Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (6 page)

Batting practice today. Arm felt fine after throwing, which is more than I can say for Steve Barber’s. Two seconds after he threw he was in the trainer’s room with an icepack on his elbow. And I haven’t even had a twinge. It’s kind of scary. Maybe I’m not throwing right.

Most pitchers are paranoid about their arms. You live in terror that you’re going to wake up in the morning and not be able to pitch anymore. You wake up in the middle of the night and you make a throwing motion to see if it’s going to hurt. In the morning the first thing you do is circle your arm just to see how it feels. In fact one of the reasons it takes injured arms so long to heal is that pitchers are constantly testing the aggravated part and making it worse. Trainers always tell you to give it a chance to get better, but what do trainers know about temptation? You got to
test
. I know sometimes I’ll be out with my family, eating in a restaurant maybe, and all of a sudden I’ll circle my arm over my head and I’m sure everybody thinks I’m calling the waiter or that I’m crazy. I’m just testing.

It’s understandable. All a pitcher has is his arm. Pitching is a precise skill that requires a coordinated effort among many parts of the body. One small hurt and it’s all gone. Like a tiddly-winks champion with a hangnail.

The guy pitching batting practice before me, fellow by the name of Paul Click, who won’t make the team, got hit with a line drive. Instead of ducking behind the screen in front of the mound he turned his back. I guess he thought that if he turned his back and closed his eyes the ball couldn’t find him. He got it in the back of the head and it opened up a lot of skin. It reminded me of the time when I was pitching in Baltimore, six years ago. I threw a low outside fastball to Jackie Brandt. He held back on it and at the last instant reached out and hit a line drive right back at me. I never saw the damn thing. It smacked me on the jaw and opened me up for about twelve stitches. Those were the days when I gutsed it, so I jumped right up and said I wanted to pitch. “Ralph, I’m ready, I’m ready,” I said. “I can pitch.” Johnny Blanchard was the catcher. “Not with two mouths you ain’t, Meat,” he said.

They wanted to carry me off on a stretcher but I knew if my wife heard I was carried off the field she’d have a miscarriage. So I went off under my own power, bloody towel and all, and listened carefully for the ovation. I got it.

Ovations are nice and some guys sort of milk them. Like Joe Pepitone. If he had just the touch of an injury he’d squirm on the ground for a while and then stand up, gamely. And he’d get his ovation. After a while the fans got on to him, though, and he needed at least a broken leg to move them.

There was an intrasquad game today after the workout, and although I didn’t have to stay to watch it I did. That’s what you call showing desire. Jim O’Toole was pitching when I got there, and his curve wasn’t sharp and he was walking a lot of guys. He’s got about eight kids and spring training means more to him than a lot of other guys, but he was really laboring. I felt sort of sorry for him, but not very.

Let me explain. It was rather early to be playing an intrasquad game and I thought, “I hope nobody gets hurt.” Then I had to amend that in my mind. I meant, “I hope I don’t get hurt.” I’ve always wanted everyone to do well. If I’m not playing I root for my teammates. But I don’t want them to do well at my expense. Even when I was in junior high school, I’d sit there hollering encouragement and all the time I’d be saying, “Gee whiz, if he’d break his leg I could get in there and play.” It’s not exactly the perfect attitude, but it’s the way I feel.

Last spring Fred Talbot said to me, “When I’m out there pitching, are you rooting for me, Bouton?”

“Yeah, Fred.”

“Do you really hope I do well?”

“Yeah, Fred. But not at my expense.”

What I should have said was, “Yeah, Fred, I hope you do well. I hope you have a helluva year down there in Triple-A.” It ended up I landed in Triple-A and he stayed in the big leagues. When I was sent down I had a record of 1–0. Talbot was 1–8. I still think about that.

The mindless grind of spring training produces, as you might guess, a sort of mindlessness. This morning Mike Hegan and I were partners in calisthenics and were locked in something that looked like the Twist. And I said to Mike, “Hey, this gives me an idea for a dance.”

“Hey, that’s right,” he said. “We’ll call it the Twist.”

“Right, and we’ll open a string of dance halls.”

“Yeah, and we can call them the Peppermint Twist.”

“Right.”

“But we need a front man with a great name. How about Chubby?”

“Great. We’ll call him Chubby Checker.”

This conversation actually took place, Doctor.

Then some guy farted and everybody laughed, and about five minutes later, in a sudden burst of quiet, he farted again and somebody hollered, “Will somebody answer the phone! Some ass keeps calling.”

Uniform-measuring day. This is always a waste. They measure everybody carefully and the uniforms arrive three sizes too big. Part of the reason is that everybody is wearing tight-fitting uniforms these days. Pepitone refuses to take the field if his uniform isn’t skintight. Phil Linz used to say that he didn’t know why, but he could run faster in tight pants. And I understand that Dick Stuart, old Dr. Strangeglove, would smooth his uniform carefully, adjust his cap, tighten his belt and say, “I add 20 points to my average if I know I look bitchin’ out there.”

Mike Marshall is a right-handed pitcher who was 15–9 in the Tiger organization last season. He’s got a master’s degree from Michigan State. He majored in phys. ed., with a minor in mathematics. He’s a cocky kid with a subtle sense of humor. He’s been telling everybody that the new lower mound, which was supposed to help the hitters, actually shortens the distance the pitcher has to throw the ball. It has to do with the hypotenuse of a right triangle decreasing as either side of the triangle decreases. Therefore, says Marshall, any psychological advantage the hitters gain if the pitcher doesn’t stand tall out there will be offset by the pitchers knowing that they are now closer to the plate.

Clever fellow, Marshall. He has even perfected a pick-off motion to second base that’s as deadly as it is difficult to execute. He says one reason it’s effective is that he leans backward as he throws the ball. I asked why, and he said, “Newton’s Third Law, of course.” Of course. Except the last time I tried his pick-off motion I heard grinding noises in my shoulder.

Steve Hovley sidled over to me in the outfield today and whispered into my ear, “Billy Graham is a cracker.”

Although I’ve enjoyed being in Arizona, there are things about training in Florida I’ll miss. Every spring Phil Linz and I would have dinner at Las Novedades in Tampa and we’d order Cuban black-bean soup and
Pompano en papillot
and we’d have a bottle of wine and talk about our old days in the minor leagues (and the time Joe Pepitone stole an elevator). Even when Phil was with the Mets we’d make it a point to meet in Tampa and go to Las Novedades.

I had the same kind of relationship with Roger Repoz and Fritz Peterson, two others guys I roomed with on the Yankees. Roger and I had this one spot in Detroit, the Italian Gardens. We’d go there for linguine with white clam sauce and we’d have a bottle of wine, and then some more linguine and another bottle of wine, then maybe another bottle of wine, and we’d stagger back to our room. When Roger was sold we made a pact that any time we got to Detroit we’d go alone to the Italian Gardens and order linguine and drink wine and stagger back to the hotel in memory of the good times we’d had.

I know when I’m in Anaheim next I’ll do what Fritz Peterson and I used to think was a lot of fun. We’d rent a little car and speed along the freeways playing Spanish music as loud as the radio would go and we’d go down to the beach or into the mountains. In San Francisco Fritz and I made an inspection trip to Haight-Ashbury where the hippies offered to turn us on with LSD. We were too chicken to try.

The first roommate I had in pro ball was a guy named Arturo Polanco and he couldn’t speak a word of English. So he taught me Spanish and I taught him English. The first words he learned were “Son of a bleach.” I think something was lost in translation.

Mickey Mantle announced his retirement the other day and I got to thinking about the mixed feelings I’ve always had about him. On the one hand I really liked his sense of humor and his boyishness, the way he’d spend all that time in the clubhouse making up involved games of chance and the pools he got up on golf matches and the Derby and things like that.

I once invested a dollar when Mantle raffled off a ham. I won, only there was no ham. That was one of the hazards of entering a game of chance, Mickey explained.

I got back by entering a fishing tournament he organized and winning the weight division with a ten-pounder I’d purchased in a store the day before. Two years later Mantle was still wondering why I’d only caught that one big fish and why all the other fish that were caught were green and lively while mine was gray and just lay there, staring.

I also remember the time I won my first major-league game. It was a shutout against the Washington Senators in which I walked seven guys and gave up seven hits and had to pitch from a stretch position all game. They were hitting line drives all over the place and Hector “What a Pair of Hands” Lopez bailed me out with about four leaping catches in left field. When the game was over I walked back into the clubhouse and there was a path of white towels from the door to my locker, and all the guys were standing there, and just as I opened the door Mickey was putting the last towel down in place. I’ll never forget him for that.

And I won’t forget the time—1962, I guess it was—in Kansas City. I was sitting alone in a restaurant, eating, when Mickey and Whitey Ford came in and Mickey invited me to eat with them and picked up the tab and it made me feel good all over and like a big shot besides.

On the other hand there were all those times when he’d push little kids aside when they wanted his autograph, and the times when he was snotty to reporters, just about making them crawl and beg for a minute of his time. I’ve seen him close a bus window on kids trying to get his autograph. And I hated that
look
of his, when he’d get angry at somebody and cut him down with a glare. Bill Gilbert of
Sports Illustrated
once described that look as flickering across his face “like the nictitating membrane in the eye of a bird.” And I don’t like the Mantle who refused to sign baseballs in the clubhouse before the games. Everybody else had to sign, but Little Pete forged Mantle’s signature. So there are thousands of baseballs around the country that have been signed not by Mickey Mantle, but by Pete Previte.

Like everybody else on the club I ached with Mantle when he had one of his numerous and extremely painful injuries. I often wondered, though, if he might have healed quicker if he’d been sleeping more and loosening up with the boys at the bar less. I guess we’ll never know.

What we do know, though, is that the face he showed in the clubhouse, as opposed to the one he reserved for the outside world, was often one of great merriment.

I remember one time he’d been injured and didn’t expect to play, and I guess he got himself smashed. The next day he looked hung over out of his mind and was sent up to pinch-hit. He could hardly see. So he staggered up to the plate and hit a tremendous drive to left field for a home run. When he came back into the dugout everybody shook his hand and leaped all over him, and all the time he was getting a standing ovation from the crowd. He squinted out at the stands and said, “Those people don’t know how tough that really was.”

Another thing about Mantle. He was a pretty good practical joker. One time he and Ford told Pepitone and Linz that they’d finally arrived, they were ready to go out with the big boys. Mantle told them to get dressed up, tie and all—this was in Detroit—and meet them in a place called The Flame. Mickey gave them the address and said to be sure to ask for Mickey Mantle’s table.

Pepitone and Linz were like a couple of kids at Christmas. They couldn’t stop talking about what a great time they were going to have with Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford. They got all fancied up, hopped into a cab and told the driver to take them to The Flame. After about a half-hour the cab pulled up in front of a place that was in the heart of the slum section—a hole in the wall with a broken plate-glass window in front and a little broken-down sign over the door: The Flame. No Mantle. No Ford. No table.

Tommy Davis was in the training room having the ankle he broke in 1965 taped. I asked him if he thought it would ever be the same again and he said he doubted it, because it’s supposed to take two years for a fracture and dislocation to heal and he was back playing after one. I’m sure that’s true of a lot of injuries that athletes suffer. They come back too soon and the injury keeps recurring. Like I say, you can’t beat the hours.

Freddie Velazquez was in the trainer’s room too. He caught a foul ball on his big toe and it looked like a ripe tomato. The toenail was peeling off. He never made a sound while it was bandaged. Then he went out and played on it. Later Velazquez was talking Spanish to some of the other players and someone—I don’t know who—yelled, “Talk English! You’re in America now.”

It was 55 degrees and blowing out there today, so I only watched a couple of innings of the intrasquad game. I was there long enough to see Marshall get hit pretty hard. Evidently the shorter hypotenuse didn’t help him much. He just ran into Doubleday’s First Law, which states that if you throw a fastball with insufficient speed, someone will smack it out of the park with a stick.

As penance for going home early I spent some time considering the possible fortunes of this ballclub. It’s early, but it doesn’t look bad at all. Except we’re going to be hurting for starting pitchers. Gary Bell is probably the only legitimate starter we have. Which isn’t bad for number 56.

In the back of my mind I see myself as a starter for this team. I think a knuckleball pitcher is better off starting. One reason is that there are usually men on base when a relief pitcher comes in. If his knuckleball is working well, you might get a passed ball and a run. If it’s not working well—and often it’s not—you get hit. With no one on base, though, this isn’t too important. The argument is simple and crystal clear. If only somebody would listen.