Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

by Jim Bouton

  “At least thirty.”

  “We couldn’t do that. It’s out of the question.”

  A couple of days later he called again. “Does $28,000 sound fair to you?”

  “Yes it does, very fair. In fact there are a lot of fair figures. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-two. I’d say thirty-three would be too high and twenty-seven on down would be unfair on your part.”

  “So you’re prepared to sign now.”

  “Not yet. I haven’t decided.”

  A week later he called again and said he’d sent me the contract I wanted—$28,000.

  “Now, wait a minute. I didn’t say I’d sign for that.”

  “But you said it was a fair figure.”

  “I said there were a lot of fair figures in there. I said thirty-two was fair too.”

  “Are you going back on your word? You trying to pull a fast one on me?”

  “I’m not trying to pull anything on you. I just haven’t decided what I’m going to sign for. I just know that twenty-eight isn’t it.”

  By now he’s shouting. “Goddammit, you’re trying to renege on a deal.”

  So I shouted back. “Who the hell do you people think you are, trying to bully people around? You have a goddam one-way contract, and you won’t let a guy negotiate. You bulldozed me into a contract my first year when I didn’t know any better, you tried to fine me for not signing last year, and now you’re trying to catch me in a lie. Why don’t you just be decent about it? What’s an extra thousand or two to the New York Yankees? You wonder why you get bad publicity. Well, here it is. As soon as the people find out the kind of numbers you’re talking about they realize how mean and stupid you are.”

  “All right. Okay. Okay. No use getting all hot about it.”

  When the contract came it was like he said, $28,000. I called and told him I wouldn’t sign it. I told him I wouldn’t play unless I got thirty.

  “No deal,” he said, and hung up.

  Moments later the phone rang. Houk: “Okay, you get your thirty. Under one condition. That you don’t tell anybody you’re getting it.”

  “Ralph, I can’t do that. I’ve told everybody the numbers before. I can’t stop now.”

  Softly. “Well, I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Just as softly. “Well, maybe I won’t.”

  When the newspaper guys got to me I felt like a jerk. I also felt I owed Ralph a little something. So when they said, “Did you get what you wanted?” I said, “Yeah.” And when they said, “What did you want?” I said, “Thirty.” But I said it very low.

  Now, I think, Ralph really hated my guts. Not so much because I told about the thirty but because he thought I went back on my word.

  Four years later Ralph Houk was still angry. By this time I had started up a little real-estate business in New Jersey. A few friends, relatives and I pooled our money, bought some older houses in good neighborhoods, fixed them up and rented them to executives who come to New York on temporary assignment. Houses like that are hard to find and Houk, who lives in Florida, needed one for the ’69 season. After a long search he found exactly what he wanted. Then he found out I owned it. He didn’t take it. Too bad, it might have been kind of fun to be his landlord.

  Of course, I may misunderstand the whole thing. It’s easy to misunderstand things around a baseball club. Else how do you explain my friend Elston Howard? We both live in New Jersey and during my salary fights we’d work out a bit together. And he always told me, “Stick to your guns. Don’t let them push you around.” Then he’d go down to spring training and he’d say to the other guys, “That Bouton is really something. Who does he think he is holding out every year? How are we gonna win a pennant if the guys don’t get in shape? He should be down here helping the club.”

  I didn’t help the club much in 1965, which was the year the Yankees stopped winning pennants. I always had a big overhand motion and people said that it looked, on every pitch, as though my arm was going to fall off with my cap. I used to laugh, because I didn’t know what they meant. In 1965 I figured it out. It was my first sore arm. It was my only sore arm. And it made me what I am today, an aging knuckleballer.

  My record that year was 4–15, and we finished sixth. It wasn’t all my fault. I needed lots of help and got it. Nevertheless my spirits were high waiting for my contract because of something Houk had said. He’d been painted into a corner with Roger Maris. There was a story around that after Maris hit the 61 home runs he got a five-year, no-cut contract. But he’d had a series of bad years and should have been cut. So to take himself off the hook with Maris, Houk said that anybody who had a poor year because of injuries would not be cut. Fabulous, man, I thought. That’s me.

  When I got my contract it called for $23,000, a $7,000 cut.

  “But, Ralph, I was injured and you said…”

  “You weren’t injured.”

  “The hell I wasn’t.”

  “Then how come you pitched 150 innings?”

  “I was trying to do what I could, build my arm up, trying to help the team.”

  Somehow he remained unmoved. I guessed it was my turn to be humble. “Look, Ralph, I know that people think you lost the battle with me last year and I know some of the players are upset that I got $30,000. So I know there are reasons you have to cut me. Tell you what. Even though I could stand firm on the injury thing if I wanted to, I’ll make a deal with you. Cut me $3,000 and we can both be happy.” He said okay.

  After that, it was all downhill. Which is how come I was happy to be making $22,000 with the Seattle Pilots.

  Part 2

  “My Arm Isn’t Sore, It’s Just a Little Stiff”

  FEBRUARY

  26

  Tempe

  Reported to spring camp in Tempe, Arizona, today, six days late. I was on strike. I’m not sure anybody knew it, but I was.

  I had signed my contract before I knew there was going to be a players’ strike and I was obligated to report on time. I found that out at the big meeting the players had with Marvin Miller, the players’ union leader, at the Biltmore in New York earlier this month. I’m much in sympathy with what Miller is doing and I think, given the circumstances, he won a great victory. I think the owners understand now that we’re going to stick together—even the big stars, who don’t have that much at stake. Still, I was going to live up to my contract and report on time. What made me change my mind was a phone call I made to Lou Piniella, a twenty-six-year-old rookie who’d been in the Baltimore and Cleveland organizations.

  Since the Pilots were not a team yet we had no player representative, so the three or four Pilots at the meeting in the Biltmore were asked to call four or five teammates each to tell them what happened. I reached Lou in Florida and he said that his impulse was to report, that he was scared it would count against him if he didn’t, that he was just a rookie looking to make the big leagues and didn’t want anybody to get angry at him. But also that he’d thought it over carefully and decided he should support the other players and the strike. So he was not reporting.

  That impressed the hell out of me. Here’s a kid with a lot more at stake than I, a kid risking a once-in-a-lifetime shot. And suddenly I felt a moral obligation to the players. I decided not to go down.

  The reason nobody knew I was on strike, though, was that I’d asked the Pilots to find a place for me and my family in Tempe. They couldn’t. So I said that as long as there were no accommodations I couldn’t report. I sort of took it both ways. You take your edges where you can. I learned that playing baseball.

  As soon as I got to the park I went right over to Marvin Milkes’ office and we shook hands and he asked me if I had a nice flight. He also said, “There’s been a lot of things said about the strike and I know you’ve said some things about it, but we’re going to forget all that and start fresh. We have a new team and everybody starts with a clean slate. I’m giving some people a new opportunity. I’ve got a man in the organization who is a former alcoholic. I’ve even got
a moral degenerate that I know of. But as far as I’m concerned we’re going to let bygones be bygones and whatever has been said in the past—and I know you’ve said a lot of things—we’ll forget all about it and start fresh.”

  I said thanks. I also wondered where, on a scale of one to ten, a guy who talks too much falls between a former alcoholic and a moral degenerate.

  I know a lot of guys on the club. Greg Goossen is one. He’s a catcher, a New York Met castoff, and is up out of Triple-A. Two years ago I was playing against Goose in the International League. There was a bunt back toward the pitcher and Goose came running out from behind the plate yelling, “First base! First base!” at the top of his lungs. Everyone in the ballpark heard him. The pitcher picked up the ball and threw it to second. Everybody safe. And as Goose walked back behind the plate, looking disgusted, I shouted at him from the dugout, “Goose, he had to consider the source.”

  I guess I got to him, because the first time he saw me—two years later—he said, “Consider the source, huh?”

  The only thing separating my locker from the boiler in the clubhouse is Roland Sheldon’s. Rollie said it had only exploded once this spring, fortunately while the clubhouse was empty. Reminded me of my first Yankees spring training in St. Petersburg. I was just there for a look and shared a broom closet with Jim Pisoni, an outfielder. I think my number was 129 1/2. The higher the number, the worse chance they think you have of making the club.

  The year I was given 56 was the year I made the club. Toward the end of spring training, Big Pete, the No. 1 Yankee clubhouse man, Pete Sheehy, said, “Listen, I got a better number for you. I can give you 27.” I told him I’d keep 56 because I wanted it to remind me of how close I was to not making the club. I still wear 56. I’m still close to not making the club.

  Sal Maglie is the pitching coach—Sal the Barber of the New York Giants, my boyhood hero. He still looks like he’d knock down his grandmother. He’s got those big evil-looking black eyes. Looks something like Snoopy doing the vulture bit. He told me I’d be pitching five minutes of batting practice today and that I’d be the last pitcher.

  That might mean something. It’s one of the tiny things you look for all during spring training. You watch who you follow in batting practice, try to find out how many minutes you’ve pitched compared with other pitchers, decide whether you’re with the good squad or the bad squad, whether the morning workout is more important than the afternoon workout. The Yankees would divide the squad into morning and afternoon groups and they’d always say it didn’t mean a thing, just two groups for convenience. Except that the morning group always had Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford and guys like that. The afternoon group would have a bunch of guys named Dick Berardino. I never saw a guy hit or pitch himself off the afternoon list.

  I’m not sure it’s going to be that way here, though. They seem to have strung us all out pretty well. I can’t really read anything into the way it’s broken up. And that makes me nervous.

  Before the first workout, Joe Schultz, the manager (he’s out of the old school, I think, because he looks like he’s out of the old school—short, portly, bald, ruddy-faced, twinkly eyed), stopped by while I was having a catch. “How you feeling, Jim?” he asked. I wonder what he meant by that.

  FEBRUARY

  27

  This is the first time I’ve trained in Arizona. I think I’m going to like it. The park is in a beautiful setting—the center of a desolate area, flat, empty, plowed fields in all directions. And then, suddenly, a tremendous rocky crag rises abruptly to look down over the park. At any moment you expect to see a row of Indians on horseback charging around the mountain and into the park shooting flaming arrows. I’d always heard you couldn’t work up a sweat in Arizona. Not true. I ran fifteen or twenty wind sprints and I can testify that anyone who can’t sweat in Arizona hasn’t tried.

  The clubhouse here is kind of cramped and the Yankees would probably sneer at it, but there’s a soda fountain—Coca-Cola, root beer, 7-Up, cold, on tap, freebie. If Pete Previte saw this he’d go crazy. Little Pete’s the No. 2 Yankee clubhouse man and he had this mark-up sheet. Every time you took a soft drink you were supposed to make a mark next to your name so he’d know how much to charge you. He spent the whole day going around saying, “Hey, mark ’em up. Don’t forget to mark ’em up. Hey, Bouton, you’re not marking ’em up.” And he’d never have enough orange juice, although that’s what everybody wanted most. One time I asked him, “Pete, how come you’re always out of orange juice?” And he said, “If I get it, you guys just drink it up.”

  We were running short sprints and I guess a couple of tongues were beginning to hang out because somebody yelled, “Marvin Miller, where are you now that we need you?”

  But don’t let baseball players kid you. All we did today was run about fifteen short sprints and Jim Ryun probably runs that much before he brushes his teeth in the morning. Baseball players are far from being the best-conditioned athletes in the world.

  I think I detect a bit of Drill Instructor in Ron Plaza. He’s the coach who gives us our daily calisthenics. He’s got those California-tan good looks, All-American, and he says, “Gentlemen, today we’re going to do some jumping-jacks.” I don’t mind the calisthenics; I think they’re good for us. I just don’t like the idea of Plaza looking as if he’s enjoying himself. He reminds me of the DI I had who always called us “people.” “All right, you people, today we are going to do fifty pushups, people.” He looked like he was enjoying himself too.

  And then there’s always the coach who hollers, “Good day, good day to work.” It could be raining a hurricane out there with mud up to your ass and some coach is sure to say, “Good day, good day to work.”

  Bob Lasko is in camp. I was glad to see him. He’s a pitcher, right-handed, and we broke in together in the Rookie League in Kearny, Nebraska, in 1959. He’s thirty years old, too, and he’s never pitched a game in the major leagues. He’s a real big guy and I remember he had a tremendous fastball and a great overhand curve. I used to try to model my motion after his. I always seemed to be better when he was around. We roomed together in Amarillo in 1961 and became close friends. His trouble was that the Yankees tried to hide him. He pitched in about thirty innings all season at Kearny. One time he got in a ballgame, struck out the side for three consecutive innings and they took him out of the game and put another pitcher in. The rule at the time was that if you didn’t get drafted your first year the organization could keep you for three years without moving you up to a major-league roster. Since he pitched so few innings that summer, no one drafted him.

  Bob told me today that he’d once complained about it. “I talked to one of the Yankee coaches,” he said. “I told him I didn’t think the Yankees had been fair to me and his neck started to get all red and he started to holler and damn, we almost had a fight, right there.”

  I asked him who the coach was.

  “Ralph Houk,” he said.

  Still, some of it is probably Lasko’s fault. He led a couple of leagues in earned-run average, but he seemed to have built up a sort of minor-league psychology. He was always an easy-going guy and as a result got pushed around. I know that in the big leagues, if you come to spring training real cocky it will antagonize a lot of the players but it will help your chances with management. They notice you and they say, “Look at that son of a bitch, boy he’s really brazen. Let’s stick him in there and see what he looks like.” And a quiet guy like Lasko might never get a good look.

  So why does he go on? For one thing, he’s like me. He likes baseball. And there is still the hope that he can get just a few years in the big leagues. That would make getting a job in the future that much easier. Plus, it says here, you can’t beat the hours.

  FEBRUARY

  28

  Decided to get a haircut today. My hair was quite long and the sideburns were thick and heavy. I didn’t want to have a longhair image, so I got a really short haircut and look like a stor
mtrooper. It’s terrible, but it won’t hurt me. You never can tell how spring training is going to go. I could be one of those borderline cases and the difference between making the team and not making it might be the length of my hair.

  I wore a mustache all winter and thought I looked pretty good. Cut it off before I came down. Richie Allen can wear those pork-chop sideburns of his if he wants because he hits all those home runs. What’s standing between me and my mustache is about twenty wins.

  When I walked into the clubhouse with my new haircut, Sheldon said, “Now you look like the old Bulldog.” Bulldog! That’s what they called me when I was a big winner with the Yankees. Bulldog. Gruff! This is the impression I wanted to create all along. Maybe they’ll think because my hair is short I got my fastball back. You got to use all your weapons.

  One thing you don’t do is what Steve Hovley did. He’s an outfielder I played with in Seattle last year, twenty-four years old, intellectual type. He told Milkes that he wouldn’t report until March 22 because he wanted to finish up some college classes. Milkes told him he’d never make the team if he waited that long and Steve said, well, he’d looked at the roster and didn’t think he could make it anyway. Besides, he thought he could use another year or two in Triple-A.

  That’s a big mistake. No matter what the truth of it is, Milkes will now always think that Steve doesn’t have enough desire to be a major-leaguer. There are times you have to show hustle, even if it’s false.

  Lots of holler out there in the infield. “Fire it in there, Baby.” “C’mon, Joey.” “Chuck it in there.” And the word for that friends, is false chatter. You don’t hear it as much during the season because nobody’s nervous and nobody has to impress a coach who thinks you’re trying harder if you holler, “Hey, whaddaya say?” You only hear it in spring training—and in high school baseball. I remember when I was in high school, even if we lost the game, the coach would say, “I liked your chatter out there, a lot of holler. That’s what I like to see.” So if you couldn’t hit, you hollered.