September 2016

Mad Dog Goes Yard

by Tom McGohey

The Tigers’ Bill Madlock was an unlikely candidate to become the 12^th Major Leaguer to hit four home runs in one game, joining the likes of Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, and Mike Schmidt (Gehrig and Schmidt in consecutive at-bats). He was a four-time National League batting champ, but in his 15-year career he hit a modest 163 homers, with a career-high of 19 in 1982. Though he had “some pop,” as announcers like to say about players with middling power, he was not the kind of belter that made opposing teams pitch around him.

But against the Orioles on June 28, 1987, “Mad Dog,” as he was known for a rabid temper that was as much bite as bark, was lofting home runs into the left field seats at Tiger Stadium like he was playing “HORSE” using paper wads and a wastebasket. A power surge all the more shocking considering that when the Dodgers, his fifth team in 14 seasons, released him on May 29, he was batting an embarrassing .180 and had played in only 21 games. It seemed the Mad Dog, 36, had become a toothless, mangy mutt only four months in baseball-years short of euthanasia. But Tigers’ manager Sparky Anderson, remembering Madlock’s smart approach to batting from his days running the Cincinnati Reds, embraced GM Bill Lajoie’s plan to add a veteran right-handed bat to a team that was sputtering along at two games over .500, 5 ½ games behind the Yankees in the American League East Division. And though the core of the 1984 World Series Champs was still in place, the odds of reprising that brilliant season were looking murkier than stale water in the concession hot dog steamers.

Twenty-five years earlier, when I was 10, my father took my brother and me to our first major league baseball game, Tigers vs. White Sox. The Tigers won on an RBI double by Jake Wood, (a once promising infielder who slipped into mediocrity and out of baseball after a half dozen seasons, his career preserved only in the franchise stat books and the memory of a fan prone to nostalgia even at the age of ten.) It was a hot, humid day, and I ate so much peanuts, Cracker Jacks, cotton candy, hotdogs, and soft-serve ice cream that after the game I threw up on the sidewalk of what is now Kaline Drive. (My apologies, Al.)

Now I was returning the favor, treating the old man to what I anticipated at the time could possibly be our final outing at the old ball park at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. In a few weeks, I was moving to North Carolina to attend graduate school, and my father, widowed the previous year by my mother’s death from cancer, had recently announced his engagement to a lady from Toronto, a recent widow herself, and that they would be starting their new life together by resettling in a place new for both of them.

At the time, Madlock’s signing did not inspire much excitement in me. That old guy? I thought. What’s he got left? But as the stand-in for the quiet, polite Jake Wood in this reprise father-son ritual, Mad Dog and his reputation for fisticuffs — he was known to punch his own teammates, as well as opponents who crossed him — did lend an air of celebrity scandal to his arrival.

Nonetheless, his former All-Star fielding skills diminished by age and portly physique, Madlock still had potential as a part-time DH on a team looking to jump-start a lineup still loaded with talented if slumping hitters, and he rewarded their faith immediately with eight hits, including a homer, in a four-game series with Boston, and with four hits in a game against Milwaukee. Explaining this torrid resurgence, Madlock said at the time, “They seem to throw more breaking balls for strikes over here [in the American League]. And when you make a mistake with a breaking ball, it’s usually up. In the National League, they throw more forkballs and a mistake with a forkball is usually in the dirt. And batting average doesn’t mean as much over here. Here, we’re talking home runs and RBIs. I’ve messed myself up a few times already, swinging for the fences. I’ve been up and down because of it.”

A down streak included an 0-21 slump that got him benched for two games before returning to the lineup against the Orioles June 28, as the DH, batting second. Why Sparky decided to reinsert Madlock for this particular game, who knows? Maybe just a gut move based on experience: .304 career-hitters generally figure things out on their own.

Whatever the reason, the move paid off in the 1^st inning, with Madlock hitting a two-run homer to left, which probably surprised Orioles’ starter Eric Bell as much as it revived the Sunday afternoon crowd of 31,606 fans, who didn’t have to wait long to recover from the three-run homer by O’s Fred Lynn, off Jeff Robinson, in the top half of the inning. Unfortunately, Madlock’s quick-strike counter blow didn’t do much for Robinson’s stuff; he gave up three more earned runs in the 4^th inning, when he was relieved by Mark Thurmond, who promptly gave up another run, in the 5^th, leaving the Tigers in a five-run hole. Madlock, as if deciding it was up to him to keep the Tigers from getting blown out, responded with another homer, a solo shot off Jeff Habyn, again to left, in the bottom of the inning. The Tigers added a run in the 8^th on a Chet Lemon single, scoring Kirk Gibson from second base. In the meantime, Eric King, the Tigers’ third pitcher, had shut down the O’s through the 9^th, and the Tigers came to bat still trailing by three.

Fanatical numerologists with a spiritual bent might have ascribed the Tigers’ ninth to a miraculous trinity of divine power: a three-run deficit erased by three consecutive homers, the first by pinch-hitter Johnny Grubb, a former All-Star limping through a final season that would end with anemic stat line of 2/13/.202; the second by catcher Matt Nokes, who would finish the season with a career-high 32 homers; and the third, by our snarling hero, Mad Dog, the crowning blow of a hat trick that even the most faithful of sporting prophets or statisticians never would have bet on. (Alas, for stat-heads seeking record confluences of streaks, no matter how arcane, Madlock’s tercet did not come in consecutive at-bats: he flied out to short stop in the 2^nd.) So improbable was this power surge for a hitter better-known for stinging singles and frozen-rope doubles that my father and I could only shake our heads and laugh in wonderment at what we had just witnessed.

No matter the outcome, I was gratified that this game, more than likely our final one together at Tiger Stadium, had provided so much drama in such an unexpected fashion. Of course, I wanted the Tigers to win, but to expect more seemed almost greedy. What could possibly top that 9^th inning?  Certainly Madlock had used up his allotment of swan-song heroics usually reserved for Hall of Famers like Ted Williams. That he had granted my father and me extra innings in a farewell outing 25 years after our first game at Tiger Stadium should have been more than any grateful son could expect. But I was greedy. You always want more — more thrills, more odds-defying feats from aging players summoning powers unimagined even in their prime — even when a part of you recognizes that such unrealistic thinking more often than not leads to bitter disappointment.

At that point, I was just hoping Madlock would get another at-bat. The odds of that happening looked bad in the top of 10^th when the Orioles put men on first and third with two outs, Cal Ripken at the plate. The future Hall-of-Famer was having another All-Star season, with 17 homers and 51 RBI by midseason. And worse, after four innings of shut-out relief, the O’s appeared to be catching up to Eric King’s fastball. The unpredictable skills that had produced a 4.02 ERA, lamentable for a part-time starter, depressing for a reliever, were resurfacing. I think everyone in the stands, myself included, expected Ripken to do something dramatic. He struck out.

The Tigers, facing Doug Corbett, went down in order in their half of the 10^th. Still, regardless of what Orioles did next inning, Madlock would get to bat in the Tigers’ half. Willie Hernandez, MVP and Cy Young winner from the 1984 championship season, faced three potentially tough outs in Eddie Murray, Fred Lynn, and Ray Knight, and put them away in order, but not before a couple of fly balls by Murray and Lynn made me squirm more than they should have. Even in a proverbial bandbox like Tiger Stadium, they were not close to clearing the fences.

Nokes led off the bottom of 11^th with a single. That brought Madlock to the plate. Of course, everyone in the stadium, myself included, was hoping for a fourth homer, and chants of “Maad- daawg, maad-daawg,” like cheers for a rabid pit bull in an illegal dog fight, swelled and circled the stands. I wasn’t a chanter, too shy and reserved for that, especially in front of my father, but as each refrain grew louder, my heart rate pumped faster. Who wouldn’t want him to swing for the fences in that spot?  My father, that’s who. He was old-school, as they say, grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and valued good old-fashioned, conventional wisdom-percentage baseball strategy. And the conventional wisdom here was obvious: move the runner over. Beneath the cheering, more like a high-pitched ecstatic pleading, and the chanting, and the simultaneous slapping of plastic seats, I could hear my father mutter in a dry, sarcastic tone, as if he were a crusty old manager with decades of experience and dismissive of the fans’ emotional demands, “Move the runner over.”

And of course, that was the smart call. Put the runner into scoring position, and a single brings him home. Walk-off homers were for perennial bombers like Gehrig, Mays, and Schmidt; they were for majestic mastiffs, not for scrappy, rabid — figurative or real, and the verdict in this case was 50/50 — Mad Dogs. After all, what were the odds of Madlock hitting a fourth homer? Sabermetric gurus filling front offices today would scoff at the possibility. Future generations of fans looking up such a stat and finding Madlock’s name would, with good reason, think it was a misprint. Or at best, the name might register with the same blankness that I felt when seeing names of batting champs from the 1880s. Walk-off singles — does the term even exist? — just doesn’t ring like walk-off homer. Moving the runner over required one thing from Madlock: a sacrifice bunt. Could he make the mental downshift from adrenaline-fueled aggression of swinging for the fences to the cool calculations of laying down a good bunt? Remember that Madlock himself, recognizing the difference between small-ball and long-ball approaches to batting in the Senior and Junior loops, had confessed that he had “messed myself up” trying to hit homers when he returned to the American League.  Keep in mind also that Sparky Anderson, despite winning two World Series with a Cincinnati lineup that featured some legitimate bashers like Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, and George Foster, had acquired his managerial chops in a small-ball league that disdained adopting the DH, and played percentages so faithfully that he earned the nickname “Captain Hook” for changing pitchers at the first sign of trouble.

Sparky liked to talk. Sparky loved to talk. Talking was like breathing for him, and he never required a respirator to support his entertaining if inflated soliloquies with reporters. With so much verbiage on the record, he was bound to contradict himself now and then. For example, he once said that “Players have two things to do. Play and keep their mouths shut.” But in Cincinnati, he was also known for having two sets of rules for stars and role players. Madlock may have been the star this day, but as part-time DH at the end of his career, he had a clearly defined role: shut up and follow orders.

Would Sparky give Madlock the green light to swing for immortality or make the conventional call for a bunt? You’d have to be a naïve romantic to hope for the former. The pragmatist in me accepted that Madlock would be bunting; the romantic was silently begging for him to hit a homer. Such an improbable ending would elevate what had already been a memorable game to the status of an immortal one. If this did prove to be the last game my father and I attended, I could not imagine a better ending to a shared passion that had started 25 years earlier with my first sighting of the luminous lime green grass of the playing field at Tiger Stadium, and other images that for some odd reason became indelible in the memory of a 10-year-old kid: Rocky Colavito’s five o’clock shadow, already a dark blue-gray for a Sunday matinee game, and the chaw-stuffed cheek of White Sox veteran Nellie Fox, which seemed to swell with each swing in the batting cage.

So it came down to this — would the Mad Dog defy his master and attempt to go yard, knowing that if he failed he’d likely be sentenced to Sparky’s dog house for eternity (which would end with his being waived), or would one of the game’s most volatile yappers shut up and follow orders? For me, it came down to another question: should I honor my father’s time-honored wisdom and stale if savvy percentage-based practicality by issuing vibes to chill any impetuous cravings for immortality twitching in the Mad Dog’s feverish brain and calloused hands, or assert my own independence by openly joining the rest of the chanting mob around us in howling for the intoxicating reward of a risky, selfish act that was more likely to end in failure, and possibly defeat for the greater good of the team?

Madlock ended the suspense on the first pitch, laying down a bunt on the third base line. A charging Ray Knight fielded the ball cleanly, but not in time to make a play on Nokes at second. Madlock was thrown out easily, but he had done his job. He moved the runner into scoring position. As he trotted back to the dugout, the crowd reacted with cheers just a shade deflated by disappointment at being denied a fourth homer.

Or maybe I’m imagining that, projecting my own mixed feelings. In my mind the perfect scenario would have had him swinging away until he either connected or got two strikes, ratcheting up the suspense and stoking the crowd to a hysterical pitch, and then laying down the perfect bunt. But that would have been a foolish strategy, if not outright stupid. He might have struck out or, worse, hit into a double-play, leaving the Tigers with two outs and no men on base. He did the right thing, whether on Sparky’s orders or not, and clearly he’d been following orders. And I suspect that even if he’d been given the green light, a fantastical possibility, Madlock still would have been bunting all the way. He may have had a volatile temperament, but he was still a pro, an aging veteran who understood that a greater, if unspoken and lesser celebrated, glory came with doing the simple, fundamental things in the game correctly. That appeared to be my father’s reaction, anyway. He just looked at me, smiled, and nodded his head.

The next batter, Kirk Gibson, was intentionally walked, bringing Alan Trammell to the plate. He hit a single up the middle, scoring Nokes. Game over. Tigers won 8-7.

 

After acquiring Madlock, the Tigers played .649 ball, going 71-39. They entered the final week of the regular season trailing Toronto by 3 ½ games, and swept the Blue Jays in a four-game series at Tiger Stadium, clinching the Divisional title on the last day of the season on a home run by Larry Herndon. (Emotionally spent after that tense finish, they lost the ALCS to the Twins in five games.) By that point, though, I had moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, for graduate school, where I watched that miraculous sweep in a local laundromat-bar called “Suds and Duds,” wearing my newly purchased Tigers’ North Star starter’s jacket, despite the 90-degree-plus degree weather.

Shortstop Alan Trammell was the star of that team, hitting a career-best .343, 28 homers, 105 RBIs and placing second in AL MVP vote. In what proved to be his final season, Madlock contributed a solid but underestimated stat line of .279 / 14 homers / 50 RBI, all the more impressive considering that he appeared in only 87 games. In one of those endless musing of ‘what if” scenarios so popular in sports, especially baseball, I liked to think that extra-inning win over the O’s three months earlier was the difference in the Tigers winning the division and going home. There was no Wild Card in those days. What if Madlock hadn’t laid down that lovely bunt? What if, following my impetuous yearning for the splashy, history-making play instead of my father’s calm, rational demand for the smart play, he’d swung for the fences and missed?

It turns out that game was the final time my father and I sat in the stands at Tiger Stadium. He’s 90 now, and still a rabid sports fan, still rooting for the Dodgers — the “Doyers,” as he calls them, in some strange patois of Brooklynese he’s never explained — partly out of loyalty to octogenarian announcer Vin Scully, more so out of loyalty to the National League for disdaining the DH, a stubborn refusal that, so the argument goes, allows managers to show off their strategy and guts by lifting a dominating pitcher for a pinch-hitter. The latter issue is an ongoing point of contention when we get together during summer visits. He ended up leaving Michigan the same year I did, relocating to North Carolina, as fate would have it, with his new wife (a Canadian born and raised in England who couldn’t tell the difference between a Blue Jay and an Oriole, but otherwise a lovely lady), a three-hour drive away.

We still watch games together during those visits, but only on TV, as his wobbly gait can no longer carry him up the grandstand steps, which now would appear to him like one of Escher’s endlessly looping mazes. But his memory is still sharp. When he starts carping about how the DH has corrupted the game, I remind him that it was a DH who provided the dramatics of our final game at Tiger Stadium. He responds with a disdainful grunt betrayed by a flicker of a smile fighting suppression. Sometimes the joy of such personal memories trumps the purity of national pastimes.

I’ve seen some dramatic homers with my father at Tiger Stadium: Reggie Jackson’s Homeric blast in the 1971 All-Star Game, a liner that pierced the fading evening summer sky like a mythic hero on the way to carving its own constellation, was still rising when it hit the metal stanchions of the lights in left-center field.

A no-doubt mortar shot by Lance Parrish in the 7^th inning of the Tigers’ clinching Game 5 victory of the 1984 World Series against the Padres. It landed a few rows behind and to the left of our second-row seats in the left-field stands, close enough that I stretched my arm high overhead, hoping the sonic force of cheering would bend the ball’s trajectory into my mitt. It did not. Succumbing to such naïve optimism was still a thrill.

But the best homer I ever saw at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull was the one that never was.

They say a walk is as good as a hit. Sometimes a bunt is as good as a homer. And sometimes a nod is as loud as a cheer of thousands. Sometimes louder.

Tom McGohey taught composition at Wake Forest University for 20 years. He has published essays in Fourth Genre and Thread.  His essay, “Friday Night Fights with Mom,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2006.

Life After Death in Golf

by Randy Steinberg

If you’re an elite professional golfer, you will most likely, when your playing days are done, be enshrined at the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Florida. This is the case for the top stars in most major sports. From halls of fame to retired numbers in the rafters to naming streets and stadiums after players, if you’re good enough your namesake will endure in a public place of honor. If you were a pro player but not good enough to make the Hall of Fame or have an avenue named after you, you’ll still be replayed and re-streamed in perpetuity, and thus millions of people will know about your accomplishments.

Going down a rung from the professional ranks, if you are a member of a swanky golf club, you might be lucky enough to have your framed photo on the wall of the main dining room. You’re smiling in tie and jacket. You are remembered in a highly personal way.

But what about the public course hacker, which is most of us after all? What is life after death in golf like for we common folk? Remarkably, your legacy might endure in a very visible way, too. You will not receive Hall of Fame, Golf Channel, or Country Club level attention. No rafters, TV replays, or dining room adornment for you. You’ll certainly have no face. Your name and dates might be displayed but not on a wall or in any place of prominence. Rather, your memorial is more likely to be a plaque or a marker on a bench by the 14^th tee, a rock by the 7^th green, the base of a tree along hole #2, or even a ball washer on, well, any tee box. You will live forever beneath a clump of windswept pine needles or buttressing someone’s rear end as they wait for the foursome in front of them to clear. Your name will be splashed with sudsy water every time a player cleans his ball.

Because golf is my passion perhaps I’ve only noticed this tradition on the golf course, but in my four decades I’ve played many sports, and I cannot recall seeing a memorial plaque to anyone on a tennis changeover bench or a ball return slot on a bowling lane. Are pick-up basketball men remembered with signage beneath the hoop at the town courts? Are softball players given markers on the trash cans where all the post-game beer cans are tossed?

Lest anyone think I’m putting down the practice of remembering a friend or loved one on the golf course, let me dispel that notion. Though I sometimes think it a peculiar tribute, it speaks to the uniqueness of golf — especially the way it honors its amateur and very average players. Cooperstown celebrates baseball greats, but are amateur baseballers accorded any status on town and city diamonds? Canton is a sacred space for the legends of the grid-iron, but are touch football men similarly remembered at the local playground?

I’m sure, in response to this essay, I’ll be corrected. Friends of Jim, who loved ultimate Frisbee, will tell me they honored his memory with a Frisbee-shaped escutcheon by the side of his favorite proving ground. Susie was remembered with a marker at mile 11 on her favorite biking trail, her survivors will state. It does happen in other sports and athletic endeavors, I’ll be told!

Though it might not relate to their hobbies or avocations, others may point out that crosses by the side of the road, where an accident occurred, are common ways to remember someone who has died other than at a gravesite or in a hall of honor. However, it would be an imperfect (if not inapt) comparison because I’m unaware of any golf course memorial that notes a golfer died on the exact spot where it is affixed. That might make some morbid sense if it indeed was practiced in such a fashion. Ralph had a heart attack walking up the slope toward the 15^th green and fell 30 yards short of the fringe: let’s put the plaque on that spot, with of course a free drop to anyone landing on it. I doubt any greens keeper would be amenable to this, but in an eerie way it would be fitting.

All kidding aside, what does the practice of memorializing people on the golf course say about the sport? Why does golf seem to treat death differently than other hobbies and pass-times, even down to its most unheralded practitioners?

***

One possible answer could be in the way golf is defined, which is the subject of much debate. Is it a sport or a game?

This question has been asked ad nauseum, and if any sports radio hosts are silly enough to pose it anymore, they can be assured of a precipitous ratings drop. But when discussing the way golf treats death, it might be worth revisiting.

Years ago, I might have sided with the “game” proponents. In as much as Nicklaus, Watson, Snead, Jones, Hogan, Player, and Trevino were great golfers they didn’t look like much. They didn’t have the appearance of a modern-day (even latter day) athlete. Flab and pudge abounded. I’m sure most of them smoked cigarettes and drank. Indeed, golf is the only sport in recent memory where a professional player can actively be seen smoking (a cigar) during a round. There are certain major league pitchers who appear wide in the mid-section, but can you imagine any one of them with a Camel in the corner of his mouth as he winds up for a pitch?

This is not to say the golf legends I mentioned did not have great hand-eye coordination, superior concentration, and nerves of steel. Of course, to a man, they did, but compare them to golfers of the present day. There are exceptions, naturally. There are overweight golfers (John Daly and Brandon de Jonge immediately spring to mind) and averaged-sized men on the pro tours, but the rule is a tall, lean, toned, intimidating figure. Tiger Woods may have ushered in the modern player and made what was once a game, a sport, but the ground he broke is now worn over on the men’s and women’s tours. A 300-yard drive 30, 40, and 50 years ago was seen as near-miraculous. Now it is routine, with drives of 350 yards or more not too jaw dropping.

Pro golfers are muscled and physically prepared in ways their forbearers would not have thought about. Technologically, golf is cutting edge and it, along with most of the other “sports,” has its own 24-hour television network. Bridge and golf were games in the 1950s, but cards remain a game in the 21^st century while golf, the arriviste, has gone athletically mainstream.

Thus, if we see golf as a sport, the urge to memorialize its participants on the field of battle, so to speak, is more understandable. A plaque by the dartboard or the poker table doesn’t feel appropriate because the players just lounged and gabbed and drank. But on the golf course, where the mighty strode and struck — just like the heroes of the Iliad — an impermeable tribute is fitting.

Given that I’ve noticed the phenomenon of on-course tributes to everyday players is a more recent one perhaps there is something to the notion that golf as “sport-over-game” has taken hold — and thus the impulse to memorialize amateur players in the same manner as professional golf heroes makes a lot more sense.

But if this analysis feels incomplete, there’s more that lends golf uniquely to the on-course tribute.

In the famed golf movie Caddyshack, Rodney Dangerfield’s character Al Czervik quips, “…country clubs and cemeteries, biggest waste of prime real estate.” Why did he pair the two together? Both can be places of calm and rest and contemplation. If you are alone on the golf course, things can be as quiet as the grave, and you might stop a moment to reflect — or view someone’s memorial.

One could say the same about skiing, whether downhill or cross country, but skiing is a sport of constant motion, and even if you do stop it’s probably 20 degrees out and you’re unlikely to ruminate for long. And let’s face it, there’s not much to ponder on a hard-top tennis court or the town hockey rink. If you’ve seen one court or rink, you’ve seen them all, but even not too well tended public golf courses have their own charm and individuality. These sui generis attributes bind course to player, and after the player is gone those left behind understand how much the course meant to that person. Thus, they wish to mark forever the synergy of environment and man.

What’s more, golf courses and graveyards are both enjoyed best in perfect weather, if the latter can even be enjoyed, though many a golfer might wish he was dead after a blow-up round. Both settings have exquisitely tended grounds and invite tranquility. A rower, skimming along his favorite river on a calm evening might be similar, but he can’t stop the boat to view a marker (if it could be placed anywhere). On the golf course, you can pause your round to view a plaque in bucolic settings. I’m not sure if those who set up memorials for friends and loved ones on golf courses consciously understand that, but I don’t think it can be coincidence.

Lastly, golf is a sport that reveres tradition and history. Naturally, other sports do as well, but I don’t think to the extent golf does. Golf predates most other modern sports, and what other contemporary athletic endeavor has more picayune rules and devotion to etiquette than golf?

No one would think it odd if a baseball player was ejected from a game for corking his bat, but should a player be disqualified from a tournament for kneeling on a towel? The latter example did indeed happen when a professional golfer (Craig Stadler) had to hit a shot from a kneeling position. He didn’t want to muddy his pants so used a towel, not in any way to aide his shot, but simply to keep his trousers clean. No matter to the rules committee: he was tossed from the tournament.

Pickup basketball is a far rougher experience than a refereed game. What constitutes a foul in the NBA would be considered patty-cake on the playground court. But amateur golf can be just as serious as the top ranks. Go to a public course and try stepping in someone’s putting line or talking during a backswing. You will find little tolerance for such a breach of etiquette no matter what level of golf. Some golfers naturally — unfortunately — cheat, but gaining an edge by getting away with a rule breach, which is seen in most other sports as admirable, is frowned upon in golf. Golfers are famous for turning themselves if an infraction occurs. You’ll never see an NFL defensive back admit he held the jersey of a wide receiver, and you’ll never see a major leaguer on second base cop to stealing signs from the opposing team’s catcher. But in golf, if a player accidentally moves a ball he is addressing, more often than not, he will announce the violation.

How does this relate to life after death in golf? Most athletes, no matter what sport they play, see themselves as part of a brotherhood, but I believe fraternity in golf is stronger than all others. Thus, we take our golf identity with us to the grave, and it is no surprise that those who survive us seek to keep the fires burning brightly for the fallen. And they do it on the golf course, which bonds the quick and the dead to its terrain, its traditions, and its etiquette in a far more palpable way than can any other sport.

***

My grandfather passed away in 2007 in Florida. My grandmother moved closer to us after that (to Massachusetts), and she died in 2015. They were both lifelong golfers, avid fans of the sport and most anything related to it. Combined, they easily played the sport more than 100 years. When my grandmother passed, we had my grandfather’s remains brought to Massachusetts so they could be buried together.

At the funeral service for my grandmother, everyone was encouraged — per Jewish custom — to throw a handful of dirt on the casket. I opted for a sprinkling of golf tees. I recall, before I made the offering, looking to the Rabbi for any signs of disapproval. A more orthodox interpreter of the faith, he did not have a problem with this gesture. There was a smattering more controversy when my mother inquired as to what kind of headstone she could fashion for her parents. She wanted it to be in the shape of a golf green or something to that effect. The rules regarding what kinds of symbols and insignia can be used in a Jewish cemetery are rigid, but it seems my mother’s idea did not violate any Hebraic, death tenet.

I have not been to too many cemeteries, but I can’t say I recall any gravestones that display golf symbols. Again, I’m sure someone will point out where I am wrong on this, but whether or not the practice is common, perhaps this is the better way to honor the passing of a golfer.

As for me — and I’m speaking to my heirs — I would prefer to forego an on-the-course tribute. I understand the impulse, but to me it’s close to a backhanded compliment. Perhaps if you were to emblazon my name on the 18th green of a course I frequented, where it could never be missed, I might agree to the gesture. Every golfer who played the course, each round, would have to see my name and even perhaps aim for it depending on pin placement. But on a bench, beneath a tree, fastened to a ball washer. No thanks. Bury my heart in the graveyard and adorn my resting place there with golf imagery, but don’t remember me with signage on a rock besides the 13^th tee.

I wouldn’t go so far as to incorporate these wishes into my last will and testament, but if this essay could be considered, in the least, legally binding, I hope my successors will heed it.

Again, I beg pardon to those who have paid tribute to a loved one with this kind of memorial. My thoughts on their efforts to remember a father or a husband may seem condescending and rude, but from an eschatological point of view I wonder if any of it matters.

When the sun burns out in another five billion years and flares in its own death throes, the planet earth will most likely be engulfed and incinerated. When this happens, if humanity is even around and still playing golf, all the courses and the Golf Hall of Fame and all of our memories and tributes and everything else will be gone.

What of life after death in golf then? Will any of this matter — this essay included — when the solar system is gone, and there is no one to remember the memories of anything, let alone golfers?

Whether you prefer plaques on the golf course over golf imagery on a cemetery headstone, or vice versa, your best hope is that God or the supreme being or whomever is a golfer. For one thing, it would make all those golf jokes in which God or Jesus figure that much more appropriate. More importantly, all the ball washer and bench markers (and graveyard ones too) will most assuredly matter, for God will have taken note. People might not remember the tribute on the rock or the tree or the headstone, but the Lord will. This may not be much comfort to the atheist-golfer, but for all the praying golfers out there it will be sweet redemption.

As for me, I prefer to remain agnostic about golf, religion, and golf-course memorials. Though I might not want an on course tribute for myself, it’s a testament I’m proud to say is unique to golf. You might not have played to the level of Arnold Palmer or Jason Day, and you may have not been a country club patrician, but you can be remembered in a way that weekend warriors in other sports wouldn’t even contemplate.

 

Randy Steinberg has a master’s degree in film/screenwriting from Boston University. He taught screenwriting at BU from 1999-2010. Since 2011, he has reviewed films, television shows, DVDs, and books for Blast Magazine.com. He has published essays, articles, and short stories in Boston Magazine, The Good Men Project, and The Heat City Literary Review. This is his second Sport Literate essay. He lives in the Greater Boston area.