by Joe Pepitone
I salvaged the clothes that weren’t damaged, closed the suitcases, and tossed them in the trunk of my car. I had just slammed the lid when Eileen came running toward me from next door, her arms outstretched and tears in her eyes.
“Daddy, don’t leave,” she said, hugging my leg. “Daddy, don’t leave me. I’ll never see you any more.” She was crying.
I knelt, hugged her to my chest, swallowing the choke in my throat. “I’ll be back, sweetheart,” I told her. “I just have to go away for now. . . . But I’ll be back to see you. I love you. Don’t cry, sweetheart. . . .”
She was only two and a half, but she knew. She knew. I cried all the way home to my mother’s in Brooklyn.
I called Barbara six or seven times in the next couple of weeks, but there was no answer. I was getting ready to drive over there to see what was going on when Barbara called. She sounded hysterical, and I heard screaming in the background. She mentioned the name of a man who lived in the area and said, “He’s here, in this house, Joe, and he’s making Eileen cry. He won’t leave. Joe, I’m afraid he’s going to hurt our daughter!”
I got so upset, I started trembling. I jumped in the Corvette and stood on the gas—90, 100 miles an hour. I made it from Brooklyn to Riveredge, New Jersey, in about twenty-five minutes. I screeched up to the house, ran to the door, and didn’t even try the knob. I kicked it in. Standing in the living room was a man in his forties. He was arguing with Barbara as I burst in, and my daughter was bawling, trying to knuckle away the huge tears rolling down her cheeks.
I grabbed the guy by the front of his shirt, and for a split second I thought I would kill him. I threw him away from me in disgust, and he fell down the four or five steps to the playroom. I stood at the head of the stairs, fists clenched, enraged, my mind swirling, and then the guy got up off the floor, crying.
“I love her,” he said. “I thought she loved me, that she was going to marry me.” He was crying so hard, he couldn’t talk for a moment. “But she says she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” he sobbed.
I turned to Barbara and said, “I’m taking Eileen out of here.”
I packed some of her clothes and drove her to my mother’s place. The next day the police came and took Eileen back. A few days later, I called Barbara and got no answer. I kept calling for over a week. Nothing. Finally I drove to Riveredge to see my daughter, but when I pulled up to the house, I knew they were gone. There was a For Sale sign in the front yard. I went to a neighbor’s. Barbara had taken the children and moved to her sister’s in Oakland, California. Jesus Christ, I thought, I’ll never see Eileen!
I stayed with my mother for a week or so, but I couldn’t stand it. All I could do was think about Eileen, how far away she was. I’d lost my daughter.
I had to distract my head, get some shit going so I wouldn’t have time to think. I moved in with a friend of mine, I’ll call Mike Jackson, who owned a motel in the Bronx, where he also lived. Mike was a good guy, but he was about as careful about his finances as I was. He also had a wife and two kids to support, in Jersey, and liked to party. We piled up the bills between us. I couldn’t wait for spring training to start, knowing my basic living expenses would be taken care of, and figuring playing ball would help get my head off my loss. I was partying night and day, yet I still had too much time to think.
XII
“Please get over here right away. . . . I’m coming apart.”
For me, the 1965 baseball season was one long agonized scream. I tried to muffle it with endless partying and rebelling against authority, and before the season was over I was in Lenox Hill Hospital feeling my mind might snap, crack, pop at any minute.
When the season started I knew my head was in a lot of trouble, but I thought I could arrange enough fun to submerge the loss of my kids and the constant harassment by my creditors. I went to Houk and got permission to room alone on the road. I had to pay the difference between the double rate—the Yankees paid that—and a single. I didn’t care. I was already something like forty-thousand dollars in debt. I told the guys that Mantle and Ford had single rooms, and I was a star, too.
Actually, I just didn’t want to be bothered with a roommate in those bad times. Linz and I were friends, but we were two very different people, and eventually we’d gotten on each other’s nerves. I was a slob and left my dirty clothes piled on the floor until I sent them all out to the cleaner at once. It bugged Phil. It also bugged him when I’d walk into a room with a piece of ass and interrupt his hypnotizing sessions. In ’64 he’d bought an album on how to be successful at anything by hypnotizing yourself. I came in one morning around two o’clock and Phil was sitting on his bed staring into the mirror with the record going, repeating its words to himself. I laughed and Phil said, “Jesus, Joe, you broke my concentration.” He really got into hypnotism after he tried it and got two hits the next day. He’d psych himself every night, then go o-for-12 and break his album on hypnotism. Three days later he’d buy another one and start psyching himself again. So while Phil and I were friends, had some terrific laughs together—the few times we jointly partied with girls ended in us laughing ourselves sick—we weren’t meant to be roommates. I was a very difficult guy to room with if you were a person who happened to need a normal amount of sleep.
I think what really tore it for Phil and me was an incident at the Concord Hotel after the ’64 season. A number of Yankee players who lived around New York were going to this resort in the Catskill Mountains because it was a nice place and there were always a lot of girls there. I happened to be at the Concord once when Phil was there, and I saw him spending a lot of time with one very pretty girl. A few weeks later I was back at the hotel, and so was the girl. We got together and she was sensational. I ran into Phil when I got back and said, “Hey, that girl I saw you with at the Concord, man, she was some piece of ass. Wow! We balled for a whole weekend. . . .” Blah, blah, blah; I went on and on.
What I didn’t know was that Phil had been truly smitten by the girl, that he was thinking about her seriously. I kept bumping into him around town after that and he barely spoke to me. Then I found out how he felt, that he had broken off with the girl, and I felt like shit.
Rooming alone didn’t help my wallet in 1965. I was so short of cash that I’d order all my meals in my room and sign for them. Then I’d have the daily meal money, which was nine or ten dollars, to spend. Of course, hotel room meals ran twenty to thirty dollars a crack. I also had parties and signed for everything. When we got back from the road trip, instead of getting a check for, say two thousand dollars, I’d get one for two hundred dollars. “What’s going on?” I’d ask. “Incidentals on the road, Joe. You’re a pretty big spender.” When we returned from one road trip, I got a paycheck for—I didn’t believe it but it was printed right on it—fifteen dollars. That was when I asked for a roommate again.
I was lucky to be able to move in with Tom Tresh, because I was really beginning to come apart by this time. I’d played with Tom at Binghamton in i960 and made the Yankees with him in 1962, and I’d always liked him. But it wasn’t until I started rooming with him that I found out what a special kind of person he was. He didn’t bitch about my dirty clothes piled on the floor of our room. I’d come in and find them hung up. Tommy never said a word to me. I’d say to myself, Jesus Christ, this guy didn’t call me a slob, didn’t say anything; he just hung up my clothes for me.
Tom Tresh became like a big brother to me. He never told me what to do. But he was concerned about me, he advised me, made suggestions about my behavior that I knew were heartfelt, and in my interest. I was out every night, fucking around all the time, and going badly on the field. There was no way anyone could do well on the field keeping my hours. Tommy would suggest it wasn’t the best thing for me, that it might be hurting me. I’d never had anyone talk to me like he did—a father, a mother, an uncle, a brother who sat down with me and calmly, quietly, suggested a way to act that might be better for me, without telling me this
was what I had to do.
Tommy would point out that we had a doubleheader the following afternoon, that I wasn’t hitting well and that it might be better if I didn’t stay out until four or five in the morning, that I might be stronger, fresher, quicker with the bat. I would listen and nod, say yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Then, of course, I would talk to my cock and see how it felt about going out. If it would say, “We’re going to get a piece of ass,” I would go. When you’re into escapes, when you’re running from pain, you run no matter what else you hear. But I didn’t know what I was actually doing until I talked to a psychiatrist years later. All I knew was that I was distracting my mind—and that was desperately necessary.
I’d say, “Thanks, Tommy, you’re right. But I gotta go out.”
“Okay,” he’d say, understanding. I think back on all those nights now and marvel at the guy, at how well he knew the human condition, how he could stay cool when he cared for me, when he offered up some simple truths yet saw me continually going off on my self-destructive course. He never got angry with me. That, it seemed to me, was the greatest kind of affection.
I’d come in at five o’clock in the morning, or not at all, and I wouldn’t see Tommy until the next day at the ball park. I’d look like death, having done what he knew I would do, and he’d say with genuine concern, “How are you, roomie?” That was all.
Where I’d been wacked out in other years, had to pursue chicks almost every night, now I not only had to pursue them every night, one conquest per evening was not enough. I’d see a girl, get off with her, say good night, then go out in search of another one. There were some nights when we were on the road, where I wouldn’t score, of if I did I wouldn’t have a chick to bring back to the room with me. I’d come in at four, five, six in the morning, whatever, go to bed and lie there, tossing and turning, get up to get a drink of water and stand with it at the window, staring out. And the debts would enter my mind, all the bill collectors who were after me. And Eileen, my daughter, who was so far away in California, and whom I had lost, whom I had deserted, had left with a mother I didn’t respect who, in my deranged mind, would foul up the child, unintentionally not do the right thing by my little girl, just as my father, unintentionally, had not done the right thing by me. I knew in my heart that I was not prepared to fully and consistently give Eileen and Joseph what they needed. But, God, how I wanted to be able to. And the beat went on.
I’d be back in the room empty-handed, no warmth in my bed, and I’d get up, get dressed, and go back down into the streets, the bars now closed, no place to go, and I’d look for a chick. I’d stand on the corner and look for a prostitute, an old lady—any woman who happened to come by. Sometimes they would. Women with warts on their faces and age on their bodies, the dregs of the street, still out at 5 A. M., looking for a trick, a hapless soul like me. I’d take their hands, lead them up to my bed, telling myself, “Fuck Bo Belinsky and the guys who hang out with stars, with nothing but beauties all the time. Somebody’s got to fuck the ugly broads.”
Tommy Tresh loved his wife, had a good thing going at home, and we hung out a lot, but he’d peel off after dinner and a few drinks and go back to our room. I’d go out in search of girls. I don’t think getting laid was as important as the pursuit. I remember Vic Ziegel, a writer for the New York Post, telling me that he’d admired my coolness one day in Kansas City. I didn’t know what he was talking about. It seemed that the day we’d checked into the Muehlebach Hotel he’d been standing by the desk when I walked up and asked for my room key.
“You’re Joe Pepitone!” the girl at the desk had said.
“That’s right,” I’d said.
“I know,” she’d said. “I’m coming in my pants.”
I’d taken my key and walked away, according to Ziegel. The point is that I don’t even remember what she’d said. “Was she nice, Vic?”
“Joe, you know the girl,” he told me. “She’s a knockout.”
I don’t remember.
I do remember many nights sitting in the lobby of the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City between eleven and one, because that was where the airline stewardesses checked in. Two fine-looking girls would come in, I’d casually follow them to the desk, overhear their names and room numbers, go to my room and call them.
“Hey, Michele, you don’t know how lucky you are,” I’d say. “The New York Yankees are staying here tonight, and there’s a party in room 704. Can you make it? Beautiful, see you in fifteen minutes.” They’d knock, I’d open the door standing there in my shorts, with Tommy sitting in the room behind me. They’d laugh and come in, or suggest what I might do to myself. If they walked away, I’d get dressed and go back to the lobby. I don’t think it ever took more than two tries to acquire company. The girls who flew into the Muehlebach were fun, and Tommy was very understanding.
The worse my head got, the more bizarre my escapes became. I’d bring a girl into our room at 3 A. M. and Tommy would be asleep until the bedsprings woke him. Then, very coolly, he’d sleepily raise his hand in front of his face and peek through his fingers at us. He was a fantastic actor. I’d be really into it, glance at him, and see him make a little signal: Move over this way a mite so I can see better. I’d be laughing and balling at the same time.
I loved to party with groups, to direct the action with another couple or two. “Pardon me, would you move your tongue down a little lower? Fine. Thank you.” If it was a good show, I’d applaud. If it was a bad show, I’d boo. It was fun while it was happening, I didn’t think of anything else during the performances. A great escape.
Mike Jackson and I rented an apartment together in Phil Linz’s building on the East Side during the season. Mike still owned the motel in the Bronx, but he was also managing the Pussy Cat bar in the city, scrambling to make a buck. About 75 percent of the tenants in our building were airline stewardesses, which was very pleasant, and it simplified party arrangements. There were girls in our place twenty-four hours a day. They’d stop by in shifts. We were fucking so much and showering so often that at times we’d run out of towels. We had to dry ourselves with bed sheets.
We had only one bedroom, and one guy had to sleep on the couch that opened up in the living room. Mike and I had a deal. Whoever got there first with a chick for the night got to use the bedroom. The guy in the room would leave a bat outside the door as a signal that he was in with a girl. No one would be disturbed. It worked fine until the night I had the room and rushed off the next morning on a road trip. I forgot to move the bat, and the girl I was with must have closed the door behind us. I was away for five days. When I got back, I walked in carrying my luggage and found Mike asleep in the living room. He sat up rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“What am I doing? Coming back from a road trip.”
“You’ve been on a road trip? When did you leave?”
“Five days ago. What the fuck are you doing sleeping out here?” Then I saw the closed bedroom door and the bat outside it. I roared. Mike never got in till early in the morning, he was working all the time, and hadn’t realized the Yankees had gone out of town for a quick trip. He had abided by the bat.
We had some wild times because of our mutual financial problems. We’d run up bills at the local grocery stores, couldn’t pay them, and get cut off. I’d met Rocky Lee, who owned a restaurant and bar in the area, through Julius LaRosa and Jerry Vale, so Mike and I started running up a tab there. We’d stop by and pick up takeout orders, or call and have them deliver food to our apartment. When the bill totaled a thousand dollars, we couldn’t even go there any more. It was becoming harder and harder to eat in New York City.
I always had a little money, but I couldn’t afford to pay my bills and still be able to go out at night. When I got paid, some nights I’d spend five hundred, six hundred dollars, bounce all over the city and pick up every check. I’d be with guys worth $200,000, $300,000, and I’d pay the bill in the restaurant, act
like a big man. Berserk! And I kept buying toys. I had a beautiful, brand-new Pontiac and I was driving down the street and saw the newest Corvette. Wow! I drove right to the nearest dealer, traded the Pontiac—at a huge loss—and tooled away in a new Corvette. It was repossessed two months later, of course. A guy from the finance company showed up at the stadium.
“You’re going to have to make a payment, Mr. Pepitone,” he said, “or I’m going to have to take the car.”
“Well, this little problem is easily solved, sir; it’s no problem at all,” I said, reaching for my wallet and looking inside. “You’re gonna have to take the car.” I walked away. “The ashtrays are full, anyway.”
My creditors were getting somewhat impatient. I was receiving daily letters, phone calls. So were the Yankees, and my mother. My mother was very cool: “Joe Pepitone? No, I don’t have a son named Joe. My sons are named Jimmy and Billy and they are New York City policemen.”
But the collection men were out after me in force. I had to be the first guy at the ball park and the last one to leave in order to avoid them. Once, when we flew in from a road trip, I got off the plane at LaGuardia and a guy came up to me and said, “Excuse me, Joe. Can I get your autograph?” He handed me two pieces of paper, one on top of the other.
I signed my name and the guy walked away. “Hey, here’s the autograph,” I said.