Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (62 page)

Johnny Edwards: “My son David read it. He kids me about it once in a while.”

Jack Billingham: “I saw this guy Bouton writing everything down and I said he really keeps a good chart on the hitters.”

Bob Watson: “I just looked in the index for
Watson.
”

Curt Blefary: “I’m not interested.”

Well, you can’t win ’em all.

The worst part about writing the yearbook story was that the Astros never used it, even though they paid me. Maybe they thought it wouldn’t go with the Bibles in the clubhouse. But I’m still proud to be an Astro.

My only regret is that I wasn’t free to go back for the Astro’s Old-Timers’ Game. Or, as Norm Miller calls it, “the Alzheimer’s Game.” But at least I was invited.

That’s more than I can say about the Yankees. They still don’t invite me back to Old-Timers’ Day. Now, you might ask, who would carry a grudge for twenty years?

I’m not sure, but I think it may be Mickey Mantle. He once refused to speak to Joe Pepitone for a month because one time Joe jumped ahead of him in batting practice. I know Mantle refuses to discuss
Ball Four
or even mention my name. When someone asks him about me, his response is pretty funny. He just says, “Jim who?” And if Mantle
is
the reason I’m not invited to Old-Timers’ Day, I’m quite happy to stay home. I wouldn’t want to be announced to the fans at Yankee Stadium as the player who caused “The Mick” not to show up.

The funny thing is that what I said about Mantle in
Ball Four
is now part of his legend. Mickey’s drinking ability is a running gag around the country. Radio comic Don Imus says that, “When you go to Mickey Mantle’s restaurant in New York City at 2 A.M. you can win a free dinner if you guess which table Mickey’s under.”

Even Bowie Kuhn wrote about Mantle’s drinking in his own book,
Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner
. I mention it here to help his sales, which I figure is only fair. Kuhn said that Mantle and Billy Martin were running around drunk in some hotel trying to round up votes against his reelection. All I’ve got to say about that is, “Commissioner, how could you? These guys are heroes. You’ve done the game a grave disservice.”

But the guy who has the most fun with Mickey’s reputation as a boozer is Mickey himself. On the corporate lecture circuit one of Mickey’s standing jokes is, “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

Lately, people have been asking me if ballplayers today behave worse than the players I wrote about twenty years ago. They are referring to players taking drugs, the Wade Boggs affair with Margo Adams, Steve Garvey fathering several kids out of wedlock and Pete Rose’s gambling.

Actually, the players aren’t any different today, it’s just that the world is a much more dangerous place. And players, as always, are ill-equipped to deal with it.

Years ago, most of the team would go out and drink after a ballgame. A few guys would get drunk and eventually some would become alcoholics. But today, just a few snorts of cocaine at a party can turn any ballplayer into an addict.

It’s the same thing with sex. Years ago, we had girlfriends on the road but they were happy just to be girlfriends. It was fair for both sides. The players liked convenient sex and the women liked the status of sleeping with a ballplayer. Our biggest fear was getting the clap.

Now that ballplayers are making big money, some girlfriends want to make a good living, too. That’s why this person named Margo Adams sued Boston Red Sox batting champ Wade Boggs for “palimony.” Getting the clap is nothing compared to getting clapped with a 12-million-dollar lawsuit.

Why do ballplayers have to take drugs and have girlfriends in the first place? This may come as a shock to some people but it’s because they’re human beings. Young human beings. Think of a ballplayer as a fifteen-year-old in a twenty-five-year-old body.

Being a professional athlete allows you to postpone your adulthood. You grow up in Hero World. Parents change the dinner schedule for you, teachers help with grades, coaches fawn over you, cops ask for an autograph and someone else buys the drinks. Or worse. As basketball great Bill Russell put it, “most professional athletes have been on scholarship since the third grade.”

And a lifetime spent developing one skill doesn’t allow much time to develop others. Lots of athletes can’t function in the real world. That’s why they only feel comfortable in each other’s company. They sense that something is missing in their lives, but they’re not sure what. At the same time, they feel invincible because of their success on the field.

This combination of emotional immaturity and physical ability makes athletes uniquely vulnerable to temptation. They can’t “just say no.” They’re too busy trying to fit in and show how great they are at the same time.

Meanwhile, most athletes don’t know who their friends are. They think their friend is the guy who picks them up at the airport or gets them a girl in Detroit. Or invites them to a party. The surprise is that there isn’t more drug use among professional athletes. These guys
are
the market.

If you think I’m exaggerating, just ask people who deal with professional athletes. Radio station managers, TV producers and booking agents all have stories about athletes showing up drunk or not at all, without even the courtesy of a phone call. People in the business know that to guarantee an appearance by a famous athlete you’ve got to send a limo, along with someone to make sure the athlete gets into it.

Okay, but do we have to know about all this pandering and philandering? Shouldn’t kids have someone to look up to?

Personally, I think kids are better off knowing the truth. I don’t believe kids think it’s all right to take drugs because some famous athlete did it. Usually, what they see is that the athlete got suspended, ended up in jail or died. I believe the kid figures that if the famous athlete can’t handle this stuff, how can he?

The people who get most upset about athletes falling from grace are the ones who built them up in the first place. I’m talking about the league owners and their friends in the media who help sell the sports product. Heroes sell tickets and newspapers and TV advertising.

But why do we need heroes in the first place? A philosopher once said: “Don’t pity the nation that has no heroes; pity the nation that needs them.” Another problem with heroes is that in order to look up to them, you have to lower yourself.

And what about Pete Rose? People are always asking me, so I’ll tell you. I think his lifetime ban for betting on baseball was cruel and unusual punishment. The major-league rule against gambling (even on your own team) is an anachronism, adopted as a response to the Black Sox scandal where players actually “threw” the 1919 World Series.

There is no evidence that Pete Rose ever “threw” a ballgame. But it is pretty clear that he’s a compulsive gambler, even though he denies it. Today we know that compulsive gambling is an addiction, just like alcohol or drug addiction, and denial is part of the illness. Accordingly, Rose should have been treated the same as baseball’s drug users: a one-year suspension and rehabilitation with Gamblers Anonymous.

The worst thing about the punishment is that it sends the wrong message to kids. Pete Rose gets banned for life for gambling while the drug addicts are allowed back after a year; and then they get extra chances after that. Baseball is saying, in effect, that gambling is worse than drugs. How do kids make sense out of that?

I believe that the real reason Pete Rose was banished for life was that he dared to challenge the authority of the Baseball Commissioner by going to court. When the late Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti suspended Rose, he said that no one man is bigger than baseball. This may be true. But it’s also true that baseball is big enough to survive without crucifying one man. Especially one sick man.

And how about those sports commentators, criticizing Rose for going on television to sell his memorabilia? The guy’s got legal bills and probably gambling debts to pay off. What did those guys expect Rose to do after devoting his life to nothing but baseball—get a job as a television executive?

The feeling against Pete Rose is so strong that NBC balked at his appearance at the first annual Masters Baseball game. Masters Baseball is an idea developed by me and former Dodger pitcher Andy Messersmith. Our idea is to have an eight-team league of recently retired All-Star caliber major-league players. The games would be played on weekends during the summer at different stadiums around the country.

We took our idea to NBC and they agreed to televise a one-game pilot of Masters Baseball in May of 1990. If this game is successful we’ll probably have another one in September. We hope Masters Baseball will be as popular as the Legends of Golf tournaments that led to the Senior Pro Golf Tour.

In case you’re wondering, Masters Baseball is not the same thing as that new Seniors League using retired players in Florida. And it has nothing to do with The Baseball League, which had plans to compete directly with Major-League Baseball using current players. But these new leagues are evidence of an expanding market for baseball.

I talk like that now because I’m a businessman. Actually, what I do is invent things and try to sell them. It’s a long-shot business but it’s fun, if you can handle failure. Fewer than two percent of new ideas ever make it. That’s why I’ve got a garage full of ideas that have bombed.

Like the Baseball Brain. This was my idea for a cardboard slide calculator that allowed fans to match up the batter and the pitcher and predict what might happen during a game. I sold 20,000 in a month. Unfortunately, I had manufactured 100,000.

And then there was Rodney’s Cube. This was a spoof of the Rubik’s Cube that I got Rodney Dangerfield to endorse. It had only three moving parts. “It’s so easy I can do it with my eyes open,” said Rodney. Rodney’s Cube was introduced just after the Rubik’s Cube craze died out. It was a lesson in timing.

Fortunately, all you need is one success to keep you trying. Like Big League Chew. This is that shredded bubble gum in a pouch that Rob Nelson and I invented in the bullpen in Portland, Oregon. We licensed it to Amurol Products, a subsidiary of the Wrigley gum company.

The good news is that Big League Chew has had sales of $14 million a year for the past ten years. The bad news is that Rob and I had to file a lawsuit against the Wrigley Company in order the get the royalties we had coming to us.

The good news is that we won about $2 million in damages. The bad news is that it took five years and cost $400,000 in legal bills. And it’s still not over yet because Wrigley is appealing the decision. Of course, we’ll eventually get our money. “Of course,” says Paula. “But not in our lifetime.”

Meanwhile, all the people I owe money to—lawyers, banks, friends and family—are rooting very hard for the success of my other ventures, like Big League Cards.

I thought it would be fun to put people on their own baseball cards with their picture on the front and their personal story or stats on the back. So my brother Bob and I set up a company that combines short-run color printing and custom typesetting to make small quantities that people can afford.

We introduced Big League Cards with a full-page ad in a local newspaper showing sample cards with kids’ pictures on them. Kids wearing baseball and football uniforms. Kids in band uniforms and cheerleading outfits. Kids wearing jeans and bathing suits and school clothes. We covered all the bases.

At a price of $30 for a minimum fifty cards, we needed a hundred orders to break even. We got up a pool in the office to see how many orders we’d get. Highest guess was 650. I said we’d get over 400. Paula guessed only 250 so she wouldn’t “jinx us.” I had visions of kids on their own Big League Cards chewing Big League Chew.

Would you believe we only got fifty-three orders? And that wasn’t the only surprise. Of the fifty-three orders, only twelve were from kids. The rest were from nineteen salespeople, five joggers, four newborn babies, three dentists, two guys and their cars, a motorcycle, a scoutmaster, a wedding picture, an engaged couple, two dogs, a pet monkey and some lady with a snake. I knew we were onto something, but I wasn’t sure what.

My latest invention is something I call “Collect-A-Books.” It popped into my mind when I was speaking with a publishing company about how to encourage kids to read. I know that kids read baseball cards. So I made a little book the size of a baseball card. “It’s interesting,” said the publisher, “but we don’t make anything like that.”

I took it to a dozen other publishers and they said the same thing. “We don’t make anything like that.” Of course, if they did make anything like that, it wouldn’t be a new idea.

Then I showed “Collect-A-Books” to Larry Greenwald of Collectors Marketing Company. “I love it,” he said. “Now let’s figure out how we can make it.” So, Collect-A-Books is coming on the market in 1990. Larry Greenwald should be the president of General Motors.

And if Collect-A-Books doesn’t make it, there’s Collect-A-Bats. These are ice cream sticks shaped like baseball bats, with major-league players’ autographs stamped on them. I licensed the idea to Good Humor. All you have to do is eat the right twenty-six Big League Ice Cream bars to collect the complete set.

A friend recently said, “Bouton, the secret of your success is that you have the mind of a nine-year-old.” This may be true. A reporter once described my office as “a long table littered with boxes of caramel popcorn, scissors, T-shirts, Silly Putty, paintbrushes, glue, a moldy baseball and other flotsam. It’s a third grader’s conception of Edison’s laboratory.”

My best idea may be Table-To-Go, a combination plate, tray and table which allows someone to hold a complete meal and a beverage in one hand, leaving the other hand free to eat with. It’s for cookouts and picnics or anywhere people want to be mobile with food. I finally got a patent for it after two years of trying.

I’m convinced that Table-To-Go will be a winner because it’s already been turned down by all the major paper and plastic cookware manufacturers. Big companies are the last to know if an idea is any good or not. As an executive at International Paper candidly told me, “Jim, this may be a good idea but we’re too big to know if it is or not.”