Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (21 page)

We also just bought John O’Donoghue and when Gary Bell and I walked into the coffee shop this morning he was sitting there. Gary said that when ballplayers get up in the morning and go into the coffee shop and see a player from a different organization sitting there, “Everybody starts stepping lightly.”

Gary has come up with a good nickname for Freddy Velazquez. Freddy just sits there in the bullpen, warming up pitchers, and he never gets into a game and just looks sad. So Gary calls him Poor Devil.

Last night Gary and I stayed up late talking about real estate and what future there might be in it for him as investor or salesman or broker and I suggested he might get involved by reading some real-estate books. Gary is a typical ballplayer in some ways in that he doesn’t seem to have any plan for himself, nothing to fall back on. The day he’s out of baseball is the day he’ll start thinking about earning a living. And then it could be too late.

We stayed up so late talking that I needed a nap in the bullpen. Fortunately the Minnesota bullpen is out of sight. So I slept four solid innings before going into the game. There may be better ways to earn a living, but I can’t think of one.

Gary wasn’t very happy, of course, after being knocked out in the fifth. He had a couple of beers and said, “Maybe we ought to break out those real-estate books pretty soon.” Then he had a better idea. He suggested that tonight the two of us go out and see what we could do about restructuring parts of San Francisco (we were to leave for Oakland after the game).

“San Francisco,” Gary said, “is absolutely going to catch hell.”

I was sitting in front of my locker this afternoon and suddenly someone walked over to me and there was a shadow on the newspaper I was reading. My heart started thumping. I could almost hear Sal Maglie say, “Joe wants to see you in his office.” That’s what insecurity is.

Today Joe Schultz said, “Hey, I want to see some el strikos thrown around here.”

I’m always fascinated by what people say during infield practice. It’s a true nonlanguage, specifically created not to say anything. This one today from Frank Crosetti as he hit grounders: “Hey, the old shillelagh!”

Had a big talk with Sal Maglie today. Not
the
big talk, with note cards and all that, which I carry around waiting for the right, quintessentially right, moment. It went about like this.

Me: “Sal, I’ve made some decisions about my knuckleball and I’d like to talk them over with you.”

Sal:
“Mblvckd?”

Me: “Yes. Well, I think I’ve got to throw the knuckleball all the time and forget about my other pitches.”

Sal: “Of course. Christ, if you don’t do that you won’t get anybody out. That’s your bread and butter.”

Me: “Another thing. I’ve got to throw the ball for about fifteen minutes before the game to get the feel of it. I don’t worry about tiring my arm. Strength means nothing to me.”

Sal: “Certainly. Absolutely. Otherwise you can’t stay sharp with it.”

So I went back to my locker and tore up my index cards. Well, the truth of it is I tried to talk to Joe Schultz on the airplane, but every time I checked he was asleep. When he was awake, I had some second thoughts. Translation: I didn’t have the nerve. I decided he would take it as me, Jim Bouton, trying to give orders to him, Joe Schultz. So I, Jim Bouton, said “Aw, the hell with it.”

Now I’ve got permission to do it my way anyway. Sal Maglie. Love that man.

The man I love had quite an adventure tonight. Darrell Brandon pitching, and with Rod Carew on third base he’s using a full wind-up. At the last moment he decides to take a look over at Carew, who’s taking a pretty good lead. So he backs off the rubber and Sal yells at him, “For crissakes, get the hitter. The runner isn’t going anyplace.”

So Darrell winds up and lets fly.
And Carew steals home
.

When Darrell comes into the dugout at the end of the inning, Maglie lets him have it. “Dammit,” he says. “You
know
you’ve got to pitch from the stretch in that situation.”

Eddie O’Brien has finally been nicknamed. “Mr. Small Stuff.” It’s because of his attention to detail. Says Mr. Small Stuff, “Put your hat on.” He said that to me today. Also to Mike Hegan. We were both running laps at the time.

Another thing Eddie O’Brien does is stand next to you when you’re warming up. I think he does it so he can be near the phone when it rings. He has to answer it. One of these days I’ll beat him to it and when Schultz asks for O’Brien I’ll say, “He ain’t here,” and hang up. Add dreams of glory.

Oh yes. As I went out to pitch he said, “Throw strikes.”

I don’t think Eddie O’Brien understands this game.

Maybe nobody does. Like when I went out to do some throwing on the sidelines before the game Sal Maglie said, “Do your running before you throw.”

“Gee, Sal,” I said agreeably, “I don’t like to throw when I’m plumb tuckered out from running. I’d rather throw first, then run.”

So Sal said, triumphantly, “What if it rains?”

“If it rains, then I’d rather have had my throwing in than my running.”

At which point Ron Plaza said, to no one in particular, “Aw, c’mon, let’s go.”

I went. But first I did my throwing. And it didn’t rain.

Oakland

Talked to my wife and she said there were some interesting things in the Seattle paper about my knuckleball. The quotes from Joe and Sal were that, well, it was better than it was before. Then there was a quote from Billy Martin, the bold and brash (as they say) manager of the Twins, which said it was a “helluva” knuckleball. The thought naturally occurred that Sal and Joe are not yet willing to make that kind of commitment to my knuckleball.

The knuckleball was fine tonight against Oakland—when it knuckled. When it didn’t, it got hit for two home runs. That was in the first of three innings I pitched. One ball was completely still. It must have looked like a watermelon floating up there. Float like a watermelon, fly like a rocket. The other rolled a bit and was hit just as hard. On the other hand, I threw only four pitches in the whole three innings that didn’t do what they were supposed to do. It’s aggravating, of course, that two of them were hit out of the park, but the others jumped so much that I struck out Reggie Jackson and Rick Monday, and the rest were tapped for pop flies and grounders.

After the game, McNertney told me that Sal Bando thought it was a better knuckler than Wilhelm’s because it breaks more sharply and it’s thrown harder. I’m not sure how to take that, since it was Bando who hit one of the homers off me.

Meanwhile, in the dugout, I found out from Darrell Brandon that Sal had thrown a fit when the home run was hit. He had a toothpick in his mouth at the time and he threw it hard on the ground (so hard a tree may yet grow on the spot) and said, “Jesus, he’s got to start throwing something else. They’re just waiting on that knuckleball.”

I think McNertney understands the situation better. “Keep throwing it,” he said. “It’s getting better. Had a real good one tonight that was really jumping down. So a couple of them spun and they hit them out. But you got to go with it. Even 3 and 0.”

It was a weird game. We were behind 4–0 and 6–1 and tied it at 6–6. They went ahead 8–6, and we damn near came back again but lost it 8–7. Now we’re six games under .500 and in last place, and something is going to happen around here. Marvin Milkes is not a guy who will sit around in a situation that calls for panic.

This afternoon Gary Bell and I hired a car and drove up to the Berkeley campus and walked around and listened to speeches—Arab kids arguing about the Arab-Israeli war, Black Panthers talking about Huey Newton and the usual little old ladies in tennis shoes talking about God. Compared with the way everybody was dressed Gary and I must have looked like a couple of narcs.

So some of these people look odd, but you have to think that anybody who goes through life thinking only of himself with the kinds of things that are going on in this country and Vietnam, well, he’s the odd one. Gary and I are really the crazy ones. I mean, we’re concerned about getting the Oakland Athletics out. We’re concerned about making money in real estate, and about ourselves and our families. These kids, though, are genuinely concerned about what’s going on around them. They’re concerned about Vietnam, poor people, black people. They’re concerned about the way things are and they’re trying to change them. What are Gary and I doing besides watching?

So they wear long hair and sandals and have dirty feet. I can understand why. It’s a badge, a sign they are different from people who don’t care.

So I wanted to tell everybody, “Look, I’m with you, baby. I understand. Underneath my haircut I really understand that you’re doing the right thing.”

Emmett Ashford was behind the plate tonight and did an especially good job calling the knuckleball. A couple of times I threw it knee-high and the ball seemed to drop into the dirt. But it was only after it had crossed the plate, so he called both of them strikes. Some umpires call the pitch where the catcher catches it, not where it crosses the plate. If he catches it as a ball, it’s a ball. But Ashford was great.

He missed one pitch. It was when a guy was stealing second and McNertney came out of his crouch to get the ball. This blocked Ashford’s view and he called it a ball. I yelled at him. “But Emmett, it was a perfect strike.” That’s all I said, and it was true, but I felt guilty about having said anything at all. I try to be especially nice to Ashford because everybody else harasses the hell out of him. He’s not exactly the best umpire, but he is far from being terrible. He doesn’t miss that many calls, and when he does, he misses them on both sides, like any good umpire. But other umpires talk behind his back. Sometimes they’ll let him run out on the field himself and the other three who are holding back in the dugout will snigger. I hate that kind of stuff. I mean, I don’t mind it when it’s pulled on a ballplayer. But Ashford, for goodness sakes.

And, of course, the players pick it right up. As soon as he makes a bad call they start yelling, “Oh, that hot dog son of a bitch.” Sure he’s a flashy umpire and sure he does a lot of showboating. That’s what got him into the big leagues in the first place. It’s his bread and butter. Instead of bitching the players ought to give him credit for hustling. He hustles every minute he’s out there, which is more than you can say for some umpires.

It’s not hard to understand why he’s resented, though. They feel he doesn’t belong in the big leagues with his way of umpiring. Besides, he’s a Negro, and they believe he’s here just
because
of that.

It must be terrible for Ashford. When you’re an umpire and travel around the big leagues in a group of four and three of them are white and the kind of guys who let you run on the field by yourself—well, it can make for a very lonely summer.

I know about lonely summers. In my last years with the Yankees I had a few of them. You stand in a hotel lobby talking with guys at dinnertime and they drift away, and some other guys come along and pretty soon they’re gone and you’re all alone and no one has asked you what you’re doing about dinner. So you eat alone. It must happen to Ashford a lot. And it’s one of the reasons I can’t bring myself to argue with him.

Encountered Marvin Milkes sitting in the lobby tonight, and whether he knows it or not that’s fairly nerve-racking. Anytime a general manager is on the road with his club there’s a feeling that a trade is in the works. From the way things are going here, I get the feeling that the front office watches the game, and when you throw a strike you’re immediately in their plans for the near future, and when you throw a ball you’re on the trading block. The players go up and down like some crazy yo-yo, and what that looks like most is a panic operation.

Brought a copy of the
Berkeley Barb
back to the clubhouse and several of the guys were crowding around to read it when John Kennedy said, “Bouton, I bet you bought that paper.” I told him I had. “Now, how did I know it was you bought that paper?” he said. Dunno, John. Extrasensory perception?

Steve Barber pitched a pretty good game while I was down on the farm, but he was in trouble again yesterday, loading up the bases with none out in the first. He said he couldn’t get loose on the sidelines, and the only time his arm bothers him is when he’s loosening up. He says once he gets into the game he’s fine.

Oh.

Another thing Sal Maglie looks like is the friendly neighborhood undertaker. You can just see him standing in the mortuary doorway saying, “Oh yes, we have something very nice for you in mahogany.” And Gary Bell recalled the old Digger O’Dell line, “Well, I’ll be shoveling off now.”

The friendly undertaker really put it to Marshall the other day. He told him that if he didn’t use better judgment on the selection of his pitches, they’d be called from the bench by S. Maglie, pitching coach. Mike was furious. Any pitcher would be. As Johnny Sain has pointed out, a pitcher will in the course of his career throw to thirty or forty catchers, work for ten or fifteen managers and pitching coaches. If he let all those people tell him what to throw he’d never amount to anything but a confused pitcher.

Anyway, the discussion with Sal seemed to do something for Marshall because he went out today and pitched a fine game. He lost 3–2, but in his heart a pitcher counts that as a victory, just as the hitter counts as a hit the sharp line drive that somebody makes a leaping catch on. Marshall went all the way and gave up only four singles, probably the only four mistakes he made in the game. Well, five. The other one was not getting enough runs.

I was warming up late in the game in case Marshall’s sturdy arm should falter, which, considering the closeness of the game, was rather encouraging. After I gave up those two home runs I naturally went to the bottom of the pile. But I think two good innings after that redeemed me.

The other man warming up was John O’Donoghue. He’s pitched one scoreless inning for the club so far and that puts him right on top. Indeed, the way things are, any new man is No. 1 until he gets hit, which is soon enough.