Seasons in Hell

by Mike Shropshire

  An event that happened at the end of the 1974 season not only guaranteed that I could never become a Seamhead but also got me more or less blackballed by the Baseball Writers fraternal order in general.

  In late September, Billy Martin’s Quixote-like quest of the Oakland A’s would die of natural causes. On the Sunday that Gerald Ford officially announced that he was granting Richard Nixon his pardon and Evel Knievel botched but still survived his jet-motorcycle jump over the Snake River canyon, the Rangers were in Oakland beating the A’s for the third time in a four-game series. Back in Texas the following weekend, the Rangers beat Oakland on Friday and again on Saturday, and if they won again on Sunday night the A’s lead would be sliced to one game. But the Rangers would not win that final game. The tank was finally empty.

  Thanks to Billy Martin’s time-honored formula for witchcraft, sorcery and voodoo magic, blended with the sensational pitching contribution of Fergie Jenkins and an MVP year at the bat by Jeff Burroughs, the Rangers had ventured into a territory where they really did not belong—the perimeters of Oakland’s championship estate. In the long run (and the baseball season is indeed the longest of runs), no amount of luck or peculiar gamesmanship could make up for the talent chasm that separated the Rangers from the A’s.

  After the A’s left Texas, they kept on winning while the Rangers, playing at home against Chicago, did not. Two losses in a Friday doubleheader to the White Sox officially extinguished the Rangers’ quest of the impossible. All that remained was a quick three-game visit to Kansas City and then Minnesota to complete a season that would see the Rangers finish in second place, a feat that gained Manager of the Year honors for Billy Martin.

  But Martin presented symptoms of acute digestive distress at the prospect of receiving a consolation prize. After the loss of the second game to the White Sox that mathematically eliminated the Rangers—an occurrence that more traditionally happened around the Fourth of July in Arlington—I walked onto the Rangers’ charter jet for the midnightish flight to Kansas City. Martin, seated on the aisle on the third row, grabbed my sleeve as I headed toward the back of the plane and said, “You know who cost us the pennant? That fucking little David Clyde, that’s who. Put that in your goddamn newspaper.”

  I shook my head and kept on walking. Two things struck me as odd about that little encounter. First, of course, was the notion that Billy Martin would actually single out Clyde as the source of the Rangers’ inability to pull off what would have ranked as the most outrageous pennant-chase upset in the history of the sport. Martin probably was saying that had Clyde somehow developed as a reliable third starter in a big-league pitching rotation instead of the game but struggling teenager that, in reality, he was, then the Rangers would have somehow pulled off the feat. But following that reasoning, Martin could just as easily have attached the blame to, say, Jim Sundberg because he didn’t bat .415 and hit forty-five homeruns.

  What seemed even more odd was that Billy had apparently already lapsed into his post-midnight, Red Alert, clear-the-flight-decks-because-I’m-fixin’-to-kick-somebody’s-ass mode. Usually, at least three-and-one-half-hours worth of persistent consumption were required for Billy to achieve that. Now it was barely forty-five minutes after the completion of the second game.

  Was it possible, then, that Billy was sucking down a few pops in the tunnel behind the dugout during that second game? After the takeoff I summoned a flight attendant. If the gritty skipper was, as they say, already drunker than Sam Houston, I wanted to achieve a similar state of mind as quickly as possible. Shortly into the flight, a commotion in the front of the 727 interrupted the flow of refreshment supplies. Several of the players back in steerage where I was seated were standing up and gaping at some sideshow that was taking place in first class. Business as usual, I figured, somebody trying to get it on with the stewardess, as flight attendants were then called. Momentarily afterward, James Walker of the Times-Herald appeared from up front wearing a peculiar expression. Walker had replaced my friend David Fink as the baseball writer for the Times-Herald. Fink had gone to Pittsburgh to cover the Steelers. Walker spoke with a distinct Northeast Texas accent. Most outsiders believe that there is one prototypical Texas accent. Actually there are several. For instance, I can determine the difference between a West Fort Worth accent—“bin gittin’ inny?”—from a North Fort Worth accent—“no hablo Ingles.” Where James Walker came from, those Goodyear rubber products that people put on their trucks are known as “tars,” and the most favored ethnic persuasion was “wyatt folks”—as in Earp.

  “You won’t believe what just happened,” Walker told me. “Billy just punched out Burt Hawkins.”

  Walker was right. I didn’t believe him. But my earlier suspicions that Billy’s psyche had already advanced into the attack phase were all too correct. Billy was no longer a baseball manager but rather an aggressor nation eager to declare war on somebody. What happened was this: Martin had started shouting at Hawkins for the ridiculous reason that Burt’s wife Janet had expressed an interest in forming some sort of Rangers Auxiliary. In other words, a Rangers players-wives club. Now Martin was demanding that Burt make Janet abandon the plan. “The goddamn wives,” Martin said, “will poison a ball club if you let ’em … the last thing you need is gettin’ ’em organized!”

  Hawkins predictably suggested to Billy that he might go fuck himself, at which point Martin offered to heave Burt out of the airplane. “If you think you’re big enough, Billy Boy, then give it a try,” Burt responded. Thus challenged, Martin got up and smacked a sixty-five-year-old-man with a heart condition across the face.

  Other than that episode, it was a quiet flight to Kansas City. Once at the airport, Billy marched about twenty paces ahead of the entourage and, once outside, hopped into what appeared to be a 1965 GTO with front-end body damage and sped away in a cloud of exhaust smoke. “Billy’s gal needs a valve job,” one of the players, Steve Hargan, noted as the rest of the Rangers climbed aboard the bus for the trip to the hotel.

  As the bus pulled away, Burt Hawkins stood up in the front and made an unusual speech. The flight from D-FW airport to Kansas City probably doesn’t take ninety minutes, but that’s enough to get reasonably crocked on an empty stomach and the majority of the passengers on the bus had done just that, knowing that the hotel bar would already be closed by the time they arrived.

  Hawkins wanted to talk to the players about what had happened on the airplane. His message included some colorful usage. “If that sorry little cocksucker doesn’t apologize, then I am going to the ownership of the Rangers and tell ’em they can stick this job up their ass,” Hawkins told the team. And he added that, until he had made up his mind he hoped that nothing would be mentioned about the airplane debacle right away in the newspapers. That presented no problems because, by now, everyone was safely past deadline.

  During the course of the night and early morning hours, Ma Bell grew fatter as the phone lines buzzed from Kansas City to North Texas. News of Billy’s behavior on the charter flight had somehow filtered back to the home office, and the ownership was appalled to the extent that an impromptu board meeting was apparently conducted to discuss what punitive measures should be imposed upon the problem child. Dr. Bobby Brown located Billy sometime around dawn and articulated his dissatisfaction.

  WE CAN’T HAVE THIS SORT OF THING!

  The phone in my room at the old Muhlbach Hotel was ringing at the inhumane hour of eight-thirty A.M. It was Burt Hawkins and he wanted to see me. By the time I reached Hawkins’ suite the other two writers, James Walker and Randy Galloway, were already there. Galloway was preparing his special Grand Prairie Bloody Mary recipe, which consisted of two ounces of Tabasco, nine ounces of cheap vodka and a teaspoon of tomato juice.

  Hawkins’ mood was drastically altered from what we had seen just hours earlier on the team bus. Now that the hostilities had abated, he seemed actually jovial. He said that the Little Dago himself had paid a visit to the suite and d
escribed Martin as a living portrait of contrition. Old Burt was clearly amused by the experience of the New Billy consumed with humility. “I suppose Bobby Brown threatened to fire him,” said Hawkins, “because Billy was really kissing my ass. You all should have seen him.” Hawkins was laughing now. “According to Billy, nobody was to blame. Booze was the real culprit.”

  Then Hawkins issued a special request. Now that Billy had been sufficiently humbled, and his apology had been formally accepted, wouldn’t it be better for all parties to forget the whole shabby episode? In other words, leave it out of the paper. This whole affair, for sure, was like Galloway’s Bloody Mary. It had an unsavory taste to it. Janet Hawkins’ club efforts had ignited Martin and publicity of the airplane event might restoke the furnace. Furthermore, this was the lurid sort of media event that presented the potential for one story eventually to become several stories. Before it was over, I could see myself interviewing shrinks and social scientists to learn their views of the appropriate role of the baseball wife in contemporary culture. Burt then added that, in my case, ignoring the incident might not be that easy since the ceremonial publisher of my newspaper, Amon Carter, Jr., was on the Rangers’ board and knew about what had taken place. Galloway and Walker then agreed that it would be my decision, and mine alone, to determine whether the story should run. My personal policy on matters like these was clear. As long as nobody was killed or arrested, why bother the reading public with the sordid particulars? If Billy made headlines every time he “caused a scene” there wouldn’t have been room in the paper for any Richard Nixon stories.

  At mid-afternoon I called the Star-Telegram’s morning sports editor, Bob Lindley, at his private office that was located in the taproom of the Pecan Valley municipal golf course and outlined my predicament. Lindley was the kind of man who heartily endorsed laborsaving measures, and therefore, a great editor. “Do whatever you want,” he told me. “I don’t care.”

  So in the pressbox at Royals Stadium before the Saturday night game, I informed my writing colleagues that a decision had been reached. The airplane incident had never taken place. Burt Hawkins was now officially unslapped.

  The Rangers beat Kansas City that night and again on Sunday to officially wrap up second place in the American League West. The flight to Minneapolis, where the season would end with two meaningless day games, was as festive as any I would experience with the ball club. The players could not have been more boisterous if they had won the World Series. In Minneapolis they staged a team party at Howard Wong’s restaurant. The media was excluded and, later, Jim Fregosi told me that even with the Howard Wong discount, the liquor tab ran dangerously close to five figures.

  Fergie Jenkins picked up his twenty-fifth win on the last game of the season at Metropolitan Stadium before an audience of probably less than 200. Since my labors for yet another regular season were now mercifully complete, I chose to remain in the north woods for a couple of days’ worth of relaxation before returning to Fort Worth refreshed, rejuvenated and largely free from the anxiety-ridden day-to-day, night-to-night routine that accompanies the seemingly endless baseball season.

  So imagine my surprise when I opened my Wednesday morning Star-Telegram, turned to the sports section and read an eight-column headline across the top of the lead page: “MARTIN APOLOGIZES AFTER AIRPLANE ALTERCATION.” All of the nasty details of the flight to Kansas City were outlined in detail in a story beneath Harold McKinney’s byline. Hastily, I phoned McKinney to inquire as to what, in the name of God, was going on here, and was informed that James Walker of the Times-Herald—upon returning to Dallas—had “spilled the beans” (Harold McKinney’s words) to his editor, the esteemed Blackie Sherrod. Let me say here that I sympathized with James Walker’s thinking at this point. Walker found himself stuck in a dilemma where it was necessary to “spill one’s beans to “cover one’s ass.”

  Without a doubt, Blackie Sherrod was and still is the best-known sportswriter in the history of Texas journalism, and with the possible exception of Jim Murray in Los Angeles and Mike Royko in Chicago, he enjoys the largest regional following of any newspaper writer in the United States. Blackie, I think, actually attended high school with H. L. Mencken and naturally is a product of “the old school” of journalism, as opposed to “the new school” that Mencken apparently found revolting. Consequently, James Walker’s heartbreaking confession generated shock waves in the Times-Herald newsroom.

  So the Martin-Hawkins conflict would see print after all—one week after the fact—and the Morning News and Star-Telegram would follow suit the next day. “This,” I told Harold McKinney, “makes me look like a total idiot.”

  “Screw that,” said McKinney. “I’m the one who had to come in on my day off and write the goddamn story. And don’t sweat it. The whole thing has already blown over.”

  Right, Harold. That weekend, when I arrived in Los Angeles to cover the 1974 World Series between the Dodgers and the A’s, an east-coast sportswriting contingent was eager to talk to me when I entered the pressroom at the downtown Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel. Dick Young, the noted syndicated columnist for the Daily News of New York, led the charge. In person, Dick Young was far too presentable ever to be mistaken for a sportswriter. Had he wished, Young could have gotten laid every night of his life simply by hanging out at El Morocco and posing as Adolphe Menjou. But at the core, I think Dick Young was too much of a Seamhead to ever embark on anything so imaginative.

  “Boy … Billy really has you guys by the balls, doesn’t he?” Young demanded. I presumed he was talking to me. Dick was a man who tended to be in love with the sound of his own opinion and it would have been futile to attempt to explain that blowing off that story had absolutely nothing to do with protecting the dignity of the Little Dago.

  Another of the New York guys, Jack Lang, joined the chorus. “What were you fuckers smoking?” he wanted to know. I suggested to Jack that his own little corner of the planet might be a more rewarding place if he sampled some of what he presumed we were smoking.

  And one week after that, I was pleased to discover myself as front-page news in none other than the Washington Journalism Review, which serves as the official trade journal—I would hesitate to use the word “Bible” since journalism is involved—for ink-stained wretches throughout North America. This was the same publication that had just ranked the Star-Telegram as one of the ten worst major newspapers in the country. Walker, Galloway and I were castigated as irresponsible, incompetent, delusional, probably on the take and clearly not the sort of men that the New York World would send out to find Dr. Livingston. The article said that “Shropshire, for his part, at least cleared the coverup through his office …” I liked that part and am sure that the editorial offices at the Star-Telegram did as well.

  Life is so full of irony. Here I’d signed onto this simple job because of free trips to Cleveland and complimentary cocktails. Now, thanks to Jimmy Piersall and Billy Martin, I was becoming a celebrity. Of sorts.

  Chapter 21

  In preparation for my third visit to Rangers spring training I had convinced the paper to rent me a new station wagon, which I would drive 1,400 miles to Pompano Beach. Now I had packed my inventory of supplies: seven cases of Lone Star beer, several new Lone Star caps, T-shirts and belt buckles to offer vacationing Canucks—they adored all that Texas paraphernalia crap—two bottles of sunscreen lotion, a typewriter, a 3-M telecopier, a tennis racquet, a box of E-Z Wider cigarette papers, a new pair of huaraches (Mexican sandals), a box of 8-track cassettes that included the recent works of artists such as Jerry Jeff Walker, David Allen Coe and Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, a cooler full of ice, and about $2,000 worth of traveler’s checks. I was ready to roll.

  For the first time, North Texas seemed alive with an abundant supply of genuine public enthusiasm for the soon-to-arrive baseball season. Jeff Burroughs was back as the American League MVP. Billy Martin had been Manager of the Year. Mike Hargrove had been Rookie of t
he Year. Catfish Hunter had edged out the Rangers’ twenty-five-game winner Fergie Jenkins for the Cy Young Award but Jenkins had at least been named Comeback Player of the Year. Now Baseball Digest was already in print with an issue predicting that the 1975 Rangers would replace Oakland as the American League pennant winner.

  About one-and-a-half blocks out of my driveway, as I was heading east toward Florida, a black cat sprinted in front of the station wagon. Had I only known of the events that awaited me in the coming weeks and months, I would have floor-boarded the car and run over that goddamn cat and, to this day, I will make sharp U-turns in heavy traffic to avoid crossing the path of those little beasts.

  After two days of endurance driving through a compressed twenty-seven-hour tour of the Neo-Confederate Redneck-o-Rama and Great American Cream Gravy Belt, via Shreveport, Jackson, Hattiesburg, Mobile, Tallahassee and, at long last, a straight shot down the Florida Turnpike, my second home, the Surf Rider Resort, came into view, barely visible through the bug stains on the windshield of the station wagon. Fergie Jenkins, who had chosen to drive all the way from Texas in his new Continental, had beaten me to the registration desk by about fifteen minutes.

  Jenkins, traveling alone, said that he had become drowsy in the red clay nothingness of northeast Louisiana and had picked up a hitchhiker so that the passenger might drive the night shift while he slept. “The guy told me that he’d been living in a fox hole … a small cave, actually,” Jenkins said. “Then, when he couldn’t figure out how to get the cruise control to work on the Lincoln, the guy looked at me and said, ‘Ya know … I wouldn’t have this piece of shit.’ Some people are hard to please.”

  The first three days of what had been scheduled as a three-week assignment at spring training—Harold McKinney would take the last three when I went home to allow my liver to recover in time for the regular season—proceeded routinely. Wayne Carmichael, the entertainer who seemed dead-set on gaining entry into the Guinness Book of Records in the category of having sung “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” more times than any other human on the planet, was back at the Banyan Lounge.