Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (16 page)

The bench was treated to a lovely Sal Maglie second guess today. Steve Barber was pitching and he had men on second and third with Jim Fregosi up. On 3 and 2 Barber threw a change and Fregosi lunged, hit it to left and knocked in both runs. As soon as the ball was hit, Maglie, who was standing next to Schultz, snapped his fingers and said, “Son of a bitch—3-and-2 change. That goddam 3-and-2 change.”

Whenever something goes wrong, Maglie is quick to show disgust, especially if Schultz is around. I guess he wants the manager to know he’s in the ballgame and that he doesn’t take adversity calmly. But I was surprised about him fussing over a 3-and-2 change, because I think it’s a helluva pitch. In a spot like that the hitter is looking for something the pitcher throws often, like the fastball, or if he’s got good control of his curve he might throw that. So the off-speed pitch in that situation really throws the hitter off.

Later on I asked Sal about it. “Sal,” I said sweetly, “I saw you get mad at the change-up Steve threw Fregosi. What’s your feeling about the change on 3 and 2?”

“It depends on the situation,” says Sal.

“I’ve had pretty good success with the 3-and-2 change.”

“Well I did too,” says Sal. “I remember once I threw one to Stan Musial with the bases loaded and he was so surprised he just stood there with the bat on his shoulder. Strike three.”

We kicked that around for a while and Sal wound up saying that the 3-and-2 change was a helluva pitch, if you threw it to the right guy.

But not to Jim Fregosi. By Barber. Today.

Bill Henry retired today, just like that. First he makes the team, then he walks in on Joe Schultz and announces his retirement. Joe told us about it and said that he admired the man, that he had a lot of guts to walk out.

John Morris, who was brought up from the Vancouver squad to replace Henry, was pretty frisky, like he’d just gotten a reprieve from the Governor. He said he had some long talks with Henry—which is something, because when you say hello to Henry he is stuck for an answer—and thinks he quit because he was holding back a young player. “What am I doing keeping younger guys from a chance to earn a living?” he said to Morris. “I’m forty-two years old. I’ve had thirteen years in the big leagues. I don’t really belong here.”

During the meeting Joe Schultz said, “It takes a lot of courage for a guy to quit when he thinks he can’t do the job anymore.”

So I opened my big yap and said, “If that’s the case a lot of us ought to quit.”

Which gave Sal Maglie the chance to say, very coolly, “Well, use your own judgment on that.”

I’m not sure Sal likes me.

Today Joe Schultz said, “Well, boys, it’s a round ball and a round bat and you got to hit it square.”

Packing day. Baseball players and their wives are very good packers. I can pack for a two-week trip in less than an hour and my wife has moving the whole family down to a science. I’m sure this will prove very valuable to us later in life. Especially if I become a big-game hunter. Or an astronaut. Of course it helped that Mike Marshall arranged, on a split-second timetable, to have our cars shipped to Seattle by rail. Maybe
he
should be running the Long Island Rail Road.

San Diego

Gary Bell is my roommate. Good roommate. Good beaver-shooter. He tells a story about a guy who climbed a palm tree to shoot some beaver and got stranded when the tide came in. I wonder where the hell that palm tree was.

I think it should be known that when Whitey Ford was pitching for the Yankees he set up a table with a checkered tablecloth in the bullpen. On the table there was an empty wine bottle with a candle in it. Also hero sandwiches. Whitey Ford had style.

Bruce Henry, the Yankee road secretary, is one of my main men. He hated to buy bats for me. He always claimed I didn’t need them. When he finally did, he had them inscribed not with my name, but my batting average—.092. And once when I complained that the people I’d given passes to were upset about getting poor seats, he said, “How’d they like the price?”

Wayne Comer says that Mayo Smith, the Tiger manager, once said to him, “Wayne, I think you’re going to hit .290 this year—but you’re going to be doing it in Montgomery, Alabama.”

I am reminded that not long ago I ran into Bob Smith of the old “Howdy Doody” show at a Rexall in Ft. Lauderdale, and was able to sing to him the Howdy Doody theme song at the toothpaste counter:

Bob Smith went out of his gourd.

I also count myself as having a rather large store of answers to trivia questions.

Q. Who was the dog and who was the villain in Rootie Kazootie?

A. Galapoochie Pup and Poison Sumac.

The end of spring training always brings out the best in me.

We played Vancouver before coming here to play San Diego a doubleheader for our last two exhibition games. I pitched two innings in the first game and gave up two runs. My arm felt good but I had poor control of my knuckleball. I asked Maglie if there was a chance I could get some more work in the second game. He said no. His reason was that they still had a couple of minor-league pitchers to look at. I said hell, I thought the team was set, and why didn’t he ask Joe if he could squeeze me in. But he wouldn’t. So I went to Joe. At the precise moment I started to explain why I thought I needed more work, Joe Schultz took a huge bite out of the liverwurst sandwich he was eating, got up off his stool, went to the Coke machine and mumbled something to me through his full mouth and over his shoulder. I didn’t pitch. That’s how I know what he said.

Seattle

Today, the day before opening day, Joe Schultz said, “Well, it’s back to the old salt mine, boys.”

Later he encountered Tommy Davis and asked if that was “an old Budweiser” he was pouring down. “No, a Coke,” Davis said.

And Joe Schultz said, “That’s not too good for the old sto
macho
.”

Joe Schultz calls Jose Vidal “Chico,” which is Spanish for “boy.”

Anaheim

Opening day—or Opening Day. Depending on how you feel about it.

I got a wire from Toots Shor in Anaheim before the game. It said, “Good luck, Jim. I hope you pitch often and win many games.” Who says Toots never talks to has-beens?

Actually I don’t know Toots that well. I’ve been in his place a few times and once when I was going bad he told me my whole problem was that I was striding three inches too far and if I just shortened up on the stride by those three inches everything would be fine. I was so desperate I actually tried it. It didn’t help.

Everyone works out pregame nervousness in his own way. Tommy Davis was standing in the middle of the clubhouse taking a hitting stance with no bat in his hands, anticipating the pitch, striding into it, checking his swing and then going back and doing it all over again. It reminded me of a guy going over his notes just before a final exam, knowing all the time it wasn’t going to do any good. If you don’t have it by now, Tom, you’re not going to.

There was a lot of grousing about the uniforms. It isn’t only that they don’t fit (no baseball uniforms fit, possibly because you are carefully measured for them). It’s that they’re so gaudy. I guess because we’re the Pilots we have to have captain’s uniforms. They have stripes on the sleeves, scrambled eggs on the peak of the cap and blue socks with yellow stripes. Also there are blue and yellow stripes down the sides of the pants. We look like goddam clowns. The only worse-looking uniforms are the ones they wear in Vancouver.

Naturally we won the first game. Beat the Angels 4–3. Mike Hegan hit the first home run for the Pilots and Joe Schultz, jumping up and down in the dugout, clapped his hands and actually yelled, “Hurray for our team.”

When we came into the clubhouse, all of us yelling and screaming like a bunch of high school kids, Joe Schultz said, “Stomp on ’em. Thataway to stomp on ’em. Kick ’em when they’re down. Shitfuck. Stomp them. Stomp them good.”

Already we’re better than the Mets.

Made my pitching debut today. Threw two fastballs to Hoyt Wilhelm, the elderly knuckleball pitcher who may one day be my idol. Got him out.

It took about a day into the season for us to be like every other ballclub, not just an expansion team full of strangers. I’m going out after the ballgame and have a few beers with the guys, maybe six or seven, which makes me blind. There is unquestionably a close feeling among the guys who go out and drink because they hash over the ballgame and it gives us all a feeling of common purpose. Slogan: The team that drinks together stays together.

Other things that draw a team together:

You’re riding down the street in the team bus and you see a guy walking along with a big beer belly and his pants hanging below it and you say, “Mincher in ten years.”

Or a guy is hanging on to a lamppost, a wino in a drunken stupor, severely defeated by life. “That’s what happens when you can’t hit the curve ball.”

Marty Pattin does a pretty good Donald Duck. Before he pitched the opener he was going around the clubhouse saying in Donald Duck that you got to be loose,
quack
, you got to be loose. He was whistling in the dark. Later I found out he’d gone to bed at seven the night before and stayed in bed until noon. That’s seventeen hours. I wonder if he got any sleep.

Today Joe Schultz said to the clean-shaven Rocky Bridges, Los Angeles coach, “Hey Rocky, how’s your old mustache?”

Joe Schultz also said to Lou Johnson of the Angels, a man whom disaster has robbed of a piece of his left ear, “Hey, what’s new, Half-Ear?”

Add to the saga of Mike Marshall: The other day he had a blister on his hand and the trainer told him the best way to help it was to keep it soaked in a cup of strong tea. A lot of guys would have told the trainer to shove the tea up his bippy, but Mike took the advice. Now he was walking around with his hand in a cup of tea—on the bus, in the clubhouse, sitting on the bench during the game and in his hotel room. So his roommate, John Kennedy, told everybody he had a nut for a roommate. Tea all over the goddam room. Even in his bed.

That’s the way you become a nut. You have guts enough to walk around all day with your hand in a cup of tea.

A few more words about Eddie O’Brien and Ron Plaza. O’Brien is one of the fairly famous basketball O’Brien twins who played with Seattle from ’49 to ’53. Actually his job is athletic director at Seattle University, but he had four years in the big leagues with the Pirates—as infielder and pitcher—and now he’s here as a friend of management (or because his brother is in city government) to get his fifth year in on the pension plan. You only need four now, but Eddie’s after five and no one’s going to stop him.

Plaza was a coach under Schultz in Atlanta when it was still a minor-league city, and that’s one of the ways you get to be a coach in the big leagues.

Coaches have little real responsibility, so it seems to me they should, at the very least, try to help club morale—cheer guys onward and upward, make jokes and smooth out little problems before they become big ones.

O’Brien and Plaza are officious types, though, and cause more trouble than they smooth over. And because they try to find things to do they become nothing but annoyances. Like O’Brien will say to Jack Aker, “Jack, you’re in the bullpen tonight.” Jack has been in the bullpen for eight years.

Another example: It is customary for players to pair off and throw easily on the sidelines before a workout or a game. So as I reached into the ballbag to grab some baseballs for the guys, Plaza said, “What are you going to do with those baseballs, Bouton?”

“I’m just going to take three or four out to the field because a few guys asked me to.”

“Just take one.”

“Yes, sir.”

Steve Barber was in the diathermy machine again, all day, and I asked him again how it felt. “Better,” he said, “fine, great. It just bothers me a little until I get loose and then there’s no sweat.” It’s killing him. He hasn’t been able to pick up a baseball and he was supposed to start today and didn’t.

Standing around the outfield the conversation turned to religion. Don Mincher said he came from a very religious home and used to go to church every Sunday where people did things like roll in the aisles. He said there was a big circle of numbers on the church wall and when your number came up with somebody else’s number you had to visit them and have a prayer meeting. As he got older Minch would say, “Well, let’s have a few beers first.” They didn’t think that was very religious of him.

This afternoon Gary Bell and I went to Pershing Square (in Los Angeles) to listen to some of the old ladies in sneakers tell us to be prepared to meet our maker. I confess I enjoy rapping with them and usually wind up assured that eternal salvation is beyond my reach.

Later on we came across a group that was into the Indian thing and they were chanting
Hari Krishna Rama Rama
, etc., and I got to talking to one of them, who said that their religion simply was to reaffirm love of God regardless of the particular religion, and I thought that was fair enough and we hung around enjoying the chanting and sitar music.

Then a priest, probably about fifty-five years old, happened by and got into conversation with one of the group. When he left I asked what it was about. “He said this was a religion that didn’t belong in this country,” the young man said. “He said we already had enough religions in this country and that we should go back to India or wherever it was we came from.”