Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (36 page)

That’s what happened around the Yankees too. When Johnny Keane was manager and losing control of the ballclub, there was a story in the paper quoting an unnamed player as saying that Keane was a bad manager, that he was handling the club poorly, that none of the players liked him and that there was going to be a mutiny on the club any day now. And this all explained, of course, why the Yankees were losing.

Naturally there was a clubhouse meeting. Keane made a short speech asking who had said those things and what we could do about it? Elston Howard leaped to his feet in a rage, waving his arms and shouting. “How the hell could anyone do such a thing?” he demanded. “When are we going to learn not to talk to these writers? We shouldn’t even let them into our clubhouse. And the guy who said those things, we ought to find him and fine him a thousand dollars.” And so forth.

During this tirade I once again had that uneasy feeling that there were a lot of eyes on me. This was unfair. I never hid behind anonymous quotes. If I had anything to say to a newspaperman I said it. In fact, newspaper guys who considered themselves my friends sometimes wouldn’t print things I said only on the grounds that they didn’t want to hurt my career with the Yankees. Nevertheless, there were the eyes and all I could do was try to look as nonchalant as possible. I probably succeeded only in looking guilty.

The next day I asked the writer of the story to tell me who his source was. He said he’d tell me only if I promised never to reveal it. I promised. And I have never revealed it. Until now. It was Elston Howard.

Sometimes things just run away from a man. Take Pagliaroni. While Joe Schultz was making his speech about what a terrible thing for the ballclub the bellhop uniform article was, Pag was a vociferous supporter. “Damn right,” he said. “Dammit, yes.” And like that. But when the idea to do it first came up in the bullpen, Pagliaroni was one of its biggest boosters. I even thought he might run out and do it during the game.

Before the game Dick Baney and I were walking across the outfield grass to the bullpen, and the crowd was buzzing, and the organist was playing, and Baney looked around and said, “Hey, you know something? This is fun, walking across the outfield with all the people looking down at you.”

And I thought, “It’s true.” You forget how much fun it is sometimes just to walk across the outfield. And then I remembered sitting up in the left-field stands in the Polo Grounds as a kid and thinking to myself, “Cheez, if I could only run out on the field and maybe go over and kick second base, or shag a fly ball—God, that would make my year. I’d never forget it as long as I lived if I could just run across that beautiful green outfield grass.” And now, sometimes, I forget to tingle.

Baney asked me if I ever got nervous on the mound. I told him no, that you’re nervous sometimes until you throw the first pitch, then everything seems to be all right. But I’ve been nervous. Like the first game I started in Yankee Stadium as a rookie in 1962. My first eight pitches were balls. Then, with two men on, I ran the count on the hitter to 3 and 1. My next pitch was ball four. I saw Houk step out of the dugout to come get me, not only out of the game, but to send me to the minors. Career over. Only the umpire called it a strike. Houk stepped back into the dugout. I got the hitter on a pop-up and went on to pitch the worst shutout in the history of the game. That’s when I gave up seven walks and seven hits, stranded fourteen runners and won 8–0.

Then there was my first World Series game, 1963, against the Dodgers. It was the year Maury Wills stole all those bases. He was the first hitter and I stood there looking at him and thinking, “He’s going to get on, he’s going to steal second, we’re going to throw the ball into center field and I’m going to be humiliated on national television.” I remember being so nervous I could hardly throw the ball, and on the first pitch, Maury Wills, bless his heart, bunted the ball right back to me. Easy out. I’ve always been grateful to him for bunting that first pitch.

When Dick Baney went into the game to throw his first major-league pitch everybody in the bullpen moved out to the fence to watch him. We wanted to see how he’d do against the Brew, which is what we call Harmon Killebrew. Inside I still think of him as the Fat Kid, which is what Fritz Peterson over at the Yankees always called him. I’d say, “How’d you do, Fritz?” and he’d answer, “The Fat Kid hit a double with the bases loaded.” Well, the first time the Fat Kid faced Dick Baney he hit the second pitch 407 feet into the left-field seats.

After the game I was shaving next to Baney. “Welcome to the club,” I said. “You lost your virginity tonight.”

“The only difference,” he said, “is that all you guys will still be here tomorrow.”

Today Baney, who’s still here, asked me if I was throwing my knuckleball all the time now and I said that indeed I was. “Sal didn’t like that pitch this spring,” Baney said. “I guess he thought you were throwing it too much. I remember one time you gave up a homer on it and Sal said to Joe, ‘Now you see? That’s the pitch that’s going to get him into trouble.’”

I said that was interesting.

“Well, if Sal didn’t want you to throw it, and if you were getting hit, why did you keep throwing the knuckleball?” Baney said.

“My wife told me to,” I said.

“And there’s something I’ve always wondered about,” Baney said. “When you go to spring training with a club, even a minor-league club, they always tell you to work on something. Then you get hit and they get mad, no matter what you’re working on. So I still don’t know what to do in the spring—work on something or try to get the hitters out.”

Welcome to another club.

I made a terrible mistake today. I was chatting with Fred Talbot and said, “Hey, Fred, by the way, you ever hear from that guy you hit the home run for?”

Fred’s eyes narrowed and he looked mean. “Were you the one who sent that telegram?” he said.

“What telegram?” I said, feeling my stupid face breaking up into a giveaway smile.

Now he was clenching his teeth. “I
knew
you sent the damn thing,” he said, “and I’m going to get you back for that. I know you sent that paternity suit thing too.”

“Fred, I did
not
send you the paternity thing,” I said, all injured innocence. “I
may
have sent you a telegram. I don’t know yet. What did the telegram say?”

And he said: “I’ll get you back. I’m going to get you back on something, and when I do it’s going to involve your wife, your whole family, your friends back home, everybody in the whole damn country.”

After the game Talbot got back at me. It was still so hot that a lot of the guys didn’t want to wait for the bus back to the hotel and grabbed air-conditioned cabs instead. We lined up for them, and when I started to get into one as the last man, Talbot, who was behind me in line, leaped in ahead of me and said, “Take the next cab, you Communist.”

Got into the ballgame today. Pitched two-and-two-thirds innings and gave up two hits, one of them a tremendous double by a former teammate of mine at Western Michigan, Frank Quilici. We lost this one 11–1 and the Fat Kid hit another. The Seattle staff is impartial in the home-run race between Killebrew and Reggie Jackson. They
both
kill us.

Too bad McNertney didn’t make the All-Star team instead of Bill Freehan of the Tigers. Freehan isn’t having anywhere near the kind of year McNertney is. This shows that the players are voting on reputation rather than current performance.

Also, I think Mayo Smith should have had a manager from the Western Division as one of his coaches instead of three Eastern managers—Ted Williams, Earl Weaver and Alvin Dark. He could easily have picked Joe Schultz and left off Dark. Take a hike, son.

I’ve had the feeling for some time now that Wayne Comer and I don’t get along. I can tell because every once in a while he says about me, “Get him the fuck out of here.” An example. One night we were sitting around in Don Mincher’s room waiting to look at some stag movies and Pagliaroni and I got into a conversation about a book we were both reading,
Psycho-cybernetics
. I had just launched into my expert opinion of it when Wayne Comer said, “Get him the fuck out of here.” Anyway, we’ve now lost four straight to the Twins, having dropped a doubleheader, and we’re waiting for the bus to leave for the airport. An elderly gentleman walks up to the bus looking for Garry Roggenburk. He wants to thank him for tickets that were left for him. He doesn’t actually know Roggenburk, but he’s a friend of Bob Locker, who left the tickets, and about fourteen others, in the names of various players. “I was with Locker’s group and I just wanted to thank you for leaving the tickets,” the old man said to Roggenburk. “I feel bad about how the afternoon went for you boys. It certainly was sad for…”

Just then Wayne Comer breaks in with his loud, “Get him the fuck out of here.”

Somehow, at this moment, in this place, in front of this nice old gentleman, that seems obscene to me. So I say, “Hey, Wayne, knock it off. That’s a friend of Locker’s.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Comer says, with flashing wit.

“Take it easy,” I say. “It’s only a game, you know.”

“Only a game, huh? Well, you want to do something about it?”

“Yeah, I do. I want you to knock it off.”

“Why don’t you do something about it with your fists then, instead of your mouth?”

“Just knock it off. You were wrong and you know it.”

“Why don’t you crawl all over my ass then? Jump up and crawl all over me.”

“Yeah. That will solve it.”

And it ends with that.

Except Comer keeps muttering, “Just a game, huh? Just a game.”

After the bus left for the airport I was making notes on this brilliant repartee and Ray Oyler looked over my shoulder and tried to read them. “What are you writing?” he said as I covered the notes with my hand.

“None of your business,” I answered, sweetly.

“Well, just keep my name out of it,” he said.

Can’t promise, kid. But it’s tempting.

While we were losing the first game of the doubleheader—we were down 5–1 and it was going to be our third straight here—Joe Schultz called to John Gelnar, who was keeping the pitching chart. “C’mere a minute,” he said, motioning Gelnar down to the other end of the dugout. Gelnar was sure he was going to get a big tip on pitching. And Joe Schultz, pointing up into the stands, said, “Up there near the Section 23 sign. Check the rack on that broad.”

In the eighth inning, Joe Schultz said, “Well, boys, between games today we have a choice of roast beef, baked ham or tuna salad.”

We were winning the second game 4–0 in the eighth when Fred Talbot, who had a beautiful three-hitter going, got tired. He came out with a runner on base and none out. Disaster set in promptly. First Joe Schultz used Locker. Then O’Donoghue, then Segui. Everybody in the Minnesota lineup got a hit. Rod Carew, just off the bus after coming back from his weekend in the army, ran into the stadium, threw on his uniform and, with his fly still unbuttoned, got a hit. I swear they pulled an usher out of the stands and
he
got a hit. We lost 5–4.

Seattle

I called Bud Furillo in Los Angeles today and asked him if he would tell me the name of his source for the bellhop-uniform story. Reporters, he told me, never disclose their sources. Too bad, I told him, because it was a lousy source. The story wasn’t true. That shook him up nicely.

I explained to him that it was something we’d kidded about but hadn’t actually done, and it turned out he got the story “from a very reliable Los Angeles writer,” who got it from one of the Angels, which is about the way I figured it happened.

He said he’d call Milkes and apologize for printing an erroneous story. I also came away with the impression that he’d let Milkes know that no one on our club had given him the story. Not that I think Milkes doesn’t know that. I think the whole point of that little meeting was to intimidate us into not telling things to the press in the future. Sneaky.

Jerry Stephenson was outrighted to Vancouver today just as he was moving into his new apartment. I know he lost a deposit and some rent money when he was called up from Vancouver, and I’m sure it will cost him again. Stephenson was here for seventeen days and pitched a total of three innings. He was on the road most of the time, and while he was away his wife had a miscarriage. Stephenson is all shook up. Now wait a minute. Bob Lasko lives in Vancouver and he’s spending the summer in Toledo. Mike Marshall had to fight to get sent to Toledo instead of Vancouver. Why couldn’t they just have been switched around? Because nobody thought of it. Because nobody cared. I agree with the title of a paper Mike Marshall wrote in college: “Baseball Is An Ass.”

We have dropped out of third place into a tie for fifth with Chicago. And Kansas City, the other expansion team, is now ahead of us.

When I got to the clubhouse tonight, I found that my two pairs of new baseball shoes had been nailed to the clubhouse floor. Used for the operation were square cement nails. They tore huge ugly holes in the soles. Also the buttons were torn off my sweatshirts, my Yoo-Hoo T-shirts were ripped to shreds and several jockstraps were pulled permanently out of stretch. Talbot’s revenge, I thought immediately. But he swore it was not him, and he convinced me. Ray Oyler and Gene Brabender admitted they were eyewitnesses, but they wouldn’t tell me who did it. They assured me, though, that it wasn’t Fred Talbot.

I asked Steve Hovley to find out for me, and he said, “If I can I will, but I doubt if they’ll tell me.”

The only other guy with a possible motive is Wayne Comer. Somehow I doubt it was him. In fact I can’t imagine why anybody would want to do that. I think it was a prank. I think it was funny when I tried to pick up the shoes that were nailed down. I think it was
supposed
to be funny. I think.

Besides, I can still wear the shoes—as long as it doesn’t rain.

Made my thirty-seventh appearance of the season tonight against Oakland and my super knuckleball showed up. I struck out the first three guys I faced. The third strike to Rick Monday broke so sharply McNertney never got a glove on it. It rolled between his legs to the backstop and Monday got to first base. Of course, this was after Diego Segui had come into the game at a crucial moment and given up a three-run homer and the game. Pitching in lost causes, my ERA is back down to 3.50. I still can’t see how they can keep from starting me.