The Baseball Whisperer Page 22

  He drove up from Texas with a teammate, and like a lot of players who came to Clarinda, he kept asking, “Are we ever going to get there?” Finally, they arrived, and it was time for Cashner to find out where he stood.

  But he almost never got to find out. Only two weeks after he arrived in Clarinda, Cashner was driving his red truck back to the home of Brian and Laurie Brockman, his host family, on a dark, rain-slicked road on the edge of town. As he approached a bridge, Cashner lost control of the truck and it plummeted off the bridge and into a creek. When police arrived, they expected the worst. But Cashner had survived. He was somehow able to extract himself from his pickup, walk to a house nearby, and call the Brockmans. He told police that he had fallen asleep. Later he conceded that he might have “had a little help” falling asleep.

  For Merl and Pat, the well-being of the players was always the first concern. In all their years with the A’s, there had been injuries and trips to the emergency room, but nothing even close to this. “I was very lucky to be alive,” Cashner said. “I remember Merl, after that happened, was teary-eyed and gave me a big hug. He didn’t say much. He was just happy to know I was alive.”

  Cashner had his second chance. Though some in town were dubious of the notion that he had fallen asleep, he was allowed to stay on the team. “I think after that, it kind of changed, the whole summer changed baseball for me. It opened up my eyes on life, to kind of slow down a little. It was a wake-up period, to not take life for granted, to not take baseball for granted. That summer taught me about life. Everybody who saw my truck couldn’t believe I had lived.”

  His host family helped him get through the gossip in town about the nature of the accident. “The Brockmans just treated me like one of their own kids . . . You make mistakes and you move forward and try not to make the same mistake twice.”

  When Cashner was pitching and would come off the field, Merl would often stop him, from his perch near the clubhouse door, to review the game. “If we stunk it up, he let you know,” Cashner said. “He never held his opinion. He gave his opinion. There was no sugarcoating. It was the truth. But he was very quiet. His answers were always very well thought out. He might be mad, but he was never yelling mad.” Ryan Eberly, Cashner’s coach, had learned to pass on some baseball wisdom just like Merl. “Ryan always said, ‘Catch the ball with two hands until you make the first million,’” Cashner said. “That always stuck in my head.”

  In the dugout in the summer of 2010, Merl and Cashner reflected on the accident and how it had affected both of their lives. They talked about Cashner turning into a truly complete pitcher that summer, learning from the other pitchers and becoming more dedicated and serious about what he was doing, more able to focus and think, not just throw. Merl also drew Cashner out about other aspects of his life. Merl was different that way from a lot of coaches who only cared about performance on the field. Merl asked about a player’s background and how he got into baseball; he wanted to know about a player’s family and about his dreams.

  They talked about hand-fishing and pheasant hunting, and of course they also talked about baseball. “He was asking questions about where I was, what I was going through, the ride, did I ever think I would be where I was? He told me how proud he was. He wasn’t in the best shape when I saw him, but he was still getting around. He was never going to show what he was going through. I just remember he had a hard time walking out of the dugout.”

  While Merl was a man of strong opinions, he was rarely given to self-analysis, or at least not in ways that he often shared. But this was a time of rare introspection for Merl. As his illness took a stronger grip on him, he started sharing thoughts with his oldest daughter, Julie, in a journal. He wanted to make sure that he left some things said, not unsaid.

  “I try to lead a clean life and do what I say I will do,” Merl said. “I don’t always get it done, but that’s what I strive to do. I think I am pretty reliable, at least most of the time, and most of all I hope that I have been a good provider for my family as well as a good husband and father to my children. A good family man. If I have done that, then what else could I hope for?

  “Caring about other people, regardless of class status—in this world today everyone seems to be trying to outdo their neighbors. Being a good American has always been something I feel strongly about and honoring those who kept us free—some gave their all at a very young age. I thank God each and every day I am alive and hopefully beyond. I have a lot of respect for the senior citizens of our country, and hopefully I have given back for the help I received growing up. Trying to be a good person is what I am saying and having others respect that.”

  He told his daughter that he had few regrets in life, though he would have liked to take a trip to Normandy to see what the brave soldiers faced on D-Day during World War II. “I will always have that feeling, even today, that those who served their country allowed me to live a free and full life. I have been blessed with family . . . [with] the things freedom allows because of their sacrifice. I just thought that would have been something that I had a great desire to do. God bless them all!”

  He also talked about the people he looked up to, including his old coaches John Tedore and Al Gray, men who had seen potential in him and given him a second chance. He admired Delmar Haley, the country hardball player who later worked as an umpire at A’s games. He appreciated his uncles, Ben Eberly and Lawrence Barchus, who had taught him to hunt and respect nature, as well as his stepfather, Stanley Zdan, and Vernon Hamilton, a man who had built his own business in Clarinda from scratch.

  When he was a young man, very little had been expected of Merl. But he had proved his doubters wrong, and in ways not even he could fully realize. Why did Merl do it? Why did he spend all those hours on baseball? On organizing the team and raising money, for other people’s children, with no compensation? “It was just part of who he was,” Julie said. “And he didn’t think of it as toil. There were never too many miles to drive to play a game or too many doors to open to put a team on the field. He loved the game . . . the competition. He had a strong sense of community, and sports were what he knew, and a way through which he could contribute. It just kind of seems like it was a progression from him playing to people hearing about the program—to him coaching and becoming a mentor. I’m sure at some level he saw it as an opportunity to give back by providing the same opportunity to others.

  “If he was overcompensating, then he did it effortlessly—at least in my eyes—to be able to keep up a full-time job, raise a family, be involved in community activities, and still do all it took to put the A’s on the field year after year,” Julie said. “On some levels, I’m not sure he saw the missteps of his youth as anything more than a stepping-stone and learning experience which led him to where he was supposed to be.”

  Though his regrets were few, he did lament not trying to do more to stop the sale of the newspaper—not to save his own job so much as to save the jobs of others and preserve the role the paper played in the community.

  Merl had more good days than bad, at least to those around him. He stayed mostly in his home, in the bedroom upstairs on Lincoln Street, visiting with a parade of people whose lives he had impacted in such a profound and positive way. One of them was his old teammate and coaching buddy Milan Shaw. The two of them had been through so much together, and these visits were difficult for them both. “Merl was one of those people—baseball was his whole identity,” Shaw said.

  But Merl also went on to build something much larger for his town and his team, repaying Clarinda for helping to redeem him. “Some people can take this road or that road,” Shaw said. “He could have said, ‘I had a terrible life, so I am not worried about anyone else.’ He went the other route. He was going to rectify all of the mistakes and things he had missed out on in his life.”

  Merl was fixated on one last project for the A’s—raising money for a new scoreboard. Along with a form letter sent to A’s alumni seeking donations, he insisted on w
riting personal notes. He would write ten to fifteen a day before tiring. He had things he wanted to finish. But as he was nearing the end, he was sleeping much of the time, his body racked with pain.

  “Life is a great go-around, and as I have gotten older I have begun to understand even more how it works,” Merl said. “Sure, as you know, there are ups and downs, but thank the good Lord we all seem to have more of the ups. I think you should also know, if you don’t already, that the best things in life are free but do require some work to achieve, and last, if you don’t know, your dad was very competitive in just about everything he tried to do—second was just not good enough.”

  As competitive as Merl was, he was also a realist. Not long after the New Year in 2011, he decided to stop his treatments. They were too debilitating. “He knew the time he had left was limited, and he wanted to feel as good as he could for as long as he could,” Pat said. She continued to get things organized for the season, making sure players had been contacted, scheduling games and umpires, ordering supplies for the concession stand, all the while caring for her husband.

  They were able to work in a trip to Texas, where the team Rick coached, Highland Community College in Kansas, had traveled for games. Merl had another motivation: to make amends with a half-brother from whom he had been estranged. The day before they were to leave for Texas, Merl blacked out, but he insisted that Pat not tell their children. He needed the closure with John Mark Eberly, and nothing was going to stop him from making the drive.

  In Texas the two brothers talked to each other and repaired their breach. Merl and Pat also were able to see some former players and their parents, and Merl’s spirits were up as they made their way back to Clarinda, just before the start of another season.

  Merl and Pat tried to maintain their normal routines, but that was becoming increasingly difficult. Merl told Pat he wanted to make it at least until July 4, the annual parents’ weekend for A’s players. Merl always enjoyed meeting the parents, and he often gave a short talk at a luncheon put on by the women’s auxiliary. The previous year the luncheon was held in a large room at Clarinda Lutheran School, near the edge of town. At rows of tables, hungry players sat side by side with their host parents and their real ones. Each player introduced himself, along with his hosts and his family. Players then went into the gymnasium for a team photo of the entire A’s family.

  Merl had one more speech to the faithful in him, and even with a somewhat weakened voice, he could still command the room. He held a microphone and talked in his soothing lilt about the history of the program and what it meant to players and the town. He joked that while he was quite capable of giving players instruction, he most often chose not to, so as not to incur the wrath of their college coaches.

  The next year Merl and Pat were able to celebrate their birthdays on May 12 and 13 and also have a Mother’s Day weekend with family at Julie’s lake house about an hour away. The family time was restorative, if only temporarily so. Merl was able to speak at length with all of his children and grandchildren.

  It seemed like every day now Merl would receive another letter or phone call from a former player or coach. The 2011 A’s players started arriving on May 22, and Merl was able to greet several of them along with their parents. He was also able to spend time with some of the people whose lives he had shaped just by their association with the A’s. He talked to Jeff Clark during one of his last trips to the field, going over what in effect was his to-do list for improvements to the field. He knew Clark would do his best to see that they were done. “He told me he was proud of me, and I about started crying,” Clark said. “It meant a lot to me because of all he had done in his life. It meant a whole lot.”

  On May 26, the A’s held their annual youth clinic, where that summer’s team gave lessons to kids in town. Pat and Jill had gone down to the field to get the concession stand ready for the A’s opener in three days. Julie and Rick’s wife, Angie, stayed with Merl at the house on Lincoln Street. He had spent days in his bedroom, greeting a stream of visitors. His family rarely left him alone.

  Angie decided to join the others at Municipal Stadium and take photos of her five-year­-old, Cooper, at his first A’s clinic. Cooper was considered a bit of a miracle, as Rick and Angie had difficulty conceiving and had almost given up. Cooper was a constant source of joy for Merl, particularly during this period of grave illness. Merl seemed to be sleeping comfortably, so Julie left to return to her home near Des Moines. Pat and Jill told each other they would go get Merl “in a few minutes.”

  Merl awoke and had enough strength to be angry. Where was everyone? Adrenaline propelled him to sit up and eventually to walk down the creaky oak stairs. He knew he wanted to see his grandson at the clinic, another generation of the Eberlys taking up the game. He gathered himself further, grabbed his car keys, and headed into the garage. He started the car and drove to the field, a trip he had made several thousand times in his life.

  When he walked in front of the concession stand, Pat shouted, “Merl James Eberly, did you drive down here by yourself?” He glowered back and said, “What was I supposed to do when everyone had abandoned me?” Then, as he looked toward the field, he saw his five-year-old grandson beginning his own journey with the game Merl so loved. The man who rarely cried had tears in his eyes.

  Unbeknownst to the rest of the family, Merl had already discussed his condition with Cooper. Angie had told the boy they were going to Iowa from their home in Kansas because his grandpa wasn’t feeling well. Cooper said he understood. Every morning Cooper would go to Merl’s room, look out the west window, and tell him what was going on, silly stories like, “That black squirrel of yours is chasing the red one,” and important stories like the one about hooking his first catfish and his accounts of the previous night’s A’s game.

  Cooper’s sweet perspective on such a grim situation helped the whole family as they began a final vigil. The house on Lincoln Street had been home since August 1960, and their large family was intact, even growing closer at this time.

  A few days later, Merl wanted to go to the A’s home opener but couldn’t make it down the stairs, not even with the help of one of his sons. It was the first time either he or Pat had missed an opening game in more than three decades.

  By June 1, his family had gathered again in Clarinda to be with him, to help Pat, and to try to come to a place of closure. Their presence ensured that Merl could stay at home. Dr. Richardson came by to check on him, not for treatment, but just to talk. His oncologist stopped by as well. Even to his doctors, Merl was special.

  It was clear that his remaining time was short. Pat decided to call people who might want to see Merl a final time, and one of the first on her list was Ozzie Smith. When she contacted him, Smith dropped everything and headed to the airport to catch a flight to Kansas City, about a two-hour drive from Clarinda. Merl had meant so much to him, and the arc of their lives had been so interwoven, the young black man from Los Angeles coming to find himself as a baseball player with the old-school white coach in the cornfields. He would do whatever it took to see Merl one last time.

  Baseball was the lens through which Ozzie and Merl saw each other, not race. It was in Clarinda that Smith realized that if he worked hard enough—which meant outworking everyone else—he would have a shot, and he never forgot who helped to get him there. His eyes were also opened during his time in Clarinda to what he called “people who were of the land,” people who in his mind had a special set of values.

  One of the greatest validations Merl could draw from those decades with the A’s was the enduring nature of his relationship with Smith. They celebrated Smith’s triumphs in baseball, from his first contract in San Diego to his Hall of Fame speech in Cooperstown, New York, on July 28, 2002, with Merl and Pat in the front row. Their conversations were free and easy, no matter how much time had passed between them. While their backgrounds could hardly have been more different, their bond was unshakable. In the thirty-six years of their relationshi
p, so many things in the world had changed, and so many of them for the better. The Soviet Union had crumbled. America had elected a black president, and it was winning the Iowa caucuses that had sent Barack Obama on his way. Ozzie Smith, a kid from Watts, was a Hall of Famer and still a national celebrity.

  For Merl and Ozzie, fame was the least of it. Their friendship was forged in baseball, but it went well beyond the field. As Smith was racing to make it to Clarinda, he was replaying his time with Merl—that first day when Merl thought he might break him only to see the kind of steel that his skinny shortstop was made of; the games in Alaska and at the NBC tournament; then the games with the Cardinals, including playoffs and World Series. He thought about his talks with Merl on the phone, too many to count, and all those conversations that were about everything but baseball. He also recalled all the trips he had made back to Clarinda to sign autographs and raise money for the team at its annual Hall of Fame Banquet—journeys he had made, often on twisting two-lane highways, because of his fealty to the Eberlys. The baseball superstar felt as at home on Lincoln Street as he did anywhere on earth.

  He pulled into town on Glenn Miller Avenue, drove past the courthouse with the monument to Vernon Baker, past Weil’s clothing store, Taylor Pharmacy, and J’s restaurant, all so very much as it was in the summer of 1975. Ozzie Smith was not of these people, but these were his people.

  When Smith was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he made sure the baseball world knew of his path through Clarinda and its lasting importance in his life. “I will forever cherish the life-changing experience and strands of love that I was blessed with through my relationship with Merl and Pat Eberly while playing semipro baseball in Clarinda, Iowa,” Smith said in his speech that day. “Merl and Pat are also here today. Thank you. You know, most people would have no idea of how intimidating and stressful it could be for a young black player to move into an all-white, rural community in the Midwest. However, Merl and Pat took me in and taught me how to live with that challenge. As my coach, Merl taught me the value of strict discipline and the importance of constantly improving my game. And I would be remiss if I didn’t take the time to thank that entire community of Clarinda, Iowa, for the strands of love and friendship they showed me then and still do today.”