Andy Scores! Vol 2 - Part 3/3: The Detroit Connection
Andy gets married and finds his time divided between the Motor City and Wichita.
To read Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 2, click here and here.
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I always respected Roy [Turner] because, back then, he owned a house and had investments. I respected that. He seemed to be someone who had some depth. He was being smart with his money. They used to make fun of me...one year they had Subarus with the players names on them. They asked, ‘Do you want one?’ I said, ‘No way. Why would I want one of those? So they can look in the parking lot at the [store] and know I’m in there? I don’t want that.’
Those first few years at Wichita, I was piecing it together. There was the standard $2,500 a month with a car and an apartment. In 1981, I negotiated a great contract and now had the security of a two-year contract that was close to $50,000 per year. That was huge. I suddenly went to see Brian Begley at the car dealership, and he showed me a Jag XJS convertible. It was red. He said, “Get in it.” It was everything I’d ever thought about. I’d never had a new car. I asked, “How much is it?” It was $29,000-30,000 and I COULD buy it. I said to myself, “You know what? There’s no way I’ll ever spend that kind of money on these flashy cars. One day I’ll be in a position where I can buy two of these and I won’t even skip a beat, but right now I can’t invest that sort of [money in a car]...that’s like half of a condo.”
When I was playing in the 1980–81 season, Brian Tinnion came in…this experienced forward. I think it was the same year they brought in [former Leicester City player] Steve Earle. At that time, I was a young pro and I wondered why. They seemed to be getting a little bit more playing time than I hoped for. Brian Tinnion was a winger and he couldn’t do that job as a forward. As the indoor game was developing, it fit my game. I started to really develop and see I should be playing.
Even though I was only 20 or 21, I was able to perform in a better capacity than Steve Earle, Brian Tinnion, or any of these other forwards that were 10 years older than me. Me and Brian got along very well. He was from the north of England, a bit of a journeyman who played in the lower divisions back in England, including Wrexham, which is a hot thing nowadays. Basically, he got the job in 1981 to be the coach of the Detroit Express and I went and played there for him.
I met Pattie, my wife, in May of 1981. That year I had to go back to England to have an interview at the American Embassy for my green card that Wichita had applied for. Pattie came to London to see me. Basically, I got stuck in London for 9 weeks and flew back one day before the opening game of the season in 1981. My contract had started October 1. I played in the opening game less than 12 hours after arriving.
I played in Detroit again that summer. Pattie and I were managing a long-distance relationship. In 1982, I went back to Detroit and played and we won the championship. In the summer of 1983, I played for the Express again. By the time we got into 1984, the outdoor league folded that year. Pattie and I decided to get married. On Dec. 14 of that year, we got married. We went to St. Maarten for a honeymoon and then flew back and we ended up renting an apartment in Wichita for the start of the 1984-85 season.
Obviously, this was a big change in a young person’s life. Pattie had been working a really good job in advertising. That’s how I met her. Her agency had the Detroit Express account and that’s how I met her. She gave up work and we went to live in an apartment. The pressures of getting married…suddenly there’s a whole new chapter of your life…living in Wichita under a microscope. Everywhere you went, people knew you. It was tough.
She was away from her family and she wasn’t working. I think that carried over to my performances on the field. During that 1984-85 season, I can’t say I lost focus, but there was a lot going on in my life. It was a difficult start to the season. I started to think, ‘This isn’t working.’ Pattie would fly back to Detroit to see her family. And Detroit wasn’t the easiest place to get to from Wichita.
I flew to see her because I had been injured. The team had gone away on a road trip and I was back in Wichita with the players that never traveled. I thought, ‘I’ll jump on a plane and go to Detroit.’ I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I was meant to stay behind and get treatment. But back in the day, there were no cell phones or internet. There were only landlines, so you could disappear quite easily.
It was like $400-500 round trip, a considerable amount of money at the time. I thought, I’ll go spend two days with Pattie and then I’ll fly home before the team gets back and no one will know. Well, I didn’t realize that in Detroit you get a lot of snowstorms because I’d only played there in the summer. And I ended up getting stuck in Detroit: couldn’t fly out. So, I didn’t arrive back until after the team got back and had their first training session and I wasn’t there. And Roy wanted to know, ‘Where the fuck is Chapman?”
I had an eclectic group of fans and friends that I got to know in Wichita. There was this one guy and his wife: a waiter called Jack. I was driving a VW Beetle that season. It would break down and Jack’s dad could fix anything. He used to come to the games and he was a lovable… and I don’t want to sound insulting, a lovable redneck. Which I loved! He showed up with a tumbler filled with a rum and coke first thing in the morning. But he was a character. He opened the back of my VW, looked in there and fixed it. It was incredible.
So I suddenly had a relationship with him, because it would break down occasionally. All the other players had brand new cars, but I always looked at the financial side of it all. The VW was what I was gonna drive. I wouldn’t waste money on cars.
So, for the first Thanksgiving of me and Pattie being married, Jack’s dad and his wife invited us over to their place for Thanksgiving of 1984. It’s a big change for Pattie just being in Wichita and a big change now not working. I take her to Thanksgiving to Jack’s dad’s place and they live in a double-wide [laughs] in a trailer park. I walk in thinking, ‘Fuck me, Pattie is going to wonder where the fuck I’m taking her.’
The wife was cooking the turkey and it must have been 85 degrees in that double-wide. Looking back, I wonder how our marriage ever survived! Here we are, it’s not like I’m taking her over to one of the owner’s houses. I’m not taking her to Frank Carney’s place. I’m taking her to a double-wide in a trailer park to people she didn’t even know. That’s typical of how I was. I had all sorts of different friends from diverse backgrounds. I think that’s why the fans liked me. That’s just who I was. I grew up in that sort of environment so that’s where I felt comfortable.
Next week: MISL 1980s explores the Dallas Sidekicks miracle season. Volume 3 of the Andy Scores! series will debut later this summer.