Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (51 page)

He was soon enlightened by the manager.

“I was angry. I had a package of crackers in my hand and I just threw them down, walked out and sat in the bus.”

After a while his teammates came out, bringing him food, and he got angry at them for that. “I realized later that they were just trying to be nice to me. But when that kind of thing happens, you don’t think straight. I was so hurt and so angry I could feel the tears in my eyes. I didn’t know whether to cry or punch somebody.”

McFadden said that incident marked him. For the first time in his life he began to view white people with anger and suspicion. And as he grew older he saw more and more things. Even on this team. “We’ll be riding on the bus and we’ll pass a couple of Negro girls in the street and one of the white players will say, ‘Hey, Mac, there’s a soul sister for you.’ Now, why do I have to have any special interest in a black girl? And why can’t
he
be just as interested in the black girl? And why can’t I be interested in a white girl?”

Another thing he resents is the way ballplayers describe other players. They’ll say, “He’s that colored first baseman, or the colored catcher.” They never say, “He’s that
white
first baseman.”

My own thinking on that is that black is certainly an identifying characteristic, and that no one should be upset to be identified as black. But McFadden is quite right to be annoyed that no one is ever identified as white.

Then Doug Rader had some interesting comments on Curt Blefary. Curt has a good relationship with at least three of the Negro players. He rooms with Wilson and he’s always playing cards with him and Morgan. Because of that, McFadden said, there are guys on the club who are afraid
not
to like him. “It would be healthy if you could say, ‘Curt’s just not my kind of guy,’ without having to be afraid that you’ll be considered racist,” Rader said.

Nothing works that way, of course. Around baseball you are what people think you are. Like Doug Rader said that white players often call him “nigger lover” as a result of his friendship with McFadden. Or they say, “You’re just like one of them,” whatever that means.

McFadden said he frequently runs into players who are friendly, pat-on-the-back types but who, as soon as they’re in a group of white players will start throwing “n’s” around. “N” is black code for “nigger.” “You realize they’re only putting up a facade when they’re around you,” McFadden said. “As soon as they think there are no black guys around they start dropping “n’s” all over the place.”

Doug Rader said it happened to him all the time. Even though white players know how he feels, they drop “n’s” on him and all he can do is get up and walk out.

Maybe the best attitude to have is Dick Gregory’s. He called his autobiography
Nigger
, dedicated it to his mother and reminded her that when people said “nigger” now, they were just promoting his book.

My wife suggested that I might save some money at the Astroworld after she left if I had a roommate. She had noticed that Tommy Davis was living at the hotel alone and thought maybe he would like to save some money too. So I asked him. He said he’d think about it.

Even though we’re friends, there was this moment of awkwardness. Maybe Tommy Davis doesn’t want to room with
anybody
. Maybe he doesn’t want to room with me, but wouldn’t mind a different white guy. And he might have wondered if I was trying to prove something. I wondered if he wondered. The tiny tension was there. Too bad.

I think I should explain here that I too have gone through a difficult learning process. When I was in high school I was certain—with all the snobbish certainty of youth—that I would never let my daughter marry a Negro, nor would I like to live next door to a Negro family. What I know now is that life is a lot more complicated than that.

Lost our fifth straight game today 5–3 to the San Diego Padres. I pitched two scoreless innings, but the game was gone by that time.

If you could disappear from embarrassment I wouldn’t have been available.

Coming out to the bullpen just before the game began, in front of thousands of empty seats, I took off my hat, made a deep bow and generally behaved as though I was being acclaimed by millions. Then I looked up and all I could see was San Diego uniforms. “What are you guys doing in our bullpen?” I said. Of course I had it all wrong. I was in
their
bullpen, act and all. I felt like a goddam clown.

Doug Rader and I agreed over breakfast that Harry Walker is a good man. One of the things Doug gets a kick out of is when Harry strikes a batting pose in the coffee shop or some other unlikely place to explain how he used to get base hits all the time. He’s always giving out useful information. And how many managers are able to go over to a player and say, “Listen, I handled it wrong. I’m sorry”? Harry is.

Another impressive thing about Harry is this blazer he wears. It has his family crest on the breast pocket. Contrary to rumor, it’s not an open mouth emblazoned on a field of wild verbiage. I know because I checked.

I had a chat with Spec Richardson about how the club came to make a deal for me. He said he’d been talking to Seattle about Tommy Davis and mentioned he could use some pitching. And Milkes said, “How about Bouton?” Spec said he hadn’t had any reports on me, but he took a chance.

Anonymity is pitching in fifty-seven ballgames and finding out that no one knows.

Norm Miller says that it has long been his ambition to sit in a laundry bag. He thinks if he did, and pulled the string tight over his head, it would be very quiet and peaceful.

Norm and I came down to the lobby and spotted Ron Willis sitting in a lobby chair. At the same time we noticed a most attractive young girl standing nearby. So naturally we walked over to have a chat with Willis.

“How come the only time someone comes over to talk to me is when there’s a pretty girl around?” Willis said.

“Ron, you’re getting a complex,” Miller said. “You didn’t even give us a chance to speak to you.”

“No, it’s no complex,” Willis said. “Bill Henry is the only one who actually sat down here and talked to me. Everybody else is here to check that girl out.”

“Listen, Ron,” Miller said. “I’m your friend. I’m trying to help you. You’re a sick person. You need help.”

I couldn’t help thinking that Norm would be a sick person too if he were traded from St. Louis in mid-season and did nothing since but pitch batting practice and be threatened with a suspension for sitting in the coffee shop.

Has anybody noticed that we haven’t won a game since we ate that chicken á la king?

Jim Owens says he’d like to see me in the starting rotation. He agrees that the knuckleball is far from ideal for short relief. But so far Harry still thinks he needs me more to relieve than to start. “I’m still plugging for you,” Owens said. Bless him.

A friend of mine named Lou Kramberg is friendly with a scout in the Chicago Cubs organization. It was still early in the year when Kramberg called this scout and told him about me: that I was getting in a lot of ballgames, pitching effectively, but not accumulating much of a record. He said I was a hard worker, a good battler, that I field my position well and could pitch under pressure. Just what the Cubs needed. The scout told him no, that the word on me is that I’m a clubhouse lawyer.

Two losses to San Diego makes it six in a row, and Rader decided to do something about it. “Can you drown yourself in the shower?” he asked.

He went up on his toes and put his mouth to the shower nozzle. It looked as though the water was coming out of his ears. Some guys just can’t take this pennant pressure.

San Francisco

Curt Blefary doesn’t like being platooned. So this is him on Harry Walker. “Look, he doesn’t drink and he doesn’t smoke. He’s not my kind of man.”

It was great coming back to Candlestick Park. I hadn’t been there since the World Series of 1962. The odor of the clubhouse was strangely familiar, and I remembered where all the guys had their lockers and the table in the middle of the room loaded with ten dozen baseballs for us to autograph.

This was my rookie year and I remember Whitey Ford hurt his arm and I was going to have to pitch the seventh game, except that it rained for five days in a row and Ralph Terry was able to come back and win the final game 1–0 when Willie McCovey hit a screaming line drive off him and Bobby Richardson caught it for the final out. And I remember the police escorts we had wherever we went, sirens screaming. Great year for a rookie.

“It was a terrible year,” Tommy Davis said. “The Dodgers should have been in that Series, not the Giants.”

Except that they lost to them in a playoff. Can’t be a great year for everybody, I guess.

Maybe we’re not out of this thing yet. We beat the Giants 2–1. Larry Dierker won his twentieth and I saved it with two innings of hitless relief. I shook everybody up by walking a couple of guys right away, but they hit only one ball out of the infield on me, a pop-up that Norm Miller made a nice running catch on. It was a good game because we stopped our losing streak and we beat Gaylord Perry. When I came off the mound, Harry threw his arms around me and said, “Attaboy, this was a real big win.”

I felt good about the whole thing until twelve-fifteen, which is when I came into the hotel. Buddy Hancken was in the lobby.

“Go to your room,” he said.

“What?” I said, thinking fast.

“Curfew,” he said. “Twelve-o’clock curfew.”

When I got up to the room Norm Miller said, “They called, they called.”

“What time?”

“Well, they called at eleven.”

“But the curfew is twelve.”

“I know. They called at eleven and asked if you were here. I said you weren’t. Then they called again at twelve and I told them you were in the bathroom. I asked if they wanted to talk to you and they said no, they’d take my word.”

“Who called?”

“Buddy Hancken.”

Poor Norm. I wonder if they’ll fine him for lying.

The Giants clobbered us 9–3. Denny Lemaster got knocked out in the first inning and that was it. We have only fourteen games left and we’d have to win all of them to accomplish very much. It’s not possible. We’re out of it now. Ah, shitfuck.

The game depressed me, and coming back to the Astroworld Hotel with Bobbie gone depressed me even further. (Tommy Davis, by the way, has decided against having a roommate. I’m sure it’s not because I’m white.) Besides, my stomach has been bothering me and Jim Owens didn’t win any fights, so Jimmy Ray, who is called “Ultraviolent Ray” since his scuffle with Blasingame, will be starting against Cincinnati and not me.

Another thing that’s depressing. I finally got the traveling-expense check from Seattle and $88.68 was deducted from the $900. That’s what Marvin Milkes says is what it cost to repair a clubhouse door I, little old Jim Bouton, pulled off its hinges in a fit of anger. Now, wait a minute. It’s true enough that I kicked a door. It was such a minor matter I never even mentioned it in this little diary. All I did was kick it a little bit after one of my frustrating appearances and broke loose a bit of molding. Johnny McNamara said not to worry about it, it was a small deal. And now this stupid bill.

As soon as I think up something awful enough to do about it I will.

A group of terrorized pitchers stood around the batting cage watching Willie McCovey belt some tremendous line drives over the right-field fence. Every time a ball bounced into the seats we’d all make little whimpering animal sounds. “Hey, Willie,” I said. “Can you do that whenever you want to?”

He didn’t crack a smile.

“Just about,” he said, and he hit another one.

More animal sounds.

One of the Houston radio announcers, Loel Passe, interviewed me and a few of the guys were on the earie, so I thought I’d entertain them. “Congratulations are certainly in order for the job you did last night,” Loel said.

And I said, “Loel, I couldn’t agree with you more. I was absolutely fabulous out there.”

Broke the lads up.

I learned that from Mickey Mantle. He’d be interviewed by some announcer about a home run he hit, with the wind blowing from left to right and the ball had been curving into the wind and thus was saved from going foul. “That’s right,” Mickey said. “When I noticed the wind blowing like that—I always check, you know—I put the proper English on the ball, left or right, up or down, depending upon which way the wind is blowing.”

And the poor guy just said, “Uhuh, uhuh, uhuh.”

Most interviewers don’t listen to the answers; they’re too busy thinking of the next question. I’ve often been tempted, when I notice a guy’s eyes all glazed over, when I’m answering a question to say something like, “I believe you know that there were over 20,000 tons of iron ore shipped from Yugoslavia in 1948.” And I’m sure he’d say, “Uhuh, uhuh.”

Bob Watson’s name was on the lineup card but he couldn’t play. Seems he was catching some weirdo knuckleball pitcher the other day and the ball took a strange hop in the air and hit him on the finger. He’s been taking whirlpool treatments, but the finger is still fat and he can’t grip a bat. Sorry about that. I wish it had been Eddie O’Brien instead.

Houston

Larry Dierker and I much prefer the Beatles to country-western music. As a protest against the amount of country-western we have to listen to, we have composed what we consider a typical song of the genre. It took us about two innings.