Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

by Jim Bouton

  In the bullpen tonight Eddie O’Brien said he’d recommended me for a start if things get tight in the next week or so, especially with Timberlake going into the army for six months. Eddie O’Brien. How about that? Suppose he thinks that if I get a start I’ll expose myself?

  Hy Zimmerman, sportswriter, was around looking for a story and I said I had a good one for him.

  “Of the 29 appearances I’ve made this year,” I said, “how many times have I done well, and how many poorly?”

  “Cheez, I don’t know,” Zimmerman said.

  “I’ve done well 24 out of 29 times,” I said. “I’ve had four bads and one fair. All the rest were either good or excellent.”

  “You know, cheez, I didn’t realize that,” Zimmerman said.

  “Do you happen to know what my earned-run average is since I’ve come back from Vancouver?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I didn’t think you did. It’s approximately 2.6542.”

  “Cheez, is it that good?” he said, reaching for a notebook.

  “Right. And do you know how many runners have been on base when I’ve come in and how many have scored?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “There were 28 runners on when I came in and only 6 scored.”

  “Cheez, I didn’t realize you were doing that good.”

  “I know you didn’t. And as soon as I win a ballgame here you’re going to come around and say, ‘Hey, great. When did you put it all together?’ I just want you to know that every day I’m putting it together a little bit more.”

  When all of that gets into the paper I hope the coaches and the manager don’t think I said those things only for their benefit, although I really did.

  I’m taking the family to Disneyland on our next trip to Anaheim and I asked Marvin Milkes if he minded if I stayed with them in a hotel next to Disneyland rather than the team hotel. Actually, the guys prefer that you don’t bring your wife on road trips, and I thought this would be less awkward.

  Milkes said I couldn’t. “Nothing personal,” he said. “You’re doing a good job for us. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t want you to misconscrue [sic! baseball fans] my meaning on this. It’s just a club rule and it has to be followed.”

  The reason for the rule, he said, was that he remembered when he was with the Angels and the Yankees used to come into town and stay out all night at those Johnny Grant parties. (Grant is what they call a radio personality in Hollywood.)

  “But Marvin,” I said. “The way I remember it we would stay out all night and then beat you guys anyway. I remember having a particularly good time at a Johnny Grant party and then pitching a two-hitter against you.”

  In fact I remembered more than that. I remembered doing a strip to my underwear to the theme song of Lawrence of Arabia and then treading water in the swimming pool with a martini in each hand and then going out and beating the Angels the next night. In fact, every time I hear the Lawrence of Arabia music my mind still snaps.

  “Yeah, well, maybe,” Marvin said. “But I could always count on you guys keeping late hours and I want to crack down on it.”

  “I’m more likely to go to bed early if my family is here than if I’m with the guys in the team hotel.”

  “That may be true. But we’re going to stick to this rule. As I said, don’t misconscrue it. Nothing personal.”

  Having lost one argument, I brought up another. I had bought myself some Gatorade, which is supposed to restore the minerals and salts you lose through perspiration. I bought it because a lot of athletic teams use it and it’s got to be better than Coca-Cola. I asked McNamara to buy some for the clubhouse. He said he didn’t know where to get it so I volunteered and bought ten cases, which cost $50. When I asked McNamara for the money he suggested that since Gatorade was sort of medicinal, the club should pay for it. What do you say, Marvin old boy?

  “I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “I’ll taste it.”

  “Try it with vodka,” I said.

  In the bullpen tonight Jim Pagliaroni was telling us how Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there.

  He’d go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, “My name is Ted fucking Williams and I’m the greatest hitter in baseball.”

  He’d swing and hit a line drive.

  “Jesus H. Christ Himself couldn’t get me out.”

  And he’d hit another.

  Then he’d say, “Here comes Jim Bunning, Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his.”

  Wham!

  “He doesn’t really think he’s gonna get me out with that shit.”

  Blam!

  “I’m Ted fucking Williams.”

  Sock!

  Today Joe Schultz said, “Nice going out there today, Jim.”

  The only thing I’d done all day was warm up.

  “Joe, I had a fantastic knuckleball today,” I said. “Just fantastic.”

  “Did you?” Joe Schultz said. “Did you have the feel of it?”

  “I sure did.”

  Whereupon Joe Schultz grabbed his crotch and said, “Well, feel this!”

  JUNE

  26

  It’s true that Joe Schultz does seem to have a firmer grip on reality than other baseball men. Example: Joe got into a terrible argument with an umpire at home plate about a checked swing and when it was over he stormed back to the dugout, still muttering. Just before stepping into the dugout, though, he spied a blonde sitting in the first row and said, “Hi ya, Blondie. How’s your old tomato?”

  O’Donoghue was saying in the bullpen today that he hopes he’s not asked to pitch because he has this stiffness in his arm. It’s not sore, just stiff. This is baseball newspeak. Nobody has a sore arm anymore, not O’Donoghue and not Steve Barber.

  Another way kook Bouton convinces people he’s a kook. When I come into the game in a bunt situation I like to check the turf around home plate to see how firm it is and whether I can field a bunt, stop, turn and make a throw without falling on my face. So I walk in and stomp around for a while, and a couple of times I’ve looked into the dugout and seen Joe and Sal giggling at each other. It’s the exact same reaction Mike Marshall gets when he decides to trot in from the bullpen instead of walking in the way everybody else does. In baseball the only thing that’s really changed in a hundred years is the attitude toward beards.

  There was a meeting in the clubhouse on the new contract negotiations between the players and owners, which should be taking place soon but probably won’t until after the season. I suggested that if you apply the standard-of-living index to the base of $7,000 that was set up 11 years ago, you come up with about $14,000 or $15,000 as a minimum instead of the present $10,000. So somebody said, “Why not $20,000?” and everybody broke up laughing. But when you really think about it, $20,000 is not out of line at all. Consider how hard it is to make a big-league club. If only the same proportion of the population were accepted as lawyers, the going starting salary would be a lot higher. When you overcome odds of better than 10,000 to 1 you ought to collect big.

  Steve Hovley has been called up. Old Tennis Ball Head hasn’t had a haircut since he left. Which means Joe Schultz had four comments to him the very first day.

  “Where’s your barber?”

  “Don’t you need a haircut?”

  “You’re getting awfully mangy-looking.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need a trim, Steve?”

  Hovley explained to me why he had started out with such a tight crewcut and then let it grow. “In the spring I cut all my hair the same length—short.” Hovley said. “After that I simply chose not to be selective against any of the hairs. Most people cut their hair around their ears and not on top. That doesn’t seem fair. I want to let each hair do its own thing. Now everybody is upset—not about these hairs on top, just the
ones around my ears and on the back of my neck. Those are the offending hairs. But they don’t offend me.”

  Just before Hovley rejoined the club we were talking about him in the bullpen. I count him as one of the most intelligent men, the closest to a real intellectual, I’ve ever met in baseball. So I volunteered that he was a pretty bright fellow. “Yeah, but does he have any common sense?” Talbot said.

  “I know just what you mean about not having any common sense,” O’Donoghue said. “He doesn’t.”

  I asked him what he meant by that.

  “Well, one time we were sitting in a restaurant,” O’Donoghue said, “and Hovley was walking down the street with a ski cap pulled down over his face and he came past the restaurant and stood outside on the sidewalk peering in at us.”

  Oh.

  Another reason Hovley has no common sense is that he may wear the same shirt five days in a row and the same sports coat and he doesn’t dress the way most players do.

  Sometimes I think that if people in this little world of baseball don’t think you a little odd, a bit weird, you’re in trouble. It would be rather like being considered normal in an insane asylum.

  JUNE

  27

  Anaheim

  During a radio interview before the game today, the manager was asked what the secret of the success of the Seattle Pilots had been so far and Joe Schultz said, “Well, we just come out and go to work and play ball. Use a little common sense, so to speak.”

  Going to Disneyland, I remembered going to the World’s Fair in New York a few years back. Driving one of those little tour buses there was Dusty Rhodes, the guy who in 1954 helped win a pennant and a World Series pinch-hitting for the Giants. Dusty Rhodes, one of my heroes, wearing that blue uniform and driving a bus. I wondered how he’d feel if somebody hollered from in back of the bus, “Hey, bussy, there’s a dog pissing on your rear wheel”—which is what we’ve said many times to a guy who wasn’t driving the bus fast enough. Maybe Dusty said it too one day, a long time ago.

  I am glad to note that Tommy Davis has become upset about our autograph rule. He has decided that to tell the kids that it’s club policy not to give them is to alienate future fans. Which was my point when it first came up at a meeting. Hardly anybody listens when Bouton talks. But I hope they’ll listen to Tommy Davis.

  At our meeting tonight Joe Schultz said, “Now, this is for you new guys. The curfew is two-and-a-half hours after the ballgame is over at night and midnight after a day game. And watch yourself. The brass is here. They’re all here this time.”

  “What about the night before an off-day?” I said. “Can we stay out later than twelve if we don’t have a game the next day?”

  Joe put his hands on his hips and smiled. “Jesus Christ, Bouton, you’re always coming up with something tricky,” he said.

  Most of the guys laughed and I never did get an answer from Joe.

  “I don’t know why everyone laughed,” Brabender said later. “I thought it was a good question.”

  “Yeah, but Jim asked it,” Marshall said. “So we’re all supposed to laugh. You should have asked it, Gene. Then we would have gotten an answer.”

  “Sorry, fellas,” I said. “I didn’t realize I was going to hurt our chances.”

  Steve Hovley got three hits tonight and nobody said a word about his hair. I suggested to him that the number of comments he gets will, from now on, vary inversely with the number of hits he gets. And if he ever stops hitting he may even have to get a haircut.

  Mike was throwing in the bullpen and Eddie O’Brien asked Sal Maglie how much Mike should be throwing. Said Sal: “Tell him to throw until just before he comes.”

  JUNE

  28

  Lefty Phillips has replaced Bill Rigney as manager of the Angels. I wish Rocky Bridges, the coach, had gotten the job. He’s familiar with the personnel over there and he was a great minor-league manager. He was successful, colorful, funny and the players loved him. A minor-leaguer named Ethan Allen Blackaby told me about the time Bridges gave the signs from third base while standing on his head. Blackaby promptly stood on his head in the batting box so he could get the sign properly.

  I told the story to Pag. He said he’d love to see it but that baseball would consider it, well, sacrilegious. “Baseball wants color,” he said. “But not that much.”

  “By ‘color,’” I said, “they mean they want you to wear your cap at a jaunty angle.”

  Tonight we had a three-run lead in the fourth and the starting pitcher got into a little trouble, so Sal Maglie got on the telephone to the bullpen. “Anybody around here see a phone booth?” I said. “This looks like a job for Superknuck.”

  The call was for Segui. Good grief, how foolish can I be? How could it possibly have been me? We weren’t behind.

  I note today that the Topps Gum people have doubled their fee to players, from $125 to $250, for using their pictures on bubblegum cards. They explained that they were able to increase payments because of increased revenues. It had nothing to do with Marvin Miller and the players going to Topps and demanding the increase. Topps just happens to have a big heart. Yeah surrre.

  And speaking of big hearts, a hearty mention here of Frank Scott, the player agent. During one of my big years with the Yankees, Scott called me and asked if I wanted to give a little talk before an IBM group for a fee of $300. “Delighted,” I said. I made the speech and collected the fee from Scott. Then my brother Bob, who worked for IBM at the time, called me and said, “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “What for?”

  “Your speech to IBM.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Well, $500 is good pay for nothing.”

  “Three hundred.”

  “Five hundred, babe. I got it from the guy who ran the dinner.”

  “Oh.”

  John McNamara is asking Don Mincher about Hovley. “Doesn’t he need a haircut, Minch?” he says.

  “I can’t say anything about anyone’s hair, needing a haircut like I do,” Mincher says.

  “Well, I think it looks horseshit,” Marty Pattin says.

  Moments later, perhaps feeling bad about his comment, or perhaps wishing to stick the needle in further, Pattin approaches Hovley and says, “I don’t care how long you wear your hair, Hovley. You can wear it down to your ass as far as I’m concerned.”

  Nah. That would look horseshit.

  JUNE

  29

  Today Joe Schultz said to Steve Hovley: “Don’t you think you ought to at least get a trim?”

  Hovley thought it over for a while and said, “I guess so.”

  Actually, Hovley said later that he hasn’t made up his mind and doesn’t feel he committed himself by what he said to Joe: “It’s interesting,” he said, “that no one really talks to me about the length of my hair. All they do is drop remarks. I guess that’s because no one wants to get into a discussion.”

  If they do they have to listen to your position, consider it, come up with an answer. But by just dropping a remark they can get in and get out with no harm done.

  On the other hand, there’s the Plaza way, which also leads to no discussion. “You better get a haircut,” Plaza said to Hovley.

  JUNE

  30

  A note on the complicated life of a moonlighting author. I usually keep my notepaper in the back pocket of my uniform trousers and my pen in my jacket pocket. The reason is that I don’t want to be separated from my notes and the jacket is often left on the bench. On the other hand, I don’t want my pen with me when I’m pitching because I wouldn’t want to fall on it. So today when I went out to the mound I discovered I had my pen in my pocket. I took it out and tossed it behind me on the mound. When the inning was over I went to sit on the bench and Ron Plaza, who coaches at third, handed me the pen. Without comment.

  Bobbie and I went to San Francisco with Gus Gil and his wife and we got to talking about what fun it was to be on a baseball team and have the opp
ortunity to listen to coaches and managers at work. Gus said that the other day on the bench they were looking for Mike Marshall, who was back in the clubhouse using the bathroom or something and someone said, “Where the hell is he?” And Joe Schultz said, “He’s probably setting up the chessboard.”

  Another time Schultz said about Marshall, “Lookit. Brains is warming up out there.”

  Gus also said that when I was pitching, every time I threw a fastball that wasn’t hit Sal would tell Joe how much of a help the fastball was. I’m a one-pitch pitcher now, just what I said I had to be and what Sal said I couldn’t be. So he covers his early tracks with Joe every chance he gets.

  Would you believe the talk in the bullpen was about pitching? At least the second-guessing of coaches and managers about pitching. One of the questions I asked was, “Has a good pitch ever been hit?” What I meant was that every single time a guy hits the ball it was in the wrong place, or the wrong pitch at the wrong time. Hitters almost never get credit for hitting good pitches. Every breaking ball that’s hit “hung.” It’s a world of second-guessers.

  McNertney told a story about Al Lopez when he was managing Chicago. Danny Cater of the A’s was the hitter and Tommy John the pitcher. John threw a curve ball that was so low it was going to be in the dirt. He said he went down on his knees to dig it out and as he did Cater reached out with one hand and hit it into left field for a single. When he got back to the dugout McNertney was shaking his head and mumbling about Cater having hit a good pitch.

  “It was a high pitch,” Lopez said.

  “No. If he doesn’t swing, it’s in the dirt,” McNertney said.

  “It was right there,” Lopez said, holding his hand out thigh-high.

  End argument.

  (Cater, by the way, has the reputation of being able to figure out his batting average to four decimal places on his way down to first base. He’s almost as quick as I am figuring out my ERA.)