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Chapter One

The light seems to come from everywhere. All of the trees, buildings, and cars seem as if they are lit from within. They rheostat down when the fog rolls in, and somewhere out there is the ocean, at any hour of the day, its breeze being flavored by one of the fireplaces in the hotel rooms of The Lodge at Pebble Beach. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have smelled Pebble.

    There's no sound at this time of the morning, though there used to be before we went spikeless—another thing the peace movement wrought. I make out the rental car trunk through the haze. Now it's got a couple golf bags in it, and towels, umbrellas, and a few extra weather and fashion choices for the day ahead. Today's palette is central coast chameleon, nothing that would flush the fauna from the flora. Save the fine vines for later in the week, when they can serve to distract the gallery from my golf game.

    At every intersection, every fork in the road, every parking lot, or every illegal-turn possibility stands a volunteer traffic marshal. And today, which way you wish to turn makes no difference. The marshals are calm. They haven't been drenched ... yet. They meet your wave with a fearless smile. You can only tell them in the rearview mirror, "By the end of this week, you'll have lived through the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

    I am a contestant in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. It says so on the side of my car. And for one week, I'm on the Princess Cruise of amateur golf, playing the greatest stand of courses in pro golfdom in front of gallerieslarger than those at the Little League World Series at Williamsport, having more fun than I will have for the rest of the year. And it's only the first week in February.

    That's the tough part. I live in the East, where February's golf also qualifies as curling. My challenge every year is to show up with my "K" game and triumph over a large field of the latest-technology, previously indicted, warm-climate sandbaggers.

    And Monday at Pebble is the first day of the rest of your life, especially for someone who plays for keeps. This year would begin like the others. I knew I'd be playing in the Monterey Boys and Girls Club tourney at Monterey Peninsula Country Club. It's about the kids, of course, don't get me wrong, but it's also about getting the kinks out of the "K" game.

    The AT&T used to be called the Crosby Clambake when Bing was in charge, but now that everything is sponsored by one corporation or another, it's called the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. The free stuff you get when you register to play (phone calls and decanters) almost makes you forget that it's somewhat of a misnomer. Even though the final round is always played at Pebble Beach Golf Links, you have to shoot your way through the Poppy Hills Golf Course and Spyglass Hill Golf Course—as well as one early round at Pebble's links—before the promised land of a Sunday round for all of the marbles. Poppy and Spyglass are no day at the beach, and MPCC is the perfect tune-up round to get used to the ricochets of the woodland inland of Poppy and Spyglass, as well as the winds off the surf at Pebble. You have both kinds of holes going for you at MPCC. Which is nice.

    On the way to MPCC, the 17-Mile Drive was transplendent. The sun was shining. The wind was thin. If the weather holds out—and it might—this could just be the year. Long ago, the roads between the golf courses were hewn by the railroad builders or the forty-niners, or the telegraph pole families (including women and children), or somebody. At night, they have the same charm as those kindly German forests in the Grimm brothers' stories, the tale which ends with a little boy being eaten by a wolf. And with only the occasional wolf beheading by a friendly woodchopper, and the tyke freed from lupine digestion. Now, you see, you got me thinking about those forests, and those trees. And those Grimm brothers. What must the parents have been like? I must make sure to be out of the trees by nightfall. Those trees line the courses, too. Especially Spyglass and Poppy Hills. But we'll get to that.

    Aw, why be a tease? Let's talk about trees. Here's a tight shot. Trees tight right, and a gentle tug to the left are more trees. A little too far away is a narrow green that slopes away, guarded by traps on both sides and back. What's wrong with this picture?

    1. It's not Position A (golfer talk for the middle of the fairway); or,

    2. I've used the word "trap" instead of "bunker."

    Answer to come. Back to the business at hand.

    One of the MPCC members, Bob Huntley, invited me to take part in this event a few years ago, and it has become my Monday. We play with Bill Brandt, a guy who makes this event go. There's no gallery, so Bill provides one: his daughter-in-law Susan, his grandson Steve, and his wife Patsy, whose job is to keep Bill in line. She quit her other job fifty years ago.

    In Quick Change I played a clown who robbed a bank. That year Bill showed up and played in a full clown mask while doing lines from the movie. It's one thing to arrive at the tee in a mask. We've all done it. But to make the commitment to play the round masked; that's giving to the team. I remember my clown partner setting up, peering at the pin, and skittering a four-wood to the right. He looks at his divot and then mutters from beneath the mask, "That wasn't my best." A pastoral Pagliacci. Bill lost three pounds that round, and I kept the mask to use when venturing out of The Lodge. More important, when Bill heard about this book, he offered free use of a photograph of his dog, Cinderella. It was a gesture I'll never forget.

    This is nice time, playing golf with a family of men and women who are comfortable in their own shoes, and with their game. I envy the nineteenth hole postscript: I've shot my age. So much so that I intend to live to a hundred and eight.

    MPCC has exceptional success with this tournament for the Boys and Girls Club of Monterey. Success, my definition—a full turnout of pros and amateurs, a competitive field of evenly matched foursomes, good food and drink afterward, and last, an awards program that is short and fun, one that people stick around for. Michael Chapman achieved liftoff when he was MPCC's head pro. The good name, charitable foundation, and considerable height of Davis Love Davis Love Davis Love put it into orbit. And members and the boosters have taken it from there. The fortuitous alignment of a PGA Tour event with a delicious golf course that foretells the terrain, feel, and challenges of the week to come at the AT&T tournament helps, too. There are charity events every week on the PGA Tour, but there aren't many like this one. Some are "celebrity" without celebrities, some are self-promotions by local shakers and movers, and some are forced-march autograph shows. Charity? Well, charity begins at home, but it never hurts to be too careful. Or so I once thought.

    A BS detector is important in this age of telemarketing. But you can be wrong. I said you, not me, but in fact my favorite stories aren't about myself but on myself. It's a true pleasure to have your preconceptions about a person proven wrong. A pie in the face with no downside. Usually, we react to the seeing of our failures and weaknesses with more failure and weakness—shame, anger, self-justification, or self-pity. But when I'm wrong about someone and find out, it tickles me.

    One day the phone rang, and a blustery fast-talking voice left rubber on my ear.

    "Hi, this is Sterling Ball, out in California. Hope I'm not bothering you. I got your home number from your brother Ed. He said I should quit bothering him and bother you directly. You see, I'm putting together a golf tournament, and I could use a few celebrities. I figure if I can get you, it will make it easier to bag some more of you people."

    (Uh-huh. Well, any friend of Ed's has got to be double-checked. My big brother is too tender, too delicate to be a good judge of character.)

    "You're a friend of Ed's? Where do you know him from?"

    "I'm not sure. I think it was playing golf. That's where I got the idea to ask you. To play. We got Eddie Van Halen to be our host."

    (Okay ... friend of Ed's, celebrity bagger, music-industry connections ... that's three strikes with the bat on the shoulder.)

    "What charity will benefit?"

    "My own charity. The Casey Lee Ball Foundation. There's nothing set up yet, but any profit we make will go toward helping kids with kidney problems."

    (This guy has got 'em. "My own charity!" Casey Lee Ball is an aunt who lives in a state without extradition. I bet Michigan or someplace.)

    "Good. So the kids will get the profits, if there are any. Do you have any hopes of a profit?"

    "Yeah, if I can keep the costs down. I don't belong to a golf club, so I had to rent a course, and they want a cash deposit ..."

    (Deep breath, very deep breath; don't ever let them hear you exhale.)

    "... so I laid out the twenty-five grand to cover it."

    (I exhale low and slow, but somehow it catches in my throat!)

    "But you've got people to feed, don't you? So ..."

    (He's heard me! Busted! By an amateur, a cold caller! But I had to find out this guy's angle. Naked now, I brace my back against the doorjamb.)

    "So a friend of mine said he'd help me with the food. Oysters, crab legs, sushi. I put down some of my own money for prizes. I figure we can make some money selling tee sponsorships. Instead of a cardboard sign, I'll put the sponsor's name or company on a guitar neck that they can keep.

    "I called to buy some airline tickets, and the guy from American got interested and donated some tickets and upgrade coupons. We're also going to limit the number of foursomes, so it won't be a five-hour round of golf. Maybe keep it to eighteen foursomes."

    (It all sounds nice. Too nice. Seafood golf orgy nice.)

    "Doesn't seem like there'll be too much left for your charity," I said.

    "The goal is to raise eighty thousand dollars."

    "Which doesn't sound like much. Not too ambitious."

    "Just enough to cover the salary and cost to relocate a pediatric kidney specialist to the UCLA Medical Center. They could use one."

    "How do you know that?"

    "I got on the Internet trying to find one, and you'd think UCLA, the biggest, most prestigious hospital, with all its resources, would have one, but they don't; and they had no plans to get one, so I told them I'd get one. And so I've got a doctor willing to relocate. That way my son and I won't have to drive so damn much."

    (The phone became terribly heavy; the voice seemed to come from very far away now.)

    "When our son was diagnosed with kidney problems, we thought it was like any other illness—there's a medicine, there's a cure, someone somewhere knows all the answers, and Casey will be fine in a couple of weeks. That was just wishful thinking ..."

    (Casey. Casey Lee Ball. I wish I were anywhere else in the world right now ... Even Michigan.)

    "I guess this all became of so much interest to me when Casey needed a new kidney 'cause his weren't functioning well enough. I gave him one of mine. I wish I'd taken a little better care of it."

    (I suddenly saw myself: five inches high, both arms over my head ... holding a giant telephone. It was a long time before I could speak.)

    At the UCLA Medical Center today, you can meet the relocated doctor. You can also visit the Casey Lee Ball Laboratory. And if you're really lucky, once in a blue moon, you might meet Casey Lee Ball.

    I make it to MPCC just in time for tee off. The course is in as good a shape as I've seen it. Last year's El Niño beat up on these hallowed grounds, but word is that this year's winter has been pretty mild. It got up to the sixties today and even with a constant breeze on the back, the conditions were bearable. Word on the street is that rain is heading in for the weekend.

    I had a hard time off the tee today, wasn't quite puring the irons the way I like to, and the short game left me short. So, you may ask, what keeps a man going when the chips are down? It's a journey, you animal, not a destination. You just keep plugging.

    My father was a very difficult laugh. Adults found him very funny. But his children had a tough time cracking him up. One of my strongest childhood impressions is falling off of my chair at the dinner table while doing a Jimmy Cagney impression. I hit my head very hard on the metal foot of the table leg, and it hurt terribly. But when I saw my father laughing, I laughed while crying at the same time. I guess that was some kind of beginning.

    My father, Edward, had nine kids: Edward; one year later, Brian; two years later, Nancy; two years after that, Peggy; one year later, Billy; two years later, Laura; four years later, Andrew; two years later, John; four years later, Joel. In those gaps were three children lost in pregnancy, including a set of twins. Rest in peace, little Murrays.

    My mother, Lucille, bore the nine children, had those eleven pregnancies, and outlived my father by twenty-one years. Late in her life she told me that having babies into her middle age had kept her young.

    As a young man, I thought that my father had been responsible for any sense of humor that I inherited and that it passed through him from my grandfather, who owned a bow tie that lit up, which he used very tastefully.

    My siblings pointed out to me later, "You're just doing Mom."

    This was so shocking all I could think was ... "You mean my father was not my mother?"

    Unless their father was a drunk or a brute, boys often don't think to take after their mother. Until it's too late. Anyway, all of the kids ended up "doing Mom." There are four of us who've tried show business. Five, if you insist on counting my sister the nun, who does liturgical dance. To date, she's the only one insisting that she's in the business. I will include a liturgical dancer in show business the day that one of them gets an encore ... the day that I hear ...

    "More! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, more! We are not getting off of our knees until you come on back out of the sacristy and give us just one more!"

    The proof is, you could not be doing my Mom and be doing liturgical dance. It's one or the other.

    The moment of actual mother and child comic union came only after Brian and I had made it in show business to the tune of buying a new furnace for the house. This somehow made us legit—and then some. She clutched the entertainment industry to her success-breeding breast as time warped, and life now jumped off the pages of Photoplay magazine. She was an insider, a major Hollywood player, and an authority on all things entertainment. And like a player, very, very vulnerable.

    The show business windfall had made possible a summer lake cottage rental, just over the Wisconsin state line. I'd called her from New York.

    "Sounds nice. Oh, nuts, that's probably too far to drive."

    "What's too far to drive, Billy?"

    "Well, it's up above Rhinelander. It's a place called the Showboat. It's a bit of a hump, but it is an incredible show to see. An amazing show. I guess you would probably call it a variety show? And they're all people who live up there, and they do the show up in the north woods. It's the only place I've ever seen them. I mean, this a show you would never see in New York. Ever. You have to go there to see it."

    Well, Lucille bit like a spring muskie. I felt something on the line, and I thought it might be big. But it was a week before I reeled the whole story into the boat. Let me tell you about the show at the Showboat.

    A beautiful horseshoe-shaped room, windows framing a gorgeous lake. Photos of the great Milwaukee Braves. An offstage voice introduces our emcee, who turns out to be the offstage voice. He bounces on, almost into your lap. The tables are that close to the stage. Unlike most of the men in the north woods, he wears high zippered patent leather boots, a green lamé jump suit, and a blond wig.

    And we're off. He sings. He talks about how much he loves the fresh air up here, and about the Liberace memorial museum in his parents' home near Madison. Then ... he brings on the other acts.

    Joe and Rita Buck. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Joe and Rita Buck." Most of the audience orders another draft. They are out for a long evening of entertainment. Joe sits and plays electric accordion. Rita stands, with the string bass. When they do a very slow and dramatic "Scarlet Ribbons," you could hear a tray drop.

    Next there is a lady with a dog act, who cannot control the dogs—four of them. And you sit about six feet away from her as she struggles, using a stick and a whistle, to catch her dogs up to the recorded music.

    A grandfather and son come up and play spoons. A fanfare brings up a bartender showing off the catch of the day. The largest fish pulled out of the lake today. A girl dressed in a sari dances to "Song of India." She exits to scant applause, and you see how tough it is for a liturgical dancer to make it.

    Eventually, our emcee returns and thanks and pays tribute to an incredible man who had believed in him, shored him up against the monsters, taught him what love is. And given him someone to emulate. That man is here tonight, and would he stand, please?

    Reverend James Something-or-other looked like guys who've been shot by a sniper—he looked alive, but you knew he was dead. There wasn't a walleye in the place as he jerked to full height and melted back into his chair.

    No act could follow that, but the owner, Carl Marty, could. Checks were being settled as he took the stage with his Saint Bernard, Bernice. Carl may have been completely bombed, I couldn't say for sure. (I didn't know what "drunk" was until later on in life, the night my friend John Thompson made me his Tom Collins and we drove around Reno in a convertible VW bug.)

    Uncertain as I was, Carl Marty did speak at length while cigarette after cigarette ashed down his turtleneck. He told the stories of Bernice's bravery in rescuing injured woodland creatures—birds, squirrels, rabbits, deer, and chipmunk. At his feet, unmoving, lay Bernice, looking exhausted from her many sallies, or perhaps dead. Nonetheless, incapable of getting Carl off the stage. Finally, voices from the room began chiming in.

    "You got that right, Carl."

    "No, Carl, there aren't many animals unafraid of the badger."

    "God bless you, and may God bless Bernice."

    "There'll never be another like her."

    "Can we all go home now?"

    It was Laura who finally told me what happened. She was the only one Mom could get to go with her. They had driven like madmen to get there.

    "Billy said it was going to be a hump."

    I love this vision of those two little women barreling down roads simply called Highway X or Highway GG. When night falls, guided only by the aurora borealis, driving deeper and deeper into the woods like Ahmet Ertegun looking for Robert Johnson.

    They arrived just as it started. It took them about five minutes.

    "Billy, we had to drop our silverware on the floor so we could hide our heads underneath the table."

    "Oh, good, you found it. I wasn't sure you would."

    At legal speed, it was a long ride back to the lake cottage. Plenty of time to absorb the show. Reflect. Fathom the depth of family. And after, dispense a serving so that all may be satisfied.

    "How was the show?"

    "Was it good? Describe."

    "Astonishing. He didn't, it was ... he really didn't do it justice."

    "He didn't. We really wished you had come. We wanted to call, but there was a man who wouldn't get off the pay phone."

    "It was that good?"

    "And tomorrow night is their last show."

    "I would certainly want to go again."

    "Is it sold out?"

     No, as a matter of fact, it wouldn't be sold out. All of those who failed to make last night's show would be able to get seats close to the stage but not until after an incredible hump. Once again, at speeds over ninety miles an hour, to arrive just in time for a breathless offstage voice to introduce our breathless emcee.

    I'm not much of a practical joker. I'm afraid to be. Because although I can dish it out, I'm not sure I can take it. But it felt good to truly harpoon my mother. And she made me proud when she pulled the others under with her. There were more. And it was merrier. I had never seen her do that before, and it had to mean something. I think it meant now that I was finally an adult, she could finally act like a child.

(Continues...)