You Let Some Girl Beat You? (21 page)

“Those who dance are considered insane by those who do not hear the music.”
~ George Carlin

On November 1
^st
, 1986, Judge John Flynn presided over another wedding ceremony in which more than half the guests were Meyers, this time at the Club at Morningside in Rancho Mirage. Never before had so many Bloody Mary's been served before noon. Everyone was on vacation in a place where wildflowers bloomed in autumn and the only high-rises for miles had palm fronds shooting out the tops.

I wore a cream-colored lace, knee-length dress with short puffy sleeves that covered my shoulders and a garland made of pink carnations and baby's breath in my hair. Don wore an off-white sports jacket and a tie which was perfectly appropriate, since this wasn't a big church wedding, though I know that's certainly what my mom would have preferred. But Don would have had to fill out a three-hundred-page annulment document in order for the two of us to be married in the Church, and that sure wasn't going to happen.

The Club at Morningside on that sunny November day was as beautiful as any bride could hope for. Its huge windows looked out past a sea of perfectly manicured fairways, which framed the mountains off in the distance. We'd been living there in the home we bought on the 8
^th
fairway behind a lake. Donnie knew the country club owner, Don Johnson, and the golf pro, Vern Fraser, so it just felt right.

Donnie's best man was his good friend, Gene Mauch, one of baseball's greatest managers. I chose my oldest sister, Patty, to be my maid of honor. It was a tough choice because I was so close to all of my sisters and I had many good friends. But Patty was my oldest sister, and I hoped everyone would understand.

We'd set the date for November because it was after the baseball season, and Donnie was still broadcasting the White Sox games out of Chicago. It didn't give us a lot of time, but luckily everything had come together quickly and easily. Many of Donnie's good friends were there, like Chuck Connors, Sparky Anderson and his wife, Carol, and Gene Autry and his wife, Jackie, who owned a home in the desert. Don's daughter, Kelly, parents Scotty and Verna, and sister Nancy and her husband and family were also there, making it the perfect opportunity for our two families to become better acquainted.

I knew the guests would be expecting my dad to walk me down the aisle, but my relationship with him had always been complicated. I didn't want Mom to be any less involved in my wedding, so I asked them both to walk me down the aisle. They hadn't seen each other since Kelly's death.

There had been plenty of Meyers events since then, of course, but none with as much laughter. Everyone danced while the drinks flowed. At one point, after Bob Uecker gave his toast, Donnie and I were dancing when Ueckie came up and tapped on Donnie's shoulder. Thinking that Ueckie wanted to dance with me, I turned toward him, but he grabbed Donnie's hand instead and the two of them waltzed around the room, a couple of clowns grinning from ear to ear while everybody howled. It was like the Bob Hope/ Bing Crosby
Road To…
films, with me as Dorothy Lamour.

It was impossible for anyone to spend much time around these two and not find their belly sore from laughing so hard. And it was good to see Mom smile. That night, there was every bit as much laughter as there had been that first night when we all had dinner together in the Bahamas, but this time instead of stewing about how I'd done in the
Superstars
, I was laughing, too.

After the reception Ueckie and his wife, Judy, got in their car and followed Donnie and me to Dominic's, a great old restaurant about two miles from The Club where we'd planned to have dinner. On the way, Don drove through a yellow light and Ueckie followed behind just as the light turned red. One of Rancho Mirage's finest stopped Ueckie, who explained that he was in Don Drysdale's wedding party.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Well, my best friend just got married. I hope so.”

“If I let you go, do you promise not to have another drink while you're in there?”

“I promise.”

“You better not, because I'm going to follow you, and when you come out, I'll be at your car, waiting.”

Of course Ueckie proceeded to have a couple of drinks during dinner, and when we finished he and his wife headed out to their car, and sure enough, there was the officer, waiting.

“After you, my dear,” Ueckie told Judy, opening the driver's side door so that she could slide in behind the wheel and drive them home. There was nothing the officer could do but smile. Ueckie and Donnie had that effect on people.

They had first met when they were in their twenties down in Vero Beach, Uecker at his first spring training with the Braves, and Donnie playing for the Dodgers. Donnie gave everybody a nickname and soon ‘Ueckie' stuck. Ueckie liked to tell about the first time Donnie threw a pitch to him and it went over his head. “I had no idea what a bad pitcher he was.” Of course, Ueckie realized soon enough that Donnie had done it as a joke. They loved to tease each other whenever they could, but never on the field. “He'd bean his own mom if she swung at one of his good pitches,” Ueckie always said. “You never messed with Don when he was pitching.”

When the two slap–happy friends weren't behaving like Bing and Bob, they were acting like Felix and Oscar. I don't know that I'd call him fastidious, but Donnie was certainly proud of our home in Rancho Mirage, which looked out beyond the lake onto the pass where the San Jacinto and San Gorgonio mountains converged. I'd watched him oversee the building of several homes, and he was particular about what he chose and how the place looked. Our desert home was beautiful, and Donnie wanted to keep it that way. Especially when Ueckie came to visit.

Donnie would make drinks, put them down on coasters, and during the course of conversation, Ueckie would casually pick up his drink, take a sip, then purposely set it down on the glass table, right next to the coaster. Donnie would grab a towel, wipe up the ring, then place the drink back on the coaster, from which Ueckie would move it again. Then Ueckie would get up, walk around, touch a window or move a trinket or a piece of furniture, knowing that Donnie would be right behind him, straightening up, oblivious to the fact that Ueckie was doing it all intentionally.

Donnie had worked hard to get where he was. He'd been a smart investor who'd owned restaurants in Hawaii and properties in California. But his divorce had been costly. When he asked me to sign a pre-nup, I had absolutely no problem doing it. I wasn't marrying him for his money. I knew I could take care of myself. I didn't need a man to provide for me. I needed him only to love me and to laugh with me. And, occasionally, to compete with me.

Donnie and I loved to compete at golf. And there was no such thing as a friendly game. As much as I loved playing golf with Donnie, I still played pick-up basketball and tennis.

We weren't married for long when I became pregnant with our first child, but I continued to compete and broadcast. There wasn't a lot of free time, but when we found it, we played golf—and my swing never felt better. I had to slow down and go around my tummy. When I was pregnant, I ate well and took good care of myself, especially when I was on the road broadcasting. But I knew that exercise was good for me and the baby, so I ran and played basketball, working clinics here and there. I also knew that when the big day arrived, I wanted Donnie to be in the delivery room with me, so I asked him a few months into my pregnancy how he felt about that.

“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 51
^st
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.