Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (69 page)

I grabbed a baseball and headed for right field, looking up into the stands as I ran, elated now to be out on the grass “with all the people looking down at you,” as Dick Baney once put it. Pretty soon, family members and friends were leaning over the wall, waving and taking pictures. In the upper deck, where I had reserved seats for sixty people, another contingent was hollering and waving. There was so much to see, and do, and feel. It was overwhelming, really. I just sort of floated around, tossing a ball, waving to people, soaking it all up.

That was the fun part. But there was also a sense of vindication; that I had been invited to a place I should have been invited to a long time ago. Twenty-eight years in the principal’s office for throwing spit-balls was a cruel and unusual punishment. I understand Old-Timers’ Day is a Yankee event and they can invite whoever they want, but it’s also made possible by the fans. As Ralph Terry had said, “The game belongs to the fans, Baby.”

Then I’d remember why I was there in the first place and a tremendous sadness would come over me. I was there because my daughter had died. I knew Laurie would have wanted me to have fun, so I didn’t feel guilty; but I just couldn’t keep the emotions separated for very long.

I’d think of Michael and his Father’s Day gift, and feelings of love and pride would well up. I bounced from pleasure to vindication to sadness to pride and back again. How I felt depended on the moment.

When I wasn’t waving and smiling, or welling up, I’d try to do some serious throwing with whoever wandered by. I didn’t want to embarrass myself if I got into the game. You never know who you might be pitching to. The last thing a ’60s guy wants to do is face some guy from the ’70s or ’80s, not to mention ’90s.

As soon as batting practice was over, I jogged in to get ready for the big moment—the introduction of the players. This is actually more important than the game itself, which is an anti-climactic side show. I sat on the top step of the dugout next to Yankee pitching coach and former teammate, Mel Stottlemyre. Mel and his wife Jean had lost their youngest son, Jason, to leukemia in 1981. Mel said it was two years before he could really function again. I had at least another year to go.

“Are you going to lose your hat when you pitch?” Mel asked.

“I don’t throw hard enough anymore,” I said.

“You have to lose your hat,” said Mel. “That’s your trademark. Everyone will expect it. Just prop it on your head and make it fall off—otherwise the fans will be disappointed.”

Mel is one of the great pitching coaches in baseball.

With the players gathering in the dugout, I scanned the stands behind home plate for Paula’s chartreuse jacket; the one she was wearing so I could see her from the field. She was there with Michael and David and my dad and my brother Bob. Lee was out of town on business and Hollis was in Amsterdam. I spotted the jacket, arms flapping as if trying to signal an airplane, and waved back again for about the fifteenth time.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” boomed the legendary public-address announcer Bob Sheppard, making it official. “Welcome to the 52nd annual Old-Timers’ Day.” Bob Sheppard’s voice has not lost a step.

Sheppard then introduced Yankee announcer Michael Kay, who would introduce the old-timers. On Old-Timers’ Day, players are introduced with their career highlights first, to build suspense and let the fans try to guess who they are. The players wait in the dugout, listening to the highlights, to see whose turn it is to run on the field. I wondered what highlights they’d choose from my career.

“He was a pretty good pitcher in the 1960s… but then he wrote a book… and became a pariah.… Let’s welcome…”

I moved to the top step of the dugout so I could hear the announcer. They usually introduce the smaller fish early and save the big guys for last, ending with Joe DiMaggio. I just didn’t want to be first.

“He spent the mid-1960s with the Dodgers…,” Michael Kay began, and I knew it wasn’t me.

“Only the fourteenth Yankee player to hit three home runs in a game…” Nope.

“Played eleven years in the majors…” Nope.

Fifteen players later, I was wondering if they had skipped me by mistake. Maybe I was on a list of players to be introduced in street clothes. If they got to the end before realizing the oversight, I’d
never get
introduced; they sure as hell weren’t going to bring me out after Joe DiMaggio!

“Remember the Yankee whose hat fell off whenever…?”

A charge went through my body. I waited a second just to be sure.

“… he rang up twenty-one victories in 1963.…”

I climbed out of the dugout and started for first base. I felt unsteady, like I might topple over. I heard a roar. What if I fell down? I wondered. It seemed as if I was moving in slow motion, or underwater. At some point my hearing went out. I was moving in a white zone, watching myself slap hands with the other players. I took my place at the end of the line, numb, trying to figure out what had happened.

I stood there like that through what must have been two more introductions.

Slowly, I began to focus again. Son of a gun, I thought, I’m really
out
here. On Old-Timers’ Day. This is great. The other players were being introduced but I paid no attention. I was in my own little world. I looked into the stands again for Paula’s green jacket, but I couldn’t find it because everyone was standing, blocking the view.

Then I remembered the gang in the upper deck in right field; my brother Pete and his family, my aunt Frances, my cousins, the Goldensohns, the Stanleys, the Elitzers, the Nelsons, Laurie’s Girls—which is what we call her closest friends Noreen, Kay and Grace—some of Mike’s friends, and others. Could they see me from that far away? I wondered. Could I see them? I stepped back off the foul line and looked up, waving my arm, oblivious to the ceremonies around me.

And that’s when I saw a large blue banner with white block lettering that read, WE LOVE LAURIE, being held aloft by a frantically waving group of people. That must be Laurie’s Girls, I figured, who had obviously been waiting for this moment.

It got me right in the heart and I began to cry. Players were being introduced and cheered, and I was crying. Laurie, my poor Laurie, I thought. She would have loved to be here. And maybe she was, I told myself.

I waved my hat to let the girls know that I’d seen the banner, and I stepped back into the line. After a memorial tribute to Mel Allen, a recitation of Yankee greats enshrined in Monument Park in center field, and the singing of the national anthem by Robert Merrill, the players headed for the dugout to play ball.

That’s when I realized something terrible. I had forgotten to acknowledge Michael, whose letter had made it all possible! My plan had been to tip my cap to him as I came out of the dugout. But I was in such a daze, I’d forgotten all about it. Now it was too late. I panicked. What could I do?

Then I remembered that there was going to be a game. I could tip my cap to Michael from the mound. That would actually make more sense. That’s when I’d do it
if
I got into the game. But not everybody plays. Old-Timers’ games are three-inning events, with players shuffling in and out, and some guys never get in. Gene Michael was managing the team. I went over and asked if I was scheduled to play. Fortunately, he wasn’t eating a liverwurst sandwich. Gene promised me one hitter. That’s all I wanted.

Keith Olbermann, my favorite TV guy, was doing the play-by-play over the PA system. When my name was announced I headed for the mound, and my final curtain. It all went perfectly. The scoreboard flashed the message I had requested earlier that said, THANKS, MIKE. I took off my hat and pointed it to where he was sitting in the stands, holding it there for a moment so everyone understood, and gently placed it back on my head.

Very gently. On my first pitch, the hat popped off as Mel had suggested, and Olbermann called it BALL FOUR! It was fantastic. On a day of ceremony, ritual, and gesture, I was allowed to play my part—not just for the fans, but for me and my friends and family. Then, to top it all off, Jay Johnstone hit a nice little dribbler to second base and I was out of there.

How did it feel the day
after
Old-Timers’ Day? Like I’d just climbed off one of those paint-mixing machines at the hardware store. A temporary, but welcome, reprieve from the depression I’d been living with since Laurie died. Or, as I say in conversation, “Since Laurie…” because I can’t stand to hear myself utter those terrible words. But underneath, the depression was still there. In fact, I was so depressed, I didn’t realize I was depressed.

I had gone from being a “pathological optimist,” as Paula used to call me, to a fearful and panicky person. I’d make an awful decision based on fear, then panic over how to recover from the awful decision. In the old days, when I was on my game, a friend had once said, “You know the expression, ‘He’s not playing with a full deck?’ Well, Jim’s playing with extra cards.” Now I was playing with half a deck. Or less. I was folding with aces and sticking with a pair of twos.

I didn’t care what happened to me anymore. I’d be in an airplane, bouncing around in a storm, and I wouldn’t be nervous; just let it go down, I’d think, I’ve got plenty of insurance. I only wanted to eat comfort foods, like macaroni and cheese and hamburgers and mashed potatoes and peanut butter sandwiches. Which is why Paula never wanted me to drive alone, or pick the restaurants.

Ironically, I only recognized that I was depressed when I was having a really good time. I’d find myself laughing at something, or enjoying a moment on a tennis court, and a noticeable feeling of joy would hit me, a fleeting speck of freedom from care and worry. But I couldn’t make it last. At night, instead of nodding off to sleep with hopes and plans for the future as I’d always done, I’d toss and turn with doom and gloom about the past. And feel sorry for myself.

Then on August 20, 1999, a few days past the second anniversary of Laurie’s death and just over a year after my return to Old-Timers’ Day, I was driving to a quarry to pick out some stones and came upon a police roadblock where a bad accident had just occurred. A fire truck and an ambulance were on the scene, about seventy yards up the road, with their lights flashing. As I slowed down I could see it had been a head-on collision between a pickup truck and a gray Jeep.

A bolt of terror struck me. Paula! That was Paula’s gray Jeep, the
exact
same color, same model! She had left the house about a half hour before me to do her own errands, in the same direction,
along the same highway!

In a panic, my heart pounding, I pulled over and jumped out of my car and started running toward the accident. A policeman held up his hand and signaled me to stop. I ran right past him. As I got closer another policeman, seeing me coming, jumped in my path with his arms held out.

“Whoa, stop right there!” he commanded.

“That’s my wife in the Jeep!” I shouted, as I dodged around him. “I have to get there.”

My
eyes
were blurring with tears as I ran, my lungs gasping for air. No, no, no, I thought, not Paula, too. My Babe. Just as I got there, the ambulance doors were closing.

“Where is she?” I hollered at the policeman coming toward me.

“Where is who?” he barked, grabbing both my arms.

“My wife!” I said. “I think she was in the Jeep.”

“There were no women in this accident,” he said. “Two men. That’s all.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, in disbelief.

“Positive,” he said, releasing my arms. “Now go sit over there and calm down.” And he directed me to a highway guardrail.

I sat there for about ten minutes, until I stopped wheezing. If I don’t get a heart attack now, I thought, I’m never going to get one.

Later, at the house, I couldn’t wait for Paula to walk in the door. When she did, I put my arms around her and held her tight. Really held her close and told her what had happened, and how scared I’d been.

“My God, what a terrible experience,” said Paula. “But you can relax now. I’m here and everything’s okay.”

She looked intently at me. “And you’re back,” she said. “You’re back.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant.

“You haven’t been yourself for two years,” said Paula. “This is the first time, since Laurie died, that I’ve felt you’re really
with
me. I was afraid I had lost you and that you were never coming back.”

In any case, I think I’m getting better. I still carry a handkerchief for sudden tears, and melancholy is still my default setting, but at least I’m not so numb anymore. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I’m actually glad to be alive. I’ve got plans to build a stone terrace on the east side of the house. I’ll be doing some work with a money-management firm in New York. I’m back on regular foods now and I’m starting to care when the plane jumps around.

And I’m getting invited to more ballparks.

A group I recently spoke to in Seattle arranged to have me throw out the first pitch before a Mariners’ game against the Minnesota Twins. On my way to the stadium, I stopped by the Eagle Hardware store, the edifice built on the parking lot that was once Sicks Stadium, home of the immortal Pilots. At least it’s recognized as an historic landmark. Just outside the entrance, in a batter’s box painted on the cement, stands a bronze statue of a batter hovering over a brass home plate.

“Batter up!” reads the inscription on home plate. “You are standing on the site of Sicks Seattle Stadium, home of the Seattle Raniers and Seattle Pilots. If the year were 1942, you would be in perfect position to knock one out of the park.”

It’s altogether fitting that the Pilots should have to share credit with a minor-league team, and as if that wasn’t pitiful enough, the statue is standing
sideways
in the batter’s box, as if the pitcher’s mound was over by the first-base dugout! A
pop fly
would leave the park—about a hundred feet foul.

Inside the store, near cash register No. 17, sixty feet, six inches away from the batter outside, is a beige circle on the floor representing the pitcher’s mound, with a white pitcher’s rubber in the middle. There is no inscription on the mound, its location next to a checkout lane being commentary enough.