Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (22 page)

Today’s Marvin Milkes’ stories concern Gene Brabender and Merritt Ranew. The Benders been having a tough time—thirteen runs in seven innings, or terrible enough to receive serious notice. So Milkes told him he has three more starts to straighten out, and if he doesn’t do well in them he could just mosey down the road.

Ranew was called up to fill in for Larry Haney, who had to put in some service time. Ranew had been hitting like .400 at Vancouver and in his first game here he got two hits. Today he got another and he’s hitting the ball good every time up. So Marvin Milkes told him, “You keep hitting the ball like that and you’ll be back up here again sometime.”

And never is heard a discouraging word.

Darrell Brandon wanted a start and got it, just by asking for it. He also got shelled, lasting an inning and a third. He thinks he knows what happened. “I was good last night,” he said. “I stayed in my room. Called my wife. Drank nothing stronger than orange juice. Then I read from the Gideon Bible and went to sleep. Then I last an inning and a third and I got two greenies in me I got to work out in San Francisco. Never again.”

As for me, I was only as good as I had to be last night and I also lasted an inning-and-a-third and three earned runs. That puts me on the bottom of the heap again and depresses the hell out of me. I figure two like that and my ass is back in Vancouver.

We were playing trivia on the back of the bus the other day, and among the questions were:

What was the name of Roy Rogers’ dog?

What was the name of the cat in the Buster Brown Show?

What three pitchers were sent down to the minor leagues with less than five innings of work among them?

The answers are Bullet, Midnight, Dick Bates, Bill Edgerton and Jim Bouton.

Brandon and I felt so badly about the whole thing we dragged Gary Bell off to a Chinese restaurant and I ate bird’s nest soup, which disgusted them both.

Gary Bell and I have become the Falstaffs of the back of the bus. Gary entertains with quotes, anecdotes and insults, and when he goes back to his real-estate book I do my routines. In a trivia game recently I asked who the moderator of “You Asked For It” was. The answer was Art Baker, which led me into my “You Asked For It” routine. “We have a letter from a listener, Mrs. Sadie Thompson of Jablib, Wisconsin.

“Mrs. Thompson writes: ‘Dear Art, I’ve always wanted to see a cobra strike an eighty-year-old lady. I wonder if you can arrange this on your show.’

“Yes, Sadie Thompson out there in Jablib, we went all the way to India for you and not only did we get a cobra, we got a bushmaster, the most deadly snake in the world. And right before your eyes the snake will be placed into a glass cage with sweet little white-haired Mrs. Irma Smedley. Here comes the snake into the cage, and just look at that sweet little old lady tremble. The snake strikes and that’s it, ladies and gentlemen, the end of Mrs. Irma Smedley. Remember now, it’s all because
you asked for it
.”

The boys ate it up. Sick humor is very big in the back of baseball buses and “You Asked For It” is almost as good as “Obituaries You Would Like To Read.” Tune in next week, folks.

Some of the mores and manners of the back of the bus crew. Others who usually sit in the back are Oyler, Mincher, Kennedy, Hegan, Rich Rollins (The Listener), Gene Brabender (Lurch), Pattin (who does the Donald Duck) and Gosger (who does a splendid Porky Pig). The middle of the bus is dominated by Tommy Davis and his groovy tape machine, and the quiet guys sit in front, guys like Gus Gil and Freddy (Poor Devil) Velazquez. Mike Marshall also sits in front looking for somebody to play chess with him. I’ve played with him a few times and he’ll thump me pretty bad. But then when he sees me start to lose interest he’ll let me come close to beating him. That turns me on again for a while. He makes me feel like the donkey chasing the carrot on a stick.

One of the favorite back-of-the-bus games is insulting each other’s wives, sisters, mothers and girlfriends. Some of the guys, among them Brabender and Marshall, refuse to participate in this game, but sometimes they’re in it anyway. That’s because any man who laughs when another man’s wife or mother is insulted is automatically chosen as the next victim. Back-of-the-bus is a very rough business.

Seattle

The worst part of playing baseball is that you become a part-time father. I feel as though I’ve been on the road for a month—first with the Pilots, then with Vancouver, now back with the Pilots again. It’s not terribly tough on a man and his wife, in fact absence often makes them appreciate each other more. But it’s unsettling to the kids. They don’t have a man around, and then when they do, well, you don’t feel like disciplining them. You just want to enjoy them.

Before the game with the Red Sox tonight, we terrified pitchers huddled together and whispered about the power that club has. We decided that if Fenway Park in Boston is called “friendly,” then the stadium here would have to be considered downright chummy. After the pitchers took batting practice, we were wondering if we should stay in the dugout and watch the Red Sox hit. We decided it would not be a good thing for us to see.

We saw enough in the game. They beat us 12–2. Brabender started and went four innings, having thrown nearly 100 pitches. It was not all his fault. There were about four errors behind him and we wound up emptying the bullpen. I came in with two runners on and stranded them and had a perfect inning-and-a-third. Then Brandon, Aker and Segui were stomped. So I should be back on the top of the heap again. Baseball isn’t such a funny game.

I was asked if I’d go to a women’s club dinner and say a few thousand well-chosen words and I said sure. I sort of like that kind of thing. Besides, it shouldn’t hurt my standing with the front office, knowing I’m a guy who does that well. My only condition was that I be allowed to bring my family along. I’m away enough without leaving them to make a speech.

I caught Joe Schultz without a liverwurst sandwich today, backed him into a corner and asked him, gently, about my chances of starting a game. I talked fast. I told him that I felt strong enough to go nine innings with the knuckleball and that I could relieve besides if he needed me.

So Joe said, “We got four starters now.”

I told him I knew that and that I didn’t want to bump anybody. I just wanted him to keep in mind that I was available and could step in at any time. I pointed out that a knuckleball pitcher
should
be a starter, like Niekro in Atlanta.

So Joe said, “He doesn’t throw all knuckleballs.”

I told him he throws 90 percent knuckleballs, sometimes more.

So Joe said, “He throws only about 80 percent knucklers. The rest of the time he throws curveballs and fastballs and change-ups.”

I wanted to tell him, well, maybe, but if I were a starter I’d have time to warm up properly and work in all those other pitches. I decided to let it ride. Because even if I do get a start I’m going to throw 95 percent knucklers. I’ve been through that war. So I said, “I think I can do the job. Give it some consideration.”

He said he would, which is better than nothing. Somewhat.

Warming up in the bullpen tonight I got back the good knuckler, the one I had last year. They moved like a bee after honey, and I was throwing them real hard. Haney was catching and he said, rubbing a knee, that he’d never seen anything like it. “If you can just get someone to catch you,” Haney said, “you’ll be all right.”

Another day off. Took the family on a ferry ride to the Olympic Peninsula. Stayed at a cabin on a lake and hired a little motor-boat, and I don’t know who had more fun, me or the kids. Pitching seemed very far away.

Mike Marshall pitched a helluva game tonight, shutting out Washington 2–0. A two-hitter, one of them by Frank Howard, called Capital Punishment. McNertney and I had a talk about the game when it was over. He said Mike called about 30 percent of his pitches, less than the usual 50 or so. Mike has some interesting ideas on what kinds of pitches should be thrown. He thinks a completely random pattern is best, that the hitter should never have an inkling of what’s coming next. As a result, if a guy gets a hit off a curve ball he may get a curve the very next time up. On the other hand, McNertney believes that if you get a guy out on fastballs, you keep throwing him fastballs until he proves to you he can hit them. As for me, I throw the knuckleball.

Incidentally, the pitching staff was happy to learn tonight that Marvin Milkes had stationed a man outside the ballpark to measure the home runs that the Senators hit out of sight. Instead Marshall threw his two-hitter. Take that, Marvin Milkes.

The meeting before the game was marvelous. When we went over the hitters, Gary Bell had the same comment on each one: “Smoke him inside” (fastball inside). Frank Howard, McMullen, Brinkman, Epstein—every hitter. “Smoke him inside,” said Gary Bell.

It got to be funny as hell after a while, because not only did he get no opposition, but he was taken seriously. According to the gospel of Gary Bell you pitch to the entire Washington team by smoking them inside.

I guess Marshall smoked them on the inside.

Chatted with Brant Alyea, the outfielder, about what was happening with the Washington club. He said Ted Williams was doing a fantastic job. “I’m just beginning to realize that baseball is at least 65 percent psychological,” he said. “Williams has these guys so psyched they actually think they’re great ballplayers. Brinkman’s starting to think he’s a hitter for crissakes and he’s hit .200 all his life. Now he’s up to .280. The team is up, the guys are emotionally high and Williams actually has them believing they’re winners.”

I wonder how he is with the pitchers.

The big confrontation is coming closer. The Yankees will be in town in a couple of days and I’ve been invited to appear at the sportswriters and sportscasters dinner on Monday afternoon. The idea is us against them. Mel Stottlemyre for the Yankees, me for the Pilots. I hope I can pitch against the Senators before the Yankees get here so I can show Joe Schultz how ready I am. I’m scared stiff the Yankees will get away without me pitching against them. At the same time I’d hate to get into one of those lost-cause games against them. I want them when they can feel the game in their guts.

Big meeting today. The way it happened, Marvin Milkes has been reading in the papers that some of the players aren’t happy. So he suggested to Jack Aker that a meeting be called so the players could air their gripes. At the meeting, which lasted about twenty minutes, there were complaints about the beds in some of the hotels, the lack of a roof over the bench in the bullpen, the bare cement floor in the clubhouse and the absence of a water cooler in the clubhouse. Imagine having to take our greenies with beer. Big things like that.

It was also pointed out that when an exhibition game is scheduled for a Monday at the end of a road trip (as several are), the players should be permitted to go home Sunday night for at least a half-day at home. (This led to a certain amount of hilarity. The suggestions were that a half-day at home is just enough, or too much, and that a better place to spend the half-day was Las Vegas.) My gripe was that I thought that any ball hit into the yellow seats in left field should be a ground-rule double instead of a home run.

My own belief about the whole thing is that the players have only one serious gripe—the behavior of the coaches. But since they were all sitting right there no one complained.

When the meeting was over Aker asked Gary Bell what he thought about it all and he said, “Smoke him inside.” Gary Bell is a beautiful man.

The sad truth about baseball, I’m afraid, is that there is not enough in it to occupy a man’s mind. In desperation they turn to insignificant things and blow them up. Example: It was cold in the bullpen tonight, so I ran into the clubhouse and picked up three parkas. While I was at it I asked Curt Rayer, the trainer, if he could get some handwarmers going for us. Later, Larry Haney came out of the clubhouse and gave me a hot-water bottle he’d hidden under his jacket.

“Thanks,” I said. “How come you had to smuggle it?”

“Curt didn’t want any of the coaches seeing a hot-water bottle come out here,” Haney said.

After the game Curt said I had bugged out at least half the coaching staff. Ron Plaza had overheard me asking for handwarmers and he told Curt it wasn’t cold enough for them, and then somebody, maybe Joe Schultz, had said, “The hell with it, no handwarmers.” Curt said everybody was very upset that I should ask for them, so he’d sent out a quiet hot-water bottle. It had been a warm day, so I guess the idea of handwarmers in May boggled the little minds.

This reminded me of something that happened the other day. Joe Schultz called me over and I thought he wanted to talk about my knuckleball, or pitching in general, or perhaps the state of the nation. Instead, with a straight face, he asked me whether I had any light-colored sweatshirts or did I have only the dark kind I was wearing. I told him I had about fifteen dark sweatshirts since the other clubs I had been with all had dark blue sweatshirts. I said I used the dark ones in practice before the game, then changed to the Pilots’ light blue for the game.

He considered that for a while, then finally nodded and said, “I guess that’s okay.”

Joe Schultz has yet to say a word to me about my knuckleball. Not even, “I guess that’s okay.”

I don’t suppose I should care about any of this, except it
is
important to me to have a warm hand when I throw the knuckler. But even if I didn’t need it, why should anybody care that I wanted it? And I would like to think that Joe Schultz has more important things to think about than the color of my sweatshirt.

At the meeting before the ballgame Sal Maglie said, “Okay, let’s get some runs.” He was kidding. We’ve been scoring a fantastic number of runs, which is either a tribute to our hitters or the size of this ballpark. Tonight, for example, we were losing to the Senators 11–3 in the sixth inning. First we came back to tie it, then we won 16–13. We ran through the whole pitching staff and only Gary Bell and I came out with any glory. I had a wicked knuckleball.