by Jason Turbow
“Wow!” said Wells: Syracuse Post Standard, May 19, 1998.
“like he was going to kill”: Ibid.
“Rule number one in baseball”: David Wells with Chris Kreski, Perfect I’m Not: Boomer on Beer, Brawls, Backaches, and Baseball (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2004).
“Well, Mick, do you think I’ll make it?”: Mickey Mantle with Mickey Herskowitz, All My Octobers: My Memories of 12 World Series When the Yankees Ruled Baseball (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).
“You don’t ever mess with the lineup”: Wells with Kreski, Perfect I’m Not.
“My father was there”: St. Petersburg Times, July 21, 1988.
“I looked over there from first base”: Sporting News, Aug. 8, 1994.
“I like that”: Palm Beach Post, Aug. 7, 1994.
“Obviously, what I said”: Curt Smith, Voices of the Game: The First Full-Scale Overview of Baseball Broadcasting, 1921 to the Present (South Bend, Ind.: Diamond Communications, 1987).
“Dodgers: one run”: Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 31, 1988.
“Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule”: New York Times, January 13, 2008.
“There was a hue and cry that night”: Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 31, 1988.
“I broadcast Warneke’s mastery”: Ibid.
“In those days people did not mention ‘no-hitter’”: Arizona Republic, Oct. 8, 2006.
“I thought that if I ever did a no-hitter”: Newsday, June 25, 2006.
“It’s just those three words”: Stephen Borelli, How About That! The Life of Mel Allen (Champaign, Ill.: Sports Publishing, 2005).
“I usually make a couple pit stops”: Newsday, May 16, 1996.
“Listen to me”: Philadelphia Inquirer, April 29, 2003.
“Parrish, needless to say, is not superstitious”: New York Times, April 10, 1984.
“I’m not a big believer in jinxes”: New York Post, July 20, 1999.
“Coleman didn’t reply”: New York Post, Sept. 16, 2003.
21 Protect Yourself and Each Other
Moore outlasted sixteen play-by-play partners: Curt Smith, Voices of Summer (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005).
“It’s an automatic $500”: New York Times, July 15, 1973.
when the Mets hired Allan Lans: Sports Illustrated, Feb. 27, 1995.
“It’s a good example”: Sparky Lyle, The Bronx Zoo: The Astonishing Inside Story of the 1978 World Champion New York Yankees (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2005 [reprint]).
“He kept his own book”: New York Daily News, Oct. 29, 1995.
Joe Kerrigan was purported: Fox Sports (specific information unavailable).
Mets pitcher Doug Sisk: Jeff Pearlman, The Bad Guys Won (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
Negro Leagues star Buck O’Neil: Lecture given at Oakland Museum of California, Jan. 2006.
22 Everybody Joins a Fight
“a Little League move”: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 1, 1999.
“I gained respect for certain people”: Ibid.
“Gary DiSarcina, Darin Erstad, [Troy] Glaus”: Ibid.
“I’m sick and fucking tired of this shit!”: Riverside Press Enterprise, Sept. 2, 1999. Expletives deleted by newspaper and reinstated by author.
“I’ve been telling these assholes”: Ibid.
“I’ve been getting drilled all year”: Ibid.
“I have three guys on me”: Jeff Pearlman, The Bad Guys Won (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
“I know what was expected of me”: New York Times, Aug. 14, 1986.
“I raced toward the infield”: Richard “Goose” Gossage with Russ Pate, The Goose Is Loose: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 2000).
“It wasn’t a pretty sight”: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Aug. 2, 2001.
23 The Clubhouse Police
“I want to be fair”: Mickey McDermott with Howard Eisenberg, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cooperstown (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2003).
Joe DiMaggio had a perk: Richard Ben Cramer, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).
“Jay,” he said: Associated Press, July 6, 1991.
“Somebody even made a big cardboard hand”: Ibid.
Another of his victims was Brooks Robinson: USA Today, April 3, 2002.
as soon as he got “in the groove”: Sports Illustrated, June 16, 1986.
“I throw strikes even on 0-2 counts”: Associated Press, July 6, 1991.
fined for aiding the enemy: Ibid.
Pitcher Moe Drabowsky: Bob Cairns, Pen Men (Boston: World Publications, 1995).
“In case of Blyleven”: Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 1993.
“Ed, Babe’s been shot”: Werber, Memories of a Ballplayer: Bill Werber and Baseball in the 1930s (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2000).
Cardinals pitcher Joe Hoerner: Peter Golenbock, The Spirit of St. Louis (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
shooting water balloons two city blocks: Richard “Goose” Gossage with Russ Pate, The Goose Is Loose: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 2000).
On Lenny Dykstra’s first day: Jeff Pearlman, The Bad Guys Won (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
“You gonna take an oh-fer”: Larry Dierker, This Ain’t Brain Surgery (Lincoln, Neb.: Bison Books, 2005).
“You try climbing a bronze horse”: Nick Peters, Tales from the San Francisco Giants Dugout (Champaign, Ill.: Sports Publishing, 2003).
“Painting nuts ain’t fun”: Pearlman, The Bad Guys Won.
Conclusion
“Run the fucking ball out”: Sporting News, April 15, 1991.
“the days of slavery are over”: Chicago Sun-Times, May 27, 1990.
“I just told him I thought”: ESPN’s SportsCentury biography.
“Modern trends have made”: Bob Gibson with Lonnie Wheeler, Stranger to the Game: The Autobiography of Bob Gibson (New York: Viking, 1999).
“The overall respect for the game”: Orange County Register, June 23, 2002.
“I told Randolph later”: New York Times, Oct. 7, 1977.
A Note About the Authors
Jason Turbow’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, SI.com, Slam magazine, Popular Science, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he is a regular contributor to Giants Magazine and Athletics magazine. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and two children.
Michael Duca was the first chairman of the board of Bill James’s Project Scoresheet and has written for SportsTicker, “Giants Today” in the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Associated Press. He works for the Office of the Commissioner as an official scorer, and for MLB.com.
Copyright © 2010 by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Turbow, Jason.
The baseball codes : beanballs, sign stealing, and bench-clearing brawls : the unwritten rules of America’s pastime / Jason Turbow and Michael Duca.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37901-6
1. Baseball. 2. Baseball—Rules. I. Duca, Michael. II. Title.
GV867.T78 2010
796.357—dc22 2009022253
www.pantheonbooks.com
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