Calico Joe

3

Sara and I met during our sophomore years at the University of Oklahoma. We married a month after we graduated. Warren was invited to both the commencement exercises and the wedding but failed to show. This surprised no one.

We have three beautiful daughters and live in Santa Fe, where I write software for an aerospace firm. Sara was an interior designer until the girls came along and she decided to become a full-time mother. Not surprisingly, I was thrilled with each birth, each healthy baby, and not the least disappointed in the gender God selected for us. I did not want a boy, because I did not want to see him pick up a baseball and start tossing it around. Most of my friends have a boy or two, and they have all coached the game at some level. I am sure I would have felt the temptation to do likewise with a boy, so I am relieved to have all girls.

I quit the game when I was eleven years old and haven’t watched an inning in thirty years.

My employer is one of those progressive companies with all manner of benefits and flexible work rules. I could practically work from home, but I enjoy the office, my colleagues, even my bosses. It’s exciting to watch the technology spring to life, evolve, and eventually hit the market.

I explain to my boss that I need a few days off for a quick trip unrelated to my job. He says fine. I tell Sara my plans, and she understands completely. She knows the history, and I guess we both have known this trip would one day become inevitable.

I drive to the airport in Santa Fe and buy a one-way ticket to Memphis.

When Warren was thirty-five years old, he managed to persuade an old friend in the Orioles organization to give him one final tryout in spring training. He could still throw hard, but he had no control; plus, his name was toxic, and no other team would touch him. He bombed in his first appearance and was cut the next day. He called home and informed my mother he planned to stay in Florida, where, supposedly, some minor-league team wanted him as a pitching coach. This was not true and I knew it. I was twelve by then and well aware that my father was a habitual liar. A few months later she filed for divorce, and when the school year ended, we moved to Hagerstown, Maryland, to live with her parents.

Warren Tracey retired from the game with a record of sixty-four wins and eighty-four losses, a career earned run average of 5.85. In sixteen seasons, he played for the Pirates, Giants, Indians, Royals, Astros, and Mets, and spent more time in the minors than in the majors. His three-year stint with the Mets was his longest stay anywhere, and they sent him down to AAA at least four times. He struck out 430 batters and walked 416. His name is in the record book only because he led the league in hit batsmen in 1972. He was never happy anywhere, and when he wasn’t being traded, he was demanding to be traded. Not a particularly stellar career, but baseball fans know that only one player out of ten who signs a minor-league contract makes it to the Bigs for a single game. When I was very young and still impressionable, I was proud of the fact that my father was a major leaguer. No other kid on my street could make that claim. As I grew older, though, I often wished I had a normal dad, one who enjoyed having a catch in the backyard and coaching his son.

When he was with the Mets, he left for spring training each year in early January, long before he was supposed to report. He used various excuses for this, but the reality was that he wanted to get away from home, to play golf every day, to work on his tan, and to drink and catch up with old girlfriends. Jill and I didn’t care which excuse he used. We were relieved to have him back on the road.

After the year in Hagerstown, my mother informed us that he had remarried down in Florida. Jill and I thought this was terrible news because he and his new wife might decide to start a family.

On the leg from Dallas to Memphis, I open my old scrapbook on Joe Castle. It is filled with newspaper clippings, magazine articles, the August 6 edition of Sports Illustrated, with Joe on the cover, and the item I had treasured most during that remarkable summer of 1973, an eight-by-ten black-and-white photo of his youthful, smiling face. Across the bottom he had printed neatly, “To Paul Tracey, with best wishes,” then scribbled his autograph. I had a whole collection of these when I was a boy. My buddies and I wrote letters to hundreds of professional players, asking for autographed photos. Occasionally one responded, and to get a photo in the mail was a reason to strut. My father got a few of these letters but was too important to grant a favor. He constantly griped about the fans who wanted autographs.

I hid my scrapbooks from my father. In his twisted opinion, he was the only player worthy of my adulation.

After I quit the game, my mother secretly stored my memorabilia in the attic. She gave it back—two cardboard boxes full—after I got married. At first I wanted to burn it, but Sara intervened, and it survives until this day.

I have never been in Memphis in August, and when I step out of the airport terminal, I have trouble breathing. The air is hot and sticky, and my shirt is wet within minutes. I ride a shuttle to Avis, get my rental car, crank up the AC, and head west, across the Mississippi River, into the flat farmlands of the Arkansas delta.

Calico Rock is four hours away.