Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (48 page)

“Now, why’d you have to go and say you came to see me when you were a kid?” Willie Mays said, his voice squeaky with mock anger.

“And you know something, Willie?” Tommy Davis said. “He’s only thirty-five years old.”

Mays groaned. “Why couldn’t you just come over and say ‘Hi’?” he said. “Now I feel like an old man.”

Funny, he doesn’t look like an old man. Especially when he plays baseball.

We beat the Giants 2–0 on a home run by Denis Menke. Larry Dierker pitched a marvelous game. This kid has everything. He’s twenty-three years old and he’s been in the big leagues five years, having spent only two weeks in the minors. He has a great fastball, great slider, great overhand curve, great control—and he makes me sound like Leo Durocher. Great! He’s a smart pitcher too, knows what he’s doing out there, and as Jim Owens says, “He has the balls of a burglar.”

Watching him pitch I remembered that after pitching a two-hit shutout or something, just completely dominating the game, I’d think, “How in the hell could anybody possibly throw a better ballgame than that?” Dierker showed me how. Just watching him throw his hard slider made my shoulder hurt, and I had to convince my arm, after a short discussion, that we wouldn’t go back to that stuff anymore.

Another insight. Between innings of this great ballgame he pitched, Dierker sat on the bench and sang “Rocky Raccoon.”

There ought to be a third column in the baseball standings: GAT, for games almost tied. Seattle would be leading the American League and Houston would be way up there in the National. We were down 7–1 going into the ninth and lost 7–6. I contributed three scoreless innings and got my hero, Willie Mays, on a pop-up.

What baseball players do to each other is punch each other in the groin and say “cup check.” Norm Miller pulled it on me today. Fortunately I was wearing it. When I was in the minors I got caught short a couple of times. The cup is uncomfortable, and on days when I wasn’t pitching I wouldn’t bother to put it on. This one time the manager said, “Bouton, loosen up. You pitch the next inning.”

Now, the last thing you want to tell a manager is that you’re not ready. So I warmed up and went in to pitch, scared. I threw every pitch inside, so they’d pull it. The last thing I wanted was any one-bounce comebackers. Ugh.

The clubhouse in the Astrodome is so big you could almost have infield practice in it. I noticed because the Seattle clubhouse was too small for chess.

Niekro pitched a one-hitter against Cincinnati, and that’s good, because I’m supposed to pitch against them next time. The idea is that they have a bunch of free-swingers on the club. They also have a lot of .300 hitters. Does that worry me? Yes.

Johnny Edwards was quoted in the paper here today saying that my knuckleball is better than Niekro’s. That’s progress. When I started out with it last year it was only better than Bob Tiefenauer’s.

The Astros have an Exergenie. It’s an exercise contraption involving ropes and tension. You lay on your back, put your feet in stirrups and work like hell. Denis Menke says he hadn’t had any leg trouble in two years and gives credit to the Exergenie. I haven’t had any leg trouble for two years either, and I never even heard of the Exergenie. Still, I’ll use it. The word is out that if you do, you make Spec Richardson happy. I like to make general managers happy.

Quote from Larry Dierker, whose ERA is so low everybody listens when he talks: “You know a ballclub I can’t see? I just can’t see Atlanta. They just don’t seem to have the depth. You know another club I can’t see? Ours.”

Fred Gladding, called Fred Flintstone, doesn’t look like a baseball player. He doesn’t even look like a pitcher. He looks like a grocer who’s been eating up a good bit of his profits. The other day Blefary told him, “For crissakes, Fred, put your shirt on. You embarrass the whole ballclub.”

Norm Miller is stomping around asking to be traded because he’s not playing regularly. He really is too young to be sitting around and he does have a lot of ability. He also has a sense of humor about it all. Today he was watching me squeeze two baseballs with one hand and asked me what for. “To stretch my fingers,” I said.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said. “I have the same problem. When I wake up in the morning I’m 5–4. I hang on the closet door while my wife makes breakfast and by the time I leave for the ballpark I’m 5–10 again.”

Warming up before the game today Wilson didn’t seem to have a thing, and it was obvious his arm hurt. But after visiting the clubhouse he came out throwing BB’s. “What the hell got into Don?” I said.

“Four greenies,” somebody said.

“I’ll tell you what makes him throw like that,” Blefary said. “Guts. Sheer guts.”

He pitched well until the fourth, when he walked four straight batters and they brought me in with the Giants leading 2–1 and the bases loaded. It wasn’t my day. The first hitter bounces one over the first baseman’s head for two runs. After an out Ron Hunt hits a 3-and-2 knuckleball into right-center for two more runs. Now I face Willie Mays again. There we are, me and my hero, nose to nose. He hits a single up the middle. Another run. I was glad to escape alive. Still, we came back to beat Mike McCormick in the ninth. That’s two out of three. If we can beat the contenders two out of three while they play .500 against each other there will be a five-way tie for first place. That’s what I’m rooting for. What a playoff!

There was a rumor abroad in the land that the Astros were going to get Richie Allen from the Phillies and some of the Astros were against it. They said he’s a bad guy to have on a ballclub.
Humph
. I wonder what the Astros would give to have him come to bat just 15 times for us this season. It might mean a pennant.

If I could get Allen I’d grab him and tell everybody that he marches to a different drummer and that there are rules for him and different rules for everybody else. I mean what’s the good of a .220 hitter who obeys the curfew? Richie Allen doesn’t obey the rules, hits 35 home runs and knocks in over 100. I’ll take him.

There was a National League questionnaire around asking for our outstanding accomplishments in school, and I had a few. I hold the record, as far as I know, for eating two large pizza pies with everything—peppers, onions, anchovies, the works—in an hour. At the time it was for the championship of Western Michigan, and possibly the world. And when I finished there were about ten guys in the dorm who were willing to put up $16.37 that I couldn’t follow the two pizzas with 100 sit-ups. Now I knew I could do 650 sit-ups, because I once set a record in high school with that many. A mere 100 seemed like child’s play. And it was. In addition to the two free pies, I picked up the $16.37 and a knack for walking doubled over. It was two days before I could straighten up. I also grew a set of boils on my stomach. But to this day, my name is legend in the dorm.

One of the ways the guys relieve the tensions of the pennant race, and there are some, is by their own version of the Dozens, the insult game. They remind each other of failures on the field of battle.

Blasingame: “That sure was a hell of a performance by you yesterday, Billingham. Three walks in a row. You were so tight you couldn’t drive a pin up your ass.”

Billingham: “I haven’t seen you do anything lately, Blasingame. What’s
your
record?”

Blasingame: “I’ve won some games in the big leagues, sonny. How many have you won in the bigs?”

Billingham: “We can’t be talking about ancient history. What have you done this year? Go ahead. Tell me.”

Blasingame: “I haven’t won a goddam game.”

Billingham: “Okay. So you’re no one to talk.”

Gladding: “Well, maybe not. But he was right about those three walks, Billingham. That was a disgrace.”

Billingham: “Oh sure. Listen to you, with your 5.6 earned run average. Some relief pitcher you are.”

And like that.

We beat San Diego 9–2 tonight and I felt sort of sorry for Mike Corkins, their starting pitcher. It was his first start in the majors and on his very first pitch Joe Morgan hit a triple to right field, and on his second pitch Jesus Alou hit another one to right-center. His third pitch was wild and Alou scored. So on three pitches the kid had given up two runs. And Marty Martinez yelled out to him, “Welcome to the National League, kid.”

Before the game one of the clubhouse men asked Fred Gladding, who has the locker next to mine, if he had a spare pair of size-9 spikes. Tom Dukes, a right-handed pitcher who used to be in the Yankee organization and was now with San Diego, had been caught short. Gladding said he didn’t have any. So I reached into my bag and pulled out a pair of size 9s. “Only one thing wrong with them,” I said. “They have some nail holes in the soles. But it never rains in the Astrodome.”

Sure enough, Tom Dukes got into the game. He’ll never know what he owes to Gene Brabender.

Some of the guys were on Nate Colbert, the San Diego first baseman, formerly of the Astros. They kept yelling that he was ugly and calling him “Mullion” and other nice things. Blefary said to cut it out, that the last time they got on him Colbert hit a couple of home runs and beat us. Well, we jumped out to a 4–0 lead, and the first time Colbert got up, sure enough he jolted one into the left-field seats. Next time up, Colbert jolts another home run. I figured if the game lasts long enough he’s bound to beat us. Actually, he’s not that bad looking.

I saw Blefary’s name on the lineup card and said, “Hey, Buff, go get ’em.”

“You know why I’m playing tonight?” he said. “Two reasons. One is that a right-hander is pitching. Two is that he’s very weak.”

Universal beaver-shooting note:

Norm Miller drilled a small hole in the back of the dugout. We can now beaver-shoot any woman who sits in a certain seat in the first row. Not only that, if you blow through the hole you get some interesting reactions. Miller is being acclaimed as a genius.

I have just ordered up a strawberry sundae (for my wife) and three scoops of chocolate ice cream (for me) here at the Astroworld Hotel. The bill came to $3.06, plus tip. Outrageous.

I have this theory that the reason prices are so high in hotels is that no one objects. Thus prices no longer have any relation to reality. We are charged, higgledy-piggledy, whatever number that seems to be wildly high enough.

Example. Checking out of the Sheraton Cadillac in Detroit not long ago, there was a $9 bill for valet. I was shocked. All I had sent out were three pairs of pants and three Banlon shirts. It was $1.50 each to clean the pants and, get this, $1.50 for each shirt.

“How could that be?” I said to the cashier.

“Well, they classify those shirts as sweaters.”

“But they’re just shirts,” I said. “What’s more, I’m not paying.”

“Oh, but you have to pay it,” she said. “It’s on your bill.”

“Like hell,” I said. “Just because somebody puts a number on a piece of paper that doesn’t mean I have to pay it.”

She wound up calling the manager and he said, yes, I would have to pay only one dollar per shirt, so I saved a buck and a half. Now if everybody did that, the savings would add up to millions. Millions, I tell you.

Odd thing about being an Astro. When I got to the ballpark one of the coaches told me, “You don’t have to be on the field for batting practice tonight. But be ready to run over at Colt Stadium at five-fifteen.” I thought he was kidding. Shows what I know. At five-fifteen I was running over at Colt Stadium, which is about ten minutes away from the Astrodome by Astrotram. It’s a little-used field, overgrown and dismal. And look out for snakes.

Now hear this. The reason we ran at Colt Stadium—about fifteen of us pitchers—is that just before we go on a road trip, Harry Walker likes to have his pitchers run outside the dome so they get used to hot weather.

Harry Walker thinks of everything.

After the ballgame, Buddy Hancken, one of the coaches, sidled up to me and said, “Look, we could be using you almost any night. So would you do me a favor, please. Stay out of the swimming pool there at the Astroworld. You’re liable to stay in that pool a couple of hours and there’s no telling how much it takes out of you.”

“Sure, I’ll stay out,” I said, wondering all the time how the hell he knew I was swimming. Then I remembered. There’s been a helicopter hovering around the Astroworld. I bet Harry Walker was in it.

“I like him,” I was saying to Blasingame about Harry Walker. “Maybe it’s because I haven’t been here long, but I like him.”

“I do too,” Blasingame said. “You know, he gets on guys and he’s always talking and you can’t turn him off. But everything he says, he’s right. He always makes a point and he’s always right.”

I agreed. The other night, for example, there was a foul ball hit out near the bullpen and the fielder pulled up well in front of the fence and let it drop. Bang, the phone was ringing in the bullpen. It was Harry telling us not to sit dead-assed out there in the bullpen, to do some yelling, tell the fielder how much room he had. We felt like kids being scolded and didn’t like it a bit. In fact, though, Harry was absolutely right.

Jim Owens’ famous remark about the Astrodome: “It isn’t much, but we call it home.”

Before the game today, Doug Rader was kidding Nate Colbert. “Hey, Nate, I think you’re cute,” he said. “Not ugly—cute. Cute like an iguana.”

Little old star-maker me was at work tonight. I was talking to Tommy Davis about his injured leg and it wasn’t hard to tell he wanted to sit down instead of play. “Why don’t you tell Harry?” I said.

“I haven’t been here that long,” Davis said. “I’d feel funny about it.”

“But Harry isn’t like most managers,” I said. “He’d appreciate the information and he wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“Well, maybe I’ll talk to him,” Davis said.

Sure enough, he walked into Harry’s office and pretty soon he was scratched from the lineup. Harry put Norm Miller in and he went 3 for 4, knocking in four runs. It was a great evening.

After Miller got his third-straight hit, Davis hollered down to Walker, “Hey, Harry, that leg isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was.”