ass…so Dave Hamilton for George Brett?”

Jeff Jones and the 1981 Topps baseball card

At present, I am particularly excited by “bad taste.” I have the deep feeling that there exists in the very essence of bad taste a power capable of creating those things situated far beyond what is traditionally termed “The Work of Art.” I wish to play with human feeling, with its “morbidity” in a cold and ferocious manner. —Yves Klein

The 1981 Topps baseball card isn’t a particularly exciting visual affair. The most prominent feature of the card front is the ball cap that’s at the bottom of the card. Player photos have a color outline that gives way to a thin white border with the Topps logo placed in a small baseball in the right corner. Of course, it’s just a baseball card. Most people see them as worthless pieces of ephemera for children to collect, toss around, and discard. I always get a kick out of people who say, “well, where’s the art in that?” Despite the term “art” being static and self-appointed to each individual, I believe if you have an iota of intelligence, an active imagination, and the ability to uncover the pure plane of expression, you can find art and emotion in almost ANYTHING.

***

There is nothing remarkable about this card from a baseball standpoint–all things considered, the player represented had a rather unremarkable career–but what really struck me was the marvelous blue background; loosely reminding me of Yves Kleins’ painting “IKB 191.” (right) This color makes me feel a myriad of emotions– the lapis lazuli jogging memories of my own Catholic school upbringing and subsequent guilt and confusion. I recall that the Virgin’s robes were almost always painted this color because of its brilliance, and the stone was also semi-precious making it a “must-have” for artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods as it represented wealth, splendor, and significance– ultimately and deceptively accruing more power and influence to the church that bathed itself in gruesome martyrology.

***

Centuries ago, in my fourth-grade weekly mass, my pal David was feeling diabolical and dared me not to swallow the thin, wafer-like Body of Christ, but to keep it still in my mouth so we could satisfy our boyhood curiosity and inspect the talismanic item after I returned to the pew. (What we expected to see is still a long-lost mystery) I eventually brought the specimen back only to drop the now mushy wafer on the ground because of haste and overall blood- rushing-to-the-brain nervousness. As always, an internally-heroic busy body ratted me out and the congregation was stopped as I was dragged to the front of the altar in front of 100’s before being berated by the priest in a back room about the divine significance of the savior’s body part (which one I wonder?) being dropped on a dusty floor. There was a closet full of priestly robes, and between thoughts of the robes being similar to Bruce Wayne’s closet and getting eternally grounded by my parents, I was just simply red-faced embarrassed. To my astonishment, my parents were never informed of my derelict behavior and I emerged from the situation relatively unscathed. Ah, the life of a daydreamer and heathen!…by way of an aging man’s fading mind motivated by an inconsequential piece of cardboard.

Mark McGwire and Heshers From the Past

Now that we know the baseball card craze of the 80’s/90’s was a facade with no chance of anyone (besides the industry itself) making a profit, we can laugh at the 100’s of dollars wasted and sleepless nights to tell our stories of woe in an era that spawned the term “junk wax” and offered no common sense or integrity.

There are many people out there who still think their collections are worth something, yet these bumbling dolts don’t understand supply and demand, and no doubt don’t understand much of anything else of either. These are the same people living multi-generational in Flyover States and are embracing the cultural hegemony of Beanie Babies, watching re-runs of All In the Family, and drinking a 2-liter of Dr. Pepper daily while embracing the brain contusion as a metaphor for life.

I recently made an impromptu trip to my local card shop and bought a Mark McGwire 1987 Donruss “Rated Rookie” for 3 dollars which I thought to be insanely cheap for a guy who once held the single-season home run record and is 10th all-time. I retrieved it later from a notebook, felt no sentimentality, and with a “meh” I threw it in a box. Remember folks, this simple piece of cardboard, tossed waywardly, once had a peak value of 80 dollars over 30 years ago.

……and then the nostalgia reminiscing came out of nowhere.

I was once a 12-year-old snot-nosed punk. (still a few years away from my first “kegger,” which was with a guy named Kevin B. who wore a Metallica shirt everyday. He only broke up the monotony on occasion with an Anthrax t-shirt, who I personally thought sucked the bag.) The McGwire card was one of the hottest properties for a young boy in Northern California, and your average dipshit kid wouldn’t trade it for ANYTHING. Eventually, through hours of tedious wheeling and dealing, I had acquired a few of these by the time Jr. High came rolling around. One day in woodshop, a very large, jean jacketed, Mexican buttrocker named Billy (who turned out to be a great hitter, but I wouldn’t know that until high school freshman try-outs) offered to trade me a cassette for one single, thin cardboard McGwire. I jumped at the chance! I had a large stack of them and welcomed the opportunity to talk to someone “cool” who would take the time and effort out of their exciting heavy metal life to make a tape for a nerd like me. ( I was a freckle-faced, Opie-looking kid who wouldn’t grow into my 6’2 frame until my sophomore year in high school.) Billy brought me the tape the next day and with a nod says,

“You needed to listen to Slayer.”

I waited with anticipation for school to let out and then popped that fucker into my fluorescent-blue Kmart cassette player. The famous riff intro to South of Heaven proceeded to slam its way into my brain and become forever locked in.

An unforeseen future nestled somewhere in time.
Unsuspecting victims no warnings, no signs.
Judgment day the second coming arrives.
Before you see the light you must die.

That was the best trade I ever made and opened a whole new, blossoming musical world for me–essentially changing my life forever. Thanks, dude…wherever you are.

Random facts about a player hardly anyone remembers.

“Smiling Jack”

Jack Sanford ended his career with 137 wins in 1967–a number that everyone agrees would constitute a successful run in the big leagues. 

A darker side of Sanford’s personality also grabbed headlines during and after his baseball career, which wound down with the California Angels and Kansas City Athletics following arm and shoulder troubles.

After Sanford made a World Series appearance, a 1963 Sportmagazine article titled “Jack Sanford’s Grim World” laid bare the pitcher’s on- and off-the-field demeanor, all the while acknowledging his pitching skills. The author wrote that “Jack Sanford is a man of many moods, mostly bad” and that “Smiling Jack Sanford is a blue-eyed blond, somewhat less adorable than Shirley Temple. His blue eyes are hard and cold, shielded by heavy brows, and he squints around them… His jaw is hinged, his face flexible, and he twists it into various expressions, most of them forbidding, defiant, scowling. He saves his smiles for his friends, and he doesn’t make friends easily.” He was nicknamed “Smiling Jack” because he was usually scowling, and he was also nervous and irritable.

Another report, in a golf book, described Sanford as bloodying his own head from whacking himself with golf clubs after particularly bad shots.

In 1954, he was suspended for ten games after refusing to give the ball to his manager as he was being removed from a game.

 Sanford’s son John acknowledged that his dad was known for his explosive temper: “He always said that’s what helped an average kid from Wellesley to make it in the bigs. He carried it over to the golf course, where it wasn’t beneficial, but we didn’t see much of it at home.” Sanford’s daughter Laura added: “As to my dad’s so-called temper, he demanded so much from himself and was frustrated when he failed. Less than a perfect performance on his part was not sufficient; he was very competitive.”

Sanford died in 2000 at the age of 70 from brain cancer. R.I.P. Jack.

Hot Dog Eating a Hot dog.

John Kilduff–Rickey Henderson 1980 Topps rookie

As longtime readers know, I like to incorporate different facets of life into this blog, mostly from the realm of modern art and literature. It tends to get a bit tedious talking about baseball players and stats and free agency and Bud Selig’s ego and PED’s and Hall of Fame voters and the widening strike zone until I’m blue in the face. We’re getting closer to the Christmas holidays, I drank too much Crown Royal and I’m feeling a bit silly.

John Kilduff was a loco personality. He hosted a “painting show” that I would watch late at night here in Los Angeles while sucking on the hash pipe. I was supposed to be writing a thesis on “Modern Art and Capitalism,” but this show seemed more interesting and vital at the time. I couldn’t tell if the guy was gifted or if he was a charlatan looking to make a buck, (he turned out to be both) and I loved it. Some of his work had titles like, “Hot dog eating a hot dog,” and “African-American titty burger.” All this talk is meaningless, you simply must see for yourself…