Flashback Friday: In the Post

By Chris Mehring

February 19, 2010

New Page 1

In The Interrogation Room that was posted earlier this week, an article by William Gildea that originally appeared in The Washington Post was mentioned.

It only seems right, that this week's edition of Flashback Friday is that article.

This long piece originally appeared in the Style section of the Post on August 8, 1984. It is the second of three articles Mr. Gildea wrote in a series titled American Summer: A Baseball Odyssey. This is the only one of the series that is in the archives of the Timber Rattlers so I can only guess that this is the only one in the series that focused on Appleton and the Foxes.

At the Heart of the Game

Appleton, Wis. - We had wandered 1,000 miles on a baseball journey. By now, the cities and interstates were past and only an occasional house or barn or lake checkered the landscape. Yet we still carried with us, my sons and I, like unwanted baggage, a big-city impatience. We wished a small town and its team to work their charms, right away. We wondered, in our different ways, if it would. Could the images of baseball's farm life, deep in the minor leagues, have been a false psychic tug?

My passengers wondered: Was there a Holiday Inn? What could there be to do in Appleton ? It looked like rain. An easterly wind made the car hard to hold to the road.

We followed a sign with an arrow: Goodland Field. That has to be it. Then, down tree-lined blocks, came the sight of a little blue park, steel girders supporting a roof that slanted over its middle three sections. Two more sections of uncovered stands stretched down each foul line, embracing a trim infield of dirt and grass and a roomy green outfield with signboard fences - so distant as to impress instant humility on aspiring long-ball gods.

A gem of a place: the home of the Appleton Foxes, defending champions of the Class A Midwest League. This evening there would be a 5 o'clock game with the Wausau Timbers. Now, three hours before game time, things were just coming to life. In minutes we would be co-opted by the handful of people in the park, made to feel as if we were at long last coming home. You're in, you're sitting down, you're talking.

"They're grooming him to be a manager," says a lone man in the seats, nodding toward the first player dressed in his Appleton whites: Greg Tarnow, a catcher, heading for the field, his spikes clacking on the macadam. He looks like a catcher, about 5-feet-10 and muscular, blond and all curls. His father, up for the weekend from La Port, Ind., sits down next to me in the stands. "You know the story on Greg?" he asks.

"His mother died when he was 9 years old," says Gerald Tarnow, once a St. Louis Cardinal farmhand. "I have three kids, just a typical American baseball family. I played ball, coached a lot of Little League. We live on a farm. When his mother died we went to the funeral parlor and he picked out the casket - he crawled up on 19 different caskets to make sure he got the right one for his mother. And when they laid here in there he got a baseball, he signed it, he said, 'I love you mother. I promise you I'll play professional baseball.' He put the ball in her hand.

"A day or two later he saw this baseball school in Fort Lauderdale advertised in Baseball Digest. He said, 'Dad, I promised Mommy I'd go learn to play professional ball. Can I go down there to learn?' He went down there every year, three months at a time. When he was 17 years old, he got his professional contract. Course he's struggling yet."

"But, he's going to be a manager."

"I think so. He's got a good future in baseball. He's worked hard. As a boy, he dedicated himself. Doesn't smoke, drink. Good churchgoer. I'm proud of him. He's a hell of an instructor. He knows the game. That's what baseball needs. People who teach."

***

My father taught me, though I scarcely knew how well. He taught me that the love of baseball does not demand perfection, that the game can exist on many levels and in many leagues. My first introduction to life deep in the minors came at his side, in the hot, baking stands of the never-celebrated Susquehana League: Aberdeen, Havre de Grace, Elkton, Rising Sun.

At Havre de Grace one Sunday, I stood with my father in the high grass that covered foul territory in left field and watched my slugging idol, Howie Moss, just a few feet in front of us. "The Howitzer" had launched 53 home runs one season with the International League Orioles, but now I felt sorry it had come to a weekend league for him. My father tried to explain that Howie Moss was simply keeping connected to the game he loved, but the romance eluded me.

At length I understood...

Up in the Appleton stands, an usher is pointing out to my older son, Billy, the prospects he thinks will make the make the major leagues someday. It turns out Billy knows Greg Tarnow; last spring Billy's high school team attended the Gulf Coast Baseball School in Sarasota, Fla., which the Tarnows own. Before long, Tarnow gives my son one of his bats to keep. And Pedro Guzman, a Foxes pitcher asks my other son, David to come out to the mound and snap his picture - it's Guzman's 23^rd birthday and he wants to send a shot home to the Dominican Republic . That quickly we are wrapped into Appleton 's fabric.

Bill Smith offers to find the boys and me a place to stay. He gets on the phone in his small office underneath the stands. Smith, 26, is the Foxes' general manager. In the major leagues, general manager is an exalted position. Here, his door is always opening and slamming shut.

A player stops in.

"Pepsi or orange?" Smith asks.

Smith takes the Pepsi from an ancient peeling refrigerator in an even smaller back room. The player slides 50 cents across the counter.

"Very few free ones go out of here," Smith says after the door shuts.

His black hair parts in the middle. He majored in French and seemed headed for a more esoteric calling when he heard about a possibility in baseball. He got the job, in the commissioner's office in New York . The next year he worked in the Chicago White Sox office. In 1983 the White Sox appointed him general manager at Appleton, their lowest farm club. "I may be the only guy in baseball working his way down," he says.

The door opens again.

"Hey, Bill, got a mop?"

Smith cleans up spills, rakes the infield, helps out at the concession stands, makes speeches downtown, gets companies to stage promotion nights at the ballpark. This season he's had Wendy's Painter's Cap Night. Tonight he has the Security Bank sponsoring a breakdancing exhibition after the game by an out-of-town group. "But this is the one I really want to do," he says pulling out a fisherman's hat from a big box. "Looks good, huh? Maybe next year. Couldn't get a sponsor this year."

Smith is the only Appleton salaried employee, and he is paid by the White Sox. A baseball rarity: The Foxes are a community-owned team - $5 will buy one share in the team. The board of directors includes a janitor, plumber, machinist, shipping clerk, school principal, tavern owner, police chief and commercial artist who designed, without charge, the team logo.

It's almost game time when Patti McFarland arrives, scorebook and pencil in hand. She's wearing a blue Appleton Foxes pullover jersey and red, white, and blue Chicago White Sox cap. McFarland has been to practically every Foxes game since 1958, and has been coming to the park since 1940 when the team was called the Papermakers. Even when she gets off late from work two nights a week, at the Prange Way discount department store out on the highway, she makes the last few innings. Always, she's loved to take pictures. "I have oodles of 'em. Some in albums, some in boxes. I'm trying to get 'em sorted," she says.

Two of her favorites are little black-and-white snapshots she got when Earl Weaver, former Oriole manager who managed the Foxes in 1962, and the Orioles' Cal Ripken Jr. as a 2-year-old. "His dad, Cal, Sr., was the catcher here," she says. "Drove the team bus, too. Weaver had an argument with the bus driver. I forgot how it went, but I think the driver abandoned them. The Ripkens lived in an apartment over Kirby Cleaners."

***

The game begins. The covered stands are almost filled. Everyone is settled in like an extended family on a large back porch, watching the kids at play on the lawn. Like distant relatives, some visitors are introduced. The public address system acknowledges: the parents of Jim Hickey, a pitcher; a busload of White Sox boosters up from Chicago to see the farmhands ("Give 'em a hand"), and "a great group of people who drove all the way over from Hastings, Minn. to see tonight's game - 300 miles to watch a minor league game. How 'bout that?"

Patti McFarland sits on the left-field side with Ollie and Bob Fondrow from Oshkosh . The two women yell as loud as anyone.

"C'm-o-o-on, Mr. T."

An explanation by one: "Mr. T - that's Mike Taylor. Mr. T hits everything."

An addendum: "They play their hearts out."

"C'm-o-o-on, Mr. T. You can do it."

After every inning, there's a rush to the beer stand. Russ Luebben, the retired deputy chief of the Appleton Fire Department, slides cans of Bud and Miller across the counter. Luebben is the secretary of the Foxes; he keeps appraised of the action by peeking around the corner of his stand to the new Miller scoreboard in left center field, and serves as major-domo to the boys who retrieve foul balls, which, scuffed or not, are re-used in the game. "Two bits a ball we give them," says Luebben.

In time, the umpire calls for the lights, but Bill Smith is missing - probably off averting some crisis. But, he's got the key to throw the switch.

"Hey, Milt, have you paid the light bill?" a fan yells.

Milt Drier, the team's treasurer, assures him he has, and continues chatting with a big, dark-haired man who is blowing rings of blue cigar smoke directly upward. Little white NY letters are stitched on the heart of his dark blue polo shirt. Joe Begani, scout for the Yankees.

His sunglasses are pushed back on his head. He's got a yellow pencil behind one ear, and a stopwatch that seems small in his hand. He may look laconic - he yawns now and then - but he doesn't miss a thing. He's always timing - runners going from home to first, the catchers' throws to second. Begani says he once scouted the Foxes' young first-year manager, Sal Rende. Rende used to be an Indians farmhand. "He could handle the bat," says Begani, "but he had concrete feet." He laughs.

Drier moves over to say a few words to Lyle Weden, president and part owner of the Timbers. They both hold cans of Miller. "We farm, that's our business," says Weden, a heavy-set man with glasses. He is speaking not of his farm team but his primary occupation - tomatoes, corn, things like that. "I guess the distinction of our county is that we have more cows than people," he says.

He drinks some beer. The Wausau third baseman is wearing No. 60 - an old Seattle Mariners shirt probably used at spring training by a raw rookie. "It's a hand-me-down situation," says Weden. "But in minor league baseball you're right here, 50 feet behind the plate. You see all the little things that you don't see in the big leagues, sitting way up in the stands..."

Actually, the view is quite exquisite. In the bottom of the tenth inning, Russ Morman, the Foxes' first baseman, slides into home with the winning run as the Wausau catcher applies the tag an instant late. It's as if the whole place is on top of the play, leaning over for a perfect look, and just about everyone goes wild. The Foxes, en masse, charge from the bench and mob Morman before he can dust himself off or move more than a few feet. Meanwhile, the Wausau catcher and his manager, who has bolted from the wings, argue jaw to jaw with the umpire right overtop the plate.

5-4, Appleton .

A half hour later, the Wausau players queue up at the door of their bus. Most of them are silent and have their heads bent. They had wanted that game. Their fans are getting on a second bus, right behind. They'll head home, 85 miles to the northwest. One bus, with the players, not their fans will be back first thing in the morning. It's a grind, but nothing compared to the ride from here to, say, Burlington , down in the southeast corner of Iowa . That one goes on forever; this is merely a Midwest League "commuter series" - it saves on motel and meals.

A soft rain, almost a mist, falls. Lyle Weden's satin baseball jacket glistens.

A Wausau fan, quietly and earnestly, to a departing player: "You'll get 'em tomorrow."

A small-town Saturday night is almost over.

But not quite, not for Bill Smith anyway. His biggest problem still remains: The breakdancers haven't shown up. The crowd is growing restless.

"The breakdancers just left Oshkosh ," somebody says.

"Oh, God," says Smith, clapping his forehead.

Ten minutes later, a long 10 minutes in the life of Bill Smith, someone runs up: "They're here. They're here."

Smith takes the grandstand steps two at a time, p to the PA announcer, Bob Lloyd, 39 years behind the mike. "Could we call on your talents once again? Just thank everyone for their patience and everything. It'll only be a few more minutes."

Pausing, Smith brushes back his wet hair that has fallen across his forehead. He's been running around in the rain.

"Tomorrow," he says, "will be better."

***

Tomorrow comes up perfect: blue sky, bright sun, low humidity. A great baseball day.

My sons shag flies in the outfield during batting practice, one in left standing next to Russ Morman, the other in right alongside Tarnow. They're out there talking to the players between hits. They chase, they talk some more. They've fallen into the rhythm. Milt Drier, the Foxes' treasurer, has just sat down from taking some swings in the batting cage.

"The only way to make it go at this level is volunteer help," he says, taking a Salem from his shirt pocket. "You have to have a whole bunch of people giving a whole lot of time." Behind a counter in the clean yellow corridor beneath the grandstand, Drier's wife Helen, and daughter, Becky, are turning over hot dogs on a grill.

In his office, Smith is handing out a Pepsi but gives the player his 50 cents back. "Thank you." A big smile from the player. "That's Charlie Moore," Smith explains shortly. "He got the winning hit last night."

"Hey, Bill," says a man sticking his head in the door, "the concession stand needs four rolls of nickels."

Patti McFarland is about to tack up newspaper clippings on three bulletin boards under the stands. They're from the local Post-Crescent ("Foxes Shade Kenosha on 11^th Inning Balk"), and items from papers in Glens Falls, N.Y., and Denver, so that fans can keep up with ex-Foxes progressing in the White Sox organization. The people here never forget a Fox - names like Boog Powell, Bucky Dent, Rich Gossage, Dean Chance, Sparky Lyle, LaMarr Hoyt, scores of others who came through here.

The crowd is smaller today. A man has a radio on the seat next to him, listening to the Cubs' game. The radio voice is saying that there are more than 39,000 squeezed into Wrigley Field, and then a few minutes later he's saying something about 40,000. Another man nearby wonders, "How many can they get in there?" My boys are up in back, eating hot dogs. Down close, Drier's 83-year-old mother, Lila, is licking an ice cream cone.

"I hate to see those $10 hits," says Smith, after a broken-bat single by an Appleton player.

Begani puffs on his cigar, and gets Tarnow 's "release time", from when the ball leaves the catcher's hand until it smacks a glove out at second. Two seconds flat. "He's quick," says Begani.

A Wausau pitcher, who worked last night and is sitting in front of Begani timing pitches with a radar gun, turns and asks the scout, "Did you get our catcher's time?"

"Oh, he's 1.9," Begani replies instantly. "I got him last year at Quad Cities."

Once a player in the West Texas League and the Mountain State League and some other leagues he can't easily recall, Begani now roams the Midwest League. Every once in a while he'll see something that will make him sit up straight. It happened last summer in Waterloo . Begani grades speed from the batters box to first base from two to eight.

"First eight I've ever seen," he says. "Pookie Bernstine."

***

Late in the afternoon, after the Foxes have lost, 7-4, in 12 innings, we say goodbye to Bill and Milt and Joe and Patti and Russ and Helen and Becky. They boys wait for Greg Tarnow, thank him for the bat, and they talk for a while next to the grandstand.

Every other Sunday when I as a boy I rode with my parents up stop-light-choked U.S. 40 to visit my grandparents. Now the tourist cabins and 20-unit motels of the '40s are replaced by globs of concrete - shopping malls and "clothing outlets." On the bend coming into town I look for the tiny park where my father took me Sunday afternoons, yet I don't even see the corn that ringed the outfield fence. But through their numbers has shrunk there still are towns where minor league players bring their major league dreams. From the ghettos and the suburbs, from California and Caracas they come - to places like Appleton .

We drive out of town, heading south.

"So Bill is engaged to Becky?"

Yeah. Did you meet her?"

"Yeah, she's nice."

"Where'd the scout say he was going next?"

" Beloit ."

"Where's that?"

"Where's the Mississippi from here?"

The sun slants through the car's side windows.

" Wisconsin looks better today than it did yesterday."

"I think Tarnow fell under .200 today. If he could just hit a little more."

And then: "You know, we didn't get to do everything in Appleton ." I am tempted to remind them that yesterday, they were worrying about not having anything to do in Appleton .

We like the small-town virtues we had seen. But we knew, too, that $600 a month or so, even for the pleasure of playing baseball, was not great, and that another small-town principle was at work: up and out. The best often move on.

"Look at this, Al Jones pitched here last year and this year he got up to the White Sox. Amazing."

As we drive along, even the searing sounds of rock seem all right to me.

"Hey, did you see that, did you see that? Dad turned the radio up?"

We look at each other and laugh. We don't say anything else for a while, nor do we have to."

NOTES AND REACTIONS:

1.) This is one of the first articles about the Foxes that I have read that captures the feeling that I get from people who were around at that time when they walk about baseball at Goodland Field.

2.) Tarnow never became a minor league manager. He played XX games for the Foxes in '84 and XX games for the Foxes in '85.

3.) A few of the state newspapers must have seen this series. The Green Bay Press-Gazette did several stories about the Foxes and minor league baseball in their June 20, 1985 edition. The Milwaukee Journal (as it was still called back then) did a story about the Foxes in their August 18, 1985 edition. If time allows, we will get to these before the start of the season.

4.) Now, why would a breakdancing exhibition team be late? Did they stop at a payphone in Oshkosh to let someone know where they were, or did this particular team have one of the first cell phones, the kind that used to be in a bag with a shoulder strap.

5.) Ten minutes from Oshkosh to Goodland Field? That driver belongs on the Formula 1 series.

6.) Breakdancing is showing up as a misspelling on my spell check. The only suggestion is to break it into two words. I would bet my own Satin Jacket from the 80's (Was there no one to stop the fashion horrors of the 80's?) that this computer wouldn't know what to do with half of the crazy words from the 80s. Just checking the program I see that of: Grody; Rad; Gnarly; and Punky Brewster only Gnarly and Brewster pass the spell check test. Gag me with a spoon.

7.) Judging from Pedro Guzman's birthday and the 1984 Foxes schedule it looks like the Gildea family trip to Appleton occurred June 23 and June 24.

8.) Nehames "Pookie" Bernstine's played for Waterloo in 1983 and stole 51 bases. He topped out at Triple-A with the Iowa Cubs in 1987. Bernstine came back down to the Midwest League and played a few games with the Peoria Chiefs in 1988 and 1989.

9.) Howie Moss played for the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association in 1949, 1950 and part of 1951.

10.) Lyle Weden was the president and part owner of the Timbers. The ownership group sold the Wausau Timbers and that team became the Kane County Cougars after the 1990 season.

11.) Russ Morman, who scored the run on that Saturday night in 1984 to beat the Timbers, would manage the Cougars in 2000 and 2001.

12.) The unnamed Wausau Timbers catcher with the 1.9 time to second base was probably Terry Bell. I wonder if Joe Begani sat up straight when he noticed the third baseman for the Timbers in 1984.

13.) Here is a link to a Milwaukee Journal story about the Timbers from May 18, 1985. Retiring Cedar Rapids Kernels General Manager Jack Roeder is part of the story. Also part of the story, the Timbers turned down an offer to sell the team to a group in Evansville , Indiana in the winter of 1984.

Previous Flashback Fridays:

10/16: Organist at Goodland Field

10/23: Coming Home

10/30: The Next Unit

11/6: Rattler Rally

11/13: The Beginning of the End

11/20: Frankie

11/27: Stewart Cooper

12/4: Craig Kuzmic x 9

2/12: To Peoria and Back