A Disgraceful Double-Header

 A Disgraceful Double-Header

                                                               Sudsy
                                                            Grabby


     This is a good example of an afternoon when we thought we were cool but actually just the opposite. The particulars in this scene were myself, Billy Hogan, Jack, Johnny Knowlton, Zeke and a young Greg tagging along. The Dodgers were in the franchise rebuild with an OK team but still offered major league baseball at about a buck and a half to bake out in the bleachers. We were all just barely legal able to drink and were excited to over-indulge at every opportunity. The idiotic plan was to drink a beer an inning at a Sunday double header in July. I could be wrong but it may have been the Summer of 1970. At that time and for the 70's the bleachers were the place for cheap rowdy fun. This was before the fans threw batteries at Pete "the cheater" Rose and they put a limit on beer. I could not tell you much about the games The roster was a mix of has beens, not bad but not great and wanna be's. Names like Billy Grabarkawitz and "Sudsy Sudakis" were on the team. We played the lousy Phillies and lost both games but the Dodgers were coming up out of a sad spell of bad baseball since Sandy retired.  We were re-stocking with Billy Russell, Steve Garvey, Bill Buckner and had some good vets in Willie Davis and Wes Parker. But this post is not really about baseball since we were drunk by the 5th inning of the first game. Truth was we all participated in that foolish young man's game of equating how drunk you could get with virility. We did not make too much trouble and sat smoking cigarettes and swallowing tepid brews without a care of our bladders for four sun-baked hours. When the game ended Billy had found a tattered straw hat in the Huck Finn mode and was actually directing traffic out in lot 8. The amazing part of the scene was that there were motorists obeying his orders! Since it was about 5 pm and we had two losses under our belts we decided to be true Angelenos and drive drunk to Phillippes over on Alameda. The beef dips were like $1.50 and the completely wasted Johnny was showing his macho palate by spooning up large dollops of the legendary horse-radish mustard into his mouth and then returning the spoon into the jar. Greg admonished the drunken lout and he threw a punch at the kid but missed. It may be that from that day forward Greg eschewed the Phillippe's mustard and just had his TWO beef double dips without garnish. I always felt it was not a legit meal at the classic spot until you felt that surge of burning horseradish flow out of your nose.


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