Suitors of Spring, The: The Solitary Art of Pitching, from Seaver to Sain to Dalkowski (Summer Game Books Baseball Classics) (11 page)

The fifth take began with Kison saying, “I was very displeased with my performance in Baltimore in the second game. . . .”

On the morning of the seventh game of the World Series, Bruce Kison sat at a table in the coffee shop of the Hilton Hotel in Baltimore and waited impatiently for his scrambled eggs. He had returned to Baltimore with his teammates after the fifth game, which the Bucs had won 4–0. Nelson Briles, a travel-weary veteran, who does an excellent imitation of Humphrey Bogart, had pitched a superb two-hitter in that game. Afterward in the Bucs’ locker room he was almost in tears as he told sportswriters, “This has to be the biggest thrill of my career.”

The Orioles had staved off a possible four-game sweep by the Bucs with a 3–2 victory in 10 innings of the sixth game to set the stage for today’s deciding contest. The importance of the contest, in which he would be the first reliever in case Blass faltered, and the uncertainty about reaching his own wedding that night in Pittsburgh, made Kison unusually irritable. His irritation had also grown from what he considered to be undue attention heaped upon him by sportswriters and photographers ever since his fourth-game triumph. He did not like his instant notoriety, he said.

To pass the time while he waited for his breakfast, Kison tried to objectively reevaluate his pitching of the past year so as to best be able to negotiate his 1972 contract with the Pirates’ front office. He decided that his 10 victories in Triple A, his six victories during the regular season with Pittsburgh and his two playoff and Series victories qualified him as an 18-game winner. Furthermore, his victory in the playoffs and the one in the Series would be worth about a half-million dollars to the Pirates, and, possibly, if they won today, a million dollars. He deserved a small portion of that cash, he said, and he wondered just how much he should ask for. (Ironically, when the Bucs divided up their World Series and playoff booty, they failed to give Bruce Kison a full share.)

“It’s funny,” said Kison, “but I don’t care that much about money. I mean, here I am talking about all this money, and if I had to I’d play for nothing back in Pasco. I wouldn’t play every day for nothing, but still I’d play. Money doesn’t mean that much to me yet. I’m not a clotheshound like some guys on the club. Clothes are just something to wear, necessities, like food. I don’t love to eat. I eat until I’m content, that’s all. But it seems the more you taste big-league life the more you want—or think you want. You get caught up in things that never meant much to you before. You become something different. I’m not the same person I was a year ago, six months ago or even a few weeks ago. When I was a kid I admired the milkman. I wanted to grow up and be just like him. Then you grow up and your sights change. Your goals get larger than they were, and Pasco is no longer enough for you. I still love to go back to Pasco and hunt, but I don’t think I could go back and drink beer on Saturday nights for the rest of my life.

“I once said I could never stay in baseball unless I was in the major leagues; that if I didn’t make it I’d go back to college and get my degree. College is getting farther and farther away from me. I can see myself as an organization man in the minors now. I wouldn’t like it much, but still I can see myself doing it.

“It doesn’t take long in baseball before you become like everyone else. I mean, when you first come to the majors you hear guys talking about things, like girls and stuff, and you think, that isn’t me. I’ll never be like that. But pretty soon you realize you’ll evolve into what everybody else is sooner or later. But I don’t think I’ll mind that. It doesn’t look so bad now. And when it happens, all I’ll think about is protecting myself up here. I know that right now there’s some kid in the weeds, some kid riding a bus someplace, and he’s checking my ERA in
The Sporting News
just like I did at Waterbury. That’s funny when you think of it, isn’t it?”

Bruce Kison looked around for his waitress. “Jeez, where is she? I only ordered eggs.” He sighed disgustedly and then continued. “I guess I’ve learned a lot up here. I learned that baseball is for the owners and sportswriters and fans, not the players. We just perform for them. For instance, the other night a guy came to my hotel room and asked if he could come in and talk to me. He said he was a great Pirate fan and that he followed me closely and thought I was great. So what could I say? Anyway, he kept talking and talking about how great I was and how no one will believe it when he tells them he was in Bruce Kison’s room, and all the while he’s looking at me with these big eyes like I’m some kind of hero or something. Finally I said to him, ‘It isn’t that big a deal, you know.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘It is to me.’ Then he left.

“People idolize us too much. They give us importance we don’t deserve. I know I may be the first pitcher ever to win a night World Series game, but I don’t feel that important. I still think of myself as a kid. But maybe that’s just me. Baseball is still a sport to me. It’s a business to everyone else. I’m just a piece of property, I know that. But that doesn’t mean I want people to make a living off me all the time. Take my wedding, for instance. I don’t want people to make a living off my wedding. That’s a helluva way to start out.”

Suddenly the waitress appeared with his eggs. She placed the platter of eggs in front of Kison and he looked at them for a second. He picked up his fork, picked at the eggs and then said, “I wanted them well done. These eggs aren’t well done.” The waitress picked up the platter and returned to the kitchen.

Kison laughed a little. “That’s funny. I’d probably never have done that a year ago. But there are also a lot of things I used to do, I’d never do now. When everybody’s looking at you, you can’t always express exactly what you feel. I think that’s the most important thing I learned up here. I mean, you don’t tell everything you know anymore.”

A Talent for Refusing Greatness

A small boy is trying to bounce a bat off the rubber floor of the Cleveland Indians’ dugout and catch it as it bounces back. He misses repeatedly. Out on the field the Indians are taking batting practice while the Oakland A’s play pepper in front of their dugout.

“Heh, Moon,” calls Alvin Dark, the Cleveland manager, from behind the batting cage. “Weren’t you supposed to pitch today?”

Oakland pitcher Johnny “Blue Moon” Odom looks up from his pepper game and says, “Supposed to, Alvin. But I wasn’t feelin’ too good today.” He grimaces and massages his right shoulder.

“Jeez, that’s too bad, Moon,” says the Cleveland manager with an evil little grin. “Sudden will be very disappointed. You know, I saved Sudden just for you today.”

“I appreciate that,” says Odom, “but I guess I’d rather pitch tomorrow.”

“But we ain’t playing tomorrow,” says Dark.

“I still rather pitch tomorrow,” says Odom, and players on both clubs break into laughter.

“Sudden” is the nickname of the Cleveland Indians’ 27-year-old left-handed pitcher, Sam McDowell. McDowell was given that name by opposing batters, who when asked to describe how his fastball approached the plate, invariably replied, “All of a sudden, man, all of a sudden.” Ever since, McDowell has been signing autographs, shirts, photographs, gloves, baseballs and just about anything but checks, “Sudden” Sam.

On May 6, 1970, Sudden Sam McDowell fired his sudden pitch past 15 Chicago White Sox batters in eight innings. He lost the game 2–1. When Blue Moon Odom heard of McDowell’s feat he shook his head in disbelief. “Man, if I had Sudden’s stuff I’d win 25 games every year.”

Some people thought Odom had complimented McDowell—until they checked McDowell’s six-year major league record and discovered he had never come close to winning 25 games. In fact, McDowell had barely won that many games in two years. With what has been called by most major league hitters “the best stuff in baseball,” McDowell has managed records like 17-11, 13-15 and 15-14. His best year was in 1969 when he finished 18-14. His career record is 89-80, although admittedly he has never played with a good team. But then again, neither did Robin Roberts when he was winning 20 games all those years for the Phillies—and Roberts never had “the best stuff in baseball.”

Odom was not the first man to be critical of McDowell’s lack of ability to win baseball games, although it appeared to be the first time McDowell was stung by such a remark. He responded by winning his next seven of eight decisions for a 10-4 record, a 2.40 ERA and 146 strikeouts in 146⅓ innings. At one point he had all the club’s eight complete games to his credit. By July most opposing pitchers were discovering mysterious sore arms that disappeared the day after they missed their turns against McDowell. (Odom’s was not mysterious, however, and he was eventually placed on the A’s disabled list.)

To casual observers it would seem that Sudden Sam had finally silenced his critics. But this was not the first time McDowell reeled off a flurry of victories, silenced his critics and then stumbled into warm mediocrity by September. In 1966 he was 4-0 in the first month of play, and then, after a brief sore arm, managed only a 9-8 record despite a 2.88 ERA and 225 strikeouts in 194 innings.

It has been said that Sudden Sam McDowell possesses a talent even greater than his assorted pitches: the talent to refuse his greatness. Like a character from an Ayn Rand novel, he has discovered he has the kind of awesome talent that stills all motion in its wake—only Sam McDowell does not know why all motion is stilled in his wake, and furthermore, he could not care less. He seems to be afraid that if he let his talent grow to its fulfillment he might cease to possess it, and it, in turn, would possess him. So he treats his talent like some unruly growth he must periodically prune before it becomes unmanageable.

When Sudden Sam McDowell emerges, hunched-over, from the darkened runway into the sun-drenched Cleveland dugout, he looks like some monstrous pin-striped Polar bear emerging from a winter’s hibernation. He stands 6 feet, 6 inches tall, weighs 235 pounds, has a natural snarl to his lips and throws a fastball with such force that his catcher, Ray Fosse, worries that someday he will lose all circulation in his catching hand. Today, McDowell also has a heavy, sandy stubble growing over his large, square jaw.

“I never shave on days I’m gonna pitch,” he says, in a deep, understated growl. “I try to look extra mean on those days. It helps me get batters out.” He also does not talk to writers or fans, sign autographs or pose for pictures on those days.

When McDowell sees the young boy bouncing the bat off the dugout floor he walks up behind him, reaches over his head and grabs the bat. The boy whirls around, looking up and up and up in terror into that unshaven, shadowed face.

“Watch this,” says McDowell. He bounces the bat handle on the floor, catches it as it springs back, flips it over his shoulder, lets it slide down his back, pulls it through his legs, bounces it one more time and then executes a perfect pirouette before catching the bat on the rebound.

“Wow, Sudden, how’d ya ever learn that?”

“Easy,” says Sudden, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly. “I practice every time I hit a home run.”

“Will ya teach me?”

“I can’t right now,” says Sudden, and he navigates three dugout steps in one leap. “I have to go practice ‘The World’s Greatest Drag Bunt.’” McDowell claims he is the second best hitter on the Cleveland club (Vada Pinson is the best, he admits), so he sees no sense in practicing his hitting when he could be spending his time more valuably by practicing his drag bunt.

“The only thing I get satisfaction from,” he says, “is accomplishing something I’m not supposed to be able to do. I live for challenges, and once I overcome them I have to go on to something new.”

But Sam McDowell is
not
the second best hitter on the Cleveland Indians, and he knows it. However, he is so talented—or rather blessed with talent—that he probably could be if he ever put his mind to it. But the possibility of achieving a goal and actually achieving it are one and the same thing to McDowell. That is, to prove one
could
be the greatest hitter is the same as
being
the greatest hitter in Sudden’s estimation. Therefore, why bother to prove it? This is precisely why McDowell never has a won-lost record commensurate with his ability. He knows he’s proven time and time again that he has the best stuff in baseball (he holds just about every American League strikeout record and, along with Sandy Koufax, is the only pitcher ever to average over one strikeout per inning), therefore he feels he is naturally the best pitcher in baseball. Right? Wrong. Wrong to most people maybe, but not to Sudden Sam McDowell. Like many extremely talented people, Sam McDowell does not judge his accomplishments by conventional standards. His challenges, and their eventual resolution, are very private affairs independent of either the approval or disapproval of anyone else.

As McDowell walks to the warm-up mound in the right-field corner, fans come running from all parts of Municipal Stadium to watch him throw. He does not warm up like most pitchers, soft-tossing 40 feet from their catcher as if trying to prolong the inevitable trek back to 60 feet, 6 inches, where their deficiencies become glaringly apparent. McDowell begins throwing 80 feet from his catcher, and almost from his first pitch the ball is swallowed in the catcher’s mitt with a thunderous crack. And when Sudden throws his first curveball he does not cautiously spin it up to the plate in a lazy arc, “just to get the spin right.” Instead, he fires it with such force and snap that it collapses at the plate like a mallard shot on the wing. By the time Sudden finally works down to 60 feet, 6 inches, it sounds as if there is a small thunderstorm in the Cleveland bullpen.

It is obvious that McDowell takes great delight in watching his pitches behave even when he’s only warming up. And he admits to often concentrating so much on his individual pitches and their perfection that he loses sight of everything else. His individual pitches then become his goal rather than simply the means of attaining some larger goal—a victory, for instance.

“I try to break things down to their simplest element,” he says, “and sometimes I guess I do it to an extreme. For instance, a game to me is just a series of individual challenges—Me against Reggie Jackson or Me against Don Mincher. If I find I can get a guy out with a fastball it takes all the challenge away, so next time I throw him all curveballs. If I don’t have a challenge I create one. It makes the game interesting.”

Against Oakland this night, McDowell breezes along with a shutout until the fifth inning. In the fifth he walks the A’s seventh batter, hangs a change-up to the eighth batter for a single, then tosses a half-speed fastball to pitcher Pat Dobson, who lines it to left field to score two runs. After another single and a walk load the bases, Sudden strikes out Sal Bando on three fastballs, then fans Reggie Jackson on fastballs thrown so hard that rookie Steve Dunning says in the dugout, “My God, I didn’t see them. Not one of them.”

“No, I wouldn’t say Sudden is the toughest pitcher I ever faced,” says Reggie Jackson. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Sudden and I think he’s got the greatest fastball, curveball, slider and change-up of any pitcher I ever saw. I call him ‘Instant Heat.’ But still, I don’t mind facing him. That’s not because I hit him so easy, either, because I don’t. It’s just that Sudden simplifies things out there. He makes it like it used to be when we were kids. You know he’s gonna challenge you, his strength against yours, and either you beat him or he beats you. And if you do beat him with a home run or something, hell, it don’t bother him that much. He’s not greedy. He lets you have a little, too. And he won’t throw at you, either, because he’s too nice a guy. He knows that with his fastball he could kill you if he ever hit you. You see, baseball’s still a game to Sudden, the way it should be to all of us. Hell, I’d pay to see him pitch because I know he enjoys himself so much. Do you know he’s got 12 different moves to first base? That’s a fact! When he was going for his 1500th strikeout he was trying so hard he fell down on a pitch to me. I took it for a third strike. I loved that, though. That’s why I look forward to facing him even if I don’t hit him a helluva lot. But someday I will. Me and Sudden will be around for a long time, and one of these days I’m gonna connect with one of his sudden pitches and watch out! But still, I have to say that Sam McDowell isn’t the toughest pitcher I ever faced. As a matter of fact, I think he’d be tougher if he had less ability. Sounds crazy, huh? But it’s true. Sudden’s just got too much stuff.”

Alvin Dark agrees that it is possible for a pitcher to have too much stuff. But Dark refuses to admit that is true of his ace left-hander. As a matter of fact, Dark refuses to admit much of anything about Sam McDowell, treating all such questions with the same dread little girls treat the offer of candy from strange old men.

“Some guys, you break them down pitch by pitch,” says Dark, “and they should be 20-game winners. But when you add them all together again the best they do is 15 or 18 wins. Something’s missing. I don’t know what. Just something. Now, I’m not saying that’s the case with Sudden. I’m just saying that’s the way it is with some guys.”

Most members of the Cleveland Press corps and the Tribe’s front office would not be so ambiguous as Dark. They definitely think there is something missing from McDowell that has prevented him from achieving the greatness they predicted of him for the past six years.

When McDowell was first brought up from the minors in 1964, he was a scrawny 21-year-old rookie with a blazing fastball, a $75,000 bonus and a reputation for eccentricity. The fans, the press and the front office immediately billed him as “the new Bob Feller” and waited, impatiently, for Sudden Sam to fulfill his potential. He didn’t. He either failed or refused to fulfill the role everyone else had defined for him, both as a pitcher and a personality. Instead of winning pennants, as the Tribe did with Feller, they finished sixth, fifth, fifth, eighth, third and sixth, respectively, in the six years McDowell’s been in the majors. And in none of those years has McDowell been any better than just a decent pitcher.

At first it was hard for people to understand how a pitcher with McDowell’s stuff could never be as good as the sum of his parts. But when it became apparent that this was the case, they reacted with bitterness. This culminated in the remarks of a local radio personality who said that Sam McDowell would never be anything more than a second-rate pitcher because “he had a million-dollar arm and a ten-cent head.”

Although most people did not agree with the tone of that remark, they did agree with its substance. How else could you describe a guy with the best stuff in baseball, who thinks he has to have a beard to get batters out?

Once people resigned themselves to the fact that Sam would never equal his potential, life was easier for everyone involved. The fans grew to love him (they voted him “Man of the Decade” recently); the writers no longer badgered him; the front office treated him like some mischievous child they tolerated with the forlorn hope that someday—maybe someday—Sudden Sam might “straighten out.” Today, it is understood by everyone in Cleveland that Sam McDowell is just a big, likable kid, more talented than most but a big kid nevertheless, who finds it impossible to take anything in life too seriously.

Sam McDowell is standing in his underwear in front of his locker, dressing in his uniform. Tacked to either side of his locker are postcards of bikini-clad maidens. They are healthy, nubile young things modestly enough looking away from McDowell as he dresses. Directly on top of his locker is a small, white figurine of a homely old washerwoman. She is smiling and pointing a finger at Sudden Sam. Written on the base of the figure are the words: “Guess who I like?”

“Hoot, did I ever tell you the one about the kamikaze pilot?” Sudden says. Hoot Evers, the Tribe’s coach, looks up from his newspaper.

“No, Sudden, you never did,” says Evers.