Home Game

by Bret Boone

  Courtesy of the Boone family

  Meet the Boone boys: Bob, Bret, Ray, and Aaron (left to right) on Family Day at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium in the ’70s.

  Copyright © 2016 by Bret Boone

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Crown Archetype and colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Boone, Bret, 1969– | Cook, Kevin, 1956–

  Title: Home game : [Big-League stories from my life in baseball’s First Family] / Bret Boone and Kevin Cook.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Crown Archetype, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015046664 | ISBN 9781101904909 | ISBN 9781101904916 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Boone, Bret, 1969– | Baseball players—United States—Biography. | Baseball players—Family relationships—United States.

  Classification: LCC GV865.B67 A3 2016 | DDC 796.357092—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/​2015046664

  ISBN 9781101904909

  ebook ISBN 9781101904916

  Cover design by Elena Giavaldi

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Warm‑Up: He’s Got the Look

  Chapter 1: Meet the Boones

  Chapter 2: My First Parade

  Chapter 3: Growing Up Boone

  Chapter 4: The Littlest Phillie

  Chapter 5: The Education of a Ballplayer

  Chapter 6: The Old College Try

  Chapter 7: You Fight Your Way Up

  Chapter 8: The Rookie

  Chapter 9: Red Alert

  Chapter 10: An Intervention

  Chapter 11: Trade Bait

  Photo Insert

  Chapter 12: The Boone Goes Boom

  Chapter 13: A Blast in the Bronx

  Chapter 14: Aaron, A‑Rod, ’Roid Wrongs, and Goodbyes

  Chapter 15: Comebacker

  Chapter 16: Game Changer

  Extra Inning: Kid in a Cage

  Boone Family Stats

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  THIS BOOK IS ABOUT FAMILY. IT’S DEDICATED TO MY FAMILY, STARTING WITH PATRIARCH RAY BOONE AND HIS WIFE, OUR MATRIARCH, PATSY BOONE. IT’S ALSO FOR MY PARENTS, BOB AND SUE, MY BROTHER AARON AND HIS FAMILY, MY BROTHER MATT, AND ALL OF MY CHILDREN: SAVANNAH, JACOB, ISAIAH, AND JUDAH.

  There I was at third base, keeping an eye on the runner at second. Yelling at him.

  “Jake, keep your head up!”

  I was dressed in my usual dad uniform: shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. I’ve been retired from the big leagues since 2005, so I wasn’t playing that day—just helping out with my thirteen-year-old son’s youth-league team, the Titans. I was coaching third base, and my buddy Trevor Hoffman—a seven-time All-Star closer for the Padres and Brewers—was across the diamond, coaching first. He had a son on the team, too. How many travel teams can say their base coaches had a total of thirty-two years in the big leagues?

  Not that the kids cared about our has-been status. To them we were just Bret and Trevor, a couple of regular dads. That’s the kind of team we had—no feuds, no fights, no egos. And no high-pressure parents. Baseball’s hard enough without pain-in-the-ass parents making everybody miserable. So Trevor and I kept things loose. We made sure the Titans had fun on the field.

  But still…there’s such a thing as fundamentals. Once you take the field, you play to win. You play the game the right way.

  That’s why I was yelling at Jake. Just reminding him that there’s a right way to run the bases, and there’s a knucklehead way. The way he was wandering off second like a pee-wee leaguer wasn’t the right way.

  “Jake! Be aware out there! Where are the middle infielders?”

  Too late. The catcher threw behind him. Picked him off easy.

  Except that by the time the ball got to second, Jake was sliding into third. He’d outsmarted the catcher, decoyed him. Gained a base without hardly trying.

  He dusted himself off and smiled at me. “Hi, Dad.”

  I admit I was impressed. I’d never taught him that move. I asked him, “How’d you know how to do that?”

  He just shrugged. “Dad, isn’t it obvious? They had nobody covering third.”

  Good instincts. You couldn’t teach that if you tried.

  That was a couple of years ago. Jake’s fifteen now. He’s a hell of a high school player for a freshman. Maybe he’ll make the big leagues someday. If he does, Jake Boone will be the first fourth-generation player in major-league history.

  Of course I’ll love my son just as much if he winds up as a doctor or a lawyer or a Walmart greeter. But right now he wants to be a ballplayer, and I’m helping as much as I can, advising him on training, nutrition, motivation—everything. Sometimes he listens, and sometimes he just pretends to listen because he’s a good kid who thinks his dad is the biggest baseball nerd in San Diego County, and maybe he’s not so wrong about that.

  Getting older, having a son who wants to play the game you love—that stuff makes you stop and think. It’s so fun to see him on the field, and to see my dad in him, and my brother. I was always the fiery one, the one who wore his emotions on his sleeve. Jake’s more like his grandpa Bob and his uncle Aaron. Smoother. Calmer. But he’s still a Boone.

  I don’t have to tell Jake how special our family is. He’s well aware of our lineage. It’s the same thing I soaked up from my dad, who was still playing in the majors while I played high school and college ball. But my father never once pushed me to play the game he played. Now I’m trying to bring my kids up the same way. Whether or not Jake makes the big leagues, there are two things he knows for sure: he’ll get no pressure from me, and I’ll always be there for him, no matter what.

  But there’s something I can and do share with him—a love of the game that has been passed down in our family since his great-grandfather was growing up in the 1920s and ’30s. Our family’s story is a baseball story, one of the best in the game’s long history, but it’s about more than the national pastime. It’s our family history, full of home runs and disappointments, big seasons and season-ending injuries, behind-the-scenes moments and across-the-dinner-table arguments. It’s also packed with million-dollar mistakes, famous teammates, clubhouse traditions, and a hundred other things that are part of your life when big-league baseball’s in your blood. Jake knows some, but nowhere near all, of the stories I’m about to tell—the adventures of his dad, a guy who loves the game his family has lived and breathed for more than eighty years. Now he’ll hear the rest—and you will, too.

  You could say I’ve got baseball in my blood.

  My grandpa was a major-league player. He was also an All-Star. So was my dad. So was my brother. So was I. We’re the baseball Boones, the first family ever to send three generations of ballplayers to the major leagues. The only family with three generations of All-Stars.

  Not that I cared about that stuff when I became the first third-generation player in baseball history. I was more about me in those days. Do I have regrets? Sure. Was I intense? A little headstrong? Well, you don’t hit .331 with 37 homers and 141 RBIs, like I did in 2001, if you’re racked with self-doubt. So don’t expect apologies. As you’ll find out in this book, that’s not something you’re going to get from me.

  A little wisdom, maybe—I like to think I’ve gained some of that. Injuries, age, a personal crisis or two, and the sheer, brutal difficulty of hitting in the big leagues—that’ll humble
any man who’s paying attention, and smarten him up. In 1996 I batted .233 with only 12 homers, and I wasn’t even hurt, just scuffling.

  But you know what? I’m still headstrong. Opinionated for sure. Today, coaching minor leaguers for the Oakland A’s, I keep an eye out for young players who remind me of me. Kids who think they’re unstoppable. Sure, they’re naïve. For every hundred nineteen-year-old studs who think they’re future Hall of Famers, ninety-nine end up with a ticket home to Bakersfield or Macon or Santo Domingo. Of course, I was just as cocky when I was nineteen. And without some of the screw-you watch-me attitude that got me to the big leagues, they’ve got no chance. In a game as demanding as pro baseball, you’ve gotta visualize. In the same way you picture the perfect swing before you hit the ball out of the park, you have to believe you’re a star if you ever want to be one.

  That’s part of what this book is about: the mental and even spiritual side of baseball at the highest level. I’ve been there and done it. My whole family has. Big-league baseball is the Boone family business.

  But it’s a tough, tough business, and it gets tougher every year. That’s another topic I’ll hit in these pages—how the game keeps evolving, getting harder, getting better. (Don’t tell my dad I said this, but if the stars of Gramps’s era played today, they’d be average.) With help from my family and friends, old rivals and teammates, and some of today’s top baseball minds, I’ll delve into every level of the sport: hitting and fielding, coaching, scouting, training. How to win with grace and lose with class. How to be the right kind of baseball parent. How to help a son max out his talent. And we’re just getting started.

  Above all, this is a fan’s book. If you’re a baseball fan—and I’m guessing you are, since you picked up this book—I can help you enjoy the game even more. How? By helping you see a ballgame the way the pros do. Starting with three generations’ worth of know-how. Let me introduce you to the baseball Boones.

  Ray Boone, my grandfather, broke in with the Indians in 1948. A two-time All-Star, he led the American League with 116 RBIs—eight more than Yogi Berra—in 1955. His son Bob—my dad—outdid Gramps by making four All-Star teams in the 1970s and ’80s. Dad used to catch Steve Carlton. He won a World Series in 1980, helping anchor a Philadelphia Phillies team starring Carlton, Mike Schmidt, and Pete Rose, and went on to manage the Royals and Reds.

  In their time, Gramps and Dad were the best father-son duo in baseball history. (Some guys you may have heard of one-upped them after Dad retired, a couple of outfielders named Bonds and a couple more named Griffey.) Next came me and my brother Aaron, growing up in a house where baseball was practically all we talked about. And Aaron and I lived up to our name. We both made the Show. I had four or five of the best years any Boone ever had, and Aaron hit a home run no Yankees or Red Sox fan will ever forget. To this day, plenty of people in Boston think my little brother’s full name is Aaron (fill in the blank)ing Boone.

  All told, the Boones you’ll meet in this book account for 58 big-league seasons, 10 All-Star appearances, 634 home runs, 3,139 RBIs, and 11 Gold Gloves. But stats don’t tell the story. There are millions of memories, too, and we’re still making them. Today, Dad’s a vice president of the Washington Nationals. I’m a special advisor for the Oakland A’s. Aaron’s in the broadcast booth for ESPN, and our brother Matt, who played seven seasons in the minors before a back injury forced him to retire, runs Boone Action Turf, the family’s artificial-turf company.

  Home Game is about growing up with RBIs in your DNA. It’s about how easy major-league baseball is, at least when you’re hot. But it’s also about how brutal the game can be when you’re struggling. You’re going to find out about the lessons I learned from my grandpa, my dad, and my brother, plus some things I learned from players who were better than me. Here’s one: greatness is a lot subtler and more interesting than it looks.

  I want to tell you some of the game’s secrets. You’re going to hear about famous names, games, and personalities. There will be bush-league bus trips, big-league luxury, and clubhouse feuds, as well as dugout and mound scenes to make Bull Durham look tame, postseason pressure, injuries, comebacks, and off-the-field crises. Drawing on eighty years of family history, I’ll give you behind-the-scenes looks at Ted Williams, Dad’s teammates Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, and Pete Rose, as well as Griffey, Jeter, Bonds, Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz, and other stars and scrubs, including today’s players. I’ll also share some great Boone moments, like the night I was in the Fox TV booth at Yankee Stadium, calling the 2003 American League Championship Series (ALCS), when Aaron beat Boston with his historic homer.

  This is inside baseball like you’ve never seen it before. I’ll address the biggest issues in the game: money, metrics, injuries, awards, replays, new rules, and more. This might be the only book I ever write, so I want it to be the best one I can write.

  It starts first thing in the morning.

  When I was a toddler, my dad was catching for the Phillies, trying to help them win the first World Series in franchise history. Mom went to the park to see him play. So who was going to babysit Bret?

  Gramps.

  I used to knock around my grandfather’s house, watching ballgames with him. I remember the Phillies’ red-pinstriped uniforms on the TV screen, and the weird green of the Veterans Stadium Astroturf. And how Gramps would doze off in his easy chair. He needed his sleep, because I was gonna wake him up at five in the morning.

  “Ball, ball!”

  That was my first word, ball. Hitting or throwing a baseball or Wiffle ball—that was about all I wanted to do from the time I was in diapers. You might say I was precocious. Adventurous. Okay, maybe obnoxious. As soon as I could walk, I invented a new game—chasing the lawnmower, trying to tackle it. Dad and Gramps forgave me because I was also smacking Wiffle balls over the house at the age of two.

  “Ball, Grampa!”

  Gramps would drag himself out of bed and we’d go for a catch while the sun came up. My six-foot grandfather seemed super-tall to me. He seemed super-old, too, at least one hundred years old if not two hundred, with his graying hair and creaky knees. He was actually young for a grandfather, not even fifty when I was a toddler. (The Boones tend to marry young and have kids early.) But he was a patriarch. That’s what Dad called him, the patriarch. I had no idea what that meant. I was doing pretty good to remember ball. Was a patriarch a kindly old man who snoozed through the ten o’clock news? A gimpy-kneed senior citizen who liked vanilla ice cream?

  Later I found out that he was a lot more than that. Our patriarch was a hell of a player in his time, a time that began in San Diego almost one hundred years ago.

  Raymond Otis Boone was born in 1923. He was the son of a woodworker who built walls on construction sites. According to family lore, he was a descendant of Daniel Boone, which makes me one, too.

  San Diego was a small town in the 1920s. Electric streetcars rolled down Broadway, clanging past Model-T Fords and a few men on horseback. The new San Diego & Arizona Railway, an engineering miracle called “the Impossible Railroad,” with its wooden bridges across desert gulleys and canyons, had connected the city to the rest of America in 1919. Four years later, the year Gramps was born, a local businessman gave a speech. “What is the matter with San Diego?” he asked. “Why is it not the metropolis and seaport that its geography and other advantages entitle it to be? Why does San Diego always just miss the train, somehow?” Maybe because people thought the city 120 miles up the coast was bigger and better. San Diego was growing—from a population of 74,000 in 1920 to 148,000 in 1930—but that didn’t seem like much when Los Angeles had 1.2 million.

  Gramps grew up in the Great Depression. He learned carpentry, his father’s trade. But once he got his hands on a piece of lumber, all he really wanted to do was swing it at a ball. The major leagues were thousands of miles away—they wouldn’t reach California until the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants moved west in 1958. During his boyhood the nearest big-league teams were
in St. Louis, the majors’ far western outpost. But even if nobody knew it, San Diego was starting to be a baseball town. The weather was perfect year-round, and Ray had a local hero to follow, a kid who could outhit any of the American League’s St. Louis Browns, and maybe even the St. Louis Cardinals’ great Stan Musial.

  His name was Ted Williams.

  My grandpa loved and respected his father, but Ted Williams was the only man he ever put on a pedestal. A rangy left-handed-hitting outfielder, five years older than Gramps, he was the best ballplayer San Diego ever produced, maybe the best hitter ever. Ted Williams graduated from San Diego’s Hoover High School in 1937, the year before Gramps’s freshman year there. By then Williams, the “Splendid Splinter,” was already a legend. Gramps and his friends used to ride their bikes to see Williams play high school games. In his junior year at Hoover, he batted .583. The New York Yankees offered him $200 a month to turn pro, but his mother didn’t want her son to play so far from home, so he signed with a local semipro outfit for $3 a week. Two years later he signed with the Red Sox, who shipped the nineteen-year-old Splinter to the minor-league Minneapolis Millers. But you couldn’t keep Ted Williams in the minors for long. The Millers’ only teenager batted .366 with 43 homers. A year later, as a twenty-one-year-old rookie with the 1939 Red Sox, he hit .327 with 31 homers and 145 RBIs.

  By then Gramps was a sophomore at Hoover High. He made the varsity team as a catcher and wound up signing a pro contract with a scout for the Cleveland Indians. It was 1942. The Indians sent him to Wisconsin to catch for the Class-C Wausau Timberjacks. This was the low minors. The low low minors. It wasn’t a glamorous job. At the time, playing pro baseball was like being a circus performer: exciting, maybe, but the pay was lousy and respectable people thought the players were a little shady. Nice girls didn’t date baseball players. Gramps was lonely so far from home, but he still batted .306 in his first pro season. He rode the Impossible Railroad back home and made a few dollars doing carpentry with his dad in the offseason. Then came World War II. In 1943, he enlisted in the navy. Like his hero Ted Williams, a fighter pilot who later served as wingman for future astronaut John Glenn, Gramps lost three baseball seasons to the war. Finally, in 1948, he reached the big leagues. And all he did was hit .400 in his rookie year.