The Tryout
by Bryce Martin

The Los Angeles Angels began spring training camp in Palm Springs in late February. Bill Rigney is their manager. I can visualize him in the pose he made for the Bowman Gum Co., on a 1953 black and white baseball card I still have. It is stored along with all the others in an old trunk. I will be seeing him for real today.

It is a small and casual crowd as I take a seat at Angels Stadium in the elevated seating just to the right and behind home plate. The fan section all around is uncovered. I give the place a once-over and settle in on watching the Angels’ big right-hander, Ken McBride, warming up along the side of the field. He throws with an easy motion. It is a bright, sunshiny day, the type of day you would expect this time of year. A radio report I heard coming in mentioned a high of 91, only slightly above normal for April.

I size up my surroundings. It is an old ballpark. The seats, long, grooved aluminum beams, are already hot. Gravel from the soles of shoes is stuck in the grooves here and there and need to be wiped away before sitting. The field, including dugouts, outfield fence, backstop and seating, is not up to par in comparison to the ballparks I had played in often in Joplin, El Dorado, and some others. In Columbus, it was 330 down both lines and 400 in dead center. I had hit line drive home runs down the lines there and reached the centerfield fence right in the middle where it juts out into a vee. This outfield fence does not run that deep. I could do it here, I tell myself, I could do a bit of hitting, maybe today.

The Angels are an American League expansion team formed in 1961. Former singing cowboy Gene Autry owns the club. In 1962, they wasted no time in making a run for the AL pennant. As a winter member of the Cactus League, the Angels are the only major league team training in California. The rest of the Cactus League teams have homes in Arizona. All other major league teams train in Florida in the Grapefruit League. Teams from the two leagues never play each other.

The Boston Red Sox are the visitors. I look for Carl Yastrzemski and find him among the BoSox outfielders casually shagging some short-hit fly balls. He looks small, nothing like you might anticipate if you had never seen but only heard about the young phenom who led the American League in batting last year with a .321 average. That is how I would look out there, I tell myself. It is true, too. Yaz and me are the same size, 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds – the same size again as Mickey Mantle when he took the outfield for the first time with the New York Yankees. I feel silly comparing myself to Yaz, and especially to Mantle, my hero. Not very silly, however. I can hit, hit for power, run with speed, catch, and throw with the best of them. A matter of degrees is the difference. Why torture myself with such comparisons? I remind myself that all I want is a rung to grasp onto, a grip to hold. I will worry about climbing any ladders after that.

The contest does little to hold my interest. I am nervous, I reason, feeling that this is all too big for me. I am going to go through with it no matter what, and I do not lack for confidence. I can perform when I have to. All I can do is ask Rigney for a tryout and go from there.

Dick Stuart, the Boston first baseman, catches my attention. I knew he had hit 66 home runs at Lincoln in some bandbox of a home field one year, second in total to the record 72 homers Joe Bauman hit one season at Roswell. Here was little old I eyeing the man who had hit the second most home runs in professional baseball history. More interesting was that Stuart was a barely capable fielder, it was largely known. I witnessed proof of that. Stuart mishandled a short, easy popup. The gleaming white baseball somehow bounced right out of his glove webbing. He nonchalantly tossed the ball back to his pitcher. The square-shouldered Stuart then shrugged with his ample upper body and gave it a “Well, what did you expect?” palms-up gesture. He had a point. It was spring training, where you were supposed to work on improving for the upcoming season – but, you were more likely to feel, as I had, that Stuart was already in mid-season form.

I endured it for a long spell, but it was getting very warm sitting here in one spot for so long. I leave my seat and walk under the grandstand looking for some shade. There is none, of course. There never is when you look for it.

I roam my eyes some more. I do not see Bo “Bright Lights” Belinsky anywhere, the wilder-than-a-March-hare, cocky, slick combed-hair, pool-shark, and boozing, after-hours playboy pitcher. No, sir, there are not enough decadent adjectives to describe Belinsky. I had enjoyed immensely reading about his manifold escapades during and since his rookie year two years ago, when, just by coincidence, he pitched a no-hitter on my birthday.

I do not see Belinsky but he makes me feel edgy just the same. I speculate that it has to do with the survival instinct we all have buried deep within our being. Any thing, situation, or the behavior of an individual or individuals that threatens this particular sense puts the body’s survival monitor on high alert. Belinsky’s notorious lifestyle triggers that monitor with me. How he can live so aimlessly under the circumstances frightens me. If he can do both, live that badly and perform so well athletically, what chance do I have? I am positive I would have to make a choice between the two. I am either a full-blown wastrel or I am not.

Palm Springs proper

At Trader Vic’s I order a rum and Coke. Walls burst with exotic yellows, greens and reds, colors splashed on bottles, signs and posters. There are parrots, ships and islands. It is nearly deserted. Rightly so, I figure, since it is not even early evening yet. I like the place okay but I get the impression it is too gimmicky, that it is trying too hard with this entire Polynesian motif.

I only plan to drink this one, and I take my time. It is not easy since I am a fast drinker. I stick to my promise and take off once more. Driving around, I pass by the Racquet Club for the umpteenth time. It is one of those magic names that fascinate me. Margie, played by Gale Storm on television’s My Little Margie, has a father played by actor Charles Farrell. The same Charles Farrell later had his own show where he owns and runs the Racquet Club in Palm Springs. This Racquet Club.

On his show, he was old with gray hair. However, he was also athletic, tanned, usually wearing white tennis shorts and carrying a tennis racquet. He smiled often, was sophisticated, had a lot of energy and was happy and full of life. He was remarkable to me because he was none of the things that old men were in my hometown of Galena. There, they too had gray hair, to go along with false teeth in some cases and toothless, sunken jaws in others. No shorts of any kind, maybe some red around the neck but far from a full tan. Urbane, sophisticated, no. Quaint, dull, and droll, yes. There is not a tennis court in town.

Palm Canyon Drive, Twin Palms Drive, Indian Avenue, Tomahawk Avenue. After a time, I pay no attention to the names of the streets. I eventually circle, steer around and cruise on into the evening completely guided by landmarks.

Big, ritzy, lush, sparkling new hotels right downtown; a rainbow of varied colored lights juice up the night, at the entrances muted, bright, low and bouncy, high and darkened in shadows at the building tops; swimming pool splashes, cries and squeals from the hotel grounds; and later, quiet, as the night hours fade into silence, draining life from all things.

I stop to eat at Sambos. Pancakes are flying all over the place. I order the bacon and eggs, nix the six Sambo cakes with syrup and tiger butter that come with it and talk the waitress into letting me trade the fruit juice for a coffee. Why does it have to be so complicated? I notice that the little boy, Sambo, drawn on the menu must be Little Black Sambo, the main character from the old book. It is an odd name for a restaurant, but not all that odd. It is confusing, though, since the boy looks whiter than black and according to his dress he appears to be from the Middle East, maybe India or Persia. I will leave this place confused about something, which is for sure. It is that kind of place.

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