High Heat (25 page)

Perhaps it was Mickey Cochrane, Grove's catcher in Philadelphia, who figured him out better than anybody. When the southpaw got into trouble, Cochrane would forget about reminding Grove to count to 10 or trying to settle him down. Instead, Cochrane would fire the ball back to Grove and shout out an accompanying insult or two for good measure. Grove hated that, the
Christian Science Monitor
reported, and the pitcher “would try to throw the ball right through Cochrane. Meanwhile, the hitters were suffering.”

Let's leave it to Red Smith to sum up Grove. “On the mound [Grove] was poetry,” Smith wrote in a
New York Times
column in 1975. “He would rock back until the knuckles of his left-hand almost brushed the earth behind him, then come up and over with a perfect follow-through. He was the only 300-game winner between Grover Alexander and Warren Spahn, a span of 37 years.

“He had the lowest earned run average in the league nine different years, and nobody else ever did that more than five times. If the old records can be trusted, Alexander, Christy Mathewson, [Walter] Johnson and Sandy Koufax each won five ERA titles. Some men would say these were the best pitchers that ever lived. Are the records trying to tell us Old Man Mose was twice as good as any of them?”

 

 

T
wo decades after he beaned Tony C. at Fenway Park, Jack Hamilton opened a restaurant in Branson, Missouri. Back then
the town of 3,700 was nothing more than a wrinkle in the Ozarks. These days Branson draws more than 6 million visitors annually. They come from far and wide to see what has been nicknamed the “Hillbilly Las Vegas.” With 30 music theaters—named for stars from Roy Clark to Japanese-born fiddler Shoji Tabuchi—a 27-acre factory outlet center, and hotels, the traffic is bumper to bumper on Highway 76 through town. And nobody is busier than Hamilton.

“It's nice to know things work out for the best sometimes,” says Hamilton, who can be found most days at his restaurant, Pzazz. “We're just down the street from Mel Tillis's and Boxcar Willie's. We work hard, putting in long hours. But in the restaurant business, that's the way you like it.”

Most days, after troubleshooting his way through the kitchen, making sure there's plenty of prime rib (Pzazz's specialty), Hamilton can be found out front, greeting customers. Every couple weeks or so, somebody will walk in from Boston or somewhere else in New England. And even though Hamilton wishes he was better known for the one-hitter he pitched or the grand slam he walloped while a New York Met, invariably somebody will ask, “Aren't you the guy who hit Tony Conigliaro?” And with a resigned look on his face, Hamilton will nod and talk about that pitch one more time.

Throughout the 1967 season, it was rumored that Hamilton was throwing a spitball, which had been declared illegal soon after Chapman's death. In fact, early in the game in which Conigliaro was beaned, Red Sox manager Dick Williams complained to the umpires that Hamilton's pitches were behaving strangely. Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr, the Red Sox first-base coach in 1967, noted in his diary for that day that Williams protested Hamilton's offerings in the second inning. Back at the bench, Williams told Doerr that he “was afraid someone would get hurt.”

But the Angels' battery denies that Hamilton was throwing a spitter. Catcher Buck Rodgers, who would later manage the Angels, remembers the pitch as “a fastball that sailed.”

Hamilton also recalls Conigliaro crowding the plate so much that his head was hanging over it. “No, I wasn't throwing a spitter,”
Hamilton says. “I had two outs in the inning. It was tied. Why would I want to hit anybody in that situation? I was just wild. I was so wild that I couldn't have hit him if I wanted to.”

After Conigliaro went down, Hamilton stood on the mound with his arms folded, while many in the Fenway crowd of 31,027 booed. Hamilton started to walk toward home plate, but Rodgers, who had seen the condition Conigliaro was in, blocked his path. After the game, Hamilton tried to visit Conigliaro at Sancta Maria Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the Red Sox slugger had been rushed. But Hamilton wasn't allowed in.

“I never did talk with him,” Hamilton says. “That's what really bothers me. I didn't get a chance to tell him that it was an accident.”

And that's what Hamilton will tell anybody who asks him about the beaning today. It was an accident. “I know that in my heart, I didn't mean to do it,” he says. “So, it really doesn't matter what people may say. They don't know. They weren't there. When the anniversaries come around, I know it's going to come up. What are you going to do?”

 

 

“I
think it's malicious to hit anyone because of your own inadequacies,” Jim Palmer says, and Walter Johnson would have undoubtedly agreed.

Legend has it that the Big Train threw at a batter only once in his 21-year career. That declaration comes from several sources, most notably the sportswriter Shirley Povich. Such a reluctance to throw the beanball is attributed to Johnson's outstanding fastball and his easygoing disposition.

That lone beanball incident involving the Big Train occurred against the Philadelphia As in 1912, and if Povich and others are to be believed it wasn't even Johnson's idea. Throughout his career, Johnson told teammates that he was afraid that he would kill a batter one day, and after close calls he often ran toward home plate from the mound out of concern.

The best hitters noticed Johnson's apprehension about coming inside, especially with the hard stuff. The Tigers' Ty Cobb, who would
undoubtedly look for an edge against his own grandmother, saw how Johnson winced when he fired the ball too close to the batter's head and shoulder. That's when the Georgia Peach began to crowd the plate, confident that Johnson wouldn't dare bust him too far inside.

“I'd crowd that plate so far that I was actually sticking my toes on it when I was facing Johnson,” Cobb later told Povich. “I knew he was timid about hitting a batter, and when he saw me crowding the plate, he'd steer his pitches a little bit wide. Then, with two balls and no strikes, he'd ease up a bit to get it over. That's the Johnson pitch I hit. I was depending on him to be scared of hitting me.”

Perhaps that's a major reason why Cobb was the all-time hits leader for so long. He could use such reverse psychology against even the best in the game. Other hitters didn't think things through to such a degree or, if they did, didn't have enough confidence in their conclusion to actually try it out against Johnson. But occasionally some did have success.

One of them was the Athletics' Frank “Home Run” Baker. He hit so consistently off the Big Train that the Senators' trainer, Mike Martin, finally confronted Johnson.

“That Baker has been ruining us all season,” Martin told Johnson. “If you don't knock him down, I'll always think you've got no guts.”

Why the Big Train bothered listening to the team trainer is anybody's guess. But for whatever reason the criticism hit home. When Baker next came to bat, Johnson vowed he would intentionally throw at his head.

With Baker in the batter's box, Johnson went into his windup with malice on his mind. The pitch, as Povich later recalled, was “a high, hard one, inside, that barely missed Baker's skull and sent him foundering and pale into the dirt. Johnson, white with terror, was the first to reach him. He was a happy man when Baker stirred, glowered, and told him, ‘Get back there and pitch!'”

Years later, Johnson told Povich, “The moment I threw the pitch, I wished I had it back.”

In the twilight of his career, Johnson did an extended interview with
Baseball Magazine
. In the piece, he left little doubt on where he stood on the subject of the beanball, calling it “the meanest thing in baseball.”

He explained that the “bean ball is one of the meanest things on earth and no decent fellow would use it. I shall not attempt to judge anyone, but there are pitchers, I am convinced, who do resort to the bean ball intentionally.

“Such a ball to be effective must be pitched fast. The bean ball pitcher is a potential murderer. If I was a batter and thought the pitcher really tried to bean me, I would be inclined to wait for him outside the park with a baseball bat, or I wouldn't be averse to spiking him as I slid into first base when he was covering the bag. I don't think any treatment of such actions is too severe.”

For a moment, the Big Train sounds an awful lot like his old adversary Ty Cobb.

When so much is on the line, the thought process of pitcher and batter becomes very intriguing. Before Cobb rationalized correctly that Johnson would never throw at him on purpose, he went to great lengths to not only convince himself to step up to the plate but to do his utmost against a fireball pitcher like Johnson.

“I reasoned with myself. I said, ‘I am up here to make a success and must overcome this foolish fear,'” Cobb later explained to
Baseball Magazine
. “‘The worst that can happen to me is that Walter Johnson will hit me. If he does hit me that it is all part of the risk I assume playing ball, a risk that is peculiar to my profession. . . . '

“So I ignored my fears. I not only refused to back away from the plate, but I crowded the plate. I was determined to conquer Johnson's fastball. And that season I batted nearly .700 against him, a higher average, I believe, than anyone else ever made at his expense.”

In essence, Conigliaro and nearly every successful batter from Cobb's era to the present day have made the same pact with themselves.

 

 

F
our days after Tony Conigliaro came home from the hospital, the Red Sox signed outfielder Ken “Hawk” Harrelson. The Hawk replaced Tony C. in right field, collecting a league-high 109 RBIs the following season. In 1970, Conigliaro was traded to the Angels,
Hamilton's former team, where his eyesight continued to diminish. Midway through the 1971 season, Tony C. retired at the age of 26. In 1975, he attempted one more comeback with his Red Sox. But it ended after just 21 games.

After taking broadcasting jobs on the West Coast, Conigliaro came home for the final time. In 1982, after he had auditioned for a broadcasting spot with the Red Sox, he suffered a heart attack. Although his heart recovered, his brain went too long without oxygen. He lived out the rest of his days with his family and at a chronic-care hospital outside of Boston, where he required 24-hour care. Bumper stickers throughout New England read, “I PRAY FOR TONY C.” He died in 1990 at the age of 45.

“I don't know how my mother and father did it,” Billy Conigliaro says. “Each day was a struggle and you just took it a day at a time. I know that's what killed my father. Seeing his son suffer like that.”

Really nothing else in baseball can be as sudden or as shocking as a pitch that can kill. Even though nobody at the major-league level has died directly from a beaning since Chapman, baseball can still be deadly. Researchers Bob Gorman and David Weeks calculate that 9 minor leaguers and 111 amateur baseball players, some as young as eight years old, have died as a result of beanings since 1887. And despite the best in equipment, from lighting to helmets to a fresh baseball put in play at almost every turn, the game still has its dark side.

Consider another Friday night, April 17, 2009, at Fenway Park. The Red Sox are hosting the Baltimore Orioles when seemingly out of nowhere Danys Baez's 93-mile-per-hour fastball to Boston's Kevin Youkilis gets away from him. The high heat tails inside, head high, with such ferocity that all Youkilis can do is turn his head ever so slightly away. An instant later, the ball smacks off his helmet and Youkilis falls to the ground. On the mound, both of Baez's hands reach for his head, as if he cannot believe what he's done. For a long moment or two, the Fenway faithful hold their breath.

Thankfully, Youkilis is soon on his feet, walking to first base as the cheers build throughout the ballpark. Baez nods his head in Youkilis's direction, as if in apology.

“Hitting somebody in the head is frightening,” says Jim Palmer, now a broadcaster for the Baltimore Orioles. “Not only for the guy who's hit, but for the guy who threw the ball, too.”

 

 

L
egend has it that before a spring training game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Red Sox at the old Miami Stadium, Steve Dalkowski was throwing to a few hitters while a group of reporters and players watched. Among those in attendance was Ted Williams of the Red Sox, the last guy to ever hit better than .400 in a season, the guy renowned for his keen vision, the one who didn't like to wear a batting helmet. After studying Dalkowski, Williams couldn't help himself. He was tantalized by this epic fastball, so he picked up a bat, ready to take a few hacks against the young left-hander.

According to lore, Williams took three practice swings, cocked his bat, and nodded for Dalkowski to give him his best shot. Dalkowski went into that abbreviated motion of his. The next thing everybody knew the ball was in the catcher's glove, only a few inches below Williams's chin. “The Splendid Splinter” looked from the glove, back out to Dalkowski, and then walked out of the batting cage. He told reporters that he never would bat against that kid again. It was too dangerous—the way the ball seemed to disappear and then reappear only when it was already past him.

Of course, Teddy Ballgame could have just asked some of the kids who faced Dalkowski back in New Britain, Connecticut, to know how terrifying the experience could be. “If he'd hit someone in the head, he might have killed them,” Len Pare, Dalkowski's high school catcher, once told the
Baltimore Sun
. “Fortunately, he never did. But once a game, he'd throw a ball behind the batter. That put the fear of God in everyone. Then the next three pitches would be way outside because he was afraid of hitting the guy.