Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? (2 page)

Otherwise, most legends should be regarded with suspicion. Although, if one is to have any fun out of life, one should proceed with the understanding that reminiscences are to be enjoyed, not authenticated. But with the Mets you do not need any of this. They made it on their own and required no help from imaginative bystanders. This team was, simply, a great, colorful spectacle, and they are held here in the highest affection. The way they played baseball made them the sports story of our time. This was not another group of methodical athletes making a living at baseball. Not the Mets. They did things.

Which brings us back to Marvelous Marvin Throneberry. On a hot Sunday last summer at old Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The Mets were in the field. Marvelous Marv was holding down first base. This is like saying Willie Sutton works at your bank.

It was the eighth inning of the first game of a doubleheader, and the Cardinals had Ken Boyer on first and Stanley Musial at third. Two were out. Boyer took a lead, then broke for second on the pitch. The throw to second from the Mets' catcher was, by some sort of miracle, perfect. It had Boyer beat a mile, and the Cardinal runner, only halfway down, turned and tried to go back to first. The Mets' second baseman, Rod Kanehl, threw to Throneberry. Boyer was trapped.

Standard operating procedure in a situation of this kind is for the man with the ball to chase the runner, but with one eye firmly fixed on the man on third. If he breaks for home, you're supposed to go after him and forget the other guy.

So Boyer turned and started to run away from Throneberry. This seemed to incense Marv. Nobody runs away from Marvin Throneberry. He took after Boyer with purpose. He did not even wink at Musial. Marvelous Marv lowered his head a little and produced wonderful running action with his legs. This amazed the old manager, Casey Stengel, who was standing on the top step of the Mets' dugout. It also amazed Mr. Musial, who was relaxing on third. Stanley's mouth opened. Then he broke for the plate and ran across it and into the dugout with the run that cost the Mets the game. Out on the basepaths, Throneberry, despite all his intentions and heroic efforts, never did get Boyer. He finally had to flip to his shortstop, Charley Neal, who made the tag near second.

It was an incredible play. But a man does not become an institution on one play.

Therefore. There was a doubleheader against the Chicago Cubs at the Polo Grounds, the Mets' home until their new park is ready. In the first inning of the first game Don Landrum of Chicago was caught in a rundown between first and second. Rundowns are not Throneberry's strong point. In the middle of the posse of Mets chasing the runner, Throneberry found himself face to face with Landrum. The only trouble was that Marvin did not have the ball. Now during a rundown the cardinal rule is to get out of the way if you do not have the ball. If you stand around, the runner will deliberately bang into you and claim interference, and the umpire will call it for him, too.

Which is exactly what happened. Landrum jumped into Throneberry's arms, and the umpire waved him safely to first. So, instead of an out, the Cubs still had a runner at first—and the Mets were so upset the Cubs jumped them for a four-run rally.

When the Mets came to bat, Throneberry strode to the plate, intent on making up for the whole thing. With two runners on, Marv drove a long shot to the bullpen in right center field. It went between the outfielders and was a certain triple. As usual, Marv had that wonderful running action. He lowered his head and flew past first. Well past it. He didn't come within two steps of touching the bag. Then he raced to second, turned the corner grandly, and careened toward third. The stands roared for Marvin Throneberry.

While all this violent action and excitement were going on, Ernie Banks, the Cubs' first baseman, casually strolled over to Umpire Dusty Boggess.

“Didn't touch the bag, you know, Dusty,” Banks said. Boggess nodded. Banks then called for the ball. The relay came, and he stepped on first base. Across the infield Throneberry was standing on third. He was taking a deep breath and was proudly hitching up his belt, the roar of the crowd in his ears, when he saw the umpire calling him out at first.

“Things just sort of keep on happening to me,” Marvin observed at one point during the season.

Which they did. All season long. And at the end, here was this balding twenty-eight-year-old from Collierville, Tennessee, standing at home plate with a big smile on his face as he proudly accepted a boat which he had won as the result of a clothing-store contest. Throneberry was not too certain what he would do with the boat. The most water he had seen in several years was a filled-up bathtub on Saturday night back in Collierville. The nearest lake to his house is 150 miles away, and 150 miles as the coon dog runs, Marv cautioned. “Take the road, it's a little further,” he said.

But this was all right. If he had been living in Johnstown, they would have given him a well pump. Things just go like this for Throneberry. It was all right with him. It was, that is, until two days later, when Marvin found out just how rough the season really was.

The whole incredible thing started in the agile brain of a Madison Avenue public-relations man whose accounts include a large chain clothing company. He also represents a book publisher, but the clothing store does not hold that against him. The clothes client had made a ticket sales tie-in with the Mets. Just before the season started, the P.R. man barged into the clothing company's offices with an idea that was so hot he was dizzy from it.

“We'll put up a sign on the outfield fence,” he said. “The player who hits it the most over the season gets a boat. Where do we get the boat? We work a tie-in with another client of mine who makes them. It'll be terrific.”

The first sign certainly was. Out on the left-field fence, it spelled out the client's name, and inside a circle was a picture of the boat. Anybody who hit the circle on the fly got five points. Anybody who hit any other part of the sign on the fly received three points. If the ball hit it on the bounce it was worth two points. Whoever had the most points at the end of the season was to win the boat. An official point-keeper was assigned to watch every Met game and keep a tally on the points. Before half the season was over, the scorer wanted to go to the needle trades union over the matter.

The sign was a beauty. It also was remindful of the famous
New Yorker
cartoon which showed the outfield wall of a ballpark and a sign on it stating, “Hit the sign and Abe Feldman will give you a suit absolutely
free
.” In front of the sign, hands on knees, was the outfielder, waiting for the next pitch. And right behind him, at the ready, was Abe Feldman. Abe was bald and he wore a vest. He had a catcher's mitt on his right hand and a first baseman's mitt on the other.

The clothing sign disturbed Casey Stengel, however. Upon seeing it for the first time, Stengel squawked.

“We get to the end of the season, and I might need a couple of games to finish higher [optimism was rampant at this time] and what am I going to get? Everybody will be standing up there and going, whoom! Just trying to win theirselves a nice boat while I'm sittin' here hopin' they'll butcher boy the ball onto the ground and get me a run or two. I don't like it at all.”

George Weiss, the Mets' general manager, moved quickly to satisfy Stengel. In a lifetime of baseball, Weiss has learned many things, one of which is that when a man like Stengel has a complaint of this type, it is to be acted upon promptly. The sign, Weiss decreed, had to go.

He was telling this to the wrong guy. This P.R. man leaves in the middle of a job for only one reason: the client isn't coming up with the money.

“Casey is worried about his left-handed hitters
deliberately
trying to hit the left-field fence?” The P.R. man inquired in wonderment. Told that this was the case, he had an antidote. “My client is buying the same sign on the right-field fence,” he announced. This cost the client another chunk of dough. So the contest was still on.

Over the year, Throneberry hit the sign in right field exactly four times. But twice his line drive landed inside the circle for five points, and on the last day of the home season at the Polo Grounds he found himself the proud owner of a $6000 luxury cabin cruiser.

The clothing company awarded another boat on the same day. It went to the Met who was named the team's most valuable player in a poll of sports writers. Richie Ashburn was the winner. Ashburn is from Nebraska.

“We'll both sail our boats all over the bathtub,” Throneberry told the boat people. Marvelous Marv was in high humor.

A day later, Judge Robert Cannon, who handles legal matters for the Major League Baseball Players Association, told Marvelous Marv something about the boat. Humor fled as the judge spoke.

“Just don't forget to declare the full value,” Cannon said.

“Declare it? Who to, the Coast Guard?” Throneberry asked.

“Taxes,” Cannon said. “Ashburn's boat was a gift. He was voted it. Yours came the hard way. You hit the sign. You
earned
it. The boat is
earnings.
You pay income tax on it.”

Last winter, at a very late date in the tax year, Throneberry sat in his living room in Collierville and he still was not quite over his conversation with Cannon.

“In my whole life I never believed they'd be as rough a year as there was last season,” he said. “And here I am, I'm still not out of it. I got a boat in a warehouse someplace and the man tells me I got to pay taxes on it and all we got around here is, like I say, filled-up bathtubs and maybe a crick or two. I think maybe I'll be able to sell it off someplace. I think you could say prospects is all right. But I still don't know what to do about that tax thing.”

The whole season went this way for the Mets. Take any day, any town, any inning. With the Mets nothing changed, only the pages on the calendar. It was all one wonderful mistake.

There was the Fourth of July, which certainly has some significance, and the Mets were at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Jim Davenport, the Giants' third baseman, swung at a pitch and lifted it high into the air. Rod Kanehl, the Met stationed at shortstop this time around, turned and raced into left field. Sunglasses flipping, glove up in the air, feet moving, Kanehl went for the ball.

The Mets' third baseman, Felix Mantilla, came in and made the catch right at the pitcher's mound.

There was even something about this team before it ever played a game. Go to the summer of 1961, before it was even formed, and you find that, at this time, the club hired the fabled Rogers Hornsby to prepare a scouting report on every player in the major leagues. The Mets of 1962 were to be formed with baseball players given to them by the other teams. As we are going to see, this little matter is, by itself, a saga of American charity rivaling that of United States Steel. Hornsby operated out of his home city of Chicago. He watched National League teams at Wrigley Field, which he did not like so much because only day games are played there and this interfered badly with his attendance at the horse races. He watched American League teams at Comiskey Park, which was a bit better because most of the games were played at night—although not so much, because he still had to look at baseball players.

“They say we're going to get players out of a grab bag,” Hornsby said one afternoon at Wrigley Field. “From what I see, it's going to be a garbage bag. Ain't nobody got fat off eating out of the garbage, and that's just what the Mets is going to have to be doing. This is terrible. I mean, this is really going to be bad.”

Rogers did not take his job lightly. On this day, for example, he slipped his hand into a pocket of his checked sports jacket and came out with a pair of contact lenses which he put on so he could study closely what was on the field, in front of him. And what was on the field gagged the Rajah. In his time, Hornsby was an unbelievable hitter who three times finished with an average of over .400, reaching .424 in 1924, a record still standing. This background has not made him exactly tolerant of the ability of baseball players. To illustrate, we reprint herewith the most glowing report on an individual which Hornsby handed in all season:

LOOKS LIKE A MAJOR-LEAGUE PLAYER

The name at the top of the sheet said the report was about Mickey Mantle.

It did not take long for the Mets to have an adverse effect on Hornsby's luck. There was one day, when he had no game to attend, that Rajah got into his yellow Cadillac at a little before ten o'clock and headed for Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago where Arlington Park Race Track happens to be located. En route to the track, Hornsby stopped for gas, or to have the windshield wiped, or just to stop, period, and each time he would jam himself into a phone booth and make phone calls dealing with situations at such places as Rockingham Park and Aqueduct.

He arrived at Arlington Park at 11:15. Post time for the first race was 2:30. This gave Rogers just enough time to get a seat in the grandstand—he feels the clubhouse is a place for suckers—and begin the tedious job of handicapping a nine-race card. He also had invested in two fifty-cent tout cards sold at the track entrance. One of them, in which Rogers placed great stock, had a horse named Frisky Phil, 15-1 in the morning line, on top in the sixth race.

Frisky Phil was trained by a Kentucky gentleman named Henry Forrest, and the Rajah caught up with Forrest before the race.

“This is a horse that's been out with leg trouble for seven months now,” Forrest said. “As a rule now, only one horse in a hundred that's been away for six months or more can win first time out. The price should be 50-1 to begin with. Here you're takin' 15-1 on a horse that just don't seem to figure at all. Don't bet.”

“Well, then you pick me a winner here in the race,” Rajah said.

“I don't do that,” Forrest said. “Every time I give out a horse, it loses, and a man don't make many friends like that.”