Seasons in Hell

by Mike Shropshire

  The plane, of course, eventually did land and amazingly “without further incident.” I felt sorry, though, for the regular passengers—the non-baseball people, the normal ones.

  Chapter 7

  A true-life passion play presented through the miracle of television made me glad that I was wasting Friday afternoon in my room at the Lord Baltimore Hotel and not sitting where Maurice Stans was sitting, about thirty miles away in a U.S. Senate hearing.

  Poor Stans. A year before, this man was a blissfully content non-celebrity working at a job that must have included good compensation and even better self-esteem—Nixon campaign committee finance chairman. Now, having already been indicted for obstruction of justice, he was having to endure some senator who wanted to know why the documentation of the whereabouts of $1.7 million in cash seemed to have disappeared just six days after the Watergate burglary.

  “A pure and innocent coincidence,” Stans told the senator. Ordinarily I would have been watching a replay of Ralph Edwards honoring John Foster Dulles on “This Is Your Life.” The traveling baseball writer (at least the ones not terminally addicted to the Victoria’s Secret catalogue) ordinarily got to watch a great deal of nostalgia-oriented daytime TV. But this Watergate inquisition was too compelling to miss, and in order to be barroom-conversant in the summer of 1973, the informed citizen was required to remain up-to-date with the hearings. This amazing public-affairs burlesque also offered a happy respite from the monotony of filing daily updates on the death march of the Texas Rangers.

  Baltimore, with its quaint personality of other-worldliness, at least presented the visitor with a few extras that I found lacking in Minneapolis, Anaheim, Detroit, Oakland and Milwaukee. Within walking distance of the hotel was a tourist-friendly three-block area that included nothing but tattoo parlors, porn shops, strip joints, and fascinating little boutiques with a limitless selection of French ticklers and Benwah balls. There were also assorted dives that permeated a suffocating aroma of Lysol that reminded me of my youth back in good ol’ Cowtown and some additional hole-in-the-wall operations so sinister that the front doors bore signs reading “Off Limits To U.S. Navy Personnel.” It was fortunate that Randy Galloway of the Dallas Morning News had chosen not to make the trip to Baltimore. Mother Nature had endowed Galloway with a kind of AWOL ambiance and he was the only member of the Rangers traveling party frequently harassed by the Shore Patrol.

  I also soon learned that Baltimore served as home office of the ultimate novelty—the sportswriter groupie. God knows, the world is equipped with an endless supply of the groupie genre. Jock groupies. Rock-star groupies. Politician groupies. Chiropractor groupies. Undertaker groupies. But in Baltimore, the world’s only living sportswriter groupie stationed herself right there in the lobby of the Lord Baltimore Hotel. Fittingly, the world’s only sportswriter groupie was more mature than the girls customarily found lurking in the lobbies. This woman, in fact, appeared to have been born sometime during the James K. Polk administration.

  What she did was have the various reporters sign their names and newspaper affiliations on a baseball that she carried with her. We all laughed about this old lady although, knowing the true psyche of the membership of the Baseball Writers Association of America, I suspected that Baltimore Blanche often received three A.M. phone calls from at least half of them requesting her to join them back in the hotel room for a nightcap.

  Actually, it made sense that if such an animal as a sports-writer groupie did indeed exist, one would have to travel to Baltimore to find her. Here, to my knowledge, is the only major league city where baseball is usually viewed with what amounts to spiritual intensity.

  The word “fan” apparently is derived from another word, “fanatic,” and that can be aptly applied in Baltimore. Certain fans who frequent certain parks in certain cities bring a distinctive personality to the game. The American League champions of my “fan personality profile” was a dead heat—Baltimore and Boston. In these cities baseball was regarded as theatre. Fenway Park provided better seats, but the Oriole fans of the early seventies were getting to see what most critics would agree were better plays.

  It should be remembered that Babe Ruth grew up as a pitcher in a Catholic reform school in Baltimore and didn’t become a full-time slugger until he moved to New York, via Boston. The Baltimore baseball ethic historically has been based around pitching and defense and the Rangers would see those concepts exemplified on a grand scale while they were getting their tails kicked in this three-game weekend series against the Orioles.

  Paul Blair, the best centerfielder that the big leagues would see in a decade, was flanked by Al Bumbry and Rich Coggins—a trio of antelopes that could not only flag down anything hit between the foul lines but was also particularly artful at snatching away homerun balls two or three feet over the fence.

  With Mark Belanger and Brooks Robinson, the left side of the Baltimore infield was airtight, and Bobby Grich and Boog Powell were formidable at second and first, respectively. The Orioles did not have a solid defensive catcher. No. They had three: Earl Williams, Andy Etchebarren and Elrod Hendricks. Surveying the Orioles’ lineup, it was beyond debate that the Rangers did not have a single player who could start for Baltimore.

  The three starting pitchers that the Rangers would face in this series were Mike Cuellar, a future underwear model named Jim Palmer, and finally, lefthander Dave McNally, who, at that point, had won fifteen consecutive starts against the Texas-Washington franchise. Defense and pitching. Even the Baltimore PA announcer, Rex Barney, had been a star relief pitcher at Ebbets Field.

  In his office before the Friday night opener, Whitey Herzog pondered the Orioles’ lineup card and said, “I’m thinking about flying Charlie Hudson up here for the weekend so we can play a little Russian roulette.” Herzog looked at his brain trust and added, “This is liable to get ugly.”

  The brain trust, by the way, included first-base coach Chuck Hiller and pitching coach Chuck Estrada. Hiller owned a proud spot in American trivia. He was the first National Leaguer to hit a grand slam homer in a World Series game. Amazingly, nobody had done that until Hiller did it with the Giants in 1962. Now Hiller’s mission was to stand in the box by first base and yell “get back! … get back! … get back!” to any Rangers base runners who reached first. With what Herzog termed his “Punch and Judy” offense, not many Rangers ever reached first safely, so when they did, Hiller was to make damn certain that nobody got picked off.

  Estrada, also known as Cha-Cha and Teen Angel because he looked like Frankie Avalon with his Fifties-style “a little dab’ll do ya” Brylcreme look, was stuck with a task even more confounding than Hiller’s. A former pitching star with the Orioles, Teen Angel understood the mechanics and theology of the craft of pitching. But attempting to function as pitching coach of the 1973 Rangers was like teaching a night course in calculus at Attica prison.

  He lasted the better part of that one season. Since then, Estrada’s name has never surfaced in any job capacity involving major-league baseball, but I am sure that he is productively occupied somewhere in the private sector. A lesser mortal would be located in blissful voluntary residence at some mental health-care facility working with modeling clay.

  This Friday pre-game session in Herzog’s little office at Memorial Stadium did involve something that Estrada would find uniquely challenging. In the best traditions of American business, Bob Short (the owner) had seen fit to overrule the better judgment of Whitey Herzog (the manager).

  David Clyde, the high school pitching phee-nom and Number One choice in the amateur draft, would be pressed into immediate service as a starting pitcher in the major leagues.

  True, Clyde’s statistical credentials were overwhelming. In his last two seasons, against a level of high school competition that was perhaps as good as any in the country, he’d compiled a 35-2 record and was 18-0 as a senior with fourteen shutouts and five no-hitters. A Phillies scout, Lou Fitzgerald, had said, “I watc
hed Clyde pitch three innings and left. Why waste time? We’re picking second.”

  By drafting David Clyde, the Rangers bypassed two players who would probably wind up in Cooperstown—Dave Winfield and Robin Yount. Between them, they would collect over 6,000 major-league base hits.

  Three other players taken in the first round of the 1973 draft, John Stearns, Lee Mazzilli and Gary Roenicke, went on to long and productive big-league careers. Interestingly, the Rangers’ third round pick, Len Barker, emerged as a quality big-league starter (with the Indians) who would pitch a perfect game against Toronto in 1981.

  At the time, no scout in baseball disputed that the Rangers did the right thing by claiming Clyde as their top pick, but the idea of bringing the prize stud directly into The Show left Herzog shaking his head. “This ain’t high school. Up here, he’ll find the strike zone shrinking fast and he won’t find any 130-pound kids swinging at the high one.

  “Another thing,” Herzog cautioned, “in high school Clyde has been used to great success. In this league there will come the time when he can’t get anybody out and that can really pull a kid down.”

  But Bob Short, in his fashion as showman, would have put a gnome in the lineup to attract paying fans if Bill Veeck, the White Sox owner, hadn’t thought of it first. Promotions like Cough Syrup Night were not filling seats in Arlington. The owner was getting desperate. Rumor had it that during the last home stand, someone had called the stadium ticket office asking what time the game started and was told, “What time can you be here?”

  The deal was done. Clyde would join the team in Minnesota that coming Sunday and make his big-league debut at home the following week. Back in Texas, a press conference was held in the Rangers dugout to announce that Clyde had officially signed for what Short termed “a considerable amount … a very considerable amount.” That amount, $150,000, was indeed deemed considerable for someone who had just turned eighteen in 1973. Clyde apparently had hired a Sunday-school teacher to script his comments for the press conference. “This fulfills a lifetime dream. It is wonderful to be the top draft choice.” And so on. Significantly, as far as being tossed into the major-league shark tank for Bob Short Entertainment Enterprises, Clyde said that both he and his old man were all for it.

  And, after what he would have to witness and withstand in his dugout in Baltimore over the next three days, Whitey Herzog was probably all for it, too. This team needed something and needed it bad. A fresh face. A transfusion. An iron lung. Anything.

  In the first game of the series, the Rangers actually received what was their best pitching performance of the season so far. Sonny Siebert, the veteran that Herzog pirated away from the Red Sox, went the distance and held the Orioles to only one run. The Baltimore team at the plate was far less formidable than the Baltimore team on the mound and in the field.

  Naturally, that one run was enough. Mike Cuellar regarded the Rangers batting order as a delight to behold. Rico Carty’s impersonation of a cleanup hitter might have made a great skit on “Laugh-In,” but beneath the harsh glare of ballpark lights the humor of the situation was wasted on Whitey Herzog. The B-e-e-g Boy entered the game against Cuellar batting a cool .194, which would sink a few more notches after another 0-for-4 showing against Cuellar.

  Joe Lovitto, the player that Ted Williams had called the best hitter in the Rangers organization, had been relegated to a limited role in the Texas attack. Herzog felt that made sound baseball sense inasmuch as Lovitto was 5 for 42.

  Mike Cuellar’s only problem Ranger on this night was Jim Spencer, a decent first baseman Herzog had received when he foisted off lost-cause Mike Epstein to California in late May. Spencer belted a line drive directly off Cuellar’s kneecap in the third inning. After the game I approached Cuellar in the Oriole clubhouse and, sure enough, his right knee, packed in ice, was swollen the size of a volleyball. Cuellar grinned.

  “Right leg hurt so much I forget about left leg,” Cuellar said. He’d been nursing a groin pull since spring training and under normal circumstances might have left the game after being nailed by Spencer’s smash. But against this Rangers lineup, a shutout just waiting to happen, Cuellar naturally had chosen to stay on.

  Since there would be no Watergate action on TV that next day, a Saturday, I spent the following afternoon at the cinema with Merle Heryford, another baseball writer from the Dallas Morning News who was splitting the trips with Galloway that year. Merle was an old-timer and like every old-timer I ever met on the baseball beat, his heart and mind were welded to the past. In his case, the past was exclusively immersed in the activities of the long-extinct Dallas franchise in the Texas League. Merle had covered that team through its metamorphoses as Rebels, Steers and Eagles.

  An amazing true story about Merle Heryford typified not only the man himself but old baseball writers everywhere. In their world, no current player could begin to measure up to the players of yesterday in terms of talent, grandeur or overall persona. “Goddamn … I remember ol’ Waffleface Watson. Sumbitch could stand flat-footed and piss over a boxcar. Helluva guy. Went 4-for-5 against Wichita Falls and died of smallpox the next day.”

  In 1956 Merle was sitting at his desk at the paper, apparently engrossed in the minor-league reports in that week’s edition of the Sporting News when a copyboy ran into the sports department and shouted, “Mr. Heryford! Mr. Heryford! The World Series game is in the sixth inning and Don Larson is pitching a perfect game!”

  Merle smirked, bit down hard on his cigar and announced, “He’ll never do it.”

  Later, the copyboy appeared again, shouting, “Mr. Heryford! Mr. Heryford! He did it! Don Larson pitched a perfect game!”

  Merle bit the cigar again and said, “Well, he’ll never do it again.”

  But Merle was a man who was impossible to dislike. That afternoon in Baltimore, Merle and I saw the first-run box office smash of that summer of 1973, Walking Tall, starring Joe Don Baker in his unforgettable real-life portrayal of Sheriff Buford “Big Stick” Pusser.

  I would have to say that Big Stick Pusser was a helluva lot more entertaining than the piss-stick Texas Rangers. That night Herzog sent yet another “live young arm” to the mound. Steve Dunning had been a top draft choice by Cleveland a couple of years earlier and Herzog had secured his talents in the trade involving Dick Bosnian. Dunning, who had graduated from Stanford, was known as Steve Stunning to his new teammates.

  Steve Stunning, who later in the year would give up a homerun to the game’s first batter in three consecutive starts, would last exactly two-thirds of an inning in this particular outing against the O’s. His relief practitioner was still another “live young arm” recently imported from the Angels, Lloyd Allen. Herzog’s quick evaluation: “Lloyd hasn’t yet learned how to work the hitters with varied pitch selection and changing speeds. But even if he could, it wouldn’t do much good because when he throws the ball Lloyd has absolutely no idea where it’s going.”

  After the Orioles had finished with Dunning and Allen, they led 9-0 after five innings. Meanwhile, Jim Palmer was fashioning what was looking more and more like a perfect game. That lasted two outs into the eighth inning and with the crowd entering an uproar mode, the Rangers’ catcher, Ken Suarez, who stood all of five-foot-seven and choked up on the bat a good four inches, slapped a seeing-eye grounder up the middle past Mark Belanger for a single.

  Afterward, Rico Carty told me that an inning earlier he had intentionally fouled off a pitch that he thought was ball four because he’d never been involved in a perfect game and didn’t want to see it spoiled by a base on balls. When I happened to relay Carty’s “disclosure” to Whitey, the manager rolled his eyes and said, “Oh. What a bunch of crap. Besides. If anybody throws a perfect game against this lineup, they oughtta slap an asterisk on it.”

  The Sunday afternoon finale of the series produced another excruciating excursion through purgatory. Against Dave McNally, the pitcher the Rangers hadn’t beaten in seventeen straight starts, it
was business as usual, with the Orioles on cruise control and leading 4-1. But the Rangers rallied in the eighth, chased McNally and tied the game when Alex Johnson doubled home two runs off reliever Eddie Watt.

  Only the Rangers could prolong the agony like this. The game lasted sixteen innings. Then Merv Rettenmund (once drafted to play football for the Cowboys but never signed) knocked home the winner for the Orioles. By the act of embarking on that eighth-inning rally, the Rangers only succeeded in extending the proceedings another hour and a half on getaway day, thereby missing their flight. They were now scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis at three A.M.

  Up in the pressbox, Bob Short presented me with an offer that I couldn’t refuse. He invited me to fly over to Minnesota with him in his private jet, arriving in time to meet and interview David Clyde and hammer out a quick feature. After confirming that this private jet was equipped with a liquor cabinet, I agreed.

  On the plane, it occurred to me that I had perhaps never seen a man as happy as Bob Short appeared to be on that late afternoon westward journey. “This Clyde … you’re getting to see … is a gift from God,” Short was saying. “I mean, beyond what the baseball scouts say. Photogenic. Mature. Articulate. A natural for the media. I mean, he’s like a fucking Eagle Scout.”

  Short’s little jet landed in Minneapolis and then we drove over to the Leamington Hotel in a limo. Short also owned the hotel, and when we got there he sprinted directly to the front desk. “Walter,” he demanded of the desk clerk. “My young friend David Clyde. Has he checked in yet?”

  Walter smiled, nodded and answered, “Why, yes, Mr. Short. You’ll find him in the bar.”