High Heat (21 page)

“In a flash, in that thousandth of a second, I saw his fastball thrown as hard as he could throw it coming right at my ear. My whole life passed before me. I tried to dig a hole beneath the batter's box 'cause I was scared to death. As he was winding up to throw his next pitch, I was already walking to the dugout. It was strike three for me, and I was just happy to be out of there.”

Dick Williams claimed that Ryan rarely threw at anybody, “but he was conveniently wild. His ball just took off.”

As later detailed in Ryan's autobiography, Williams remembered slugger Reggie Jackson hitting a line drive off Ryan, which was barely tracked down in the outfield. After Jackson made the turn at first base, heading back across the infield to the dugout, he gave Ryan a playful smack on the butt. The next half dozen games they faced each other, Ryan was “conveniently wild.”

Perhaps that's what prompted Jackson years later to say that Ryan was “the only guy who put the fear in me. Not because he could get me out but because he could kill me. Every hitter likes fastballs like everybody likes ice cream. But you don't like it when somebody's stuffing it into you by the gallon. That's how you felt when Nolan was throwing fastballs by you. You just hoped to mix in a walk so you could have a good night.”

Dave Duncan, who went on to be a respected pitching coach, says what separated Ryan from most pitchers was that he didn't “just get you out. He embarrassed you. There are times when you've won some sort of victory just hitting the ball.”

Brooks Robinson adds that when Ryan was in his prime there was definitely a fear of him. “There's an old baseball saying,” the Hall of Fame third baseman said. ‘“Your heart might be in the batter's box, but your ass ain't.'”

Such sentiment once forced Dodgers shortstop Bill Russell to return to the dugout before his at bat was over. The reason? A fastball delivered by the Astros' J. R. Richard that sailed over Russell's head
and splintered a piece of wood attached to the backstop. The wood was a good 30 feet beyond home plate, and Richard's heater was later reported to be 103 miles per hour.

Russell stepped out of the batter's box, thought things over, and then refused to step back in. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda tried to console him, but Russell had seen enough. So, Lasorda motioned for Pepe Frias to pinch-hit, which prompted the famous response, “Why do I have to bat?”

Before the start of the 1969 season, the St. Louis Cardinals traded slugger Orlando Cepeda to Atlanta. Cepeda still remembers his first at bat against his old friend and teammate Bob Gibson, and how the rules of engagement changed overnight. “The first time I went to the plate, he knocked me back,” he says. “It was mandatory, you know what I mean? In fact, Bob came to my house for dinner after the game, and my son said, ‘How come you threw at my dad?' And Bob said, ‘It's a game. Baseball.'”

From Ryne Duren to Rob Dibble, pitchers have always employed intimidation. Duren was famous for uncorking his last warm-up pitch to the backstop behind home plate. “I didn't do it as much as people think I did,” Duren once said. “But the evil that men do lives after them. Somebody said that once.”

Dibble, who along with hard throwers Randy Myers and Norm Charlton was part of the Cincinnati Reds' “Nasty Boys” relief corps, buzzed a hitter or two, especially early in his career. “I've pitched like that my entire career,” Dibble told the Associated Press after a 1991 altercation in which he brush-backed the Houston Astros' Eric Yelding, who then came after him and threw his batting helmet at the pitcher. “I didn't hit him. He hit me.”

Sometimes even the best intentions can turn heads. When Andy Baylock, who caught Steve Dalkowski in high school, complained about a sore receiving hand, a few adults advised him to get a slab of beef from the local butcher. They told him to cut it thin enough to slide inside the palm of the catcher's mitt to provide another layer of cushion. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What nobody envisioned was that the meat would ooze so much blood and juice that
by the middle innings hitters stepping to the plate against Dalkowski would see red stuff dripping down the catcher's forearm. “It got a bit out of control,” says Bill Huber, Dalkowski's high school coach. “I had to put an end to that practice, no matter how well intentioned.”

Over the years, a few hitters have found inventive ways to get even. Jackie Robinson, for example, took a page straight out of Ty Cobb's playbook. After being decked several times by the Giants' Sal Maglie, Robinson bunted up the first-base line. The blow was perfectly placed—too far for the catcher to field and not so close to the bag that the first baseman could take it unassisted. Maglie had no choice but to field the grounder. As he did so, Robinson, who perfectly timed his dash to first, ran headlong into Maglie. Giants manager Leo Durocher called Robinson's tactic “bush league,” and the incident went all the way up to the league president's office, where Ford Frick assured everyone that umpires had things under control. Later, Maglie admitted that throwing at Robinson only “made him a more aggressive hitter.”

Throughout his career, Maglie did more than enough to earn his nickname, “the Barber.” “I couldn't stop throwing the knockdown,” he said. “That would be the same as if Marilyn Monroe stopped wearing sweaters.”

Yet opposing pitchers soon learned not to throw at another Robinson, Frank Robinson. Head-hunting just seemed to rile him up, to the point that Phillies manager Gene Mauch finally decided to fine any of his pitchers $50 who dared challenge Robinson with a little chin music.

“Pitchers did me a favor when they knocked me down,” Frank Robinson says. “It made me more determined. They say you can't hit if you're on your back, but I didn't hit on my back. I got up.”

Bill Bruton, a career .273 hitter, may have best summed up the dilemma most batters face when it comes to knockdown pitches and beanballs. After teammate Eddie Mathews hit three consecutive home runs in a game, Bruton reluctantly stepped up to the plate, knowing exactly what was coming. He was hit by the very next pitch
after Mathews's third homer. “What did he pick on me for?” Bruton wondered after the game. “I didn't hit the home run.”

Mike Wallace of
60 Minutes
once asked Roger Clemens if he ever threw at a batter on purpose and the Rocket refused to consider the concept. In fact, he demonstrated a similar capacity for stonewalling when he testified before Congress about performance-enhancing drugs years later.

“I don't have to intimidate anybody,” Clemens told Wallace. “I don't need it. I don't need anyone to be fearful.”

But in the next breath, Clemens said he did need to pitch inside at times.

“That's what power pitchers do,” he said.

In the report,
60 Minutes
detailed how Clemens once hit the Mets' Mike Piazza in the head (“I tried to call him and apologize,” Clemens explained. “But I was shut down.”) and later threw a chunk of Piazza's broken bat at him in an incident during the 2000 World Series.

“Anytime somebody throws the ball at you, it's scary,” says the Yankees' Derek Jeter, who seemed to get routinely plunked by Clemens when they were on opposing teams.

Joe Torre, who managed Clemens in New York, told the New York press that the hard-throwing right-hander was “an intimidator.”

But with beanballs, what often goes around comes around. Maglie, the old Barber himself, perhaps played a role in Conigliaro's tragedy. After his playing days were over, Maglie became a pitching coach, eventually with the Red Sox. In Boston, he turned “Gentleman” Jim Lonborg into another intimidator on the mound. After going 10–10 in 1966, Lonborg blossomed into a 22–9 Cy Young winner during the Red Sox “Impossible Dream” season. Under Maglie's guidance, he wasn't afraid to come inside on any hitter, and the buzz began that batters needed to be wary against Boston's pitching staff.

By that point Johnny Pesky had been let go as the Red Sox manager, but he still followed one of his all-time favorites. “The night [Tony] was hurt, I was devastated,” Pesky recalls. “The only way you can view it is as one of those tragedies in life that happens to everybody, sooner or
later. I think of Tony often when I see a young hitter. But none have been as good as him. The closest one was Jim Rice.

“You fall in love with players in this business. In a way, that's what keeps you going. If I live to be 100, I'll never forget Tony.”

Mike Andrews was in his first full year on the 1967 Red Sox team. He was one of the first to reach Conigliaro after he had been beaned, along with several teammates and manager Dick Williams. By the time Andrews reached Conigliaro, the Red Sox slugger was motionless near the plate, his left eye almost completely shut. “Right then I knew that this was different than most injuries you see in baseball,” Andrews says. “His eye was already swollen up.”

While others contemplate what might have been, Andrews finds it amazing that Conigliaro played baseball again. After missing the 1968 season and a brief comeback bid as a pitcher, Conigliaro was back in the batter's box the following season. He hit 20 home runs and collected 82 RBIs in 1969, and he was considered by many to be the American League's Comeback Player of the Year. In 1970, despite ongoing vision problems, Conigliaro had 36 home runs and 116 RBIs.

Even though Conigliaro remained dogged about his comeback, routinely hitting 300 or more balls a day, he was now reluctant to be center stage with a bat in his hands. He liked to take batting practice in private, wanting to get his stroke perfect. Of course, his life would never be perfect again.

“That showed what kind of competitor Tony was,” Andrews says. “He wasn't the same Tony. Something was missing. But that didn't stop him from trying. I learned a lot about tenacity and heart by watching him.”

The night Conigliaro was beaned, his younger brother Billy and his parents were at Fenway. Billy had been playing for the Red Sox Single-A team in Greenville, South Carolina. But his season had ended prematurely with a torn hamstring.

“I wasn't supposed to be there that night,” recalls Billy, who played on the same team with his brother in American Legion and high school, as well as for two seasons later in Boston.

From the family seats, behind the Red Sox dugout on the first-base line, the beaning didn't seem that serious. Conigliaro had a
habit of “being dramatic,” his brother says. “And from where we were sitting, we didn't hear anything. It wasn't until I got down to the clubhouse that I saw how serious this could be.”

Before the game, a slumping Conigliaro had told his brother that he was going to move back up on the plate for this game, and start looking for something inside that he could pull. While Conigliaro was considered a streaky hitter, his brother also remembers his brother “as the best clutch hitter I've ever seen. A lot of players press in a tough situation. For some reason, Tony could relax at those moments.”

Conigliaro's clutch hitting helped set the tone for what became the Red Sox “Impossible Dream” season in 1967. Back on June 15, with a man on, he had battled back from a 0–2 count in the 11th inning against the White Sox. His two-run homer into the netting above the left field wall marked the night that many fans in New England began to believe in that magical team. But on that fateful night in August, Conigliaro hardly reacted at all when Hamilton's pitch sailed high and inside.

“Funny, you never go up there thinking you're going to be hit, and then in a fraction of a second you know it's going to happen,” Conigliaro later recalled in his autobiography. “When the ball was about four feet from my head, I knew it was going to get me. I knew that it was going to hurt because Hamilton was such a hard thrower.”

To this day, Billy Conigliaro, whose birthday is three days before the anniversary of the beaning, hasn't forgiven Hamilton, the man who threw the pitch.

“No doubt that ball was thrown at his head,” the brother says. “No doubt.”

 

 

W
e can love the brush with danger that high heat provides, the rush we feel when it teases, even momentarily frightens us. It can be the best roller-coaster ride in the amusement park that is the national pastime. But when a fastball bites, we're quick to vilify the pitcher responsible. By then it's too late to change what happened. All we can do is watch the impact of the incident ripple through the game and hope that some good comes of it. That's how it was with
Ray Chapman, still the only hitter at the major-league level to be killed by a pitched ball.

Chapman made a name for himself with his legs, his ability to fly around the bases and snare many a hard-hit grounder in the field. Conigliaro, of course, hit the long ball, but despite the different styles of play, the two were similar in many ways. Both were handsome guys, matinee idols in the towns where they played, and both seemed to have a bright future in the game ahead of them. Regrettably, both became casualties of the game's dark side.

A history existed between Chapman and the pitcher on the mound that muggy Monday afternoon, August 16, 1920. “Carl Mays throws it so he'll dust you off the plate,” Chapman is quoted as saying in
The Pitch That Killed
, “but I'll stand right up there. He doesn't bother me. He's not going to intimidate me.”

Everyone from Ty Cobb to Chapman's teammates on the Cleveland Indians had become convinced that Mays routinely threw at batters to gain the upper hand. For his part, Mays wasn't in any hurry to disperse any preconceptions.

When Cobb once confronted him, asking Mays point-blank if he threw at hitters on purpose, the pitcher answered, “What do you think?”