Page 12 of Angry White Male

  Part of Billy was Palos Verdes. Part of him was inner city L.A. Just when he was comfortable and had made friends in Torrance, he was ripped from away from there. Now he was in a wealthy place, but the creature comforts of P.V. had no value to a child of his age.

  In 1972, eight-year old Billy played his first year of little league. The teams were picked via draft, held after try-outs in the Spring. He was the best eight-year old in the draft. The Cardinals drafted Billy first. Stan was picked second, by the Dodgers. The reason Stan was picked so high was because people knew his dad had been a good player, so they figured maybe he was, too.

  Billy was a star from the get-go. Stan was one of the worst players in the league. Billy was the only black kid in the midget league. Stan looked at him and was mystified. He had not met more than a handful of black people in his life. He had a vague sense that to be black was a negative thing, but he had not formulated any kind of feelings about the subject. What he did know was that Billy was out of his league. He knew his father was a star. Billy was placed on a pedestal, one that Stan, at that age, had no chance to attain. It was a weird conflict for Stan, who viewed Billy as a mythic black icon.

  When Stan was nine, through hard work and love of the game, he flowered into a great player. It was a toss-up who the best player was, Stan or Billy. Stan never said a word to Billy. He did not speak to his mother, who worked the coke shack and drove her son, and his teammates, to and from games and practices. The Taylor’s and Boswell’s never conversed. There was something unsaid going on, as if both sides sensed that they were rivals. Both sides felt the other was unfriendly and arrogant. Neither really had any personal experiences to back up this proposition.

  Al usually did not make it to the games, because he was playing in the big leagues. When he did show, it was a big production of autographs and hero worship. The Taylor’s resented it for reasons they could not put their fingers on.

  Billy had a lot of “friends.” In actuality, they were not really his friends. They wanted a piece of him. White kids thought it was “cool” to hang with the black guy. Their parents encouraged them. The changing sensibilities of America were manifested in the way Billy was received growing up. It amazed his father and grandfather, who had seen real prejudice. Now they saw the opposite; a liberal white stance of extra-acceptance.

  Stan saw Billy’s popularity and contrasted that with his own shrinking reputation. They were natural rivals, of course, since they usually competed for the title, they were the headliners, and they never played on the same team. Billy was “billed” as the good guy, Stan the bad guy. Billy was cheered. Stan was booed. It was like a pro wrestling match.

  Stan would look at Billy, and saw no reaction in his face. Stan would be taunted, and he saw that Billy knew exactly what was going on, but Billy never joined the taunting. Neither did his folks, or his grandparents, who came to the games. In a way, Stan would have preferred that they join the chorus of dissent but they were above it. They had an imperial manner about them. All the Boswell’s had it. It frustrated Stan. He could not gauge them. They were mysterious.

  Matt Hobli was Billy’s best friend. They had met in grammar school, before Billy even started in the little league. Matt and Billy went to different schools than Stan. They played for a different CYO team.

  Matt’s father was a Princeton-educated doctor. They were fabulously wealthy and Jewish. There were not a large number of Jews on the peninsula. Rich Jewish families in Los Angeles tended to live in Encino or Beverly Hills. At one time, Palos Verdes Estates might not have opened its arms to Jews. By the late 1960s, however, things had changed. If one had the right credentials, i.e., money and career, Palos Verdes was the place to be. The Hobli’s and the Boswell’s had the right credentials.

  Dr. Russell Hobli was a Democrat, which put him in the minority on the peninsula. He had grown up in Massachusetts, and at Boston College had faced prejudice from the Irish fraternity boys. He harbored the certain conviction that Harvard had turned him down because they had already met the 1950s-era quota of Jewish students.

  Hobli probably could have gotten into Harvard Medical School, but opted not to apply in silent protest of their earlier admissions policy. Princeton was even more anti-Semitic, but medical school was such a grind that he had no time for a social life, fraternities, or to pay much attention to any slights that came his way.

  He was brilliant, made excellent grades, and earned respect through these traits. When he became a doctor, he worked on the East Coast for a couple of years, married, and started a family. Dr. Hobli wanted a new life in a new place. He thought about Miami, but heard there was a lot of drug activity in South Florida. He applied for and was accepted as a surgeon at the Centinela Medical Center. The doctor moved his family to Palos Verdes Estates.

  Matt was his oldest child. He was small, but quick enough to handle most sports creditably. Matt was intelligent, but had a mean streak to him. He was ingratiating and looked for opportunity. He saw it in Billy Boswell. Matt knew Billy’s dad was a baseball star. Billy was not open. He had been taught from a young age to be suspicious, especially of white people. Perhaps because Matt shared the trait of natural suspicion, they formed a friendship.

  Billy and Matt became tight. They did not let many people into their little world. They shared each other’s secrets. Matt became Billy’s sidekick, his shadow, and his assistant. Matt developed as Billy developed. He derived his social status and standing to Billy’s. What was good for Billy was good for Matt.

  Matt played for a different midget league team than Billy, but he was at all of Billy’s games. They were two peas in a pod. Like Billy, Matt was aloof around Stan. He did not taunt Stan like some of the others. He was as much a mystery to Stan as Billy.

  Matt’s parents were not much into sports, and rarely showed up for games. Matt became part of Billy’s extended family. There was some sniping behind his back, but nobody dared get on him about it up front. Except for Dick Maslin, who had opinions on everything and was not afraid to air them.

  When they were 10, Billy was drafted first in the minors. Stan was not drafted, because his dad managed his team, and players whose father’s coach in the league automatically go to their dad’s team. Billy and Stan were the two best players in the league. Stan’s team won the championship. When they were 11, Billy was drafted first in the majors. Again, Stan was not drafted because his father managed the team, so he again automatically played for his dad. Billy played for Rob Lateucci’s team, and they beat Stan’s team for the championship. That was the team that taunted Stan in the most merciless manner ever, led by the “little Napoleon,” Lateucci. They beat Stan badly, in the worst game of his youth baseball career. Stan pitched through the tears, but noticed something conspicuous.

  Matt Hobli was on Lateucci’s team. He broke his usual silence and screamed horrible obscenities at Stan. But Billy remained silent. Billy never said a damn thing. In some ways, Stan wished Billy had joined in. By staying above it all, Billy was maintaining his mystery. Stan was becoming obsessed with Billy. He wanted to be beat him, he wanted to be better than him, and he wanted to understand him. He was competing with Billy, but it was not easy. He had no way of understanding him.

  In 1976, Stan’s team beat Billy’s for the title. They then teamed up for all-stars. With Billy, a left-handed thrower and switch hitter, playing center field, and Stan pitching and playing shortstop, Palos Verdes went all the way to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. They beat the fabled Taiwanese juggernaut for the World Championship. Billy was named MVP.

  Hobli had been Billy’s teammate for two years, from age 11 to 12. He made all-stars at age 12 and was part of the World Championship team. During the entire play-off season, as the team moved through winning tournaments, traveling long distances from home until they finally reached Williamsport, Billy and Stan never said two words to each other. Hobli never spoke to Stan, either. They looked down on him. Stan was galled by this action. He was much more com
fortable with open hostility.

  When they were 13, Billy and Stan entered Babe Ruth League, which separates the “men from the boys.” Stan and Billy played on different teams again, although they had played together on all-star teams throughout little league.

  In 1977, Billy and Stan both made regular all-stars. Throughout little league, there had always been grumbling that Stan got favored treatment because of his old man. This criticism was always muted by the fact that he was without dispute one of the best players in Palos Verdes. Except for Billy, who was the best player.

  At age 14, Billy led his team to the championship. That fall, Billy entered Palos Verdes High School. Stan was supposed to attend P.V. High, too, but after being recruited by Coach Ambers, he was at Rolling Hills High School, which had a baseball program with a better reputation.

  In their freshman seasons, Billy starred on the frosh football team. He made the varsity basketball team, and was the starting center fielder on the varsity baseball team, and made All-Bay League. It is extremely rare for freshmen to play varsity sports.

  Matt Hobli played freshman baseball and basketball. Over at Rolling Hills High, Stan got off to a good start. Dan coached Rolling Hills’ Winter league team, and Stan showed terrific promise despite his youth. He lifted weights and began to put on size, increasing his strength. Stan played freshman basketball, and in the Spring he reached his goal of making the varsity in baseball.

  The newspapers began to play up the two kids who had starred on the Palos Verdes Little League World Series winners, then made Babe Ruth All-Stars at age 13. Now they were the only freshmen playing varsity in the Bay League.

  Eddie Andrews was a senior that 1979 season. Ambers had over pitched him over the previous three seasons. Scouts who had been watching him closely noted a significant loss in velocity. Still, Andrews was a star. He went 12-2, leading Rolling Hills to the league championship. They had won the CIF-Southern Section title the year before, with Andrews shutting out Lakewood at Dodger Stadium, 1-0 in the championship game. Andrews beat Hoover High of Glendale in the first round in ’79, but Rolling Hills lost in the second round.

  Stan had a ball. He started several games during the pre-season, and beat Redwood High of Marin County in the championship game of the San Luis Obispo Easter Tournament, earning all-tourney honors. He started one league game, and was used as a key relief pitcher, closing out several close wins. He was also used as a backup shortstop, hitting over .300 with two home runs.

  Stan found himself a celebrity of sorts on campus. Being a freshman on the varsity made him a hero to all the other frosh, who usually get treated like second-class citizens, or are ignored by the upper classmen. He also reveled in his public success, to the usual chagrin of his many detractors “left behind” at P.V. High.

  His greatest triumph came in a night game against Palos Verdes played before several thousand fans. In the fifth inning, he came on as a pinch-hitter. He could hear boos and catcalls coming from his former “associates.” They had been taunting him ever since he arrived at the field, but Stan was up to the challenge. He was proud to be a Rolling Hills Titan, and knew that his presence on the varsity roster spoke for itself.

  With the score tied, 1-1, he hit a home run. Stan stayed in the game and played shortstop. Eddie Andrews walked the first batter in the seventh, and then gave up a single. Stan, who had warmed up in between innings, was brought in with the tying run on third and the winning run on first.

  The place went crazy. It was electric. There was less taunting from the dugout than the stands. The Palos Verdes players were all older than Stan. They were not the same kids who had played little league and Babe Ruth with him. They had not received the “Dan Taylor treatment.” The freshmen who did know Stan had filled the stands, however, and they were begging for the guy to get beaten. The first hitter powered a shot to the left field fence. It looked like a surefire extra base hit to tie the game. The runner on third assumed that was just what it was. He trotted home with the winning run. But wait!

  Gary Zuchini silenced the P.V. fans. He was a great defensive player who lived up to his reputation. Zuchini ran the ball down at the base of the fence to make the catch. The runner had to return to third, where he bowed his head. His mistake had cost his team a chance to tie. The runner at first might have scored if he had been running all the way on a ball that was not caught, but he respected Zuchini’s glove skills. He held at first, and then advanced on the tag to second. Now Stan was faced with the tying and winning run on second and third.

  The next hitter went down on three straight fastballs. Now Billy Boswell came to the plate. Years later, people would look back at this at-bat with great nostalgia. Major League pitchers would routinely walk him in these situations. Not Stan.

  Boswell was still only a freshman, and P.V.’s best hitter was on deck. Coach Ambers came out to the mound to discuss the situation. He told Stan to pitch aggressively, but not give in to Billy with a base open.

  Facing the left-handed slugger, Stan worked him carefully until the count reached three-and-two. Then Stan let loose a wicked slider that broke in on Billy’s hands. Billy swung and missed.

  Rolling Hills’ players ran out to the mound and lifted Stan in the air, led by Eddie Andrews. Coach Ambers knew that he had found another star. Stan had denied his foes again.

  The morning after that game, the phone rang at 5:00 a.m. in the Taylor household.

  “Hello,” answered Dan, groggy as hell.

  “Mr. Taylor,” came the voice on the phone. “My name’s Dan Grogian. I write the prep column for the Daily Breeze.”

  “Yeah,” said Dan, still asleep.

  “Mr. Taylor,” said Grogian. “I understand that your son, Stan, was supposed to attend Palos Verdes, that you still reside in the P.V. school district. But you chose to send him to Rolling Hills. We’re doing a story on athletes who transfer to schools not in their districts.”

  There was some more conversation, mostly unintelligible on Dan’s end. Grogian never explained or apologized for his dawn wake-up call.

  Finally, Grogian got to the point.

  “Could you tell me if Jim Ambers recruited Stan?” he asked.

  “Our point is that Palos Verdes is a bunch of losers,” said Dan, still not awake. “Rolling Hills has a great program and my son has a future in baseball and he can best realize his potential at Rolling Hills.”

  Dan went on like that for a few more minutes, and Grogian asked a few more questions, but the damage was done.

  Dan hung up the phone and went back to sleep. He had done some pretty good drinking the night before in celebration of Stan’s big game. He forgot all about the phone call and did not tell Stan.

  A couple of days later, Stan came home and picked up the Daily Breeze in the driveway when he got home. He came inside, opened it up to the sports page, and there it was.

  “‘P.V.’s a bunch of losers,’ says Taylor’s father,” the headline read. There was a picture of Dan, taken during a game. It had to be the most unattractive photo of Dan they had on file. Underneath it was a picture of Stan, looking like he was yelling at a teammate.

  Stan read the whole thing, which was a very negative take on the whole Taylor family.

  “Thanks, Dad,” he said to himself.

  Dan never apologized to Stan about it, even though it would cause Stan plenty of headaches in the form of taunts at Palos Verdes-Rolling Hills games for three more years. It also was the subject of letters to the editor in the Daily Breeze for two weeks. There was a scathing editorial in the Palos Verdes school newspaper and the free weekly papers that are delivered on the peninsula, Hermosa and Redondo. There were death threats called in to the Taylor’s.

  Dan started showing up at his basketball and baseball practices. He went to all the games, home and away. He rarely stayed past five o’clock in the office. He often worked from home, if he worked. He arranged all his appointments, filings, and court dates around Stan’s sports schedule.
r />   At basketball games, Dan would fill the gym with the cacophonous sound of his voice, screaming and yelling at Stan and his teammates. He loudly verbalized his disdain for teammates who failed to pass the ball to Stan. The frosh coach hated Dan. Stan’s teammates made snide comments about him. He often appeared to be somewhat intoxicated.

  The frosh team was practicing on the outdoor courts because the varsity was using the gym. Then Stan’s teammate, Walter Coleman, pointed and yelled, “It’s the Dan!”

  “The Dan” was Dan Taylor. He was peering at his son’s practice, hiding from behind the corner of the coaches’ offices. Everybody started pointing and laughing.

  “The Dan!” Coleman yelled again.

  When Dan saw that he had been had, he disappeared. The practice went on. Stan was red-faced. These were new kids to him. He was trying to fit in, and now he and pops were a source of amusement and scorn again. They were on to the Stan and Dan Show.

  “Shit,” Stan muttered under his breath. Coleman, a rich kid and the team’s clown prince, did not let up.

  “The Dan,” he jeered. Coleman had a way of speaking in a stentorian tone. He had talked like that since he was seven. It was authoritative, deep, yet funny. It was a cross between a parliamentarian at the House of Lords and old Eastern money. The guy was an absolute piece of work. A unique human being. “Peering around the corner. Peer on, my Dan, peer on. Ha.”

  Then Dan appeared again.

  “Oh God,” Stan said.

  Coleman pointed at Dan, laughing hilariously. His teammates joined in. They were not laughing with Stan, they were laughing at him - and his old man.

  It got worse during baseball season. For years, Dan had coached his son. Now, he had to squirm while others took over the duty. Dan would score the games, arguing over calls. He always wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to his son to keep his earned run average low. If the shortstop booted one, the guy scoring in the press box might call it a hit. He would come down to the dugout, where some high school gal, known as a “ball girl,” was scoring. These girls knew little inside baseball and made many mistakes. None of them were as good as Kim had been. If those mistakes cost his son his ERA - their mistakes were more likely to hurt him than help him - he would get infuriated. His antics, just as they had in the P.V. baseball community, quickly put Stan in an unfavorable light.

  Dan would keep all of his own statistics, then lobby Coach Ambers to change any discrepancies between his records and the official team stats. Scorers who failed to learn the rules for winning pitchers would particularly frustrate Dan. This could get complicated. In American Legion baseball, the games were nine-inning affairs. A starter had to pitch five complete innings, leave with the lead, and his team would have to make that lead hold up the rest of the game. In high school, a starter need only pitch three innings of the seven-inning game to earn a win. The scorers would gyp his son out of wins by failing to understand that he was in the game when the winning run scored, or some other variation of the rules.

  All of this quickly had parents and players grumbling about “Taylor and his old man.” This was what Stan had feared.

  Stan still made friends at Rolling Hills. One was Walter Coleman. Coleman’s parents were Canadians, and Walter himself had been born in Toronto. He would not become an American citizen until his 18th birthday. This struck everybody as odd, since the guy was the most patriotic, flag-waving, Commie-hating little bastard on the peninsula. Coleman made fun of Stan, such as the time he discovered Dan peering from behind the coaches’ offices. He was a cut above the rabble Stan had dealt with prior to high school. Walt’s father was a top insurance executive, and his mother a mousy housewife. Walt had a little sister who was so intimidated by him that many of his friends swore they were in their 30s before they heard her speak.

  Walt went to about 50 Dodger games a year with his various pals. He knew all the bus lines to Dodger Stadium. He also knew about a little, unknown spot behind the pavilion where he would sneak into the stadium for free. He was savvy and knew how to avoid the ushers. His pals were not as smart and were always getting in trouble trying to keep up with his daring escapades. Walt himself was infallible.

  In junior high school, various sycophants worshiped Walt like an icon. One was Bennie Hussein, a guy with an image problem if ever there was one. Bennie’s father was Palestinian. He hated Jews and ranted on and on about the situation in the Middle East. The problem was that his wife was Jewish.

  Naturally, Walt started calling him The Kuyke. Hussein did everything Walt wanted.

  “Kuyke! Get me a coke,” Walt bellowed.

  “On it,” said Bennie. Walt would have his coke. Bennie was a terrific youth league athlete. He was tall, big and strong, a legend in the Rolling Hills Little League and Babe Ruth League. A catcher, he had a great arm and loved baseball. Unfortunately, he was one of those people who reached his full height and weight by the time he was 15. His skills petered out early, and he would never live up to his early promise.

  Mr. Hussein would drink too much and got fat quickly. He sold rugs and made a good living. He was the embodiment of the American Dream, having moved from Palestine to Boston, then to Los Angeles where he lived in a crappy part of town and started his business in the garment district. It was there that he met his Jewish wife. She was an immigrant, too, from Russia. They eventually bought a house in Gardena, kept getting rich, and eventually moved to Rolling Hills Estates.

  Neither mother nor father was particularly attractive, but in that weird kind of cross-blending way, which seems unique to America, their son was extremely handsome. Girls loved him from the get-go. This, of course, was a source of amazement to Stan. Chicks would pass him over and go for the Arab-Jewish kid instead. Bennie looked like he was the product of some cosmic swing party in which Omar Shariff hooked up with Tony Orlando and Dawn.

  Walt loved to go over to Bennie’s house and give Mr. Hussein crap. Like everybody else, Walt mesmerized the Hussein’s. His opinions, his quips, quotes and insults, all fell like strawberry blossoms. Mr. and Mrs. Hussein loved Walt like he was their son. In fact, they liked him a lot more than Bennie. Walt especially liked it when old Hussein started to uncork the whisky. The man had a low threshold for alcohol, and in no time the house was the freaking Gaza Strip.

  Mrs. Hussein would quietly get plowed on Manischevitz (“Fucking Jew wine,” according to her husband), and after taking his insults for an hour, she would lay into him about Allah, the Six Day War, and various remarks about camels and what the Palestinians liked to do with them. Walt would just laugh at them. So did Bennie, who was actually dieing inside. Bennie would avoid religion like the plague throughout his entire life.

  Bennie continued to be Walt’s de facto slave when they got to high school. In the locker room, Walt would “order” Bennie to attack Stan. Stan would smile and try to play it off as fun. Stan and Bennie were actually friends. But Bennie would get his orders, and next Stan would find himself getting tackled, or taking the sharp end of a towel whipping. Stan spent all his time around them in a state of nervousness. It was still better than his junior high days, though.

  Walt could be incredibly foul. Once, he had pulled his pants down and taken a dump on the center court of the junior high gymnasium. Then, for good measure, he had gotten on his stingray and made “skid marks,” leaving it all for the Mexican janitor.

  Walt was a snot-nosed little S.O.B. How prejudiced he really was is debatable. Those who tried to psychoanalyze him always excused his biases. He did it all under some guise of fun, light-hearted humor, or non-seriousness. How he did it no one could truly explain. He just had a way about him. You had to like him.

  Even Reggie Holloway liked him. Reggie was a 6-6, 230-pound black basketball and track star from Lawndale who had been recruited to attend Rolling Hills. He was a junior on the varsity hoops team. Walt was a mere freshman. One day Reggie went strolling by. Everybody glad-handed him. He had a big Afro with a comb sticking out of it. His
wardrobe was straight out of an episode of “What’s Happening?” He was menacing, but friendly. Everybody liked Reggie, including Walt. That did not stop Walt from saying, “Dance me a jig, nig.”

  Reggie stopped in his tracks. He went to Walt and picked him up. It could have been a tense situation. If it had been anybody else, it would have been. This time, it was not. Reggie and Walt both had smiles on their faces.

  “What you call me, Walt?” asked Reggie.

  “Aw, don’t worry about it, Reginald,” said Walt. “It’s cool.”

  It was. Somehow, it was. There is no explaining how it was. There was a look in Walt’s eye, a disarming tone to his voice that said that you really did not need to take him seriously if you did not want to.

  “Yeah, ‘kay Walt,” said Reggie. He liked Walt. He had just heard the worst word that could be applied to him, and he just smiled it off.

  “How’d you do that?” asked Stan incredulously, after Reggie departed.

  “Dumb nigger doesn’t know whether I’m laughing with him or at him,” said Walt. Everybody laughed with him. He was despicable. The worst kind of spoiled brat. He was a horrible racist, and yet he was not. He had a quality that allowed others to just excuse it. It was not that all his white friends were racists. They were not. But they simply did not take his act seriously.

  “Ah, that’s just Walt,” they would say. In his heart, Walt was not racist. He was a clown.

  His family had a black maid. Walt would purposely leave his room as messy as possible for her.

  “One of these days I’m gonna shit on my bed and leave it for her,” he would say.

  But she loved Walt as if he was her son. Around her, he was a barrel of laughs. He joked with her, flirted with her. There was probably some form of Uncle Tom going on, but Mabel had fallen for Walt like everybody else. He was irresistible.

  Stan was amazed at Walt. His entire life, he had been misunderstood. Everything he ever said came out wrong. Everybody suspected the very worst of him. He clung to Walt like a puppy hanging on to his mother. In his own way, he idolized him like Bennie Hussein did.

  As far as Stan was concerned, the greatest thing about Walt was that Walt liked him. He knew how much crap Stan had taken in junior high, but he never let on. When Stan was taking heat from a new group of semi-tormentors at Rolling Hills, Walt never jumped on it. He had his own way of playing with Stan, but it was genuine friendship.

  There are lots of reasons why people become friends. Sometimes they have something the other needs. In this case, it was one-sided. Walt was totally confident. He needed nobody. Everybody needed him. That was the crux of his friendships with Bennie and Stan. It was at the heart of his relationship with everybody who knew him. All who knew him liked him. Even blacks who had been called “nigger” by him.

  Walt was a cut-up of the first variety. When asked by the student newspaper about what he was doing to conserve water during drought season, he replied, “It’s all a Communist plot. I spit in the toilet and flush it.”

  In Spanish class, he sat surrounded by Stan, Bennie and the rest of his worshipers. He would crack awesome jokes and highly intelligent, cutting-edge quips that had everybody around him going crazy. Then the teacher would see what was happening. Everyone was rolling in the aisles except Walt, who would have his nose in his book. All the laughing people would get punished. He never did. Nobody ever got mad about it. It was his gift.

  Another time he sat in the back row, leaned back, hocked a loogie, and spit a huge missile at the blackboard behind him. Anybody else would have been caught. Walt never got caught.

  One substitute teacher quit his assignment when Walt drove him to distraction.

  “Are you a prejudiced man, Mr. Atwater?” he asked the bespectacled sub.

  “What?” replied Atwater.

  “Have you ever stuck your finger up a Kahuna?” he asked matter-of-factly.

  The sub tried to punish Walt. Walt just laughed at him. The class laughed at him. The sub left the room in tears.

  “I have taught at Fremont,” he told the superintendent. “I have taught at Gardena, at Banning. I’ve taught in North Long Beach! I have never seen such impudence.”

  He was never seen again in the Palos Verdes Peninsula School District.

  Walt could make fun of anybody at any time. He worked at the pool to make some extra cash. The basketball coach supervised him. He was a big, round, bald man named Richard Marder. Marder told him he would be working up to a certain day, but Walt had already scheduled a vacation in Lake Arrowhead and had no intention of being at the pool until Summer’s end.

  “Oh, how wrong you are, sweet Mellon Head,” Walt said of Marder as soon as Mellon Head was out of earshot.

  Walt had stock responses to most things.

  “Standard,” he would respond to something ordinary. When asked what “standard” meant, he would reply, “Anything that is time honored and obligatory.” Most people his age had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but it sounded good.

  If something seemed outrageous to him, he would exclaim “Horseshit!” except it did not come out “horseshit.” It came out like this: “Haarz-shit.” Or he would say, “Jesus,” which sounded like “Shay-soss!”

  Stan understood him. He knew every nuance of his character, and was perfectly willing to be his foil. He was Ed McMahon to Walt’s Johnny Carson, who happened to be Walt’s favorite. He pronounced Carson “Caar-son,” and made a big to-do about catching the comedian’s monologue.

  During freshman baseball season, an African transfer student would watch practice. Coleman decided the kid’s name was Johnson.

  “Johnson!” he yelled when he saw the kid. “Jungle bunny Johnson!” Everybody laughed. If it were anybody but Coleman, they would have been suspended. Walt’s coaches just praised him. In basketball, he was a deadeye outside shooter who routinely fired from all over the floor. Conservative coaches like Marder, who came from the Hank Iba school and normally would have sat him down instantly, let him get away with it.

  Walt was something good and funny in Stan’s life. After the “peering” episode with Dan, Walt took to calling Stan “Dan” or “The Dan,” although he never differentiated his reference to father Dan as “The Dan.” Nobody ever offered a good explanation of it. He would call Stan “Dan” and Bennie “Kuyke” the rest of their lives.

  Walt was a wunderkind for sports, just like Stan. He knew every stat, every record, and all the players in every sport. His favorite was baseball. The Dodgers were everything to him. He also loved the Lakers, UCLA basketball and USC football.

  Walt was a good athlete, but nobody ever predicted that he would go very far in sports. He could shoot, he never got tired or winded, and in baseball played some middle infield and threw a knuckle ball.

  Everybody liked him, including upperclassmen, which was highly unusual. He was respected, even though he never hid his semi-racist-conservative-Red-baiting rants. Even when others started picking on him, Stan would find comfort with Walt. Walt never stood up for him, or told him something sappy like, “Forget about those guys,” or “You’re alright in my book.” Never in a million years. He made Stan an equal and a trusted friend through laughter and fraternity. Everybody was welcome in Walt’s fraternity. Stan, like Bennie and a handful of others, would maintain permanent membership. Walt’s humor simply overwhelmed the pain that Stan had always felt growing up with a domineering father and tormenting classmates. It made Bennie feel like an equal instead of a comic Arab-Jew rug seller’s son.

  There were a few blacks around Rolling Hills. Aside from Reggie Holloway, Walt would occasionally meet up with them, usually through basketball. He befriended them, and they, like everybody who knew him, thought he was hilarious; a nut and a great guy.

  Stan had determined that he would find a girlfriend at Rolling Hills. The place was crawling with beautiful babes. California beach blondes and sexy fourth-generation Japanese girls. The peninsula had an active Japanese commu
nity before World War II. Many of these families had lost their land when they were interned during the war, but they came back. They were smart and hard working. Nothing could keep them down. Now their progeny again populated the hill. They made good grades and went to USC and UCLA. They lived the American Dream.

  Walt was not a ladies man. He could have been. He was not a great-looking fellow, but he had the capability of making good rap. He was by no means shy or afraid of girls. But he was still a kid and he acted like it, albeit unlike any other kid anybody had seen.

  In his freshman year, Stan had a class in English literature. They read “Romeo and Juliet” and a few other classics, none of which sunk in in the slightest way. He was a baseball player and not much else. A blonde girl named Sandra was in the class. She was friends with a black girl named Doris. Sandra liked Stan, and Stan liked her. Since they were only 14, this manifested itself mostly in insults and put-downs. As the semester wore on, the back-and-forth took on increasingly tense sexual overtones.

  Sandra wished that she was a slut. She loved to talk nasty trash. Her mother and father were both doctors, but one would never have guessed it. She seemed to be pure trailer park material.

  She repulsed Stan. He also had a big hard-on for her. He had no idea what to do with it and knew it. Doris laughed at him and called him Romeo, which puzzled Stan. For the first time in his life, he was having regular conversations with a member of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, it was terribly crude and awkward. Being called Romeo inferred that he was somehow attractive to the ladies, which he liked. He just could not get a handle on it.

  “Know what a woman has in common with a frying pan?” Sandra asked him one day.

  “Tell me,” said Stan, hating himself for not knowing the answer.

  “They both gotta be hot before you put the meat in?” she said, laughing.

  “You wish,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “You’re a slut. Why don’t you suck my fucking cock?”

  Sandra seemed quite interested in that suggestion, but the teacher, a diminutive, not-unattractive 30-something woman, heard this filth and had had enough.

  “That’s it,” she said to Stan. “You’re coming with me.”

  She dragged Stan into the office of Ms. Ruth. Ms. Ruth wore her hair in a severe manner. She had a bad hip and walked with a cane, and gave off the impression of being one big bore.

  “I’m concerned with Stan’s attitude towards women,” the teacher told Ms. Ruth.

  Ms. Ruth listened while the teacher described Stan, basically, as a pervert. Stan tried to defend himself. He tried to say that the girl was a slutty little tramp who drove him crazy, but of course verbalizing these feelings just dug him deeper into a hole.

  Ms. Ruth just looked at him as if she was Sigmund Freud. Stan could swear she had just a little smile working the corner of his mouth, but he could not put his finger on it. Many years later, he would be waiting with a pal in the bar at Joe’s. They got into a discussion with some drunk. Somehow, Ms. Ruth’s name entered the conversation. The man recognized Ms. Ruth. It turned out that she enjoyed going to swing parties, which might have explained the little smile she had when she heard about Stan’s suggestions to Sandra.

  Stan’s hormones were going crazy his freshman year. One day Dan took him out to the field for some extra practice. Stan noticed that two girls were sunbathing in right field. He made sure a few stray baseballs made it out their way. When he went to retrieve them, he was blown away. The girls were nude. He could see their soft pubic hair pushing up, in that sweet taint area below their asses.

  “My God,” he exclaimed.

  One of the girls awoke, looked up and smiled at Stan.

  Stan was stunned. In his mind, the girls were Playboy Playmates.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on?” asked Dan, sounding clueless. He could not tell the girls were even there.

  Stan insisted on Dan hitting fly balls to him in right field for about an hour. Later, he fantasized about the nude sunbathers, imagining that they wanted him. He told himself that he could have had them if it had not been for his old man being in the way.

  Yeah, right.

  The Taylor’s subscribed to the Los Angeles Times in the morning, and the Daily Breeze in the afternoons. Dan usually picked up the L.A. Herald Examiner from a newsstand and would bring it home. Stan would read the sports page, but he also liked checking out the ads for strip clubs in Hollywood.

  “Ultra sexy,” they would say, “Come feel the sensual thrills of Kiki, Rhonda, Trixi and Bunny.”

  When Dan and Shirley were out to dinner, he worked himself into a particularly torrid erotic frustration. Dan was 15, but he had yet to have sex. He had not even learned how to stroke and release, the favorite pastime of most boys his age. He simply did not know how to do it.

  The pictures of the girls appeared in the ad.

  “Kiki,” Stan mused to himself. “Hmm. Oriental. Naw. Rhonda looks okay. Trixi, nope, she’s black. Ah, Bunny. Blonde with big tits.”

  Bunny it was. The strip club’s address and phone number appeared in the ad. He called it.

  “Seventh Veil,” came a husky voice.

  “May I speak to Bunny, please?” said Stan, effectively disguising the youth in his voice. He had the gift of a husky voice anyway.

  Momentary silence. The phone was put on a desk. Stan heard some muffled sounds. His heart was racing.

  “Bunny,” the man was calling out. “Yeah. Yeah. Tell Bunny it’s for her.”

  30 or 40 seconds later, Bunny came on the line.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Stan was ridiculously horny.

  “Hi, Bunny,” he said. “It’s Mike.”

  “Um, Mike?” she asked.

  “Sure, baby,” said Stan. “I know you remember me.”

  “Well, did I meet you at the club?” she asked.

  “Sure you did,” said Stan. Then he blurted it out. “I fucked you.”

  ”Oh,” said Bunny. “Umm.”

  She seemed pleased.

  “You remember?” asked Stan.

  “Sure I do,” she answered.

  Oh my God, thought Stan. Then he recovered.

  “I want to see you,” he said. “I got somethin’ for you.”

  “I bet you do,” she cooed.

  “When can I see you?” he asked.

  “Just come on down to the club,” she said.

  “Oh, oh okay,” he said. “We’ll go out afterwards. What time do you get off?”

  “Two,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Two it is. See you then. I can’t wait.”

  “It’ll be worth the wait,” she said. In the background, Stan could hear somebody call her name. “I gotta go. I’m on stage next. Bye.”

  “Bye,” said Stan.

  He hung up the phone. Man, was he ever pleased with himself! He had carried on a real conversation with a beautiful girl. The episode was very instructive to him. First of all, it told him that he was capable of talking to girls, even if he pretended to be somebody who did not exist. No problem. He could use this persona, re-invent it, change it.

  The other thing that struck him was how easy it was to fool this girl. He looked at her picture. The girl identified as Bunny in the ad was gorgeous. She had blonde hair and big breasts, and filled out her bikini beautifully. Dumb blonde? Yes, probably.

  The other thing that occurred to Stan was how promiscuous beautiful women were. This was easily the best-looking girl he had ever spoken to. All his life, ugly girls, plain Janes, and almost every other girl he had known in school, had given him the cold shoulder.

  Now he had gotten some encouragement from two beauties. First was the naked sunbather who smiled at him when he was shagging fly balls. Now a stripper, of all people, had encouraged him to come see her. To carry it to its logical conclusion, she had “agreed” to have sex with him. It was a ruse on his part, but he was encouraged.

  He had always looked
at girls as Untouchables. Sometimes he would come across somebody like Sandra, but she seemed dirty. To him, girls were people who did not like guys. They certainly did not like him. They rebuffed the advances of men, thwarted their sexual desires. Men were the ones who wanted sex, not women. Maybe there were exceptions to this philosophy, and maybe this stripper was one of those exceptions.

  The conversation left Stan to conclude that she had enjoyed sex with this guy “Mike.” However, the fact that he could convince this bimbo that she had had sex with Mike seemed evidence that she slept with a lot of men. She was beautiful and she slept around with a lot of men. It was apparently easy to get her to take her clothes off and get it on with guys. She liked it. This was a revelation to Stan. Even though he did not formulate the thought fully in his mind, he was beginning to feel that the best-looking girls are the sluttiest. This was a very hopeful concept for him.

  Having concluded this, young Stan then realized that she was waiting for him. Here he was, sitting alone in his big, comfortable home on the hill in Palos Verdes Estates. 20 miles away, at a strip club in Hollywood, a gorgeous blonde dream girl was to be had.

  But how? He had no car, no driver’s license and in fact had no idea how to drive. There was no train service, no subway, and taking a bus would involve a journey to the center of the Earth. He had $2 to his name, and was not the type to steal. A cab ride was out of the question.

  Even if he did get to The Seventh Veil, he was way underage and would never get in. Surely he would need money to get in a place like that. The whole thing was problematic.

  If he did get there, and he did get in, then what? Bunny would laugh at him, right? The sunbathing beauty had smiled at him, though. Maybe she would think this young guy was cute. But she would know she had not had sex with him. Would she get mad at him, or think it was funny?

  Stan had seen “Summer of ‘42”, in which an “older” woman in her 20s had sex with a young guy around his age. If that guy Herbie could get Jennifer O’Neil, maybe he could get Bunny.

  It was all for naught, of course. He was stuck in this royal doghouse. The Lakers were on TV. The familiar voice of Chick Hearn was going on about some “popcorn machine.”

  Stan needed something other than sports this night. He looked at the Saturday night TV schedule. Then he saw it. “The Graduate” was just coming on. Stan had heard of this movie. It was 12 years old, but Stan had never seen it. It was supposed to be racy.

  “Jesus,” he said to himself, and turned to the station. There was Dustin Hoffman standing on the people mover at LAX. Simon and Garfunkle were singing “Sound of Silence”, and Stan knew that he was watching something as good as “Patton”.

  The movie was the final kicker. So far, he had wooed a stripper, and now he was getting a load of Katherine Ross in her prime. She was unreal. He had no outlet for his desires, so his mind raced in a conflicted manner. He was hot and bothered. On top of everything, he had to sweat out his parents return from dinner.

  He was not sure where they went. If it was Joe’s, then he could count on them being gone awhile, because it was always a long wait, especially on a Saturday night. The Taylor’s had two televisions. One was in the main living room, where he was. The other was in their bedroom. If they showed up, he would have to switch stations. If he turned it to the Lakers, Dan would ask him details about the game, and he would not know. Then Dan would ask him why he did not, if he watched the game? Like virtually all conversations with his old man, it would lead down a bad path for Stan, especially after dinner. Dan would be intoxicated. God knows what stage he would be in. If he was in the “mean stage” he did not want to tread in that territory.

  Stan would hate to have to turn off “The Graduate”. There was no pay-per-view, no Internet, no VCR. He would not easily get a chance to see it again. He had to endure commercials and the chance to see it now, or maybe not for a long time to come.

  It worked out. The whole glorious movie played for him, right down to Katherine Ross’s Elaine screaming for Hoffman’s “Ben!” on her wedding day. Just as Ben was blocking the exit of Carl Smith’s church in Santa Barbara, Stan heard Dan’s car pull up.

  “Shit,” he said to himself.

  Stan wondered how much more of the movie was left. He decided to sweat it out. Ben smiled at Elaine. Elaine smiled at Ben. The door opened. In walked Shirley and Dan.

  “What are you watching?” asked Shirley.

  “Uh, I dunno,” stammered Stan. “I just turned the station.”

  “See the Laker game?” asked Dan.

  He should have said no, that he had read a book, but he did not think fast enough.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said.

  “What happened on that call?” asked Dan.

  “Uh, gee, I missed it,” said Stan.

  “I thought you said you watched the game,” demanded Dan.

  “Are you watching ‘The Graduate’?” asked Shirley.

  “Oh, is that what this is?” asked Stan, trying to sound surprised.

  “Did you learn anything?” asked Shirley, laughing at him.

  Stan’s face turned red. There, the credits. Thank God, it was over.

  “Huh,” huffed Dan. “Yeah, did’ja learn about sex?”

  Stan just maintained silence, hoping the moment would pass. It did. The movie was over, and his reason for staying in the room no longer existed. He went downstairs, and congratulated himself on talking to a stripper and watching “The Graduate”. All in all, he had had a pretty good night for himself.

  Stan made friends with another kid his freshman year. His name was Brad Cooper. Cooper had a different relationship with Stan than the one he had with Walt. Brad had played in the Palos Verdes Babe Ruth League when he was 13. Stan remembered him as “the kid from San Francisco,” because he had just moved from the Bay Area. They did not know each other personally. Stan’s sports reputation preceded him at Rolling Hills, of course. When they met during freshman basketball try-outs, they discussed the Babe Ruth days. Cooper had been beaned by a hard, side armed Wayne Fingers fastball. Their mutual fear and disgust of Fingers made for immediate conversation.

  Brad’s father was a hardcore disciplinarian who was bringing up his boys as strict Catholics. Which meant that none of them would be strict Catholics. The old man was no strict Catholic, either. He just figured it was a good way to keep his charges in line. Nothing like fear and intimidation, as everybody from George Patton to Vince Lombardi had said.

  There were five Cooper children. All had been born within a year of each other. By the time old man Cooper had reached the ripe age of 25, all his children had been born. Mr. Cooper was a robust, athletic man, and his wife a beautiful blonde. The first son was Jeff. Jeff was a stud; great looking, smart and a good athlete. In Mill Valley, where they lived before moving to L.A., Jeff had dated the daughter of a husband and wife duo who were big rock icons of the 1960s. In the eighth grade, he had already lost his virginity. The celebrity offspring was one of his conquests. His brothers idolized him.

  When he moved to the peninsula, Jeff was an immediate hit. Everybody wanted to be his friend. He had more girlfriends than Stan could ever hope to have his in his life. The family lived on the P.V./Rolling Hills border, which was why Brad had played in Stan’s Babe Ruth League. They lived in the Rolling Hills school district, though. They lived on the same street with the Lavers and the Hernandez’s.

  The Cooper’s, Laver’s and Hernandez’s consisted of a lot of boys. They were all within a few years of each other. Everyone was competitive, testosterone-filled and sports-crazy. There were enough of them to make up several basketball teams, a football team, or a baseball team. They lived on a wide street next to a school with a good playing field. On any given day, sports were played amongst the families.

  That was not all that was going on. Some of the kids started to get into petty and not-so-petty crime. Eventually the parents began to figure whom to separate from whom, in order to keep trouble to a minimum.
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  Jeff wore his hair long and the chucks dug him. When he was a freshman, he dated sophomores. When he was a sophomore, he dated seniors. When he was a junior and senior, he got them all. The college girls came back for more.

  Jim Ambers and Richard Marder hated Jeff. They had short hair rules. Jeff refused to cut his hair, and immediately made a political issue out of it. He was student body president and took the issue to the student council. Ambers and Marder never did give in on the issue, but the papers got hold of it and turned Jeff into a celebrity.

  The next brother was Brad. Brad was smaller and not as handsome as Jeff. He was passionate about sports, though, and rivaled his brother in that regard. The brothers were fierce competitors, but totally loyal to each other.

  The third bro was Darren. Darren loved sports but lacked ability. He was, however, the smartest in the family. He would joke in later years that he was “born 30 years old,” and indeed it seemed that he was. Stan nicknamed him “The Efficient One”, because he was so “damned efficient.” Darren never got in trouble. He was the kind of guy who would write his term paper the first week of the semester. He was conservative and awesome. When he talked, he addressed his “subjects.” He occasionally finished his conversations with “I’m finished with you now.”

  Darren, being very corporate and Republican, was expected to follow his father into the stock market, but he had an artistic side. Darren was a natural-born actor, and would take that as far as he could.

  The other Coopers were not in the Rolling Hills picture. Mr. Cooper divorced his wife and moved to L.A., where he took a position with Goldman Sachs in their downtown office. His ex-wife remained in Mill Valley with the youngest son and their only daughter. These two were nice, cheerful, intelligent and attractive, but were terribly overshadowed by the three older brothers.

  Stan bonded with the three L.A. brothers. They accepted him as if he was a fourth sibling. Jeff was their idol. Stan wanted to be near his light. Mr. Cooper was a different story. They had a pool and a big yard. Mr. Cooper was always up at the crack of dawn, doing yard work or building a wing to the house, or something ambitious. Stan would wander on over to hang out with Brad.

  On a hot day, Stan and Brad were chewing the fat in the kitchen. Stan opened the refrigerator. There was a lone Coca-Cola in there. Stan grabbed it, flipped the tap, and started to drain it.

  At that moment, Mr. Cooper walked in. He was covered in dirt and sweat. His face was beet red from hours laboring in the heat. He opened the refrigerator and started scouring about.

  “Brad, have you seen my Coke?” he asked.

  Then he saw the cold, sweaty Coke in Stan’s hands.

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “Excellent work,” Brad said to Stan.

  Brad was his buddy. Like Walt, Brad was a sports fanatic. Because he lived fairly close to Stan, Brad would bum rides home, usually with Shirley. Waiting for Mrs. Taylor, or just hanging around, the two of them developed a language of their own. It was infused with a sense of humor, and a code of fun unique to them. Nobody else could understand or relate what they had together. It was totally personal. Making a friend like Brad, like his friendship with Walt, was liberating to Stan. It saved him.

  Brad and Stan would be standing around and begin riffing on anything that came to their minds.

  “This is neither the time, nor the place, to be discussing your jockey underwear,” Stan said. Then they would repeat this inanity during the ride. Shirley was clueless to their wanderings, and more often than not would be irritated by it.

  The freshman basketball team had their team picture taken by a Swedish photographer who constantly had the players changing around, and would said, “not like ziss, like ziss.”

  For two years, Brad and Stan went around saying, “not like ziss, like ziss.” One of the kids on the team had a case of bad acne on his back, so the skit they invented turned the Swede into a Nazi commandant, and went, “Not like ziss, like ziss. No, no, no, no, svine. You have rude contusions. Ziss iss not acceptable. Rude contusions!”

  They thought they were regular Laurel and Hardy’s. Anybody who looked at them was non-plussed.

  Bill Ozlow lived near Cooper. He weighed about 300 pounds by his freshman year. Eventually, he would become a drug dealer, but he was a damn smart one. He competed with Skip Beam for the peninsula’s drug trade for years. Everybody called him “Fast Oz”.

  Beam kept trying to ride his drug fortune to legitimacy. He bought property, re-modeled homes, and sold them at a profit. Years after he was supposedly “out,” he was brought back in for a big score. It was a set-up. The D.E.A. had a long memory. They had never forgiven Beam for foiling them. Beam was busted and, because of his past, given a long stretch at a Federal penitentiary. Fast Oz avoided the big-time problems associated with drug trafficking and became a successful restrauteur and family man.

  Fast Oz had little regard for Stan. During Christmas of his freshman year, Dan bought Stan a letterman’s jacket. Nobody wears a letterman’s jacket without a letter, and one only earned a letter by playing on the varsity. At the time, Dan was hoping he would make the varsity as a freshman, but it was no sure thing. Even if he did make the team, he would not get his letter until after the season, in May.

  In a terrible miscalculation, Stan started wearing the jacket around school. This caused immediate and total ridicule. Stan knew he had made a big mistake. Dan and Stan went to a Rolling Hills varsity basketball game. Stan emerged from his room wearing a sweater.

  “Where’s the jacket I bought you?” Dan asked.

  “In my closet,” answered Stan.

  “I didn’t buy it for it to be in your Goddamn closet,” Dan said. “Go get it.”

  A man who had played high school and college varsity sports would know that a kid does not wear a letterman’s jacket before earning his letter. Stan wanted to tell his old man that he did not think wearing it at a basketball game was a good idea. Talking to him about matters of this kind was an exercise in futility.

  Stan put the jacket on. When they got to the school parking lot, he took it off to leave in the car.

  “Why are you such a Goddamn studidkid?” asked Dan. “Put the jacket on.”

  “But it’s not cold in there,” answered Stan.

  “I bought it for you to wear it,” Dan answered.

  14-year old freshman Stan Taylor, the new kid, a good athlete but already notorious for his arrogance, sheepishly entered the gym wearing a Rolling Hills letterman’s jacket, sans the letter. His father was a piece of work.

  A couple thousand people did not jeer him, mock him and scream epithets at him. It just seemed that way. Stan sat in the stands with his father. Nobody sat with his or her fathers at these events. The pecking order of high school demanded that one sit with your friends. Stan did not have any friends in the student rooting section. He would feel out of place. Who would he sit next to? His being alone would just seem so obvious.

  He moved into the stands with Dan. He walked past Fast Oz. Fast Oz saw the letterman’s jacket.

  “You are…unbelievable,” Fast Oz told him.

  Stan endured these events. His father would insist on going to all the games. Stan had to sit with him, and he had to wear that God-awful jacket.

  On the other hand, Dan continued to help Stan with extra practice. Stan felt he needed the practice. He became more dedicated than ever. His parents supported him. They yelled and screamed about stupid little things, but if he needed something in a pinch they backed him up.

  Dan was almost a cartoon character, but there was a side of him many never saw. For instance, several of his clients were old ladies, whose estates he handled. Dan would personally drive to see them once a week. He would bring them things, and go far out of his way to make them comfortable. It was much more than personal service. Nobody else at his corporate law firm ever paid that kind of attention. Dan did not handle big money clients, but he treated them like they were. He did it out
of compassion. He felt it was the right thing to do.

  Stan admired his father for this. There were many things for him to admire. Dan had great work ethic. It had not manifested itself in Dan becoming an elite attorney or political figure, but the old man had put tremendous time and energy into his family, and this meant Stan. Stan knew it. Stan could never stay mad at his father. He could never allow his hard feelings for him to control him forever. He loved Dan intensely. Dan was a worthy role model and hero figure, despite his many faults.

  Drinking was one of them. Stan wanted him to stop. He took to leaving notes in his car that read, “Dad, I love you and want you to be all right. I hope you don’t drink today.” Stan just crumpled the notes up, threw them away, and drank anyway. Stan never rebelled against him by growing his hair long, doing drugs, slacking off in school, or losing his desire for sports. He wanted to be like his father. He wanted his respect. Dan had a hard time figuring his son out. He was such a chip off the old block, but fell short in some key areas.

  Stan was not the student Dan had been. Dan could not understand that. Stan pulled okay grades, but he was not an academic star. He was smart enough, but school just did not inspire him as it had Dan. Dan looked at his son and wondered if the kid was living up to all those Taylor’s who had made their great mark in politics, journalism, sports and the entertainment industry.

  Stan’s life was not about living up to the Taylor legacy. What mattered to him was making friends and making it with a girl. He had found in Brad and Walt an anti-dote to the Fast Oz’s of Rolling Hills. His new friends were his saving grace. They were his hedge against the abyss of teenage unpopularity that had threatened to overwhelm him during his junior high days.

  Stan knew that he came from a prominent family. He sensed that he was above the pedestrian taunts and put-downs of high school life, but he could not use the Taylor Family Crest as a buffer. He had to make it on his own merit. This was why sports had always validated him. Between the white lines, money and connections were of no value. Sports were the most merit-based activity there was.

  Fast Oz bummed rides with Shirley. He was like the obsequious little league kids who were nice to Stan when his parents were around. Stan knew it was an act. The tension was there.

  With Brad around, Stan put on a different persona. The Taylor’s had a dog named Laddie. Laddie was a great big tri-Collie. Brad and Stan sat up front with Shirley. Fast Oz sat in the back, with Laddie slobbering all over him.

  Shirley would stop at Ralph’s to pick up groceries, and let Laddie run in the field behind the store. Laddie always took a big old honkin’ dump. Laddie was a hairy beast. When he defecated, some of the feces would end up on some of the fur near his butt. In the car, Laddie would turn, so his crappy butt was in Fast Oz’s face. Fast Oz would be disgusted, but he was getting a free ride home.

  Stan and Brad would observe it, to their amusement.

  “Ozzie,” they would say, in mock English accents, “my good man. Ya stink, man.”

  It did not take Fast Oz long to figure out a different way to get home from school.

  Brad and Stan invented new “skits.” Adopting various accents, they made funny faces, creating characters and caricatures. Nobody else got it, except for Jeff and Darren. They seemed to be the only ones with the personality and the intelligence to “get it.”

  “Wah allo Guv’na, and a Guv’na allo,” Brad and Stan said in Cockney accents, to a sophomore. The sophomore hated them. Stan and Brad did not give him a hard time, or play tricks on him. They represented something totally foreign to him. What he could not put understand, he chose to hate.

  They invented a character named Leroy. Leroy was a black stud in the tradition of plantation slaves. He was based on a Hustler pictorial that Jeff had lying around, in which a Negro with a 12-incher gives the high, hard one to a girl made out to be a Southern belle.

  “All shall rise,” the skit went in the style of a bailiff calling a courtroom to order. Then, stage whisper: “Not that way, Leroy!”

  They created a Colonel Sanders-style Senator who recognizes, in a full Southern drawl that both kids handled impressively, “the chair recognizes the Senatah from the greeaatt, whiiitte, PREJUDICED State of Kentucky. I see judgin’ from new photos of Senatah Kennedy of Massachusetts in the company of a young lady of questionable morality on a boat, that he has changed his position on off-shore drillin’.”

  Stan would pull these sayings right out in the open. Nobody else got what he was talking about, which meant ridicule. He could care less. Brad was more PR conscious. As they got older, he usually reserved his “performances” for private sessions.

  Stan wanted to write for the school newspaper. They did not allow freshmen. There was an empty room next to the cafeteria, which was used by the local police when they busted miscreants for smoking dope. It was a bare room, but it had two things that were gold to Stan. There was a typewriter, a crude copy machine, and green paper. That was all he needed.

  He started the Rolling Hills Sporting Green. He wrote articles about Titan football, basketball and baseball games. He wrote about his friends, giving emphasis to the deeds of Walt and Brad. He wrote about himself in the third person.

  “Stan Taylor came on to close out the victory, striking out the last two Vikings on seven pitches for his third save,” he would write.

  He built up enmity by omitting the accomplishments and emphasizing the failures of others, while glorifying himself. It did not matter. He was published. He made copies and handed the Sporting Green to everybody he saw.

  “If you don’t like it,” he told detractors, “publish your own paper.” The Sporting Green became popular, which made an enemy out of Mrs. Johnson. She was the journalism teacher who supervised the official school paper. She had told Stan he was too young to write for The Titan. When Stan went forward with his entrepreneurial venture, she was pissed. She viewed such action as defiance, and was frustrated that so many read the little green rag.

  She did not admire Stan’s spirit, willingness to do something constructive, natural writing talent and creativity. This fact did not escape Stan.

  Mrs. Johnson was a neighbor of Brad’s. Brad and Stan were hanging around at Brad’s house. As usual, they were up to no good. They came across an ad for “Swinger’s Hotline.” It was some kind of pornographic material for people who enjoyed “alternative lifestyles.” In other words, swingers are men and women who go to swing parties and have orgiastic sex with as many people as possible. This is an old variation on what used to be called “wife swapping.” In the 1970s it was popularized by “key parties,” in which couples would go to a house and put their keys in a bowl, drawing them out like matched lottery tickets to determine who would have sex with whom.

  The “Swinger’s Hotline” newsletter promised plenty of information on how to engage in these activities. Better yet, it was free. Apparently it was paid for by the ads and sponsored by the various organizations charging membership or asking couple’s to pay to for the parties.

  It was too good to be true. Stan dialed the number and asked to be put on the “Swinger’s Hotline” mailing list. He gave the name “Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.” Brad knew Mrs. Johnson’s address. The publication began arriving the following week. It came every two weeks for several years. The Johnson’s had no clue how it got there. They started blaming each other. Both adamantly denied any knowledge of it. They called the number on the newsletter and asked to be taken off the list. They were assured they would not receive it anymore. It kept coming anyway. Eventually, they started reading it. In 1980 they actually attended a swing party that they saw advertised in the publication. It was a disgusting affair in some Hollywood hovel. All they really saw were piles of bodies in the corner. They never spoke of the incident again.

  In their sophomore year, the two incorrigible friends made it on to The Titan staff. The boy geniuses walked around, saying in murmured tones, “Swinger’s Hotline”, when walking near Mrs. J
ohnson. She figured out that it was them.

  The Winter Olympics were at Lake Placid, New York. The United States defeated the Soviet Union in ice hockey. It was one of the greatest moments in Americans sports history, punctuated by announcer Al Michaels’ call, “Do you believe in miracles?”

  At the paper’s staff meeting the next day, Brad and Stan were beyond themselves. They were wrapped in patriotic fervor and the glory of this Cold War sports victory over the hated Russians. They went on and on, filled with youthful enthusiasm. Then Mrs. Johnson walked in the room.

  “Hush now,” she said sternly. “Let’s direct the discussion to something relevant.”

  Stan almost had a heart attack.

  “Mrs. Johnson,” he exclaimed, managing to sound like an English barrister. “I shall have you know, madam, that discussion of the American victory over the evil minions of Communist Empire is the single most relevant topic of discussion in this classroom, to date.”

  That did it.

  “Mr. Taylor,” said Mrs. Johnson, “please come with me.”

  Stan got up and accompanied Mrs. Johnson into her little office.

  “Mr. Taylor,” she said, “I know you are behind the horrid pornography that keeps arriving by mail at my house every two weeks.” It was like when Laurence Olivier looked at Kirk Douglas and said, “Spartacus…you are he!” Stan had been found out. “ I will not put up with your impudence one minute longer. You are hereby no longer a member of The Titan.”

  Brad was behind the “Swinger’s Hotline” material, too. They were notorious cut-ups, but it was Stan who was nailed. He was obvious. He was out there. Unlike Walt or Brad, he was not discreet about his hi-jinks. Stan was gone.

  A year later, Stan had another class with Mrs. Johnson. The term paper was a historical retrospective of well-known subject matter. Stan decided to cover the 1951 pennant race between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, culminating in Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘round the World.”

  Stan typed out a 14-page essay covering every aspect of the teams, the individuals involved, the dramatic stretch run, and of course the winning moment. Mrs. Johnson gave him a B-, calling the effort “trite.”

  Years later, Stan would become friends with Leonard Koppett, a Hall of Fame sportswriter who was on the New York baseball scene during that era. Koppett was known to be the leading expert on baseball history. He was a bit of a curmudgeon, not given to easy praise.

  Stan found the old paper and read it over. He was amazed at how well written and researched it was. It was worthy of a chapter in any baseball history book. He showed it to Koppett, but hid his original grade. He wanted Len’s honest assessment of it. The next time he saw the old writer, Koppett had read it over.

  “This wasn’t written by a 16-year old,” he told Stan. “C’mon, who wrote it?”

  Once convinced that young Stan was the author, Koppett said it was an A+ paper. He told him that if he had been the teacher and found a student capable of doing that, “I would realize I had a prodigy on my hands, and I’d do all in my power to get that student into Harvard or the Columbia School of Journalism.”

  Tears came to Stan’s eyes when he thought about the lack of encouragement from Mrs. Johnson, or any of his useless, paycheck-collecting teachers. Had he been given some real direction then, he might have discovered his love, his passion and his career at a young age, instead of much later.

  The bitch Mrs. Johnson said it was “trite.”

  Stan took typing in school. He barely made a C. He could type 60 words a minute. He was an expert typist. It was a fantastic skill, which would serve him his entire life. The problem was that he had taught himself. Dan had bought him an Olivetti when he was in the seventh grade, and he learned it on his own.

  Stan already knew how to type better than anybody in the class, including the stupid teacher. He typed by sight-and-touch, using just two fingers on each hand. It was unconventional and it looked funny. It worked for him. That did not save him from getting a C because of his unconventional method. The Dumbellionite who graded him would have flunked Jimi Hendrix out of a music class because he did not play his upside down right-handed guitar “correctly.”

  The experiences with Mrs. Johnson and the typing teacher were typical of his entire academic career. All he ever got were coaches interested in their glory or teachers just punching a clock. Inspiration would have to be something he came up with on his own.

  Walt and Brad were his inspiration. They thought The Dan (as in Mr. Taylor - The Dan could be Stan or Dan depending on the context) was hilarious, not the monster some thought he was. They did not judge Stan over the letterman’s jacket incident, Dan’s yelling, or the Sporting Green. They either encouraged or tolerated Stan. They were their own men. They did not need anybody else’s opinion for them to form their own.

  Walt and Brad were not dorks, misfits or ugly. They were popular. Neither one was a big hit with the chicks, but there was time down the road to earn those spurs. They were not shrinking violets, scared of their own shadows, either. They were not driven by horrid teen peer pressure, which seems to dominate every aspect of life at that age. Mainly, they were Stan’s friends.

  Stan never had gotten his hands on the Playboy magazine that his next-door neighbor, Halstead, had stashed away. He did not really know when he hit puberty. Brad and Stan wandered into a 7-11 store. They meandered on over to the magazine rack, and checked out Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News and the usual publications.

  Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler were right there, in plain view. The depictions of gorgeous, sexually charged women adorning their covers were enough to drive Stan and Brad (who was also a virgin) right off the edge. These magazines were off limits, though. Or so Stan thought, until Brad casually picked up Playboy. He opened it up to the centerfold, and there she was.

  Candy Loving was a coed at the University of Oklahoma. Hugh Hefner had chosen her as their 25th Anniversary Playmate. She was awesome, a brunette with large, beautiful breasts and big, sensuous lips. She was a wet dream.

  Brad and Stan had no intention of buying the issue. They were not 18 yet and figured they would be carded, with poor results. They were not loaded with dough. Paying for Playboy would leave either of them broke. But the age and money issues were secondary to the embarrassment problem. It meant walking Candy Loving to the counter, where the elderly clerk (7-11 clerks were not yet refugees of the Iranian Revolution) would eye them for being the buyers of such smut, which is ironic since the clerks were the ones peddlin’ smut. Worse than the moralistic clerk was the paranoid fear that a cute girl or somebody’s mom would walk in the door and see them buying Candy Loving.

  So Brad did what seemed to be the logical thing. He stuck it into his coat and walked out. Just like that, followed by Stan. No problem. They were not caught.

  Stan thought this was just awesome. He marveled at Candy Loving.

  “I think I’ve hit puberty,” he mused. He just did not know what to do with it. Then the issue of who would take the magazine home came up.

  Stan just had to bring it home, but Brad had a stubborn streak. He did know what to do with it. So Brad took it home for a whole week. Every day, Stan bugged him about letting him have the magazine. Brad told him to get his own. Stan approached several convenience stores with this in mind. He chickened out every time.

  Finally, after eight long days, Brad gave him the Candy Loving edition of Playboy. Stan stuck it into his backpack, and sweated out the rest of day. He snuck several peaks at it, and imagined her all afternoon. Finally, at home and in the privacy of his bedroom, he found himself alone with the 25th Anniversary Playmate.

  Candy Loving. Wow. Eye candy. Except Stan literally did not know what to do. Nobody had ever taught him. He did not have an older brother. In junior high, he had been at a guy’s house when a “blue movie” was shown. But it was one of those old jobs, black-and-white on 30-milimeter film. All it really was, as he recalled, was a sexy stripper gi
rl in a bathing suit, which she took off at the pool. There was no sex.

  He had heard people talk about “cum,” and “jerking off,” but this was still uncharted territory. So he looked at the pages, and finally went to bed. In bed, he held on to his pillow and pretended it was Candy Loving. He pretended they were having a sexy conversation. He was hard as a rock against the pillow. He eventually fell asleep.

  The next morning, a Saturday, he was scheduled to pitch a game. He woke up with the same raging woodrow, and pretended the pillow was Candy. Something remarkable began to happen. This feeling between his legs. He was not sure what the heck it was, but it felt damn good and he was not about to stop. It was daylight and Candy’s centerfold was in plain view. He kept humping that soft pillow, and finally ejaculated.

  “My God,” he exclaimed to himself. He had drenched the entire pillow. It was an enormous load. Unbelievable. He was really good at it. What a talent! Stan had average size equipment, but when it got “angry” it swelled up. Women would be very fond of it. It was nicely shaped, and some of the more cerebral women in his life would call it “esthetically pleasing.”

  When he was not aroused, his equipment looked to be between small and average. In locker rooms, Stan always would take heat from teammates, who talk about anything. They would laugh at him.

  “For a dude your size,” guys would say, “you sure got a little pecker.”

  Stan did not care. He would know that his women knew. He would get hard and thick. He would have what it took to turn women on and make them feel sexy.

  All of this was in the future when Stan “accidentally” ejaculated for the first time, courtesy of Candy Loving. Pitching that afternoon, all Stan could think about was Candy. He was relaxed, and pitched a terrific game. The normal pressures of baseball seemed to wilt away, now that he had discovered the great combination of Playboy and masturbation.

  Stan kept Candy between his mattress and box springs. Naturally, Shirley entered his room, snooped around, and within a few days found it. Here was an adolescent boy who did not have a girlfriend, had been taunted by his peers, and whose courage and “manliness” had at times been in question.

  Yet, the kid had Playboy magazine. This was evidence of normalcy. He was fantasizing about some of the most beautiful women in the world, just like millions of other kids for decades.

  She left it on his bed, so that when Stan came home he would see that she had discovered it. She did not put it back where it was. She embarrassed him. He was beet red with shame.

  Thanks, Mom, Stan thought.

  After procuring the Candy Loving issue, Brad and Stan made regular forages to various convenience stores, looking for Playboy and the other men’s magazines, plus the fine side publications that Playboy published. There was Playboy’s “Girls of Summer”, “Girls of the Pac-10”, and “Wet ’n’ Wild”.

  Stan knew that Shirley would rummage through his room like an F.B.I. agent with a search warrant for Al Capone. He went through elaborate gyrations to hide his stash. His favorite publication was Playboy’s “The Women of Pompeo Posar”. Pompeo Posar was Playboy’s leading photographer, and the magazine published a special publication dedicated to his greatest work. It was outrageous. Donna Michelle. Karen Christy. Barbi Benton. A veritable Hall of Fame of sex. It was just as good as the All-Star Baseball game with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig that Granddaddy had given him in his garage.

  Brad and Stan never bought these sex pictorials. They stole all of them, developing sleight of hand, always wearing a coat for the occasion. Once they were detected and had to run down the street while the clerk yelled at them. That was their closest call. They planned their adventures and called them “heists.” They would approach Darren, who would hear none of it.

  “I shall have nothing to do with this, how you say, heist,” Darren addressed them like an English schoolmaster He was younger than the unholy duo, but light years ahead of them in maturity.

  Dave Hunt played on the JV baseball team. He was older than Stan. Stan was at his house, and he discovered a treasure trove. Hunt’s old man had been subscribing to Playboy since the early 1960s, and they were all kept in order. Stan simply had to have them. Luckily (depending on one’s point of view), Hunt had just hooked up with his first girlfriend. According to teenage rationale, he was now “above” such things as Playboy. He sold the whole collection to Stan for $30.

  Stan did not have a girlfriend. He had the “Women of Pompeo Posar”. High school girls were no comparison with Cindy Wood and Marilyn Lange. Plus, he actually read the articles, in particular the Playboy interview. Stan could name every Heisman Trophy winner, World Series champion, Most Valuable Player, and now every Playmate!

  He had centerfolds of the 1970s spread on his bed. He achieved full wood. His father opened his door and barged right in.

  “I need to talk to you about tomorrow’s schedule,” said Dan.

  Stan just lay there holding himself. Dan saw the magazines. Instead of easing his way out of the room, he sat there and discussed the stupid itinerary. Stan pulled the sheet over himself and covered up the magazines as best he could. He nodded stupidly. Dan knew his son was embarrassed.

  In 1980, Stan and Brad added telephone fraud to their repertoire. They found a random phone number from the South Bay phone book, dialed the operator, charging a call to the Playboy Club in New York City, which was allowed at that time.

  “Playboy Club,” came the female voice on the phone. A real bunny? Probably.

  “Yes, this is Richard Betkivich,” Stan said, using the name of the guy they found in the phone book. “I’d like to book a bachelor party, please.”

  From there, he put together an expensive party at a future date for Betkivich, who could never have imagined what a high roller he was.

  “Shecky Green’s available that week,” said the bunny.

  “Oh, yes,” said Stan. “Book him.”

  The whole bill was mailed to Betkivich’s address, which was in the book, too.

  The Playboy bachelor party scam was not enough. Stan decided to go for the coup de grace of pranks, something that required real wit, humor and innovation. Ordinary kids were into stink bombs and toilet paper parties. He was way beyond that. Stan was no ordinary kid.

  In 1980, Tom Seaver was having a lousy season in Cincinnati. Stan decided to trade him. He wanted to trade him to the Dodgers, but he had recently heard an interview with Spec Richardson, general manager of the San Francisco Giants. Richardson sounded like Slim Pickens. Stan had mastered Pickens’ famous phrase “What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin’ on here?” from “Blazing Saddles”.

  The Dodgers GM was Al Campanis. Capturing the gruff voice of Campanis was not in his repertoire. The call went out to Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, from the payphone in front of the Rolling Hills gym. Another poor slob was randomly selected out of the phone book to pay for the call.

  “Cincinnati Reds,” said the operator.

  “Richard Wagner,” said Stan. “This is Spec Richardson of the Giants, sugar.”

  “Yes, Mr. Richardson,” she said.

  “Hey, Spec, what can I do you for?” said Wagner.

  “Well,” drawled Stan “Richardson”, “I got a deal for ya.”

  “Is that right?” inquired Wagner, surprised that a division rival wanted to trade with him. “Whaddaya got?”

  “Tom Seaver for Jack Clark,” said Stan. “Straight up.”

  There was a moment of silence on the line. Seaver for Clark? That was a great trade for the Reds. Seaver was a future Hall of Famer, but he was having an off year. Clark was one of the best young hitters in the game.

  “Done,” said Wagner.

  After a little small talk and some details, Wagner said, “I’ll get it on the wire,” and they parted company.

  Brad was awed. The ability to carry this out so calmly and easily was a gift. That afternoon, they listed to Dodgertalk on KABC 790, and host Geoff Witcher announced the Seaver-fo
r-Clark trade. Dodger fans were calling in, demanding why Campanis had failed to pull off this kind of trade. They were in a pennant battle with Houston.

  Wagner did inform the Commissioner’s office of the trade, but the Giants never consummated it, of course. A call went out to Richardson, who was asked why he had not put Clark on the wire to make the trade official.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he responded to the baseball official calling from New York.

  Richardson then got to thinking about it, and decided it was not such a bad trade, after all. He called Wagner, but he wanted the Reds to throw in some prospects. Between the new demands and the overall embarrassment of the trade snafu, Seaver-for-Clark never came down. The media got a hold of it, and speculated on the “joke,” but the issue eventually went away.

  “George, you’ve performed magnificently here in Europe,” Brad said to Stan, as if he were Karl Malden playing Omar Bradley in “Patton”. “Ike’s up against a whole new set of priorities in London. I’m gonna have to slow you down a bit.”

  “Naw, you can’t do that,” Stan imitated George Scott’s Patton. “Sounds like Montgomery.”

  “Now just hold on, George,” Brad said. “Hitler’s killing more civilians in London than he is soldiers in the field. There’s serious issues here. Political issues.”

  “By God it is Montgomery,” Stan thundered. “You give me that gas, I’ll gain ground. I’ll kill Germans. You give me 100,000 gallons, I’ll go straight to Berlin.”

  “Now, there’s use arguing with me about it,” Brad replied.

  “If you didn’t want me to fight, why’d you pick me?” Stan asked.

  “I didn’t pick you,” Brad answered. “Ike picked you. George, you are loyal, trustworthy, you’re one of the best tank commanders I’ve got, but you just don’t know when to shut up! George, you’re a pain in the neck.”

  “I got a lot of faults, Brad,” Stan says. “But ingratitude isn’t one of ‘em. I owe you a lot.” Then Stan pauses, and shows some real acting talent.

  “I’m a prima donna, Brad. I admit it. What bothers me about Monty is he won’t admit it.”

  Stan would pretend to hold binoculars at Al Gatar, and say, “Rommell, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, I READ YOUR BOOK!”

  Brad and Stan did a skit they called “I KNOW.” It could be anything. One of them would start in on a subject he knew the other had complete knowledge of.

  “You see, Stan, the Dodgers came to Los Angeles in 1958,” Brad said in a cocksure manner.

  “I know,” Stan replies.

  “Well you didn’t realize they came from Brooklyn -. ” Brad says.

  “I know, Brad,” Stan interrupts.

  “But ya see, they were the Dodgers in Brooklyn, too,” says Brad. “They used to be the Suburbas, then the Trolley Dodgers -”

  “I know, Brad,” Stan says patiently.

  “But you see, they came out here and played at the Coliseum,” Brad continues. “That’s where SC plays football -.”

  “I know, man, okay,” says Stan, still showing patience.

  “Oh, well, they built Dodger Stadium in 1963 -.”

  “1962,” says Stan.

  “…And the team drew almost 3 million fans, a record -.”

  “I know.”

  “And they won many pennants with Dandy Sandy and Big D and I went to a lot of games and ate Dodger Dogs and Walt’s Malts and -.”

  “I know.”

  “…And they won the Series in ’63 and ’65 -.”

  “I KNOW, BRAD. I KNOW. Dear God, man, I know.”

  Stan bellowed it out loud enough for everybody within shouting distance to hear. He patted Brad on the head as if he was a child who realized he had erred.

  “I know, Brad,” he would finish it off softly.

  “Ehhhhhh,” was Brad’s stock response.

  They made faces, hiding their upper teeth with their lips, making them look goofy.

  They would talk in faux Irish accents.

  “`Tis a fine, fine doggy,” Brad would say, petting Stan’s dog, Laddie, while looking at the dog with an exaggerated look of youthful love.

  “And a fine, fine Daddy as vell,” Stan would finish it off.

  Brad and Stan could be just as stupid as they could be witty when it came to things that made them laugh. They started taking used, wet towels, and throwing them at each other. The one with the towel draped on them would gingerly peel it off, using the ends of his fingers as if the towel was a heinous object.

  “Hmm,” he would say. “Translucent in substance. Sticky. Hmm, let’s see. It’s…why, could it be? Hmm, it’s…it’s…why, it’s…”

  Then mock “realization” would be followed by horror.

  “It’s SPEEEERMM!!!”

  Anybody standing around them looked at them as if they were jackasses. They could care less. As much as they loved each other, though, Brad and Stan could only take so much of each other. They both had a selfish streak. Brad never would grow out of his. Even as adults, they would be at each other’s throat on occasion. Confined spaces, road trips, long periods of time together, would create small contempt. Brad would always maintain a Brad-is-first attitude.

  Walt, on the other hand, had an insouciant way of fluttering though life offending everybody, yet really offending nobody. He was a teenage version of Hunter S. Thompson, spouting various inanities that could pass for wisdom; making announcements and pronouncements about any and all things as if he were a supreme authority, all of delivered in mock jest.

 

  In 1979, freshman all-league sensation Billy Boswell hit .400. Stan was not an all-leaguer, but had struck out Billy in their dramatic head-to-head match-up. Billy still overshadowed him.

  Ambers put everything into coaching the Rolling Hills varsity, and had decided not to manage the American Legion team in the Summer. Rolling Hills’ Legion team had not been a really serious club for a few years. They played a regular league schedule, rarely practiced, and did not go anywhere in the post-season.

  Ambers asked Dan Taylor to manage the Legion squad in 1979. Stan had mixed emotions about it. Dan had coached in the Winter league, but he felt his old man was a loose cannon who, unleashed upon the Rolling Hills baseball program, could have the same effect he had had on him when they were in Palos Verdes.

  On the other hand, he thought there might be some advantage to having his family closely associated with Ambers’ program.

  That year, it was decided that they would not just allow graduating seniors to play, but even 18-year old college freshmen who had gone to the school. It was decided that they would put together an American Legion juggernaut. They would practice regularly, simulating a minor league professional organization. At the first meeting, held in the gym, Dan gathered his team together.

  “As far as you’re concerned,” he told them, “I’m Jim Ambers, and you’re to pay me the same respect you pay Coach Ambers.”

  The remark went down like dead weight.

  “Yeah, sure,” one 18-year old, who had just finished his first year at Loyola, remarked.

  Something had happened to Dan since his days playing at SC, and in the White Sox minor league system. For all his moxie and savvy, all his maturity and baseball experience, his methods seemed to be a thing of the past. He was a caricature of the 1950s, dealing with kids in the late 1970s. They wore their hair long, they did drugs, and they were not virgins. They respected authority only if it was forced down their throat, which was Ambers’ way. Ambers demanded and received respect through intimidation and fear. Dan did not have that in him. A kid needed to know that the threats were real, and if he felt a hint of weakness, that was the end of it.

  Stan was eligible to play his last year of Babe Ruth baseball, but had chosen not to do it. He still lived in the Palos Verdes district, and would have to play with all those kids who hated him. It would have been a disaster going back there after going to Rolling Hills. Many had determined that he had cut ’n’
run.

  He could not actually play Legion ball, since the rules required 16-to-18 year olds only, but Dan took care of that. The league schedule consisted of 24 games, but Dan scheduled games almost every night in the Summer. The team played close to 60 games from Memorial weekend until the post-season in August. They traveled all over Greater Los Angeles, including Orange County, the San Gabriel Valley, San Fernando, up to Ventura and out to San Bernardino.

  It was a fantastic Summer. Stan pitched, played shortstop and first base in the non-league games. He built on his freshman performance, establishing himself as a top player. He was 6-0 with a 1.57 earned run average. He beat some of the top teams in Southern California, including the powerful Long Beach Connie Mack team in a game under the Blair Field lights. A switch-hitter, he belted a couple homers and hit over .300.

  Rolling Hills ended Santa Monica’s dominance and went all the way to the Legion World Series in New Mexico before losing. Over in Palos Verdes, Billy Boswell hit almost .800 in his last year in the Babe Ruth League. He took P.V. all the way to the Babe Ruth World Series, but they lost in the semi-final game. A lot of folks were mad at Stan for not playing out his last year. If he had pitched, they might have won, just as they had in little league three years prior. It was absolutely ludicrous for a player of Billy’s skills to be playing in that competition. He also played in non-league games for the Redondo Beach Legion team, which consisted of players mostly from Palos Verdes and Redondo Union High.

  In his sophomore year, Billy starred as an All-State football and basketball player, and was an All-American in baseball. Stan played Winter league baseball. His dad again coached the team. He was a substitute on the varsity basketball team, and the ace right-hander on the baseball team. He did not throw all that hard, but he had great control, and a mastery of four pitches: Fast ball, curve, slider and change-up.

  As good as he was, he was still in Billy’s shadow. Stan was 11-1 and made All-Bay League, but Billy was already being featured in national magazines like Prep Sports and Cal-Hi Sports. Perhaps the highlight of Stan’s sports career came in early June, however. All season, he and Rolling Hills had battled Billy and Palos Verdes for supremacy and bragging rights. Both teams made the play-offs, and moved through Southern Section competition. The two teams met each other in the title game at Anaheim Stadium, the home of the California Angels.

  Almost 20,000 people showed up. Most of the peninsula was on hand, and both school’s entire student bodies made it to Orange County. With the score tied, 2-2 in the fifth, Billy connected for a two-run homer off of Stan. Taylor was devastated. To have Boswell tear his heart out was almost too much to bear. He could see the little pissant, Matt Hobli, yelling like crazy from behind the P.V. dugout. Hobli had played on the junior varsity that season.

  In the top of the seventh, Stan came to bat with his team trailing, 4-3, and runners on second and third with two out. Palos Verdes considered walking him, but chose to pitch to him, which fueled him even more. The count went full, and still they came in with a strike.

  Stan stroked a doubled to drive in the tying and go-ahead runs. He held the lead in the bottom of the seventh, and was pictured in the Los Angeles Times’ sports section and the Daily Breeze front page being carried off the field by his teammates, the 1980 CIF-Southern Section champions.

  That Summer, Dan again coached the Legion team. Stan was like a conquering hero, a celebrity. He was the super sophomore who had pitched and batted his team to the title. Pro scouts and college recruiters checked him out.

  This time, Ambers did not allow seniors or college boys to play, limiting the roster strictly to returning players in the Rolling Hills program. Rolling Hills beat out Redondo for the league title. Boswell hit over .500 that Summer, but it was not enough.

  When a Legion team advances to the play-offs, they are allowed to pick up three players from their league for the post-season. Billy was picked up by Rolling Hills. The team advanced past the first two tournaments, which included a trip to Yountville, in Northern California.

  During this entire time, Billy and Stan never said two words to each other. Since Dan managed the team, he had occasion to talk to Boswell, but the communication between them was held to an absolute minimum. Boswell’s large family made all the trips. Even his father, Al, who was with the San Diego Padres, made it to a regional game in Fullerton. The Boswells and the Taylor’s never said a word to each other. Matt Hobli showed up. He hung with the Boswell entourage, and never anything to Stan, Dan or Shirley in the stands. Shirley never spoke with the Boswells. The whole thing was surreal.

  It was not that the kids, or the families, were enemies. They had never fought with each other. There was, however, an unspoken rivalry that mirrored the real rivalry that had developed between the two kids. They were the two best athletes in the South Bay; one white, one black, and while there was not any outward racial animosity, a palpable tension existed. They had chosen sides early on and stuck to it.

  They respected each other. The papers talked about the rivalry, and their teammates acknowledged it, but the kids themselves left it up to others to make hay of it. Billy did not badmouth Stan to his family or Matt Hobli. Stan had nothing bad to say to Stan or Shirley, to Brad or Walt, or anybody else.

  Others tried to fuel the fire. Dan would bitch about Billy, calling him sullen and unfriendly, but even he could not put his finger on what made the kid tick. Stan never took the bait. When the subject came up, he just maintained his silence.

  At Yountville, things fell apart. A team from Sacramento blew out Stan. Billy never got a hit the entire time. Rolling Hills was forced to return home with their tail between their legs.

  Jim Ambers was none too pleased, but the failure of his team to advance very far was not his only beef. Ambers had a son named Marty. Marty was a mediocre ball player. He was a liability in the field, and could not hit. He was also a complete prick, just like his old man.

  When Marty arrived at Rolling Hills, there was another kid who had come up through the little leagues and the Babe Ruth League with him, named Nick Tolan. Tolan lived, ate and breathed baseball. He was talented. He was a far better player than Marty.

  A gruff, big man named Jesse Pentilla coached the freshman team. Nick beat out Marty for the starting job and had an excellent season. The next year, Marty played on the varsity, even though he had no business being there. Nolan started on the JVs. Nick again languished on the JVs his junior year, when he should have started on the varsity. Marty started on the varsity.

  Nick was so heartbroken by his treatment that he gave up baseball and got heavily into drugs. Marty hit .103 as a junior, but stayed in Ambers’ starting line-up despite intense grumbling. His senior year he was named captain, although he could not lead a dog. He batted .197.

  Dan butted heads with Ambers when it was time to choose his 18-man roster for the Legion play-offs. He could bring only 15 Rolling Hills players, since three spots were left open to all-stars from the league. One of them was Billy. Another was an excellent second baseman from Bishop Montgomery High named Rich Bixby.

  Bixby took Marty Ambers’ spot on the roster and played his position. Ambers was vacationing at Big Bear Lake when he heard about it, and he called Dan to rip him a new anal cavity.

  “What the hell are you thinking, Dan?” he yelled.

  “But, Rich Bixby’s -.”

  “I don’t give a shit what Rich Bixby is,” shot back Ambers. “You get him off that team and you do it now.”

  “I can’t,” said Dan.

  “What the hell do you mean, you can’t?” asked Ambers.

  “I submitted the rosters to the American Legion office,” said Dan, sweating. “It’s too late to change it. It’s official. The rules are, even if he gets hurt, that’s it.”

  “Ah, shit oh dear,” said Ambers, using one of his favorite expressions. “You are one sorry ass motherfucker and you’re Goddamn kid’s gonna pay.”

  Dan
could feel his head swelling, his heart racing, his pulse quickening. He was in full stress mode, holding the phone in his hands, listening to the dial tone after Ambers hung up on him.

  In the other room, Stan heard his father’s side of the conversation. He knew he was up the creek.

  Marty was even less impressive as a human being than he was as a baseball player, but he knew he was a crappy player. His father verbally abused him at home. Marty abused his position as the coach’s son with teammates, peers, teachers and other coaches. He had no respect for authority other than his own father.

  Marty once asked Dan him if Shirley gave him head.

  Dan repeated this story at home to Shirley and Stan. Stan was afraid of Marty. He knew he would not serve himself by making an enemy of him, even though he hated the kid. Marty ridiculed Stan, and hung with a small cadre of delinquents who made fun of him, too. Marty drank, smoked pot, and snorted blow. Stan was a straight arrow. Marty knew he was not in Stan’s league in any way. He was no intellectual giant, and Stan was something of a brain. Few understood Stan’s psyche and his sense of humor, except for a small group of kids like Walt and Brad. What kids like Marty did not understand, they made fun of. Marty just knew that as the years went by, Stan would ascend while Marty would sink into ignoble mediocrity. Like the Frankie Yagman’s, the Rico’s and the Wayne Fingers’ of the world, he was determined to get his licks in while he still could.

  That is what high school is all about.

  Success in sports was helping Stan to develop some sense of popularity. It was not genuine popularity. He had a whole new group of kids taunting him at Rolling Hills, but he was slowly, yet surely, finding a niche and an outlet in which to express himself.

  What he still wanted was a girlfriend. His stash of Playboys helped him through lonely nights, but he needed the human touch, other than his own. Looking back at his years at Rolling Hills, Stan always kicked himself over his handling of Staci Hartley and Lyndsey Pallas. In some important ways, he had a lot to learn.

  Staci and Lyndsey were his age. He met them in the same Spanish class in which Walt got everybody but himself in trouble. They were cute as hell. Staci was tall, thin yet athletic, with a heart-shaped face. She looked like a blonde Debra Winger. Lyndsey was tall, with unbelievable, long black hair, and an incredible body. She had some Cherokee Indian in her, and looked like Cher.

  Staci and Lyndsey were bi-sexual and boy crazy. They did not lose their virginity until their junior year, but they enjoyed taking some lucky guy to Staci’s parents house, and seducing him in the hot tub. They had their eye on Stan.

  Stan, dingbat that he was, was convinced that they were not smiling at him, but rather laughing at him. The girls were nice as can be, and tried to make friends with him. Stan just did not get it. He thought they were total foxes, but he was too shy and too scared of girls to take advantage of the situation.

  Staci and Lyndsey figured he must be gay, which made them want him even more. Bennie and Walt had grown up with the girls. Bennie was much more hip on these kinds of matters than Walt.

  “Hey man,” he said to Stan. “Those girls like you.”

  “Ya think?” asked Stan.

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked Bennie. “Go talk to them. Trust me.”

  Despite Bennie’s attempts to clue Stan in that a great opportunity was at hand, Stan was paralyzed.

  His sophomore year, he sat on a bench eating lunch with Ron Walker, a senior, back-up catcher. Staci and Lyndsey came by, flirting like crazy with Stan. They wore tight, form-fitting jeans, with belly shirts showing plenty of cleavage and tanned skin. Their hair flowed down to their butts. They could be had at the drop of a hat. All Stan had to do was take just a little initiative.

  “Hi, Stan,” said Staci.

  “Hi, Stan,” echoed Lyndsey.

  “Hi,” said Stan.

  Awkward silence followed. The girls looked at each other as if to ask, Why is this guy ignoring us? Walker stared at Stan as if he was an idiot.

  “Stan, what are you doing this weekend?” Staci inquired.

  “I dunno,” answered Stan dumbly.

  “Wanna come to our house?” asked Lyndsey.

  “Uh, I dunno,” said Stan. This was the guy who successfully convinced the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds to trade Tom Seaver for Jack Clark, and he could not lift his eyes to talk to these girls.

  “Want my phone number?” asked Lyndsey.

  “Uh, yeah,” said Stan.

  “Why don’t you come to our house after school?” asked Staci.

  “Uh, I got practice,” said Stan.

  It went on like that.

  If he played his cards right, he could be naked with these high school honeys in a hot tub. A high school sports star, in a hot tub having passionate sex with two gorgeous California girls overlooking the Pacific Ocean! It does not get any better than that. Stan was too stupid with girls to see it. He did see it, he just failed to overcome his own inhibitions. Those inhibitions had been drilled into him since he was a child, and manifested themselves in terms of insecurity, poor self-esteem, and tentativeness. He was conflicted. The same guy who wanted the ball in the seventh inning of a tight game, a natural leader on the warring fields of athletic strife, he had challenged Rico and Fingers head on with everybody watching. But he was scared with girls.

  The girls left after the unsatisfactory exchange.

  Ron Walker observed the whole mating dance, utterly incredulous.

  “Are you a fool?” he asked Stan.

  “I, no,” said Stan.

  “Horseshit,” said Ron. “You’re a fool. Those girls are the two sexiest women at this school and they want to get naked with you, and you’re tellin’ `em you got practice. We don’t got practice. What the hell’s the matter with you, man? Wake up.”

  “I gotta lift weights after school,” said Stan.

  “Lift weights?” asked Ron. “Jesus, you can lift weights any time. Shit, lift them on and off of your dick. Do pushups in and out of them. Those chicks’d let you do anything you wanna do. If they wanted me, I’d be there so fast…”

  “I know,” said Stan. “You’re right.”

  “Go get `em,” said Ron. “Go. Now. Before they leave.”

  The girls were just meandering along. Lord, Lyndsey turned and smiled at him.

  Stan just sat there eating his sandwich.

  “You’re fucking hopeless,’ said Ron. “You’re a hopeless case. I give up.”

  Stan just knew that if he simply got up, walked 15 yards and said, “Okay, let’s go,” he would within an hour be having fantasy sex. It was in his grasp, within the palm of his hand. He could not make himself do it. He sat there, looking at his sandwich. Ron stared at him as if he was from another planet.

  As a junior, Billy was an All-American football quarterback and basketball forward, and again an All-American baseball center fielder. His football, basketball and baseball teams all won the Southern Section title.

  His friend Hobli played JV basketball and baseball. Billy really started to break out with the girls. He was terrific looking, and being black at a mostly-white high school worked to his advantage. He was hung like a horse, and word of his endowment spread among the girls of Palos Verdes Estates. Hobli went out with him on double dates and often helped him in his never-ending struggle to juggle girlfriends. Hobli would occupy one girl while Billy was finishing with another, unbeknownst to each other. The rich, white suburban girls just loved the whole taboo of having sex with a black guy. Billy played it perfectly. He was well mannered, polite and nice to these girls. He led them smiling down the primrose path.

  Billy stayed away from drugs. He had seen substance abuse swallow up a lot of great athletes. His father was nearing the end of a Hall of Fame career that could have been even better had he been more focused. Billy had grown up at Dodger Stadium. His playground had been big league ballparks, his playmates Major Leaguers. He was gifted with great talent, and treated as a special
person from the beginning. His being black worked to his advantage, too. All in all, he was already full of himself. There was nobody to tell him he should feel any other way. His father did not do that. Neither did his mother or his coaches. Matt Hobli was practically his servant. By his junior year he had a posse of sycophants, worshippers and groupies.

  Billy was hugely popular despite treating a lot of people poorly. He was nice to beautiful girls. Everybody else got the cold shoulder, unless he was in a mood to be nice. It did not matter. Everybody kissed his royal ass.

  Stan also eschewed drugs, but not for the same reasons that Billy did. Stan was a sheltered kid who simply was not exposed to these kinds of things. Kids at Rolling Hills had money, and drugs were easily obtainable. There were dealers on the peninsula, and if one wanted to slum it, they could venture into Torrance, Gardena, and L.A. to mix with the crack heads.

  Stan did not party. He was not invited to parties. He had no girlfriends. He was not a popular member of the “in crowd.” His teammates tolerated him because of his ability.

  In his junior year, Stan started and made all-league in basketball. He was 6-5 at the age of 17. Normally, he would have weighed about 175 or 180 pounds, but he had lifted weights religiously for three years, and was up to 215. He was strong and muscular. He was still not very aggressive, however. He felt a surge of confidence with his new strength, and threw harder because of it, but he was not yet sure of himself as a man.

  Ambers was old school, one of those guys who thought baseball players should not lift weights because it would tie up their muscles and cause injuries. Stan infuriated him by lifting weights for hours, whether Ambers liked it or not. What really galled Ambers was that Jesse Pentilla had taken Stan under his wing, and was supervising his workouts.

  Pentilla was the guy who sat Marty’s butt on the bench in favor of Nick Tolan when he coached freshman baseball. Ambers had given him grief about it, just like he had with Dan when he had the temerity to leave the little prick off the American Legion play-off roster. Pentilla refused to take any of Ambers’ crap. He was 6-6, 245 pounds in his own right. He had been a tough Mexican-American kid who survived the streets of East Los Angeles, had excelled at the University of Santa Clara on an athletic scholarship, and had played professional football for a couple of years. He was a colleague of Ambers, and refused to see the man as a legend (“except in his own mind”). Pentilla believed in fairness and honesty. He saw in Ambers greed and manipulation.

  When Stan first entered his weight room, he stood 6-2, 135 pounds. He could shower in the barrel of a .22. Pentilla prescribed a meat ’n’ potatoes diet, and had him doing squats, dead lifts, and bench press. Pentilla relentlessly pushed Stan to work his butt off in the weight room.

  “I don’t wanna see nothin’ but assholes and elbows,” was one of his favorite expressions.

  “Some day you’ll be 6-6, 235,” he told Stan.

  “No way, Coach,” replied Stan.

  “I guarantee it,” Pentilla told him.

  By his junior year, Stan and Ambers were hardly speaking to each other. They had a “marriage” of convenience. Stan pitched Ambers’ team to victory, so Ambers wanted him around. But the incident with Marty the previous Summer had changed things. Dan still showed up at practices, and sat in the stands during games. He did not hide his opinions. Dan’s opinion was that his son was the greatest thing in the world, and Ambers did not appreciate what he had. It got to the point where Ambers barely spoke to Dan.

  Dan always sat behind home plate. He preached to Stan that he needed to keep his arm up when delivering pitches. Occasionally, Stan tended to short arm. Dan hounded him about it. Stan would be on the mound, trying to concentrate on the batter. Behind home plate, Dan would get this look. It was a serious look. His face had a “long” quality to it. Shirley would sit next to him until it got unbearable. Then she had to move. Dan swore and moaned and was pissed. Others gave him fair distance. He yelled at his son. He embarrassed him. Stan would have done anything not to have his old man sit right behind home. He hated looking at him every game. He would dearly love a breather from the old man.

  Just take a few games off. Maybe when I do not pitch. Stop coming to practice. He tried to hint around these issues, but the result was shame and martyrdom, with Dan nailing himself to the proverbial cross in order to gain maximum guilt out of his kid.

  “I practice with you every chance I get,” he would say. “How dare you not appreciate the sacrifices I’ve made for you. I’ve spent thousands of dollars to make you better. You ungrateful brat.”

  He was right. Stan knew it, and had no comeback when Dan rolled out the big guns.

  Dan always pumped Stan for information. Who is starting the next game? What did Ambers say to him? Was Ambers happy with him? No detail was too unimportant for Dan to know. It drove Stan out of his mind, but he had been raised to answer all his old man’s questions, so he did. Stan often wanted to tell the guy to mind his own business and stop asking him all these lame questions. He knew that this was unacceptable. The fallout would be terrible consternation, blaming, maybe even a little violence.

  Dan drank heavily and acted it. He drank beers in the car and left the empties lying around. He drank at the games. His breath smelled.

  If Stan pitched well, and he usually did, Dan was ecstatic. He would jump around cheering and hooting like a maniac. He would greet his son with a big hug, and fill him with compliments. Shirley would follow suit. Dan would go over the whole game, asking what pitch Stan threw to certain hitters, or in particular situations. He would marvel at how Stan had pitched out of a jam, or struck somebody out at a key point in the game.

  “You deserve a meal at Joe’s,” he announced. That was Stan’s reward, dinner at Joe’s with the folks.

  When Stan did not pitch well, the misery and pain was worthy of Shakespearean drama. Stan would watch his father’s face in the stands after he walked hitters, gave up hits, and worse, after opponents scored runs against him. He had that tortured Emil Zatopek look to him. The real torture was for Stan, who had to look at the old man, knowing he had let him down. Stan knew what was in store after the game. It would not be prawns and spaghetti at Joe’s.

  Emerging from the locker room, Dan would be moping in the car. Stewing. Stan would get in. There would be no discussion. Dan would start the car, and they would drive home in abject silence.

  It was not entirely Dan’s fault. Stan took baseball as seriously as any kid. If he failed, he took it hard. He was not in a mood to talk or joke around, either. If Dan had tried to get him to open up on these occasions, Stan would not have had much to say anyway.

  So they just sat there like lumps of coal. Shirley was less attuned to the mood after a poor performance. She still harbored the illusion that it was still “just a game.” She would break the silence with her chatter. In contrast to the Stan and Dan silent movie, it was embarrassing and grating.

  Things just did not occur to Shirley any more. Living with Dan and the soap opera that was her son’s precious sports career had its effect. She would demand conversation and get none. Then she would start in on Stan, berating him for his bad attitude.

  Dan headed straight to the freezer, loudly breaking ice for the first of many Stanerinos. Shirley got on him.

  “Goddamn it all to hell,” Dan yelled at her, “get off my back.”

  “Do you have to drink?” she asked.

  “Goddamn it get off my back I told you,” he yelled.

  Dinner was a terrible affair. It took place in stone silence or amid yelling and swearing.

  Dan was in a particularly nasty drunken state and Shirley had had enough. She called Stan in to her room. Stan sat at the bed of his crying mother.

  “I just can’t take it any more,” she told him.

  “I know, Mom,” said Stan lamely. Stan was amazed that Shirley had stuck with Dan. When she was alone with Stan, Shirley had more sense about her. She became fairer. She seemed to have her blinders
lifted. She could see that Dan was a mutual “enemy.”

  “Stan,” she said to him, “you have to ask him to stop drinking. He has to stop drinking. I just don’t know what I’ll do. I just don’t know if I can stay with him.”

  Stan approached the old man, who looked at him as if Stan had just announced at a press conference that he was a gay Communist who hated baseball.

  “Dad,” Stan would mutter. “I’ve spoken to Mom. She really wants you to stop drinking.”

  Dan would say nothing. He dug in. He was pissed and drunk. He stopped looking at Stan. Dan wanted only to avoid the subject. Through body language and mental aloofness, he kept Stan’s words as far away from him as he could.

  Dan stopped drinking a few times. It never lasted more than a week. He tried to drink only wine. He tried to go “on the wagon.” Stan waited until his folks were out to dinner, and he poured out well over $100 worth of Scotch, Bourbon, wine, Tequila and Rum.

  “Liquor, liquor, lousy liquor,” Stan called it.

  Dan came home and saw what he had done. He appreciated Stan’s concern, but he expressed to Stan that he should not have done it. The liquor should be kept in the house for guests.

  Stan immediately recognized this as a lie or an excuse. He was right. The liquor always returned.

  Dan was a tough pill to swallow, but Stan felt that he would not have stayed married to Shirley, either. She was scatter-brained, kept the house in a state of disarray, had zero patience, yelled at the drop of a hat, and misunderstood things. Her competency had been depleted through fear and intimidation. She seemed to have lost the ability to think for herself. Now, she just lived with Dan’s abuse.

  When Dan jumped on Stan, she jumped right in with him. Stan dealt with this convergence of two fronts. Shirley never provided friendly skies to abate the storm.

  Stan walked in to the kitchen, and the place looked like a disaster area. Already a history buff who did imitations, Stan incorporated some style into his barbs.

  “Jesus,” he’d say out loud. “This place looks like post-war Berlin. It looks like Atlanta after Sherman was finished with it. We’ll have to call FEMA to get Federal matching funds.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Shirley, but with a twinkle of a smile because Stan’s commentary had some merit.

  “I believe it should be the stated purpose of this great family,” Stan said in an excellent John Kennedy imitation, “to send men in to clean this kitchen, and return them safely to Earth before the end of this decade. I ask Congress for the necessary support, and while the task before us shall be hard, we as a family can attain these lofty American goals!”

  “Smart ass,” said Shirley.

  Shirley had a habit of talking with her mouth full. Stan could not understand what she said.

  “What?” he would say.

  “You heard me,” Shirley would say.

  Stan had not heard her, because her mouth was packed full of food. Stan never spoke with his mouth full. If asked a question while his mouth was full, he carefully chewed and swallowed it before answering. Before he could answer, Dan or Shirley said, “Goddamn asshole,” or “Spit it out,” or “Answer us,” or “Stop treating us like dirt.” This went on for years.

  Stan was conscious of the California water shortages of the 1970s. He blew his nose using toilet paper, threw the paper in the toilet bowl, but did not flush it. It would harmlessly sit in the toilet until the next time. After relieving himself Stan would flush the water. He did it to save water.

  “Goddamn it all to hell,” Dan said when he saw toilet paper in the bowl. He went in to Stan’s room.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Stan followed him in to the bathroom.

  “How much Goddamn paper do you need to wipe your fucking ass?” asked Stan.

  “Enough to remove the feces from the inner reaches of my asshole,” replied Stan.

  “Don’t give me a lot of shit,” said Dan. “There’s always Goddamn toilet paper from you stuffing the bowl. Why do you have to use so much paper?”

  “I do not,” replied Stan in an unemotional tone. Instead of explaining why the paper was in the bowl, he decided that when his father applied words like “Goddamn” and “fuck” to him, he eliminated himself from the privilege of receiving such explanations.

  “Why’s there all this Goddamned paper in here?” asked Dan in a tone better suited to ask, “Why are you selling heroin out of my house?”

  “To save water,” replied Stan, which was precisely why he did not flush the water.

  “You’re a Goddamn asshole,” his father said.

  Stan had always concluded that his father called him an “asshole” because he was an asshole. He blamed himself for his parent’s attitude towards him. As he got older, he began to question the logic behind this reasoning. Maybe his father called him an asshole simply because he needed to call somebody an asshole. Stan was an easy, available target.

  Stan took on the opposite traits of his parents. Where his mother was unkempt and terribly unorganized, Stan maintained perfect cleanliness. He was orderly. He made his bed. His bathroom was always clean. He kept papers, documents and records in well-maintained filing cabinets.

  His father went off the handle. He yelled and screamed. He was impatient. Stan was patient and spoke quietly. His parents, who called him a “fuss bucket” or “Felix Unger”, jeered his commendable habits. Stan was conflicted. He wanted to please his parents, and when he failed to do so, blamed himself. But common sense told him that being clean, organized and patient was not a bad thing.

  Rich Lopez and Frank Ferrigno grew up together in Hermosa Beach. Hermosa Beach is a pretty little town, and a great place to be a teenager. It is just 15 or 20 minutes’ drive from Rolling Hills Estates.

  Lopez lived with his grandfather, who owned a big, old house that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. The house had been in the family for generations. He would walk out of his house and be surrounded by gorgeous beach girls. What a life! Lopez, however, had an identity problem. He was of Mexican descent, but none of his friends were Hispanic. He was a super good-looking dude; tall, strong and athletic. He was also supposed to be a tough guy. In actuality, he was not so tough. He just wanted everybody to think he was. So, he affected a cholo persona. He wore stiff homeboy jeans, known in the barrio as “shit kickers,” with hard-as-hell pointed-toe boots. He wore white T-shirts, rolled up to show his biceps. He slicked his jet-black hair with Brylcreem. He did a very good job convincing people he was a bad ass.

  Lopez started out at Mira Costa High, but there was only one “in crowd” at Costa: Surfers. Lopez had grown up right next to one of the most popular point breaks in the South Bay, but instead of taking to it, he rejected surfing and surfers. He liked their women, though, and sampled several at Costa. One of these freshman girls was going steady with a junior, who was also a big surfer boy. Surfer boy and his crew started hassling Lopez, so Lopez beat the holy crap out of them. Five of them at once.

  This made him quite a legend, and of course every girl at Mira Costa wanted what he had after that. But the school administrators wanted no more to do with the stiff-jeaned Chicano miscreant, so they kicked him out. Lopez could have transferred to Redondo Union, but they were the same bunch of white surf boys as Mira Costa. So, he went to North Torrance. The reason he chose North Torrance was because it was in a declining neighborhood, and had a lot of Mexican kids, some of whom were gangbangers, or at least psuedo gangbangers. Lopez wanted to get down with his element.

  He immediately ran into problems at the beginning of his sophomore year. The Mexican kids did not accept him, because he did not speak like a Mexican. He was smart, and spoke the English language like a blueblood. In fact, he was a California blueblood. His family had been in the area since the 1830s. They owned property, stores, and businesses. But Lopez was determined. He jumped in with both feet. He got in a lot of fights, and some of them were pretty hairy. He learned how to use a knife and to fight d
irty, using his “shit kicker” boots, or anything else at his disposal. Within a few months, he was damn popular at North Torrance.

  Lopez hated blacks. Like most things in his poseur life, he really did not hate them. But they were the natural enemies of the cholos who vied for L.A. territory. By his junior year, he was constantly getting in fights with black kids, at school and away from school. North Torrance High finally had enough. He was kicked out and told to find another school for his senior year.

  Lopez might have simply dropped out of school, but he also played baseball. He was a pretty good ball player. He was not great, but he had an excellent arm, played right field well, and hit for some power. He had played varsity ball at North Torrance as a junior, and made honorable mention all-league.

  Ferrigno had grown up down the street from Lopez. He came from a huge family. His father was a mailman, and Frank was the oldest of 10 kids. They were Italian-American Catholics. Ferrigno and Lopez were friends, even though they had little in common. The bond between them was baseball and church, where their families had been members for decades. Frank was a left-handed pitcher, and a good one. He was soft, though. He got scared when the game was on the line.

  Frank pitched at Mira Costa for three years. He pitched on the JVs as a sophomore, but his junior year he made second team all-league. Baseball at Mira Costa, however, was a pretty low-key affair. Football was hot there, but by the Spring, most of the kids were into going to the nearby beach. Baseball took a back seat to surfing and beach volleyball.

  Frank was not like the other kids. He loved baseball. He devoted his life to it. He wanted to be around others who were devoted to it. Frank had a falling out with Mira Costa’s coach, and told his dad he had had it playing there. The old man knew right where to look.

  Enter Jim Ambers.

  Ambers felt that Frank could be a big star. He was not tall, with a classic build like Stan, who fit the mold of a professional pitcher. But Frank threw harder than Stan. He was about 5-10, a stocky left-hander with a short, whippet throwing motion. Frank was one year older than Stan, too.

  Frank and his father drove up to Jim Ambers’ house in August of 1980. A few strings were pulled. Recruiting and transferring in and out of districts is supposed to be hard to do, but enforcement of the rules has always been a joke. So now Ambers had a new pitcher on his staff.

  The first guy Frank told about his new school was Lopez. Lopez had been kicked out of North Torrance, but he wanted to play ball somewhere his senior year. He was looking at some of the more hardcore schools in the area, like Lawndale, Gardena, Banning, Carson and Narbonne. He figured there would be plenty of opportunities to fight and prove his manhood at these “inner city”-type schools.

  Frank told him he should transfer to Rolling Hills with him. Lopez thought Rolling Hills was for sissies, and worse. They were a bunch of rich white kids; the sons of lawyers, doctors and the like.

  Frank introduced Lopez to Ambers. They clicked right off the bat. Ambers was a hard ass in the tradition of Bobby Knight. He was the first authority figure that Lopez ever felt natural respect for. Right off the bat, Lopez became an Ambers disciple. He needed the direction and structure that a coach like Ambers provided.

  When Stan arrived at school his junior year, he knew nothing about Frank and Lopez. He knew about them. He had pitched (and beaten) Frank in varsity and American Legion competition, and had pitched with success against the free-swinging Lopez.

  He saw them in the hall, talking to a couple of his teammates. Lopez was already scamming the hot Rolling Hills girls in the hallway. They seemed to be celebrities. Stan’s teammates were fawning all over them, showing them around. Stan immediately felt a sense of danger.

  In the gym, where everybody had to sign up for Fall classes, he met Lopez.

  “Hi,” Stan said, extending his hand with a big smile. “I’m Stan Taylor.”

  Lopez did not take his handshake.

  “I know who you are,” said Lopez. “You ain’t shit.”

  Call it chemistry, bad vibes, or Karma. Call it first impressions. Stan was Lopez’s immediate enemy. Lopez wanted it that way. Stan was a diplomat, perfectly willing to make friends with anybody. Lopez knew all about Stan in advance. He identified in Stan everything he despised.

  Lopez saw a tall, blonde white boy who could be pushed around and would not fight back. A mama’s boy. A lawyer’s son. A kid who had been born on third base but thought he had hit a triple. Stan was, in his view, coddled. A little league celebrity and a super sophomore who led his team all the way, then followed that up with a spectacular American Legion season. He was arrogant and conceited. He needed to be taught a lesson.

  Frank and Stan liked each other immediately, even though it was assumed that they were rivals. They competed, but had respect for each other. Frank loved guys who took the game seriously and worked hard at it. He knew Stan fell into this category. Stan and Frank spent the whole Fall and Winter working out together. They both dominated the Winter league, which was no longer coached by Dan. Ambers took it over and up-graded the whole program in terms of practice time. He instituted a weight-training program. He never gave any grudging credit to Stan, but the reason he did it was because he had seen how much Stan had benefited from it.

  Stan and Frank became inseparable on the field and in the weight room. They lifted together, spotted each other, ran wind sprints, stretched with each other, and competed for the role of “ace.”

  Stan had been ready to rest on his laurels. Ambers accorded Stan the number one slot that he had earned. Stan pitched first, Frank second in workouts. Stan started the Winter league season opener. But he sensed that he was in for a fight. Ambers loved Frank, and had thinly-disguised contempt for Stan. Stan knew that the animosity between his father and his coach would bite him in the butt sooner or later.

  At the root of his sense of dark tidings was Rich Lopez. Lopez immediately was one of the most popular guys at Rolling Hills High School. It was absolutely unbelievable and galling to Stan, who despite his athletic prowess was somewhere between tolerated and disliked. He had improved upon his social status from junior high, but not by much.

  What the hell’s the matter with me? Stan asked himself. Here was this juvenile delinquent - Lopez - who struck out entirely too much, transferring in after being kicked out of two schools. He was accorded James Dean status right away. He was too cool for school.

  Lopez’s animosity towards Stan quickly became downright physical hatred. He beat him up in the locker room. Stan did not fight back. Stan hated the bastard. He called him a “fucking Mexican,” and Lopez kicked the crap out of him. Lopez took things out of his locker and threw them around the room, which drove Stan out of his mind. Guys took his tossed around gear, hiding things, laughing at him. He was despising life.

  The worst part was that Lopez loved Frank. That Fall, Stan and Frank pitched tremendous ball. Both of them went the entire Winter league with ERAs under 1.00. Lopez showed no respect for Stan’s pitching, while extolling the virtues of his longtime friend Ferrigno.

  Frank was impressive. Stan had to admit that. There was a palpable shift away from Stan. His teammates were increasingly impressed with the flame throwing Frank. Lopez lobbied for Frank, and Ambers seemed to be aching to put Stan in his place.

  Having a violent semi-criminal like Rich Lopez dedicated to kicking his butt every day was not the worst part for Stan. The worst part was that Dan saw no redeeming value in adding Frank Ferrigno to the program. The fact that it would make the team better was of no concern to him. All he saw was a threat to his son’s place in the Darwinian hierarchy of prep sports. Stan was forced to walk a fine line. He had to be a good team player, to accept Frank as a teammate and a good pitcher. But he had to put up with his father’s disdain for the guy.

  Dan did not know about Lopez’s attitude toward his son, but he immediately sensed that Lopez was bad news. The kid never said hello, and gave him dirty looks.

&nb
sp; “What an asshole,” Dan said of Lopez.

  Dan was barely able to hide his contempt for Frank, or for Ambers, who had brought the new kid in. Frank’s parents came to all the games, and they were just as nice as can be. Dan and Shirley managed to be friendly with the Ferrigno’s, who either did not know the way Dan felt, or chose to play it off. Lopez never had any relatives show up. He came from a huge family, but one would have thought he had grown up in Boys Town.

  The first game of the 1981 varsity season was played on a cold, windy, foggy night. Rolling Hills hosted powerful Millikan High School.

  In the first inning, Stan nervously worked the first hitter to three-and-two. He was not comfortable on the mound. He felt herky jerky. But he managed to blow a high fastball past the swinging hitter for the strike out. He then settled down and struck out the side. Stan trotted in from the mound, and all was right with the world.

  “It looks just like last year,” a pretty ball girl said.

  We’ll just see who the ace of this staff still is, Stan thought to himself. Who the hell does that asshole Lopez think he is? I pitched us to the title at Anaheim Stadium, and I’ll do it again this year.

  Rolling Hills scored four runs in the bottom of the first, and Stan headed out to the mound with the confidence exploding out of his pores. Then it happened. A double. A walk. A triple. A line drive out. Another double.

  By the time the carnage was over, Millikan had scored four runs, and Jim Ambers was on the warpath.

  “Shit o’ dear,” he yelled. “You’re pitching yourself out of the rotation, Taylor. I got plenty of other pitchers if you’re gonna pitch like this.”

  Ambers yelled these things from the top step of the dugout for everybody, especially Dan, to hear. Stan stood on the mound, his ears ringing. Trying to figure the worst part of it was not easy. Getting pounded by Millikan High School was no fun, but he could justify that.

  He was having a bad game, but it happens. Millikan was a good team and they were pumped to face the vaunted Taylor. They had been gunning for this game from the first day they saw Rolling Hills was on the schedule.

  Being yelled at by Ambers was a nightmare. No question about that. Ambers had a way about him. He cut him to pieces. He was not like other coaches. Jesse Pentilla was a big time screamer. He would jump all over his players. But they loved him for it. It was all exuberance, excitement and passion. With Ambers it was different. It was very personal. A kid who performed poorly for Ambers was insulting the coach. Ambers demanded to be glorified.

  Ambers was waiting for the opportunity to embarrass Stan, and this led to the worst part of the whole day. Dan heard every damn word Ambers said. Stan could see Dan doing a slow burn in the stands. He stared at his son, with his long face. Dan’s silence, his looks; his very presence was brutal.

  Ambers made one trip to the mound.

  “Goddammit, get your head out of your ass, Taylor,” he said. “I’ll replace you so fast it’ll make your head spin. We’ve got a whole staff of good arms just waiting to take your place.”

  Stan continued to get hit, and when Ambers came out the second time to take remove him, the coach had only this to say to him: “Get out of my sight.”

  Stan started walking off the mound.

  “Run off,” everybody on the bench yelled at him. Stan forced himself to run into the dugout, his head down.

  “Show some hustle,” some scrub said to him.

  Stan was boiling inside. The last time he had pitched for this team, they had carried him off the field. Now guys who were on the JVs the previous year were yelling and scolding him like he was an unproven rookie.

  What a bunch of assholes, he thought to himself.

  “I guess it’s not gonna be like last year,” said the pretty ball girl.

  The only guy who gave him any love was Frank. He sat down next to him.

  “No worries, bro,” said Frank. “You were throwin’ good, I thought. That was the hardest I ever seen you throw. You’re pumped up a lot more than last year, from weight lifting, and you were bringin’ it, but I don’t think you had a handle on throwin’ that hard. They were just makin’ contact because you’re stuff was straighter because it was harder, but when you get a handle on it you’ll be awesome. You just need to get that natural sinker of yours going again. Nobody hits that nasty shit you throw. ”

  That meant a lot to Stan. Frank was right on point. Stan had gotten stronger in the weight room, and he was throwing hard. But his new velocity had resulted in a loss of movement. The natural sinking action of his fastball had straightened out, and Millikan, expecting his usual sinking stuff, had jumped on a few mistakes up in their strike zone.

  He’s a good guy, he thought.

  The inning ended with the team now trailing, 5-4. Some nobody came in and got the last two outs to keep the score within range. Lopez lead the charge from right field.

  “Let’s get ‘em now,” he roared. “Now we’ve got someone to pitch, let’s score for him.”

  Everybody just yelled and pumped and agreed with Lopez’s assessment.

  Asshole, thought Stan. He’d never say to score for me. This guy’s not half the pitcher I am and he’s backing him like he’s Christy Mathewson.

  The relief pitcher might not have been half the pitcher Stan was, but he was tremendous that day. He pitched great ball the rest of the way, and Rolling Hills went back on the offensive to win big, 11-5.

  Everybody had a good game, except for Stan. All the hitters did their job. The defense was sterling. The bullpen came through. Stan pretended to smile, clap and cheer his team on. He put on the facade of a team player who was not interested not in his individual performance.

  He knew he was a fraud. He knew everybody saw through him, too. He felt ostracized. In a matter of minutes, all that he had built up for himself as a baseball player at Rolling Hills was down the tubes.

  The game was played on the last day of February. When Stan emerged from the locker, it was pitch black, windy and foggy. Dan waited in the car. Stan just got in, and before he could close the door, the car was off and running. There was no talking. Stan was pissed at his father’s attitude, for two reasons.

  One, he hated having his performance be the be-all and end-all of his old man’s happiness. Second, Stan did play a team game, and his team had won. There should be some kind of joy they had won, but Dan exhibited none of that. It was all about Stan.

  Things got worse after that. The next game was Frank’s Rolling Hills debut. He pitched five perfect innings, struck out 10, and the Titans won, 3-0. Lopez was jumping around, extolling Frank like he was the greatest pitcher of all time. Everybody just raved over him.

  “It looks like we’ve found the next great Titan pitcher,” Ambers told the Daily Breeze. Stan liked Frank. He smiled, he clapped him on the back, and inside he hated him. He liked him, but he still hated him.

  The next game was down in Orange County, against Newport Harbor High. This was Stan’s start. Of course it was. At practice, Stan threw on the side, did his running, and prepared for the game. Ambers said nothing to him. Dan showed up, and he watched every single move at practice like a hawk. He was looking to confirm that his son was, indeed, starting the game. He saw the telltale signs that it was not a sure thing. He bugged Stan incessantly for confirmation that he was starting. Stan had not been given the information, so therefore he had nothing for his dad. However, it was his natural start. Normally, it would simply have been assumed, but because of his last game, all bets were off.

  “I guess so,” Stan told Dan when he asked again about the start.

  “I’m sure I am,” he said the next time the old man asked him. “It’s my turn.”

  The day of the game, the starting line-up was usually posted in the locker room in the morning. Everybody made their pilgrimage over there in between classes to see what it was. On this day it was not posted.

  Stan was there at 8:30, again at 9:30, and twice after that. No line-up.

&
nbsp; Surely I’m starting, he thought to himself. The whole thing played itself out like a slow motion nightmare. It was inconceivable to him that Ambers would not start him after only one bad game. But Stan had developed a sense of dread and foreboding about life. To him, baseball was life. There was a feeling in his gut that things were not designed to go his way. That his past good record would never be used as collateral to counter times in which he failed. The world was filled to the brim with people, from Jim Ambers to Rich Lopez and on down, just waiting for him to fail. When he failed, he would be made to pay, and to pay in a publicly embarrassing way. His failures would be fully viewed by his pissed off, disapproving father. Stan was beginning to believe in Murphy’s Law, which is that “if something can go wrong, it will.”

  In his case, he was thinking that the “law” meant that if there was a 50/50 chance that something good could happen to him, as opposed to something bad, the forces of nature would always be aligned in favor of “bad.” Stan knew he was lucky in many ways. He had good looks, smarts, athletic ability, and good health. He had parents who took care of him. He lived in a beautiful home, in a great, safe environment in the greatest country in the world. But he had sinned, and for his sons he would always have to deal with the cuts. Like not starting against Newport Harbor.

  Newport is about 40 miles south of Palos Verdes Estates, in south Orange County. It is a pretty good haul to get there any time, but this game was scheduled for a Friday, and the end-of-the-week traffic makes for a brutal commute.

  Naturally, Dan cut out of work at mid-day to battle every inch of that traffic and be in Newport Beach. Stan rode the bus, and the whole way down, there was no indication that he would start. Most of his teammates assumed he had the start. Ambers said nothing to him.

  Finally, when the team settled in to the dugout, Ambers posted the line-up card. Stan ambled on over, and there it was.

  “Campanella, P.”

  Stan was starting at first base, where he played when not pitching. Tony Campanella was a pretty good left-handed pitcher. Like Stan, he was a junior, and he had been battling hard for his chance. He was competitive and talented. His teammates congratulated Tony on getting the start. The underlying theme was that Stan was getting his come-uppance, and that was a good thing. At this moment, Stan hated him.

  Then Dan arrived. Stan saw him. Dan was waving at him. He wanted to know whether Stan was starting or not. Stan pretended not to see him. He avoided him, standing next to the dugout. Dan was getting frustrated, trying to find out if his kid was starting.

  Finally, Campanella headed down to the bullpen to warm up. Stan glanced at Dan, who was watching the telltale sign that Tony was starting instead of Stan. The look on Dan’s face was disappointment mixed with anger. Dan was mad at Ambers. He knew that not keeping Marty Ambers on the American Legion play-off roster was coming back to haunt him (and his son). But Ambers did not ride in his car or live in his house. Stan did. Stan knew that his father would blame him. He had let his dad down. He was the reason the old man would be angry.

  Fuck you, Stan quietly said to himself. He could live with not starting. What he hated was having his life, all the petty, stupid things that mattered to him, be so damn important to his father.

  Of course, Campanella pitched the game of his life. He went five innings, and got the victory in a tidy 5-1 win. Stan was desperate by game’s end. He was hoping to get the last two innings in relief, but Ambers never so much as looked at him. He was 0-for-4 at the plate, which did not help his cause, either. Dan sat in the stands looking like he was made out of stone.

  Frank Ferrigno pitched brilliantly in his next two starts, and Campanella took Stan’s place in the rotation. Stan did not see the mound. Ambers did not explain anything. He just stuck it to him where it hurt the most. Stan was dumbfounded that after establishing himself as a star, one bad game had cost him his job.

  He learned another major lesson. He had long ago discovered that hard work paid off. Now he knew clichés were true.

  What have you done for me lately?

  Don’t rest on your laurels.

  You’re not paranoid, there is really is somebody out to get you.

  Life’s not fair.

  He knew it was not one bad game. It was his dad pissing off Ambers. The coach was exacting revenge. This was the pattern he saw his life taking. He would be the guy who would not be allowed to slip up. He would be the guy who crappy things happened to.

  Sure, Stan thought the world revolved around him. He was egotistical and selfish…and he paid for it.

  Finally, the team made their trip to the San Luis Obispo Easter Tournament. Frank would pitch the first game, Campanella the second. Surely, Stan would pitch the third game. Ambers continued to say nothing. Stan, in a funk over losing his spot in the pitching rotation, had stopped hitting, too. He was benched from first base. What a disaster. His glorious high school career was going right down the drain. If he did not have success in sports, he was nothing. His teammates had taken to treating him like an outcast. Nobody felt sorry for him. Little slights were aimed at him. He had to carry equipment, normally a “rookie’s” job. He was on the outs.

  Everybody loved Frank, and Tony Campanella was a popular, cocky guy who rubbed in his new status ahead of Stan. Lopez was like a rock star. He gave Stan verbal and physical digs every chance he got. Ambers saw it, and did nothing. Stan was alone.

  Frank pitched a shutout in the first game, and Tony pitched a sterling game to win the second. The tournament’s title game was scheduled for Saturday night. Dan was staying in the team’s motel, of course. His long face and silences were constant reminders to Stan that he was failing him.

  Finally, on Saturday morning, Ambers called Stan to his room and told him he was starting that night against Redwood High, a traditional power from Marin County. Stan had pitched against them in a winning effort his freshman year here at the San Luis Obispo Tournament.

  Finally, Stan told Dan, who had asked him about 85 times if he was starting. Stan was determined to get the job done, to earn his spot back. He was a winner, and nobody was going to keep him down.

  San Luis Obispo is a pleasant, warm place on California’s central coast, but on this March day it was bitter cold. The wind was whipping in at 75 miles per hour off the ocean. Player’s hats were flying off their heads. It was barely above freezing.

  Stan warmed up and took the mound. Immediately, he was in trouble. He walked the leadoff man, then gave up some hits, and within no time runners were scoring, the bases were loaded, and there was only one out. Stan also did something to his back. It hurt like hell. But he was so discomfited by the weather and the bad feedback that Redwood was showing his pitches; the crowd, the taunting, his father’s long face behind the plate. He tried to pitch through it. Each pitch made it worse.

  Ambers was beside himself. He stood out in front of the Rolling Hills dugout, yelling and screaming at Stan.

  “Shit o’ dear,” he screamed. “If you throw another Goddamn ball, you’ll never pitch for Rolling Hills again.”

  Stan pitched. A ball.

  “What’s he got?” Ambers yelled at catcher Rod Orson.

  Orson, a senior, was another cocky, unfriendly sort, but a good ball player in his senior year. He had no love left over for Stan.

  “Nothin’,” he told the coach.

  “That’s it,” Ambers said. He came out to the mound, and took the ball from Stan.

  “You’ll never pitch for this program again,” he told him in the meanest possible way. Crestfallen, Stan barely jogged off the mound.

  “Run,” his teammates yelled.

  Stan purposely ran slower. He did not care any more.

  Stan was ostracized in the dugout. He found a corner, and bundled himself against the cold with a jacket and blanket. His teammates kept yelling at him to get up and root for the team. Stan just sat there like a lump of coal. He was through, he knew it, and he had no inspiration or energy to root for any of these jac
kals. Nobody had helped him. Nobody was ever there for him when he was down. Screw ‘em.

  Stan then realized his back was badly hurt. He could barely move. Normally, the team trainer would have given him ice for his arm. The trainer was a 400-pound piece of blubber named Barney Russo. He was in his early 20s, already embarked on a lifetime career as a loser. He hated Stan, and offered no ice. He ignored him. He ignored none of the other pitchers when they were finished pitching, just Stan.

  Stan realized he was hurt, so he approached Barney.

  “Hey man,” he told him. “I think my back’s badly fucked up.”

  “Who cares?” Barney replied without looking at him.

  Stan sat in the dugout the whole game, trying to move as little as possible. Redwood led 4-0 when he came out, but his team rallied. The wind and cold got worse. The combination of the weather and his own stiffness made Stan feel like a mummy, wrapped in jackets and whatever else he could find to stay warm.

  In the seventh inning, with Rolling Hills ahead, 6-5, Redwood rallied. They put runners on second and third with no outs. Ambers had used every pitcher on his staff, including Ferrigno and Campanella, who had pitched the day before.

  “Shit o’ dear,” he said. He turned to Stan.

  “Get warm,” he said.

  Stan was dumbfounded. He had not given any thought to being put back in the game, and assumed he could not once he had been taken out. The tournament had a return rule, so it was a legal move. Stan knew he could not pitch. His back was in bad shape, and the cold weather had made it worse. But he had no choice. He could not tell Ambers no.

  Ambers had no business telling him to get warm, certainly not at the last minute. He should have consulted him earlier. He should have given him enough time to stretch and get loose. He just told him to get up, when he was stone cold, and to get ready.

  Ambers walked out to the mound. Stan got up. He felt shooting pain in his back. He took his jacket off, and ran out to the bullpen. He barely made two throws, and then saw the umpire motioning him into the game.

  He was in a real bind. The game was on the line. If he let the tying and winning runs in, he would be might never get out of the doghouse. He also knew he was in danger of hurting himself permanently. Ambers either did not know his injury, or if he did, he did not care. He wanted only to win the tournament.

  There were a couple thousand people in the stands, and the place was loud. Both benches were going crazy. Stan made his way to the mound. His face was contorted in pain, but Ambers showed no concern. Ambers said something to Stan, but Stan did not hear it. His mind was racing with concern over his back and his arm. He would have to go at full speed with no warm-up, which is a very dangerous thing for any athlete. But his fear co-existed with the adrenaline of pitching with the game on the line. Fear and adrenaline are greatest resources for athletes. Coaches try ways to instill these emotions into their athletes, usually without success. Vince Lombardi and Bobby Knight have been the masters of it. Few coaches can get his charges to feel the way Stan Taylor felt at this moment. But fear and adrenaline affect people in different ways. Most are not mentally equipped to handle it, and would break down like a baby if placed in such a stressful position. Stan was not like most people.

  His first three warm-up pitches were a joke. He barely tossed it up there. He was stiff, and in great pain. He knew he had to be ready when the first hitter came up. His fourth warm-up was thrown with more exertion. He threw the last three hard.

  Amazingly, the pain was being replaced by the adrenaline. He put the pain someplace else, and prepared to do battle. What Stan did next is a testament to his competitive nature. He was a guy who came through in the clutch, a “money pitcher” in the parlance of baseball talk.

  The first hitter hit a shot right back to the mound, and Stan knocked it down with his glove, scrambling after it despite feeling searing pain in his back. He picked it up, held the runner at third, and threw the runner out at first base.

  He struck out the next hitter. He went to 3-and-2 on the next man, a catcher named Chad Kreuter. Kreuter would go on to a long Major League career, and was a tough out. With the count full, Kreuter parked a game-winning home run, except that it curved foul at the last second. He fouled off three more pitches, but Stan got him on a wicked slider on the outside corner to win the game.

  Stan collapsed on the mound, tears in his eyes. His teammates came out and picked him up. They saw the tears and assumed it was emotion. Stan tried to tell them to stop pushing him around. He was almost paralyzed. The hyenas did not hear him. He was their Main Man again. They lifted him up and gave him hero’s adoration.

  Jim Ambers came out to the mound and hugged him as if there was no tomorrow. Lopez, for God’s sake, gave him a bug hug.

  Bunch of front-runners, Stan thought to himself.

  A few minutes later, the all-tournament team was announced, and Stan made it. He was lying down on the bench, and was unable to get up, his back hurt so bad.

  “C’mon, Taylor,” they urged him.

  “Can’t do it,” is all Stan said.

  “You hurt?” asked Ambers.

  “Yes, sir,” Stan said.

  “Shit o’ dear,” Ambers muttered. He never considered that he had misused the kid. He only thought that an asset to his team might be unavailable. Ambers was supposed to be a teacher. He was supposed to care about his students, to take an interest in them as people, and in their future. What a joke! All he cared about was winning and Jim Ambers.

  Dan came down and saw his son lying down in pain. He and Stan made eye contact. Dan’s long face and miserable expression was replaced by great pride and joy.

  “Great game, champ,” he said.

  Stan smiled.

  Yeah, right, he thought to himself. You’d be actin’ like your dog died if I’d blown that game. Is it really worth it to have your happiness depend on me?

  Stan needed a stretcher. The tournament had one available. He could not ride the team bus, because he needed to lie down. Stan was placed on the stretcher, and carried to his father’s car. Dan hovered over him, extolling his virtues. At the hotel, some of the guys helped with the stretcher to get him to his room. Somehow, he managed to take a shower. It was a weird night, in which the joy of saving the game was tempered by his having been knocked out of it, and the ensuing injury. Dan did not seem to realize how much pain his son was in. He smiled and joked because Stan had made the all-tournament team. Stan spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning. In the morning, he was in agony.

  Stan’s season was over. He could barely attend school after that. He would have back problems the rest of his life. Ambers accused Stan of faking the injury. He knew it was hurt. He knew he was responsible for the injury. Instead of taking responsibility, he preferred to shift the blame. He called Stan a “shirker,” and the team picked up on it.

  Stan went to a physical therapist. He put him in traction. Stan attended practices and games, but was able to do little. He could not run, throw, or do much else. He had irritated his sciatic nerve, and the pain ran from his upper back to his heels.

  Rolling Hills did fine without him. Frank Ferrigno was unbelievable. He won 15 games and struck out two batters an inning to make most of the prep All-American teams. Rich Lopez made Stan’s life even more miserable. He openly accused Stan of faking the injury, and pushed him around. Stan was unable to do a thing about it.

  Tony Campanella was all-league, and the team had another good season. Unfortunately, they did not have enough to overcome Billy Boswell and Palos Verdes. Stan was stunned when, before the Palos Verdes game, Lopez and Billy embraced each other. Somehow, they were friends, which Stan found to be odd. Naturally, the guy he despised was buddy-buddy with his biggest rival. Now that he was injured, Stan was insignificant. Boswell never acknowledged him.

  Ambers wanted Stan ready for the play-offs. In the last week of the regular season, Ambers set up a practice game for Stan to pitch. Stan knew he was still injur
ed, but Ambers kept pushing him, trying to convince him that he was ready. Stan pitched, and was in immediate pain. His teammates hit him, hard. It was a terrible disaster that set him back several months. Had he rested, he could have pitched the second half of the American Legion season. Ambers’ forcing him to pitch destroyed his Summer. Ambers was mad because he would not have Stan in the Southern Section play-offs.

  Boswell was out of control. He hit almost .600, slammed 14 homers, and pushed his team to the Southern Section championship. The title game was played at Dodger Stadium between P.V. and Rolling Hills. The previous night, a Friday, Frank had thrown a no-hitter with 17 strikeouts against Villa Park.

  The title game was played on Saturday. Campanella started against Palos Verdes. He pitched pretty well, but Boswell drove in three runs with a double and triple. In the sixth, Ambers had Frank warm up in the bullpen. Frank’s arm had started to hurt down the stretch. He threw too hard for his age. He was not fully developed, but Ambers just pitched him and pitched him. In the bullpen that night, he hurt himself. He had no business throwing the day after pitching a complete game. Frank was like Stan, though. He had guts. Frank pitched to one hitter in the sixth, and got him out with the bases loaded. He came to the bench and approached Barney.

  “I hurt my arm,” he told Barney. Barney had him remove his shirt, and applied ice packs to his shoulder and elbow. Rolling Hills entered the top of the seventh (and last) inning trailing, 3-0. The game was, for all intents and purposes, over. The first two batters made outs, but then Rolling Hills rallied. Ambers argued a call with the umpire for 37 minutes. A throw had gone in the third base dugout, but the umpire had called Rolling Hills’ runner, who had gone home, back to third base. Ambers knew it was the right call, but he stayed on the field while the crowd booed and Palos Verdes’ pitcher cooled his heels. When play resumed, the pitcher was stiff and lost his location. That was Ambers’ intent. Rolling Hills pieced together a remarkable comeback to tie the game, 3-3.

  As it became apparent that Rolling Hills might have to go out on the field again, Ambers’ mind was racing. He stared at Stan, who was in uniform, but he was injured and there was no way he could pitch.

  “Taylor,” he barked, “we need you.”

  Stan just stared at the bastard. He said nothing.

  “You’ve been skating on me all year,” Ambers said.

  “Come on, Taylor, get ready,” somebody said. Stan just stood there, his head spinning.

  God help me I wish I could pitch, he thought to himself.

  “Fuck you, Taylor,” said Lopez. “I’m gonna kick you’re ass after this game.”

  “Shit o’ dear,” Ambers said. He turned to Ferrigno, who was topless with ice packs on his throwing arm. “Frank, Taylor won’t pitch. He cares more about himself than the team. I need you to stay in the game.”

  Frank stared at Ambers, and knew that this was the moment his career was coming to an end. He knew he was hurt. He was already iced, and this guy was telling him to go back out there and pitch.

  Frank started to remove the ice pack.

  “That’s a team player,” Lopez said to Taylor.

  Frank did it on guts. He had a high pain threshold. Stan sat in the dugout wishing he could disappear. Frank was stoic. He knew he should not pitch. He was smart enough to realize he was putting himself at risk. He was the high school hero, so he answered the call to glory. In the back of his mind, he knew he was giving up greater glory down the road. Frank had what it took to pitch in the big leagues. He certainly was going to get his shot, if he was healthy. He had tolerated Ambers because they had a good business relationship, but he knew he was being used and abused by the coach. He said nothing. Frank just gutted it out.

  Frank pitched three scoreless innings. Finally, after getting the last out in the ninth, he told Ambers he could not continue.

  “Goddammit Ferrigno,” said Ambers, “you gotta show me some guts. You’re gutless. They were right about you at Mira Costa.”

  Frank Ferrigno attacked Jim Ambers. His teammates had to pull him off the coach. Ambers said nothing. He just smiled and walked to the end of the dugout. Ferrigno went into the Dodger Stadium visitor’s clubhouse and tried to tear the place apart. A security guard almost had him arrested. His teammates, including Lopez, had to restrain him.

  “Frank, don’t worry about the asshole,” Lopez said. “You’ve done everything you can do for this team. Nobody can ask more of you.”

  “Fuck it,” said Frank. He slipped his glove on and went back out to the mound for the 10th. He courageously pitched the 10th and 11th. In the 12th, with the score still 3-3, Frank came out to face Billy Boswell. Ferrigno had nothing left. Boswell tagged him 405 feet over the right-center field fence to give Palos Verdes the title.

  Stan watched all of it in his own personal hell.

  The San Francisco Giants drafted Frank Ferrigno a few weeks later in the 17th round. He would have been drafted in the first three rounds, but the scouts all knew that Ambers had hurt his ace pitcher. Faced with a low bonus offer, Ferrigno chose to accept a scholarship to Cal State Fullerton. Frank figured that he should at least get an education. He never threw a pitch at Fullerton. His best friends there were the physical therapists, not baseball teammates. His arm was destroyed, and his career had ended. Had he not been hurt, he might have pitched in the Major Leagues.

  Rich Lopez never did beat Stan up. He played two years of junior college ball, and then joined the Marines. A few years after he got out of high school, Stan went to a party and Lopez was there. Stan was nervous, until Lopez came up to him. He was smiling. He shook his hand. He was the nicest guy in the world!

  Lopez had bit off more than he could chew. He got involved with the some serious Latino gangbangers, got in a fight, and was cut up within an inch of his life. The event convinced him that he had to change his path, so he did. After that, he lost his anger.

  After the Marines, Lopez became a personal fitness trainer. He developed a perfect body, and with his looks and newfound personality, became a ladies man of the first order. He developed a Hollywood clientele, training movie stars in Beverly Hills and providing stud service on the side. Everybody who met him said he was a nice guy.

  Go figure.

  Ambers and the Taylor’s were not on very good terms by the end of Stan’s junior year in 1981. However, Stan still had a year left, and Ambers knew he would need him his senior year. Everybody just decided to live with each other. Dan managed the American Legion club again. Dan put thousands of dollars into the program, and spent so much time scheduling, practicing, traveling and managing games, that from May until August, he hardly worked in the law.

  The Rolling Hills baseball field is located on a plateau. Staring from behind the stands along the third base line, one sees a fabulous view of the L.A. Basin, with luxury homes in the valley below. Marty Ambers liked to take the brand new baseballs that Dan bought, and with a fungo bat would hit them into that valley, trying to break windows and hit cars.

  Frank Ferrigno played on the team. He tried to pitch a few times. Dan was aghast at the damage to his arm. After three tries, he called it quits, hoping that if he rested he might be able to pitch at Fullerton. He never did.

  Stan just sat on the bench most of the Summer. He and Jesse Pentilla spent most of their time in the weight room, trying to strengthen his back muscles. Stan regularly saw the therapist, and by August he was ready to pitch again.

  The team had a mediocre year, however. Redondo, led by Billy Boswell, won the league championship. When they picked their three all-stars from the league for post-season play, they chose Stan. It was a weird experience for Stan. A fair number of the players were guys he had known playing in Palos Verdes. They were not exactly friends of his. However, he had established enough of a name for himself in sports to earn grudging respect.

  His “relationship” with Billy Boswell had not changed, either. They never spoke. Matt Hobli was always around. Wherever Billy was, so wa
s Matt.

  The team went all the way, though. Stan was pleased that his back had healed, and he pitched well for the Redondo club. Boswell, who had been named National High School Baseball Player of the Year by Prep Sports, was the American Legion National Player of the Year, too. Redondo advanced to the Legion World Series in Massachusetts, and in the championship game against Coral Gables, Florida, Stan pitched a three-hitter to win it. He was back. Of course, when the tournament’s Most Valuable Player award was announced, it was Billy. Just like at Williamsport.

  Off the field, Stan’s life improved that Summer. The back injury had robbed him of his junior year. It was a terrible dilemma. But he was beginning to come into his own as a young man.

  Stan got his first driver’s license. Walt and Brad still hung out with him. Stan particularly enjoyed hanging out with Brad’s older brother, Jeff. He had a communications class with Jeff and a lovely, blonde girl named Susan Hicks. Susan was one of Jeff’s girlfriends.

  Stan watched in awe the way Jeff handled these high school fantasy girls. One day he and Brad drove out to the beach. Stan, who had never been a beach guy, started going down there now that he had a driver’s license. Susan and a girl named Connie Hannity, both of whom were Jeff’s girlfriends, were hanging out. They looked awesome in their bikinis, and were very friendly with Brad.

  “Why don’t you hang out with us?” Connie asked Stan.

  Stan actually felt like he was attractive to women. He had been lifting weights with Coach Pentilla for three years, and the sun had given him a great tan to go with his blonde hair. He was not yet 6-6, 235 pounds, as Pentilla still insisted he would be, but he was 6-5, 215. He was nicely developed and athletic.

  The girls were digging him. Jeff showed up, and invited everybody back to his house. The old man was gone for the weekend. At the Cooper’s home, Stan was hopeful than maybe he would lose his virginity.

  “Where’s Jeff,” Stan asked Brad.

  “Go check his room,” said Brad, with a funny look on his face.

  Stan went to Jeff’s room and knocked on the door. Fleetwood Mac softly played on the record player.

  “Come in,” said a girl’s voice.

  Stan entered. There was Jeff, naked on the bed. Connie Hannity was giving him a blowjob. Susan Hicks was nude. She was checking out the records. Also on the bed, sharing Jeff was a voluptuous babe named Caroline Kitzke.

  Susan laughed when she saw Stan. He was stunned at what he saw.

  “Uh, gee whiz Jeff,” said Stan, starting to smile. “I’m sorry you’ve got it so rough.”

  All the girls laughed. That made Stan feel good. They were laughing with him, instead of at him. He was hoping he would be invited to join the festivities.

  My God, Jeff Cooper has three of the best-looking girls at Rolling Hills High in his bed, he thought. Surely he can spare one.

  The moment passed, and Stan just picked out a record.

  “Uh, hey, just wanted to borrow your Beach Boys album,” he said. “Holler if ya need any help.”

  Stan closed the door, and heard the girls laughing, but they were not making fun of him. For the first time in his life, Stan was beginning to feel like he was in on life’s jokes instead of being the butt of it.

  “Jesus,” Stan told Brad, “you’re brother’s havin’ sex with Connie Hannitty, Sue Hicks and Caroline Kitzke. Holy Moley.”

  “Aw, that’s my brother,” said Brad, who knew what was going on. He had sent Stan in to see for himself.

  Stan started listening to music. Greg Grillo, the kid who stayed at his parent’s house when they were 12, had given him an introduction. He still was not hip, but he started to get into the music of Boston, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys represented something special to him. They were a bunch of guys from the South Bay. Stan began to understand how lucky he was to live in the South Bay, with its beaches, sunny weather, and beautiful girls. The Beach Boys were part of the fantasy, and Stan wanted to live the California Dream. He wanted that elusive life that was offered in their songs. He still lived a repressed life, but sensed that he was due to break out soon. He did not have to actually go anywhere. He already lived there.

  At home, things were dicey. Stan Taylor loved his parents, and they loved him. Maybe, Stan thought, they all loved each other too much. Shirley was still a beautiful woman, but alcohol was aging Dan.

  Stan knew that the problems with his folks were partly his fault. He knew that he was selfish and snotty. He could be a brutal teenager, and sometimes hated himself for it. He could not help himself. He drove his parents crazy, and they did not handle it well. There was not a lot of understanding in the Taylor household. There were too many short fuses.

  Shirley read constantly, and had great interest in European history. She saw to it that Stan was introduced to the arts. She took him to plays, and to the opera. Classical music played in the house all the time.

  Stan took to it. Unlike many teenagers, who would disdain Mozart, Shakespeare and Dickens, Stan found himself mysteriously drawn to great works. He read Twain, Melville, and Steinbeck. He developed his intellect. In an English class, Stan read “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger and “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad. Because they were school assignments, he barely gave them his attention. Dan saw him reading them.

  “That’s a great book,” he told Stan, who was holding “Heart of Darkness”. “If you can understand what Conrad’s saying, you’re on your way to real understanding of the human condition.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Stan, who was happy to have a conversation with his old man about something other than whether Ambers had told him he was starting on Friday.

  “Well,” said Dan, “when he faces Kurtz, he faces himself.”

  “Himself?” said Stan.

  “Yeah,” said Dan. “Kurtz is us. All of us. He’s our temptations run amok. He faces evil. It’s in himself, just as it is with all of us. Mostly we’re not faced with the choices Kurtz has to make. We have restraints on our lives. Kurtz no longer has restraints, and given the choice to ‘be god,’ he chooses to glorify himself.”

  “But he knows he’s wrong to do it,” says Stan.

  “Yes,” said Dan. “He knows.”

  “Do you think most people know when they are wrong?” Stan asked.

  “Yes,” said Dan.

  Up until then, Stan mostly read sports books. Now, inspired by his father’s attention, he read “Catcher in the Rye” and “Heart of Darkness” on his own time, and enjoyed them.

  Stan was not a great student. He carried a B- average. He was poor in math, languages and science, but when he found something that interested him, he got A’s.

  He got an A in government. He wrote a book report on “A Day In the Life of the President”, which detailed the activities of former President Gerald Ford. The teacher, Mr. Bakey, handed back the graded reports.

  “Before I hand the reports back,” he said, “I want to mention one in particular. That is Stan Taylor’s report on ‘A Day In the Life of the President’.”

  Oh, Christ, Stan thought to himself. He knows I only read the flaps.

  “In my 20 years of teaching,” Mr. Bakey went on, “this is the finest book report I’ve ever read. Congratulations to Stan Taylor. You are not just a great athlete, but a great student-athlete.”

  The class applauded him.

  Stan was flabbergasted. He also learned something. He already knew he could write. Now he knew he could BS people.

  Brad and Stan took a music appreciation class together. It was taught by Mr. Wilson, a jazz lover who stood about 6-5 with big, floppy ears that made him look a cab going down the street with its doors open. Brad and Stan paid no attention to the music, choosing instead to joke around.

  Wilson kicked Stan out of the class. Brad escaped his wrath because, like Walt, he was better at hiding his indiscretions. After that, Stan and Brad constantly made fun of Wilson. Wilson would be walking through the cafeteri
a, or the bench area where kids sat and socialized. They would hide, or make themselves inconspicuous, then change their voices.

  “WILSON!” they yelled, loud enough for the teacher to hear it.

  This went on for two years. Mr. Wilson would stop, and dumbly look around. Stan and Brad would observe this, careful not to expose themselves. It always caused great hilarity.

  Brad’s brother, Jeff, legendary because of his sexual prowess, told Brad about a “whorehouse.” Brad knew the address. They drove up to the place at night. They wanted to go inside and sample the girls. Jeff had said that all they had to do was enter the house, and lingerie-clad lovelies would surround them. Naturally, he was such a catch that they serviced him for free, according to Jeff.

  The house was at the end of a long, winding driveway. Stan drove the car up to the front door. Instead of getting out, they started to flash the lights, honk the horn, and scream, “Whorehouse, whorehouse.”

  Then they peeled out of there. A few minutes later, after the laughter subsided, they decided to do it again. When they emerged back on to the main street, the flashing lights of a police car were waiting for them.

  The cops approached the car, and the owners of the house came out. They were a couple of gay men.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on here?” asked the cop.

  “Well,” said Stan, “we heard this was a whore house and were just having some fun.”

  Then the cop saw three full cans of beer in the back seat of the car.

  “You been drinking?” he asked.

  Stan saw the beers and moaned. He and Brad did not drink. The beers had been left in the car by his old man.

  “Shit,” he said, “my dad.”

  It was never determined whether the two gay men operated a whorehouse. They pressed no charges. The boys were let off with a warning.

  This adventure did not stop the two from becoming budding hellions.

  They discovered a dry cleaner operated by a Chinaman. The Chinaman slept in a cot next to the window at night. Stan and Brad would drive the car right up to the window, then flash the lights and honk the horn like nuts. They thought it was hilarious when the Chinaman’s head would pop up above the windowsill, his eyes bugging out, to see what all the racket was.

  Brad had a friend named Zalman. Zalman was a genuine intellectual. He and Brad were good friends, but Zalman thought Stan was suspect because he lacked maturity. Brad was just as immature, but he had a developed intellect and was in Zalman’s league.

  Stan had a car, though. He drove Brad and Zalman to the Pussycat Theatre in Santa Monica to see “Deep Throat”, the famous porno movie starring Linda Lovelace. Stan was amazed. He had never seen anything like it. Linda performed fellatio on Harry Rheems. Some years later, he had suspicions of his own about Zalman.

  “Hey Brad,” he said to his friend. “You know that Zalman? I’m not so sure about him. I think he might be gay.”

  “He’s queer as an eight-dollar bill,” Brad replied, nonchalantly. “Didn’t you know that?”

  It turned out Zalman was watching Harry Rheems a lot more than Stan and Brad.

  Brad and Stan developed more “skits.” One concerned a district attorney from Los Angeles who sends an innocent man to the gas chamber. Stan would play the D.A. Brad played a friend of his and also the mother of the condemned man.

  FRIEND: “Hey, Stan, I understand congratulations are in order. You’re the new D.A.”

  D.A.: “Why, thank you, Brad.”

  FRIEND: “Uh, yeah, listen. I understand you, uh, well, had to pull a few strings.”

  D.A.: “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do.”

  FRIEND: “Yeah, but Stan, I heard that black kid was innocent.”

  STAN: “Well, sure he was innocent, but I needed to get the conviction to become the D.A. As a matter of fact, he’s gettin’ fried at San Quentin today, which leaves me just enough time to fly up, witness the execution, and get back here in time for some prawns `n’ spaghetti at Joe’s. Hey, gotta git.”

  MOTHER: “You, Mister D.A. Man. Today my boy’s gonna die because of you. I swear to you, as God is my witness, he didn’t do it. HE DIDN’T DO IT!!”

  STAN: “Well, there you have it. Gotta run if I’m gonna get back in time for a beer and some prawns dore.”

  Nobody really got the skit, except for Brad and Stan, which was par for the course.

  Shirley became increasingly odd. Her voice took on a shrill tone. She would answer the phone and seemingly not understand what people told her until the second or third time. People would identify themselves, and her response would be a disconcerting, “Whoooo?”

  She tended to talk down to people, and to make questionable racial comments, reflecting the influence of her husband. She would talk about “blacks who won’t work.” She was disdainful of American blacks who “won’t work dirty jobs,” as opposed to Africans and Mexicans, who she had respect for because they were not above manual labor. She continued to cut off cars, then calling the other driver an “idiot,” in a high-pitched voice. Stan would ride in the car and wince.

  The Taylor’s next-door neighbor’s let their dog run free. The dog was always tearing up the Shirley’s flowerbed. Shirley asked the neighbors to tie the dog up. They tied the dog up on their front porch. The porch was elevated. The dog tried to run after something. He jumped off the porch, but the rope around his neck caught him and hung him to death.

  Shirley did not see the dog for a few days. She and Stan were doing some yard work when she saw the neighbor.

  “Where’s your dog?” she inquired.

  “He hung himself because we had to tie him up,” the neighbor said. He was mad at her, blaming her for forcing him to tie the dog up. Stan heard him and understood what had happened.

  “What’s that?” asked Shirley. Things did not occur to her. Ideas and possibilities did not seem to germinate in her mind any more.

  “The dog died,” said the neighbor.

  “Oh, dog days,” said Shirley, blithely. She just turned and went about her business. The neighbor stared at her as if she was out of her mind. Stan just slunk away out of embarrassment.

  Dan was now 49 years old. He still worked hard and was a good attorney, but he had given so much of his time to coaching his son’s baseball teams that his career would never recover.

  In the fall of 1981, Stan started his senior year. He was not highly popular and he was not the “big man on campus,” even though his accomplishments should have granted him that stature. But Lopez had mercifully graduated. All the teammates who had jealously given him a hard time had been older than he was, and they were gone.

  His teammates now were his age or younger. They had watched in awe as one of their own had pitched on the varsity as a freshman, and starred as a sophomore. There were a lot of kids in the program who had no use for Ambers. They knew that the coach had treated Stan poorly.

  Stan still did not have a girlfriend, and had never been with a woman in any capacity. He was still timid. He did not go to parties, he did not drink, and he did not do drugs. He hardly socialized. He was not an average high school kid.

  Dan had been popular in high school. He got the girls. He had never been like Stan. He looked at Stan, and wondered about him. He knew the kid had athletic talent, and the make-up to take it all the way. But the kid would not fight even if someone took him on. He had beaten the crap out of a couple of kids in junior high. Surely he had been pressed into similar situations in high school, but he had chosen weakness. He was still burdened by fear and intimidation.

  Dan saw himself as everything he wanted his kid to be. While Stan’s athletic feats met expectations, he was neither tough nor popular. This frustrated Dan. He felt like Ted Williams teaching hitting to mediocre batters. Dan had difficulty relating to his son outside of sports. He knew his son liked girls, but Dan was amazed that a handsome athlete like Stan was not more successful with them, as he had been. He was also concerned with his choice of
friends. He viewed Walt as a drunken bigot, which was amusing because Walt was not the only one who viewed Dan like that. Dan thought Brad was okay, but the two seemed to always be on the verge of getting in trouble. But none of the top athletes at Rolling Hills were close pals with his son.

  Walt and Brad played on the teams, but in the hierarchy of Rolling Hills’ sports pecking order, they were not in Stan’s class. Stan’s injury-marred junior year had been a disappointment, but he had achieved major notoriety as a sophomore. The scouts had been out in force to see him come back in the American Legion World Series, and he entered his senior year as a member of Prep Sports’ Pre-Season All-American team.

  Stan made friends with people who normally would not have hung out with a star jock. Stan took drama classes. He played Felix in Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple”. He would have been more involved, but sports took up too much of his time. He became friends with the artsy kids in drama. He did not realize it at the time, but a lot of them were gay. In fact, half the teachers at the school were gay. Stan was still gullible enough to avoid believing people were gay, despite telltale signs. The drama teacher was openly homosexual, and still Stan did not realize it. Rolling Hills’ cross-country coach brought his “significant other” to basketball games. An avid surfer, he had an old “woodie” that he also used to drive runners to practice in remote parts of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. On lonely, windswept running paths, he had sex with several of his runners over the years, but was never caught.

  Stan liked drama class for two reasons. He enjoyed the plays. Shirley had introduced him to the stage, and he enjoyed it. He had done “skits” with Brad and had natural acting talent. But he also discovered the hidden secret of drama class.

  There were always cute girls in drama class. They were not the please-like-me-I’m-so-popular cheerleader types who dated quarterbacks. Those were the girls who had gravitated to Dan when he was in high school. The drama girls at Rolling Hills were earthy and intelligent. Stan was still too shy to make much time with them, but he enjoyed being around them.

  Stan also hung out with the kids nobody ever remembers from high school. Kids who might by called “nerds” or “geeks.” Guys who were into computers. There was a natural inclination on their part to be wary of Stan. Well-known athletes were not supposed to be a part of their crowd. But Stan loved hanging out in the library, and he would shoot the breeze with these guys, who sat around there, shooting the breeze. These kids tended to be big sports fans. They knew statistics and baseball history. Stan would talk ball with them every chance he got. There was nothing he loved more than sharing his passion for the game.

  Dan had become ever more vocal regarding his attitude towards minorities. Walt and his pals, who by this time were smoking a lot of marijuana, drinking beer and listening to the The Grateful Dead, liked to swing by Stan’s house to “get a load of The Dan,” as in Dan, not Stan.

  Dan would always be in the bag. He was disgusted at the way the “news media caters to the damn blacks.

  “You guys have it much harder,” Dan would go on. “In my day, if you were the best man for the job, you got the job. Nowadays, the niggers get the jobs. They get into schools through affirmative action. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing a black face. Every commercial is blacks.”

  “Damn right, Mr. Taylor,” Walt would egg him on. “Fuckin’ niggers.”

  Stan would watch, half agreeing and half horrified. He could see that Walt was a “shit disturber” who loved getting a rise out of his old man. Walt actually did not hold these racist views. It was all a big joke to him. Walt would be drinking. Stan still did not drink. Walt came to the house with an open beer. When he was finished with it, he looked in the refrigerator and saw a six-pack of Budweiser.

  Walt grabbed the Bud, but Dan saw him.

  “Walt, I’m sorry, but you can’t drink that,” Dan told him. “If you drink in my presence and leave here intoxicated, and get in an accident, there’s case law that says I’m liable.”

  “No problem, my Dan,” intoned Walt. “Do you mind if I drink milk?”

  “No,” Dan said, “drink all the milk you want.”

  Walt broke out the milk, but hid a Bud behind it. Stan saw what he was doing, and made some noise to hide Walt flipping the tab. It went on like that for the entire six-pack. Walt and the boys sat listening raptly to Dan go on and on about blacks, minorities in general, Jim Ambers, gays, Democrats, and any number of hot button issues. Once on a tangent, he went into orbit. Stan was happy to have friends at the house, but he knew his father was more an object of hilarity than respect.

  Early in his senior year, a number of important events occurred in Stan’s life. Now that he had a driver’s license, his parents let him borrow the car, but he did not have one of his own. Dan would drive him to school every day. This was always a source of tension.

  Stan never was and never would be a “morning person.” Shirley would call down to him to get up for school. Stan would be asleep in bed. Either he did not hear her, or he was too groggy to effectively call back loudly enough for her to hear him. It had gone on like that for years.

  “Stan,” Shirley would call.

  No answer.

  “Stan,” she would call out.

  Stan would barely hear it, roll over in bed, and mumble to himself.

  By the third “Stan,” it was all over.

  “Goddammit, answer me,” she would yell, and her voice would take on high-pitched agitation. Screaming meemies.

  She would stomp downstairs, open the door without knocking, and say, “Answer me when I call you you little…bastard.” Her voice would break. It got very high when she was agitated. Some variation of that scene was the way Stan Taylor met almost every school day of his life.

  Shirley and Dan both asked Stan questions. Stan would answer them in a normal, conversational tone.

  “Answer us when we talk to you,” Shirley would say, while Stan was answering them, or before he could answer.

  “Goddamn asshole son of a bitch, treats us like dirt under his feet,” Dan would say.

  It was always unfair. Stan never got the benefit of the doubt. His job was to be the object of their anger. That was what he was there for. He realized that, and had always blamed himself for the heat that came down on him. As he got older, though, he was asking whether he truly deserved this treatment. He was intelligent enough to question it. When his parents would lay him out, he could have explained things, like telling them he had answered them, only they had not heard him. But he figured that they yelled and swore at him because they had some psychological need to do that. Stan reasoned that if they were going to act like that, parents or no parents, they gave up some of their rights

  When Stan started his senior year, he began to defy his father.

  “Here are the ground rules,” he told Dan. “For every pound of shit you hand me, I’ll give five pounds.”

  “Goddamn lousy rotten son of a bitch fuckin’ asshole cocksucker bastard prick son of a bitch fucking no good lousy rotten little fuckin’ prick bastard Goddamn you all to hell, Goddamn you,” Dan responded.

  Stan would get out of bed and read the L.A. Times sports section. Shirley would make breakfast. Stan would then go to the bathroom. Every day, Dan would go to his car, get in, start it up, and idle in the driveway. He never told Stan he was going. He just assumed that if he was ready, Stan had to be ready.

  If Stan did not get in the car within 10 seconds, the horn would start honking.

  “Goddamn you son of a bitch Goddamn prick bastard lousy rotten cocksucking son of a Goddamn bitch bastard Goddamn you, Goddamn you!” Dan would say to Stan.

  Stan listened to that on his way to school for years. Stan started to give it right back. He used logic.

  “Okay, if you’re gonna talk that way to me, you’ll get talked to twice as bad right back,” Stan would say calmly. “Here’s the new rules around here. When I identify that with which you say to be not acting
like a decent human being, you’ll be called on it. Period. No more listening to all your crap.”

  Dan’s face would clench. Reasoning with him was of no value when he was in full “shitstorm” mode.

  “Lousy rotten ungrateful cocksucking bastard prick Goddamn you,” he responded. Stan had told him that he would give it back worse than he got it, but he was not capable of such vulgarity. He could swear, but not like his father.

  Thank God for it.

  Dan started in on Stan, for no good reason, before breakfast.

  By 8:30 in the morning, Stan had been called a “cocksucker” five times, an “asshole” four times, and three times been “damned to hell” buy his father. He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and cried. He had a sudden urge to take a dump, so he sat down and did what he had to do. The tears were still coming down his face, when he heard the horn honking.

  Fucking prick, he thought to himself.

  Stan took the toilet paper, and started to wipe. It took quite a bit of paper, and a few minutes, to sanitize himself enough to get dressed and depart for school. Dan was apoplectic, screaming, “Goddamn you,” “fucking cocksucker,” and “asshole bastard.”

  Stan emerged from the house. He could see neighbors staring from across the street. They were used to hearing Dan swear with the windows open. Watching USC and the Dodgers on television often resulted in horrid scream sessions, but now he was outside.

  Dan leaned on the horn, and his voice cascading through the canyons of Palos Verdes Estates.

  My father is a certified asshole, Stan wearily said to himself.

  He saw the look in his old man’s eyes. It was pure evil. This was in the morning. Dan was not drunk. He was livid. Stan purposely moved slowly. He meandered. He checked his books. He paused at the car. He opened the door…

  “Goddamn you cocksucker little prick Goddamn it all to lousy hell Goddamn you son of a bitch fucking lousy rotten son of a fucking no good lousy fucking fuck of a son of fuck bitch you fuck Goddamn you Goddamn you all to lousy hell,” Dan said to his son.

  Stan got in the car. He reached over to close the door. He felt himself jerked forward. Dan gunned the car out of the driveway. Stan lost his grip on the door, which swung open. It was too late. The car’s wheels were spinning, and the car just flew right out. The door caught the mailbox, knocking the mailbox off its hinges, and the door tore right off the car.

  Dan was out of his mind. He kept screaming and yelling at his son. Incarcerating people for using that kind of language is a good idea. Stan started to cry. Finally, five minutes from school, Dan was exhausted from yelling.

  “Let me tell you something, old man,” Stan said. “You’re Goddamn lucky to have a son like me. I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked me. I’ve never given you trouble. I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t get in trouble. Who the hell are you to say things like that to me? Huh? I’ve loved you and Mom with every pore in my body all my life, and I don’t deserve to be treated like this. I just don’t.”

  The car pulled up to the curb, and a sobbing Stan departed. His old man never said a word. It was one of those rare times in which he was shamed by what he had said, but he was not genetically programmed to apologize. He just drove away.

  Stan then tried to pull himself together for school. He managed to sleepwalk through five periods, and at lunch he just found a quiet bench to eat his sandwich. Tears were streaming down his face, making the bread soggy. He thought about killing himself.

  “Do you mind if I sit here?” said a voice.

  Stan looked up.

  His name was Marty Frazier. Stan hardly knew him. He was a quiet kid. He had never had been an athlete. He was known as a “Jesus freak” because he was always telling people about the Bible.

  “Whaddaya want?” inquired Stan.

  “I want to tell you the Lord Jesus Christ loves you,” said Marty.

  Stan just looked at him. He found it hard to believe anybody loved him at that moment.

  “That’s nice to hear,” said Stan. “I could use a little love right now.”

  Marty was kind, gentle, and understanding. Stan felt comfortable with him. They began to talk.

  “My father hates me,” said Stan. “My mother doesn’t defend me against him. I can’t take it any more. The things he calls me - I’m a good son, man. I love my parents. They love me, I guess, but they just are so horrible to me. Why is my father, why do my parents treat me the way they do?”

  “Let me show you something,” Marty said. He opened his shirt, turned his back, and revealed some ugly scars. Stan stared at them. Marty put his shirt back on.

  “My father’s beaten me all my life,” he said.

  Stan hugged him, and started to cry.

  “I just hate myself sometimes,” said Stan. “My parents have given me everything. My Dad’s sacrificed for me. I’m a spoiled brat. Everything’s been handed to me all my life, and what have I done for it? I must deserve what I get. I can’t do anything right. I’m no damn good. I think I’m hot shit, but I’m fooling myself. If my parents blame me for everything all the time, there’s gotta be a reason for it. It’s my fault, every time. It has to be that way, I must really be a screw-up. I just hate myself. I hate what I am. I have no redeeming qualities.”

  “I have some advice for you,” Marty said. “That’s a destructive path. I don’t know you’re dad. But I do know him. And I know you’ll never out yell him. You can’t give him more pain than he gives you. He doesn’t hate you, he hates himself.”

  “Man, I just can’t do anything right,” Stan lamented.

  “Listen,” Marty said, “I used to believe that about myself. It wasn’t true with me, and it isn’t true with you, either. You can’t change your father, you can’t change your parents. They’re gonna give you a hard time. They’re gonna yell at you -.”

  “I call `em ‘shitstorms,’” said Stan.

  “They’re gonna give you ‘shitstorms’ when it’s time to give you ‘shitstorms,’”

  said Marty. “You can’t stop `em. Think of it like the weather. You can’t stop the weather. You don’t get mad at it, you just shelter yourself from it. It’s not your fault and never has been. I’ve seen you around. You’re a good guy. Sure, you’re full of yourself like all the jocks, but a lot less than most I know. I’ve never seen you hurt anybody, or badmouth anybody.”

  “I don’t,” said Stan. “I never mean to hurt anybody.”

  “I know that’s the way you are, I can tell,” said Marty.

  “But there has to be something wrong with me,” Stan said. “I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t think my parents are proud of me. They deserve better than me. My dad’s an attorney. He played at USC and for the White Sox. He was a baseball star. My mom was somebody that everybody at USC wanted to marry. My parents were, like, the perfect couple. And look at me. I’m a loser. All I do is disappoint `em. That’s why they blame me for everything and yell at me and swear at me. That’s why, because I deserve it. I don’t deserve to be loved.”

  “Now you listen to me,” Marty said. “You are loved. You’re loved by the Lord Jesus Christ. Are you familiar with the Lord?”

  “I was baptized Episcopalian,” said Stan, “but I never go to church.”

  “Jesus loves you,” said Marty. “He also loves your parents. I know all about what you’re going through. I love my parents, and they love me. But my father beats me because he can’t help it. Don’t hate your parents. Pray for them. Turn the other cheek. You have to come to two conclusions. First, when your folks blame you and yell at you, it’s not your fault. Do you know that?”

  “I dunno,” said Stan.

  “It’s not your fault,” repeated Marty. “Okay? You’re not to blame. Now, there is something else you have to learn and understand.”

  “What?” said Stan, looking up at Marty.

  “You’ll never be able to match your dad in a shouting match,” he said.

  ??
?No kidding,” Stan said, allowing a smile.

  “Listen to me closely, Stan,” Marty said. “You’ll have to live this. If you follow my advice, it’ll change your life for the better. Here’s what it is. From now on, when your old man - your parents - yell at you, swear at you, blame you, try to make you feel lousy - just ignore it. Don’t fight back. Turn the other cheek. You’ll never convince `em their wrong. They have to live with themselves. Don’t yell back. Just take it. Pray for them. It’s not your fault. If you argue with them, you’re acknowledging that they might be right. You’re authorizing them to keep doing it. If you react to it, you’re giving them credence. Don’t do that. Do I make sense to you?”

  “Yeah,” said Stan, “I think I do.”

  Marty went on to explain the Bible to Stan. He talked about the sacrifice that Christ made, and how the sins committed by Dan, Shirley, Stan, and everybody, were forgiven because Christ had died for humanity.

  Stan began to realize what a great deal this is. He could forgive himself. He could forgive his parents. Christ had already forgiven all of them. Stan became a Christian that day. He was different after that. He would live not for his parents, but for himself and for God. He would honor his parents. He would love them, but he would not let their words, their bluster and their blame - their sins - ruin his life. Stan was a human, and he would have his letdowns. He would continue to be flabbergasted by his parents, and he would not maintain strength every day. But he had a relationship with Christ now. This provided him a guidepost. A sign up ahead.

  Stan Taylor was always a complex person. Becoming a Christian created a conflict. He did not become a devout churchgoer. He did not read the Bible very much. He simply became comfortable with his place in the world. He became spiritual. He talked to God. He also started to sow his wild oats. He had been repressed for a long time. This would amount to some considerable sowing. But something told him that it was the dawn of a new season in his life.

  Christianity would be the rock at the center of this new adventure. He yearned to experience everything. Not everything he wanted to experience was wholesome. He wanted women. He wanted to party. But Marty had told him that Christians were not perfect, just forgiven. He could be forgiven for wanting to measure himself in the world.

  The first thing that happened was that Stan got a car. Shirley bought a new one, and handed down her Plymouth Fury to Stan. It was a convertible. Stan was grateful to his parents for the car. They could be so mean to him, and they could be so wonderful. Stan drove that car to school. He hung out afterwards. He drove it to football games. It made him popular.

  Stan, Walt and his other pals, Seth Hillmire and Pat Flood, would drive by the front of the school. The other guys knew girls.

  “Hey, wanna take a ride in Taylor’s convertible,” Pat yelled out to a group of girls.

  The next thing he knew, Stan was driving to the beach with three high school honeys in the car. It was full of hilarity, and for Stan, a taste of Heaven. He would come home to the burden of his father, and see the old man in an entirely knew light. He began to break the parental chains. His parents would lay the same old crap on him. Stan just smiled. He had a car, he had friends, and he could sense that his virginity might be coming to an end, too.

  Kimberly Biagini was one year younger than Stan. She was Italian, and as far as Stan was concerned, beautiful. She was also one of those girls that might be considered slutty in high school. Kimberly had unbelievable 40D breasts.

  People joked that Kimberly’s breasts arrived in the library five minutes before she did. What saved Kimberly from a really bad reputation was her intelligence and personality. She was a smart girl who would go on to UC-Santa Barbara. She was always smiling and friendly. She had lost her virginity at age 13. In the eighth grade, she had sex with two guys in one of the guys’ pool. That made her legendary.

  Kimberly did not have to go steady with a guy to have sex with him. She liked jocks as much as German transfer students. The guys marveled at her incredible breasts. She would let guys mount her breasts and slide between them. She gave great blowjobs.

  Kimberly was one of those girls who occasionally ended up in Stan’s car along with the other kids. Stan got to know her a little. He was encouraged that she seemed to like him. Kimberly knew he was a good athlete. She did not seem to know that Stan had been considered something of a nerd. She was unaware that he had been pushed around in his earlier high school years. He was a senior with a car now. Those days were slipping into the past.

  The Fall dance was held in October. Stan went with a kid named Ken White. Ken had grown up with Kimberly. He had started to hang out with Stan because he had a car. Stan cultivated the friendship because Ken had a great music collection. He had also known Kimberly since grade school. Through Kenny, he wanted to get to Kimberly.

  At the dance, Kenny and Stan stood together.

  “There’s Biagini,” he told Stan. “Go get her.”

  Kimberly was wearing a paisley cocktail dress. She was tanned, and her breasts seemed to explode against the material. Stan had been waiting for this moment for weeks. He knew exactly what he was going to do.

  Now that the moment arrived, he was completely unable to do it.

  “What are you waitin’ for?” Ken asked him.

  “Next song,” said Stan.

  Kimberly was standing by herself.

  “Next song?” exclaimed Ken. “Jesus, man, are you high. That’s Kimberly Biagini. Her tits are hangin’ out of her clothes, man. That chick’s got a short shelf life, dude. You don’t just wait around when she’s standin’ there. You know how many guys wanna give it to her?”

  “Okay, okay,” said Stan. His head was starting to spin.

  He just stood there.

  “Yeah, well, okay?” inquired Ken.

  Stan remained silent.

  “Listen, man,” said Ken, “I know you like the chick, and I wanna help. But if you don’t take some action, I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”

  “What drastic measures?” asked Stan.

  “I’ll tell her you told me you had a wet dream about her,” said Ken.

  “Jesus, man, no,” said Stan, frantically.

  “Listen, Stan,” said Ken, “here’s the story. She likes you. She told me she likes you.”

  Ken was lying, but this was the encouragement Stan needed.

  “You lie,” said Stan.

  “She told me not to tell you, bro,” said Ken, “but she likes you. Now go.”

  Stan walked across the dance floor, staring at Kimberly and her massive, tanned breasts. The closer he got, he felt the walls closing in around him. He was as nervous as he had ever been.

  Finally, he was face to face with her. She smiled.

  “Hi, Kimberly,” said Stan, “wanna dance?”

  “Uh, sure,” she said.

  They went out to the dance floor.

  “Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight,” were the lyrics to the popular disco song that was just ending as they got on the dance floor. Then it happened. Perfect timing. The disco dance song ended. A slow dance Bee Gees love song came on. It was too late to turn back.

  Stan reached his arm around Kimberly’s shoulder, and she did the same. They started to move to the rhythm. Suddenly, Stan felt her monumental breasts squeezed up against his chest. It was like nothing he had ever felt in his entire life. It was beyond magnificent.

  Stan sprouted the biggest, hardest, most spectacular erection in the history of sex. His equipment felt like it was 18 inches long. His testicles felt like they were filled with concrete. It was impossible for Kimberly to slow dance with him and not feel it. It brushed up against her leg. Stan pulled her closer to him. He was grinding into her.

  The guys in the locker room could give Stan grief about the size of his unit, which was not impressive when unaroused. But he also knew he had what women needed when it counted, and as Jim Morrison once said, “The men don’ know, but the little gi
rls unnerstan’.” Kimberly understood. She almost thought it was a joke at first, that Stan had a baseball bat between his legs. Then she realized it was his natural equipment.

  “Jesus, Stan,” she said, wide-eyed, “are you happy to see me, or did you bring a Louisville Slugger.”

  Stan thought the Mae West-style comment, and the fact this girl knew what a Louisville Slugger was, made her the sexiest woman ever.

  “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” Stan whispered into her hair. “I want to make love to you.”

  “I guess so,” said Kimberly. Her hand slipped on to his equipment. Stan’s pants were in serious jeopardy of splitting from the force of his erection.

  “Let’s go someplace and be alone,” he said.

  “You sure like to work fast,” she said, smiling.

  This was the greatest moment of Stan’s life. He glanced around the room. His baseball teammates watched him with the legendary Kimberly Biagini. He was a stud. Kenny was giving him the thumbs up sign.

  The song ended.

  “Wanna go to my car?” said Stan.

  “Okay,” she said obediently.

  Ken walked out of the gym with Kimberly. Every eye was on him. He was going to attain his manhood.

  When they got to his car, Stan started kissing her. He was very good, a natural. He had his tongue down her throat, and was running his hands up and down her sides. Stan was pressed up against her so her massive breasts were squished against him. His tremendous erection was pressed against her thigh.

  Into the car they went. The radio came on.

  “More Than A Feeling” by Boston was playing. It was too perfect.

  They kissed some more, felt each other out, and then Stan had her breasts out of her dress. He started licking and kissing them. Then he managed to unzip his trousers, and out came his unbelievable hard-on. Stan was utterly amazed at himself. He could not believe hard and big he was.

  Kimberly was on it like a hobo on a ham sandwich. It felt like fleshy rock in her mouth. Stan felt like all the power in the world was between his legs. He was ready to ejaculate immediately. Stan knew that if he let himself cum, he would literally soak Kimberly, her dress, his pants, and his car. He wanted to hold it back. He figured from here he would take her to bed and make love to her. He was not sure where. His house was out of the question. Maybe her place. A motel?

  Then it happened.

  “Hey Taylor, go for it,” came the voice. A hand pounded on the windshield.

  “Oh My Dan, carry on by all means,” said Walt Coleman in his stentorian tone. He was with Brad Cooper, Pat Flood and Seth Hillmire. They had a couple of open six-packs, a bottle of booze, and a water cooler. They had the car surrounded.

  “Is that Kimberly Biagini?” asked Brad. “Jesus, Dan, good work. For God’s sake man, good work.”

  Stan did not like being interrupted, but his great triumph was something he was proud to have his pals see. They were clapping, hooting and hollering. Kimberly withdrew from him.

  “Put that back in your pants,” she said. She was not mad, but she was insistent.

  “Hey guys,” said Stan, “how ’bout a little privacy, okay?”

  Kimberly’s head moved away from his equipment, and the fellows saw his massive woodrow.

  “Holy shit, Dan,” exclaimed Walt, “did’ja get an implant?”

  Kimberly opened the door.

  “I’ll see you inside,” she said.

  “Wait,” said Stan, but she had put herself back into her dress, and was out the door.

  In later years, Stan would kick himself over what he did next. He should have gone after her, smoothed things over, and taken her to a quiet place away from the school grounds. Instead, he allowed himself to be glorified by his pals.

  “Wanna snort?” asked Hillmire. He had a water cooler.

  “No, man, I gotta get that chick,” said Stan.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it my Dan,” said Walt. “Have a beer.”

  “What’s in the cooler?” asked Stan.

  “‘Tommy the Tigers’,” said Brad. “Vodka, orange juice and Olde English 800.”

  Stan had drunk the equivalent of a six-pack of beer in his life. He had had a beer with his dad fishing a few times. This seemed like a good moment to start drinking in earnest.

  “Want one?” asked Brad.

  “Sure thing,” Stan replied.

  Hillmire produced a plastic cup, poured the orange liquid into it, and offered it to Stan. Stan drank it. He could barely taste the Vodka and malt liquor. The orange juice was sweet and went down smoothly.

  “Dynamite combo,” announced Stan.

  “To The Dan getting his cock sucked,” announced Walt.

  Everybody lifted their drinks in a toast. Stan was on top of the world.

  The boys sat at his car for 45 minutes drinking beers, “Tommy the Tigers”, and Bourbon. Stan became very intoxicated. He wanted to go inside and find Kimberly, to resume their adventures, but he was having the blast of his life getting drunk with his friends. Finally, everybody meandered in to the dance. Stan was looking for Kimberly, but could not find her.

  “Where’ve you been?” asked Ken.

  “Every once in a while,” Stan announced, “a man’s gotta do a little bit a drinkin’.”

  “Jesus,” said Ken, “I never seen you drink before.”

  “I’m makin’ my debut,” said Stan. “Now, where’s that tittie monster?”

  “Hey dude,” said Ken, “she left with that German exchange student guy. Heinrich something.”

  “German exchange student?” asked Stan. “You gotta be shitting me.”

  He was still too exhilarated by the events of the evening and the alcohol, to be disappointed. He continued to have a terrific time. That night, Stan partied. He made up for everything he had ever missed. They hooked up with other guys who had alcohol, and Stan drank until he was wasted.

  Finally, when the dance ended, Stan was ready to get Kimberly.

  “Who knows where Kimberly Biagini lives?” he asked.

  “I do,” said Ken.

  “I’ll drive,” said the drunken Stan.

  Everybody piled in his car, and Stan peeled out of there. Ken directed him to Kimberly’s house. Miraculously, he evaded a DUI.

  “Maybe she’ll do all of us,” Pat Flood said. “I hear she’s into it.”

  The house was dark. The guys stood by the car for about 10 minutes, formulating a plan.

  “Fuck it,” Stan finally said. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. If I’m not back in 20 minutes, call in an air strike. The coordinates are almighty almighty Zulu foxtrot somethin’ or other.”

  “Good luck, my Dan,” announced Walt solemnly. He lifted his beer in a toast to Stan, who stood and saluted.

  Stan crept along the driveway that led to the back of her house. Kimberly lived in an old house that had a gravel driveway, and each step was loud as the rocks crunched under his feet.

  “You’re mission, Mr. Taylor, should you decide to accept it,” Stan said softly to himself, “is to find one Kimberly Biagini, reputed to have the finest set of female breasts on the face of the Earth, and fuck her.”

  Stan worked his way around to the back of the house. He looked up at what he figured had to be her bedroom. There was a dim light in there. The only way up was to climb the transom. Stan grabbed hold of the pipe, and pulled himself up.

  “I gotta be out of my mind,” he said to himself.

  Suddenly, the backdoor opened. A 270-pound guy who looked like a hit man for the Gambino crime family stood in his underwear, wearing a “wife beater” tank top. He was holding a rifle. Stan fell on his ass, onto the gravel.

  “Who the fuck are you?” asked Kimberly Biagini’s father.

  “Uh, shit, I’m a friend of Kim’s,” said Stan.

  “Get the hell out of here before I call the cops, or worse,” said the man.

  Stan got up and high-tailed it out of there.

  He
ran to the car.

  “Get in,” he said. “Luca Brasi’s gotta gun.”

  Everybody got in the car, and Stan drove off. Everybody just busted out laughing. It had been a memorable evening.

  The next day, Dan and Stan went down to the field to practice. The whole time, Stan just thought about Kimberly’s incredible breasts, and what her mouth felt like wrapped around his erection. He figured he would make her his girlfriend. He could not wait to consummate the relationship in a nice, private place. Stan was walking on air.

  Even Dan sensed that things were changing for Stan.

  “I think he’s starting to sow his wild oats,” he told Shirley.

  At practice on Monday, all his teammates were buzzing about Stan Taylor, born-again ladies man.

  “So there’s Taylor,” said Larry Starr, a reserve outfielder, “dancing with the women. Stan, we never knew.” Stan loved it. There was nothing that would up-grade his social status more than to be successful with the girls.

  The next time Stan saw Kimberly at school, he became nervous. He did not approach her, figuring she would come to him. She did not. A week passed, and then Stan saw her with the German exchange student, Heinrich. He was a 6-3 soccer player, good-looking with long hair. He wore a headband.

  It turned out that after their fellatio interruptus in the car, Kimberly had gone back in to the dance, where she hooked up with Heinrich. She took Heinrich back to her house, and was having sex with him in her room when her old man had caught Stan.

  Kimberly stuck with Heinrich exclusively the rest of that school year. She decided not to be such a slut anymore. Getting caught by a bunch of guys blowing Stan Taylor was the last straw. She was going to clean up her act. Kimberly and Stan spoke a few more times, but the chemistry was not there. She was not mad at him. She did not blame him because his friends had discovered her giving him head.

  Stan pined for her the rest of his senior year. He never did get a girlfriend, and he never “officially” lost his virginity. The next year, when Kimberly was a senior and Stan was gone, the German kid returned to the Fatherland. Kimberly decided to go back to her old ways. She and her friend Patty, a gorgeous girl who would have a successful modeling career, started doing ménage a trois’ with guys. Stan heard about it, but never participated. He kicked himself for missing out on that, just as he had blown his chances with Stacy and Lyndsey. He certainly used the mental images to fuel his fantasies, though.

  Stan did not place a lot of emphasis on his grades. He was sure he would get a baseball scholarship and would be admitted to college. He wanted to go to USC. After his phenomenal sophomore year, he figured that was a fait accompli, but his junior year had put everything up in the air. Nothing in school excited him very much. When he went to take the SATs his senior year in October of 1981, it fell on the day USC was playing Notre Dame in South Bend. Stan rushed through the SATs, not particularly caring what his score was. He wanted out of there so he could catch the second half of the Trojans’ 14-7 victory.

  One night Shirley and Dan went to dinner. Stan went rooted around their bedroom. He found some interesting pornographic items, including magazines, some 30-millimeter movies and a projector. He set the projector up, and proceeded to watch three porn movies. They were old-fashioned and grainy, but the girls looked hot. One of the movies looked to be Swedish or German. The girls were attractive. The best action was the fellatio. Stan had himself stripped nude with a bottle of skin cream, and was holding Mr. Fullwood in his hands when suddenly he heard the front door open.

  Oh, Christ, he thought to himself.

  Stan grabbed the still-playing projector, and threw it into the closet. He rolled up the screen. He kicked the movies under the bed. He threw his clothes on. He was sweating like a stuck pig.

  “Stan,” Shirley was calling out. “We’re home. Stan?” If his parents had come straight into their bedroom, he would have been a goner, but they lingered in the kitchen. Finally, Stan came out.

  “Why are you so red?” Shirley asked him.

  “Abbada aw sweat abbada,” said Stan.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” asked Dan.

  “Abbadda aw abba da,” said Stan.

  “Stupidkid,” said Dan.

  “Yeah, ah,” said Stan.

  Stan sweated out the rest of that night. Remarkably, the closet had a dark corner, and his parents did not notice the projector, which had been thrown in there. The next morning, Stan snuck in and put everything back together the way he had found it. The whole episode was a close call.

  The next time he and his pals had some time to kill after school, they all rode up to his house. Shirley was taking tennis lessons, and Dan was at work. Stan set up a screening room, and about eight guys sat around watching his parent’s porn movies. This occurred several times.

  Once, Shirley came home unexpectedly. Stan and his pals managed to shut the projector down and get everything back in place without detection. VCRs were still novelty items. Discarding the projector was a lot more hassle than ejecting a videocassette.

  On another night, Stan attended a Dodger game with Dan and Shirley. It was a rare cold evening at Chavez Ravine, and they brought a blanket. The blanket was inside a plastic, with a zipper. It served as a seat cushion until it got cold. Then Dan unzipped it and took the blanket out. That was when Stan saw it. Inside the clear plastic was a porn magazine. The cover showed a pretty girl giving head. The title of the magazine was “Cocksuckers.”

  Dan and Shirley did not see it. Stan saw that the elderly couple sitting behind them did. This situation went on for about an inning. Finally, Dan noticed the blowjob magazine.

  “Ooh, ooh,” he blurted out. “Shirley, Jesus.”

  He showed it to Shirley.

  “How did that get in there?” she asked.

  Stan laughed so hard that he had to hide his face in his jacket for two innings. The incident served to humanize his parents. He could laugh at things now. He had a new perspective of his folks. He prayed to Jesus that he would be forgiven for looking at the pornography. He had a smile on his face.

  Stan’s life was changing. He took up surfing. Within a few short months in the Fall of his senior year, major and diverse changes were occurring to him. He had become a Christian and gotten his first blowjob within weeks of each other. He was obsessed with Kimberly, had learned how to drink, and discovered porn. He still had basketball and baseball season ahead.

  Stan re-dedicated himself to baseball. All the hard work in the weight room, the conditioning and running, had become drudgery to him. Now that he was having fun like a normal teenager, he found that he had new mental energy to devote to his training. All work and no play did not just make for a dull boy, it made for a stale athlete. He was determined to come back from his junior year injury and make his senior season the best it could be, on and off the field. His new religious convictions made him feel that he had something solid to come back to when he was finished partying. It might not have been a perfect plan, but God works in mysterious ways.

  Stan and Tony Campanella were the two aces during Winter league. Ambers knew he needed Stan. Frank Ferrigno had been used and abused. Over at Palos Verdes High, Billy repeated his three-sport All-American performance. The football team that he quarterbacked was undefeated, won the Southern Section title, and was named “mythical” National Champions. Billy was all-everything, including Southern Section Player of the Year, L.A. Times Player of the Year, Southern California player of the Year, and California Player of the Year.

  In basketball, his team made it to the Southern Section finals, and Billy was close to winning the consensus Player of the Year awards. He and Stan went at it on the basketball court, too, and the action got plenty physical. Stan was a good hoops player, but not in Billy’s league. But he pumped it up for his games against his rival, managing to hold his own. Stan made all-league again.

  Matt Hobli never made it past the junior varsity, and his “job” as a senior was to be Bil
ly’s entertainment coordinator. Billy had so many women at his disposal that he could not keep track of them. They came from everywhere. Girls emerged from out of the woodwork. Girls from other schools traveled to Palos Verdes Estates to have sex with Billy. He was a god at P.V. High. He received tremendous publicity and total adulation. Sports Illustrated called him “the greatest high school athlete of all time.”

  As good as he was in football and basketball, Billy was beyond comprehension in baseball. He hit over .600 with 20 home runs, and by the time he was finished, owned most of the single season and career offensive records. He was named National High School Athlete of the Year. Palos Verdes had a tremendous team, and they rolled undefeated through the pre-season, the Easter tournament, and the first seven games of the Bay League season.

  The big question for Jim Ambers would be who his “ace” pitcher would be, Campanella or Taylor. Ambers knew that the road to both the Bay League and Southern Section championships went through Palos Verdes. He was glad that he had recruited Stan away from P.V. If Stan were pitching against him instead of for him, Rolling Hills would have no chance. He also knew that Stan’s greatest competitive juices flowed when he faced his old P.V. “buddies,” particularly Billy Boswell. Ambers decided to put all his eggs in Stan’s basket.

  The coach sensed that Stan had changed. He was impressed with the ferocious determination that Stan had. Ambers figured that determination was the only thing that had a chance to slow Boswell down. Ambers had heard the new “Taylor stories.” He knew his star pitcher had gotten a blowjob in his car, and had started to drink. But Ambers had been around high school athletes his whole life. He had been a fine player in his own right, and he knew that sometimes the guys had to blow off steam. Taylor would be a better, more relaxed performer instead of an up-tight kid who was obsessed with pleasing his meddling father.

  Stan had a newfound sense of outward confidence in himself. He was no longer the unpopular geek. The Kimberly Biagini incident had made its rounds, and he was enjoying the legend. He had his own car, and a tight knit group of friends.

  Stan felt balanced for the first time. He felt free at last. He had perspective. He found himself better able to withstand the slings and arrows of his father’s barbs. He no longer blamed himself for the way his parents yelled at him. Stan, the selfish jerk, was not suddenly Mahatma Gandhi, but he now the saw world in color, not in black and white. Dan just seemed to see things in black and white.

  Stan also came to realize something else. His father had always required information out of him. Stan had learned early on to give it to him, and not hold anything back. He was expected to tell both his parents everything. He analyzed his life, and saw that his parents used what they knew against him. They criticized his actions. They held the information until it could be used against Stan.

  When he turned 18, Stan figured the less he told his parents, the better. He did not want to be secretive. He had little to hide. But information was like high-pressure build-up with them. If he kept it to a minimum, he could keep the “shitstorms” to a minimum, too.

  His strategy was not without pitfalls. Now that he had a car and a social life, he was getting asked, “Where were you last night?” and “Who were you talking to on the phone?” in addition to the usual “Are you starting on Tuesday?” questions.

  After hanging out with Walt, he answered, “I was over at Walt Coleman’s house.”

  “That Goddamn Coleman’s a troublemaker,” Dan responded. “Shit, he’s not even on your team. What the hell’s he doing, anyway? Is he even going to college? His parents just let him run around unsupervised all day. God knows what kind of trouble you can get into with him, do you hear me?”

  Each remark would spin off to more questions, and the Q & A would become a nightmare of interrogations, accusations and judgments. Stan began to hold back.

  “I was out and about,” he said.

  This was not a good answer, either. Dan demanded to know where his son was, where he was taking the car, and what he was doing.

  “Oh, just hangin’ around,” Stan said.

  “Goddamn kid, can’t answer me,” Dan harrumphed.

  What Stan learned was that it came down to a simple choice between two evils. The greater evil was to answer in full and have every detail picked apart. The lesser evil was to keep the information to a minimum.

  “Think of it as levels within the CIA, and you’ll hear your information on a need-to-know basis,” Stan, who got a carried away with sarcasm, told his old man when he demanded to know more.

  That did not sit well with Dan, but it disarmed him quicker than full disclosure, which was Stan’s ultimate goal. Dan’s tirades were coming, just like the weather. Nothing could stop them. He was an occasional hurricane. Stan just knew that his only defense was to batten the hatches as best he could. Period.

  When it was time for Ambers to choose his opening game pitcher, he went with Stan, who by now was over 6-5, and weighed 222 pounds. Stan looked to have a real future in baseball. He pitched brilliantly throughout the pre-season, winning the Most Valuable Player award in the San Luis Obispo Easter Tournament. In the Bay League opener, Stan threw a no-hitter against Santa Monica.

  Stan was keeping a close eye on the exploits of Billy Boswell. He was obsessed with beating Billy in his senior year. Billy had stolen his thunder for the last time. Stan wanted to prove conclusively that his decision to come to Rolling Hills had been a sound one.

  He was still jealous of Billy. He was was piqued by the fact that Billy never acknowledged him. Billy was interviewed all the time, but he never said anything like, “We know we have to beat Taylor if we’re gonna win it all,” or “Taylor’s the best pitcher in the league, and he’s always been tough on me.” He just ignored Stan. Stan also knew about Billy’s remarkable record with the girls.

  Why do all these white girls throw themselves at a black guy? he thought to himself.

  Stan had heard his father’s racial tirades all his life.

  I’ll never be like that, he told himself repeatedly. He had baggage, however. Billy had repeatedly one-upped him, fair and square, but Stan needed to create the concept that Billy had some kind of unfair advantage. Stan was not able to admit that Billy was the better athlete. He viewed him as aloof, with a posse of sycophants like Matt Hobli, kissing his behind. This appalled Stan. Why was Billy so good? Why was he so popular? Why was he getting more ass than a toilet seat?

  Oh well, Stan thought. I got half a blowjob from Kimberly Biagini.

  As Mick Jagger once said, “You can’t always get what you want. But sometimes, you might just find, you get what you need.”

  On the last Friday of April, 1982, the Boswell vs. Taylor rivalry was jetted up half a notch. Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills met under the lights before 3,000 fans. The game drew media attention not only from the Daily Breeze, but the Los Angeles Times. Several local radio and TV stations sent crews.

  Palos Verdes was 23-0 coming in. Rolling Hills was 22-1. The game was for first place in the Bay League, and peninsula bragging rights. Billy was already projected as the top pick in the amateur draft, which would come in June, and the stands were packed with scouts armed with radar guns.

  Stan was 12-0 with an earned run average of 0.94. He had two no-hitters to his credit, and had completely come into his own. Ambers was kissing his butt every chance he got. Dan could find nothing to give him any heat about.

  That afternoon, Stan tried to take a nap before heading to the ballpark. The phone rang. It was USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux. USC had been recruiting him. Stan figured they would offer a scholarship.

  “Tiger,” said Rod, “I know you got a game tonight, so I don’t wanna break your concentration. But I wanted to let you know we’re offering a full ride scholarship. I sure hope you decide to be a Trojan, just like your old man.”

  “Yes,” said Stan. ”Of course. I’ll sign the letter of intent, absolutely. There’s no place else I want to be.”

/>   Stanford and UCLA had come after him. So had both Arizona schools. Miami, Cal State Fullerton, San Diego State, and all the other big name college baseball programs wanted him, but Stan wanted to be a Trojan.

  After hanging up with Dedeaux, the phone rang again. This time it was the college baseball writer for the L.A. Times.

  “Have you given a verbal commitment to USC?” he asked Stan.

  “Yes,” he replied, “I’ll be a Trojan.”

  “What about the draft?” the writer asked.

  “Well, it depends on where I’m drafted,” said Stan. “I’ll listen to any offers, but my dad pitched at SC and I’ve dreamt of being a Trojan all my life.”

  “Did you hear about Billy Boswell?” the writer asked.

  “No,” said Stan.

  “He signed with UCLA,” he said. “If neither of you sign, you’ll be carrying this rivalry right into college.”

  “That’s great,” said Stan, thinking to himself, Will I ever get out of this guy’s shadow.

  After hanging up with the writer, the phone rang again.

  “Stan, it’s Tom Gamboa of the Milwaukee Brewers,” said the scout on the line. He wanted to know whether Stan was committed to USC or not.

  “We’re projecting you to be a third-to-fifth round pick,” said Gamboa. “That’s if you are signable.”

  “I’ll listen to any offers,” said Stan.

  “Fair enough,” said Gamboa.

  That night, Stan was not in anybody’s shadow. Billy batted three times and went down on two grounders and a pop-up. Stan homered in the first inning, and pitched a seven-hitter to win, 2-1. It was not his best game. He had runners on base all day, but good defense in the form of two double plays bailed him out. His teammates mobbed him after the game. The whole school was there. They treated him like a conquering hero. Little kids lined up for his autograph. Ambers hugged him. Dan and Shirley showered him with praise. Girls called his name. Amid the great accolades, Stan thought about his life. He thought about being taunted in junior high. He thought about his parents. He had love in his heart for them. They had sacrificed for him, and supported his efforts to be the best he could be. He thought about Billy Boswell. He knew that whether Boswell acknowledged it or not, he had given as good as he had taken in their rivalry.

  Stan also thought about the film “Patton”. At the end of the movie, Patton walks alone, away from the pomp and circumstance of military success, and George Scott’s voiceover tells a cautionary tale.

  “Throughout the centuries,” Scott says, “Conquering Roman emperors would parade through the city, displaying the defeated armies. Strange animals would be paraded along with the spoils of war. At the emperor’s side would be a slave, whispering in his ear, ‘All glory is fleeting.’”

  “Just walk with God,” Stan said to himself, feeling magnanimous. “Walk with God.”

  The next day’s L.A. Times ran a story about Billy Boswell signing with UCLA. It was the lead of the story. “Boswell signs with UCLA” overshadowed Rolling Hills’ 2-1 win, which was not mentioned until the third paragraph, which started, “USC-bound right-hander Stan Taylor led Rolling Hills to a victory that will be remembered for years on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.”

  Stan maintained his focus and discipline in the second half of Bay League play. Billy resumed his heavy hitting, and the two teams kept winning. The re-match drew another huge crowd. This time, the team’s came in with identical 29-1 records. They were tied for the league lead, and ranked one-two (with Palos Verdes holding the one) in Southern California and national polls.

  This time, Billy got his revenge. Stan was 14-0 coming in to the game, but Billy tagged him for two home runs in a 4-1 Palos Verdes victory. Both teams made the Southern Section play-offs, and they matched up again for the title game at Dodger Stadium. Stan had pitched and won the semi-final game against Long Beach Poly to get his team into the championship match. Campanella pitched the title game. Naturally, the opponent was Boswell and Palos Verdes. The press was calling the Palos Verdes-Rolling Hills rivalry, particularly the long battles between Billy Boswell and Stan Taylor, one of the greatest in high school history. They said it was the prep version of USC-Notre Dame, Alabama-Auburn or Oklahoma-Texas.

  Tony was terrific, giving up only a solo homer to Billy. He led, 2-1, heading into the bottom of the seventh. Ambers already had Stan warming up. He should have had him resting, since he had pitched the night before. Ambers was no more concerned with Stan’s arm than he had with Eddie Andrews or Frank Ferrigno. When Tony walked the leadoff hitter, Stan was brought in. He had succeeded many times in these very situations. He was hungry for the ball.

  The first hitter to face Stan was Billy. Stan challenged him with two fastballs, one called for a strike, the second swung at and missed. Billy took a vicious cut at the second one. Then Stan came up and in, brushing Billy off the plate. Billy glared out at Stan, who swiped the throw back from his catcher and returned the stare.

  Come on, Billy, Stan thought to himself. Come out here if you want some of me.

  The next pitch was the key. Stan tried a “backdoor slider,” and everybody thought it had nipped the outside corner. Boswell was caught flat-footed after the “purpose pitch,” but the umpire was caught flat-footed, too. He called it a ball.

  Stan challenged Billy on 2-and-2, but got it up. Billy smacked a screaming liner off the right-center field wall for a triple, driving in the tying run. He now represented the winning run at third with no outs. The place was going bananas.

  Stan struggled to stay within himself.

  Fucking umpire, he thought. Anybody but Billy Boswell and I get that call.

  He probably was right. Boswell had already established such a reputation that he was getting the benefit of the doubt from umpires. It did not matter now. Stan bore down and struck out the next two hitters.

  He looked into the stands. There was Dan, sitting next to Shirley, and he had that face. Behind the P.V. dugout was the entire Boswell clan. Big Al had made it for this one. There was Matt Hobli, sitting next to one of Billy’s girlfriends. Two white kids sitting in the middle of this large black family.

  “Weird,” thought Stan.

  Stan bore down to the next hitter, until the count was 1-and-2. His catcher was Bennie Hussein. Bennie was finally getting his chance. He rode the pine his whole Rolling Hills career, but had never quit. Now he was flashing the number two sign, for a curve ball.

  All right, Stan figured, he would get the key strikeout with a breaking pitch. He wound and threw, and it was a beauty. A big, hard-breaking roundhouse. The Uncle Charlie.

  The hitter froze.

  “Strike three,” called the ump.

  The ball broke sharply. Bennie gloved it, but the ball bounced out in front of home plate. The hitter saw this and took off for first. Bennie turned to look behind him.

  “In front,” screamed Stan, but the crowd was loud and Bennie did not hear him. It was an easy play. Just pick up the ball at his feet and throw to first. But Bennie did not know where the ball was.

  Bennie took two steps behind him, but could not see the ball. Billy, at third base, saw this. He calculated that Bennie wood not pick up the ball’s location, and that this was his team’s last, best chance to beat Stan Taylor. He darted for home. Stan ran for home, too. Damn, Billy had speed. Bennie never saw the baseball. It was resting a few inches in front of home plate. Had Bennie seen it, he could have picked it up and tagged Billy out with room to spare. Billy came sliding in. Stan scooped it up, and lunged to tag Billy out at home. It was a bang-bang play, but Billy hooked and came in just under the tag.

  Stan lay on the ground surrounded by Palos Verdes players, who came charging out to hug Billy. He looked around and saw the faces of guys he had played with in little league and known since he was in grammar school. Chuck Berber was on the team. So was Frankie Yagman. He felt like they were dancing on his grave. He looked into the stands, and saw Al Erlanger. But nobody was mocking him. He had prove
n himself a worthy opponent and had earned their respect. It had all been decided fair and square, the way it was supposed to.

  Palos Verdes was the Southern Section champ, and later would be voted number one in the nation. Had Rolling Hills won it, they would have captured that elusive “mythical” National Championship. The greatest era in the history of prep sports on the P.V. Peninsula was over.

  In his last high school match-up with his greatest rival, Stan had come up short against Billy Boswell. A few weeks later, Billy made headlines again when the Chicago Cubs made him the first pick in the amateur draft. His dad negotiated with the Cubs, who he had played for in 1977. If they had retained an agent, Billy would have lost his amateur status and would not be able to play college ball, which was his main source of leverage. Al wanted $1 million for his son, an unheard of sum for a high school player at that time. Al battled over the big bucks with another famous battler, Cubs’ general manager Dallas Green.

  The Boston Red Sox drafted Stan in the fourth round. Dan represented him in negotiations with Boston’s Haywood Sullivan. Coach Ambers tried to weasel his way in, but the Taylor’s did not want him anywhere around.

  Billy and Stan both made the Summer circuit while their fathers negotiated. First, Billy teamed with Stan on some all-star teams. This included the California North-South game, in which Billy was named MVP after hitting a gargantuan home run. Then came the California-Oklahoma All-Star Game, in which Stan pitched five scoreless innings. For the first time, they actually began to communicate with each other.

  “Dude, you were the toughest pitcher I ever faced,” Billy told him.

  “Coming from you, that’s pretty high praise,” said Stan.

  “Man, I wished you’dve stayed at Palos Verdes,” Billy said.

  “You guys did pretty well for yourselves,” said Stan.

  “So you gonna go to SC?” Billy asked.

  “I’m sure I will,” replied Stan. “I really wanna go to college before I sign. What about you? You gotta sign.”

  “To be honest with you,” said Billy, “I’m gonna play at UCLA. I know the Cubs are gonna come in with a lot of cash, but I don’t wanna sign and play in the minors right away like my dad. I’m kinda thinkin’ about all that fine pussy in Westwood, too.”

  The two laughed.

  “Yeah, I heard about you,” said Stan.

  “Man, every time I went over there the girls were better and better lookin’,” Billy said.

  “You visited SC, too,” said Stan. “How did they compare?”

  “Oh, shit,” said Billy. “That’s like asking me which ‘Charlie’s Angel’ I wanna bang, right?”

  “Let me guess,” said Stan. “Farrah Fawcett’s UCLA, and Jacqueline Smith’s USC.”

  “Right,” laughed Billy. “I visited Texas and ASU, too. I’d have no complaints, there. Oh, man, at Austin, these ‘hostesses’ showed me around campus. Two of the best lookin’ Southern belles you ever seen. I left `em both beggin’ for more. Justine and Billy Jo. You meet them?”

  “Yeah,” said Stan. “I met Justine and Billy Jo.”

  “Then you know what I’m talkin’ about,” said Billy.

  “Yeah,” said Stan. “Two of the hottest chicks I ever seen.”

  They were hot all right, but neither one of them had offered themselves to prize baseball recruit Stan Taylor. He imagined them with Billy Boswell. Both of them at the same time.

  Christ, thought Stan to himself, and I’m still a virgin.

  He kicked himself over having let four years of high school pass without ever doing a ménage a trois with the dynamic duo of Staci and Lyndsey. He thought about the Texas cuties. They were nice to him, but never flirted with him in a big way.

  What the hell was the matter with me? he thought.

  Where Billy went, Matt Hobli went. He followed Billy’s lead. After his man smiled at Stan, Matt was all smiles, too.

  “Hey, man, you were the shit,” he said to Stan.

  “Not enough,” said Stan.

  “Hey, you stopped us the first game,” said Matt.

  “Not when it counted,” said Stan.

  “I got a feeling you and Billy’ll be facing each other a bunch more before you’re through,” said Matt.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “AN ANCIENT LUNATIC REIGNS IN THE TREES OF THE NIGHT”

  “Wild child full of grace

  Savior of the human race

  Your cool face

  “Natural child, terrible child

  Not your mother's or your father's child

  Your our child, screamin' wild

  “An ancient lunatic reigns

  In the trees of the night

  Ha, ha, ha, ha”

  --“WILD CHILD”

  By The Doors