The Mouth That Roared

by Dallas Green

  In Philadelphia, I sat in a room full of future soldiers. The Army officials told us we’d undergo physicals that day, and assuming we passed, we’d then be shipped off to Fort Benning, Georgia, for two years.

  The player I most admired as a kid, Ted Williams, sacrificed some of the best years of his career to serve his country in World War II. Unlike Williams, however, I was at the start of my career. There were no guarantees that a job would be waiting for me after two years in the Army. The other difference was that ballplayers called to active duty in the early 1940s were actually fighting for their country. I’d be sitting at an Army base waiting for a conflict to happen.

  I returned home to Delaware to await the results of my physical and attend a going-away party thrown by family and friends. I tried my best to hide my disappointment. I said my good-byes and told everyone I’d see them soon. It didn’t escape me that I’d be away from baseball and Sylvia for two years.

  The next day I got a telegram from the Army that informed me of the results of my physical. I had a hernia. Because of that, I got slapped with the 4-F tag. I was physically unfit for duty, thankfully.

  I never asked if Phillies owner Bob Carpenter had anything to do with that diagnosis. A few months later, I had surgery to fix the problem.

  I unpacked my bags and we had another party in Delaware to celebrate my reprieve. Instead of heading off to Fort Benning, I headed to High Point, North Carolina. My friends were tired of partying and glad to see me go.

  * * *

  In some ways, it was a different era in baseball.

  Fresh off his perfect game in the 1956 World Series, which I attended with friends, Don Larsen of the Yankees was looking for a pay raise. The amount he and the team agreed upon? $20,000.

  And on April 22, 1957, the Phillies became the last National League team to integrate when John Irvin Kennedy entered a game as a pinch runner. He got into just five games that season, his only big league appearances, coming to bat twice.

  In other ways, the game was much the same as it is today, especially in the minor leagues, where I was among thousands of players plugging away in the hopes of getting a shot at the big time.

  In the Carolina League, I took a step in that direction by walking far fewer batters than the year before, a major step forward in my development as a pitcher.

  But sometimes, admittedly, I missed the strike zone on purpose.

  In those days, pitching inside was part of the game, a way to keep hitters from getting too comfortable at the plate. I was a dedicated practitioner of the brushback pitch. That pissed off some hitters, who for some strange reason didn’t like seeing a 95 mile-per-hour fastball coming toward their chins. But whether they liked it or not, I didn’t back off.

  In a June 1957 game against Winston-Salem, I threw a couple of inside fastballs to Gene Oliver, a burly catcher who later enjoyed a long major league career that included a season with me in Philadelphia. After the second high-and-tight pitch, Oliver shot me a scowl and raised his index finger in the air. He wasn’t signaling that he was No. 1. He was saying that if I came in on him one more time, he was going to have something to say about it.

  My teammates, including Kettle, who followed me from Salt Lake City, knew exactly where the next pitch was going. I reared back and uncorked a fastball designed to knock Oliver on his ass. Down he went. After getting up, he came out to have a word with me, as promised. I didn’t wait for him to get out to the mound. I took two steps forward and landed a haymaker to Oliver’s face. He got in a few punches as both teams spilled out onto the field. Kettle came out with a batting helmet on. What followed wasn’t your average baseball brawl, in which players grab each other and mill around. This one was a real donnybrook, with haymakers and wrestling and probably some eye-gouging. When the dust cleared, our manager, Frank Lucchesi, ended up in possession of the umpire’s home-plate brush. I’m still not sure how that happened.

  A few days later, I got a telegram from the president of the Carolina League that read, “You have subjected yourself to the automatic Carolina League fine of $5 for accepting Winston-Salem player Oliver’s challenge to fight. For actually participating in a fight, you are hereby fined another $5, making the total fine $10.”

  Believe it or not, that was a good amount of money at the time for a minor league baseball player. Who did they think I was? Don Larsen?

  Later in my career, I was involved in another brushback incident. Future Dodger John Roseboro thought I was throwing at him, so he bunted a ball up the first-base line. As I bent over to field the ball, he bowled me over. He was playing good hard baseball, and so was I. Many years later, as a catcher for the Dodgers, Roseboro took exception to inside pitches being thrown by Juan Marichal of the Giants. With Marichal at the plate later in the game, Roseboro made sure his return throws to Sandy Koufax came as close to Marichal’s head as possible. In what became an infamous episode, Marichal retaliated by hitting Roseboro over the head with his bat.

  * * *

  Still young and single, I had some fun times in High Point, the sleepy southern town I called home for the summer. It was mostly of the good, clean variety. Almost half the team lived side by side on a nice residential street in High Point. Kettle, Eddie Keegan, and Freddie Van Dusen lived in one house, and I lived with Dick Harris and a couple of other guys next door.

  To pass the time between games and practices, we formed a commando group that went on secret late-night missions. On one hot night/morning, while drinking some beers, we decided to go for a swim at the local country club. We weren’t members of the club, and even if we had been, I doubt we would have been permitted to take a dip in the pool at 2:00 am.

  We drove over to the country club but the gate to the pool was bolted shut. We could have aborted our mission at that point, but that wouldn’t have made us very effective commandos.

  A tall metal fence surrounded the pool. We had consumed too many beers to do any serious fence climbing, but Kettle had an idea.

  “Boys, we’re going under the fence,” he announced.

  “We’re tunneling in?” Harris asked.

  “Nope, the fence is going up,” Kettle replied.

  Kettle got a jack out of the car, hooked it up to the fence, and proceeded to hoist it out of the ground. One by one, we slid underneath the uprooted metal.

  After splashing around in the water for a while, Harris noticed the headlights of our car were still on. At an otherwise pitch-dark country club, the lights cut a bright path through the night, providing a road map for a security guard who would have loved to catch some pool-hoppers.

  We decided to get the hell out of there. My teammates slid back under the fence and jumped in the car. I was at the top of a ladder leading to a diving board when they all took off. Without thinking, I jumped about 20 feet down to the ground and landed awkwardly on my ankle. Man down! My teammates came back to retrieve me, pulling me across the pool area and back under the fence.

  The next day at the ballpark, my ankle hurt like hell. The other commandos tried to cover for me by helping me get dressed and out onto the field. Fortunately, I wasn’t pitching that day. After a while, Lucchesi and trainer Pete Cera noticed me hobbling around. I told them I sprained my ankle going after a ground ball.

  In addition to making uninvited visits to country clubs, I won 12 games at High Point, second-most on the team. At the end of the season, the Phillies promoted me all the way to Triple-A Miami, which put me just one step from the major leagues.

  * * *

  When I signed with the Phillies after my junior year at the University of Delaware, I was still several credits shy of graduating. During my off-seasons, I took classes at Temple University and UD in an attempt to earn my degree in business administration. I liked the idea of having an education to fall back on in case my baseball career didn’t pan out. But more than that, I just wanted to finish what I started.
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br />   While I was playing at High Point, Sylvia graduated from Conrad High School. She enrolled at UD that fall. In January 1958, a few days after Sylvia’s 18th birthday, we got married and then honeymooned in the Poconos. After that, she moved in with me at my mom’s house. More than 50 years later, we’re still together.

  In the first years of our marriage, Sylvia went wherever I did, continuing her studies in whatever minor league city we happened to be in. We agreed to put off starting a family until she completed her education. This pleased her parents, who had been concerned that marrying young would interfere with her getting a college degree.

  Sylvia completed her first two semesters in Delaware and then hit the road to join me in Miami for the 1958 season.

  You hear a lot about the rough life of a minor leaguer: low pay, long bus rides, backwater towns, that kind of stuff. I experienced all of the above in Mattoon, Reidsville, High Point, and to a lesser extent, Salt Lake City.

  My Triple-A experience in Miami didn’t exactly follow that script, however. I spent the tail end of the 1957 season and all of 1958 playing there. Long before the Florida Marlins relocated a few miles south and became the Miami Marlins, multiple minor league clubs used that name, including a Phillies farm team that played in the International League between 1956 and 1960.

  For newlyweds, Miami was an exciting place to spend a few months. We lived in a motel on the 79th Street Causeway, a lively part of town back in the late 1950s. Sylvia says if she ever writes a book, it will tell of the colorful characters we met at the motel’s communal swimming pool.

  Our neighbors included a gun runner who made regular trips to Cuba to sell his wares; a contractor who earned and squandered millions of dollars in the construction business, all in the span of that single summer; a downtrodden widower who lost his wife in a hurricane; two lesbians; and a busty stripper whose husband may or may not have been her pimp. The gal who ran the motel was a former B-movie actress whose head shots adorned the property. In addition to telling stories of near-stardom in Hollywood, she’d fix mai tais for everyone at the pool.

  When Sylvia wasn’t hanging around the pool, she was in class. She took 16 credit hours during the summer session at the University of Miami. One of the qualities Sylvia and I share is taking pride in the tasks we set out to do. With an eye toward becoming a schoolteacher, Sylvia took a full load of education classes and got three As and a B. She was so conscientious about her studies that she passed on accompanying me to Cuba when the Marlins played the Havana Sugar Kings. The next year, Fidel Castro seized power in the country.

  Sylvia has a passion for travel. Just recently, she returned from a two-week solo trip to Thailand and Myanmar. To this day, she regrets not visiting Havana before it was closed off to Americans. What’s worse is that the University of Delaware, which approved her to take classes in Miami, would only transfer her grades back as Cs.

  * * *

  My Miami team consisted mostly of older players hoping for a last go-around in the majors. Baseball had taken its toll on them and their families. I recall a time at the Miami airport when the wife of one of my veteran teammates showed up at the boarding area clutching a handful of papers. Apparently she had stumbled upon a batch of letters he had written to another woman.

  “You son of a bitch!” she screamed at him before ripping up the letters and tossing them in the air.

  The next set of papers he saw were divorce documents.

  I witnessed the seamier side of minor league life in Miami, but I also saw extraordinary grace.

  The oldest player by far on the Miami team was Satchel Paige, who turned 52 midway through the 1958 season. He was a right-handed pitcher who dominated the Negro Leagues for 18 seasons but didn’t have an opportunity to pitch in the majors until his early forties. Satch went 10–10 with a 2.95 ERA for Miami in 1958. It was the second season in a row that he tallied 10 wins and a sub-3.00 ERA. I was amazed by what he could still do at such an advanced age. He was thin and wiry and didn’t move around really fast, but he had unbelievable command of his pitches. I’m proud to say I got to play with Satch during his last season in the Phillies organization. Remarkably, he remained active a while longer. At 59 years of age, while pitching for the Kansas City A’s, he threw three scoreless innings against the Boston Red Sox.

  * * *

  I had a decent season in Miami but did nothing to set myself apart from the other guys hoping to get called up to the majors. I was one of five pitchers to start at least 15 games that season but the only one to finish the season with an ERA above 3.00. After four years in the minors, I still wasn’t ready for the big leagues.

  My return trip to Havana in 1959 came as a member of the Buffalo Bisons, who replaced the Miami Marlins as the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate.

  Sylvia’s studies again kept her from the trip of a lifetime. She was back finishing up a semester at the University of Delaware. By 1959, Cuba had become a volatile place, and International League officials ordered us to stay in our hotel to avoid trouble. Later that summer, gunshots rang out during a game between the Sugar Kings and the Rochester Red Wings. A Rochester coach and player were grazed by bullets, prompting the game and the rest of the series to be called off.

  I got on a roll in Buffalo, pitching one complete game after another. For the first time in my professional career, I had control of the strike zone. By dramatically cutting down on walks, I didn’t have to constantly pitch with runners on base. As a result, my ERA dropped significantly.

  With the Phillies stumbling toward a last-place finish in the National League, it served to reason that they’d again look to the minors for pitching help. I had no doubt that Buffalo manager Kerby Farrell was keeping them apprised of my performance.

  * * *

  After going the distance for a fifth consecutive start, I experienced extreme pain in my right arm. I didn’t think too much of it, because I figured even strong arms like mine get sore from time to time, especially after so many complete games. All of those starts took place while Lake Erie was still frozen over, and pitching in the bitter cold couldn’t have helped the situation. During the third complete game, I felt tightness in my arm around the seventh inning. I rubbed hot ointment on it in the dugout and went out and finished the game. I was on a roll and didn’t want to admit I was hurting. I stayed sore throughout the next two outings. I hoped a few days of rest would cure the problem. But by my next start, on Mother’s Day, the pain was so acute that I had to take myself out of the game in the third inning. By that point, I could barely reach home plate with my pitches.

  Sylvia was in the midst of a six-week summer course at the University of Buffalo when I returned to Philly to get my arm checked out. She was a good sport about staying in upstate New York without me.

  In Philadelphia, I met with Phillies trainer Frank Wiechec to talk over the situation. I was relieved to hear Frank say he thought I had nothing more than a strain. All I needed was additional rest, he said.

  Those starts for Buffalo convinced me I was a big-league-caliber pitcher. As I missed games waiting for my arm to heal, I couldn’t help but worry. I saw the way shoulder and elbow injuries had turned Robin Roberts of the Phillies from a consistent 20-game winner into a sub-.500 pitcher. Robbie’s natural ability and knowledge of how to pitch allowed him to remain a productive major leaguer. I, meanwhile, had yet to pitch an inning in the big leagues. If my arm didn’t get better, I wouldn’t have the same savvy and experience to fall back on.

  On Frank’s orders, I abstained from all physical activity during the winter of 1959. When I reported to spring training the following February, my condition hadn’t improved. My arm still hurt and my fastball still lacked pop.

  As long as I played, I never found out the exact nature of the injury. The only surgery I ever underwent came at the ripe old age of 77, when I could no longer lift my right arm.

  In Buffalo, I simply tried to
cope with the pain and adapt to pitching with it. In 11 starts in 1960, I pitched four complete games. With less velocity on my pitches, I relied on hitting my spots. To my coaches, it appeared I had successfully adapted to my new set of circumstances.

  Those months in Buffalo included one last visit to Havana, the final trip of any International League team. As we departed Cuba after the three-game series, we saw plumes of smoke rising from American-owned oil tanks. Not long after that, the Havana Sugar Kings became the Jersey City Jerseys.

  And bad arm and all, I became a member of the Philadelphia Phillies.

  5

  The 1960 Phillies were never going to be confused with the 1927 Yankees—or even the 1959 Phillies. Nobody understood that better than manager Eddie Sawyer. Fired two years after leading the Phillies to a National League pennant in 1950 and then rehired in 1958, only to see his team lose and lose some more, he had evidently given up hope. Following an Opening Day loss to the Reds in 1960, he announced his resignation. Before walking out the door, he muttered something about being 49 years old and wanting to live to see 50. His plan worked. Sawyer died in 1997 at the age of 87.

  To the surprise of many, the Phillies went outside the organization to replace Sawyer, bringing in Gene Mauch, who had been managing the Red Sox’s Triple-A affiliate in Minneapolis.

  Mauch, a former journeyman infielder who played for six major league teams, had no experience as a major league manager. With his hiring, he became the youngest skipper in the game. The 1960 season marked the beginning of his 26-year managerial career with four different teams.

  When I got called up to the Phillies in mid-June, the team was already 16 games out of first place. In light of the team’s woes, general manager John Quinn figured he’d give some younger players a shot. To make room for me, the team demoted veteran right-handed pitcher Ruben Gomez. I narrowly missed out on becoming the first Delaware native ever to play for the Phillies. About a year earlier, pitcher Chris Short, who hailed from Milford, had earned that distinction.