Foul Ball

by Jim Bouton

  And just because he already had his computer turned on, Chip wrote another letter—this one to James R. Johnson, head of the oversight board that now controls the financial decisions made by the City of Pittsfield. Chip attached documents showing how much our proposal would save the city, and how much our competitors’ proposals would cost it.

  We are not expecting an answer by Tuesday night.

  Meanwhile, I’m involved in much headier pursuits.

  “What do you think of the idea for a radio show called ‘Live from Wahconah Park’?” I asked Paula as we dozed off to sleep. “With the game as background noise for discussions about sports, history, life, et cetera.”

  “I’m too tired to think right now,” said Paula, sinking deeper into her pillow.

  “I’m just trying to think of creative ideas,” I said.

  “I think you’re going to be surprised at how creative they can be in turning you down,” she said.

  I should really save my best ideas for the morning.

  SEPTEMBER 6

  THURSDAY

  I drove up to Pittsfield today to get my scruffy old saddle bag fixed. This is a bag I bought about twenty years ago, and the longer I keep it the better it looks. “Where’d you get that bag?” people ask me. “Gabby Hayes gave it to me just before he died,” I say, joking. And they nod their heads and say, “Really?”

  While I was in town, I figured I’d stop at some stores and see if they’d take a few sign-up sheets and a window banner. Most were happy to do it—like the Lantern, Ray Parrott’s A-Mart, Tahiti Take-Out (a sponsor of the Dan Valenti Show), and Tim’s Sports Zone, a sports collectibles store located right next to Wahconah Park.

  But as I walked around town, I noticed a decided lack of window banners in other stores. In fact, there were none, as far as I could see. This was supposed to have been one of the first things Rick Jones would do, along with handing out materials to the captains.

  When I got back home, I gave Rick a call.

  “When I was in town today,” I said, in my least pushy voice, “I didn’t notice any window banners. How’s that coming along?”

  “I gotta eat!” said Rick, sounding pressured. “And I gotta work! If I don’t get paid, I don’t eat!”

  Whoa! What brought that on? A simple question? I tried to calm him down.

  “Nobody expects you to take time away from work,” I said. “The thought was that whatever time you had planned to spend campaigning would be spent on the petition drive. Your name and address are on all the sign-up sheets. It’s a great way to meet people. It’s an issue everyone cares about. Look what it did for Dave Potts.”

  “Well, I gotta work now,” said Rick, by way of explanation.

  I said goodbye and hung up, deeply regretting that I had pushed him that night at the Italian-American Club.

  No sooner had I called Chip to tell him I had chosen the wrong guy, than the phone rang. It was Rick Jones.

  “I got a message that Tom Murphy called,” said Rick. “He wants to talk to me.”

  This got my heart beating a little bit. Why would the mayor’s water boy want to talk with Rick Jones?

  “That should be an interesting conversation,” I said.

  “Maybe he wants to pay me some money,” said Rick.

  This was too fast for me. Pay him some money? For what? I tried to collect my thoughts.

  “I’m sure he’s not just calling to say hi,” I said. “Do you know Tom Murphy?”

  “I never spoke to him before,” said Rick. “I might have said hi to him once.” Then he paused. “But he can’t threaten me. He can make things difficult for my friends—business-wise. Doyle is very vindictive.”

  I thought it was interesting that he saw Murphy and Doyle as one person.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I was working on this house once,” said Rick, “and Gerry Doyle’s kid was working with the carpenter. And I was giving him a hard time about the new stadium—I used to drive around with a ‘No Civic Authority’ sign on my truck—and he went home and told his mother. Then Gerry Doyle wants to check the lettering on my boss’s truck, check our license to be a plumber. He’s going to call the board of examiners.”

  “What did you do?”

  “It was a tough scene between my boss and me,” said Rick. “My boss and I are friends—we go skiing together.”

  “It’s good you’ve got a boss who can stand up to these people,” I said.

  “They don’t know who they’re dealing with,” said Rick. “They can’t push me anywhere near what I grew up with.”

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “My father,” said Rick.

  When I told Paula about my conversation with Rick Jones, she wasn’t too happy.

  “You see why I’m worried,” she said. “That’s a very vindictive group up there. They’ll hire some goons to do something bad—maybe to our house.”

  “They wouldn’t do that,” I said. “They’d be blackmailed by whoever they hire. They’d spend a lot of time in jail.”

  “As soon as we can,” said Paula, “we’re putting in a really good security system.”

  Later, when I was hiding my notes in the closet, Paula happened to notice my Yankee uniform, which I now keep around for Old Timers’ Days.

  “They could take your Yankee uniform, too,” she said.

  “Gerry Doyle’s too fat to get into my uniform,” I said.

  SEPTEMBER 7

  FRIDAY

  Chip and I aren’t the only ones in the petition business.

  City Council candidate Jonathan Lothrop has a petition—already signed by half the mayoral and council candidates—asking the current City Council to place a non-binding referendum on the November ballot with the following language:

  “In order to determine the future of baseball in Pittsfield, we ask that you choose one of the following options: (A) Bossidy, (B) Bouton, (C) Fleisig.”

  Lothrop is planning to present his petition to the Council on Tuesday night.

  A story about the petition in today’s Eagle quotes Parks Commissioner and Council candidate Jim Conant as saying, “I certainly want to get citizens’ input. But very clearly, if we wait for this [ballot] initiative to take place in November, the Bouton Group will be out; they have indicated to me that they just can’t wait.”

  This, of course, is bullshit.

  Which is exactly what Chip said to Atlantic League Commissioner Frank Boulton, in a follow-up letter to him today:

  Dear Frank:

  For your information, here is a headline story in today’s Eagle. Parks Commissioner Conant, one of lame-duck (no offense to your mascot!) Mayor Doyle’s appointees, misrepresents our position. We explicitly declined to identify a “drop dead” date for a decision, because that would ratify the Commission’s “wait-them-out-until-they-go-away” strategy.

  Clearly, it would be very useful if we could go into the City Council meeting on Tuesday night and announce a deal with the Atlantic League during the televised “open mike” session. We could then ask the council to support this ballot initiative (which we know we will win in a landslide on November 6).

  Otherwise, our opponents on the council will oppose placing the referendum on the ballot by using the insincere excuse that doing so would “unfairly” run out the clock on the Bouton proposal. They would much rather have the mayor’s hand-picked Parks Commission make the decision on October 5th, rather than let the voters pick us on November 6th.

  With regards, Chip Elitzer

  I asked Chip whether he thought we would have a deal with the Atlantic League in time for the council meeting on Tuesday night. And what would happen if we didn’t find out until the last minute?

  “Sometimes you put your hand in your pocket to draw out your gun and it isn’t there,” said Chip. “You find that you’re holding something else.”

  SEPTEMBER 8

  SATURDAY

  Exciting news from the western front. Brought to you by the
Utica Observer-Dispatch.

  County and city officials are presenting a united front in announcing a committee to study another way to keep the Utica Blue Sox in town. The committee will examine the feasibility of making the Blue Sox a community-owned team.

  A provision in the lease agreement with the Blue Sox states that should they seek to sell the franchise—a 30-day purchase option has been given to Lawrence A. Bossidy—the community will be offered the right to match the offer within a 90-day period.

  Well, waddaya know?

  Hello, community-owned baseball. Goodbye, Larry Bossidy.

  The Oracle of Delphi was right again.

  And just to put things in further perspective, the Observer-Dispatch cited examples of successful community owned baseball teams in other cities like Syracuse, Auburn, and Rochester.

  In Rochester, a successful effort to create community ownership decades ago resulted in the Red Wings becoming one of the most successful teams in minor league baseball.

  Of course, those cities don’t have the leadership that Pittsfield has. Which includes the kind of newspaper that completely ignored the story of Utica’s plans to keep the Blue Sox in Utica.

  Pittsfield’s business leaders are responsible, too—not just its political leaders. Here’s what mayoral candidate Peter McHugh said to me just this morning: “The thing I still don’t get,” he said, “is how the business community doesn’t see that you have the best plan.”

  This reminded me of a conversation I had the other day in Pittsfield with two guys on their way to a Rotary luncheon.

  “How’s it going?” they asked, because they had recognized me.

  “It’s not easy,” I said.

  “That’s Pittsfield,” said one guy.

  “The people don’t know what they want,” said the other one.

  Coming from these Rotarians—leaders of the community—this irritated me.

  “It’s not the people,” I said. “They know what they want. It’s the business community—guys like you—who should be speaking out. It’s a lack of leadership on your part, too.”

  They just smiled and wished me luck.

  In an increasingly ominous development, Rick Jones has not called since we spoke two days ago. He had said he would call me yesterday—after the buttons arrived.

  I wonder if he’s had that talk with Tom Murphy.

  SEPTEMBER 9

  SUNDAY

  The number of candidates who have signed Jonathan Lothrop’s ballot petition is growing. There are now twenty-one (out of a possible thirty-two) who will ask the current City Council—Tuesday night—to place the question of who should get Wahconah Park onto the November ballot.

  SEPTEMBER 10

  MONDAY

  I spent the day in Montclair, New Jersey, playing in the Jackie Robinson Charity Golf Tournament, hosted by Yogi Berra. Whenever I see Yogi I remember the 1964 World Series, when the Yankees’ traveling secretary handed me an extra ticket in a brown envelope and said, “You’re lucky, this is the last one.” And Yogi, sitting next to me, said in all seriousness, “Are they all out of them brown envelopes?”

  I recently gave a speech in St. Louis, and afterward one of Yogi’s relatives came up to tell me the latest family Yogism. He said Yogi walked into the den where his son Dale, visiting for the weekend, was watching a John Wayne movie. “That’s John Wayne, isn’t it?” asked Yogi. “Yeah, Dad,” said Dale. “It’s the movie True Grit.” And Yogi said, “He made that movie before he died.”

  When someone mentioned to Yogi that I was going to be there today, Yogi said, “He’s a character.”

  SEPTEMBER 11

  TUESDAY

  Tonight, six of eleven city councilors can put the question of who should get to play at Wahconah Park onto the November ballot. Five are hard-core new stadium guys who will do anything to keep it off—Hickey, Lee, Massery, Kerwood, and Dowd. Of the remaining six, three are guaranteed to vote for putting it on—Bianchi, Guzzo, and Scapin. And James Brassard, a new-stadium guy, has indicated he might vote in favor of the ballot question.

  That leaves Bill Barry and Gary Grunin.

  And we’re pretty sure about Grunin—even though we know he’s a new-stadium wolf in a Wahconah Park T-shirt—because if Councilor Grunin were to vote against a ballot question, then mayoral candidate Grunin would lose in a landslide. Now all we have to do is convince Barry.

  Which is why Chip and I happened to be at Kelly’s Diner, in Pittsfield, at 7:30, having breakfast with Bill Barry. We brought Lothrop’s petition, which has now been signed by twenty-three of the thirty-two candidates for office. We knew Barry had been a new-stadium supporter, but we also knew that Dan Bianchi has been trying to win him over.

  “I spoke to him the other day,” said Bianchi, “and he said he was a ‘lame duck.’ I said fine, but don’t be a Daffy Duck.”

  Our meeting with Barry went well. He’s a reasonable guy who thinks a new stadium still makes sense, but he saw value in letting the people decide. Most important, he understood how a ballot question would require the Park Commissioners to be responsive in October to voters whose wishes would be made clear in November.

  “That makes five,” said Chip, “if Brassard stays on the ranch.”

  “And Grunin will make six,” I said. “Only because he’ll have no choice.”

  Feeling pretty good after our meeting with Barry, we got into my car and turned on the radio to catch the last forty minutes of the Dan Valenti Show. We always like to hear the latest on Wahconah Park from Dan’s callers, who sound like we paid them to call in.

  When we found the station, someone was talking about the budget. Then a woman called and asked Dan if he knew about what was happening in New York. Dan said he hadn’t heard anything, but he would check it out. And a few moments later we heard this:

  “This may be what that last caller was referring to,” said Dan Valenti. “Evidently, a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center…. We don’t know what kind of plane…. We’ll see if we can get that for you.”

  On any given morning, Valenti goes back and forth between talk show host and authoritative journalist. Now he was in journalist mode. Chip and I speculated that a private plane must have flown off course. With three major airports in the area, it’s a wonder it hadn’t happened before.

  “It now appears,” said Valenti, coming back after a break, “that the plane was a commercial airliner.”

  This was disturbing news. If the plane was full, it would mean hundreds of people have been killed.

  Then it got worse.

  “Now we’re hearing… if this is correct,” said Dan, “that a second plane has just hit the World Trade Center. And… it’s also reported that this plane, too, is a commercial airliner. Hard to believe… but that’s what they’re saying.”

  “Terrorists,” said Chip, leaning forward, eyes fixed, listening.

  We switched the station to WAMC so we could get the news from National Public Radio.

  Both towers of the World Trade Center were now in flames.

  Jesus Christ!

  I ran through a mental checklist. Three of our kids live in New York City. Two work in the financial district. Paula’s brother Alan and his wife, and their two kids work in the city. My brother Bob and his wife live a few blocks from the World Trade Center. The list kept getting longer. My heart was pounding.

  I needed to be with Paula. She was supposed to be taking a ballet class at ten-thirty this morning at Fitness Express in Great Barrington. I could go right there after I left Chip’s house.

  We drove in silence, the reports on the radio completely at odds with the meadows and farms just outside the car window. I studied the horizon, fearing a flash or a mushroom cloud in the distance. It was as if we were in a science fiction movie, only it was real, with real terror. I had an awful feeling in my stomach similar to the one I had the night Laurie died.

  I dropped Chip off with the understanding that we’d all get together later. Chip looked like
he was about to cry. Me too.

  I raced to Fitness Express and jumped out of my car. A few of Paula’s ballet buddies were standing outside the building, milling about in confusion.

  But there was no Paula.

  “Where’s Paula?” I asked, in a panic, fearing that she might be off somewhere, dealing with bad news.

  “I don’t know,” said a woman named Ava. “She didn’t come yet.”

  Just then the ballet teacher, Sharon McDonald, arrived.

  “It’s twenty after ten,” said Sharon, looking worried. “Paula’s usually here by now.”

  “She’s probably at home,” I said to the group. “But if she shows up, tell her that’s where I am.” And I ran to my car.

  Finally at home, Paula met me as I came through the door, expecting the worst. She looked distraught and relieved at the same time, patting the air reassuringly, as she gave me the news.

  “Everybody’s okay,” she said, which I knew meant family and friends. I was temporarily relieved.

  “I reached Lee,” said Paula, “and he and Elaine and Georgia are okay. Lee said he had spoken to our David, and he’s okay. Michael called and he’s fine. And I called my brother, and his David and Ronnie are both safe.”

  In times of crisis, Paula becomes Command Central, wielding her phone like a crazed stockbroker.

  “Then our David called me back from his cell phone,” said Paula—all the land lines were jammed—“and he said he had been running uptown from his office and had seen the tower collapse and people jumping. My God, I can’t think about it.”

  “What kind of nightmares will that cause,” I said, trying to gauge the potential damage of such an experience.

  “But I don’t know about your brother,” said Paula. “How close is he to the World Trade Center?”

  “About six blocks away,” I said, “but he works in White Plains. I’ll try to reach him.”

  “Oh, and listen to this,” said Paula, the fear coming back in her eyes. “You know Liz Thompson works on the top floor of the World Trade Center.”