A Christmas Story
Posted: December 25th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 66 Comments »
Many years ago, I delivered afternoon newspapers to the houses on my old street, Warrendale Road. The paper I delivered was called The Cleveland Press — don’t go looking for it now. The Cleveland Press died more than 25 years ago. That’s what afternoon papers did in my lifetime. They died. It had something to do with the way America was changing or something. Nobody wanted their paper to come so late in the day.
I don’t remember how I got the job. I think the guy who delivered Press to us mentioned that he was quitting and wondered if I would take over. We were a Cleveland Press family. It’s funny to think about it now, but I seem to recall even as a kid thinking of us that way — a Cleveland Press family. The Cleveland Plain Dealer was the morning paper, and I remember thinking that doctors and lawyers and titans of business got the morning paper. We were not a Plain Dealer family. Dad would leave for the factory at some preposterously early hour, long before I ever woke up, and too many hours later his rusty blue Chevy Nova would pull into the driveway. He would have oil on his pants and salami on his breath, and he would collapse into the sofa, and I would hand him one of the Cleveland Presses that my mother and I were neatly folding for delivery. He would fall asleep reading paper.
Thinking about the Press now only makes it feel even longer ago. The paper had no color in it at all — none at all, the front page was always this harsh black and white. There was always a little photo of a lighthouse on top — the Scripps Howard lighthouse. The only color in the Cleveland Press was the cover of the little TV guides that I inserted on Fridays, and the color of the Wednesday coupons that would weigh the paper down. I hated Wednesdays. The newspapers felt like cartoon anvils as I lugged the newspaper bag from house to house. I remember once, in 1978 I believe, the Cleveland Press turned 100 and they put out a special section to celebrate. Each individual paper, in my memory, weighed about as much as two jugs of milk. It was no celebration for an 11-year-old kid.
The Press cost $1 for the full week (a Cleveland Press week was six days — there was no Sunday paper) — I think it might have gone up to $1.10 sometime during my delivery tenure. It was 35 cents if you only wanted the Friday and Saturday paper. I only had one house on my route that got the paper on Friday and Saturday … the old man used to leave me 35 cents wrapped in tinfoil and hung from the inside of the screen door. He never left a tip. Few people left tips. The Diamonds used to tip a dime every week. They were my favorite customers. Later, a young couple moved down the street, and though I don’t remember their names I do remember that he taught me the indefensible (undefensible? indefendible?) snowball throwing trick, and that she was very pretty and would tip me a quarter every week.
I remember lots of stuff like that — more about the route than the paper. My paper route was not very big — I think it peaked at 30 house. Still, there were very specific directions for each house … the Cleveland Press could not just be thrown in someone’s driveway. No, Mrs. Cohen wanted her newspaper folded neatly into the milk compartment*. The old woman on the corner wanted the paper placed neatly into the chair on her screened-in porch. The Polsters wanted me to ring the bell when I delivered the paper — they wanted to know exactly when the paper arrived. The Mumfords wanted their paper placed just inside the screen door and not thrown in there. And so on.
*It has been years since I thought about that — every house on Warrendale had a milk compartment. Basically, on the side of the house there was a door roughly the side of the large Macbook Pro (I was going to say roughly the size of an album — but albums are about as obsolete as milk compartments), and you opened it and there was this little chamber. And, inside the house, there was an identical door. Quite the thing.
So many details. A very old woman lived in the house on the corner and she never shoveled her driveway — I’m fairly certain she never left the house — and I can remember wading through snow that was almost up to my neck to deliver her paper. I started to call that house “Snowy.” There was another house — I remember the man who lived there would yell at me for various crimes that the youth of America were committing. Drugs. Alcohol. Free love. He was right out of the cliche, the archetypal “kids today don’t know the meaning of hard work” kind of guy, and I suppose I was the only kid he ever actually saw. And so even though I was 10 years old, he would dump his truckload of political thoughts on me. I began to call his house “Cranky.” There was one house where the owner never gave me a tip, never, not even at the holidays. I called that house “cheapy.”
And then there was the house I called “Brownie.” The house was not brown. The people there were not named Brown. No, the house was named for their dog — Brownie. And Brownie was the meanest dog in the world.
No, really, he was. It’s like that when you are 9 or 10 or 11 years old. Everything feels so much larger, colors are so much crisper, sounds are so much clearer. I guess it’s because everything still feels so new, there is no static of the everyday buzzing in your mind, no fog of familiarity blocking your view. Six days a week, I would deliver the paper to the Brownie house, and as soon I opened the screen door to deliver it, I would hear this thunder-crack THUMP that would scare me enough to make me jump back. That was Brownie running full-speed into the door. Full speed. Every day. Like he was hoping to knock the door off its hinges. Then Brownie would growl and bark, and there was menace in it.
On Friday, collection day, it took two men at Brownie’s house to pay, one to give me the money, the other to hold back Brownie. There was no illusion about it — no “Oh, it’s OK, you can pet Brownie, he won’t hurt you.” No, he would hurt you. The kids on Warrendale and Colony and Eastway and Grosvenor all heard the same story — that the the dog authorities (whoever these people were) had come to visit the Brownie house. I imagined them looking like British Bobbies from Sherlock Holmes time. They pronounced that Brownie had to be put down after he escaped the home and went on a neighborhood run of holy terror. I believed it. Everyone believed it. But they authorities did not return, and every time I delivered the paper, Brownie was always there to slam into the door and bark menacingly from the other side.
Two men lived at the Brownie House — one old, and the other even older. It was like something out of a Russian novel. They were father and son, Old Man Brownie and Older Man Brownie, and nobody knew anything at all about them. As far as I knew, nobody ever came to visit them, and nobody ever talked to them. On snow days, the only tracks to and from the house seemed to my own from the day before. I never saw the father or son when delivering the papers during the week, and I never said a word to them when collecting on Fridays. I kept my eyes on Brownie, took the money, and scurried off with the relief of another week gone by.
Then, one day during the summer, the son was standing outside the house when I delivered the paper. I handed it to him and turned to leave, when he said the strangest thing. He said: “Do you play baseball?”
There wasn’t much that an old man could say to me that would have engaged me at that age. Usually, they would ask me about school or something like that, which (of course) was boring. Every so often, an adult would say something about the Cleveland Browns or Indians or Cavaliers, but I never trusted that an adult could feel about those teams the way I felt and the conversation tended to peter out quickly. But Old Man Brownie asked me if I played baseball, and of course I did. I had been the start third baseman for a team called “Hollywood” — good glove, decent power, kind of a pint-sized Brooks Robinson in my own memory — and then had moved to second base where I dived for every ground ball like my hero Duane Kuiper. I practiced every day in our unfinished basement by throwing baseballs against the yellow brick wall and fielding the ground balls off the hard concrete floor. I played baseball.
And Old Man Brownie told me that he had played ball too. Come to think of it, he probably was not that old. Connecting the dots now, he was probably around 50. He said that he had played minor league ball — he was a catcher — and then he was drafted and he had played baseball in the Army Navy* during World War II. He called me over and pulled out two photos out of his wallet. The first was a yellowing black and white photo of himself throwing a baseball. He had good form. The second was a photo of his younger self and another man, both in Army baseball uniforms, both smiling at the camera.
*The quirks of memory — it was the Navy, of course, and not the Army.
“I know I don’t need to tell you what that guy is,” the man said to me. I shook my head — I had no idea who it was.
“That,” the man said, “is Bob Feller. The greatest pitcher who ever lived. And I was his catcher.”
The man was standing outside again the next day. He told me that he had not been a great baseball player. He was good though. Well, he had a good glove. He could really throw too. He said he wasn’t much of a hitter. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that he was telling the truth.
He told me about some of the other players he played with during the war. There were a whole bunch but the only one I remember was Pee Wee Reese. I remember that because I was the shortest kid in my class, and I had only then begun to worry that this might prevent me from becoming a Major League Baseball player. Now, he was telling me stories about a man they called “Pee Wee” who could field and hit and throw and run, a great baseball player, a man who Old Man Brownie insisted should be in the Hall of Fame. He told me that when Jackie Robinson was having trouble with people his first year in the big leagues — you know, because he was black — Pee Wee Reese put his arm around Jackie and people had so much love and respect for Reese that they immediately stopped bothering Jackie. It was a nice and simple version of race relations in America. It perfectly suited a 10-year-old boy.
Mostly, though, he talked about Bob Feller. Nobody ever threw harder than Feller, he said. “What about Nolan Ryan?” I asked. No, the man told me. Feller threw harder than Ryan. Feller had grown up on a farm, and he used to throw baseballs against the side of the barn, and he threw so hard that his fastball would break the boards. The old man who wasn’t really that old had a gift for telling stories. I asked Old Man Brownie if he had any kids. He said he did not. I asked him to show me the picture again — him and Bob Feller. He pulled it from his wallet and showed me.
A while later, he brought his old glove out and asked me if I wanted to play catch. And we stood on the sideway, about 20 feet apart, and threw an old gray baseball back and forth. His glove really was like a pillow — it was hard to tell where you were supposed to catch the ball. He caught the ball with two hands, and he threw with a snap in his wrist — the baseball seemed to jump out of his hand. He told me that I had good form. That, as far as I remember, was the only advice he ever gave me.
It did not occur to me, of course, that the old man was sad. It did not occur to me that he had fought in World War II, and he lost any chance to play in the big leagues, and he ended up living in a small brick house on a tiny street with his aging father and a maniacal dog. I never did find out what he did or if he had been married or anything else about him. I only remember that we played catch, and he told me baseball stories, and that one day I read in The Cleveland Press that Bob Feller was going to be signing books at Cedar Center, near our home. I told the man that he had to go see his old friend, and Old Man Brownie said: “Oh, Bob Feller wouldn’t remember me.”
“Sure he would,” I said, or some such thing. “You were his catcher.”
“No,” the man said sadly. “He would not. He had a lot of catchers.”
I begged and pleaded with him to go. It seemed important to me, though I could not explain why. And finally, he agreed to go. It’s funny, then, how memory can play games. I remember that he took me with him. I remember specific details about the walk to the store, and how crowded it was inside, and how Bob Feller looked behind a table of books. But I’m thinking now that’s impossible … I cannot imagine that I would have gone with a relative stranger to a book signing. I feel certain that he went alone and told me about it later. I feel certain about it.
Still … I remember going with Old Man Brownie to see Bob Feller. I remember it the way I remember other stories from my childhood. I remember walking in with him, and there being a long line, and Bob Feller sitting there and talking loudly about the old days. Maybe that’s because I have seen that Bob Feller scene many times since. In any event, I remember Old Man Brownie walking up to the table, and I thought I saw him shaking just a little bit. It’s a powerful thing, being a great athlete. You can inspire such deep and powerful memories in people’s minds. I can remember through the years seeing adults near tears as they approached Mickey Mantle or Joe DiMaggio or Pete Rose or John Unitas. I know that to some people that seems sad somehow … I know that makes many roll their eyes. “They’re just PEOPLE,” you hear the cynics say. But I never thought those in line were going to see the people. They were going to revisit their childhood. They were going to get as close as they could to a younger time, a better time, when the world seemed sunnier and Mays’ cap flew off his head and Brown tore away from tacklers and Wilt dropped the ball in the basket from impossible heights. They were going to give thanks to someone who brought joy into their lives.
“How are you doing Bob,” the man said as he stepped to the table.
“You look familiar,” Bob Feller said.
And the man handed him the photograph. Bob looked at it for quite a long time. I suspect it isn’t easy being people’s hero. I suspect that you can feel unworthy — I’m just the same as you — or you can feel resentful or you can feel like people are asking you to live up to an impossible standard. How many people over the last 50 years have come up to Bob Feller and said “Remember me?” How many people have handed him an old photograph? How many people have expected him to recall an autograph he signed in Des Moines in ‘68 or a pitch he threw in Detroit in ‘53 or an autograph he signed in Waco in ‘74 or a handshake in Augusta in ‘91? And how much has it meant to them when he did remember? And why did it mean that much to them?
I still see the old man’s face while Bob Feller looked over the photograph. I feel sure I wasn’t even there, but I still see it — his eyes locked on Feller, his shoulders rigid, his lips pressed together. He looked for all the world like a man on trial. He looked for all the world like someone who wanted to be somewhere else.
And then Bob Feller looked up from the photograph, smiled, and said “How the hell are you!”
They talked for a little while after that — NavyNavy talk, men they knew, rules they observed, food they ate, trips they made, and so on. All these years later, I still don’t know if Bob Feller really remembered the old man. I have seen many famous people pretend to remember … though, even then, there’s something touching about pretending. I only know that the old man smiled broadly as he would retell the story, which he did a few times on request over the next few weeks.
“What did he say then?” I would ask.
“He said, ‘How the hell are you!’” Old Man Brownie would say.
Eventually, they did take Brownie the dog away. Or maybe he ran off. Or maybe he died of natural causes. I don’t know. I only know that when I delivered The Cleveland Press to Brownie’s house, there was a dead silence behind the door. After a while, I stopped seeing Old Man Brownie. Maybe he was only staying at the house to keep the dog from killing people. Whatever, he no longer stood outside the house, and he he was not around to pay for the paper on Fridays. I never thought to ask about him — I suppose kids don’t think much about that sort of thing.
Many years later, I became a sportswriter and I interviewed Bob Feller on several occasions. I had mixed feelings about Feller, and still do, but one time I told him a version of this story and asked him if he remembered meeting his old Navy catcher at a book signing. He said: “Sure I remember.” I doubt he did. I figure that he had many book signings and many catchers in the Navy and many people who wanted to feel in some small way a part of his pitching greatness. I figure it’s impossible to remember everything. I told Feller how much it had meant to the old man, what he said. Feller nodded.
“What did I say to him?” he asked.
“You said, ‘How the hell are you?’” I told him.
Feller nodded again. “Well,” he said, “that sounds like me.”
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Christams or no, any story from you is truly a gift!
Great story Joe! I felt like I was there delivering the newspapers and talking to Old Man Brownie!
Merry Christmas, keep up the great work!
A fine story for Christmas day. Thanks for sharing.
Brilliant post Joe. I worked for UPS years ago and had my own encounter with a Brownie-type dog. I met a lot of mean dogs and the owner would always say “He won’t bite.” even though it was obvious that he would. But there was one bulldog that would always come out and the owner would say “He will bite. stay in the damn truck.” I would just blow the horn and wait for the owner to come out and get the package.
Thanks.
This post takes me back. In the last days of afternoon delivery of the Newsday on Long Island, about 23 years ago, I had a route of about 35 houses in my neighborhood. I got the job because my friend who had it before me went to juvenile hall after robbing a deli (I guess our stories differ slightly). While none of Bob Feller’s catchers were on my route they were mostly older men and women with very specific requirements for how and where to leave the paper each afternoon.
Thanks for reminding me of that. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Joe,
Merry Christmas. You are a fantastic writer.
GREAT story.
I was a paperboy many years ago. There was a house with a large loud dog. I was too scared to even go collecting there. They got a free paper for years!
Wow. Who knew Barack Obama had a UPS route?
Absolutely great story, Joe. Thanks.
I think your memeory might be a little faulty here Joe. Feller was in the Navy during the war. Maybe Brownie was also in the Navy.
Great story though.
I recommend to anyone to check out Bob Feller’s museum in his hometown. It’s in a small town in Iowa and off the interstate, very easy to miss if you aren’t aware.
It’s reminds me of this story, just a humble homage to a hometown hero that everyone feels connected to.
hey this is a real nice post and i also like your blog layout, have bookmarked your site and looking for more updates.
Wow — this essay brought back a ton of memories. I’ll restrict myself to recounting just two.
When I was going to university in the mid-80s, I was once visiting a friend of mine who lived in some early postwar apartments — the kind with those milk compartments Joe refers to in his piece. I was bemused that the thing still worked — milk delivery had gone the way of the second paper in our city, and the compartment doors looked to have been painted over a few times — and took a closer look inside. Beneath the coats of paint, there was an old valentine-style “heart” etched into the wood, saying “Tom & Kae 56″ inside. I was flabbergasted — my mom and dad had lived in that city as newlyweds. In 1956. And their names were Tom and Kae. I contacted them and they had indeed lived in that little apartment for a few months right after marrying!
The second story has to do with military baseball. My best friend and I had decided to drive from Vancouver to Seattle to see Ron Guidry pitch for the Yanks at the Kingdome (I know, I know). We asked our dads if they wanted to go, and they agreed. On the way down I-5, my friend’s dad seemed pretty knowledgeable about baseball, particularly in his era, around WWII.
“I played pretty decent ball when I was that age,” he said. “I was on a Canadian Army team that barnstormed around the country.”
He went on to say that he had been a leadoff hitter — good with the stick and fast. This was pretty funny to us, because he was by this time nearing retirement age, with the usual late-middle-age paunch and a bit of a limp from his long career in a steel mill after the war. Not exactly Rickey Henderson.
We asked him if his team was good, and he said, “Hell, yes. We won almost every game we played. Mind you,” he continued, “We were playing against farmers and town teams, and we were all pretty experienced players.”
Then he told us about a game he remembered losing, an exhibition game against a team from the U.S. armed services. He told us about stepping in as the leadoff hitter, eager to show those Yanks what kind of baseball us Canadians could manage.
“I had barely dug in when I just kind of heard, ‘Fffft-fffft-ffft,, and the umpire said, ‘Take a seat, pal — yer out.’
” ‘But I didn’t even see those pitches,’ I complained. The catcher says, ‘And you ain’t likely to see ‘em, neither. That’s Bob Feller.’ “
merry christmas joe!!!!
may God bless you and your wife and daughters
there’s absolutely NOBODY can tell a story like you.
nobody
no matter how long, no matter what topic, even (yeccccch) football, i enjoy every word and am only sorry it has to come to an end, as all stories do.
This is why baseball transcends time. This is why baseball, no matter what greedy owners or cable tv or ‘the media’ in general or our jaded society or steroids does to damage it, it will never die. It is because an old man can ask a young boy if he plays baseball , and they can talk of that when they have nothing else in common. Field of dreams had it perfect, no matter what, there is and always will be baseball….and baseball stories that warm the heart. Thanks Joe.
Merry Christmas Joe,
Great Story. Brought back memories I didn’t even have or almost had, if that makes sense. Hope you and your family have a wonderful holidays.
Great story Joe! Merry Christmas to you and your family!
Reminds me of my old paper route in California, trying to collect money every two weeks, getting stiffed by some, told to come back tomorrow by others, and receiving nice tips from a very few (not to mention the mean dogs on the route!).
Fortunately I still live in a community with an evening paper and have fallen asleep in the recliner many times reading my copy of the Rochester Post-Bulletin. Those that haven’t experienced an evening edition don’t really know what they’re missing!
Brilliant, really gorgeous, this one. I think you are right, it is about nostalgia, primarily, but also the joy that we have in watching great sports moments with family and friends. It’s unmatched. And I think the working class/blue collar parts of town experience this intensity more than any others.
I also agree with your impressions of things when you are young. Life is so much more vivid…and mysterious, when you’re young. That mystery adds to its beauty.
I’d forgotten about the joys in having a paper route. Delivering wasn’t nearly as bad as the collecting. I formed my character collecting from customers.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Posnanski.
Say what you will about Bob Feller. I met him once at a card show, and got a ball signed. He thanked ME for coming to see him. Class act.
11 really is a magical age. The Mets won the World Series that year and I remember every second of it, unlike any other year before or since. It was an awful year for my family, but damn if my mind doesn’t still think of it as one of the best in my life.
And we had a rusty old red Chevy Nova back then, oddly.
I met Bob Feller in Melbourne, Florida on a Saturday afternoon. He was at a small card shop, chatting away with the guys working there and a few scragglers. My mom took me over and I was pretty much in awe. Hell of a story teller, though he didn’t strike me as the type of guy who really wanted to hear what someone else had to say :p Still, it was a thrill…
Thanks Joe….as always. That story reminded me so much of my days as a paperboy when I was a kid in Independence, KS. Umfotunately, no Bob Feller though….:-(
Joe,
Great story. I too was a Cleveland Press delivery kid – only in the 60’s not the 70’s, and in Maple Hts. not South Euclid. You hit it on the head – there were PD families and there were Press families as different as night and day.
Some day I’d like to hear what you have to say about the various writers from the two papers – August, Gibbons, Seltzer, Dolgan, Eszterhas, French, Liebovitz et al. Some truly great writers staffed both papers.
About those milk compartments. They were known as milk chutes in Maple Hts. and both inside and outside doors were insulated to keep the milk from freezing in the winter and cold in the summer.
Hi Joe,
Big fan of your writing, both the sappy stuff and the analytical stuff. It’s funny how sometimes you tell someone not to do something and the first thing they do is, well, do it. But when you said not to go looking for the Cleveland Press, that’s the first thing I did after reading your wonderful story. And I found a website you might find interesting:
http://www.clevelandmemory.org/press/
Happy Holidays!
Great story. Made me recall my route in a small town in southeast KS in the early 60’s. Thirty customers spread out all over town. Once in a while my dad would take me around when it was really cold. Most times it was just me, my bike and the canvas bag that held the paper from the county seat. Grew up watching lots of small town baseball. As a teenager, one of my friends and I got to keep score and announce the game for a few seasons. Remember taking lots of lessons on calling a game by watching Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee on the CBS Saturday game of the week. Oh yeah, we saw a few famous faces before they made it big, but my memories are of the visits of the ‘Colored’ teams like the Monarchs and the Indianapolis Clowns who were still barnstorming around the country at that time. Always beat the locals, but it was always entertaining, too. Thanks again for the memories
Say what you want, that Brownie was a evil dog!
Another amazing story from the best sportswriter in America! Merry Christmas to you and your family, Joe!
Great Story Joe,
This story brought back a lot of memories for me because I was an afternoon paper boy for the now defunct Paterson (NJ) Evening News during the late 70’s. Some joyfull but most of it was kind of a horrific experience.
Here’s a couple of points I remember:
1: Joe is spot on with his recollection of the bizarre and somewhat insane way customers used to insist on having their paper delivered. In the mailbox, on the step, in the screendoor, with plastic, no plastic, in the mailbox with plastic, in the screendoor without plastic, before 4:00 pm, after 4:30 p.m., ring the bell, knock, don’t ring the bell, don’t ride your bike in driveway, etc. And God forbid you didn’t deliver the paper the exact way they wanted it delivered, oh man!! You would have a 5o year old man yelling at a 11 year old kid because his paper was folded the wrong way.
2-I remember what a pain it was to actually collect money from these people. 50% of these people all had some kind of lame excuse why they couldn’t pay me on time. Sometimes I would have a family where the husband/father always came home late so there was nobody to pay the bill. Then I would have to come back a week or two later and the guy would get completely pissed like I was trying to scam him because they owed 2 or 3 weeks, when it was his fault in the first place because he was never home or didn’t leave money for his wife/children to pay the stupid bill.
What I never understand in retrospect is why these newspaper companies not have the customers just pay the newspaper directly instead of going through 11 year old kids??
3-I just remember the older kids chasing me and trying to beat me up just because I was the paper boy. “There’s the paper boy!! Let’s kill him”.
4-Old people who didn’t understand inflation and still though a nickel was a lot of money in 1978.
5-Then if a customer would cancel you would have to call the newspaper and then speak to adult who would get really pissed off and yell at you. Toward the end I was so afraid to call that I would have 5 or 6 extra papers each day and probably made no money.
I got nothing…Thanks, Joe. Merry Christmas.
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Too bad that I can’t slip over to Winter Haven this spring and ask Feller if he remembers you asking him about that. I’m sure he would,but sadly,the Indians(and Feller have moved on.
Bob Feller? Heck, that’s nothing. I got a book signed by Joe Posnanski.
Merry Christmas, Joe. My son was surprised and pleased with the book.
Nice story. It reminded me of why I love baseball so much. It truly is everyman’s sport.
I hated collecting. One old guy on my route was my dad’s boss. One day I was collecting, and he answered the door while his family was eating dinner. He owed 70 cents and he gave me three quarters. By an odd chance, I had no nickels, so I shyly explained that I couldn’t make change, somehow expecting that he’d tip me the nickel.
Well, he went up one side of me and down the other while his family watched from the dining room. They all knew my dad worked for him, and it seems to me now that they were ashamed by their father’s behaviour, and that they knew that in a twisted way he was trying to send a message to my dad through me.
I never told my dad that story, and I only understood what was happening later in life. It was profoundly humiliating and he meant it that way, the bastard.
My next-door neighbour’s dog was just as insane as Brownie. She got loose one day and chased me down the driveway, biting me on the leg. I needed a tetanus shot. The neighbour never even apologised, and the next day, that lousy mutt was still barking furiously from their living room window at anything that moved.
I’d happily shoot that damn dog.
Great story. Thanks. So vivid. Brings back a lot of memories.
I was a paperboy for the Pittsburgh Press, also a Scripps Howard afternoon paper. Give light and the people will find their way. Apparently every paperboy had the same customers: the grumpy old-timers, the crazy dog, the one pretty woman you hoped would be home when you went to collect.
I guess this is me hitting middle-age but it bums me out a little that my son will never have a paper route. It was a good introduction to the world of work. You were outdoors, you worked alone, you got a free paper every day, the tips were not bad. That’s a pretty good gig.
Thanks Joe,
Though I rarely comment, I am a regular reader. I read a handful of blogs, and none of them come close to the superior writing, the quality of storytelling you do. Blogs tend to be for half-finished thoughts rife with typos. Not here. I recommend this blog to everyone I know, from my baseball buddies to my high school journalism students.
This was a wonderful story, beautifully told. Brought back my own memories of delivering the Seattle Times-in the afternoon, during the 60’s-but the connection to baseball, the two old ballplayers, what a great touch.
Thanks.
[...] A Christmas Story courtesy of one of the finest local writers around: “Many years ago, I delivered afternoon newspapers to the houses on my old street, Warrendale Road. The paper I delivered was called The Cleveland Press — don’t go looking for it now. The Cleveland Press died more than 25 years ago. That’s what afternoon papers did in my lifetime. They died.” [Joe Posnanski] [...]
#35 Paul O,
I think your story is pretty common among paper boys of that time period. I think a lot of these adults were just frustrated or had little power in their day to day existence or had too many kids and took out their anger out on powerless 11 year olds. Which is pretty f*#&ed-up when you think about it.
Also, I remember how friggin cheap some people were and sadly that’s about the only thing I remember about some of my neighbors.
I remember our weekly paper bill was 90 cents a week in 1978 and my neighbor would always give me exact change instead of a dollar. Never gave me a tip, he would always give me nickels and dimes that equaled 90 cents instead of a dollar. Then the paper went up a nickel a day and the guy flipped out and started yelling and cancelled the paper.
I still don’t understand why the Newspapers didn’t just send them a monthly bill and have the customers send a check to the Newspaper directly.
Also, this was the time period right before lawsuits became as common as raindrops. Adults would never behave today like they did back then. Especially letting their dog bite someone. If that happened today the paper boy’s father would have sued the family
All of these nostalgic stories make me wish I could’ve been a paper boy for even a short while. Unfortunately, the paper boy went the way of whale oil before I could even walk. For as terrible as some of the anecdotes are, they make great stories. A few lawns to mow and a kid to babysit doesn’t quite cut it in the world of story-telling unless you lose a limb, lose a toddler, or lie.
… And by terrible anecdotes, I don’t mean the anecdotes are terrible in quality. I mean the actions of some of the characters in them are terrible.
Brad,
Delivering papers during that time was kind of like a Suburban version of Lord of the Rings.
If you want to see an interesting film about what it was like to be a teenager in the late 70’s rent “Over the Edge”. It came out in 1979 and was Matt Dillion’s first movie.
That post Watergate, post Vietnam time period was a very weird time to be a kid.
There were basically 3 types of families during that time period:
1-The Parents were born late teens-early ’30’s, went through the depression/WW2 and had 3-7 kids.
2-The Parents were born mid-late 30’s-late 40’s, they just remember the tail end of the War, Elvis, R&R and had 2-3 kids.
3-The Parents were born late 40’s-mid 50’s, baby boomers, young people with 1-2 kids.
The biggest problem IMO usually came from the the families with the 4-7 kids with the parents 50-65 years old. The fathers were just too tired/old to take care of their youngest children usually about 14-18 years old, so consequently these kids were the ones that were causing a lot of the problems in the neighborhood. They were usually left alone to create all sorts of havoc.
Also there were just so many teen-agers running around totally unsupervised during this time period.
There would be these little groups of 8-12 kids about 12-17 years old, smoking cigarettes, throwing M-80’s and riding their bikes all over the place. These kids would literally spot me and scream, “There’s the paper
*There’s the paper boy, KILL HIM!!!”
A masterpiece of storytelling. Simply brilliant.
Joe,
Good story. It was no surprise when the Press closed shop. I had a PD route in the morning and our street didn’t even have Press delivery. I’d run to a hotel on Clifton and buy several copies of the Press and take them to a few folks. My only profit was the tips.
A few people will buy a paper because of their hard news coverage, but many will decide between two papers because of their sports coverage. For the longest time I could remember driving out to Lorain to get the paper out there because they carried Hal Lebowitz’ column on Sundays. His passing was a bigger blow to Cleveland sports than losing the Browns. Terry Pluto is the closest thing we have left for decent sports reporting.
Joe,
It is stories like this one that make this site one I check daily.
Thank you so much. What a great story.
Happy Holidays.
House #12 (I think) on my paper route was Mrs. Grubb, Johnny Grubb’s grandmother. He was a Ranger when I was delivering papers, but subsequently went on to win the World Series with my beloved Tigers. Mrs. Grubb loved to brag about her little grandson, Johnny. And I loved to listen. (Oh, and her paper had to be folded and slid into the mail slot.)
Great sports blog you have here. I have a couple myself. There are a lot of us out there. We need to stick together. Let’s exchange links so we can help spread some traffic around. My two sports blogs are listed below my name. Please let me know if this link exchange is possible.
Jason
SportsSoundOff.net
SPORTSMONARCH.com
Thanks for that story, Joe. I hope you had a terrific Christmas with your family.
Best. Story. Ever.
Thanks for sharing your life with us…truly a blessing.
Joe -
At my family’s Christmas gathering yesterday, I was talking baseball with one of my nephews, the sports nut to whom I gave The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract when it came out (he loved it), and asked if he knew of this blog. He didn’t, and I told him he should, because you’re the best sportswriter working these days. After reading this post, I should tell him you’re one of the best storytellers around, no matter the subject.
And I’ll share a little bit of my own paper route memories – I delivered the Middlesex News in the afternoons, and on my route were the Fluties. Getting to know Doug’s mom led, a few years later, to my getting to carry his Heisman to her car. She worked mother’s hours at the supermarket I worked at after school, and a few days after he won it, she brought the trophy in and perched it on the deli counter. It’s one of my favorite stories to tell, but to keep things brief, I’ll just say this: that thing is really, really heavy.
Merry Christmas, Joe, to you and yours. Best wishes for a healthy and happy New Year!
Great story, Joe!
Although I never had a paper route, your story still brought back a couple of memories. The first is of the mean dog in my childhood neighborhood. (Who once got out, chased me, and caused me to injure my leg on the spiky top of a chain link fence I too hurriedly tried to climb over to avoid him. I still have the scar.)
The Main memory though, is how much I loved and looked forward to the afternoon/evening paper. In KC we had the Times in the morning and the Star in the afternoon. When I got home from school, I waited breathlessly for the Star’s arrival, looking out the door every 5 minutes or so until it came. I would run out to get it, immediately going to the sports page with it’s complete box scores of the previous night’s games, along with a more fleshed out story about the Royal’s game. The Royal’s were in the western division then, and a good potion of their games did not start until 9:30. I would not be able to hear them, and the morning paper would be printed too early for the game to have finished.
In this age of immediacy where people can just check their phone to find out what is happening in a game, (or their computer, or ESPN) I don’t think anyone under a certain age can appreciate not being able to find out what your team did until the next afternoon, and how much the sound of the paper hitting the driveway meant to a young baseball fan.
i had a paper route back in the late 70’s ( I was 11) in Dallas, TX and had a dog on my route like that. he was in a fenced yard and would bark and growl at me everytime I delivered the paper. he was a pretty dog (yellow lab I think) I remember going up to the fence one day… so scared I was. I wanted to pet that dog. I will never forget that day when I reached my hand through the fence to pet the dog. the dog licked my hand and I sat down in the grass and we became friends. several years later they moved. I remember crying over missing that dog. I think I loved that dog
#52 good points Khazad.
Baseball scores were a big part of the afternoon papers. And I think morning stock market quotes as well.
I remember back then that afternoon pap
Baseball scores were a big part of the success ers were sometimes more popular than morning papers.
Also, a lot of people would buy 2 or 3 papers a day. Some people might get the New York Daily News, and then have the Paterson news delivered, and then some people would get a weekly local paper delivered as well..
Joe,
I realize you’re both employed by Sports Illustrated, so I understand if you don’t want to respond to this question out of professional courtesy. Having said that, do you have any explanation for Jon Heyman’s Hall of Fame ballot? Morris, Alomar, Larkin, Mattingly, Dawson, & Parker. Morris? Morris, really? And yet no vote for Blyleven?
How is it fair that Heyman has a vote for the HoF and my dog does not?
Joe,
My daughter had the pleasure of meeting you several years ago when she was in high school. You came to her Sports Lit class at Gardner-Edgerton High School and spoke.
To this day, it is a highlight of a high school career filled with highlights.
She’s now a Sophomore at Brown University and will probably continue her post-graduate study in Journalism, partly because of you.
I’m proud to be a 2010 JoeBlog HOF voter. Except for Alan Trammel. Honestly, people, just pretend he won a couple MVP’s if that’s what you care about. There’s no shame. Afterall, I was only able to uncheck Dale Murphy’s box at the very last second. Ifinally drew my induction line after the first 8, between McGriff and Dawson.
Also, it’s good to see Appier would stay on the hypothetical “Joe’s Brilliant Readers’ ballot” for at least 1 more year. I had to uncheck HIS name at the last minute, too.
*Trammell
-See how under-appreciated he is.
Joe,
Great story. Thanks for sharing.
I guess I’d like you to elaborate on your “mixed feelings” about Bob Feller sometime if you could.
You Still have good form …well done and thank you for letting me relive my childhood awhile
I had the complete opposite experience with Feller as #21 Jay did…perhaps its because my dad didn’t want to pay $20 for an autograph and just wanted to snap a quick picture with us kid standing next to him, but Feller was rude and told him to get lost. Classy guy.
Great story. I carried the Des Moines Register (morning paper) for 4.5 years and once had a dog bite me and nearly had to get rabies shots till they tested it and discovered it was OK. Probably the most vivid memory was of the man in the smelly house having an epileptic fit when I went in the house to collect one cold winter afternoon. Wow.
I’ve gotten Feller’s autograph twice–once at Living History Farms west of Des Moines (free!) and later at a Waterloo minor league game and had to pay $5 or $10. He was very cordial.
By the way, one of the most famous guys to ever catch Feller was 1939 Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick during Legion games in Adel, Iowa, a little town west of Des Moines. Today in Adel, Iowa, there is Kinnick-Feller Field (near the town of Van Meter where Feller grew up). Kinnick was an all-round athlete, but I heard Feller on a radio once say something to the effect that “Kinnick never liked baseball as much as football. He was always drop-kicking and punting the ball outside the ballfield when we were up to bat and he was waiting his turn to hit.”
I think every delivery-person has a deeply imprinted mental map populated by mean dogs. One of my favorite stories from my grandparents is about their old dalmatian. He wasn’t mean, just crazy (probably from being so inbred). One day a delivery man came to the house, and the dog got so excited that he leaped through the glass of the front window (fortunately not to attack the guy, probably just to bark at him from a closer distance).
Years and years later, long after the dog was dead, the same delivery guy, who was not normally on that route, had another package for my grandparents, and insisted on leaving it with the neighbor, since the image of the dog leaping through the glass was still ripe in his mind.
I heard one time, in ‘93 or ‘94, that Len Dawson was signing autographs at HyVee in Gladstone. I happened to have a program from the first Super Bowl with me that day, for some reason or another. I waited in the line, and when I handed it to him to sign, he stopped in his tracks, looked at it for a few minutes, and started reminiscing about the old days, telling stories like it was just him and me, sitting around shooting the breeze. Seemed to me that he enjoyed it as much, if not more than I did. Great story, Joe. I can almost see Bob Feller staring at the crumpled old photograph, peeling through the memories like an onion, trying to remember, and finally giving up. “How the hell are you?” just seemed like the right thing to day. Thanks, and Happy Holidays.
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Bob Feller can be criticized for many things with regard to his abruptness and overall blowhard tendencies but I respect him for so much more. Here is my Bob Feller story…
Albuquerque, NM – Oct 1988 Feller is in town as part of an old-timers basbeall game/weekend event to raise some much needed $$$ for the UNM baseball program. My parents and handicapped (cerebral palsy/crippled legs, etc) uncle (Uncle Bob) were in town visiting me from NE Ohio and we had an opportunity to meet and speak with Feller following the game. My father was a retired farmer and knew of Feller’s farming background and the area around Feller’s home in Gates Mills, OH. So, they had a lengthy conversation. However, it was my handicapped uncle who made a great impression on Feller. My Uncle Bob had been a huge fan of Feller and the Indians of the ’40s and early ’50s so Feller was so very kind to Bob but also impressed with Bob’s memory of those teams/times. It was a special time for my father and my uncle (brothers).
Two years later my parents were again out visiting me and we again had an opportunity to see Bob Feller at an AAA Albuquerque Dukes game where Feller was selling pictures and autographing anything in sight. My dad again approached him and Feller stood up and said something like ”It’s great to see you again! I’m busy with this autographing stuff now but tell me where your seated and I’ll come out to chat later in the game.” Sure enough, later in the game I came around the corner and there sat Feller with my mom and dad and they were having a great time talking about farming, farm equipment and the like. Feller asked about my uncle too (who had not made the trip) which impressed my mother greatly. So, given that history, it’s difficult for me to be too tough on Feller’s sometimes rough demeanor. He’s an overly proud man and that can lead to an arrogance that turns many people off, understandably. But, to me he’ll always be a likeable sort who loves to talk farming and was so very kind to my handicapped uncle, now deceased. For that, I am eternally grateful.