An Entertainer Offers Advice : Forrest Tucker Says Baseball Can’t Afford to Lose Sight of What It Is, What It Does for Fans

I am, by the messages my body sends me, an old man. The way I have abused my body, 66 comes out to about the age of Methuselah--roughly 969 years.

I am a baseball fan. My father was a baseball player for the Toronto Maple Leafs before World War I. Unfortunately, for him and for me, he suffered the effects of mustard gas in France while trying to make the world safe for democracy and was relocated to the bullpen when I was 4 years old.

Sunday, I watched Rod Carew get his 3,000th hit and Tom Seaver pitch his 300th win. I saw Pedro Guerrero try to bail out my beloved Dodgers with still another clutch homer--I mean it was a day to remember. This morning (Monday) I am faced with the possibility of a strike that will deny us the pleasure and excitement of America’s favorite pastime.

What prompts this piece is somehow tied up to hero worship. Those of my persuasion have their favorites--Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial.

Perhaps if my father had lived I would have been guided, coached and encouraged into the world of baseball. As things turned out, I was guided by my mother, a singer, and I became an entertainer. I am listed in the “Who’s Who in America” as an actor. I am not, in my mind, an actor. I am an entertainer. When you put down your money at the box office, I want you to leave happy.

If I have ever brought happiness or pleasure to you in the past 57 years of my slam-banging around the world, I would like to explain how it all started.

I was 14. Vaudeville was dead. We were in the middle of the Depression and at that time welfare, as we know it today, didn’t exist. Mother was having her problems and, as always, I took myself to Chicago--via freight train--and on Feb. 12, my birthday, I was shopping around on Randolph Street for a place to stay warm and dry.

The Oriental Theater had not yet given in to double features from Hollywood and still held a vaudeville show. I decided in panic, since it was about 10 below zero, to plunk my quarter down to see Conrad Nagel and an exotic looking blonde in a movie supposedly shot in Egypt--it looked warm . On the bill was a vaudeville show starring Phil Harris. I had never heard of him, but the price was right--and I was cold.

It was warm, Mr. Nagel was suave, and the blonde was blonde--and then came the magic moment when the great red velvet curtain with its gold fringe was lifted, and Phil Harris came out of the wings. It was snowing outside, and I was broke, but I never knew it. He turned a dispirited and desolate audience into a happy and hopeful congregation who felt, “Let’s give it one more try.”

From that day to this, I have tried to be an entertainer. Mr. Harris is my personal hero.

If the men on both sides don’t understand what hero worship is all about, and how it affects our lives, I feel deeply sorry for them.

FORREST TUCKER

North Hollywood