Bagels, bananas, and birdies

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“Tuesday with…”

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – Rudy Nadalet looks like an athlete. He walks like an athlete. He acts like an athlete. Each week, three times, a 60-minute gym workout. When it rains, he misses a round of golf, and since the desert has been sprinkled only eight times in the last 12 months, a leak in the skies makes front page newspaper copy.

Nadalet has that walk and leg spring of an athlete, and I surmise one probably should expect this from a jock, though he is in his 63rd year. He also has come to be an ardent fan of this fabled land called “the desert” – a spread in Cochella Valley that includes such golfing and tennis citadels as Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, Cathedral City, Palm Springs, and other communities 100 miles east of Los Angeles.

When Rudy Nadalet was at the age of innocence, 14, he confesses to have worked the patron turnstiles at Ebbets Field, the late shrine of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, on an older scoundrel’s work permit.

“The attendant at the gate in those days stepped on a foot-plunger when each ticket-holder got into the ballpark. This was how the Dodgers kept a check on the game attendance. If you had a pal, when no one was looking, all you had to do was pass him and leave your foot over the plunger. But after the second, third, or fourth inning, the cops would allow the kids in free to watch the ball game.

“As a kid, I remember going home nights and falling asleep dreaming about wearing for the first time a Brooklyn Dodger uniform.”

LIKE OTHERS, thousands his age, the war came along and he returned as a 20-year-old with a dream and a very good pitching arm. He could fire strikes, had a respectable curveball, control. Day after day, he haunted Ebbetts Field with a baseball glove stuck in his hip pocket.

He worked his way into the Dodger clubhouse, somehow, and one day got a chance to pitch batting practice.

“They let me throw to the scrubs. The bench-warmers. Leo Durocher was not about to allow some raw rookie plinking the likes of Carl Furillo, or Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, or the rest of those great players.”

One morning, Nadalet picked up the morning newspaper, the long-dead Brooklyn Eagle, and noted in the sports section that the Dodgers were going to hold tryouts the next morning at Ebbets Field.

“I was there before the gates were opened. I was throwing to another tryout kid on the sidelines, when I saw this man approaching and wearing a Dodger uniform. I knew who it was, but I was too scared to call him by name. He watched me throw two or three pitches, and quietly suggested I throw my fastball. He then made some suggestions with respect to my motion, my stride, and a few other little things. He asked about my leg conditions. Had I done any running. I had, I said. Then he quietly said, `Do a couple of laps around the field for me.’ I did and returned to where he had been watching. He said, `Son, I’m Clyde Sukeforth. I am going to recommend to our scouting staff that we send you to Vero Beach, Fla., where you will be assigned to a minor league team. Take this card and my notes to the front office. And good luck.”

NADALET’S boyhood dream and budding career abruptly got sidetracked a few months later during a warmup.

“I felt a a sharp twinge in my right shoulder. It never healed. After that one happening, I was never again able to throw a baseball with the old zest and fire.”

Nadalet had to make a sudden career change. He entered college and became an engineer. Five years ago, after more than 30 years with Lockheed, he retired, sold a large, sprawling home in Fullerton, Calif., and purchased a condominium on the 13th fairway at the Desert Princess Country Club.

He focuses on a daily 18 holes. The swing is smooth, and the Nadalet scorecard reflects his all-around ability on the links.

The one-time Lockheed engineer is the first golfer I’ve met who, while in competition, lunches on bagels, bananas, and birdies. The stylish-playing PGA senior, Al Geiberger, once credited a peanut butter sandwich as the ideal nourishment during a five-hour round.

Another peanut-butter man is Maine’s fisheries and wildlife boss, Bill Vail.

Vail has saved considerable pocket money by offering his luncheon guests a handy, ready-made peanut butter sandwich.

But bananas and bagels?

“I don’t remember where,” laughs Nadalet, “but I recently read where some golfer consumes a banana and two bagels during an 18-hole round. He said the nourishment improved his game.”

On the next hole, a par-3, 160-yarder with a green surrounded by the liquid alligators love to wallow around in, Nadalet proceeded to neatly spank a crisply struck 5-iron to within 24 inches of the cup. An easy birdie 2.

“Here, have a bagel. No? How ’bout a banana?”

I answered that I wasn’t yet that desperate and shamefully took my double-bogey 5 to the next tee.

THE NADALETS, Rudy and his wife, Jeanne, have found the good life in the desert country. He says summer is fun so long as one learns not to blister a hand by grabbing the automobile’s door handle.

With triple-digit heat, the afternoons in the summertime are close to a total loss. Once it cools around 6 in the evening, the Nadalets get their shopping done or share an evening with friends.

“I rise early and play some golf. Then, three times each week, I go to our health club and a 60-minute workout. I nap in the afternoon.”

In February, the natives assert, it’s cool and a 70-degree day is called “winter.” I avoid giving free lectures on what a real winter is like in the State o’ Maine, or reporting that the sink pipes chilled a few nights ago at our oldest daughter’s manse.

The Nadalets chose this part of the universe for its free and easy lifestyle, the year around sunshine, and the seemingly enormous golfing opportunities. You may play it or see it here.

Last week, as an example, within 75 yards of our front porch, I watched movie and television personalities the likes of Robert Wagner, Jack Carter, Andy Williams, Pat Boone, Robert Stack, a whole lineup of sports guys, plus retired San Francisco 49ers football coach Bill Walsh parade by in the Frank Sinatra Invitational.

An old friend, Chuck (The Rifleman) Connors, the one-time Boston Celtic hopeful, called out a “What the hell are you doing here!?” greeting.

Some 379 starters anted up $3,000 apiece and helped raise $1,000,000 in behalf of the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Hospital. The PGA Seniors played here over the last weekend and they’re days away from the well-established Dinah Shore championship.

For an Easterner, and this is not a first visit here for me, the desert and all its glitz seems like a trip to another planet. But leave your stereotyped visions at home.

It’s just not that ultra-chic place everyone seems to write about. Unless one is going to church, and even then it is pretty much freewheeling. This is not dress-up country.

Golf here is what freshwater fishing is to Maine in June.

Neither is this Antarctica. At one hotel, the room charges begin at $255. Yet, the golfer needs to reserve links time. There’s no such thing as grabbing the golf bag and shoes and heading for the nearest first tee.

The city-operated Palm Springs public course, though not a mite superior than Portland’s Riverside nor Bangor’s 27-hole municipal layout, commands a daily $33 greens fee. And getting a starting time is about the size of an attempt to talking fishing with President George Bush, who billeted this past weekend at the 205-acre Walter Annenberg estate.

WHEN I informed Nadalet that I was on a first name basis with Clyde Sukeforth of Friendship, Maine, he nearly swallowed his No. 1 wood.

I said I’d seen Clyde and Mrs. Sukeforth months ago at the annual State of Maine Hall of Fame dinner in Portland. Though Clyde is in his early 80s, I said, he was still physically keen to fetch up an occasional lobster and hasn’t missed a Maine bird hunting season in more than 70 years.

“Tell him, please, what an impression he made on a young squirt who literally grew up at Ebbets Field. Tell him, too, I have never forgotten his kind, helpful encouragement he gave a kid with big dreams. He made a great impression on me and I’ve never forgotten his name. How ’bout a bagel? Or, maybe, a banana?”

No, I responded, there was all the banana I want to look at with that leaking drive I just let loose off the 18th tee.