When Adlai Stevenson went through the wicket to win the ticket

In that happy era between vice presidents Aaron Burr and Dick Cheney shooting people for no good reason, was a time when politicians settling scores in a civilized maer: with mallets, like bigod men.

Legislated segregation, rampant sexism, the Korean and Cold wars, the continuing though dwindling threat of polio and the nonexistence of even twin-blade razors notwithstanding, the 1950s was the time that Donald Trump’s trucker cap has in mind when it says it wants to Make America Great Again.

On a warm afteoon on May 11 in 1956, a motorcade slowed to a stop at Lincoln Park in downtown Long Beach and Adlai Stevenson, a Democratic candidate for the office of the President of the United States, stepped out of his limousine.

The former goveor of Illinois strode toward the park’s expertly manicured roque court. He was a man on a mission to destroy his opponent for the top spot on the Democratic ticket, Teessee Senator Estes Kefauver.

Kefauver was well ahead of Stevenson on that May afteoon as the latter man made his way up a walkway flanked by Washingtonian palms. Things were about to change.

A month earlier, Kefauver had visited the same hallowed court and had made a sort of Cruzian mess out of things, flubbing the terminology at every tu. “Croquet,” he called it, as if every game played with mallets, balls and wickets was called croquet. The media had a field day with Kefauver. Perhaps rattled by the gales of laughter from hard-core roque players, Kefauver took five whacks at the ball before he managed to coax it through the wire arch.

Now arriving at the courts, Stevenson summoned a local man, Pat May, then 70. May lived nearby right by Lincoln Park on Pacific Avenue, and the retiree was the king of the roque court. Like a championship golf caddie, May muttered a few tips to the candidate, maybe something about using the rubber-tipped side of the mallet to add a little spin to the ball while caroming it off the court’s raised banks. Stevenson squinted against the spring sunlight and laid up his shot just shy of the wicket, then blasted his second shot through.

The media had yet another field day. Almost every day’s a field day for the media nowadays, but back in the 1950s they were rare. Oddly, the Long Beach Independent ran two versions of the same story. If there’s any explanation, it could be that it had two headlines that the giddy editors, not known back then to complete their shifts without liquid courage, felt the need to print, both on Page One:

No Joke,

Adlai’s Oke

at Roque

And another:

Hey, Estes,

Adlai Bestest

In Roque Poke

Stevenson parlayed his roque prowess to a victory in Califoia, and other states in the West followed and he ultimately became the party’s candidate. In a magnanimous act that you don’t see much these days in politics, he chose Kefauver as his ruing mate. It was a powerhouse ticket, but no match for Dwight Eisenhower and his two-term sidekick Richard Nixon, both of whom wisely stated away from the roque court in Lincoln Park.

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Contact Tim Grobaty at 562-714-2116, [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter.