When I find Gail in section K, sitting with the other scouts, I stop in the aisle beside him, catch his eye and ask, "Gail Henley, who am I?"
Squinting up at me from beneath a broad-brimmed straw hat, he says, "First base. Yeah, you were my first baseman." My name comes only later.
He offers me a seat among the scouts, and we chat, reconstructing the team rosters from the two seasons we shared. I ask about my old teammates. Gail knows how far most went in pro ball: "Yeah, Larry Carlton -- got picked up by Houston, got to Double A, and I think he's broadcasting sports somewhere down in Missouri. Jon Warden -- he was with the big club in '68, when the Tigers won the Series. He works for Readers Digest in Columbus, and I heard he won the Ohio lottery. Gene Lamont you know about -- he's managing the Pirates. . . ."
Together we recall the old times, the crazy pranks and personalities. The left-handed pitcher, whose name escapes us, who drove the team van straight into the ocean after losing his fourth consecutive game. The mess we created with shaving cream, feather pillows and a firehose in a hotel in Auburn, N.Y. I confess to Gail that it was I who dropped the water balloon from the third floor on a passerby at the Colonial Hotel in Miami, a foolish act that touched off a room search. He snorts at the memory. We can even laugh about the fine he levied on me when, while on the disabled list, I snuck off during a game to take my girlfriend out.
I ask Gail if he can give me a scouting report on the kind of player I was. Without skipping a beat, he goes through all five tools: arm, speed, hitting, hitting with power and fielding. "A little slow afoot, average arm, pretty good power, hit to all fields, soft hands. . . ." I am stunned. After 30 years, it's as though he's talking about one of the players he's scouting that very day.
Then my curiosity gets the better of me, and I blurt out the big question, the one that's bothered me all these years: "Was I a prospect?"
I have always wondered if I might have made it to the big leagues. Although I often batted in the clean-up spot and was twice promoted midseason, my batting average in the minor leagues fluctuated wildly from one season to the next. And I was released from baseball prematurely, my career ended by a threatened libel suit stemming from a Bay Area newspaper article I wrote about racism in the Southern town I was then playing for. The article claimed that the town's police chief and his brother were members of the Ku Klux Klan. I still believe it was true. But when the police chief threatened to sue, the Tigers -- already perturbed over an earlier article I'd written about life in the minor leagues -- let me go. I ended up in Canada, where I played in an independent league before returning to Stanford to finish my bachelor's degree. From there I pursued a career in academia, without ever knowing how far I could have gone in pro ball.
Gail hesitates before he answers me. "No," he says softly, "you were good, but never a real prospect. You weren't the complete package, and you couldn't hit lefties. You were lucky to get out of baseball when you did and go on to graduate school."
Now, finally, I know. What do I feel? A pang, disbelief, some defensiveness, but also an odd sense of relief. Maybe I hadn't ruined my sports career by writing those naive articles, as I'd always feared. But Gail's assessment puts an end to my springtime fantasies about the life I might have lived.
I'll always wish I'd had at least a few at-bats in the big leagues. I was good, just not good enough. But my manager never forgot me -- and that, I tell myself, is something.
George Gmelch, '68, is professor and chair of anthropology at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. He has written seven books, including two on baseball.
