Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? (11 page)

Jackson stopped dead.

“Everybody here crazy,” he announced.

It went pretty much like this from the first day of July until the last day of the season, in September. Only a true hero could win a game for the Mets. Jackson, who was to wind up losing twenty, began to trust nobody. When he won a game, he won it by pitching a shutout. Even then, he was never too sure until he was back in the dressing room.

There was a night game in St. Louis that showed this. Jackson had a 1-0 lead as the ninth inning began. Ken Boyer was the first Cardinal hitter. Boyer hit sharply down the third-base line. Felix Mantilla went the wrong way for the ball, and it went through into left field. The Mets' left fielder was Joe Christopher. Casey Stengel had put him into the game for defensive purposes. Christopher advanced on the ball, then touched it several times before finally holding onto it. Boyer had pulled up at second by the time Christopher was able to make the throw.

With one pitch the Mets had not only allowed the first man up to reach base, but they also had allowed him to advance into scoring position. Jackson, however, did not fold. He bent his back a little more and got the next two hitters. Then Red Schoendienst came up to pinch-hit. He is old, this Schoendienst, and maybe he has never been the same since being hit with tuberculosis a couple of years ago. But he is still Red Schoendienst, and in a spot like this he is dangerous. Jackson worked carefully on him. He got Red to go for an outside curve. Red hit a high pop foul alongside first. It was an easy third out. The fans started moving toward the exits. The Mets' outfielders started to come in for their showers. The bullpen crews reached for their gloves. Everybody moved but Jackson. He had been around too long. He was staying where he was until the result was official.

Throneberry circled under the pop fly. First he moved in a little circle. Then he began to move in a bigger circle. With a great last-moment stab, Marvelous Marv got his glove on the ball. The ball hit the thumb part of Marv's glove and bounded away. Jackson then walked Schoendienst.

The next hitter was Bob Whitfield. He slammed a pitch right back at the mound. Now pitchers are not out there to make heroes of themselves. In self-defense they'll stop a batted ball. But only for that reason. Generally they like it much better if the ball goes past them and is handled by an infielder. That's what infielders are for. But this case was different. Jackson knew all about his infielders. He knew all about his outfielders too. He caught one glimpse of the ball as it buzzed toward his shoetops. Then Al Jackson went down for it. The thing could have hopped up and broken his jaw just as easily as not. It didn't matter to Jackson. He knew the only way he could win was to risk his life. With a loud slap, Jackson stopped the ball. Then he came up and threw to Throneberry at first. Marvin held onto the throw. The game, for a wonder, was over.

It was things like this that made an indelible impression upon a nineteen-year-old boy from Stockton, California, named Robert Garibaldi. Last July, Garibaldi, a sophomore at Santa Clara, was the most sought-after pitching prospect to come along in many years. He was a left-hander, and the bidding was up to $125,000 for his signature on a contract.

The Mets had sent Red Ruffing, the old Yankee pitching ace, to look over the kid for them. Ruffing's report was short and impressive: “Has big-league speed. Has big-league control. Ready right now.”

On July 3 the Mets were in San Francisco. By the end of the fourth inning they were trailing by a tidy 10-1. Out of the dugout came Stengel. He ran up the right-field line and disappeared through a door leading to the clubhouse. Many people were speculating that Casey had decided he couldn't take any more. They were wrong. Stengel most certainly could take more. In fact, Casey Stengel at this point thought he could do anything. He had just heard that the Giants were going to sign Garibaldi the next day. So he had made a hurried date with George Weiss to drive to Stockton, sixty miles away, and try to charm Garibaldi into going for a Mets contract.

Charm the lad he did.

“He was wonderful,” Garibaldi says. “It was great meeting him. I'd read about him all my life.”

Stengel and Weiss sat down in the boy's living room and talked for two hours with him. They got down to money. The Giants reportedly had offered $130,000. The Mets certainly would top that, Weiss assured the boy. The boy said thank you, but there was no money in the world that could make it worth his while to pitch for the Mets. He signed with the Giants the next day.

This statement seemed borne out a week or so later when the Mets were in Milwaukee. The ace of their bullpen, Craig Anderson, who was in the midst of losing sixteen games in a row, needed a rest. For a relief pitcher Stengel called upon Wilmer (Vinegar Bend) Mizell. This one came on to walk the first three batters to face him in the seventh. Then he decided to effect pin-point control and he served up a pitch that Joe Adcock hit six miles for a grand slam home run. Out came Vinegar Bend. Stengel waved to the bullpen for somebody else. Nobody came.

“They're afraid to come out,” everybody said.

For a Mets pitcher there were only two possibilities every time he took the mound. Either he was going to be hit for some of the longest home runs in baseball history, or he was going to have to stand around and watch his teammates make those astonishing plays.

Sometimes it was a combination of everything. There was one bright Sunday in July in Cincinnati when the Mets lost two games. Not easily, either. It all began the day before, when Roger Craig, with the class of a real professional, had walked over to Stengel and volunteered for relief pitching in the doubleheader. Stengel nodded. It touches an old guy like this when a pitcher volunteers to work between starts. So in the ninth inning of the first game, with the score tied 3-3, Casey took Craig up on his offer. Roger came in from the bullpen, and immediately Cincinnati sent up Marty Keogh as a pinch-hitter. Craig threw him one pitch. Keogh did not swing. Craig threw another pitch. Keogh swung. He hit the ball eight miles and the Reds won, 4-3.

“They get beat on favors now,” everybody said.

Craig, however, was only part of the day's show. During the course of the eighteen innings the Mets managed to set some sort of an all-time record by getting four runners thrown out at home plate. In the first game Choo Choo Coleman was out trying to score from second on a single to left. In the second game Stengel jauntily ordered a double steal in the second inning. Cannizzaro was on first and Kanehl on third. Cannizzaro broke for second and drew a throw. Kanehl raced for the plate. The Cincinnati shortstop, Cardenas, cut off the throw, fired home, and that took care of Kanehl. In the fourth inning Elio Chacon, on first, put his head down and tried to go all the way around when Jerry Lynch, the Reds' left fielder, messed up a single. Chacon never saw Vada Pinson, the fine center fielder, come over for the ball. He should have, because Pinson, as he demonstrated here, throws quite well. He cut down Chacon at home by six yards. Finally, in the fifth inning, with Jim Hickman on third and breaking for the plate with the swing, Kanehl hit the ball hard. And squarely at third. Hickman was out by a mile at the plate.

In pitching for the Mets, then, it was best to take no chances. Don't volunteer, don't rely on getting any runs, no matter how many teammates get on base. The password was: beware. And the one who seemed to know this better than anyone was Ralph Branca. He had nothing to do with the team officially. His job was talking on a pre- and post-game program for a radio station. But by being around the Mets he understood that anything could happen. So on July 14, when the Mets held an Old Timers' Day and Branca was out in the bullpen, he did not merely sit on a bench and look at the crowd. He stayed loose. He also stayed determined.

The moment Bobby Thomson came up to bat, here was showman Leo Durocher waving to the bullpen for Branca to come in and pitch. Ralph walked in, just as he had come in that day in 1951. Thomson greeted him with a smile. Everybody else out on the field lolled around and made jokes about the situation.

Branca did not say any jokes. And a small thought crossed his mind: Stick the first pitch right in his ear. He dismissed it.

He then wound up and nearly broke his arm off throwing his best curve at Thomson. He threw a couple more of them, and Bobby, fooled by one, barely lifted an easy fly to center field.

Following this, the Mets took the field to play the Dodgers. In the stands to watch them were such as Zack Wheat and Carl Hubbell and Frank Frisch. At the end of five and a half innings the Mets were slightly behind. They were behind by 17-0, and that night Frankie Frisch sat in his house in New Rochelle and he told the neighbors, “I don't have to go out of this house again as long as I live. I've seen everything.”

This view was being echoed on 52nd Street in New York, where the man named Toots Shor runs his restaurant and bar. He is generally considered to be the town's Number 1 sports fan, and around his circular bar he is known, simply, as The Best Customer.

“I have a son,” Toots announced over brandy, “and I make him watch the Mets. I want him to know life. You watch the Mets, you think of being busted out with the guy from the Morris Plan calling you up every ten minutes. It's a history lesson. He'll understand the depression when they teach it to him in school.”

He shook his head. “That Frank Thomas is one helluva guy, you know. But he makes a throw against the Cardinals. He's on third base and he makes a throw to first. He makes the wildest wild throw in baseball history. It goes 125 feet over the first baseman's head. Nobody ever done a thing like that. Well, what the hell, there never was a club like this.”

Anderson is a case in point here. His sixteenth loss was memorable. It left him two short of the all-time National League record, and only a step or two short of asking to be farmed out to an institution. The date was September 8, and the Mets were in Houston for a day-night doubleheader. They were leading, 3-2, in the ninth inning of the day game when Bob Lillis of Houston singled. Johnny Temple bunted down the first-base line. Marvin Throneberry approached the ball thoughtfully. Marvelous Marv's estimate was that the ball would roll foul. He was wrong. He then picked it up and threw to first, too late to get the runner. Stengel waved to the bullpen for help. Here came Anderson. Craig was in great form. He worked on Joe Amalfitano and got him to hit into a double play. Then he walked Norman Larker. This brought up Bob Aspromonte. He hit a sinking liner to left field. Frank Thomas broke for the ball. Then he charged the ball. Then he dove for the ball. He did not make the catch. Temple rounded third and scored the tying run. Larker, the runner from first, rounded second and began to go for third. Thomas grabbed the ball, stood up, and looked at Larker. It was going to be a close play at third. But Thomas was taking no chances. He was not going to let anybody reach second base. So he fired to second. There was nobody there. Aspromonte, the hitter, had remained at first. Kanehl and Neal, the Mets' keystone combination, as the announcers call it, were widely scattered over the area. Thomas's throw roared past second untouched by human hands. Larker reached third, made the turn, and headed for home.

Throneberry made a remarkable save on the throw. He knew exactly what was going on. Larker was heading home with the winning run. A good throw would cut Larker down. Throneberry wanted to make that good throw. So he took aim at the plate. He took aim as if his life depended on this throw. He also took so much time aiming his throw that Larker simply slid across the plate with the winning run.

Jay Hook was another pitcher who found the Mets trying. On August 6, a hot Monday night at Los Angeles, Jay allowed the Dodgers five hits. He did not walk a man. But in the sixth inning of a 1-1 game Maury Wills of the Dodgers dragged a bunt past the mound and beat it out. He then stole second. This infuriated Chris Cannizzaro, who was catching Hook. Chris crouched down and looked out at second. Wills was taking his usual long lead off the base. Chris planted his feet and got ready to make a comeback. He was going to pick Wills off. On the first pitch, Chris threw to second. Threw hard. If there is one thing he can do, it is throw a baseball hard. He threw this one so hard that the only reason Wills had to hold at third and not score was that Jim Hickman, the Mets center fielder, caught the ball on the fly. Willie Davis then hit a ground ball, and Wills came across with what was to be the winning run.

Hook also had the privilege of pitching when the Mets lost their hundredth game of the year. This was late in August at Philadelphia. Jay went ten innings before losing to the Phillies, 3-2. He lost the game primarily on a ground ball to Charley Neal at short. Don Demeter hit the ball. Neal picked it up and made a bad throw to first. It pulled Throneberry off the bag. Marv had to come up the line and into foul territory to stay with the throw. He grabbed it. Then he went to tag Demeter. His feet slipped and he fell on his face.

This was Throneberry's best kind of play. And because of this, people sitting behind first base at the Polo Grounds soon began to show up with T-shirts which read VRAM (MARV spelled backwards) on them. And they took up a great chant: “Cranberry, strawberry, we love Throneberry.”

This was the Marvin Throneberry Fan Club. At the peak of the season over a hundred letters a day were arriving at Marvin's locker at the Polo Grounds.

“The hell of it all is, I'm really a good fielder,” Throneberry kept insisting.

This was something Ralph Houk gladly backed up one evening during the summer, in Washington. Houk, who manages the Yankees, sat in the bus taking his team to the ballpark and he chewed on a cigar and talked about Marvelous Marv.

“I can't understand what's happening to that Throneberry,” he said. “I had him three years at Denver. He's not that bad a ballplayer at all. Why, he opened the season with the Yankees one year there [1958]. Skowron was hurt, I guess. Marv never made plays like they say he makes now. I guarantee you he never did. If he ever played that way for me, I'd of killed him with my bare hands.”