Suitors of Spring, The: The Solitary Art of Pitching, from Seaver to Sain to Dalkowski (Summer Game Books Baseball Classics) (10 page)

The game commenced according to script. The Orioles scored three runs in the top of the first before Pirate starter Luke Walker, a taciturn Texan who dresses solely in black, was spared further embarrassment. When his replacement, Bruce Kison, stepped from the golf cart (built in the shape of a black and gold baseball cap) that had brought him in from the bullpen, there was a barely audible groan from the Pittsburgh fans. It was as if the appearance of this elongated, pink-faced rookie was a sign of Murtaugh’s resignation to the inevitable Baltimore triumph. Nor did the fact that Kison retired the side with one pitch abate this feeling of despair. However, when the Bucs scored two runs of their own in the bottom of the first, their fans, expecting a speedy replacement for Kison, took heart. When he took the mound in the second inning they hoped Murtaugh was just waiting to pinch-hit for him in the next inning. They would forgive Kison any future transgressions if he could just manage these three outs before retiring. Kison, working quickly but unhurriedly, with that sweeping right-to-left sidearmed delivery of his, retired the first two batters he faced. Then Paul Blair hit a pop fly that bounced in front of Roberto Clemente and sprang on the tartan surface over his head for a double. Kison, undaunted, retired the next batter on an infield fly.

Murtaugh did not pinch-hit for Kison in the second inning; nor in the fourth (by which time the score stood 3-all); nor in the sixth. During those innings, in full view of the largest audience ever to watch a baseball game, Bruce Kison pitched flawless baseball. In this flawless performance one must include, not exclude, the three batters he hit with his pitches, which set a World Series record. Those Orioles, bruised in spirit as well as body, were simply being served notice by Kison that despite his virginal appearance he was not a person with whom one could take liberties. In fact, Kison has always hit a high proportion of batsmen throughout his three-year professional career. (He once hit eight batters in a single game, which his team won.) His difficulty stems from a fastball that breaks sharply in on a right-handed batter at the last second. This break is often misjudged or overlooked by most batters and results in bruised ribs. Also, because his curveball is such a brief affair, and anxious batters tend to lean far over the plate in anticipation of pasting it off the right-field wall, Kison must protect himself by firing an occasional pitch a bit inside. This combination of a batter leaning one way and a fastball breaking the other accounts for his frequently plunked batsmen. There is a feeling among Kison’s close friends that he is not particularly upset by these accidents, and that he feels such occurrences more than compensate for his limited repertoire (two basic pitches) and his virginal looks. Yet, in the fourth game of the Series, he claimed that the three hit batters were results of his youthful wildness (strangely enough, he did not walk a single man during that span).

By game’s end Kison had put himself into baseball’s record books in another way. He had become the first pitcher to win a night World Series game. He did it by allowing the Orioles only Blair’s bloop double and no runs in 6⅓ innings, before retiring in favor of Giusti, who preserved the 4–3 victory. Four days later when the Bucs defeated the Orioles in the seventh game, Earl Weaver would say in a televised interview that the fourth game was the turning point of the Series, and that Kison had been the pivotal figure in the Bucs’ reversal. Weaver explained that with a three-run lead in the first inning, and with a rookie pitcher at their disposal, the Birds should have waltzed off with that game, giving them a 3-1 edge and, eventually, the Series. “It was Kison who turned the whole thing around,” said Weaver. “Without that nutty kid we would have won it.”

The moment Kison entered the Pirates’ locker room after the fourth game, writers, photographers and television cameramen, who had been occupied with his teammates, came running toward him from all parts of the room. He was surrounded and immobilized before he could reach his locker. Flashbulbs exploded in his face. People shouted orders and questions at him. A television cameraman, his camera slung over his shoulder like a bazooka, yelled at Kison to look his way, and when he did the cameraman flashed a bright light in his eyes. Kison raised a hand to shade his eyes, and as he did, a television commentator stuck a microphone under his nose and began asking him questions. The sportswriters were forced into silence as they waited their turn at Kison. They grumbled and fidgeted until the cameraman extinguished his lights, and then they simultaneously attacked Kison with a dozen questions. For just a split second a look flickered in Kison’s eyes like that of a terrified animal about to flee, and just as quickly it was gone, replaced by a look devoid of all expression. Kison folded his arms across his chest and then, towering gazellelike above the writers yapping at his heels, he began to answer their questions.

“Were you as nervous today as you were in the second game?” asked a writer.

“I don’t know,” said Kison. “I had trouble getting the ball over the plate in the second game so they said I was nervous. If I’d have gotten it over they would have said I was calm. So I guess you can say I was nervous in the second game but I was calm today.”

“What’s your telephone number?” asked another writer.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know your own telephone number?”

“I never had to call myself before.”

“Do you mean to tell us you weren’t nervous in that second game?”

“Everybody brings in nerves, nerves, nerves,” said Kison. “I don’t think about being nervous. I just tried to do better this game than last, that’s all.”

“If the Series goes seven games,” said another writer, “do you think you’ll be able to make your wedding?”

“When I set the wedding date I had been told by some of my teammates that the Series would be over before then. I was told it never went into the second week of October. I should have looked into it myself. That was my mistake. But if I’m in Baltimore Sunday then that’s where I’m supposed to be. I’m here to help win the Series first and then get married afterwards.”

“Bruce,” said Milton Gross, “now that you’re famous, do people recognize you when you walk the streets?”

“I don’t walk the streets.”

“Is your fiancée good-looking?” asked another writer.

“She’s okay.”

“I mean, is she a really good-looking girl, you know?”

“What do you think? Boy, that was a stupid one.”

“What do you think of major league sportswriters?”

“They’re all right. They haven’t stuck a knife in me, yet.”

While Kison was talking, Milton Gross, who was directly under his nose, began arguing with a radio interviewer over rights to the next question. The argument grew louder and louder until Kison broke off in mid-sentence and rolled his eyes heavenward. Finally the argument abated, and Kison was asked if his childhood dreams have come true.

“Yes, my dreams have come true, and then some.”

For a third time a writer asked him about his wedding.

“Why is everyone making such a big deal about the wedding?” Kison said. “It’s no big deal. If I can’t make it back to Pittsburgh Sunday we’ll have to change it, that’s all.”

While Kison was talking, Bing Crosby, part-owner of the Pirates, walked by him and said with a grin, “Well, they know where Pasco is now, Bruce.” A few of the writers broke away to interview Crosby, who Kison kept referring to as “the Bo-bo-bo-bo-man.”

“How often do you shave?” asked a writer.

“Every day,” replied Kison.

“Do you need to?”

“I wouldn’t shave if I didn’t.” Suddenly there was a commotion by the telephone on the wall. One of the Pirates’ trainers motioned for Bruce to answer the phone. While Kison talked, the writers edged closer to eavesdrop. One of them said, “Who is he talking to, the President?” Someone else said, “He’s talking to President Nixon,” but they were not sure until Kison hung up and returned.

“Who were you talking to, Bruce?”

“That was my father and mother and some friends of the family, and, oh, yes, my dog.”

“What’d they say?”

“Nothing much. My mother and father and the friends congratulated me. The dog didn’t say anything. He can’t talk.”

From the outer edge of the group the writer who asked Bruce about his fiancée’s looks said to another writer, “It’s hard to tell if he’s a bright kid or not. I thought he’d say his fiancée was sensational, a knock-out, something I could use. But he doesn’t say what you’d expect. I don’t know. Maybe he just isn’t too bright.”

“How do you show pressure inside?” asked a writer.

“I don’t know,” said Kison. “You tell me.”

“Don’t you feel
anything
inside?”

“I guess.”

Another writer told Kison that Frank Robinson, from whom he elicited snarls and stares when he plunked him in the ribs, was still furious with Kison for his performance. The writer asked Kison to comment on Robby’s anger.

“I think you’re just trying to cause friction there,” said Kison. “I don’t want to answer that question.”

From behind the mass of writers, Steve Blass, yesterday’s hero, could be heard saying, “Yeh, my wife will probably want to sleep with Kison tonight. Last night was my night. She’s a real front-runner, you know.” The writer he was talking to laughed, and he was soon joined by other writers who began interviewing Blass. A clean-cut, strong-jawed man, Blass not always had such an easy time with writers. A few years ago he found an old World War I German helmet and he took to wearing it in the locker room, to the delight of his teammates. When Dick Young discovered his antics he wrote a blistering column attacking Blass for making a mockery of something against which millions of American boys died fighting.

“I couldn’t see how anyone could take that so seriously,” says Blass today. “But still I got rid of the helmet. I even decided I should hate Dick Young forever. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t. The best I could do was stay mad for what I considered an honorable period of time. Now we get along fine.”

Today Blass gets along fine with most sportswriters who find in his self-deprecating humor (despite its predictability) the perfect tonic for tired stories. In fact, at 29, Blass is so in tune with the thinking of sportswriters that often he senses precisely what they are seeking and supplies it so smoothly and effortlessly as to make it seem spontaneous. He is also a master at sidestepping delicate queries with affable grace. It is a quality, says freelance writer Melvin Durslag, that all ballplayers must acquire if they are to survive. “They build up a tolerance to some questions and automatic responses to others,” says Durslag. “Bruce Kison hasn’t cultivated this yet, but he will, and maybe that’s a shame. Right now, Bruce refuses to answer dumb questions in a clever way, but is willing to answer good questions in a fresh new way. But soon he’ll answer them all with safe clichés.”

Blass agrees. “Bruce will have to learn how to handle writers eventually,” he says. “Sometimes he makes judgments too soon without considering all the possibilities. I’ve tried to tell him he can’t be too quick in evaluating people, especially writers. But Bruce is flexible. He’ll learn as he gets older. He’ll become more aware, which is a shame really. It’s like a loss of innocence. He won’t be this Bruce Kison anymore. He’ll be a new Bruce Kison, because people demand more from us than we’re really capable of giving.”

It is midnight when Bruce Kison finally emerges from a shower into an all-but-deserted locker room. Dripping, he moves to his stall and begins drying himself. He is incredibly long and bony. His ribs show, and yet he claims he has already begun to put on weight since he’s arrived in the major leagues. “I’ve gained ten pounds,” he says. One wonders where.

“Jeez, I hated all this attention,” he says to a friend. “I must have acted like a real fool in front of those writers. Did I? Jeez, I hope not. Aw, shit, I know I did. A real fool.” He throws his towel into the center of the room and begins dressing and muttering to himself. Bob Veale, the only other player in the room, comes over to Kison and says, with mock solemnity, holding an imaginary microphone in front of Kison, “Tell me, Kison, how’s it feel to set a World Series record by hitting eight batters in three innings?” Kison smiles and says nothing. Veale adds, “And to be such a big hit with all those sportswriters, too? My goodness, Kison, tell me, how’s it feel?”

When Veale is gone Kison says of him, “He told me to go into the locker room between innings so my arm wouldn’t stiffen up. He’s always helping me out like that. Jeez, sometimes I feel sorry for him. I wonder why I’m so lucky. I see him sitting alone at his locker, not saying anything, and I wonder what he’s thinking. He has to watch me get all this attention in my first year and he’s been here eight years.”

On the morning after his fourth-game triumph, Kison arrived at Three Rivers Stadium at nine for a television interview with Sandy Koufax. He was smoking a cigar, which made one feel his father ought to be told.

Kison and Koufax stood halfway down the third-base line and chatted while the television cameramen set up their equipment in the visitor’s dugout. A brilliant sun hung over the center-field bleachers and had already begun to cut through the morning mist. It was directly at Kison’s back, making him visible only as a dark silhouette, while Koufax, to Kison’s left, was minutely visible in every detail. Koufax, at 35, looked as sleek and jittery as a greyhound. He wore a navy blazer with an NBC television crest on the breast pocket. He also wore a red shirt and a red and navy patterned tie; gray double-knit slacks; and black alligator-skin loafers with a brass buckle on the tongue. As Koufax chatted with Kison, his microphone hanging at his side, he constantly tugged at his shirt collar, stretched his neck, smoothed his already smooth hair and glanced at the cameramen. Kison stood spread-legged and motionless. His hands were stuffed into his back pockets. His shirt hung outside his pants and he wore cowboy boots. When the cameraman signaled Koufax to begin, he raised the microphone to his lips, assumed a smile and began asking Kison questions. Kison replied in a monotonous voice. His hands remained in his back pockets and his eyes drifted over Koufax’s head to the deserted stadium around him. The first three takes were unsuccessful, and with each new take Koufax became increasingly annoyed. Finally, when Koufax blew a fourth take, the cameraman signaled for him to continue. Koufax yanked the microphone away from his mouth and said, “Goddamn it, no we won’t! Bruce doesn’t want to live with that, do you Bruce? And I sure as hell am not gonna make a fool of myself in front of millions of viewers.”