You Let Some Girl Beat You? Read online

  “I’ve watched colts and puppies being born. I’m good, thanks.” Donnie had been on the road with the Dodgers when his daughter was born, but it wouldn’t have mattered since hospitals didn’t allow fathers in the delivery room in those days, something he was probably grateful for. Now things had changed so much and at age fifty, Donnie was becoming a father all over again, so I put out the offer to be involved in the birth of this child. But he made it sound like he’d just as soon pace a spot in the waiting room carpet.

  Several months later, while we were in Chicago staying at the Lake Point Towers Downtown, which is where we stayed when Donnie was working for the White Sox, I was a week past due. Mom and Patty had flown into Chicago a few days earlier expecting the baby to have already been born. It was a sweltering July 22, but the three of us spent that whole day walking up and down Lakeshore Drive, hoping to get the baby moving. Late that night I went into labor.

  The next morning was Don’s birthday, the same day our son was born, weighing 7.5 lbs. As it turned out, the man who’d seen enough animals born for a lifetime couldn’t keep himself away. We both watched in awe as this small being emerged, barely enough hair on his scalp for us to be able to tell that he was blonde.

  “Mr. Drysdale, would you like to do the honors?” The doctor handed Donnie an instrument to cut the umbilical cord. We were so excited to have a healthy child. We had talked about names, and Donnie had been very definite that if we had a boy, he didn’t want to name him Don, Jr. Don had friends he’d played ball with who had named their sons ‘Juniors,’ and it had put a lot of pressure on those kids. But, amazingly, our son had come into the world on Don’s 51st birthday, and we decided that if the good Lord had arranged that kind of a gift, then how could we name him anything else? Donald Scott Drysdale, Junior was typed onto the birth certificate, but from day one I called him D.J.

  The year D.J. was born was Donnie’s sixth and last year broadcasting the White Sox games. White Sox owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn had become dear friends, as had so many other people we met in Chicago. But now it was time to move on. Longtime announcer Jerry Dogget was retiring and Dodger’s owner Peter O’Malley had asked Donnie to come back and join the organization in the booth with Ross Porter and Vin Scully. It was a dream job for Donnie to work side by side with the same man who had announced his shut-out games so many years ago. It brought his career full circle.

  We looked for a place to rent in the La Canada/Pasadena area so we could stay close to the stadium during baseball season. We found a beautiful place fifteen minutes from the ballpark and, unlike our desert home, it wasn’t wall to wall mirrors—a great touch if you’re trying to bring nature’s beauty indoors and make a place look bigger, not so nice if you’ve just given birth and everywhere you look there’s a reminder that all the baby weight didn’t magically disappear just because the baby was born.

  As an athlete, I wondered how long it would take me to get my body get back into shape. The well-toned machine I’d spent my entire life tuning and tweaking so it could run faster and jump higher had served a miraculous function. All of the awards, trophies, and firsts I’d racked up to that point paled in comparison to this achievement. But looking in the mirror now, I saw that, like anything worthwhile, it came at a cost. I assessed the damage and calculated the number of crunches, lunges, and pull-ups it would take to put things back in order.

  DJ’s birth was natural, so I was able to start exercising pretty soon, and because I continued to work out during my pregnancy, I snapped back to my original size easily. I was back on the courts and the courses inside of a month. Donnie and I also spent a lot of time in the pool teaching D.J. to swim, using the Esther Williams video Swim Baby Swim. Between the summers in Pasadena when Donnie was working broadcasting for the Dodgers, and the off-season months in the desert, it seemed like we were always near a pool. At seven months, D.J. could hold his breath under water and swim.

  When we were back in Rancho Mirage, Donnie had a baby seat built into our golf-cart so we could take DJ out on the links with us. Wilson Golf gave DJ a little 5 Iron, and when he was old enough to walk, I would take him out onto the driving range where he would hit balls. Meanwhile, my golf lessons continued with Verne Fraser at the Morningside Club. Donnie and I would go out and play a round, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with friends who would come out to the desert to visit.

  Donnie had many friends from his playing days who still liked to come by and spend time with him, and they were all great. But I have to say I was fascinated the first time Sandy Koufax came to visit. I’d read and heard so many things, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Drysdale and Koufax were names that had been long linked together by writers who were looking for a good story. If there wasn’t a good story, they made stuff up. Why let reality get in the way when you can fabricate conflict between the two superstar ballplayers. The only truth was that Don and Sandy had always been great friends.

  Watching them share stories and laugh about the old days was fun for me, and I could tell it was a tonic for both of them. As different as they may have been—Donnie, the right-handed blonde from California and Sandy, the Brooklyn-born, Southpaw—they made each other better as players back then, and they made each other smile now. Most people didn’t realize that Sandy was also a great basketball player and played both baseball and basketball at the University of Cincinnati. It gave the two of us something to talk about.

  And I’d just received some exciting news to share in that department. I’d been named the first Bruin women’s student-athlete to be inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame. It was 1988. By the year’s end, I received more good news. I’d become pregnant with our second child.

  On August 23, 1989, I was visiting Don’s daughter, Kelly, in Manhattan Beach while Don was out of town working for the Dodgers in Montreal. I started having what felt like contractions. The baby still wasn’t due for a couple of weeks though, so I called Mom. “I think I’m having contractions but they don’t feel the same as they did when I had D.J.”

  “It’s probably a false alarm, probably just Braxton Hicks contractions.” Mom had been pregnant enough times to know everything there was to know about being pregnant.

  “Well, I think I’m going to head back home just the same. You don’t mind do you?” D.J. and I had spent the previous night at Kelly’s, and I was planning to head out to La Habra to see my mom.

  Instead, I returned to our home in Pasadena since I didn’t feel well. I had our nanny, Valerie, a sweet Irish girl from a family of nine, watch D.J. while I went upstairs to lie down. That’s when my water broke. I felt down between my legs and there was something there that didn’t feel like the other pregnancy. I called Kelly and asked her to call her dad, then I drove to the hospital. I don’t know how I made it there, but I slammed on the brakes, grabbed myself with both hands, and ran in. They put me in a room and tried to contact my doctor’s partner. My obstetrician was on vacation…naturally.

  “Somebody better get in here,” I shouted loud enough to wake the dead. While I’d been lying in the room, I’d felt a foot pop out, and now I was really scared. The nurse stuck her head in and, within a fraction of a second, her expression changed from annoyance to panic. Then the other foot popped out. Meanwhile Don had caught the first plane to L.A. Kelly, who was staying in touch with the hospital, convinced the airline to relay updates from her to her dad via the pilot.

  When the doctor arrived, he performed an emergency episiotomy. I nearly jumped off the table, but there was no time for drugs to deaden the pain. The baby was coming fast and the cord was wrapped around its neck. I was alone and incredibly scared, but I had no idea the baby’s supply of oxygen might be compromised. I prayed our baby would be okay. Like a bolt of lightning, I suddenly realized that a hair’s breadth lay between giving life and losing it.

  With a worried look that I’ll never forget, the doctor instructed the nurse to push down on my stomach while I bore down with all my might at the sam
e time. It was touch and go for a while, but thank God the little guy who’d been in such a hurry to get here had lungs strong enough to let us know everything was fine. It was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. Kelly got a message through to the pilot that a healthy baby boy had been born, weighing 6.5 lbs, with all ten fingers and ten toes intact. Apparently the whole plane cheered.

  When the nurse handed me my son, I was more relieved than anything else, relieved and grateful. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I held my beautiful little bundle. He was perfect. I wanted to name him John after John Wooden, John Havlicek, and John Wayne, but Donnie didn’t want two boys named Don and John because the names rhymed, and he thought that would sound silly. A friend of his, Darren Johnson, had recently passed away after battling cancer. We both loved the name. It was a Gaelic word that meant both “great and strong.” Thus Darren John Drysdale was christened.

  I had been playing basketball into my seventh month in the John Wooden Adult Camp while I’d been pregnant with Darren, just as I’d stayed active throughout my first pregnancy, but Darren never did turn. My doctor would put me on my side and try to maneuver the baby’s head down. He suggested I spend the remaining months of my pregnancy being less active, but I didn’t like anyone telling me I couldn’t play basketball. I would swear Papa had been talking to my doctor because he’d say, “Annie, what are you doing out here?” when I was about to take a charge. My mentality was that the baby was well-protected inside of a miraculous creation capable of making life and baskets all at once.

  The first several days after Darren’s birth were difficult. Because he was jaundiced, he had to stay in the hospital an extra day. It was so hard to be away from my newborn that night. When he did come home, we needed to keep him under a special light to remove the extra bilirubin. The nurse would stop by and draw blood to check his levels. Here he was only a few days old and bleeding from all these needle pricks. That didn’t sit well with Don.

  Added to that, was a strange sensation that crept in from out of nowhere, until it filled the house like a plague. Don and my family couldn’t understand my teeter-tottering emotions, and I couldn’t explain them any better. One minute I was crying, the next laughing. Apparently God’s miraculous creation had some post-partum kinks that no one had warned me about. Thank God for Valerie. She helped me so DJ wouldn’t feel like he was being replaced. The two boys were only twenty-four months apart. At night I could bond with Darren and the daytime was dedicated to giving DJ the attention he needed. Somewhere in between I tried to rest.

  Eventually the fog that enveloped me, and the surplus of iron that was making Darren’s skin look so olive, dissipated. It had been a very difficult patch for a while, but we all got through it.

  Don was a wonderful father. He was known throughout the world of sports as a man’s man, and yet he knew how to change a diaper. As the boys got older, he would take Darren in the pool and teach him to swim, just as he had with D.J. He’d also take the boys out in the backyard to play catch and learn to hit a ball. Don was also such a fundamentally good person. He helped friends out when they were struggling financially, yet he never let anyone know about it. It was the same when he would quietly send money to charities. He was very much like his friend Frank Sinatra in that way.

  And Don was a team player. Donnie was broadcasting the game with Vin Scully when Orel Hershiser was in the midst of pitching for the record, eventually breaking Don’s 58 2/3 scoreless innings streak by one. I asked Donnie how he felt about the possibility of having his record broken. He would explain how he had been encouraging Orel after the games. Whenever Orel expressed misgivings to Don about the position he was in, Don would guide him, offering advice on how to shut-out the batters. “You can strike this guy out with a fast ball on the inside corner if you let him think you’re throwing a slider.” In Donnie’s mind, records were meant to be broken, so long as it was a fellow Dodger. Lesser men would have clung to the past, but not Don. He was good at moving on.

  Even with the children, we both stayed busy traveling and broadcasting, but we worked during different seasons so there was always one of us home with the kids. When we were apart we would talk to each other six to eight times a day, just to hear each other’s voices. Every phone conversation ended with, “I love you.” If it was at night we’d add, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite, and if they do, get your shoe, and smack them with your crackers and stew.” When we were together again, it always felt like we were on our honeymoon. Everything was perfect, and it only seemed to get better.

  On February 3, 1990, in Pauley Pavilion, Denise Curry, Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and I watched as our jerseys were the first in the school’s history to be retired. My family was there along with our coaches, Billie Moore and John Wooden, Donnie, and our two boys. My jersey, #15, had been framed and was now being handed to me as a photographer from Sports Illustrated clicked away. The picture to appear in the magazine featured Kareem, Bill Walton, and me on either side of Papa. The two players dwarfed the aging coach, whose shoulders were beginning to stoop a little. To us, however, he remained every bit the giant he’d been in college. But he would always be larger than life in spite of his enormous humility and increasing frailties.

  It was such a special day for so many reasons. As a Meyers, we’ve all supported one another during occasions like these, but now I had my husband and my two sons with me, and it was the first time Don had ever been inside Pauley Pavilion. Growing up in Van Nuys and playing baseball with the Dodgers, he hadn’t had many opportunities to catch a UCLA basketball game during Coach Wooden’s championship winning era. Now he was here for me.

  I felt proud and blessed.

  19

  That Four Letter Word I Hated More Than Any Other: Loss

  “I am but waiting for you, for an interval. Somewhere. Very near. Just around the corner.”

  ~ Henry Scott Holland

  That summer after broadcasting the ’90 Goodwill Games, I returned to discover I was pregnant. I was just as excited about this pregnancy as I had been with the boys, but Donnie and I decided to keep it quiet during the first trimester, which wouldn’t be too hard because I never started showing until after then anyway.

  Don’s parents adored D.J. and Darren, but Scotty and Verna had questioned their son’s decision to have more children. “Aren’t you a little old to be having babies?”

  Don’s demanding schedule broadcasting and traveling with the Dodgers concerned them, and they wanted to make sure he considered the toll of having more children, and whether he’d have the necessary time to devote to his children.

  At about eleven weeks into the pregnancy, we were at our place in Pasadena when something felt off. Luckily, I was already scheduled to see the doctor. He turned on the ultrasound machine and together we watched the monitor transform sound waves into what looked like a Rorschach test. Every time he moved the gadget around my bulging tummy a new design appeared, but unlike the other two pregnancies, each picture was stagnant. I realized I’d put off going to the doctor’s office longer than I probably should have, but having had two healthy babies, I knew the drill. In fact I considered myself almost a pro by that point. After all, my mom had had eleven babies and all were born healthy.

  “Well Mrs. Drysdale, I have some good news and some bad news,” the doctor said. “The good news is you have twins. The bad news is you’ve lost them. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve lost them?” I repeated, unable to process what I’d heard, wanting proof that this wasn’t some sort of weird dream. He was so casual. Maybe he was joking. This was the doctor who had delivered Darren, the hero who’d appeared at the zero hour to save the day. Wouldn’t he at least want to touch my hand, show some sign of sympathy? Wasn’t that part of the whole Hippocratic oath thing? Or maybe I was just too much in shock to recognize whatever bedside manner there was.

  “Stop by the counter before you leave and the nurse will schedule a D&C.”

  But how? Why? What happened? I
wanted to scream, but he was already gone. I put my clothes on, and then, half-dazed, asked if I could use the phone to call my husband. The line was busy. I tried his car phone, but it just rang. I called the house in Pasadena where Don was with my mom and the kids a few more times, but I still couldn’t get through.

  I propped-up my arms on the counter near the nurse’s station so that my legs wouldn’t give way beneath me. I was supposed to fly out to Carolina that evening to broadcast an NC State game for ESPN. What am I supposed to do? This feeling of helplessness was something I wasn’t accustomed to. I wasn’t like other girls when I was little. I hadn’t dreamt of growing up to marry a prince and having babies and, therefore, had never considered that something might go terribly wrong with that scenario.

  Even if I had, that dread of the worst happening would never occur to me because I’d long since trained myself not to give negative possibilities any room to grow. I’d always plucked them out before they could take root. But now the worst had happened. I found my keys and my bearings then made my way to the car and drove myself home, empty and alone, an internal kind of autopilot kicking in the whole way.

  “Annie, are you okay,” Mom had come out to spend time with the boys who were four and two, but she had no idea about this pregnancy.

  “Where’s Don?”

  I had to let him know what had happened before I could tell anyone else, even her. My mother had always been there for me through everything, she was my protector and my inspiration. I felt guilty about keeping such a huge secret. As much as I wanted to run crying to her now, explain everything and be comforted by her, I knew that I had to tell my husband first. Don was my emotional anchor. He would make everything okay. He was still strong enough to take a fastball to any part of his body and pretty much laugh it off. Donnie loved to laugh. I prayed his strength would make me strong. I opened the door to the office where he was talking on the phone. The moment he saw my face he knew something was wrong.