Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (17 page)

Going over the hitters is something you do before each series, and before we went against the mighty Angels, Sal Maglie had a great hint for one of their weaker hitters, Vic Davalillo. “Knock him down, then put the next three pitches knee-high on the outside corner, boom, boom, boom, and you’ve got him.”

Everybody laughed. If you could throw three pitches, boom, boom, boom, knee-high on the outside corner, you wouldn’t have to knock anybody down. It’s rather like telling somebody if he’d just slam home those ninety-foot putts he’d win the tournament easily.

Seattle

Home again at Sicks’ Stadium, graveyard for pitchers, home-run heaven, the major leagues. The clubhouse is small and crowded and there’s no rug, just rubber runners on the cement floor and the lockers are small and close together, and there was a lot of grousing about it, and Joe Schultz said, “It’s just like the old winter league. You’ve got to follow the crowd.”

Gary Bell pitched and beat the White Sox, 7–0. Mincher hit two home runs. Tomorrow the world.

Before today’s game Joe Schultz said, “Okay men, up and at ’em. Get that old Budweiser.”

Pitched against the Chicago White Sox today and got bombed. Three runs in an inning-and-a-third. My knuckleball just doesn’t seem to be ready yet. I can’t get it over the plate consistently, and when I get behind I have to come in with my fastball, which somehow isn’t too fast. So I got ripped for long hits, including one Don Pavletich hit over the left-field wall.

There were other problems. Pete Ward’s a left-handed hitter and I threw him a knuckler that was about a foot off the ground, outside. This is the kind of pitch he should have missed by a foot if he swung but he followed it all the way and belted it deep to center. It was caught against the wall, but it scored a run from third and I was damn relieved it didn’t go out. That he was able to hit it at all is an indication that I wasn’t throwing the knuckleball hard enough, probably because I was so worried about getting it over.

Pavletich hit a fastball, the first pitch I threw, and I thought, “Jesus, I didn’t even get a chance to throw him a knuckler.” It was supposed to set him up. So much for setting people up with my fastball, Sal Maglie, you fink. As soon as he hit it I said to myself, “Oh Christ, what a way to start. It’s going to be a long time before I’m in there again.” And I wondered how many innings I’d have to pitch in order to redeem myself and whether I’d be coming to bat in the next inning (sure enough) and subject to being pulled for a pinch hitter (and I was).

We were behind like 4–0 when I came in and 7–0 when I left, and I have to admit I didn’t cry when the other guys got clobbered too. You stand out less in a crowd.

After five games, our record is 3 wins and 2 losses. And we’ve scored a lot of runs. The team looks good. Tommy Harper is doing a helluva job at second base and I thought he’d be one of our weak spots. Ray Oyler’s been fine at short and we’ve had some outstanding catches in the outfield. Third place doesn’t look impossible. And if you don’t count me, our pitching looks pretty good. Except for Steve Barber. Joe Schultz is upset with Barber because he has a sore arm. It’s not as unusual as it sounds. Managers get angry at injuries. An injury is beyond a manager’s control and he doesn’t like anything he can’t control. So if you’re out too long with an injury he gets angry at you. The logic is almost perfect.

Johnny Keane was particularly prone to this kind of thinking. I remember going to Joe Soares, the Yankee trainer, and telling him my arm was bothering me and that I probably shouldn’t throw and suggesting that he tell Keane.

“
You
tell him,” Joe said. “The last time I told him anything he chewed my head off.”

A kid named Tom Berg, who belongs to the Seattle organization and goes to school here, came over to work out with the club. And before the workout he was in the clubhouse shaving off his nice long sideburns. He got the word that Dewey Soriano, who is the president of the club, thought he would look better with shorter sideburns. Well, I think Dewey Soriano would look better if he lost weight.

I’m not getting enough pitching in, even as a short man, which is what I guess they’ve decided I am (although why they would want to bring in a knuckleballer with men on base, I can’t understand). I need lots of work on my knuckleball and I’m not getting it. My other pitches aren’t that bad, except they don’t get anybody out, so I’m going to concentrate on the knuckleball. Last summer I threw to a catcher for about fifteen minutes every day, just knuckleballs, and if I was needed that night, I could still pitch. But Sal is not very enthusiastic. A couple of times I’ve asked him if I could warm up and he said, “You’ve been throwing the whole damn day.” He was referring to the fact that I had played catch in the outfield before the game. The man’s got big eyes.

The trouble is that coaches and managers have a thing about being strong for the ballgame. They don’t realize that sometimes you can be too strong—sacrifice sharpness for strength. With a knuckleball, this can be particularly costly. I’ve tried to talk to Sal about this. I say, “Sal, I’d like to talk about my knuckleball.”

And he snaps, “What?” and he’s already looking at something over my shoulder. My impulse is to say that my Aunt Frances has a great knuckleball and would he like to give her a look. But when Sal snaps, “What?” he gives you the impression he doesn’t want such a long answer.

If he had a liverwurst sandwich I’d expect him to take a big bite.

With Hovley gone, Mike Marshall is probably the most articulate guy on the club, so I asked him if he had as much trouble communicating as I’ve had and he said, “Of course. The minute I approach a coach or a manager I can see the terror in his eyes. Lights go on, bells start clanging. What’s it going to be? What’s this guy want from me? Why can’t he be like everybody else and not bother me? It’s almost impossible to carry on a conversation or get a direct answer to a direct question.”

In baseball they say, “He’s a great guy. Never says a word.”

Like a lot of players, Jack Aker chews tobacco. But he’s only been at it for two years and doesn’t do it well. Hasn’t learned to spit properly. As a result his uniform is always covered with brown spots.

All people who chew tobacco should have happen to them what happened to Steve Hamilton of the Yankees. Steve is an ace with chewing tobacco. Most players chew only on the field, Hamilton even chews at home and has a spittoon in the middle of his living-room floor. He says he also has a wife, which I don’t altogether believe. Anyway he got careless once while pitching in Kansas City. He swallowed his chaw. So he turned around and gave it up, along with his cookies, on the back of the mound. In front of all those people.

I’ve felt like that on the mound too, and I don’t even chew tobacco.

I died tonight.

I got sent to Vancouver.

My first reaction: Outrage.

Second reaction: Omigod! How am I going to tell Bobbie? The
problems
. Where to live? How to get rid of the place we’d already signed a lease on in Seattle? What would happen to the $650 deposit? Moving again.
Again
. And we just got here.

But mostly outrage.

We’d lost a 2–1 game to Kansas City when Sal came over and said, “Joe wants to see you in his office.”

My heart started racing. I mean Joe never wants to see me anywhere. So I knew. At the same time I thought, “Nah. It’s too early. I’ve really only pitched the once. How can they tell anything from that? Maybe it’s a trade? Or maybe he’s just sore at something I’ve done. Let’s see, what have I done lately?”

It takes a lot longer to tell it than to think it. As soon as I got into his office Joe Schultz said, “I hate to tell you a thing like this after such a close loss.”

I almost laughed in his face. As though I’d be so broken-hearted over losing a lousy ballgame that I couldn’t bear anything more, even a small thing like being sent to the minors.

Then Joe said he had to send me to Vancouver, and I thought, “What the hell, I’ll go out with some class.” I told him I would have done anything to help the club and that I really felt bad about having to leave it.

“I know,” Joe Schultz said. “You work hard and you do all your running and you did everything we asked of you. We just didn’t think your knuckleball did that much in Arizona and we wanted to see what it looked like when it got out of the light air, and it didn’t look like it was coming around like we thought it should. We need pitching bad.”

So I said, “Well, if I do real good down there, I’d like to come back.”

I expected him to say, “Of course. You do good down there and we’ll yank you right back here, stick you in and you’ll win the goddam pennant for us.” Or something reassuring like that. Instead Joe Schultz said, “Well, if you do good down there, there’s a lot of teams that need pitchers.”

Good grief. If I ever heard a see you later, that was it.

So I said thanks a lot and left.

I went back to my locker and there was a Coke sitting there that I’d opened. I gave it to Mike Marshall and opened a beer. This was not a night for Cokes. I threw my half-eaten corned-beef sandwich in the waste basket and went over and told Gary Bell what had happened. He was kind of shocked, but as I started throwing stuff into my bag I could feel a wall, invisible but real, forming around me. I was suddenly an outsider, a different person, someone to be shunned, a leper.

Jose Vidal was the first guy to come over and say he was sorry to see me go. Velazquez was the second. And at that point I really felt close to them. Don Mincher came over and told me to hang in there—and, you know, I really was wrong about him. He’s a good fellow.

I stopped by to shake hands with Gene Brabender and Tommy Davis, but I missed Tommy Harper and Jack Aker and some of the other guys. I realized I didn’t have any money with me to pay the clubhouse men, so I told them I’d send a check. Then I picked up my bag and walked out. It felt lousy.

I suppose the man I’m most outraged at is Sal Maglie. The Screaming Skull, as he is being called (because he looks like a character in a movie of the same name), said the second really lucid thing to me that he has all spring. The first was, “Don’t talk to the fans.” And the second, “Joe wants to see you in his office.”

That was all. No goodbye, no suggestions about what I should work on, or what I needed to improve, or what I had done wrong this spring, or what pitch I should work on. Not even a hang in there. Silence. I can’t believe this is Sal the Barber, my idol.

I stopped by to see Marvin Milkes, and he wasn’t any help either. I told him I was running into some big and sudden expenses and could he do anything about it, and he said—and this was beautiful—“Well, you didn’t show us much all spring” (10 games, 19 innings, 16 hits, 11 walks, 5 strikeouts, 3.25 ERA). If I
had
shown much more I wouldn’t be getting sent down. I felt like kicking him in the shins, but I said, “Hell, I had a better spring than four or five guys. In fact, I’m healthy, which is more than you can say for at least two of the guys.” What I didn’t say, but what I thought, was: “What about Steve Barber? He hasn’t been able to pick up a baseball. He had a brutal spring. What’s this love affair with Barber? Why can’t he go on the disabled list?” Ah, the hell with it.

One of the worst things about getting sent down is the feeling you get that you’ve broken faith with so many people. I know my mother and father were rooting real hard for me, and all my friends back home, and they’ll all feel bad—not for themselves, but for me.

Quitting altogether crosses my mind. But I won’t. I
can’t
. I’m convinced I can still get out big-league hitters with my knuckleball. I
know
I can. I know this is crazy, but I can see the end of the season and I’ve just won a pennant for some team, just won the final game, and everybody is clamoring around and I tell them, “Everybody have a seat. It’s a long story.”

I could be kidding myself. Maybe I’m so close to the situation that I can’t make an objective judgment of whatever ability I have left. Maybe I just
think
I can do it. Maybe everybody who doesn’t make it and who gets shunted to the minors feels exactly the way I do. Maybe too, the great cross of man is to repeat the mistakes of all men.

Yesterday Bobbie and I drove up to Vancouver with the kids to look for a place to live. We found a nice home about twenty minutes from the ballpark, near the beach. We had to put down $480, which represented the first and last months rent, May and August, and we had to give postdated checks for June and July. The owner is concerned that there might be another shift. He’s not taking any chances.

In the meantime I still have that $650 deposit in Seattle and don’t know if I’ll be able to get that back. And we haven’t received the $100 deposit we left in Arizona. That’s $1,230. I lead the league in deposits. Fortunately there’s a baseball rule that says when a player is transferred he’s not responsible for the remainder of his rent, so we won’t be liable for any more money, but we might not be able to get the $650 back if we can’t rent to somebody else.

A lot of players don’t have the problems we do because they leave their families at home and live in hotels. That’s for one of two reasons. They’re just starting out and don’t make enough money. Or their kids are old enough to be in school and they don’t want to take them out. These guys have their families with them only two months of the season. I don’t know if I’ll last long enough to have to make that kind of decision.

The Vancouver Mounties (little Mike is going to have a terrible time with that one) are still in Phoenix and I won’t join them until they come home. They play in Tulsa first, so I called Bob Lemon, who’s the manager, and asked if he intended to use me as a starter right away and he said no, he planned to use me in relief and that I might as well wait for them to get home.