Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? (12 page)

The year Marvelous Marv had in 1962 just happened, then. Nobody had any indication he knew how to play baseball this way. He just arrived from Baltimore one day in May and replaced an ailing Gil Hodges at first. After that, things began to happen. They kept happening too, and by August 18 he was an institution.

On that night the Mets' management held a special day in honor of Stan Musial. But the fans, proudly wearing their VRAM T-shirts and shouting their cheer, showed much more affection for Throneberry. Musial? He was fine. Great guy, magnificent baseball player. A perfectionist. Only who the hell needed him? The mob yelled for Marvelous Marv.

“I hated to take the play away from Stan on his big day here,” Marv apologized after the game.

Throneberry is a balding, likable fellow who has been known to buy a writer a drink, something unheard of in a ballplayer. He is anything but a clown. He simply came into the 1962 season accident-prone, and he barely got out alive. Nothing went right at any time. There was even one night, late in the season, when there was supposed to be some sort of a small party in his honor at a little Italian restaurant called the Grotto on the West Side. Somebody mixed things up, and 125 people showed up instead of an expected 30. The lone chef, hired to work this small party on a usually dead Sunday night, took one look at the mob and pulled off his hat.

“Small-a party, huh?” he said. “Well, you take this small-a party to the Automat. 'Cause that's where I'm going to have my dinner on the way home.”

The place got so jammed that there was no room for Marvelous Marv when he arrived. After trying to get in, he finally gave up and went across the street from his party and had dinner in another place.

The strange thing about the Mets is that, for all their great comedy onfield, they had no real characters off the field. This was a team of twenty-five nice young men who came to the big leagues to play baseball. The fact they played it rather strangely was, obviously, out of their control. The only player on the club who might be counted as unusual is Frank Thomas. His only quirk is that he wants to be an airline hostess. Yet here again you are dealing with a basically serious matter, because Thomas is a damn good airline stewardess.

“He's awful neat,” Miss Barbara Mueller of United Airlines noted one day. “He does everything the way the regulations say you should. Outside of this girl Jane, who handles first class on our New York to San Francisco champagne flight, I think that Frank Thomas is the best stewardess on United Airlines.”

Once the Mets are airborne, going to or from a game, Thomas jumps out of his seat, strides up the aisle to the kitchenette, and takes over the running of the plane. Trays slide in and out, coffee is poured, and he starts moving rapidly up and down the aisle, serving meals. He is very particular about it too. One night, en route to Houston by plane, Thomas started serving the back of the plane first. He thrust a tray under the nose of Barney Kremenko, the sports writer, and a couple of partners he had gotten into a pinochle game. The partners were not good at pinochle. Thus Mr. Kremenko preferred to have nothing break up his game.

“We're not ready now,” Barney said. “We'll eat later.”

“All right,” Thomas announced. “But that means you eat last, and I don't want to hear any squawks about it.”

Offended, Thomas stormed off. Any housewife can understand how he felt. Here he had a whole meal prepared, and it was being turned down.

Presently Kremenko's game broke up. He hailed the regular stewardess and asked her to bring a tray, which she did. Thomas found out about this some minutes later. His eyes flashed.

“You cheated,” he told Kremenko. “I told you to wait your turn, and you cheated. That's the last time you're going to pull that.”

Otherwise, to travel or live with this club was to be with a normal group of young men in the major leagues. In fact, as Ashburn observes, the Mets were the only losing club he can recall on which there was no dissension.

“Any losing team I've ever been on,” Richie says, “had several things going on. One, the players gave up. Or they hated the manager. Or they had no team spirit. Or the fans turned into wolves. But there was none of this with the Mets. Nobody stopped trying. The manager was absolutely great, nobody grumbled about being with the club, and the fans we had, well, there haven't been fans like this in baseball history. So we lose 120 games and there isn't a gripe on the club. It was remarkable. You know, I can remember guys being mad even on a big winner.”

By this he meant a rather famous episode in more recent baseball history. On the last day of the 1950 season Ashburn's Phillies held a one-game lead over the Brooklyn Dodgers. At Ebbets Field, in the ninth inning, the score was tied, 1-1, with none out and Dodgers on first and second. The highly dangerous Duke Snider was at bat against Robin Roberts of the Phillies. Ashburn was in center field. If anything happened and the runner on second, Cal Abrams, scored, the Dodgers would tie for the pennant and go into a playoff heavily favored.

At shortstop for the Phillies was Granny Hamner. When they played it with money on the table, Hamner was one of the real big ones. It has been a while since he has been around, and maybe some people forget him, but when they talk about big men in the clutch Granny Hamner should always be mentioned. On this afternoon, with Abrams edging off second, Hamner flashed the pick-off sign to Stan Lopata, the Phillies' catcher. With Snider, a left-handed batter, up, Hamner was playing over toward second. For the pick-off throw, he would duck in behind Abrams and take the throw. Oh, they wouldn't get Abrams. That would be too much to ask for. The idea was to keep him as close to the bag as possible. If Snider bunted, they could try for Abrams at third. If he hit away and the ball went into the outfield, there still would be a chance to get Abrams at the plate.

Lopata called for a pitch-out. In center, Ashburn moved in. He would back up second in case of a bad throw. Hamner began to edge toward second. Abrams had not picked up the action yet. On the mound, Roberts nodded he had the sign. He started to go into his stretch. Then he threw. He threw a fast ball right down the pipe. Hamner's mouth fell open. Snider rapped it on a line up the middle, over second, and into center field. Abrams started running. Dirt flew from his spikes as he tore around third. From the stands came one great roar:

“ABIE, YOU SHOULD RUN FAST.”

But in the middle of this huge mistake, here was Ashburn. He had raced in to back up second base. And as he came in, the ball landed right at his feet. By now, Richie was only a short distance on the outfield grass behind second. He picked up the ball and threw to the plate. And suddenly all of Brooklyn realized what was happening. Halfway down the line, Abrams was beaten. A wail rang out over Brooklyn as Lopata tagged out Abrams. Roberts, whose bacon had been saved, proceeded to get out of the inning unscathed.

In the tenth inning Dick Sisler hit a home run into the left-field seats and the Phillies won the pennant. But after the game Hamner didn't want to talk to anybody. Particularly Roberts. He wanted to kill Roberts.

“I need a drink,” he kept saying. “Alone.”

The Mets never had even a faint tinge of this. This was a nice, placid, thoughtful team. There was one Sunday night, coming back to New York from Chicago, when Solly Hemus, the coach, and a couple of the players sat in the lounge part of the plane, and the talk was the same as you would hear any place around the major leagues. Except they soon got to talking about throwing knockdown pitches at Willie Mays.

“The pitch right after you throw at him, that's the time to watch him,” Joe Pignatano, one of the catchers, said. “He's ready then. He's mad.”

“Knock him down twice in a row, then,” a tall kid said.

“Do you mean knockdown pitches bother Mays?” they were asked.

“Bother him?” one of the players said. “He's scared to death. If he wasn't so scared of being hit with a ball, he'd hit .600.”

“You go up to him before the game,” one of them said, “and you tell him, ‘Willie, sometime today. Sometime today I'm going to stick it right in your ear.' He'll be standing around the batting cage and he gives you this, ‘Go ahead, man, throw at me all you want. It don't bother me, man.' But that's talk. I know it bothers him.”

They sat and discussed handling Mays with these pitches. It was excellent talk, and it would have made a great impression on the listener except for one thing. It was a red-covered scorebook, and a flip through the pages showed little items like this:

May 26:
Mays hits two home runs against the Mets.
May 27:
Willie gets four hits against the Mets.
June 1:
A home run.
June 2:
Another homer.
June 3:
Still another homer.
July 4:
Willie hits two homers and has seven runs batted in.

I closed the book. “You're right,” I told one of the players. “Mays is a yellow dog.”

Why a discussion of this type should come up at all is a question. If there is one matter which irked Stengel over the season it was the refusal of his pitchers to throw tight pitches and move the batter back. Against the Mets, all hitters practically stepped on the plate and remained there until they had either hit the ball out of sight or reached base through an error.

Stengel, in one of the finest talks on baseball anybody has ever heard, made much of this one night.

“All these pitchers we have,” he said, “I see them with their lovely wives and their lovely children. Oh, grand children. So they go out there to pitch, and here is the batter. Ohhh, he digs right in there and he swings that bat and he has a wonderful toehold. And our pitchers, they say they won't throw at him. They say you have to think of the lovely wife and children the batter has. Well, some of these pitchers of mine ought to think about their own children. That batter up there doesn't care about them. He's in there to take the food right off the table from the pitcher's children. These fellows of mine, they better start thinking of their own lovely children and move that batter back off of the plate a little.”

It was excellent thinking. However, every time you bring it up you also think of the game against the Reds on August 12, and it shows, as well as anything, the way the Mets, advice or no advice, played baseball all year.

Before the game a home-run-hitting contest was held. Wally Post of the Reds had five pitches thrown to him. He pulled four of them over the left-field wall to win the contest. Now in a contest such as this the batter tells the man pitching to him just where to put the ball. Then it is thrown at three-quarter speed. In Post's case he wanted it a little bit over belt high and a little bit on the outside.

As each contestant comes up, opposing pitchers normally watch closely from the dugout. Whatever pitch the home-run hitter calls for is the one never to give him in a game.

Later in the day, in the eighth inning with two on and the Reds ahead, 5-4, Post was sent up as a pinch-hitter. On the mound for the Mets was Kenneth MacKenzie, who is a graduate of Yale University. Don't ever let anybody tell you that a guy can get into Yale just because he has money behind him. It takes more than that. Those kids that go to Yale have to be very good spellers. So MacKenzie is no dunce. This is a bright boy.

He threw a pitch a little bit over belt high and a little bit outside to Post. Wally hit it exactly three miles over the left-field fence.

L
ONG
I
SLAND, WHICH IS
considered part of New York and the new home of the Mets, is the perfect place for them. Nothing particularly good has happened on Long Island for over fifty years, so nobody is going to get unduly concerned if the Mets take more than a little while to pull themselves together.

Long Island is a sandspit 150 miles long. It originally was the great outwash plain of a glacier, and history shows even the Indians didn't want much to do with it. They moved out without a fight and without asking for a dime when the whites arrived. Later the redcoat General Howe engaged Washington's Colonials in something called the Battle of Long Island, and Howe succeeded in driving Washington off Long Island and up the Hudson to someplace like Dobbs Ferry. Anybody who knows anything about Dobbs Ferry as opposed to Long Island can never accept a history book which says this was a defeat for Washington. In fact, there are many people who still wonder why we did not insist that the English, as part of the Yorktown surrender, be forced to retain Long Island.

Before it gained the Mets, Long Island's more recent highlights consisted mainly of the defeat of Whirlaway by Market Wise in 1943 at Belmont Park, and the muggy Saturday in June 1958 when Tim Tam was 3-20 in the Belmont Stakes and only a broken leg could keep him from winning. This was a theory held by many young bank tellers as they stood in the mutuel-window lines with Friday's deposits in their hands. Tim Tam, as could be expected, broke the leg. He was moving toward the eighth pole, and moving well, when the leg splintered. The horse faltered and was out of it thereafter. The skies promptly were split by the loudest mass wail ever heard at an American sporting event.

In the last fifteen years Long Island has become crowded with people who have moved out from Brooklyn. This is excellent, for real Brooklyn people know how to wait for a baseball victory. And the wait for the Mets could be a hard one. This is something Casey Stengel continually recognizes. He always worries about the people who go to see the Mets play. The question is, of course, how many more seasons this situation will have to go on. A major-league baseball team is built with a combination of patience and luck. Money alone is never going to do it. Mrs. Payson can take out her checkbook and start scribbling until her hand hurts, but that still is not going to bring a winning Mets team to us.

The good ballplayer has to be found, not bought. This is something rich men have found out over long years in the sport. Tom Yawkey, who owns the Boston Red Sox, has a ton of money and he has spent a lot of it on the club. It has gotten him exactly nowhere. By and large, the high-priced bonus players simply do not make it. It is the guy who comes out of nowhere who seems to make it best. This is something Stengel, in particular, knows all about.