Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (32 page)

Broke bread with Gary Bell and he was feeling much down. He said he hadn’t been able to find his rhythm and that he was afraid he’d lost it altogether. Gary said Ray Berres was a good pitching coach, but that nothing could help him anymore and he was terribly worried about his future. Not only that, his wife was still in Seattle and he hadn’t been able to find a place in Chicago that wasn’t crazy expensive, and all in all it was depressing.

Mike Marshall and I talked about the possibility of becoming roommates, and he said he hesitated to because we’d probably have to take too much crap from the players and coaches—two kooks rooming together. And if there was crap, he said, he’d probably blow up. “I remember the time you were nominated for alternate player representative and got only one vote,” he said. “If that happened to me I’d stand up and say, ‘Fuck all you guys.’ I mean, here you were obviously better qualified to do the job than anybody else and you get one vote. To me that’s sheer stupidity and I couldn’t let them get away with it.”

All of which reminded him of a line Sal Maglie delivered tonight. Talbot was pitching and threw a slider that was nailed into the upper deck, just barely foul. So Sal hollers out, “Hey, watch the first pitch on this guy.” Now, that’s a classic second guess, because there can no longer be a first pitch to this guy. It’s now strike one.

Joe Schultz is not like Sal with the pitchers. Gelnar was telling us about this great conversation he had with Joe on the mound. There were a couple of guys on and Tom Matchick was up. “Any particular way you want me to pitch him, Joe?” Gelnar said.

“Nah, fuck him,” Joe Schultz said. “Give him some low smoke and we’ll go in and pound some Budweiser.”

Seattle

At the meeting before the twi-nighter against Kansas City, Joe Schultz asked if anybody knew anything about John Martinez. Silence. “Well,” said Joe Schultz, “we’ll just zitz him. Up and at ’em men, and let’s win two tonight.” One of these days I’ll find out how to “zitz” a guy. It sounds like a valuable pitching weapon.

Right after that I ran into Sal Maglie and, because I’d been pitching a lot lately, I felt I ought to tell him that I wasn’t tired. Rather than just say I was ready to pitch, old stonehead here said, “Sal, I could pitch both ends of this doubleheader if you need me.”

And Sal Maglie said, “Let’s get one first.”

I had broken a baseball taboo. You’re not supposed to talk of winning two games. You should only be thinking of the first game, the big one, the one you play today after putting your pants on one leg at a time. If you’re thinking about the second game, you can’t be concentrating enough on the first game. Got it? Which is why I thought it sweet of Joe Schultz to tell us to go out there and win two—and pound some Budweiser.

Today the Seattle Pilots enjoyed one of their finest hours. We pulled off one of the great practical jokes of all time. The victim was Fred Talbot. Chief perpetrator, as the police like to say, was his roommate, Merritt Ranew. But we were all aiders and abettors.

When Talbot arrived at the ballpark a uniformed policeman handed him a letter. He sat down to read it in front of his locker. We all knew what it was: a legal document written by a local lawyer friend of Ranew’s that announced a paternity suit against Talbot by an anonymous girl in New York. A paternity suit is only somewhat worse than being accused of murder. No matter how innocent you are, you lose. Who wants to win a paternity suit?

Business in the clubhouse seemed to be normal, but in fact everybody was watching Talbot. He opened the letter, looked at it, put his head down, looked at the floor for a while, gazed up into the air, shook his head slowly from side to side, started to read the letter again. Then he folded it, put it back in the envelope, tossed it onto the shelf in his locker, lit a cigarette and stared around the room. The expression on his face was one of shock and disbelief.

Meanwhile everyone in the clubhouse was biting his lips, trying not to laugh. Talbot stomped out his cigarette, reached up into his locker, opened the envelope and read the letter again, as though he was hoping it would say something different this time. Finally, after he’d devoured both pages, put them back in the envelope and thrown it on the floor of his locker, Brabender felt he had to tell him it was a joke. He might have slashed his wrists. “Some joke,” Talbot said. “Why didn’t you just send me a telegram telling me my kids had been burned to death?” While Talbot then looked around trying to figure out who would do such a terrible thing to him, there were, among others, the following remarks:

Tommy Davis: “I didn’t think you caucasian guys could get any whiter.”

Ray Oyler: “You couldn’t have pulled a needle out of his ass with a tractor.”

Finally Talbot decided that it was Marshall and I who had sent the letter. Of course. Fortunately we were able to convince him he was wrong. I wouldn’t want to fight him. As far as he’s concerned the Marquis of Queensberry is some fag hairdresser.

Gene Brabender went all the way tonight and pitched a beautiful game. He had a no-hitter going for six innings. One of the nice things about it was that he gave the bullpen the rest it needed. I’ve pitched in four- or five-straight games now (my outings are beginning to blur together in my mind) and although I like the work, I liked the day off too. My earned-run average is down to 3.45. There are only four guys ahead of me in ERA. I wonder if anybody is thinking of giving me a start.

Another way Mike Marshall gets into trouble. He has conversations with Joe Schultz, such as:

“I went to him and said, ‘Joe, what should I do in a situation like this? I started on Monday. On Tuesday I threw on my own. I pitched two innings in Wednesday’s game. Then you had me warm up three times on Thursday. The first time I felt all right. The second time I felt a little tight. The third time my arm was tired and stiff and I wasn’t effective.’ All the time I’m talking, Joe doesn’t look at me, only at the floor. Suddenly he looks up and says, ‘You shouldn’t have thrown on your own on Tuesday.’

“So I said, ‘Well, yes. But the point is that I wasn’t ready to pitch on Thursday. Now, what should I do in such a situation? Should I call down from the bullpen and tell you, or should I let you put me into the game knowing I wasn’t going to be effective? It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll go out there and pitch no matter how tired my arm is. But I don’t want to hurt our chances of winning. What do you think, Joe?’

“At that point Joe turned his back and walked away.”

In the rain the little Seattle clubhouse takes on an aura of great intimacy. The talk flows freely and takes in everybody. It’s like sitting around in somebody’s living room. Tonight we got into the Pilots’ yearbook and we kidded each other about what it said in there about us.

Fred Talbot read out loud that when John Kennedy was in high school he was used for late-inning defense, which is funny because most guys in the big leagues were superstars in high school. Talbot then composed a last line for Kennedy’s career. “Also has been known to pop a greenie.” (Which reminded Wayne Comer that rainy days were sure tough on greenie-poppers. You never know whether to pop.)

Gene Brabender’s biography noted that he was an outstanding athlete at Black Earth, Wisconsin. I wondered what the school song was there. “Black Earth, we love you, hurrah for the rocks and the dirt.” Someone else suggested that Brabender had probably made the Future Farmers of America All-America football team.

Mike Hegan had made the All-Catholic High School baseball team and said that Jim Bouton had probably made the All-Agnostic High School team.

“Hey, Fred, how come you never went to college?” said Ray Oyler after reading that Talbot had received several football-scholarship offers.

“You ever hear of an entrance examination?” I said and was rewarded with a dirty look from Talbot.

And Hegan said, “Here’s one for Oyler. Now taking correspondence courses for his high school diploma.”

For a while I was getting almost no work at all. Now I’m getting plenty. I’ve been in 29 games and about eight of our last ten. But I suddenly realized
I never get in at crucial times
. I’m never in there if it’s close and we have a chance to win. No wonder I have 29 appearances and only one win and one save.

Today there was a perfect example of what I mean. We’re playing a doubleheader against Chicago and in the first game Timberlake (even he gets a start) is taken out in the second inning, losing 4–0, bases loaded, two out. I come in and get the first hitter I face on a fly ball. I then get the next nine-straight hitters, three scoreless innings. Now we’ve tied it at 4–4 and I come out for a pinch hitter. We end up losing 6–4.

In the second game we’re losing 4–2 in the fifth and O’Donoghue’s in there, pitching in relief of Talbot. They let O’Donoghue bat for himself in the fifth even though we’re two runs down, which I don’t understand at all. Anyway he’s out. Somebody gets a base hit and Comer hits a home run. Now if somebody had batted for O’Donoghue, we might have gotten three runs instead of two. Instead we have a tie game and O’Donoghue is still pitching. Pretty soon they’re ahead of him 5–4 and then 6–4. And when we tie it at 6–6, who goes into this critical situation? The knuckleball kid? Nah. Diego Segui. He’s in trouble right away with a walk and a base hit, but he gets out of the inning. By this time I’m warming up. But do they take him out? Nope. So he gives up a home run. Do they take him out now? Nope. Not until he gives up a double in the ninth.
Then
I go in. I need one out, I get it. One third of an inning. And we lose 7–6. I never got a real chance to save either game, and if I had we might have won both. I think I’ll go bite Sal Maglie on the leg.

I read in the paper today that Richie Allen, who has left the Phillies, says he wants to be traded and will not play for them next year. Then I heard Van Patrick on the air complain that baseball ought to have some recourse against a player who simply walks out on a team during the season. Bullshit, I thought to myself, gently. Here’s one of the few cases where a baseball player has enough courage or money or both to tell baseball to take its one-sided contract and shove it. How many times does a ballclub release a player without a thought to his future? The players have zero recourse, but Van Patrick wants to think up another weapon for baseball.

I’ve admired Richie Allen from afar ever since his second year in the majors when, after a great rookie season (.318, 125 runs, 13 triples, 29 home runs and 91 RBIs—I looked it up) he demanded a large salary, $50,000 or $60,000 and said he wouldn’t play unless he got it. Philadelphia must have thought he meant it, because he got it. (I wonder if they told him there was a club rule against quadrupling salaries.)

The minute somebody refuses to work for somebody else at a particular wage, the onus, in the public mind, is on the person who chooses not to do the working. I’m not sure why this should be, but it is. Like the lady in my Wyckoff, N.J., bank who said to me during a plumbers’ strike, “Well, they don’t
have
to be plumbers if they don’t like it.” She probably thinks, well, Allen doesn’t
have
to be a baseball player if he doesn’t like it. Sure, he can always be vice president of the Wyckoff, N.J., bank.

In the bullpen tonight Eddie O’Brien said he’d recommended me for a start if things get tight in the next week or so, especially with Timberlake going into the army for six months. Eddie O’Brien. How about that? Suppose he thinks that if I get a start I’ll expose myself?

Hy Zimmerman, sportswriter, was around looking for a story and I said I had a good one for him.

“Of the 29 appearances I’ve made this year,” I said, “how many times have I done well, and how many poorly?”

“Cheez, I don’t know,” Zimmerman said.

“I’ve done well 24 out of 29 times,” I said. “I’ve had four bads and one fair. All the rest were either good or excellent.”

“You know, cheez, I didn’t realize that,” Zimmerman said.

“Do you happen to know what my earned-run average is since I’ve come back from Vancouver?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I didn’t think you did. It’s approximately 2.6542.”

“Cheez, is it that good?” he said, reaching for a notebook.

“Right. And do you know how many runners have been on base when I’ve come in and how many have scored?”

“No, I don’t.”

“There were 28 runners on when I came in and only 6 scored.”

“Cheez, I didn’t realize you were doing that good.”

“I know you didn’t. And as soon as I win a ballgame here you’re going to come around and say, ‘Hey, great. When did you put it all together?’ I just want you to know that every day I’m putting it together a little bit more.”

When all of that gets into the paper I hope the coaches and the manager don’t think I said those things only for their benefit, although I really did.

I’m taking the family to Disneyland on our next trip to Anaheim and I asked Marvin Milkes if he minded if I stayed with them in a hotel next to Disneyland rather than the team hotel. Actually, the guys prefer that you don’t bring your wife on road trips, and I thought this would be less awkward.

Milkes said I couldn’t. “Nothing personal,” he said. “You’re doing a good job for us. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t want you to misconscrue [sic! baseball fans] my meaning on this. It’s just a club rule and it has to be followed.”

The reason for the rule, he said, was that he remembered when he was with the Angels and the Yankees used to come into town and stay out all night at those Johnny Grant parties. (Grant is what they call a radio personality in Hollywood.)

“But Marvin,” I said. “The way I remember it we would stay out all night and then beat you guys anyway. I remember having a particularly good time at a Johnny Grant party and then pitching a two-hitter against you.”

In fact I remembered more than that. I remembered doing a strip to my underwear to the theme song of
Lawrence of Arabia
and then treading water in the swimming pool with a martini in each hand and
then
going out and beating the Angels the next night. In fact, every time I hear the
Lawrence of Arabia
music my mind still snaps.