The Innocent Man (6 page)

The dream was rapidly coming true.

His first assignment, though, was Coos Bay, Oregon, Class A in the Northwest League, far from Oakland. His 1972 spring training in Mesa, Arizona, had not been remarkable. He’d turned no heads, caught no one’s attention, and Oakland was still trying to figure out where to play him. They put him behind the plate, a position he did not know. They put him on the mound, simply because he could throw so hard.

Bad luck hit late in spring training. His appendix ruptured, and he returned to Ada for surgery. As he
waited impatiently for his body to heal, he began drinking heavily to pass the time. Beer was cheap at the local Pizza Hut, and when he grew tired of that place, he drove his new Cutlass over to the Elks Lodge and washed things down with a few bourbon and Cokes. He was bored and anxious to get to a ballpark somewhere, and for some reason, he wasn’t sure why, he found refuge in booze. Finally he got the call and left for Oregon.

Playing part-time for the Coos Bay-North Bend Athletics, he had 41 hits in 155 at-bats, an unimpressive average of .265. He caught forty-six games and played a few innings in center field. Late in the season, his contract was assigned to Burlington, Iowa, of the Midwest League, still Class-A ball, but a step up and much closer to home. He played in only seven games for Burlington, then returned to Ada for the off-season.

Every stop in the minor leagues is temporary and unsettling. The players earn very little and live off meager meal money and whatever generosity the host club might offer. At “home,” they live in motels offering bargain monthly rates, or cluster in small apartments. On the road, along the bus routes, it’s more motels. And bars and nightclubs and strip joints. The players are young, rarely married, far away from their families and whatever structure that gave them, and so they tend to keep late hours. Most are barely out of their teens, immature, pampered for most of their short lives, and all are convinced they’ll soon be making the big bucks playing in the big ballparks.

They party hard. Games start at 7:00 p.m. Over by 10:00. A quick shower, and it’s time to hit the bars. Staying out all night, sleeping all day, either at home or
on the bus. Drinking hard, chasing women, playing poker, smoking grass—it’s all part of the seedier side of the minors. And Ron embraced it with enthusiasm.

Like any father, Roy Williamson followed his son’s season with great curiosity and pride. Ronnie called occasionally and wrote even less, but Roy managed to keep up with his statistics. Twice he and Juanita drove to Oregon to watch their son play. Ronnie was suffering through his rookie year, trying to adjust to hard sliders and sharp curveballs.

Back in Ada, Roy received a phone call from an A’s coach. Ron’s off-field habits were of some concern—lots of partying, drinking, late nights, hangovers. The kid was being excessive, which was not that unusual for a nineteen-year-old in his first season away from home, but perhaps a strong word from the father might settle him down.

Ron was making calls, too. As the summer wore on and his playing time remained marginal, he became frustrated with the manager and staff and felt he was being underutilized. How could he improve if they left him on the bench?

He chose the risky and seldom-used strategy of going over the heads of his coaches. He began calling the A’s front office with a list of complaints. Life was miserable way down in A ball, he simply wasn’t playing enough, and he wanted the big shots who’d drafted him to know all about it.

The front office had little sympathy. With hundreds of players in the minors, and most of them miles ahead of Ron Williamson, such calls and complaints
quickly wore thin. They knew Ron’s numbers and knew he was struggling.

Word came down from the top that the boy needed to shut up and play ball.

When he returned to Ada in the early fall of 1972, he was still the local hero, now with some California edges and affectations. He continued his late-night routines. When the Oakland A’s won the World Series for the first time in late October, he led a boisterous celebration in a local honky-tonk. “That’s my team!” he yelled repeatedly at the television while his drinking buddies admired him.

Ron’s habits changed suddenly, though, when he met and began dating Patty O’Brien, a beautiful young lady and former Miss Ada. The two quickly got serious and saw each other regularly. She was a devout Baptist, drank nothing, and didn’t tolerate bad habits from Ron. He was more than happy to clean up and promised to change his ways.

In 1973 he found himself no closer to the big leagues. After another mediocre spring in Mesa, he was reassigned to the Burlington Bees, where he played in only five games before being transferred to the Key West Conchs of the Florida State League. Class A. In fifty-nine games there, he hit a dismal .137.

For the first time in his life, he was beginning to wonder if he would make it to the big leagues. With two very unimpressive seasons behind him, he had quickly learned that professional pitching, even at the Class-A
level, was far more difficult to hit than anything he’d seen at Asher High School. Every pitcher threw hard, every curveball broke sharper. Every player on the field was good, some would make it to the big leagues. His signing bonus had long since been spent and wasted. His smiling face on a baseball card was not nearly as exciting as it had been only two years earlier.

And he felt as though everyone was watching him. All his friends and the fine folks of Ada and Asher were expecting him to fulfill their dreams, to put them on the map. He was the next great one from Oklahoma. Mickey cracked The Show at nineteen. Ron was already behind schedule.

He returned to Ada, and to Patty, who strongly suggested that he find meaningful employment in the offseason. An uncle knew someone in Texas, and Ron drove to Victoria and worked several months with a roofing contractor.

On November 3, 1973, Ron and Patty were married in a large wedding at the First Baptist Church in Ada, her home church. He was twenty years old, still a prospect as far as he was concerned.

Ada saw Ron Williamson as its biggest hero. Now he’d married a beauty queen from a nice family. His life was charmed.

The newlyweds drove to Mesa for spring training in February 1974. A new wife added pressure to finally make his move up—maybe not to triple A but at least to double A. His contract for 1974 was with Burlington, but he had no plans to go back there. He was tired of Burlington and Key West, and if the A’s sent him back to
those places, then the message was clear—they no longer considered him a prospect.

He pushed harder in training, ran more, took extra batting practice, worked as hard as he had back at Asher. Then, during routine infield practice one day, he made a hard throw to second base, and a sharp pain shot through his elbow. He tried to ignore it, telling himself, as all players do, that he could simply play through it. It would go away, just a little spring-training soreness. It was back the next day, and worse after that. By late March, Ron could barely toss a ball around the infield.

On March 31, the A’s cut him, and he and Patty made the long drive back to Oklahoma.

Avoiding Ada, they settled in Tulsa, where Ron got a job as a service representative with Bell Telephone. It wasn’t a new career, but rather a paycheck while his arm healed and he waited for some baseball person, someone who really knew him, to call. After a few months, though, he was doing the calling, and there was no interest.

Patty got a job in a hospital, and they went about the business of getting themselves established. Annette began sending them $5 and $10 a week, just in case they needed help with the bills. The little supplements stopped when Patty called and explained that Ron was using the money for beer, something she did not approve of.

There was friction. Annette was worried because he was drinking again. She knew little, though, of what was happening in the marriage. Patty was very private and shy by nature, and never really relaxed around the Williamsons. Annette and her husband visited the couple once a year.

When Ron was passed over for a promotion, he
quit Bell and began selling life insurance for Equitable. It was 1975, and he still had no baseball contract, still no inquiries from teams looking for neglected talent.

But with his athletic confidence and outgoing personality, he sold a lot of life insurance. Selling came naturally, and he found himself enjoying the success and the money. He was also enjoying late hours in bars and clubs. Patty hated the drinking and couldn’t tolerate the carousing. His pot smoking was now a habit and she detested it. His mood swings were becoming more radical. The nice young man she’d married was changing.

Ron called his parents one night in the spring of 1976, crying and hysterical with the news that he and Patty had fought bitterly and separated. Roy and Juanita, as well as Annette and Renee, were shocked at the news and hopeful that the marriage could be saved. All young couples weather a few storms. Any day now Ronnie would get the phone call, get back in a uniform, and resume his career. Their lives would be on track; the marriage would survive a few dark days.

But it was beyond repair. Whatever their problems, Ron and Patty chose not to talk about them. They quietly filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. The separation was complete. The marriage lasted less than three years.

Roy Williamson had a childhood friend named Harry Brecheen, or Harry the Cat, as he was known in his baseball days. Both had grown up in Francis, Oklahoma. Harry was scouting for the Yankees. Roy tracked him down and passed along his phone number to his son.

Ron’s powers of persuasion paid off in June 1976,
when he convinced the Yankees that his arm was fully healed and better than ever. After seeing enough good pitching to realize he couldn’t hit it, Ron decided to play to his strength—his right arm. It had always caught the attention of the scouts. Oakland had continually talked of converting him to a pitcher.

He signed a contract with the Oneonta Yankees of the New York-Penn League, Class A, and couldn’t wait to get out of Tulsa. The dream was alive again.

He could certainly throw hard, but oftentimes had little idea where the ball was going. His breaking stuff was unpolished; he’d simply not had enough experience. Throwing too hard too quick, the soreness came back, slowly at first, then practically a full-blown limpness. The two-year layoff took its toll, and when the season was over, he was cut again.

Again avoiding Ada, he returned to Tulsa and sold insurance. Annette dropped by to check on him, and when the conversation shifted to baseball and his failures, he began crying hysterically and couldn’t stop. He admitted to her that he had long, dark bouts of depression.

Once more accustomed to life in the minors, he fell into his old habits, hanging around bars, chasing women, and drinking a lot of beer. To pass the time, he joined a softball team and enjoyed being the big star on a small stage. During a game, on a cool night, he fired a throw to first base and something snapped in his shoulder. He quit the team and gave up softball, but the damage was done. He saw a doctor and put himself through a strenuous rehab program, but felt little improvement.

And he kept the injury quiet, hoping once again that a good rest would have things healed by spring.

Ron’s final sally into professional baseball came the following spring, in 1977. He again talked his way into a Yankee uniform. He survived spring training, still as a pitcher, and was assigned to Fort Lauderdale in the Florida State League. There he endured his final season, all 140 games, half of them on the road, on the buses, as the months dragged by and he was used as sparingly as possible. He pitched in only fourteen games, thirty-three innings. He was twenty-four years old with a damaged shoulder that wouldn’t heal. The glory of Asher and the Murl Bowen days were far away.

Most players get a sense of the inevitable, but not Ron. There were too many people back home counting on him. His family had sacrificed too much. He’d bypassed college and an education to become a major leaguer, so quitting was not an option. He had failed at marriage, and he was not accustomed to failure. Plus, he was wearing a Yankee uniform, a vivid symbol that kept the dream alive every day.

He gamely hung on until the end of the season, then his beloved Yankees cut him again.

C H A P T E R  3

A
few months after the season was over, Bruce Leba was casually walking through the Southroads Mall in Tulsa when he saw a familiar face and stopped cold. Just inside Toppers Menswear was his old pal Ron Williamson, wearing very nice clothes and peddling the same to customers. The two bear-hugged and launched into a lengthy session of catch-up. For two boys who’d practically been brothers, they were surprised at how radically they’d drifted apart.

After graduating from Asher, they went their separate ways and lost touch. Bruce played baseball for two years at a junior college, then quit when his knees finally gave out. Ron’s career had not fared much better. Each had notched one divorce; neither knew the other had been married. Neither was surprised to learn that the other had continued a fondness for the nightlife.

They were young, nice-looking, single again, working hard with money in their pockets, and they immediately
began hitting the clubs and chasing women together. Ron had always loved the girls, but a few seasons in the minors had brought an even higher intensity to his skirt chasing.

Bruce was living in Ada, and whenever he passed through Tulsa, it was time for an all-nighter with Ron and his friends.

Though the game had broken their hearts, baseball was still their favorite topic: the great days at Asher, Coach Bowen, the dreams they’d once shared, and old teammates who’d tried and failed just like them. Helped mightily by two bad knees, Bruce had managed a clean break from the game, or at least the dreams of major-league glory. Ron had not. He was convinced he could still play, that one day something would change, his arm would miraculously heal, someone would call. Life would be good again. At first Bruce shrugged it off; it was just the residue of fading fame. As he had learned himself, no star fades faster than that of a high school athlete. Some deal with it, accept it, then move on. Others keep dreaming for decades.