A Legacy of Line Drives

By Tom Callahan

Inheriting the family business seems a wish more appropriate to builders and bankers than ballplayers and boxers. Yet Joe Frazier is a cornerman for son Marvis. Jack Nicklaus II contemplates having his own whirl at the golf tour. And Don Shula has just promoted his oldest boy David to assistant head coach of the Miami Dolphins. "It's a wonderful thing when a son follows you in your life's work," Shula says, a sentiment probably shared by Buffalo Quarterback and Congressman Jack Kemp. At Dartmouth, David Shula caught most of his passes from current Los Angeles Rams Quarterback Jeff Kemp, who could end up in politics.

Of the four top-seeded basketball teams in the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament, two feature direct descendants of Baltimore Bullets: Danny Manning of Kansas, Ed's son, and Duke's Danny Ferry, whose father Bob is the general manager of the Washington Bullets. "I really enjoy his accomplishments and understand his failures," says Ferry. "If he were a concert pianist, I'd still enjoy it. But I wouldn't understand it."

Hal McRae is not exactly a concert pianist, and Brian McRae is not exactly a major leaguer, but they come tolerably close. Last week, for the first time in the long memory of baseball, a father and son played together in a big-league game. The sport has had a rich run of sequels: Boones, Berras and Bells. But not even in a Grapefruit season had two generations ever come to the same stage at the same instant, until Brian singled and stole second in the first inning and Hal followed with a walk. Pausing only for the usual sidelong glance of teammates on base, they both went on to score in a 7-5 Kansas City Royals victory over Philadelphia.

A No. 1 draft choice ticketed this season for Class A ball, Brian, 18, manned second base, Hal's original position. Almost no one remembers McRae, 39, the definitive designated hitter, ever having any place in the field, although he was once a gloveman nimble enough to be nicknamed for his favorite brand: Wilson. Old Cincinnati Reds still call him that. Until splintering a leg in the '60s sliding into home, he was slated to be a primary cog in the Big Red Machine but ended up a legendary figure only among the other players.

He was known for the purest swing and the poorest luck in the National League. When the fifth game of the 1972 playoffs--the very pennant--came down to one pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning with two out and the winning run on third, McRae was at the plate poised to be the hero. But Pittsburgh's Bob Moose threw a wild pitch that utterly erased the figure in the batter's box from memory. With the bases loaded in the seventh game of the World Series, McRae managed only to tie the Oakland A's with a deep fly that missed being a home run by a distance too slight to become the measure of a 17-year career. But it has.

This was the luckiest break of his life. Had McRae hit a grand slam to win that World Series, he would likely be retired now, because he almost certainly would not have been traded the following season to Kansas City. "That's the start of the sequence," he figures, "of all the rare events that brought me to this rarest one." He had to be in the American League; there had to be a DH rule; and he probably had to be with Kansas City. "Then I had to have a son, and he had to have the talent, and the Royals had to draft him."

For a day or so at the start of this baseball spring, the McRaes gazed across the clubhouse at each other in paralyzed wonder. "Initially, you think how amazing, how exciting, how much fun it is," Hal says. "But then you have to get on with it. We had to get ready in our own ways for our own seasons, and in the batting cage after a while, I found myself almost forgetting who he was. I was dealing with a man and a ballplayer, not a boy and a son." Of course, "when anyone yelled, 'Mac,' " Brian says, "both of us turned around."

Brian's first gauzy images of his father, the hitter, are set oddly in Venezuela around the family's regular sojourns to winter ball. "We didn't play catch in the yard, the way fathers and sons do," he says. "And our talks were more about school and cars. Dad wouldn't even let me play Little League until the seventh grade, because he didn't want me to get burned out. Even at twelve and 13, I can remember running around in the stands and barely watching the games." His recollection is that he eventually taught himself to play by tossing a ball against a wall.

At that, Brian does recall hearing something around home about the virtues of switch hitting, but the young switch hitter has no memory of coercion. "He never gave me any advice I didn't ask for." And Hal, the righthand hitter, says, "I never quizzed him on the game or volunteered my stories. You can't impart all your knowledge, even to your son, because there's so much a person has to learn for himself. It's not important that Brian hit the way I do; in fact, he shouldn't. It's important for him to be Brian and me to be Hal." The father's only somber advice has been "Never get lost in the past, mine or yours. If you do, the future will make you sad."

The most famous father in sports, Hockey Methuselah Gordie Howe, skated seven professional seasons with sons Marty and Mark in the '70s. A third son, Murray, is less renowned. "He isn't as big as the rest of us, about 5 ft. 8 1/2 in.," Howe says. "I kept telling him, 'In my eyes, you're big enough.' But growing up, whenever he lost a game, you could almost hear him thinking, 'I can't lose. I'm Gordie Howe's son.' One day Murray sat down and analyzed his own talents. He took off for the University of Michigan to study pre-med--even went out for the hockey team. 'Don't take me for my name,' he told the coach," who took him at his word and cut him. He'll become a doctor this year.

"You know, the medical students play a bit of hockey, and Murray wrote me a while ago to say 'Dad, I love it. I'm a star here. I get goals and everything.' Damn, I'm proud of him." --By Tom Callahan