Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (24 page)

The money goes into a kitty and at the end of the season it will be spent on a lavish party, for pitchers only. Gene Brabender is commissioner of the kitty and sergeant-at-arms because he’s so big, and I’m secretary-treasurer, I’m not sure why. Perhaps because I look so honest.

An outfield game is making up singer-and-actor baseball teams purely on the sound of their names. Example—Panamanian. Good speed, great arm, temperamental: shortstop Jose Greco. Or big hard-hitting first baseman; strong, silent type: Vaughn Monroe. And centerfielder, showboat, spends all his money on cars, big ladies man, flashy dresser, drives in 75 runs a year, none of them in the clutch: Duke Ellington. Finally—great pitcher, 20-game winner five years in a row, class guy, friendly with writers and fans alike; stuff is good, not overpowering, but he’s smart, has great control and curve ball, moves the ball around: Nat King Cole.

If you think this is a silly game, you haven’t stood around in the outfield much.

Another one about passing time. Larry Haney says that in the Baltimore bullpen Dave Leonhard, who went through Johns Hopkins with a 3.9 average (that’s out of a possible 4.0, kids) prepares quizzes on various subjects for the fellows: history, current events, literature, personal idiosyncrasies of players on the club. Sounds almost as good as singer-and-actor baseball teams.

And then we played a game of baseball. We knocked Stottlemyre out and won 5–3. I warmed up in the bullpen, not to pitch but just to keep my knuckleball sharp. It’s been four days since I’ve been in a game. And I don’t see much chance of getting in tomorrow either. Mike Marshall is pitching and he’s been throwing real good. Bill Burbach is pitching for them and we should rack him up. He’s a high-ball pitcher, and this is the wrong park to pitch high in. And I haven’t been getting into games we win at all.

Shows what I know. We lost. We should have won. We were losing 3–2 going into the eighth and they brought Aker in. Jack’s been getting bombed while I’ve had two good appearances in a row, and I thought I was ahead of him. But that’s not what Joe Schultz thought. So he brought Aker in and he got ripped for a triple and a homer and now it’s 5–2 and the game is about gone. So guess who got called in? Jim Bouton, or Lost Cause, as they say around the French Foreign Legion. I had a good inning. Call it pretty good. Roy White got to a mediocre knuckleball for a double down the first-base line. Then Pepitone connected solidly for a weak little roller down the first-base line and I personally tagged him out. They got zero runs.

In the bottom of the ninth, though, Gus Gil hit a double with two on and suddenly it’s 5–4 and I wonder if Joe Schultz is sorry he brought in Aker instead of me. Better relief and we’d have won the game. Even so, it’s one run and a man on second with none out and inside I’m jumping up and down because if we win it’s seven straight losses for them and a victory for me, my first win of the season and against the New York Yankees. Just like in my dreams. Except that we don’t score and lose.

I wonder if their general manager, Lee MacPhail, noticed my knuckleball.

Boston

Off day for travel to Boston. As dusk fell Gary Bell and I went out to celebrate the fact that we’ve won five of our last six. We chose Sonny’s as the ideal place, and it was, because when we returned to our hotel it was three-thirty in the morning and we were still able to have a long discussion about the world, the ghettos and civil rights (all of which we disagree about). We also decided that it would be a good idea, at each baseball game, to allow a fan to suit up and play in the game. Just announce on the public address that if there are any fans in the stands who think they could do a good job at any position, to come down and draw lots for the privilege. We could designate him as our wild-card fan.

And so to bed, after deciding that we are both promotional geniuses.

I knew I was going to enjoy this day. I just didn’t know how much. It was going to be a good day because my brother Bob was coming up from Fairfield, Connecticut, to see the game and also Bill Morehead III of Harvard and Pittsburgh would be there. Morehead once sent me a long involved questionnaire about the knuckleball. He said he wanted to be a pitcher for Harvard and since he had hurt his arm he thought his only chance was to learn to throw the knuckleball. I called him on the phone and told him that answering the questionnaire would take too long and wouldn’t teach him that much anyway and suggested he come down to Connecticut when I worked out there in a gym with my brother. He came down twice and I think now he understands the principle of it. It’s just a matter now of him working on it. In any case, I was looking forward to seeing him.

So with friends in the stands I had my greatest night of the season. I pitched three innings against the Red Sox—the eighth, ninth and tenth—and shut them out with no hits. In the eleventh we scored six runs, and although the Red Sox came back with five in their half, while I paced up and down in the clubhouse cursing the other relief pitchers, we won 10–9 and I ended up with my first big W, as we baseball players call it. It was my first major-league win earned with the knuckleball. I don’t think I threw more than a couple of fastballs during the three innings. The knuckleball was just great. So was the company after the game.

I thought it would be a good time to talk to Maglie. He was shagging balls thrown in to second base from the outfield, and I got him between shags. I told him about my conversation with Schultz and his thought that I couldn’t be a starter because I had only one pitch. I told him that Niekro said after his last game that he’d thrown 95 knucklers out of 104 pitches.

“Well, you can do that if it’s breaking,” Sal said.

“Fine,” I said. “Then I can throw it all the time.”

“But they start looking for the damn thing,” Sal said. “And if it doesn’t break you got nothing else.”

“What about Wilhelm?” I said. “They wait for
his
knuckleball.”

“He throws that slider of his once in a while.”

“Sure, but they don’t look for his slider. They look for his knuckleball. And what about when you threw the curve ball?”

“When I was pitching they always looked for the curve,” he said, not without a certain pride.

“But you threw other pitches, didn’t you?”

“Oh yeah.”

“But they always looked for your curve, right?”

“Yeah, but they just couldn’t hit it. They tried, but they couldn’t.”

Even after all that he wouldn’t admit that it didn’t matter if the hitter was looking for it as long as the pitch was good enough.

What I think is going on here is something in Sal Maglie’s head. He said in spring training, in front of everybody, that you can’t get by with one pitch. Now he doesn’t want to admit he might have been wrong.

Then we played the game and it was lousy. Gary got beat real bad. It was especially tough because he wanted so much to do well in his old ballpark and when they announced his name before the game he got a standing O, which is an ovation. There were 30,000 people in the park and it was exactly the kind of day in which you want to look good against your old club, and in honor of the occasion Gary put down at least three greenies. They didn’t do a bit of good.

I sat down next to him in the clubhouse afterward and said, “Hang in there, Rooms. Tonight we’ll go out and celebrate until we forget what happened. Besides, you got nothing to worry about. We’ve both done our jobs and we both have some good years behind us and a game like this doesn’t really matter.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Rooms,” he said. “But when we’re all through celebrating my loss tonight and when we get back to our room, we’re going to start working on that knuckleball.”

Today I’ve been thinking about God and baseball, or is it baseball and God? In any case, this rumination was caused by the sight of Lindy McDaniel of the Yankees. Although I’ve never met him, I feel I know him pretty well because of this newsletter he sends out from Baytown, Texas, called “Pitching for the Master.” One of the first I got from him—and all the players receive them—was a complete four-page explanation of why the Church of Christ was the only true church. The dogmatism of this leads to the kind of thinking you find in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and in
Guideposts
and
The Reader’s Digest
. The philosophy here is that religion is the reason an athlete is good at what he does. “My faith in God is what made me come back.” Or “I knew Jesus was in my corner.” Since no one ever has an article saying, “God didn’t help me” or “It’s my muscles, not Jesus,” kids pretty soon get the idea that Jesus helps all athletes and the ones who don’t speak up are just shy or embarrassed.

So I’ve been tempted sometimes to say into a microphone that I feel I won tonight because I don’t believe in God. I mean, just for the sake of balance, to let the kids know that belief in a deity or “Pitching for the Master” is not one of the criteria for major-league success. But I guess I never will.

Tonight I was making some notes in the bullpen and Eddie O’Brien was slowly going out of his mind with curiosity. Finally he sneaked over and snatched the paper out of my hand. I snatched it right back. That’s all Mr. Small has to find out—that I’m writing a book. It’ll be all over for the kid.

Front running is not limited to coaches. Here’s what I mean. I’ve had about three appearances lately in which I haven’t given up any runs. But no one bothered to talk to me. As soon as I win my first game, though, I’m on an interview show back to Seattle and they want to know the whole Jim Bouton story. “Give it to us from the beginning, Jim. Tell us all about it.”

Hell, I could write a book.

It’s like what happened to Diego Segui. About a week ago, Segui won two games. He pitched about two innings and gave up two runs and then about four innings and gave up two more runs. He was pitching lousy, but he was in there when our team was scoring runs, so he got credit for two wins. And so the reporters started coming around. “Gee, Diego, you’re starting to win ballgames. Tell us what you’re doing different.”

He wasn’t doing anything different, except maybe pitching worse. All they care about is results. “The world doesn’t want to hear about labor pains,” Johnny Sain used to say. “It only wants to see the baby.”

Washington

It’s been four days since I had my great night in Boston and I still haven’t appeared in a ballgame. It’s goddam depressing. I haven’t even been the first or second man warming up. Hell, I’m going backward. One more good outing, I guess, and they’ll ship me out.

Two trades today. We sent outfielder Jose Vidal to the Yankees for outfielder Dick Simpson. We also traded Aker for my old friend Fred Talbot. This is a little disturbing because Talbot and I didn’t care too much for each other over there in New York. We’re exact opposites. He’s country and I’m city, and I always felt uncomfortable around him.

It’s interesting, though, to see the Yankees trade Talbot, the guy they decided to keep instead of me two years ago. And they traded him for a guy who is, or at least should be, below me on the pitching totem pole over here. I believe Seattle would have wanted more than Talbot for me in a trade.

Marty Pattin, Donald Duck (his great routine is where he has Donald reaching orgasm), pitched a strong game tonight. In the eighth he gave up a home run to Mike Epstein after walking Frank Howard and we lost 6–5. Marty did not do Donald Duck tonight.

I mistakenly thought there would be a meeting tonight to elect a new player rep. I was sure Gary Bell, who was assistant rep, would get it. I also thought I’d like to be Gary’s assistant, so I asked Larry Haney, who was sitting next to me, if he would nominate me, and the minute I asked him I realized I’d made a mistake. Larry got a big grin on his face and immediately got up to tell the guys that I’d asked to be nominated. On the spot it was decided to add this to the list of fines our pitchers pay into the party kitty for various infractions, so I was assessed an
ex post facto
dollar fine for campaigning.

Today Mr. Small came out to the outfield where the pitchers were running and said, “Gentlemen, from now on we can all run with our hats off. It’s really silly for us to run with our hats on, because the band gets all sweaty and ruins the hat.”

“How come you weren’t able to think of that a few weeks ago?” I asked him.

“Well, it wasn’t as warm then and we weren’t sweating at the same rate we are now.”

Oh.

We’ve been running short of greenies. We don’t get them from the trainer, because greenies are against club policy. So we get them from players on other teams who have friends who are doctors, or friends who know where to get greenies. One of our lads is going to have a bunch of greenies mailed to him by some of the guys on the Red Sox. And to think you can spend five years in jail for giving your friend a marijuana cigarette.

There’s a zany quality to Joe Schultz that we all enjoy and that contributes, I believe, to keeping the club loose. Last night he got thrown out of a ballgame for the first time after disputing a home run that everybody knew was foul except the umpires. But that’s not what he got thrown out for. He got thumbed out for offering the plate umpire his glasses, a very obvious gesture, which I enjoyed all the way out in the bullpen.

On the bench he’s always saying all kinds of silly things. Like the other night when we scored six runs in the eleventh and the Red Sox scored five in the bottom half, he said, “Had them all the way.” He gives a countdown on the outs when we’re ahead. “Only eight outs to go—oops, only seven.” And he’s running up and down the dugout and jumping around like a little kid. At the same time he’s letting Harper run on his own and letting the guys hit and run, and he doesn’t get angry when they get thrown out stealing. It makes for a comfortable ballclub.

The knuckleball is groovy and still I can’t get into a game. Tonight they could have put me in early with a 4–0 lead and Brabender pitching in a lot of trouble. They warmed me up, which means they’re now thinking of me as a long man, which isn’t a very good sign because there aren’t many chances for a long man to get into a game when it matters. When they need short relief, both Segui and O’Donoghue get into the game.