by Bill Lee
We got a hero’s welcome when we came back home. I thought this was it for me. Even though I had gone 28–8 the last two years and had pitched well in the Series, I still didn’t view myself as a possible major-leaguer. Al Campanis had already given me his assessment. I saw him at a party and he said, “Lee, you’ll never pitch a day in the majors. You don’t have an overhand fastball like Koufax, you don’t have an overhand curveball like Koufax, and . . .” I finished it by saying, “. . . and I’m not Jewish. So I guess that’s three strikes.” I think Al had passed by the punch bowl a few times too many that night. He seemed so intent on shooting me down. Meanwhile, in another part of the room, Tommy Lasorda was busy telling my father that he was certain I was going to be a major-league pitcher. That picked me up. Of course, now I realize that Tommy tells that to every father, even those who don’t have sons.
Neither of those two unofficial scouting reports meant much to me. I wasn’t even too impressed when I got the word that I had been picked by the Boston Red Sox in the secondary phase of the free-agent draft on the day after the College World Series ended. They picked me in the twenty-second round, so you can forgive me if I didn’t get too excited. All I did was think a little bit more about becoming a forest ranger. After all, when you get right down to it, there were about three hundred guys chosen ahead of me. That can make a man think.
Boston sent a scout, Joe Stephenson, to sign me. He had a son, a pitcher with the Red Sox, who was a punk rocker before his time. He dyed his hair green, a color that eventually clashed with the pink slip the Sox ended up giving him. Joe wanted to meet me in Los Angeles to discuss a contract. I said sure. My father warned me not to go and not to sign anything. That was a mistake. The best way to get me to do something is to tell me not to do it. I had no time to follow Dad’s advice; I was in a hurry. Not in a hurry to play ball, just in a hurry. I think I’ve always been in a hurry, but never really knew what for. That’s the story of my life.
When I got to see Joe, he gave me the big smile and the quick handshake and acted like the Red Sox were doing me a big favor. He draped his arm around my shoulder and said, “Hey, you’re really too old for a rookie minor-leaguer. You spent too much time in college and we really shouldn’t sign you. But, you look like a pretty fair pitcher, so we thought we’d give you a break.”
I was a has-been at twenty-one, and Boston was going to sign me out of pity. He finished by saying, “By the way, we also can’t give you any money. As it stands right now all the bonus money is gone.” I asked, “Can’t you at least pay for my continued education?” He thought about that for a minute, smiled and said, “I guess we could come up with about four thousand for that.” I grabbed it. After the assessment he had just made of me I wanted to dash out and invest it in a life-insurance policy, because it was obvious I didn’t have very much time left on this planet.
When I got back home my father didn’t seem upset that I had signed a minor-league contract. I think he was just proud to have me in the Red Sox organization. The next day I packed my bags and got ready to leave for the club’s minor-league affiliate in Waterloo, Iowa. Class-A ball. My father drove me to the airport and wished me luck, giving me a hug and some more good advice. “Son,” he said, “you’re joining the Boston Red Sox, a fine organization. Now if you can pitch like we both know you can and you can keep your mouth shut, you’ll end up being with them for a long time.”
2
I wasn’t nervous when my plane took off for Waterloo. Being a geography major, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to study the climate and terrain of Iowa. The fact that I was going to get paid to play professional baseball was just an added inducement. I thought it would be a nice way to spend the summer. I was a little put off at first when Stephenson handed me my plane ticket. Ozark Airways. It sounded as if Wilbur and Orville would be taking turns at the throttle, and the passengers would be lying six across on each wing. I still hadn’t made a firm commitment to pursuing a career in baseball. I just wanted to compete for that summer—it didn’t matter where, just as long as the competition was challenging. More than anything I was anxious to see what the Midwest looked like. God, was it flat!
One of the team executives met me at the airport, greeting me with a speech about how happy the club was to have me and how they were certain I was a major-league prospect. There wasn’t much conviction behind those words. His eyes were glazed over, and he sounded as if he was reading from a cue card. I couldn’t blame him. He had probably given the same spiel to twenty-one other kids in the last two weeks and had just finally winked out.
We drove straight to the ballpark, where I met my first professional manager, the immortal Rachel Slider. Nobody called him Rachel; it was not considered a name that inspired manly fear or confidence. He was called Rac (as in lack). Rac Slider. It sounded like the name of a comic-book hero. “The Adventures of Rac Slider and his Wonder Dog, Frito.” When I arrived at the stadium Rac was on the field, hitting double-play grounders to his second-and-short combination. The poor sons of bitches had messed up a play during a game that afternoon. Slider was up to what seemed to be his three hundredth grounder, and the infielders looked as if they had taken root. Their legs had died long before they finally broke for dinner. Later they had to come back and play the second half of a day-night doubleheader, and Rac couldn’t fathom why their range was severely curtailed in the nightcap.
I knew immediately that I was not dealing with another Dedeaux here. After the workout I was brought into Rac’s office and introduced as his new left-handed starter. He looked me over from top to bottom, his eyes settling on my feet. For a moment it appeared as if he was trying to decide which shoe he was going to splatter with tobacco juice. Finally he looked up at me, fixed me with a vacant gaze, and said, “We’ll see.” Every now and again, in times of darkest crisis, I still recall those stirring words of inspiration: “We’ll see.”
While dressing for that evening’s game, I met my new teammates and found that, despite the manager’s frigid reception, the club was excited about getting me. Well, not me, specifically. They were just excited about getting a left-handed pitcher. Any left-handed pitcher. The only other one they had was Roger Moret, a young skinny kid from Puerto Rico who could throw the ball hard. He and I were supposed to be the left-handed pitching strength of the club.
Roger had a tough time of it in the minors. He was very superstitious, having been raised in an area of Puerto Rico that dictated he be brought up with a heavy Catholic background tinged with a smattering of mysticism. That was his double-edged sword. Moret carried every religious icon possible, plus a lot of good-luck charms. Everybody thought that was strange, but I believed it showed good sense. None of us is certain of what awaits us in the next life; Roger was just covering all the bases. His teammates gave him a hard time about it. It’s doubtful he would have lasted very long in the States if it hadn’t been for a local widow who took him under her wing. She had three kids of her own, and she let Roger stay in her house, teaching him English and how to dress. That was a big help. People were always poking fun at his inability to communicate in anything but his native tongue. At times we would go out to eat together. He would order two eggs, and when asked how he wanted them done, he would say, “Over large.” On another occasion, after being asked what he would like, he opened the menu and pointed to the bottom, where it read, “Thank You For Allowing Us To Serve You.”
My first professional appearance came a few days after joining the club. Coming on in relief, I gave up an unearned run that tied up a game we eventually lost. Rac was all over me for that. He was very intense. Any time a player made a mistake he would jump on him and then have him come out to the park and work on it. Rac didn’t like me, having pegged me as a smart-ass college boy. He had figured that out before he laid eyes on me, hence the cool reception. The fact that I was not averse to expressing my opinion also did not sit well with him. I told him he was crazy for working his players to death and then expecting them to
have something left for the game. After a week he wrote a report telling the Sox I was a fat, out-of-shape hot dog, and that I couldn’t get anything on my pitches. I had just thrown twenty-seven innings in a six-day period during the College World Series. All I needed was a little rest. Rac was quick to oblige.
He didn’t let me pitch at all, not an inning. Then, as the schedule tightened up, he was forced to pitch me on and off in relief. I never started. Still, I liked playing in Waterloo. The local diner gave us credit, and if you hit a home run, you got a free steak dinner. As I recall, it was a good little diner, although when you’re young the quality of food is relatively unimportant. You have the Frankenstein attitude toward nourishment. All food is good; only lack of food is bad.
Waterloo did not offer much in the way of entertainment, however. There was a theater in town that showed a new feature every leap year, and there was always the local tavern. We did spend a lot of time watching meter maids give out summonses. This was a slow town. There were groupies there, but most of them were interested only in the big-bonus boys with the brand-new Mustangs. I traveled on foot, so I didn’t fare too well. That didn’t surprise me. Cars made big impressions on young girls in the sixties. I had gone out with a beautiful lady at USC. She was my steady for about three weeks, which was about all the time a classmate, Alan Ladd, Jr., and his Ferrari needed to snake her away from me. From that time on I’ve hated all forms of elitism. I wouldn’t knock myself out to get a set of wheels just so I could score. It said a lot about my principles, but it didn’t do much for my sex life. Occasionally we would meet a girl wanting to do the whole bullpen, but I didn’t go in for that. I was too much of a loner.
We did try to liven things up. The team had a standing bet that revolved around a contest. All you had to do was drink a gallon of milk in one half-hour sitting. If you kept it down you won a hundred dollars. No one could do it. A player would guzzle almost to the bottom of the carton and then suddenly race from the room while doing some heavy projectile vomiting. It was like something out of The Exorcist, and it never failed to break the boys up. Great waves of white would come flowing out of a guy’s mouth. Watching our center fielder, Charlie Day, throw up white was one of the most exciting things that ever happened down there. It was great seeing his belly get distended, like Paul Newman’s did in Cool Hand Luke. Even greater fun was to have some guy’s stomach bloat up like that and then have someone cannonball off the top bunk onto his belly. Like Old Faithful, it was one of life’s unforgettable experiences.
Carlton Fisk and I shared an apartment in town with a couple of outfielders from Massachusetts. Fisk was always late, the last one to get to the ballpark, the last one to leave. Very methodical. He was also slow at putting down signs. I used to think, Jesus, what’s taking him so long? I’ve only got two pitches. I had my revenge later on, when we were both on the Red Sox. During one game I shook him off six consecutive times. He came out to the mound and yelled, “How the hell can you shake me off six times! I’ve only got five fingers!” My point exactly.
Carlton still catches the longest games in the majors. That’s because he takes things in stride and likes to consider all options. He’ll live to be a hundred and five, there’s no doubt about it. Fisk comes from hardy stock and never gets frazzled. Funny thing, in the minors he was a fine receiver right away, but he didn’t look like much of a hitter and he didn’t have much power. He had a great arm, though, and despite being sluggish off the field, he was very fast on the bases. When the club signed him he really wasn’t a catcher by trade, but he sure learned in a hurry. That Waterloo club wasn’t too shabby. It had Fisk, Moret, Nagy, McGlothen, and me. We would all be up in the majors within four years. Our best player, though, was Charlie Day. He never spent a day in the big leagues, but he could hold down more milk than the rest of us.
After I went a month without a start, Neil Mahoney, one of the big honchos of the Boston minor-league operation, came down. When he asked why I wasn’t pitching, Slider reiterated his assertion that I wasn’t in shape and didn’t have a good fastball. Mahoney didn’t buy it. The next day, I started against the Yankees’ minor-league affiliate. My frankness in dealing with the manager made this a pressure ballgame. It was one of the few times I can recall being nervous before taking the mound. If I screwed up in this game, it would be sayonara, smart-ass. Matters weren’t helped any when I gave up a single to the first batter I faced. I could see Slider sitting on the bench, a big grin on his face, with visions of my butt being shipped to the local gulag dancing through his head. I could also see that the baserunner was taking a long lead off first. Too long. I picked him off and then retired the next twenty-six hitters in a row. After pitching this one-hitter, a coach came up to me and said, “Abner Doubleday must have been watching over you today.” He knew what had been at stake.
As it turned out, Slider was able to get rid of me anyway, but not by choice. Twenty-four hours after pitching that game, I was on a plane heading for Winston-Salem in the Carolina League. It was a promotion. The Carolina League was still Class-A ball, but it was on a slightly higher level than the league I had just left.
After arriving at the team’s boardinghouse on a beautiful Sunday morning, I headed to the ballpark for an afternoon game. The first member of the club to greet me was the trainer, Pio Di Salvo. He was the brother of the Boston Strangler. I discovered that when he came over to me and introduced himself, saying, “Hi. I’m Pio Di Salvo and my brother was the Boston Strangler.” I didn’t know what he meant at first; I thought his brother was a professional wrestler. When I found out who his brother actually was, I thought, Holy Jesus, where have the Red Sox sent me? Turned out I had nothing to worry about. Pio was one of the nicest guys I ever met in baseball, a very hard worker. That introduction was just his way of getting any questions about his infamous relative out of the way. It certainly did that.
Bill Slack was my new manager. That was a blessing. He had been a pitcher and really understood my needs. The day after my arrival, I started and got jocked. He took me aside and said, “Don’t worry, you had good stuff. You’ll get them next time.” That gave me confidence. Bill left me alone, and I pitched well for him. I was still basically the same type of pitcher I had been in college, but I was getting more strikeouts. I had a pretty good breaking ball, and the kids in Class-A ball didn’t get to see many curves. I split six decisions that year and had an ERA of 1.72.
When the season ended I went back to school to complete my education. While there I took an aptitude test. It recommended I become an undertaker. With that in mind, it wasn’t very hard for me to continue playing ball for a while. I also decided to get married.
During the summers of 1966 and 1967, I had played ball in an amateur league in Alaska. It was there that I met Mary Lou. I married her the moment I set eyes on her. She was tall and blonde, a former Miss Alaska with a sensitive soul, a good sense of humor, and tons of brains. She also had great legs. Adding all this up, I knew she was for me. My friends were surprised when we got married, figuring I wasn’t the marrying type. That didn’t faze me; I knew it was the right move. I had a temperament that dealt only in extremes, while Mary Lou had the level-headedness that balanced me out. We were yin and yang.
We went to spring training together in 1969, a first for both of us. We lived in a duplex in Ocala that was a small slice of heaven. Outside our door was the river that fed Silver Springs. Mary Lou and I would go to the river’s edge and fish for bass. When we finished, we would head over to the Ocala Inn for an evening of Lowenbrau. It was during this time that I first discovered that Mary Lou couldn’t cook. I didn’t care. It was our honeymoon; I wasn’t into cooking.
The Red Sox had listed me on their Double-A roster. I thought I was doing well, but midway through camp they put me back on the Winston-Salem team. I was pissed, but before I had a chance to sound off, one of the coaches grabbed me and told me to keep cool, that it was only a temporary condition. Apparently the front office just had to do some ro
ster juggling, and I was odd man out for the moment. Turned out to be a worthwhile move for me, because without it I might have missed out on a chance to start a game against Bill Faul.
Faul was a curveballing righthander who had been up to the big leagues with the Tigers and Cubs and had become something of a living legend. This status had nothing to do with his pitching. Faul was a guy who used to prepare for games by ripping off the heads of live parakeets. With his teeth. Then he would put himself in a trance and go out to throw a shutout. When he wasn’t decapitating birds he was swallowing live toads, claiming they put an extra hop on his fastball. None of these tricks bothered anybody, and after a few performances their novelty wore off. What did upset some people and helped gain Faul undying notoriety was his habit of grabbing someone’s attention by picking him up at the ankles and holding him upside down. From outside the fourth-story window of his hotel room. Up to this point in my career, Bill was the craziest guy I had ever met or heard of. With the possible exception of the Marquis de Sade, there was nobody else in his league.
Faul and I matched up well against each other, but I was able to beat his team, 2–1. Four days later the Red Sox gave me a start against the University of Florida. I won that game, too, and my timing couldn’t have been better. Those two wins came right before camp ended, and they must have convinced someone in the front office to take me off that Winston-Salem roster. I departed Florida as a member of the Pittsfield club. This was an important step up. Though Pittsfield was only Double-A, it was located in Massachusetts, not far from Boston. Whenever the Sox had an injury they generally brought players up from there instead of their Triple-A club in Louisville. We had a good group of guys in Pittsfield. Billy Gardner was the manager, Fisk caught, and Ivy Washington kept us laughing.