A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (15 page)

The general unhappiness that marked the San
Francisco condition manifested itself in the city's national lead
in suicides, most of which came when people threw themselves off
the Golden Gate Bridge. While Los Angeles was a "car culture," its
drag racing youth portrayed in rebel movies, it was San Francisco
that had the highest accident rate. Cars were constantly running
into each other on its twisting, turning roads.

Los Angeles was viewed by the intellectual elite's
as a place of "air heads" who neither read nor contemplated very
much. "Thought is barred in this city of Dreadful Joy, and
conversation is unknown," wrote Aldous Huxley, author of
Brave
New World
.

For the first time, California became the most
populous state in the union in 1962, but of course most of this
came about via growth in the seemingly endless L.A. Basin. Northern
Californians derided it and issued Apocalyptic warnings about
overpopulation.

The weather and geography was unique to each
culture. Los Angeles is essentially a desert; a Southwest terrain
of chaparrals, Santa Ana winds and an endless strand of beach. It
rained very little and maintained warm year-round high
temperatures. A Rose Bowl Game played on New Year's Day could
easily be played under 90-degree sunny skies.

The city of Los Angeles, which had annexed the San
Fernando Valley in a move derided by screenwriter Robert Towne's
Chinatown
, is as large as a small country. San Francisco is
a mere 47 square miles, enshrouded by fog, drizzle-rain, and brisk
wind. The coastline is rocky and perilous. Cypress and eucalyptus
trees, ravaged by ages of harsh weather, stand like battered
sentries above the cold Pacific Ocean, where whales were spotted
and given religious protection by the environmentalists who
worshipped them as they frolicked in white-capped waters.

San Francisco consists of 42 hills overlooking the
bay and the ocean. Cable cars and buses, some connected to electric
wires above, traversed the city. Its main businesses were shipping,
banking and insurance.

San Francisco's Chinatown was a world unto itself.
The tradition of Barbary Coast opium dens, a district of whore
houses and saloons that catered to rough-and-tumble seafarers on
shore leave during the middle of the 19
^th
Century, was
carried forward in a "live and let live" anything goes ethic. This
existed in easy confluence with the sophisticated elegance of
tuxedo-wearing operagoers. Men wore suits and women elegant gowns
simply to go to dinner. Shopping was reserved for a downtown
excursion to Union Square, not some suburban mall. Eastern styles
prevailed.

"In 1962 America, it would have been impossible to
find two places as geographically close but as profoundly different
as San Francisco and Los Angeles," wrote David Plaut in
Chasing
October
. "On the map, they were cities in the same state. By
all other comparisons, they were worlds apart . . .

"San Franciscans
knew
they were superior to
Los Angeles, and truly believed their city was also the most
civilized and sophisticated in the country - perhaps even the
world."

"The rivalry is reflex built at birth," wrote
San
Francisco Chronicle
columnist Herb Caen. "It is firmly a part
of the mystique of each city - and why not? In this era of
blandness verging on torpor, and conformity close to non-think,
it's fun to have an object of automatic disdain so close at
hand."

Meanwhile, back in New York, the Yankees stood like
the Colossus of Rhodes over all they surveyed. To them the Giants
and Dodgers were humdrum, second rate ball clubs in minor league
towns, fighting for the remaining crumbs that their baseball empire
had left for them. To New Yorkers, any argument between San
Francisco and Los Angeles, whether it was baseball-related or
otherwise, was a minor disagreement between colonial provinces

The heroes

“You can’t compare Joe to me.”

- Willie Mays's assessment of Joe DiMaggio

It starts with the center fielders. In the 1950s
there were three: Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, Willie Mays of the
Giants, and Duke Snider of the Dodgers. These three Hall of Famers
embodied their respective championship teams, and were compared
endlessly by fans of each during a time referred as the “golden
age” of New York sports. It was a time of baseball greatness, but
also one of the great eras of the New York (football ) Giants,
whose great running back, Frank Gifford, was a golden boy from
USC.

In retrospect, California probably went on to enjoy
even greater “golden ages” than New York in the 1950s. In the 1960s
and 1970s, California sports would see great champions in different
sports that dwarfed all previous runs. Combinations of dynasties
and titles won by the Dodgers, A’s, Lakers, Trojans and Bruins
created dynamics not seen in New York, which after World War II had
little in the way of national college powerhouses. The 1962 season
was a particularly good California sports year; one that would be
duplicated and surpassed in various succeeding seasons.

But New York in the 1950s resonated more deeply.
There was a greater connective tissue among the fan bases at Yankee
Stadium, the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field than later would be
found among disparate crowds at the Forum, Dodger Stadium, Pauley
Pavilion, and the Oakland Coliseum.

The center field comparisons carried over to the
California years, adding new dimensions to the discussion. Joe
DiMaggio was the great superstar whose shadow hung over all three
of the New York stars in the 1950s. Naturally, the most immediate
discussion concerned DiMaggio and Mantle, since both were Yankees.
Mantle’s rookie year was DiMaggio’s final season, and the great
star never made it easy on the “Commerce Comet” from Oklahoma.

Joe D.’s presence hung over Mantle for a decade, not
to be exorcised in any appreciable manner until Mickey’s run for
Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record of 60 with teammate Roger
Maris in 1961.

Los Angelenos never really took to the
Compton-raised Snider, immediately hampered by distant Coliseum
fences. Similarly, San Franciscans distanced themselves from Mays
for varying reasons, not the least of which was the fact that The
City considered DiMaggio every bit as much
their
property as
New York’s. He was a San Francisco kid. The era in which DiMaggio
emerged from Galileo High School and ascended to the big leagues
was a special time in San Francisco Bay Area high school sports. A
plethora of tremendous athletes came from The City and the
surrounding areas included the likes of Vince and Dom DiMaggio
(Joe’s brothers, both Major Leaguers), Tony Lazzeri, Lefty Gomez,
Dario Lodigiani, Joe Cronin, Jerry Coleman, Bobby Brown, Gil
McDougald, Joe DeMaestri, Matt Hazeltine, Charlie Silvera, and many
others.

DiMaggio hardly even played at Galileo. Apparently
he flunked out of school and discovered his extraordinary talents
at nearby Funston Playground near his North Beach home (the Italian
section of San Francisco). On the recommendation of his older
brother Vince, he signed on with the San Francisco Seals before his
high school class graduated. DiMaggio was not terribly interested
in baseball; he often had to be cajoled by friends to play sandlot
ball, but once he discovered a regular paycheck his enthusiasm
grew.

The Galileo connection has been touted ever since.
The school, located on the outskirts of the Marina district (today
a fashionable neighborhood of upscale young professionals) has
never been a prep powerhouse to be compared with Concord De La
Salle, San Mateo Serra, Santa Ana Mater Dei, Long Beach Poly, or
any of the mythical programs of the Golden State’s storied
past.

Nevertheless, Galileo boasts the unique fact that
they produced baseball, basketball and football players who at one
time were each considered the best in the world at his respective
sport. Aside from DiMaggio (baseball), basketball star Hank
Luisetti was said to have invented the jump shot and led Stanford
to the heights of glory. O.J. Simpson claimed he had a relatively
average prep career because all his blockers were “little Chinese
kids,” but in the early and mid-1970s he was the best running back
in the NFL.

Mays quickly discovered just how loyal San
Franciscans were to DiMaggio when he experienced boos in his early
years at Seals Stadium, Joe’s old stomping grounds. The sensitive
Mays, who had felt so at home among the large black population
surrounding the Polo Grounds, detected a racial dynamic in the
taunts, even though great love was freely given to the Puerto Rican
Orlando Cepeda and even to his fellow African-American from
Alabama, Willie McCovey.

San Francisco was not in all ways the liberal
bastion many would have one believe. It never had a large black
population. San Francisco’s blacks were pushed into a small corner
of the city near Candlestick Park. Bay Area blacks congregated in
larger numbers in Oakland, Richmond, and to a lesser extent in
Marin City and Vallejo. In the mid-1960s, Oakland’s Curt Flood, a
rising star with the St. Louis Cardinals, decided to move his young
family to San Francisco.

A sensitive type, he was a budding
artiste
, a
canvas painter who saw in San Francisco a cultural kindred spirit.
Instead, he was met by petitions from neighbors who wanted no
blacks moving in.

Years later, Mays’s Godson, Barry Bonds hit his
500
^th
career home run before wildly cheering Pac Bell
Park fans. Mays was asked if the nice reception, after a similarly
cold initial relationship between Bonds and his hometown, reminded
Willie of the way he had to earn San Francisco’s respect in a town
devoted to DiMaggio.

“You can’t compare Joe to me,” Mays replied. It was
not said with a smile on his face. He resented DiMaggio and the
fact that San Francisco loved one of their own more than him. He
immediately called it racism and never deterred from that
assessment. Bonds learned from the Mays playbook. Whenever he was
backed into a corner, his lies about steroids or various other
absurdities exposed to the public, he reacted to the public’s
disdain of his unimpressive behavior with the usual “it’s because
I’m black” ridiculousness.

****

“To all Americans, Mickey Mantle epitomizes the
Golden Age of American sport: he is the quintessential hero of a
time when much was right with the world, and nothing was ever wrong
with the New York Yankees,” wrote Mickey Herskowitz in
All My
Octobers
. Mantle embodies something so elusive it cannot be
grasped. It is something Roman generals understood.

After conquering distant lands, Roman leaders
returned to Rome, leading great processions through the streets.
Amid huge cheering, the enslaved soldiers of defeated foes were
paraded before the populace along with exotic animals from the
conquered territories. The Roman generals were accorded literal
god-like status. Amid the
hubris
a slave would be assigned
to whisper in their ears, “All glory is fleeting.”

No place is this truer than in America. American
heroes are the biggest in history. One could argue that Dwight
Eisenhower, Abraham Lincoln and Douglas MacArthur are world figures
of such esteem, status and wide-ranging impact upon history as to
be second only to the living Christ. This seems rather preposterous
at first glance until one attempts a list of those whose place in
the annals of Mankind is greater. Who are they? Genghis Khan?
Oliver Cromwell? Joan of Arc? King Henry VIII? Michelangelo? After
sorting out all the criteria one is left to accede to the fact that
America’s place in the world, and therefore our greatest heroes’
place in the world, is overshadowed only by Biblical figures.

But as huge as these people are, America in her
egalitarian way strips these “gods” of their esteem in short order.
Term limits, shifting public opinion, and Democracy in its purest
form reduces the time in which cheering adoration marks their
lives. They are left for retirement and the history books. Doug
MacArthur, for instance, was said to have had a direct impact on
over a billion people, but when President Harry Truman fired him,
he was just another “old soldier.”

There is a similar sense of fleeting heroism found in
sports heroes. Mantle is the most fleeting, tragi-comic of them
all. In terms of adoration, on-field success, and sustained
greatness, it can be argued that Mantle surpassed all others; Babe
Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Joe Montana, Michael
Jordan, Barry Bonds, Pele, or any athletic god before or since.
This is not to say he was the best. Most would agree Mays was a
little better. Ruth was probably superior. DiMaggio’s statistics
are not as good, but his most avid supporters say there was a style
and grace to him that cannot be measured by lifetime home runs or
batting average.

But Mantle was something beyond even DiMaggio. First,
his Yankees dominated as nobody ever dominated. Not even DiMaggio’s
teams were as unbeatable. DiMaggio was a hero to Italian-Americans,
who loved him because he saved them from a pervasive image of
themselves as either Mobsters or Mussolini Fascists. DiMaggio was a
clean-cut Californian and the press cultivated his grace as they
later protected JFK from the truth of his sexual excesses. But in
fact DiMaggio regularly hung out with Mafiosi, albeit in a more
discreet manner than his contemporary, the brash Frank Sinatra.

Mantle was blonde and boyishly handsome. He was the
All-American boy from Oklahoma at a time when those OK creds were
quite exceptional. His superstardom ran parallel with coach Bud
Wilkinson’s astounding 47-game winning streak at OU. The
combination of Mantle, a great high school football player, and the
coach he turned down in order to sign with the Yankees, is revered
to this day as the official end of the Dust Bowl.