Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (58 page)

The rewrite sessions last all day and late into the night. The later it gets, the funnier the lines are. By two o’clock in the morning you laugh at anything just to get out of there. And the writing is always done in a room without windows. That’s so you don’t catch a glimpse of a tree or a bird, or something that might remind you there are other things in life. In California, we were told, they write scripts in a swimming pool. They hold your head under water until you think of a funny line.

We were lucky to have a great producer like Don Segall. He’s a chubby little bald guy with a moustache and a goatee, who went around like Joe Schultz saying funny things to keep people loose. Don’s favorite expression was “in the toilet,” as in, “If you guys don’t hurry up and write something funny, this show is going in the toilet.”

We had some very productive writing sessions. Here is one that actually took place. Don walks in and says, “OK, if you guys don’t behave yourselves today I have three writers waiting outside in the trunk of my car.” A network vice president stops by to say there is a need for a put-down line we can use all the time like the one on “Welcome Back Kotter”: “Up your nose with a rubber hose.”

“Well, we can’t have ‘up your nose with a bat,’” says Don Segall. Vic remembers that during rehearsals that day, one of the actors had forgotten a line and substituted the word “doodah” and everybody on the set had laughed.

“Since nobody knows what ‘doodah’ means,” Marvin said, “how about ‘up your doodah with a bat.’ If Standards and Practices (the CBS censor) objects, we’ll tell them doodah is a baseball term meaning nose.”

“We can’t use that,” Don said. “Standards and Practices will think it means ass.”

Vic: “We can have another line in the script where somebody says, ‘this guy sure has a doodah for news.’”

Don: “They’re still going to think it means ass.”

Me: “We can have somebody wearing glasses and a fake doodah.”

Marvin: “Keep your doodah to the grindstone.”

Don: “Marvin, keep your doodah out of other people’s business. That’s enough! It can’t go in the script.”

Vic: “How about that old favorite, ‘Camptown races five miles long, nose, nose!…’”

Don: “I can see it now. Dr. Jones: eye, ear, doodah, and throat. Listen to me. I’m laughing and I’m going in the toilet.”

Which is where the show eventually wound up in spite of all that brilliance. Our main problem with the show was a difficulty in conveying reality. The CBS censor wouldn’t let anybody spit, burp, swear, or chew tobacco. Any similarity between the characters in the show and real ballplayers was purely coincidental. Even our real ballplayer didn’t seem like a real ballplayer. I had tried out for the lead character even though I didn’t expect to get the part and was half hoping I wouldn’t. As I told Don Segall, I didn’t want to be part of a show that would have me as an actor.

I discovered that television acting is a lot different from movie acting. In the movies, you get to do a scene over and over again until you get it right. And you can talk in a normal tone of voice and the camera comes in and makes you larger than life. In television you only get to do it twice, on tape. And you do it in front of a live audience so you have to project your voice and have lots of energy. I’m normally a low-key guy and suddenly I’m on stage with a bunch of actors who all sound like they’re on some kind of uppers. In spite of that I didn’t do a bad job. My performance is often compared to Paul Newman. A wooden statue of Paul Newman.

The show was cancelled in November of ’76, after five episodes, and we never did make a lot of money. In fact, when the three of us figured out how much time we spent writing and rewriting scripts, the money came to $1.48 an hour, each. Still, we were in exclusive company for awhile. Every year a network gets about 2,000 ideas for sitcoms, from which they commission about 150 scripts and from that they make about 30 pilots of which only three or four ever get on the air. That means we beat 500 to 1 odds. We just couldn’t make it happen on the stage.

After our sitcom experience, the three creators were so dizzy that Vic went into seclusion, Marvin went into shock, and I went back into baseball.

THE PROBLEM

I first noticed it about six years ago although it may have existed before that and I just refused to admit it to myself. Something was wrong with my marriage. Things were not the same anymore between Bobbie and me. It was hard to put my finger on it then. I only knew that daily living had become extraordinarily difficult. I was so unhappy that I talked out loud about leaving someday but actually doing it seemed unthinkable. In spite of outward appearances I was very old fashioned. I came from a background in which divorce was something that only happened to other people.

This was all complicated by the inner struggle I was having with myself. Somehow my past successes hadn’t made me feel secure. There were all these thoughts racing through my mind, fragments of this and that. It was like listening to twelve radio stations at the same time. And I had trouble breathing. Sometimes I’d get this tightness in my chest and it felt as if I was buried ten feet underground breathing through a straw, terrified that someone would kick dirt into it. Even the memory of it frightens me. I felt I needed to get away from the noise in my head and find someplace I could breathe. The illusion was always that it would come with the next achievement, the next success. If I could just find that ultimate accomplishment I’d be safe.

THE COMEBACK

I began throwing a ball against the garage. I had always joked about making a baseball comeback. What if I actually tried it? I could be back on the road and have time to figure things out. I was convinced I needed a challenge in my life and it would be a blast if I could make it all the way. Maybe I could recapture that happier, simpler time in our lives that I wrote about in
Ball Four
.

Our friends all laughed, of course. I was 37 years old, there were good job offers in television, I hadn’t played professionally for seven years and baseball didn’t want me. The whole thing just didn’t make sense. That’s probably why it felt right to me.

I wasn’t completely out of shape because I had been playing in a beer league over the summers. At various times I’d been the ace pitcher for the Ridgewood-Paramus Barons, the Teaneck Blues, the Englewood Rangers, and the Clifton Tigers. I was like Jim O’Toole, hanging on with the Ross Eversoles in the Kentucky Industrial League. I threw a mediocre fastball which I had no trouble getting over the plate. I just had trouble keeping it in New Jersey. To make it in the pros I’d have to resurrect my old knuckleball. Maybe “Super knuck” would make a reappearance.

My comeback did not get off to a rousing start. In the spring of ’77, White Sox owner Bill Veeck gave me a shot with his AA farm team in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was released after six weeks but I didn’t take it personally. My pitching record was 0 and 5. Then after a couple dozen phone calls I ended up pitching in Durango, Mexico. Only a foreign country would have me. I brought the family with me as I had always done years ago. Partly because I needed to be with Michael, David, and Laurie (between road trips), and partly because sometimes people pull closer to ignore the truth.

After five weeks of 26-hour bus rides, galloping “tourista,” and a 2 and 5 record, I was released by Durango. At that point, any sane man would have quit. Naturally, I packed my spikes and headed for Portland, Oregon, home of the independent Portland Mavericks in the Class A Northwest League. They would give anybody a chance.

The Mavericks were the dirty dozen of baseball, a collection of players nobody else wanted, owned by actor Bing Russell. The team motto could have been “Give me your tired, your poor, your wretched pitchers yearning to breathe free.” In a league stocked with high-priced bonus babies, Maverick players made only $300 per month and had to double as the ground crew. Revenge being a strong motivator, the Mavs had the best team in the league.

The soul of the Mavericks was an old red school bus which was used for transportation. In addition to a seatless interior with mattresses on the floor, it featured a loudspeaker on the roof from which important announcements could be made via a microphone inside the bus. The Mavs had a unique way of attracting crowds to the ballparks. The afternoon before a game, we’d drive through the streets of whatever town we were playing in and insult the citizens over the loudspeaker. “You there, in the blue shirt,” one of the players would broadcast while the bus stopped at a light. “Pull in that gut, it looks disgusting.” No insult was too outrageous. “Hey, Lady, that sure is an ugly baby you got there.” And so on. Needless to say, that night the stands would be filled with hundreds of irate fans rooting passionately for our defeat.

And the Mav manners weren’t any better at the ballpark. Whenever the opposing pitcher got knocked out of the game (which was often), the Mavericks, resplendent in red uniforms with black trim, would stand in front of the dugout and serenade the departing player. It was always the same tune, a loud chorus of Gene Autry’s closing theme, sung with a smirk. “Happy trailllls to youuuu, until we meet againnn. Happy trailllls to youuuu, keep smiling until thennn.”

One night an umpire came over to our dugout (umpires were always coming over to our dugout) and said we should knock it off because we had too much class for that. To which one of our players responded, “Oh yeah! Who says?” I’m embarrassed to say I enjoyed every tasteless minute of it. It was just the sort of slapstick humor I needed to cover the pain.

On the surface it seemed like a good summer for the family. We saw the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee, the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico, and Mount Hood in Oregon. We traveled any distance necessary to avoid seeing the problems nearby. Looking back, I realize that it had always been our pattern. We would go places and we would talk, but we never went places
together
and we never talked about
us
. As good as I was at observing others, I had always been blind to myself.

Bobbie and I had gotten married after I became a ballplayer. Our life had been built around separations and homecomings. Yet it’s hard to believe ours was a baseball marriage, like Gary Bell’s. We had always liked baseball and we enjoyed traveling. If we couldn’t be happy during a baseball season, we couldn’t be happy together.

That summer I realized we couldn’t be happy together. But could I live alone and still be close to the kids? I still didn’t know what I wanted, only what I didn’t want.

It was the worst of winters. Bobbie and I grew further apart and our life together became unbearable. After my 6-and-13 season there were no teams willing to give me a chance. Still, I worked out three nights a week in a gymnasium until two o’clock in the morning. Some nights I stayed out later than that.

And it was the best of winters. I got to meet Ted Turner when he came to New York to accept the Yachtsman of the Year award for winning the America’s Cup. Ted said, “Sure, what the hell, why not?” He’d give me a chance to make one of his minor-league teams. So what if I was 39 years old. He was 39 and
he
wasn’t washed up. Ted said he believed in the American way, that everyone should get his chance, and let the best man win.

THE MAGIC LADY

And I met somebody else. It was at Bloomingdale’s department store in Hackensack, New Jersey, at an evening fund-raiser for a local hospital. I spotted her across a crowded room. She was very beautiful. Our eyes first met in the furniture department and we smiled. We saw each other in notions and we stared. We crossed paths again near the luggage and we smiled and stared. When we saw each other back in furniture we stared and smiled and laughed. Then to my astonishment she walked over and said, “I think we’re destined to meet.”

I told her I was Jim Bouton. She said, “What’s a Jim Bouton?” I said I was a former baseball player with the Yankees. She said she knew nothing about baseball. Her name was Dr. Paula Kurman and she was a behavioral scientist. I said, “What’s a behavioral scientist?” She replied that she was a college professor and she also helped people with relationship problems. I told her I had a few relationship problems that needed help and asked for her telephone number. She handed me her business card.

This was October. The next day I called and got a recording. Since I didn’t want to talk to a machine I hung up. For the next three months every time I called I got the machine. After awhile, I wasn’t even sure why I was still calling, except that there was something about this woman. And things were falling apart at home.

Finally, in January I left a message, she called back, and we had lunch. She was just as lovely as I had remembered her. This was a college professor? I had this silly nervous grin on my face and her hand trembled when she drank her sherry. The next time we had a longer lunch. I told her my story and she told me hers. “My God,” she said, “I think we’re going to be catalysts for each other.” I didn’t know what the hell she meant but I liked watching her say it. In two weeks I would be leaving to play baseball. I gave her the address of the Braves minor-league camp in Florida.

Ah, spring training. I needed to run in the sunshine and clear my head. The pitching mound was my isolation booth and the locker room was my sanctuary. And I could use some laughs. These are not hard to find around baseball players. Especially if they’re 19 years old and you’re 39. In my first exhibition game I was winding up for my first pitch when my shortstop hollered, “C’mon, Mr. Bouton!” I had to call time out to laugh. Actually, the players were very kind to me. They called me Dad. Or Old-Timer.

After the workouts we’d go out and have a few beers together. I felt a little out of it whenever they’d be trying to pick up 19-year-old girls. Then one day somebody walked in and the players all started screaming, “Hey Jim, here comes one for you.” It was a little old lady with blue hair.

In the beginning I was a real curiosity. The players would sneak glances at me and whisper a lot. But they seemed to respect me. Maybe that’s because I was old enough to be their father. They knew I was the guy who wrote
Ball Four
, but they didn’t dislike me for it. In fact, they liked me
because
I wrote it. A few players said it sounded like so much fun, they were inspired to play harder so they would be sure to make it. They told me if I was writing another book I should be sure to spell their names right.