In the 1980s I was married with two young boys, working in a union job with fantastic benefits, a home-owner in a racially mixed community of mostly retired GIs. And in great physical health. Part of those benefits included fully paid, first rate medical insurance that ensured that when there was a crisis (a major one with my oldest son) there would be first rate care available at no cost. The American Dream? I was living it.
I played a lot of softball - several days a week up in the Trenton suburbs, a double-header league on Sundays. Winter one-pitch ball in the off-season. The double-header team was sponsored by a bar, with some additional money thrown in by my employer because it offered a league that could accommodate people on both first and second shift. Guys I worked with made up that team almost entirely.
One of those guys was Lester Powell, one of my closest friends at work. Lester lived in Southwest Philly and did what quite a few black men from Southwest Philly did in those days to secure a good job. He headed east across the river, passed Camden, and into the developing industrial parks around Cherry Hill. It was a long and grueling commute.
Very early in the softball season (it may have even been pre-season practice) Lester pulled me aside. “My team in Philly needs a stick (good hitter). Can you hit fast-pitch?”
Me: “I’ll give it a try.”
Lester: “I should let you know, you’ll probably be the only white guy in the league.”
In the league?
The Leroy Kelly League had two divisions – one in Southwest Philly and another in the even more hardscrabble North Philly. At first I thought it was an odd name for a softball league – Leroy Kelly had been an all-pro football player for the Cleveland Browns. What I learned was that Kelly had lettered in football, basketball, and baseball at Simon Gratz High School in inner city Philadelphia. Where success comes hard, you honor success. The first time I played a game at the Overbrook High field, my teammates noted, in no uncertain terms, that it was hallowed ground. “This is where Wilt Chamberlain first played basketball.” The Leroy Kelly Fast-pitch League was the most competitive of all the leagues I have ever played in.
Our team was named The Dirty Nine. It was a mixed metaphor. We had fine uniforms – “dressed to kill” - which also was a mixed metaphor in those parts of town. Pertaining to softball, there were 10 players in the field, as opposed to nine. We were sponsored by a bar on Market Street. Not the part of Market Street familiar to tourists - keep going west. Way west. Cross the Skuylkill River and keep on going. Turn south when you get to the 50s. Drive through the Osage neighborhood where the city dropped a bomb on MOVE headquarters, burning down an entire block of homes owned by working class black people. If you keep on going south to the Bartram Village Housing Project, you may see the field of our main rivals. If it’s still there. This was home turf for the Leroy Kelly Fast-pitch League, Southwest Division.
My teammates on the Dirty Nine were quick to accept me into the fold. The rest of the league – not so fast. It was a year of “What you doin’ here, white boy?” and wide strike zones. I learned to hit bad pitches and not to protest close plays. The Dirty Nine had my back. My biggest defender was Dennis McDuffy. But nobody ever called him Dennis. It was “Duffy” or “Duff.” Until the day the team captain, Buck, started calling him “Crime Dog” after a cartoon character with a similar name (McGruff).
Duffy was about 5 or 6 years older than me. I was 30 my first year in the league. 5 years older, at the competitive level we were playing, was considered retirement time. Duffy was a big man with failing knees. He was relegated to player/coach status. Translated that means designated hitter and backup catcher. But Duffy played a much bigger part on the team. He was the spiritual heart of the Dirty Nine. Pre-game rave-ups? It was Duffy leading the way. A couple guys on base? “Get us going, Crime Dog” were Buck’s orders. When I first joined the team it was, “Here we go! The wild, wild, west!” Somewhere along the line Duffy began clapping out a beat before announcing “What time is it? It’s Nine time.” And he kept at it with a whole list of raps ("Who are we?/The dirty nine/ Who we gonna rock?/other team's name/Let me hear you scream/What time is it/It's nine time) until the whole team was answering the question. Then everyone in our stands. This wasn’t “white boy ball” with a few wives and children in the stands. These were neighborhood events. The thunder of those chants was awesome!
Duffy was a native Philadelphian. He had a white collar job for the city of Philadelphia, but he lived across the river in Levittown, New Jersey, a community much like the one I lived in. He used public transportation to commute to and from his job. On game and practice days, I drove him home. Sometimes those stops included beer time and occasionally records. “Want to here the original Nine Time?” He handed me the cover for Africa Bambaataa’s “Beware (The Funk Is Everywhere)” while he placed the record on the turntable. “I know that song!” I said when I saw “Kick Out The Jams” listed. Always the gracious host, Duffy cued it up first. It was powerful. More powerful than the MC5 original? Flip a coin. And at the end it previewed “What Time is It?” Duffy flipped the album and played the full track. It was an epiphany. I soon had my own copy.
Three decades later, I show up for work, the third day back from a two-week vacation and three weeks away from retirement. The week started out fine, feeling better than I had in years. But by the 5am start of today’s shift, I told my working partner, Ray, “Jesus, my back and knee are acting up again.”
Around 8:30 I needed to switch lifts from my overhead picker to a small stand-up fork lift. We've been short on equipment since the company took on a huge new contract. The smaller lift was in use. When I asked the operator how long he would be, he answered, “Just a couple of minutes.” I set the platform of my overhead picker about a foot off the ground and sat down. It was then that my lead person drove by on his cart. “What are you doing, Bill?” “I’m resting for a couple minutes until Mike’s done with the stand-up.”
“We’ve got a lot of work and we can’t afford to have you sitting down. Tell Mike to use the (larger) gas lift.” This was the first time I had taken a “sit-down” in the ten years at the warehouse. The comment angered me at first. “If you’re dissatisfied with my work…” I was cut off in mid-sentence. “No that isn’t it at all. It just looks bad.” He went on his way and I proceeded to chase down Mike.
It’s been over three decades since Duffy first played that record for me - almost that long since I moved to the mid-west. Somewhere in all that time, a time of great adventure until I returned to manual labor 10 tears ago, I lost track of Duffy. I hate to admit it, but I haven’t even thought of him in years. After all, that was a different time, a different life.
By the time I got off my butt and on my lift, “What Time Is It?” was playing in my head non-stop. Both the song and Duffy’s chant. My brain could actually see Duffy leading the way to the next rally. I looked at the clock. What time is it? It’s Nine time. I walked to the manager’s office, gave him my employee card, and told him, “I can’t do this for three more weeks. I’d be cheating you, but more important, I’d be cheating myself.”
And then I went home and started writing about the place this album had in my development. It should have been at the top of my Facebook “10 albums in 10 days” list, but wasn’t. Shame on me. But it's never too late to start all over again.
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