Baseball Diary Vol II #5

Los Angeles
June 24, 1983

(Cover by Hastings/Fuller)

"One big item in the annual expense list of a big league ball club accrues from traveling over the circuit throughout the season. The sixteen teams will travel 188,287 miles between April 15 and the first week of October. The American League teams will cover 95,772, while National League clubs will cover 92,165 miles. At the rate of two cents a mile, each club carrying an average of eighteen men, the expense for railroad fares alone figures close to $68,000. And this does not include expenses for berths, meals and other incidentals." New York EVENING MAIL 1908

"Lou Gehrig's withdrawal from today's game does not necessarily mean the end of his playing career, although that seems not far distant. When the day comes, Gehrig can sit back and enjoy the fortune he has accumulated as a ballplayer. He is estimated to have saved $200,000 from his earnings, which touched a high in 1938, when he collected $39,000 as his Yankee salary." James P Dawson, May 2 1939, on the day Lou Gehrig ended his 2130 game playing streak

"The highest paid men on the Philadelphia A's...make $17,500 a year or less, and the sweatful young Valo probably does not make more than $8500. Mister Connie Mack just does not believe in the kind of salaries paid by the rich owners of the Yankees, to buy a ready-made winner. Except for the cost of helping half a dozen of his players through their colleges - Mr. Mack's first advice to any teenager who wants to play for him is, 'You'd better let me send you to school first' - he paid only $20,000 for his present pitching staff." Bob Considine 1948


Report from Los Angeles
by The Editor

What a way to start the week. Beat by the PADRES! There had to be something that would help my team. I decided it was time to change jobs. So the next afternoon I arrived at the DAF Corporation in Beverly Hills. I walked through the huge grated door on Camden Street and entered a small cubicle where I found myself facing a huge iron gate with stairs beyond it. As the door to the street closed behind me and things got dark, I heard a woman's voice ask, "Who's there, please." I announced myself and told her I had an appointment with Andy and she told me to come in. I tried the gate and it opened. I went up the flight of stairs and came to another gate. I reached out to open it and as my hand groped for the bars, I heard the faintest kind of "click"; it was almost subliminal and the instant I sensed it I knew that I had also "heard" it downstairs when I came in the other gate, but that I hadn't realized it consciously at that time. I went in the second gate into a plush waiting room with magazines on the table that had titles like "14 Carat" and something in Italian on high gloss paper with pictures of diamonds on the cover. The voice was a blonde behind a glass encased counter who greeted me and gave me an employment application.

Feeling a little out of place in my worn out New Balance running shoes, I took it and sat on the sofa. In the next room two men were arguing about money and precious stones. I caught a glance at one of them through the open door - a young black man in a suit who had a striking resemblance in appearance to Michael Jackson the singer and a striking resemblance in voice ot Michael Jackson the English radio talkshow host. I filled out the application and gave it back to blondie and took my seat again, dividing my attention between the magazines and the conversation in the next room. Eventually, a vaguely familiar looking young man with a slight East European accent came in and brought me into the room with the arguers. He asked them to leave and when they did, the interview began.

Andy was full of self assurance and after giving my application a cursory scan, he asked me, "Bill, have you ever done telephone sales before?"

I'd just completed a week trying to convince people they had really won something big by buying a book full of free coupons and I tried to turn that into sales experience.

"Bill, do you know what an objections is?"

I stammered something about opposition to what someone is saying and Andy smiled and asked, "Bill, tell me this, do you know what a tie-down is?"

What the hell was he talking about? "No, I don't."

"Do you know what a jack call is? Or a close or a condition?"

"What?"

He shook his head, gazed up to heaven and rubbed his forehead before he let out with a loud laugh. "Bill, what you be been DOING with your life? Do you know that in the first four months of working sales I made over $47,000?"

I had a couple of impulses at that point. One was to point out a philosophical justification for not pursuing money all my life and the other was to punch him in the mouth. But since I wanted a very large income, which I knew he might be able to offer, I did neither. The interview continued and he finally said he'd try me out. He called back the other two arguers and they continued. They were role playing, with one giving the pitch and the other trying to resist. Michael Jackson would try to convince the other guy, another black guy named John, to invest in a few thousand dollars worth of investment diamonds while Andy threw in pointers and comments and criticisms. This continued for awhile, with Michael Jackson having numerous problems understanding the point of what he was supposed to say, and all three of them role playing and slipping from their "true" personae to their roles with such frequency and abandon that all of us had trouble knowing just what "reality" was for long periods of time. After about a half hour, a short, pudgy man with a full gray beard and a blue jump suit came in and handed his application to Andy. Andy asked him if he minded if we stayed during his interview and he didn't.

Andy looked at his application and said, "Oh, so you're a headhunter."

"That's right," said the guy. "Been one for three years."

The Headhunter did much better in the question and answer portion of his interview than I. A little later, flabbergasted with Michael Jackson's lack of comprehension, Andy took him out of the room to fire him and I had a chance to ask the Headhunter just what it was he did for a living.

"Well, I'm a headhunter. You see, a corporation may lose a vice president or important person in the organization for some reason. So they'll hire me to call people in the same position in other rival organizations and make them an offer. Sometimes I don't get a deal for months. But when I do - by God, the money's incredible!"

I eventually had to leave with a promise to return to work the following morning. I picked up Donna from work and we went home to celebrate Midsummer, the Summer Solstice, the first day of summer. I told her about my new job and we spread out the food and drink on a small portable wooden table in the middle of the apartment. The Dodger/Padre game came on the radio and we started singing - a midsummer tradition. But like all traditions, there's a ceremony involved. First you take a forkful of raw fish (we had a choice of kippers, clams or salmon), then you spear, on the same fork, a chunk of boiled potato and then you dip it in either a chive and sour cream sauce or a mustard and dill sauce. Next you pour everyone involved a shot of imported Danish akvavit. Now you're ready. Someone starts singing a song, and everyone else has to join in. At the end of the song, you down your shot (which tastes of caraway), consume your forkful, and wash it all down with beer (which is optional and in our case meant a taste of hte decidedly non-Scandinavian Tecate). I know of no finer celebration. After a few rounds we decided to ask one of our neighbors to join us, a doctor who had had a horrible day and week and was ready to celebrate something. He wasn't familiar with the Midsummer custom but quickly got the knack of it. A little later we invited his roommate over, another doctor who had just gotten off work. She too found the new holiday thoroughly enjoyable. Well, we kept drinking and singing and Tony and Yvonne came by and then Dick came over and it was his birthday for god's sake and we were carrying on in the best Swedish tradition and someone asked me what the score of the game was and I didn't know and no one else did and we turned off the radio and brought out some records and put on some music and when we ran out of akvavit the male doc went and got some German Kirsch, an almond type liqueur and so we kept singing and when we ran out of Kirsch Doc went and brought over some Triple Sec and he and Yvonne started dancing very close and we started singing some more and his pants came off and we ran out of Triple Sec and Doc wanted more so I brought out that same bottle of mescal from last issue and there wasn't much left in it but a couple shots and good ole Juanito the Worm and Doc just chugged the whole thing and the female doc told him he had to go home and he chased her out of our place and threw an unopened can of beer at her that ricocheted off a few walls and into Dick's place and Bob Dylan, Richard and Linda Thompson and Beethoven's Ninth kept getting louder and louder and louder and male Doc did a sit down dance that involved tongue jobbing a philodendron leaf while his arms and legs went into spasms.

And the Dodgers lost again. And 4:30 AM came too damn fast. And away I went to make my fortune.


Report from Anaheim
by Ken Koss

After a week long skid, the Halos finally halted a tumble out of first place against the Royals last night by winning 7-2. Ken Forsch went all the way for the win. I wonder if Gene Mauch grumbles a lot when Forsch has a good game. We all know the Angels would have been in the series last year if Forsch would have pitched game three in the championship series against the Brewers.

Rod Carew not affected by Sports Illustrated cover jinx. Still hitting .410 and leading vote-getter for AL first baseman for All-Star game. Reggie may be out of AS game (he's leading outfield vote-getter) because of bruised ribs he suffered after falling over the bullpen mound chasing a fly in Texas the other day. They must have big flies in Texas. Happy Halos.

(Note: Answers to last issue's Ken Koss Kwiz will be in the next issue.)


Baseball Diary is published and edited by William Fuller