The last time I saw him he was lurching around the outfield at Wrigley Field, injuring himself as he stumbled after a fly ball to left. Dave Kingman mashed 48 King Kong-size homers for the Cubs in 1979, but it seemed he left town in shame. He was remembered less for his homers than for the dead rat he mailed to a reporter he didn’t like and that awful column he “wrote” for the Sun-Times.
Anyway, I was surprised to hear that Kingman had popped up in Florida, playing the game it had appeared he couldn’t wait to walk away from. The word was he was swinging his mammoth lumber for the West Palm Beach Tropics in the new Senior Professional Baseball Association.
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I had trouble imagining mean-faced Dave signing autographs for tots who didn’t even know his name, or giving his all for the older set in south Florida. I just had to get down there and see for myself. It turned out that Dave was indeed playing in this 35-and-older league, whose wry motto is: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” How could the mad masher be playing in this old-timers’ game that won’t end, this trial balloon for pro ball in the citrus state?
The Tropics are up 3-0 after one inning. My mind drifts from baseball. The sound of birds chirping overwhelms the silence made by the 1,233 sleepy fans gathered at the West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium. Little monkeys romp in a tall tree over the right-field wall.
He glares at me and delivers a rebuff: “Don’t talk to me now. We got a ball game going on.”
In the bottom of the eighth Kingman gets his last at-bat against a fatherly looking reliever named Tom Moore. He throws a slow curve to Kingman, who connects with the thick part of the bat. The ball towers out toward center field. The man who hit 442 major-league homers puts his head down and steps into his home-run trot.
I decline, intent on continuing my interrogation. So Dave, do you have anything to say to the media or the fans back in Chicago?
