The Last Season (32 page)

I felt uneasy inside. I wanted someone to tell me how hockey could overcome pain and wrong and death, death in particular — how did the Leafs overcome Bill Barilko's death if it took them more than a decade to win another Cup? Explain that one to me Fog?

As far as I was concerned the sayings of Freddie the Fog Shero were utter crap. On the night of May 19, 1974, the day we beat Boston 1–0 at the Spectrum to win the Stanley Cup, the Fog wrote down, “We will walk together forever.” We won.

On January 29, 1976, the Fog decided he was tired of walking with me. He didn't even have the guts to tell me himself.

“Felix Batterinski?”

It was my phone but I didn't recognize the voice. Was Torchy handing out my number again?

“Yah, who's this?”

“Phillip d'Atillio of the
Enquirer
here. We've received a tip that you've been put on league waivers. Any confirmation?”

Surely it was a wrong number.

“Hello?” the voice barked. “Are you there?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“A tip. Has anyone at the Flyers told you you're up for trade?”

“No.”

“Well, we hear you are. We're going with it in today's paper. Any comment?”

“Like what?”

“Well, how does it feel?”

“I don't know whether it's true.”

“It's true, believe me. How does it feel?”

“How would you feel?”

“I don't play hockey.”

“Then you wouldn't understand, would you?”

I slammed the receiver down and then picked it up again quickly, welcoming the dial tone. I let the receiver rest while I poured rye halfway up a beer glass and then filled the rest with coke. I gulped it down in quick swallows, my eyes burning wet, but it did no good. Batterinski was on waivers.
Waivers.
For the first time in his life.

I stared at the wall unit over a second, stronger drink. A half dozen team pictures — some magnificent, like a million and a half Philadelphia fans spread out over Broad and Walnut and Chestnut and the parking area around the Spectrum, Torchy and I riding in the back seat, both of us covered in confetti and champagne. The goofs in the minors — Saginaw, Wichita, Saint John, Rochester — faces and places I'd love to forget. My first training camp just before Pittsburgh claimed me in the expansion draft. Pittsburgh, the town that makes Sudbury look like Paris. Erie. Hershey. My fling in the World Hockey Association: the Ottawa Nationals before they became the Toronto Toros before they became the Birmingham Bulls. To Philadelphia and back together with good old Torchy the following year, Torchy picked up from Detroit for two stinking draft choices. Some of the faces I could barely remember. Swoop Carleton, Pelyk , Harris, Hampton, poor damned Bill Masterton with his fractured skull and a trophy for his memory. Hockey, where
we can best meet and overcome the pain and wrong of death
. Tell it to Bill Masterton, Freddie.

Walk forever, my ass — I broke the glass setting it down, pulled on a shirt, shoes, and raced into the Spectrum, petrified to turn on the radio in case I turned up as a bulletin.

Freddie wasn't there. I ran over to the general manager's office and could hear Keith Allen's voice soft as a pussywillow as he thanked someone for their “unselfish effort.” I was stunned to discover he was talking to Torchy Bender, dressed in what he called his best “screw suit,” the orange three-piece, pink silk shirt open to the navel.

“There he is!” Allen called out to me.

“Come in, Bats, come in!” Allen ordered as he stood up. He seemed to be welcoming me rather than knifing me in the back. I went in hesitantly, suspicious.

“The
Enquirer
call you?” Allen asked.

I nodded.

“Damn. I'm sorry.”

“Is it true?” I asked.

“It's true,” Torchy answered for him.

I looked at Torchy, wondering.

“It's not all so bad,” Allen was saying, trying to pull a seat over toward me. I wasn't in any mood for sitting and refused, staring straight at him.

“Then it's a lie,” I said.

Allen was glowing. “Well, not exactly, Bats.”

“They're dumping you, Bats.” Torchy said. He was still smiling.

“Not dumping,” Allen said frowning at Torchy. “We're changing team, that's all, boys.”

“You just won two Stanley Cups,” I said.

“Yes, and no small thanks to you, either. But a team can't sit fast, son. We need new blood all the time. You —”

“You're old blood, Bats,” Torchy butted in.

Allen pulled in his air and scowled, wishing Torchy would leave or shut up.

“We have a good opportunity, Bats. We think its best all around.”

“How can it be best for me?” I asked.

“Ever been to California?” Torchy teased.

I stared at him.

Torchy smiled back. “We're both going.”

Looking back, I came to see Los Angeles was a godsend. For me, if not for Torchy. It had been necessary to have my face pushed to the glass before I could see that the Batterinski rep existed more in the crowd's mind than my own. At thirty-one Batterinski had peaked.

Tough shit. Hockey meant nothing in L.A. Not only were the Kings nobodies up against the Lakers and the Dodgers and the Rams, but who could possibly compete for notice with the Fonz and Suzanne Somers and
Charlie's Angels
and, more precious yet, the true Hollywood stars. The Los Angeles Kings made as much sense as turning the
Queen Mary
into a hotel. We were the London Bridge in Arizona; the magic mountain in Disneyland was more real than a bunch of half-talented Canadians charging around on ice after a forty-five cent piece of black rubber in a replica of the Forum in Rome, all for a mere $12.50 a seat. They even sold margaritas and tacos in the tuck shop at the Fabulous Forum. No fat men with runny noses peering knowingly through the steam of their Styrofoam cups; in California there might be foam cups and heat but it began with cleavage and ended with skin-tight acrylic pants.

Torchy and I rented a huge house out at Rolling Hills estates, a twenty-five minute drive down the San Diego Freeway and out toward the Palos Verdes Peninsula. We had a massive ten-year-old mansion with cathedral ceilings, black leather furniture with Tex-Mex design, bull horns over the bar and a spring-loaded, embroidered saddle seat in the television room which Torchy liked to ride nude while watching
Sonny and
Cher.
Outside we had a huge, clover-shaped pool, a hot tub, a eucalyptus grove and a small garden of hibiscus, morning-glory and — Torchy's favourite — scarlet passionflowers, all cared for by a nattering little Japanese man he took to calling Hirohito. The next house was a hundred yards away, past our purple morning-glory fence, past their stables, grazing Morgans, jump range and tennis courts. Another house beyond that and we had a view of the Pacific, great breakers rolling white and silent in the distant blue. Ugga-bugga.

It took Torchy all of twenty-two seconds to forget he's ever come from Kirkland Lake and that once, when we were in Sudbury, he had actually asked Lucille if she was serious when she said he should stop making a fool of himself with white T-shirts under his red shirt. Torchy became an instant minor celebrity, except he didn't make movies, just stars. He made the gossip pages almost as often as the sports pages, pictures of Torchy in his new hairstyle from The Clip Joint and his aviator glasses and his white silk bandanas and pink suits making his hair stand out like a devil's paintbrush. And of course, the large-breasted, hopeful starlet of the week. He even got his teeth capped — which turned out to be weird because he also suffered his first major injury: two lost teeth. But it had nothing to do with hockey. Torchy grabbed a couple of rookies, bought a water gun and some thick cream, loaded the gun and the rookies and took them all down to the Bare Bottom Bijou, where he emptied the joint by squirting cream over the necks of the entire front row at the precise moment of the first penetration. Unfortunately, three of the victims turned out to be football players from Houston, and failed to see the harmless fun in it.

Not that this incident fazed old Torch in the slightest. He talked the team dentist into recapping the two and putting the bill through as a blocked shot in practice, something that Torchy bender had never done in his life. But then, Torchy was trying a lot of new things.

“Face it,” he told me one night as we were screening some of his recently acquired hardcore for an upcoming bash. “We're just hanging on by the skin of our teeth now anyway.”

“What do you mean? They're talking like we're saviours, man.”

“We're fillers, son, and you better come to grips with it. I got maybe two, maybe three more years left in these legs. What have you got left in your fists?”

I was hurt, though I knew he was right.

“They didn't get me for that.”

“The fuck they didn't. I'll give you one more season beyond me, ‘cause you don't need the speed. But that's it.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe, and since I'm not here for a long time, I'm sure as shit going to be here for a good time.”

As it turned out he was going to be there for a time he couldn't possibly have imagined, good or bad or long. But for the time being, he was Torchy Bender in all his Californian glory, now so far away from Kirkland Lake that he could wear a T-shirt under a red shirt and by the weekend a dozen Hollywood hangers-on would be following suit.

Torchy and I were going to a team that had just come off the best season in its history, 105 points and a record of fourty-two wins, seventeen losses and twenty-one ties. At the start of the season the know-it-alls had predicted a first-place finish for the team and the Kings were supposed to be a Stanley Cup contender. Coach Pulford was called a genius. Rogatien Vachon was called the game's greatest goaltender. It was, however, nothing but a fluke.

Torchy and I tried, but we could not do everything. The only category the team improved in was they had less ties, nine compared to twenty-one, but unfortunately they also had far more losses, sixteen more, to be exact. Still, Torchy and I did improve the team for a stretch, and whereas the previous year the Kings had been beaten out in the preliminaries, this time we took them to the quarter finals. Torchy ended up with thirty-three goals and forty assists and I ended up with a new team record for penalties, 218 minutes.

Personally, it was not so bad, even if the team flopped. My coming to L.A. was considered a great success, precisely as intended. Dionne had more freedom to wheel; little Goring wasn't beat on; and much to Jack Kent Cooke's delight, the attendance didn't falter as badly as the team, a fact he attributed directly to my presence. No one blamed the losses on me.

But it was false and I knew it. From the day I arrived in Los Angeles I'd been obsessed with my rep, for the first time seeing directly through my own eyes rather than examining myself through my image. I was like the water spiders on Black Donald Lake. Ig and I used to find the spiders by first scanning the lake bottom for their shadows, the shadows being considerably larger than the spiders themselves. That's the way Batterinski was. Players knew me by something larger than I was myself, and that was the rep. My stats formed the shadow, and the shadow alone spooked them. But they were not seeing me as I truly was. Not at all.

But I am not stupid. Nor was Vincent Wheeler, my New York agent since the first call to pros. The Flyers had dumped me on the last leg of my contract and L.A. would have to renegotiate, so I couldn't have changed teams at a better time. Nor could I dare change the rep, since that was why they were buying.

Wheeler flew out and began his pitch to management. The Kings were interested in three years, offering a contract that would pay $100,000 the first year, $150,000 the next and $175,000 the third. I was all for jumping at it, having never made more than $70,000 in a year in my life, but Wheeler was convinced they'd go for five years and even more cash. Why? I don't know. We both knew in five years I'd be in the minors, if anywhere. But he convinced me to let him try, anyway.

For three days they met at the Forum, and when Wheeler finally came out to the house it was to tell me they'd struck a compromise.

“Four years, if you collect your bonuses, $700,000.”

I knew better than to ask what the bonuses were. “Sounds good,” I said.

“Good! You've struck gold, man!”Vincent shouted. He was already turning California: burnt like a rash, polo shirt, open, enough neck metal to put him in traction, mirror shades. Every time I looked at him I saw myself. But he was my agent, I suppose that was proper.

“I'm telling you this is a super deal, Felix.”

“Yah, well, thanks.”

Vincent smiled, seeming to pull harder on the left side to show off the gold cap on the eye tooth. “Not me, you did it.”

“You negotiated.”

“You were my trump card.”

I was bored already. But Vincent showed no signs of leaving. Torchy had gone up to San Francisco and didn't plan on returning until just before camp, so Vincent suggested he might take over Torchy's room for a couple of days and soak up the sunshine.

“You won't like it,” I warned.

“Me? Fuck, man, I feel more ‘me' out here than I do in New York.”

“I mean the bedroom.”

“Torchy's? Gwan with you.”

“Go look for yourself.”

Torchy's bedroom had an expensive pewter handle on the door rather than the customary knob, and he immediately replaced it with his own version of a “knob,” a twenty-one-inch black monster made of plastic flesh gel and advertised in the back of
Cheri
magazine as the “mule.”He pulled it over the pewter handle and adjusted the setting so the only way the door could be opened was if the plastic penis was moved to the erect position.