Jack Mathis is a talented baseball player but will drugs and alcohol destroy his dreams.
Excerpt
The first memories I have of my childhood are of me and my father, James Mathis, playing catch in the backyard. I was about 5 years old and even back then I can remember my father telling me that I would someday play for the Yankees. I’m not sure I believed him then or not, but the seed was firmly planted.
“Jackie if you listen to me, we can go all the way to the majors,” he would say. “I can see you in pinstripes now.”
I would hear that mantra the whole time I was growing up. Even then I could see my mom, Ellen, looking out the window shaking her head and smiling. Over the years that smile would fade away, and so would she.
“Jackie pay attention to what you are doing, not your mom,” my father would say. “You always have to keep your eyes on the ball.”
I know I didn’t realize it then, but my father had a subtle way of brushing my mom to the side and making her insignificant. Unfortunately over the years he would be less subtle.
“You can’t worry about the people watching you; they can’t help you when you are on the field. Stay focused, that is the only way to succeed and reach our goals,” he would say.
I would then pull my hat down so that it almost completely covered my eyes and throw the ball back to him as hard as I could.
“Thata boy, get angry,” he would respond.
Anger and I would become real close in the coming years.
I was an only child born August 1, 1971 in the small village of Greenville, Rhode Island. My father always told me he was happy I was a boy, for he had no idea what he would have done with a little girl. He owned a small hardware store in town that did a decent business, but he never seemed happy with his work. He would come home and complain about his customers and how helpless they all were. He was an All-American baseball player at the University of Texas and even played in the low minors in the Giants organization before he blew out his elbow. Although his arm would be physically fine he never seemed to recover from the injury mentally.
My mother was “just a housewife” according to my father. She was a very quiet woman, even with me. She always made sure I was dressed in nice clothes and kept me well fed with home cooked meals, but she always seemed a little distant. That was probably because of my father, who ruled not only with an iron fist but also an iron tongue. If you stepped out of line he always came up with the perfect words to take you down a notch, the kind that stung and buzzed around in your head, like an angry hornet trapped in a glass jar.
The one thing my mother passed on to me was an appreciation of music, something my father said was a complete waste of time, probably because he had no talent in that area. She would often sing when we were alone, never when my father was around. I believe these were her happiest moments. She would sing James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend” to me at night sometimes, telling me the song was number one on the charts when I was born. She sang in her chorus in high school and dreamed of a career in music, a dream that was long dead and buried by the time I came around.
My dad and I would play catch like this all summer long, with my father dispensing his thoughts on various topics as he would do for years to come. It was 1976 and the country was celebrating its bicentennial. My father would tell me what a great country we lived in and how the opportunity was mine, I just had to grab it. I remember seeing the tall ships in New York and the huge fireworks displays across the country. The country seemed to get swept up in a wave of patriotism and my father was not immune.
The wave of good feeling quickly left my father when October arrived. The Yankees were taking on the Reds in the 1976 World Series. My father’s mood often mirrored the fortunes of the Bronx Bombers. The Yankees were in the series for the first time in twelve years so that made my father happy, but the fact that they got swept, sent his emotions to the other end of the spectrum. I can remember him cursing at the Big Red Machine and especially their catcher, Johnny Bench.
1977 for many people will always be remembered as the year Elvis Presley died. Elvis was a shell of his former self at the end but still had amazing star power. Who else could get away with wearing sequined white jumpsuits and still be considered somewhat cool? His career is often looked at as two separate periods, the young Elvis and the old Elvis. The young Elvis had hit after hit on the music charts, starred in movies with the most beautiful women of the era, and was the essence of cool. The old Elvis liked drugs and fried peanut butter sandwiches too much, became a virtual recluse, and was defeated by his demons. Elvis hadn’t had a top ten single since “Burning Love” in 1972. In 1977 the airwaves were being dominated by Debby Boone’s “You Light up My Life” and Andy Gibb’s “I Just Want to Be Your Everything,” not quite up to the star wattage of Elvis. Years later, coincidentally, Gibb would lose his battle with drug addiction just like Elvis, so I guess they did ha
ve one thing in common.
1977 was memorable to me for three other reasons. That summer was the first time my father allowed me to swing a bat. I loved taking my cuts even though I rarely made contact. Even back then I was swinging from my heels, trying to hit it as far as I could. Sometimes when I did make contact the bat would cause my hands to sting, but that didn’t faze me in the least, in fact I kind of liked it. My father always insisted I use a wooden bat. “Just like they do in the majors,” he would say. My father would spend hours teaching me my swing, correcting things I was doing wrong. At first he was almost gentle and beamed with pride at his little boy. The problems started when I repeated the same mistake, which was something my father couldn’t stand or understand.
“What is wrong with you, are you retarded?” he said more than once to me.
I responded at first with tears, but that just made him angrier.
“Boys don’t cry. Crying is for babies and little girls,” he said.
I would learn to respond to his insults with anger, which was something he was all too familiar with and strangely respected. I would grip the bat tighter and try to hit it right back at him as hard as I could. The scary part of all this is in a weird way his teaching style seemed to work with me, to some extent. When he insulted me it drove me to try to prove him wrong. He was harsh with me, yet I still craved his approval. I didn’t hate him yet; hell I was like a dog just looking for a pat on the head.
The second memory of that summer was my mother’s car accident. She was driving down Church St. in town when a cat crossed in front of her and she slammed on her brakes. She missed the cat, but unfortunately an older gentleman behind her didn’t notice her braking and hit her from behind. My mother’s head snapped forward and hit the steering wheel, leaving a nasty bump on her forehead and injuring her neck. She wore a neck brace for the next three weeks. She never complained about the pain I could see she was in. She still took care of me and the house, yet my father would still find fault and ridicule her.
“I just don’t understand why the hell you would slam on your brakes for a worthless cat. I would have just run the damn thing over,” he said. “Just another reason why women shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”
About a week after the accident I found my mother crying. It would be one of the few times in my life that I would see her shed a tear, though my father gave her many reasons to. When I found her I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and turned around and left the room. Looking back years later I felt like I just left her there to twist in the wind all by her lonesome. I was only six years old at the time, but maybe just a hug would have helped ease some of her pain. This may have been the first time I let my mother down, but it would soon become a ritual.
The third memory was a much happier one, at least for my father. The Yankees were back in the World Series for the second straight year. The Yankees were able to win the series against the Los Angeles Dodgers four games to two. New York finished the series with the help of three home runs from Reggie Jackson in game six. My father was so happy after that game and told me that I could do the same thing one day. It was probably then that I first wanted to be like Reggie. He concentrated on hitting home runs and getting RBI, rather than worrying about his batting average. Reggie struck out a lot, but when he made contact people took notice. Reggie was a star and seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted. Reggie had the power in more ways than one. He was a star and he knew it and he wasn’t going to take any grief from anyone. He was going to do it his way or he wasn’t doing it at all. Reggie, at this time, was the young Elvis of baseball.
1978 started off with a bang with one of the biggest blizzards that Rhode Island had ever seen. On February 7 and February 8, a nor’easter blasted us with over two feet of snow. The storm took the state by surprise with what looked like just a few flurries on the morning of February 7, turned the state on its ear by mid afternoon. Snow was falling at a rate of three inches an hour at times. Over 3,000 cars were stuck on the highway and the surrounding area in Providence, with many people spending the night in their cars. Others just decided to abandon their cars altogether. Winds reached over 50 miles per hour and caused many to lose power. Over 25 deaths were blamed on the storm and over 30 people were arrested for looting. The storm brought almost all of Rhode Island to a standstill for about a week.
Because of the storm we missed an entire week of school, which I enjoyed. I did start to think that spring was never going to come and the snow would be here until sometime in May. It was about this time that baseball really became my life, and would remain that way for many years. I couldn’t wait for spring to come so that I could start throwing the baseball around. Thankfully the rest of the winter went by without much snow.
I played in my first midget league game in 1978. This was the first time that I had anybody besides my father try to coach me. Midget league was the step below Little League that was for kids 7 and 8 years old. In midget league the coaches pitch instead of one of the kids, nowadays the kids would probably hit from a tee. During the games nobody kept score and we played three innings, with each child batting once in each inning, no matter how many outs were made. I still swung like Reggie Jackson, only from the right side, taking big cuts and trying to drive it as far as I could. Just like Jackson I struck out in bunches, especially this year. My coach, Mr. Thomas, tried to get me to change my swing, but as with most of my coaches I wouldn’t listen, I just followed my father’s advice. I played for the Red Sox that year, which for most kids in Rhode Island would have been great but for a Yankee fan was a cruel twist of fate. I wore the red jersey with Red Sox splashed across the front in cheap blue letters, but I imagined one day I would wear the pinstripes and have a candy bar named after me like Jackson had the Reggie Bar.
My father came to most of my games that year, as he would until around high school when he was asked to stay away. He didn’t cheer like the other parents would, but he would let me know if he didn’t think I was concentrating hard enough. Many of the kids ran around without much direction, a controlled kind of chaos. In my mind I wondered why these kids didn’t take this more seriously. How would they ever hope to play in the majors when they didn’t even seem to care? It also bothered me that we didn’t keep score, how would you know who won and who lost? Midget league wasn’t baseball like my father had taught me, it was baseball light.
My father would drive me home after the games and tell me what I did right, and then in more detail tell me what I did wrong. I would sit there beside him in our Chevy Nova and try to absorb what he was saying, making adjustments in my next game. I wanted to make him happy because it meant less yelling, and if I had a good game it meant ice cream, a small chocolate chip cone at Fred’s Ice Cream Shack to be exact.
Baseball seemed to be the only thing my father and I had in common. When we talked it was usually about baseball, but at least we talked about that a lot. I remember one point late in the baseball season when my father told me about California Angel, Lyman Bostock. Bostock was murdered in Gary, Indiana after a game against the White Sox. My father said Bostock was on the verge of being a superstar in baseball, but instead died at the age of 27, with a lifetime batting average of .311. I always wondered what he would have done had a crazy man with a gun not taken his life. It was an early lesson in being careful who you surrounded yourself with and where you hung out.
Just a short time later that season the Yankees won the World Series. They beat the Dodgers again in six games, this time rallying from two games down, to take four straight. Rallying back from a deficit was old hat by now for these Yankees. The Red Sox held a 14 game lead over the Yankees on July 17. In the next ten weeks the Yankees would wind up tying the Red Sox for the division lead. Since they were tied after 162 games they needed a one game playoff to determine the winner. The game would be played at Fenway Park on October 2. The Yankees would battle back from two runs down in the seventh with four runs of their own. Bucky Dent was the hero that day hitting a three run home run that barely cleared the Green Monster, the 37 foot wall in left field at Fenway Park. The Yankees would hold on to win the game 5-4. From that day on, Dent’s name would be a curse word in New England.
The Yankees were led by Ron Guidry in 1978. The lefty pitcher nicknamed Louisiana Lightning, had a record 25-3 and got the win in the playoff game against the Red Sox. Guidry won the American League Cy Young Award that year, and finished second to Jim Rice, of the Red Sox, in the American League Most Valuable Player Award voting. My father and I would talk for years about Guidry’s 1978 season; my father believed it just may have been the best pitching season of all time. Even though I was a hitter at heart, my father would teach me to respect the art of pitching.
I relied on school and my mother to teach me about everything else in life. My mom and I talked a little about the Jonestown tragedy when it happened. Jonestown was built as an isolated religious community by Jim Jones and his followers in Guyana, South America. They were on the run from the United States government for tax evasion. People who escaped from the community later told of beatings, murders, and a planned mass suicide. United States Congressman Leo Ryan led a fact finding mission down to Guyana. As Ryan was leaving he was murdered by members of Jonestown. Later that day Jim Jones started the mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of over 900 members, that included people drinking cyanide laced Flavor-Ade. My mother did the best job she could explaining the events that took place to me, though I’m not sure anyone could ever really explain Jim Jones. My mother rarely sugar-coated things, but rather gave me the facts and answered the questions I might have as straightforwardly as possible. I started to realize that some people’s actions just didn’t make any sense and that some people are just plain evil, yet even at an early age I wanted to figure people out.
My mother had a pretty quiet year, my father doing a pretty good job keeping his anger in check. We listened to the radio together quite a bit in 1978, and the airwaves belonged to the Bee Gees. The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, which prominently featured the Bee Gees, was all the rage. “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” and “How Deep is Your Love,” were all chart toppers for the Bee Gees. Disco was in full swing and so were the ugly clothes that went along with it. I was dressed in flared pants and button down shirts with huge collars, what was my mother thinking. In later years when I heard a Bee Gees song I would think of these times and feel a tiny smile creep across my face.
1979 was a horrible year for my family. On January 17 my father’s hardware store burned down and was a complete loss. On the good side the store was completely insured and was rebuilt in about seven months. The bad part was that for most of those seven months my father was home, with little to do to keep him occupied. My father being around the house was like an innocent person being sentenced to prison for my mother. My father played the part of the warden, constantly criticizing how she did things and how she could get more things done if she was more efficient. The ironic part of all of this was seeing my father give my mother advice on housework, though I had never seen him lift a finger to help out. Any little crisis that happened during this time was blown out of proportion by my father and my mother was always to blame. I remember the washing machine overflowed one time and my father hit the roof. He started yelling at my mother, “You idiot you put too much clothing in here and now all this water is going to ruin the floor.” My mother had been using this washer for over seven years, without a hint of a problem, and all of the sudden she forgot how to use it? It seemed clear to even my eight year old mind that it just wasn’t the case. My mother just cleaned up the mess without a word or a tear, as she usually did.
I wasn’t helping the situation at home either. I was in third grade and I was starting to struggle in school, more specifically I was having trouble with math. I never really cared for math, unless it had to do with baseball statistics, and once I started to struggle I started to act out. Although I am not proud of the fact, if things didn’t come easy to me I usually chose to quit rather than put in the hard work, the only exception was baseball. The fact that I had basically quit math did not sit well with the nuns at my catholic school. Sister Catherine, my third grade teacher, tried hard to give me the kick in the ass that I needed, but I definitely got my father’s stubborn streak and rebuffed her efforts. She kindly offered to tutor me after school, but I already was sick of school so I wasn’t keen on the idea of signing up for more. Then the school got my parents involved and I quickly changed my mind or more accurately had it changed for me. This would be the first time I can remember my father hitting me, but it wouldn’t be the last. I knew I was in trouble from the moment I got home from school and my father said he wanted to talk to me.
“Jackie, Sister Catherine called me today and said that you are failing in math. What do you have to say for yourself?” he said.
Although he asked me what I had to say for myself he really wasn’t looking for a response. He cut me off as soon as I started talking, though that may have been a blessing for I had nothing for an answer.
“Jackie I am not going to put up with this crap,” he yelled at me. “You will do the work that is asked of you, without any questions. You will respect your teachers and shut your mouth. If you need help you can go see your mother that is what she is here for.”
“And just to make sure you understand me,” my father at this time started to take off his belt. “Come here,” he growled. He bent me over his knee and smacked my butt five times with the belt. Tears came to my eyes, but I would not cry, I was trying my mother’s way of dealing with my father. As it was happening all I could think was how much it hurt, and yet thank God for pants because at least that cushioned the blow a little bit. My father only said one more word to me that night, as he pointed to the stairs that led to my room, “March.” I went up to my room and sniffled on my bed for awhile. Neither my father nor my mother came up to see me that night, as I went without supper and tried to sleep. I could hear my parents arguing a little later, though I could not make out what they were saying. I am pretty sure they were fighting about me.
The rest of the school year I stayed pretty much on track. Math was still a giant pain, but I plowed through the best I could. I stayed after school to work with Sister Catherine and she helped me out as much as she could. I stayed away from home as much as possible, which was strange because I hated school too. I really didn’t have any friends, so I couldn’t hide out at their house.
Spring arrived and my father wanted to start working on baseball drills with me. I was still holding a grudge about being belted, so I lied and said I had homework to do and I stayed up in my room. This would go on for another couple of weeks, before I broke down. I was trying to hurt my father, but my love of baseball broke my spirit just the way my father wanted it to.
“We’ve got a couple of weeks to make up for Jackie, so that means double the work,” my father said before we started our first baseball lesson of the year. “And just remember Jackie, I’m always right.”
In 1979 the United States was experiencing our second energy crisis in seven years. The 1979 crisis was brought about by production issues in Iran due to a revolution, which brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power. This disruption led to shortages, high prices, and long fuel lines at stations. My father would complain mightily about the rise in gas prices, he was sure it was a conspiracy by the oil companies to gouge American consumers. It was just another thing to light his already short fuse.
I was now in my second year of midget league and was getting better game by game. With my father not working, we worked day and night on infield drills and my swing. I was easily the best and most serious player on my team. I played second base most of the time and occasionally played third base, my true love. By the end of the season I was scorching the ball unlike any other eight year old in the league. The kids would automatically back up when they saw me approach the plate, and at that age it was the ultimate form of respect. My dad and I would go out for ice cream at Fred’s so often that year that I got sick of chocolate chip and switched to strawberry.
On August 2 of 1979, one day after my eighth birthday, Yankee fans across the nation, including my father, were rocked by the news that Yankee captain Thurman Munson died in a plane crash. Munson was at the controls of a twin-engine Cessna practicing take offs and landings. In his third practice run the plane missed the runway and crashed killing Munson and injuring two passengers.
I remember watching my father as the special report broke the news of the Munson’s death. He stared blankly at the television long after the report finished and didn’t say a word. As seriously as my father took baseball this was like losing part of his family, if he had cared about his family. He didn’t say much that night and I didn’t try to engage him in conversation.
In the next few days my father and I would talk about how much Munson meant to the Yankees. My father would tell how Munson won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1970 and the American league Most Valuable Player Award in 1976.
“It was more than the awards, Jackie, Thurman was the heart and soul of the Yankees, their leader. He played the game the right way, giving it all he had all the time,” my father said in an unusually quiet way. “He wouldn’t take any crap from anyone.”
My father was happy when he heard that Yankee owner, George Steinbrenner, announced that Munson’s uniform number 15 would be retired by the Yankees.
The Yankees would finish the year in fourth place 13 1/2 games behind the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles would eventually go on to face the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. The Pirates used the Sister Sledge song “We Are Family” as an anthem that was embraced by the fans. I heard “We Are Family” almost everywhere I went and grew to hate the song and the Pirates.
The Orioles jumped to a three games to one lead before the Pirates would come roaring back. The Pirates, led by Willie Stargell’s three home runs, would win the last three games to close out the series. I remember waiting for the Orioles to do something to take the series, yet they always found a way to come up just short. The 1979 Pirates became the first team I really disliked. I hated their ugly black and yellow uniforms, which seemed to change every game like this was some kind of horrible fashion show. I disliked Willie Stargell because he just seemed old and fat to me. I didn’t like Dave Parker either because he seemed so cocky. What I liked least of all though was Kent Tekulve and his goofy glasses and even goofier side arm delivery. It would become clear to me later in life why I hated Tekulve so much, because I never would have much success against guys who pitched side armed.
Everything in the world seemed to go a little crazy in 1980. Even as a nine year old kid I realized that there was more around me than just Rhode Island and the United States. Every night on the news you would see updates on the hostages in Iran, the most vivid memory being seeing them blindfolded and paraded in front of the media. The hostages were abducted on November 4, 1979, from the American embassy in Iran. Originally 66 people were captured, with 13 released in the middle of November 1979 and 1 more set free in July, 1980. It would be 444 days before the release of the 52 remaining hostages was negotiated. I remember the paper in my hometown kept count of the days on the front page, with a small American flag beside the number. I didn’t quite understand what was going on, though we discussed it a bit in school, I just knew that these people hated us for some reason.
The Iranians weren’t alone in their hate for us; in fact there was a country that probably hated us more, the Soviet Union. 1980 was the first time I can remember my father watching any other sport besides baseball, as he watched the United States hockey team beat the Soviets in the Olympics. My father was full of patriotism at this point and full of hate for “those commie bastards,” as he put it. It was one of the greatest upsets in sports history when the U.S. won the game 4-3. My father was pumping his fist and had a huge smile on his face when the clock ticked down to zeros and Al Michaels spouted his infamous “Do you believe in miracles, yes.”
With so much going on around me and around the world, it was about this time that I really started paying attention to the news. I would read the newspaper and watch the news on TV as I got ready for school in the morning. It wasn’t like I had to rush to school and play with my friends, because I just didn’t have any. It was also a way to escape what was going on in my own house. My father throwing insults at my mother for the smallest mistakes, or what he perceived to be mistakes. I started comparing my father to the volcano, Mt St. Helens in Washington, which erupted in May. Though, unlike Mt St. Helens, my father’s eruptions rarely came with any warning signs. Of course I kept those thoughts inside my head, because if my father heard about it another of his eruptions wouldn’t be far behind.
Copyright 2008 Darren Pare. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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