DEL WEBB, the hulking, slope-shouldered, long-striding 63-year-old who hates to be called Delbert, could not stand the life in one of his own Sun Cities for more than a few days—or a few hours. Though he has earned some unexpected gratitude for his retirement centers, he is better known for more rough-and-tumble activities as co-owner of the New York Yankees and as one of the largest single builders in the U.S.
The Journeyman. A restless barnstormer by trade and temperament, he was born in Fresno, Calif. His mother was the daughter of a German farmer, who built one of California's first irrigation systems. His father was the son of an English evangelist, but most of Del Webb's early exposure to religion came from his father's three sisters. "Those old ladies were so religious they squeaked," he says. "I had to go to Sunday school and church, and—goddammit—I wanted to play ball. They thought baseball was trafficking with the devil, so when I finally went off to play, I had to do it now and then under an assumed name."
His father, a building contractor and amateur ballplayer, passed on to him the tools of his two trades—a carpenter's saw and a fast ball. By the time he was ten, Del knew his way around a scaffolding or an infield with equal aplomb. "I can't remember not being captain of the team," he says. "When we chose sides for a pick-up game, I was always one of the guys who did the choosing."
When he was 14, his father went bankrupt, and Del hit the road two years later. "I've been on the move ever since," he says. "It gets in your blood and you can't stop." Weekdays he was a journeyman carpenter on construction jobs; weekends he played semiprofessional ball. Webb hit nails and nailed hitters all over the West, from Calgary down to the Mexican border, developing at the same time a taste for old bourbon and young ladies. During World War I, he worked in the Oakland shipyards; when it was over, he married his childhood sweetheart, Hazel Church. The marriage broke up in 1952, and last year Webb married pretty, brunette Toni Ince, 41, buyer for the Bullock's-Wilshire department store in Los Angeles.
20 Bourbons a Day. Del Webb's baseball days ended in 1925 with a crunch of cracked ribs and torn ligaments, sliding home from second on a short single, followed by a bout of typhoid fever that brought his weight down from 204 Ibs. to 99 Ibs. When he was on his feet again, he landed a job with a small contractor in Phoenix. One day, when he was working on the construction of a new grocery store, his paycheck bounced, and his employer disappeared. The grocer asked young Webb to take over the job, and the Del E. Webb Construction Co. was born. Its total assets: one cement mixer, ten wheelbarrows, 20 shovels and ten picks.