Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (14 page)

We were doing wind sprints and Gary Bell was having a terrible time because of certain local poisonous fluids he’d encountered the night before. We decided that Eddie O’Brien would let him off if he got a note from his bartender.

Bell is a funny man and, along with Tommy Davis, is emerging as one of the leaders of the club. He’s got an odd way of talking. Instead of saying, “Boy, that’s funny,” he’ll wrinkle up his face and say, “How funny is that?”

Or he’ll say, “How fabulous are greenies?” (The answer is very. Greenies are pep pills—dextroamphetamine sulfate—and a lot of baseball players couldn’t function without them.)

There is an odd sort of sexual liberation among baseball players—a verbal one. It’s considered perfectly all right to make sexual remarks about your wife and other players’ wives. It’s a nothing-sacred game, and Bell is one of the leading practitioners. “When I get home I’m going to knock my old lady’s eyebrows off,” he’ll say. Or he’ll go up to Ray Oyler and say, “Ray, when you come to the ballpark tomorrow will you bring my socks? I left them under your bed.”

Sometimes you’ll get this kind of conversation:

“Gee, your wife was great last night.”

“Oh, she wasn’t all that great.”

“You should have been there earlier. She was terrific.”

After the game today many of us repaired to the local pub and spent the fading hours of the afternoon drinking beer. Johnny Podres, the old Dodger who seems to be making it with the San Diego Padres (that’s sort of nice, Podres of the Padres), was there, feeling little pain, and took it upon himself to straighten me out as a pitcher. “Listen, Jim, let me show you what you used to do and what you’re doing now.”

Pretty soon there was a beer glass where my right leg was supposed to be, an ashtray for my left foot and martini glasses for the length of my stride, and he was going through all my motions, two ways. Of course, I had to do it too, and after a while we drew a pretty good crowd. What he was saying was that I had to get my body into the ball and that I should hold my weight back and let it go all at once. It was sound advice and it embarrassed the hell out of me.

Still, it was a good afternoon. I was pleased that Podres should care and that he remembered my old motion and there was that little stirring in my belly that maybe he was right, maybe I could still find the old magic. But then I remembered baseballs disappearing into clouds and I smiled and tried to sit down. “One more time,” Podres said. And all the guys said, “Yeah, one more time, Bouton, and this time get it right.” So I did it one more time, wishing I could drink beer faster and get drunker.

On the airplane, Darrell Brandon, sitting next to me, said, “You like to read a lot, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said cleverly.

“Does it make you smart?”

He wasn’t being sarcastic. I think he really wanted to know. “Not really,” I said. “But it makes people think I am.”

Actually I was somewhat embarrassed by the question. In fact I
do
like to read on airplanes, but when I do I’m not in on the kidding and the small talk, so as a result I’m an outsider. I’ve resolved not to be an outsider this year. I’m not reading so much and no one can accuse me of playing the intellectual. And here I get caught up in a magazine article and Darrell Brandon is asking if reading makes you smart.

A little more about the new Bouton image. If the guys go out to a bar after a game for a few drinks, I’m going too. I’m going to get into card games on airplanes. I don’t like bars much, and card games bore me, but I’m going to do it. If you want to be one of the gang, that’s one way to do it.

It’s odd, but you can be seven kinds of idiot and as long as you hang around with the boys you’re accepted as an ace. Johnny Blanchard of the Yankees was an ace. He was just another jocko, but he was an ace because he was always out with Mickey Mantle and the boys, drinking, partying, playing cards. Every once in a while, just to enhance his image, he’d smack some poor guy off a bar stool and that was great. Johnny Blanchard was one of the boys.

Why should I be one of the boys? Why should I yield to the jockos? Oh, I’m not going to hold back if something comes up I feel strongly about, but I’m going to soft-pedal it a bit, at least at the beginning, until I’m sure I can make this club. I really believe that if you’re a marginal player and the manager thinks you’re not getting along with the guys it can make the difference.

I’m positive that the one reason Houk got rid of me was that I’d made a lot of enemies on the club (including Houk, I guess) simply because I refused to go along with the rules they set up.

Here’s an example. I always felt that players should cooperate with the press, and when the Yankees got angry at me for talking too much to reporters I was quoted as saying, “Well, I don’t get angry at them for
not
talking to reporters, why should they get angry at me because I do?” And that made it even worse.

Or they’d make a rule, because of some story or other, that nobody should talk with this or that reporter. So when he came into the clubhouse I’d give him a big smile and talk with him and be seen having lunch with him, just to let them know I wasn’t going to buy that nonsense.

In September 1966 when the Yankees were in ninth place, 26 1/2 games out of first place, Murray Olderman of Newspaper Enterprises Association, asked me what I thought was wrong with the Yankees. After carefully examining our statistics and lofty place in the standings I said, “I guess we just stink.” The headline in the papers the next day said “Bouton: Yankees Stink.” The distortion was only minute.

Houk called me into his office. “Olderman made you look bad,” he said. “The players are all upset. I’m sure he misquoted you. You’ve got to be careful when you talk to these guys.”

“Well, he didn’t really misquote me,” I said.

Houk didn’t think that was enough. He thought I should say more. I asked him like what. And he said I should apologize to the players. I said I would. And I did. I’m not sure what for, though. I mean, boy, did we stink.

Then there was the matter of talking too much, not to reporters, to the guys. You see, you
could
talk about the war in Vietnam, only you had to say, “Look at those crazy kids marching in the street. Why don’t they take a bath?” Or you could say, “What right does Rev. Groppi have to go out in the streets like that? He should be in the pulpit where he belongs.” If you said these things, no one would accuse you of talking politics, because you were
right
.

On the other hand, if you said things like, “We’ve got no right to be in Vietnam,” or that, “Rev. Groppi is certainly making his religion relevant up there in Milwaukee,” then you shouldn’t be talking about things like that, because you were
wrong
.

And it could cost you too. When Joe Garagiola was running “The Match Game” on television, a lot of the Yankees, almost all of them, were getting on the show. I mean even Steve Whitaker. And me, the articulate Jim Bouton, spontaneously witty, always at ease in front of the camera, never got a call.

This year, though, it’s a new Bouton. At least until I win some ballgames.

Holtville

Mike Hegan has been hitting like fury. He does that from time to time. His history is streaks. He’s either hitting .450 or .150.

I wondered if he ever got any help from his father, who has been in baseball twenty years and is now a Yankee coach. Mike said he never did. In fact, when he was growing up he hardly saw his father at all, and to this day they seldom talk about baseball.

The help he gets is from his mother. He said that he believed it was she who put him into his current hot streak. She knows a lot about hitting and she sends him little reminders all the time of what to do and think about while he’s hitting. She’s a big reader of golf manuals and applies them to baseball, sending him helpful hints for the duffer that actually help.

We don’t have a hitting instructor here. So I’ve been thinking that maybe Mike Hegan’s mom, since she has such a good record… ah, I don’t think Eddie O’Brien would go for it.

When Lou Piniella said he’d been to a palm reader the other day the guys wanted to know what she’d told him.

“She told me I was hitting in bad luck,” Piniella said.

Today, while we were sitting in the bullpen, Eddie O’Brien, the All-American coach, said, just after one of our pitchers walked somebody in the ballgame, “The secret to pitching, boys, is throwing strikes.”

Gee, Eddie! Thanks.

I came in to relieve in the ninth and got the last out. After the game, Joe Schultz had the whole team run around the bases and then said, “Okay, everybody in—except Bouton and Baney. I want to see you two.”

Baney got this horrified look on his face and said, “Oh, my God!”

I couldn’t resist, so giving him my sincere look, I said, “This is it.”

He turned pale and moped over to Joe, slowly, as if attached to a large rubber band. But all Joe wanted was to tell us that we had to run some extra laps since we were in the bullpen and weren’t able to run when everybody else did.

I never saw anybody run laps looking so happy as Dick Baney. Unless it was Jim Bouton.

Wayne Comer got into an argument with an umpire, and they were jawing back and forth. The last thing said was, “All right, Comer. You’ll be sorry you said that.”

And he probably will. Umpires do get even with people, even good umpires. I remember when George Scott first came up to Boston. He must have irritated Ed Runge somehow because the word came out from Elston Howard that when Runge was behind the plate and Scott was hitting, the strikes wouldn’t have to be too good.

The first pitch I threw to Scott was about six inches off the plate. Strike one. The second pitch was eight inches outside. Strike two. The third pitch was a curve in the dirt. Scott swung and missed. He never had a chance.

Runge is one of the more powerful umpires in the league, mostly, I suppose, because he’s a real good one. He’s been wearing these long, gray sideburns that look just great against his tan. He is a striking figure out there. I asked him if he thought he could get by wearing the burns during the season and he said he didn’t know, that Joe Cronin, the league president, hadn’t seen them yet. But I’m betting on Runge. He’s got power.

There was the time, for example, when Steve Whitaker was with the Yankees and bitched to him on a couple of calls and Runge told Mickey Mantle, “You better straighten that boy out.”

That night Mantle and Whitaker ran into Runge at a restaurant and Mantle told Whitaker he’d better go over and apologize. Whitaker said the hell he would. But after Mantle explained to him what it might mean to his batting average he succumbed. Just call him
Mr
. Runge.

One would have thought Comer was through arguing with umpires, but I guess he’s a slow learner. The other day he got himself in trouble with another umpire by getting on his son, who is trying to be an umpire. The son told the father and the father told Tommy Davis that Comer better come up swinging. He meant he wasn’t likely to get any balls called.

Sure enough the first pitch to Comer was a high curve and he called it strike one. Comer didn’t even look back. He swung at the next pitch and hit a line drive off the fence for a triple. The ump looked over to our bench and said, “See, it makes him a better hitter.”

Rich Rollins has a good story he tells in the same vein. It goes back to when we were playing against each other in the Class-B Carolina League. Rich had hit two home runs in the first game of a doubleheader and the club had some deal that anybody who hit three home runs in one day would get $300. So the other players on Rollins’ team told him to go to our catcher, Norm Kampshor, and get him to tell him what was coming by offering him half the money.

Rollins: “I didn’t want to do it at first. I said I didn’t think it was right, but they said hell, it was common practice, and there I was just out of school and didn’t know a damn thing. So I told Kampy I needed another home run and that he’d get $150 if he told me what was coming. He didn’t even hesitate. Just said sure.

“And not only did he tell me what was coming, but after a while he started asking me what I’d like to have thrown. And I’d say fastball, or change, and I’d get it.”

The big joke, of course, was that I was the pitcher at the time.

“You know, I really felt sorry for you,” Rollins said. “There you were sweating your guts out trying to make the big leagues and not only did I know what was coming, but I was calling your game for you.”

In the end, though, the joke was on Rollins. Calling my game for
me
, he managed only one double in four times at bat. And if he had come to me, I probably would have grooved one for him. Not for money, just for the hell of it.

Sorry kids, things like that happen. Phil Linz was batting .299 going into the last game of the season at Modesto and asked the other catcher to help him get to .300. “When you come up I’ll have the third baseman play real deep,” the catcher said. “All you have to do is lay down a bunt and beat it out.”

That’s exactly what happened. Phil got the hit for his .300 average and got the manager to take him out of the game. Now it’s in the record books forever that Phil Linz hit .300.

The same thing happened with Tommy Davis. He was hitting .299 for the Mets and playing against his old teammates, the Dodgers. Johnny Roseboro was catching. “Hey, Baby, you’re my main man,” Davis said. “How about a little help?” Roseboro said sure and told him what was coming. Davis got his hit and had his .300 batting average.

Palm Springs

Tommy Davis is loose and funny and a lot of guys look to him, not only Negroes. Everybody sort of gravitates toward him and his tape machine, and he’s asked his opinion about things. Like, “Hey Tommy, what kind of town is Palm Springs?”

So far I haven’t heard any of the white guys say, “Tommy, what are you doing for dinner tonight?” Maybe it will come. Maybe.

At least Tommy is no Elston Howard. The best way I can explain Howard is to recall the day Jimmy Cannon, the elderly columnist, Howard, his wife Arlene and I got involved in an argument about civil rights; Arlene and I on one side, Cannon and Howard on the other. Arlene and I were the militants.