He hit a long foul ball that felt good

 He hit a long foul ball that felt good...






     This was a cautionary tale Greg liked to tell about a man who once stood at the top of the mountain and ended up drunk in the afternoon on Tweedy boulevard. Greg and I loved to pour over Dodger Yearbooks and especially the back few pages where they listed prospects who were trying to wear the sacred Dodger blue. We threw these names around like they were movie stars even though very few ever made it to the big show. As the bible says "many are called but few are chosen" and in sports it is way more than a few. We used to muse about how good you had to be to make it to the big time since every guy in Single A was probably the best player in his league. One of the names we picked out was a Lynwood kid named Rod Miller who was good enough to make it to the minor leagues and even had a single at bat at Connie Mack Stadium for the Dodgers September 28, 1957. The yearbook told the sad tale. Miller was on the bench when manager Alston called his name to pinch hit. In his excitement he grabbed a heavy Duke Snider model bat and nervously headed to the plate. The paragraph continued with young Rod "hitting a long foul that felt good...before going down swinging." That precious time was the last for Rod Miller and his baseball career fizzled out like the many beers he consumed in the following years. After his baseball dreams were dashed and a time in the Marines he hung around SGJAA games at the park wearing a stained windbreaker with a bellyload of brewskies, hollering advice to ten year olds. In the late 1960's this would-be major leaguer was an assistant coach for the Midget Eagles. When Greg got a  job working for Joe Moschetti at Southeast Sporting Goods on Tweedy he was privy to some small dramas of those who banked on sports to make a living and ended in the ashcan. Rod Miller was the poster boy for failures on the Tweedy mile where he used to show up to take a  afternoon beer leak in the funky toilet at the back of the store and not even flush his waste after using the facilities. It disgusted young Greg who had to look at the washed up beer drunk's pisswater and hear him boast about how great he was back in "the day."




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