Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

by Jim Bouton

  After the game Joe Schultz said, “Attaway to stomp on ’em, men. Pound that Budweiser into you and go get ’em tomorrow.” Then he spotted Gelnar sucking out of a pop bottle. “For crissakes, Gelnar,” Joe Schultz said, “You’ll never get them out drinking Dr. Pepper.”

  JUNE

  10

  I’m pleased to note today that the New York Mets are 28–23 and in second place in their division, and that the New York Yankees are 28–29 and in fifth place in their division. Perhaps justice is about to triumph.

  I also note with some puzzlement that the Yankees have bought veteran right-hander Ken Johnson from the Atlanta Braves. Ken Johnson is thirty-six years old (I’m thirty) and throws a knuckleball. He has pitched 29 innings this season and so have I. He’s 0–1 this season and I’m 1–0. His ERA is 4.9 and mine is 3.8. And I bet they paid more than $12,000 for him.

  Bob Locker, who is called “Foot,” or “Wall,” for obvious reasons, and “Snot” because Mickey Mantle swore he personally had that kind of locker back home, was elected alternate player rep before the game. Mincher announced that as his first move as player rep he had gotten the Pilots to agree to move to a new hotel in Baltimore, from the Belvedere to the Statler Hilton. “A hell of an idea,” one of the guys said. “Now my broad is going to be wandering around the wrong hotel.”

  It was suggested that as Mincher’s next move, he arrange to get Marvin Milkes a room in whatever hotel we happen to be staying in. We’re all convinced that Milkes never has a room, which is why he’s in the lobby all the time, especially late at night.

  Talking about his Chicago White Sox days, McNertney said that Eddie Stanky always insisted there was only one excuse for not being in the lineup—if there was a bone showing. Stanky was also responsible for storing the baseballs in a cool, damp place. McNertney: “You had to wipe the mildew off the balls before the game. First you’d take them out of the boxes, which were all rotted away anyway, wipe the mildew off and put them in new boxes. Then you gave them to the umpires and they never suspected a thing.”

  The idea, of course, is that cold, damp baseballs don’t travel as far as warm, dry baseballs, and the White Sox were not exactly sluggers.

  The game was lost 5–0. I could stand that. What I couldn’t stand was pitching two-thirds of a miserable inning, giving up two runs and leaving the game with the bases loaded. (Fortunately, Bender got the third out without costing me any runs.) My knuckleball was so bad the only thing I could think of was suicide. This was no false sorrow. It was all I could do not to cry. Maybe I haven’t been throwing it enough. Maybe I’ve been throwing too much. Maybe I’m going out of my mind.

  I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel and call my wife so she could cheer me up. After I talked to her and the kids I felt better and agreed with her when she said that if I was going to allow myself to get this upset I wasn’t getting paid enough. This did not change the nagging feeling that maybe I’ve lost it for good, that the knuckleball and I have gone our separate ways.

  Milkes and Schultz just happened to be sitting in the lobby again around curfew time and Pagliaroni allowed as how he’d give us all the benefit of his experience. “If you’re going to be late,” he said, “be at least three hours late. Because if you’re only an hour late they’ll still be around trying to catch you.”

  At dinner Don Mincher, Marty Pattin and I discussed greenies. They came up because O’Donoghue had just received a season supply of 500. “They ought to last about a month,” I said.

  Mincher was a football player in high school and he said, “If I had greenies in those days I’d have been something else.”

  “Minch, how many major-league ballplayers do you think take greenies?” I asked. “Half? More?”

  “Hell, a lot more than half,” he said. “Just about the whole Baltimore team takes them. Most of the Tigers. Most of the guys on this club. And that’s just what I know for sure.”

  JUNE

  11

  In the bullpen it was “Can you top this?” on general managers. Bob Locker told this one about a contract argument with Ed Short, general manager of the White Sox. This was after Locker had had his best season in 1967–77 games, 125 innings and a 2.09 ERA. It was a year after Phil Regan of the Dodgers had had his super year—14–1 and a 1.62 ERA—in relief. Short had offered Locker $16,000 and he was asking for $18,000. Short said he was asking a lot and that what the hell, Regan had just signed a contract for $23,000. “If Regan is making only $23,000, then I’m asking too much,” Locker said. “You check that. If he signed for $23,000, I’ll sign for $16,000.”

  The next day Short called him and said, “I called Buzzie Bavasi (the Dodger GM) and he told me Regan was making $23,000 this year.”

  “All right,” Locker said. “I’ll take the $16,000.”

  After he signed he got to thinking about it and just for the hell of it he wrote Regan a letter. He asked if Regan would mind telling him about what he had signed for. And Regan wrote back saying he’d signed for $36,500.

  “You know, you don’t mind a guy deceiving you a little during contract negotiations,” Locker said. “You get used to it. They all do it. But when a guy just outright lies right to your face, that’s too much.”

  Brabender told about the generosity of Harry Dalton, the Baltimore general manager. When the minimum salary was raised from $7,000 to $10,000 he was making $8,000 and had a year-and-a-half in the majors. When he went to talk contract with Dalton he was told that he was getting a $4,000 raise to $12,000. He felt pretty good about it—for about a minute. Then he realized that no matter what, his salary would have to go to $10,000, so he was therefore getting only a $2,000 raise. Dalton didn’t think he’d see it that way.

  And O’Donoghue chipped in with the one about Eddie Lopat, when he was GM of the Kansas City A’s. O’Donoghue agreed to terms with Lopat over the telephone and went down to spring training. When he got there he was offered a contract for a lot less money. “But you agreed to a different figure on the telephone,” O’Donoghue said. By this time, who knows, he may have been crying.

  Said Lopat: “Prove it.”

  This kind of stunt was pulled on several players. It cost Talbot $500. He offered to throw Lopat through a closed window, but it didn’t do him any good.

  In the end Lopat must have been hurt by all of that. Because now no one will ever forget that when Tony Oliva first came up Lopat’s pronouncement was, “The kid will never hit in the big leagues.”

  Jim Gosger was sent back down to Vancouver. “You know, I didn’t think I was that bad a ballplayer,” he said. “But they’re making a believer out of me.”

  Probably because we’re going to be in New York soon, the conversation was about Whitey Ford and what great stuff he had when he was pitching for the Yankees. Fred Talbot, who came to the Yankees when Whitey was about through and looking for all the little edges he could find, said Ford could take advantage of every little nick on a ball and make it do something, dive or sail or hop or jump. “If Cronin’s name wasn’t stamped on the ball straight, he could make it drop.”

  For a long time Whitey got away with throwing a mud ball that was positively evil. Sometimes Ellie Howard would load it up for him by pretending to lose his balance and steadying himself with his hand—while the ball was in it. Ford could make a mud ball drop, sail, break in, break out and sing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” Eventually the opposition, particularly Bill Rigney, the manager of the Angels, got wise to him and he had to quit using the mudder.

  Then he went to his wedding ring. He gouged such sharp edges into it that we used to kid him about having lost the diamond out of it. He’d scuff up the ball with the ring and make it do all the things the mud ball did, except maybe now the song was different. He got by with the ring for a couple of months until umpire John Stevens, I think it was, or John Rice (for some reason, every time Rice came onto the field, somebody would holler, “What comes out of a Chinaman’s ass?”) got wise. The ump could have caused real
trouble, but he went out to the mound and said, “Whitey, go into the clubhouse. Your jock strap needs fixing. And when you come back, it better be without that ring.”

  After that, Ellie Howard sharpened up one of the buckles on his shin guard and every time he threw the ball back to Whitey he’d rub it against the buckle. The buckle ball sang two arias from Aida.

  JUNE

  12

  New York

  Day off today and into New York for a three-game series starting tomorrow. There is always a flood of remembrances when I come back to New York. Like all the trouble I used to get into with the Yankees. One time nobody in the bullpen would talk to me for three days because I said I thought that Billy Graham was a dangerous character.

  This was after he had said that Communists were behind the riots in the black ghettoes. I said that when a man of his power, a man with such a huge following, makes a statement like that, he is diverting attention from the real causes of riots in the ghettoes. As a result he delays solutions to those real problems, and this is dangerous. My heavens, you’d think I had insulted Ronald Reagan.

  Another time, I recall, Crosetti and Jim Hegan were reading the paper and complaining about Father Groppi interfering in things he had no business getting involved in and I simply couldn’t resist the temptation to let them know that I thought Groppi was doing a fine and courageous thing. As Mort Sahl says, you’ve got to fight the madness.

  It’s just the sort of thing I did when I went back to my old high school in Chicago Heights, Illinois, some years ago. I was invited to speak there as a returning hero. One of the things they wanted me to do was help calm some of the racial problems they were having. The principal asked me to speak from his office over the intercom that reaches the kids in all the rooms. I knew what I was expected to say; that students are here to learn and teachers are here to teach and that any feelings they might have, any grievances or problems, should be left outside the school. So let’s all work together for a better education. Instead I sat down and wrote that I understood there were tensions within the school and that I recognized that they came about because of legitimate beefs that some of the kids had, and when the principal and the teachers who were there saw it they said, “No, Jim. Maybe you shouldn’t, Jim. Why don’t you just say hello to the kids and tell them you’ll see them at the dinner tonight?” That’s as far as I ever got. They told me politely and firmly that they didn’t want me telling the kids any of that stuff.

  And once at a father-and-son banquet, a kid with long hair got up and asked me what I thought about long hair and sideburns. The man sitting next to the kid was obviously his father and he just as obviously didn’t like the long hair. So I said that the thing that disturbs me about long hair is not the fact that suddenly a whole lot of kids in this country decided to let their hair grow, but that a whole nation of adults would let it disturb them to the point where they were ready to expel otherwise excellent students from school simply because of their long hair. I got a big cheer from the kids. The parents sat there with clenched teeth resolving never to invite Jim Bouton again.

  It turns out that Pagliaroni is a telescope buff. He has a 300-power telescope at home with which he not only explores the heavens but shoots a little beaver. The only problem shooting beaver with a 300-power telescope, he says, is that the image comes in upside down. He says it’s very tough looking through the telescope while standing on your head.

  JUNE

  13

  Getting on the bus to go from the Biltmore Hotel to Yankee Stadium, O’Donoghue said, “Well, boys, here we start our tour of the funny farm.” He meant the streets of New York.

  Ray Oyler shouted out of the bus to a long-haired guy on the street. “Don’t you feel there’s something itching you all over?” He got a very big laugh in the back of the bus.

  Since we were in New York, the talk turned to sex (the talk also turns to sex in the eleven other American League cities). It was decided that the most interesting offbeat milieu for sex was a tubful of warm oatmeal. So Mike Hegan promptly leaned out of the bus and hollered to a girl walking by, “Hey, do you like oatmeal?”

  Larry Haney read a selection from the New York Post, a story by Vic Ziegel. “Today Mel Stottlemyre goes after his seventh victory,” Ziegel wrote, “and Gene Brabender goes after whatever the Gene Brabenders of the world go after.”

  Ray Oyler: “Hey Bender. That guy just shit all over you.”

  Brabender: “Will someone point out that fucker to me?”

  Pagliaroni: “He must never have seen you in person, Rooms.”

  Footnote: Brabender beat Stottlemyre 2–1.

  JUNE

  14

  Fifth inning and we’re down 3–2. Bases loaded, nobody out. I’m warmed up. I get the signal. I climb into the golf cart that will take me to the mound. Yankee Stadium, and my heart is thumping under my warm-up jacket. It feels like a World Series. As the cart rolls along the clay track in left field I hear the fans saying, “Hey, that looks like Bouton.” “Yeah, it is Bouton.” My public.

  They were out there before the game. When our bus pulled up there must have been 20 kids there chanting, “We want Bouton, we want Bouton.” The guys on the bus said I must have been a big man in this town. I said yeah, modestly.

  The infield is in as I start to pitch. The knuckleball is working. I get Ken Johnson, the pitcher, on a ground ball to Tommy Harper. But instead of going home with the ball, he goes to second and a run scores. Roy White pops up. Jerry Kenney grounds out. End threat. None out, bases loaded and they got only one run. Not bad.

  In the next inning there are three fly balls, by Bobby Murcer, Joe Pepitone and Horace Clark. Two innings, no runs charged to me. I rated it an excellent performance. Almost as good, we went on to win the game 5–4. Fritz Peterson said afterward I should have been given credit for the win because when the Yankees got only one run out of that situation, the game was turned around. Fritz Peterson is a nice man.

  One day Joe Pepitone inserted a piece of popcorn under his foreskin and went to the trainer claiming a new venereal disease. “Jesus Christ, Joe, what the hell have you done?” the doctor said. Pepitone didn’t start laughing until the doctor had carefully used a forceps to liberate the popcorn.

  JUNE

  15

  Today in the visiting dugout at Yankee Stadium, Joe Schultz said to nobody in particular: “Up and at ’em. Fuck ’em all. Let it all hang out.”

  I pitched against one hitter in the game, Jimmy Lyttle. Struck him out on five knuckleballs. Nothing to it.

  I wonder how the Yankees feel now about picking up Johnson.

  On the plane from New York to Milwaukee, where we play the White Sox a game tomorrow, the stewardesses (we call them stews) were droning about fastening seatbelts. “Fasten your seatbelt,” Fred Talbot said. “Fasten your seatbelt. All the time it’s fasten your goddam seatbelt. But how come every time I read about one of those plane crashes, there’s 180 people on board and all 180 die? Didn’t any of them have their seatbelts fastened?”

  People are always asking me if it’s true about stewardesses. The answer is yes. You don’t have to go out hunting for a stew. They stay in the same hotels we do. Open your door and you’re liable to be invited to a party down the hall. They’re on the road, same as we are, and probably just as lonely. Baseball players are young, reasonably attractive and have more money than most men their age. Not only that, baseball players often marry stews—and the stews know it.

  Baseball players are not, by and large, the best dates. We prefer wham, bam, thank-you-ma’am affairs. In fact, if we’re spotted taking a girl out to dinner we’re accused of “wining and dining,” which is bad form. It’s not bad form to wine and dine an attractive stew, however. A stew can come under the heading of class stuff, or table pussy, in comparison with some of the other creatures who are camp followers or celebrity-fuckers, called Baseball Annies. It is permissible, in the scheme of things, to promise a Baseball Annie dinner and a show in retur
n for certain quick services for a pair of roommates. And it is just as permissible, in the morality of the locker room, to refuse to pay off. The girls don’t seem to mind very much when this happens. Indeed, they seem to expect it.

  In Chicago there’s Chicago Shirley who takes on every club as it gets to town. The first thing she does is call up the rookies for an orientation briefing. She asks them if there’s anything she can do for them, and as the ballplayers say, “She can do it all.” Chicago Shirley says that Chicago is a great place to live because teams in both leagues come through there. She doesn’t like to miss anybody.

  JUNE

  16

  Milwaukee

  In the Milwaukee clubhouse there’s a sign that reads: “What you say here, what you see here, what you do here and what you hear here, let it stay here.” The same sign hangs in the clubhouse in Minneapolis. Also, I suppose, in the CIA offices in Washington. If I were a CIA man, could I write a book?

  Steve Barber has been placed on the disabled list, although there’s nothing wrong with his arm, just a little stiffness. The three weeks on the list will give him a chance to work it out.

  Pitched an inning-and-two-thirds against the White Sox and gave up one hit, no runs, no walks. There was one strikeout. That’s three good outings in a row since I last wanted to commit suicide. This might be a good time to ask Joe Schultz for a start again. He may not be much for the underprivileged, but I’ll try anyway.

  JUNE

  17