Busy today so here's another rerun, this time from January 18, 2014. The only thing that's changed since then is that I no longer occasionally catch a Dodgers game just to marvel at the broadcasting skill of Vin Scully. Since he stepped down, the chances of me watching a Dodgers game — any baseball game, really — are about the same as the chances of me starring as Aspicia, the lead ballerina in a production of The Pharoah's Daughter for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. Maybe even a little worse…
As I've written here before, my father hated his job. He hated what it involved doing and he hated the way he was treated in his office — the arguing, the yelling, the jockeying for position, the whole bureaucracy. He did not respect his superiors; didn't believe that they had gotten to higher positions by being good at what they did so much as by being skilled politicians. They knew, he said, which butts to kiss and when. More importantly, they knew how to make certain that when things went wrong, it was always someone else's fault. Often, it was his, even though he'd followed their orders to the proverbial "T."
He came home each day, frustrated and depressed, gulping Maalox and other unpleasant substances to soothe a savage ulcer that hospitalized him more than once. He loved his home. He loved his wife and son. He loved his chair in the living room and his TV and our cat. The best thing about his job, I'm sure, was that it made all those things he loved possible.
He especially loved his TV when it had a Lakers game on it. I'm sure I disappointed him greatly by being unable to summon the slightest interest in basketball. For a year or two there when I was around eleven, I was sorta/kinda interested in following the Dodgers…but that soon went away. I will follow the Dodgers again when the starting roster once more includes Maury Wills, John Roseboro, Frank Howard, Willie Davis, Duke Snider, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax…but not before. Actually, even before those men left the team, I did — and that was the end of any interest in team sports. Every now and then, I'll catch an inning or two of play-by-play described by Vin Scully, not because I care which team wins but because I admire great broadcasting.
My father would have liked sports to be something he could share with his son. He would make futile, doomed-to-fail attempts from time to time to see if an interest in basketball, and especially in the Lakers, could be kickstarted within me. It could not. And to my dying day, I will live with the knowledge that I let him down, at least in that one area. We only had one shared basketball experience. For a time, we bet on the Lakers games.
They were never large bets. My father wouldn't have bet more than five dollars that the Earth revolved around the Sun. But we did bet actual cash-money — a buck or two — on some games.
The Lakers games were broadcast intermittently on KTLA, Channel 5. I guess they were only allowed to show one or two a week and only "away" games. An "away" game played on the East Coast started at 5 PM Los Angeles time but someone at KTLA decided that was too damn early. Too many men weren't home from work by then so they began telecasting the games on a delay, starting them at 6 PM. My father got home from work about 5:45 each day so that was perfect.
Once home, he'd hurry out of his office duds and by six, he'd be in front of the TV and my mother would be setting out his dinner on a TV tray. I would hear him in the living room yelling, "Let's go, Lakers," because for my father, basketball was a participatory experience. He spent the whole game shouting at the TV. Often, he had the family cat on his lap while he did this and you could kinda hear her thinking, "What the heck is he yelling about?"
I'd occasionally wander into the living room and say things like, "Why are you hollering? They're in Boston and your voice only carries as far as St. Louis!" If the game was in commercial, he'd tell me how it was going, knowing full well I didn't know a jump shot from a huddle. (Oh, wait. I don't think they have huddles in basketball, do they? This shows you how much I know about the sport.)
Anyway, there was a simple rule, violations of which would warrant the Death Penalty, when I ventured into the living room during a game: "Don't tell me the current score." I had a TV in my room and if I was watching the news, I could know the score an hour before he did. He was watching a tape delay, remember.
So he'd tell me how the game was going and I'd say, "Would you care to put some money on the outcome?" And this is exactly how it went every time. He'd look at me and say, "I'm not going to bet you. You know what the current score is." I'd say, "Two bucks and you can pick either team."
If we were having this conversation between 6:00 and around 6:45, he might show a bit of interest because he'd figure as follows: The game's not over yet. Mark might know that one team is way ahead but he doesn't yet know for sure who'll win. This would probably not have worked with baseball because baseball games are sometimes so lopsided that by the fourth or fifth inning, you'd never bet on one team, no matter what odds you get. But basketball games are unlikely to be truly "over" by the mid-point…or so he told me.
Still, he'd feel like I was setting him up but would weaken when I would make him this amazing proposition: Three-to-one odds, the team of his choice…and he could switch teams until the last three minutes of the game on his TV. It was one of those offers you can't refuse — he couldn't, at least — and he'd finally say, "Okay, it's a bet. Two dollars and I'll take the Lakers." I'd say fine and extend my hand so we could shake on the wager.
Noting my smirk and instant agreement, he'd say, "No, I want the Celtics. You take the Lakers." I'd again say fine.
Studying my face, he'd say, "No, you want me to pick the Celtics. I'm staying with the Lakers." I'd say fine and we might go around another time or two…or I might repair to my room.
From time to time, I'd pop back out to ask him if he wanted to switch teams and/or raise the stakes. He never did before around 8:00 but after that, he might consider it. After 8:00, he'd figure the game back in Boston was probably over and I'd gotten the final score, either on TV or by tuning it in on the radio. So when I walked in then and said, "You want to change teams?" he'd instantly say no. That would make him think he had the winning team. In fact, he'd grin and say, "Outsmarted yourself this time, didn't you?" I'd say, "No…I just want to make sure you think the bet is fair."
And then I'd ask, "Would you be interested in raising the bet?" That would make him think he had the losing team. Sometimes, at that point, he'd switch. And sometimes when he switched, he'd raise the bet a buck or two…and we might go back and forth a few times before the final buzzer, at which point one of us would pay the other. We did this for most of one season and I'm guessing that by the play-offs — or the World Series or Super Bowl or whatever they have in basketball and yes, I really don't know anything about the sport — we came close to breaking even. At the end, I owed him two dollars which I never got around to paying him. This all probably happened in 1970 or 1971.
In 1991, he was hospitalized by what turned out to be his next-to-last heart attack. The last one, which came a week or so later, took him from me. Between the next-to-last and the last though, we had some very nice visits, all of which I recall verbatim.
I believe he knew, or at least thought likely, that he wasn't leaving that hospital alive. I also believe he was genuinely at peace with that idea. We had no differences between us — it had been at least fifteen years since our last argument of any sort — and he knew that his wife could get by without him. He had left her a solid if unspectacular government pension, full ownership of their home, about ten grand in the bank and very good health insurance. He had also left her me, and he knew I could and would take care of her. So when I went by to see him, we spoke of only good things….because apart from the fact that he was dying, that's all there were.
On one visit, I walked in and he was watching a Lakers game. I immediately asked him if he wanted to make a bet on its outcome: Three-to-one odds, the team of his choice…and he could switch teams until the last three minutes. He laughed and said, "This is not on a tape delay."
I said, "It doesn't matter. All those games where you thought I knew the outcome before you did…I never did."
He asked, with a note of amazement in his voice, "You didn't check the score before you made those bets? You let me go back and forth, trying to guess what you knew that I didn't…and you didn't know anything I didn't?"
"Nothing," I said.
He laughed a little. Then he thought about it and laughed some more. Then he thought about it some more and laughed a lot more. Then he said, "You're going to do just fine, son. By the way, you still owe me two bucks."