by Roger Kahn
“Warneke said, ‘What’s this?’
“I said, ‘Get in the cab.’
“Warneke said, ‘That’s the station twelve blocks down Eighth Avenue. Keep your legs strong if you wanta pitch. We’ll walk.’
“That first cabbie took me to Brooklyn, the Bronx, Astoria. Man, I saw it all. The country boy’s nine-buck city tour.
“So I’m grateful to Warneke, but my gratitude had limits. He was through ‘round ‘45 and commenced to become an umpire. Now by the time I got to Brooklyn and I was working the wet one, I didn’t have that real hard fast ball any more. I needed the corners. I pitched to four-inch spots. Figuring both ways, that means I needed an ump could see two inches. And one day in a tough game I was passing Lonnie Warneke and he said, ‘Preach, I may have my superiors on the bases, but when it comes to balls and strikes, I’m second to no man.’
“And I commenced thinking careful and when I was done I told him, ‘Horseshit, Lon.’
“See that gas station up there? Well, that’s Viola. You done brung me home.”
The gas station, old pumps and graveled driveway, stood at an intersection. Small clapboard houses, mostly white, were scattered beyond it. You could see in one glance school, church, houses and the little sign that read:”viola. pop.: 196.”
“Growed,” Roe said. “Another sixteen. I told you things was picking up.”
At the crossroad he turned right and drove six hundred yards up a narrow country road and parked in front of a sprawling white house, with a sheet-iron roof. “The clinic my dad run burned down, but this is my home, just about the way it was. Over here, I want to show you something. Let’s get out.” We walked to a retaining wall, between lawn and blacktop road. Someone had written in the wet cement:
Roe Construction Company
July 15, 1934
Wayman B. Roe, Superintendent
Elwin C. Roe, Foreman
“We were kids,” he said, “but we built the thing ourselves.”
The house stood against the sky on a grassy crest. “We played some ball right here,” Roe said. “I want to show you the school over yonder. That big brick building’s the Wayman B. Roe building. He was my older brother. Died in an auto crash.” There was no sadness, but a kind of resignation, that country people acquire to survive.
Roe walked with long strides, his head bobbing on the long neck. “Now here’s something else.” A stone gatepost bore an inscription:“GIFT OF CLASS OF 1934–35.ELWIN C. ROE, PRESIDENT. VEDA E. UPTON SECRETARY.” “I finished third. The secretary finished second. Her boy friend finished first. We’re all pretty old and scattered now. That little house across the way, not fancy, is where my wife was raised. She and me used to sit on fences here and spark.
“Over there you seen the Methodist church, where I was raised in all my life. That’s all there is of Viola. I’ve hunted and fished every hill and stream in this country. I grew up in the woods here and the fields. Let’s commence back country a ways, unless you’re tired.”
We drove and turned onto a dirt road for two miles. He stopped between two houses and a clearing in oak woods. “This was my real home field,” Preacher said. “Old backstop’s gone now. There’s some stones come up. Native flint rock. And as you see, it’s all overgrown.”
“What’s that, rye grass?”
“Sage. Let a field be and the sage takes it.” We got out of the car and sat on a bank at the side of the road.
“Here’s where it really begun,” Preacher said. “One of my brothers and I lived in those two houses once. We had a regular Roe community, but when I was a boy, there weren’t any houses at all. Just woods and this field, trimmed neat. Gray Field, owned by Mr. Gray, and open spaces. Can you imagine startin’ here and getting to pitch for the championship of the World Series in New York City?” Roe shook his head in wonder.
“Can you imagine it?” I said. “Can you make it come alive?”
“All of it,” Preacher said. “One thing makes a feller sad is knowin’ that’s behind, and what’s wrong with him is nothing that giving back twenty years wouldn’t cure. ‘Cept they don’t do that, do they? Say, we had some pretty good days.”
Country quiet held us briefly.
“That Mr. Rickey,” Preacher said. “First time he talked to me he told me two things. He said, ‘Son. Always be kind to your fans. You get back what you give and when you’re through, you’re just one more old ball player, getting back from life what he gave.’ I heeded that and I wisht someone would give advice to Joe Namath. I don’t know the man personally, but I get the impression he ought to walk more humble.
“Second, Mr. Rickey said, ‘Remember, it isn’t the color of a man’s skin that matters. It’s what’s inside the individual.’ And he said some of the people with the whitest skins would be the sorriest I’d meet and some of the darkest ones would be the best. That was 1938. I know now that Rickey had in mind breaking the color barrier almost ten years before he did. I respect him for that, and I went through my career with that respect always in mind.
“I first seen colored at Searcy, ‘cepting colored passing through on trucks and once a year a colored team’d come down from Missouri for an exhibition game in Viola and draw a crowd.
“Now I’m playing with Jack. I’m gonna tell you frankly I don’t believe in mixed marriages.”
“Neither does Robinson,” I said.
“Well some do, and I won’t argue with ‘em. But as far as associatin’ with colored people and conversing with them and playing ball with them, there’s not a thing in the world wrong with it. That’s my way of looking at the thing.
“Lots of people here reckoned like me. And some did not. A few times people come up to me in the winter and said, ‘Say, Roe. If you’re gonna go up there and play with those colored boys, to hell with ya.’ But very few. I always said, ‘Well, if that’s how you feel, I considered the fellers I play with, I considered your remark, and to hell with you!’”
The sun was lowering toward a line of oaks. Before us stretched a wide, bright sky, big sweeping woods, a field of sage. “When I was starting,” Roe said, “the Cardinals would look at me in the spring and send me back and take another look in the fall. For five years I pitched at Rochester and Columbus. Then Frankie Frisch, who’d managed the Cardinals when I first come up, moved on to Pittsburgh and wanted me there. I pitched opening day, 1944, the first year he had me. Threw a two-hitter and got beat, 2 to 0.
“In Pittsburgh I commenced to change my style. In ‘45 my control was a lot better and I led the National League in strikeouts.
“I came back to coach basketball and teach a little high school math that winter. At one game I didn’t like a referee’s call and I shouted something.
“He shouted, ‘Shut up.’
“I thought he shouted, ‘Stand up.’
“He decked me. My head hit the gym floor. I got a skull fracture and a lacerated brain. The fracture ran eight inches long.
“I wasn’t much good the next couple of years; but I was changing my style and messing with the wet one. I won less than ten games in the next two years, but I was learning.
“Then Rickey got me and Billy Cox for Dixie Walker and Vic Lombardi, a little lefthander, and Hal Gregg. Years later, they said, Rickey put a gun to the Pirates, but hell, he wasn’t dealin’ with dummies. Billy had been shook by the war. Close as I been to that man, he never talked about it. So what was Rickey getting? An infielder who had been shook real bad and a skinny pitcher with a busted head.
“Now we come to where I quit flyin’ in airplanes. For 1948 the Dodgers trained in the Dominican Republic, so Jack and the other colored guys wouldn’t have the pressure of bein’ in Florida. I went to Miami by train and got on this airplane to the Dominican Republic. Then I flew from there to Puerto Rico and back and then on to the States, and that began and ended my career flying.
“On one of them flights, the plane ahead of us took off into a cross wind and almost wrecked against a hangar. After our pilot
assured us he won’t do that, we all had to get off. Overloaded. He took off a little gasoline. I knew we was running heavy, and forty minutes out Duke called to the hostess, ‘Why isn’t this thing flyin’ right?’
“She said, ‘Look out your window.’
“One of the inboard motors was stopped. We turned back and a little later there’s more bucking and Duke said, ‘What’s doing that now?’
“The girl said, ‘Look out the other window.’
“Another inboard motor was stopped. Here we are loaded to capacity, two engines out, and we come over a mountain so low, if I coulda pulled down the window, I’da grabbed me a handful of leaves. We get over the coast and the right outboard motor starts smoking. You counting? Three stopped. We’re down to one. Pilot comes on and tells us to buckle in; he might set down in the water. No sharks, he says, just barracuda, so stay on top o’ something that floats. We made the airport, and landed among a mess of fire-fighting stuff.
“Couple of days later, we fly back to Florida and we’re to take the Dodger DC-3 from Miami to Montgomery, Alabama. Pilot run into a storm. There was twenty-one on the plane, and twenty of ‘em was sick. Only Jocko Conlan, the umpire, was okay. Sickest crew you ever saw. We finally had to set down in Tallahassee and we come staggerin’ off, and somebody says, ‘Lunch is being served.’ That was it. I had to see me a doctor. Then someone with the ball club says, ‘Preach, go home for thrse days and pick us up in Asheville, North Carolina.’ I caught up with them ten days later in Washington, D.C., by train. I’ve never been on an airplane from that day to this.
“In ‘48 we started with three lefthanders, Joe Hatten, a boy named Dwain Sloat and me. Durocher’s managing. He calls in me and Sloat and says, ‘Hatten’s made the club, and I’m only gonna keep two lefthanders. I’m gonna start you both in Cincinnati and the one that looks best gets to stay.’ We all shook hands. Then we flipped a coin and I got to pitch first. I had a good game, a three-hit shutout. Next day when Sloat worked, he gave up about as many hits as I did, but Pee Wee kicked one. It beat him his game.
“Now we have another meeting. Durocher says, ‘Preach, you won, but you have to admit Sloat looked as good as you did. Remember, I didn’t say who won. Just who looked better. You looked the same. So we’re gonna do it all over again in Chicago.’ And we three shake hands again.
“Welp, if you look into the records, you’ll see that in Chicago in ‘48 I pitched my second straight shutout. Next day the Cubs got to Sloat for five. He goes. I stay. That began my Brooklyn success. Those were the only two shutouts I got all year.”
According to the story in Sports Illustrated, Roe decided over the winter of 1947—before coming to Brooklyn—that he would try to use the spitter. “But,” he said, “I believe I admitted in the article to throwing exactly four specific wet ones. It was a helluva pitch, but it was just one of my pitches; and just one part of my pitching. I ain’t gonna tell you now I only threw four at Brooklyn, but, cripes, don’t make it come out like the spitter was my only pitch. Some seem to think I threw a hundred spitters every game.”
Sitting on the woody roadside, beside a settled, fiftyish man, I could almost see the skinny lefthander who at thirty-three learned above all things to win. His Brooklyn winning records were phenomenal. He had the league’s best winning percentage in 1949 and in 1951. During the three years from ‘51 through 1953 he won forty-four games and lost only eight. He kept ahead. He yielded more homers than most pitchers, but almost never let a home run cost a ball game. He stood on the mound fidgeting, walking in little circles, muttering, scheming. It could take him three hours to win, 3 to 1. He was always chewing gum, touching his cap, tugging his belt or chattering to the air.
“Everybody on the staff threw curves off their fast ball,” he said. “They used the fast one to set up the hitter. That helped me. I used one curve to set up another. I had some tricks.”
Roe chewed Beech-Nut gum, which he says gave him a slicker saliva than any other brand. To throw a spitter, you use a fast-ball motion, but squeeze as you release the ball. The effect you want, Roe says, is like letting a watermelon seed shoot out from between your fingers. The fingertips have to be both damp and clean. Before throwing the spitball, Roe cleaned his fingers by rubbing them on the visor of his cap. Between innings he dusted the visor with a towel. To “load one,” Roe wiped his large left hand across his brow and surreptitiously spat on the meaty part of the thumb. The broad base of the hand was his shield. Then, pretending to hitch his belt, he transferred moisture to his index and middle fingers. Finally, he gripped the ball on a smooth spot—away from seams—and threw. The spitter consistently broke down.
The other Dodgers knew about the spitter. Carl Furillo says that he could tell all the way from right field. “When Preach went to his cap with two pitching fingers together, that was our signal,” Furillo says. “That meant it was coming. If he went to his cap with fingers spread, then he was faking.”
Within the year 1948 word spread that the skinny Pittsburgh lefthander had learned a great new drop in Brooklyn. Hitters talk to one another. They knew what Preacher was throwing. But no one caught him. While he fidgeted, Roe studied the umpires, as a prisoner might study turnkeys, always on his guard. His closest call came when he had wet the ball, and suddenly Larry Goetz charged from his blind side. Goetz had been umpiring at second. “The ball, the ball, Preacher,” Goetz roared.
Roe turned and flipped the baseball over Goetz’s head, perhaps six inches out of reach. Reese scooped the ball, rubbed it and threw to Robinson. Jack rubbed the ball again and flipped to Hodges, who threw across the infield to Billy Cox. Cox examined the baseball. It had been rubbed dry. Then he said to Goetz, “Here, Larry. Here’s the fucking ball.” Roe’s control was never better than when he was under pressure.
An extra pitch developed when several hitters read a connection between Roe’s touching his cap and his new drop. Did he have vaseline on the visor? A sponge worked into the fabric? No one knew. Everyone theorized. The dry cap on which Roe cleaned his fingers was regarded as the source of moisture.
“Soon as I figure that one out,” Roe said on the Viola roadside, “I got another pitch, my fake spitter. I go to my visor more and more. Jim Russell with the Braves one day was looking when I went to the cap and he stepped out. He comes back in. I touch the visor again. He moves out. This went on three or four times. Finally, Jim said, ‘All right. Throw that son of a bitch. I’ll hit it anyway.’ He’s waiting for that good hard drop. I touch the visor and throw a big slow curve. He was so wound up he couldn’t swing. But he spit at the ball as it went by.
“So you see what I got. A wet one and three fake wet ones. Curve. Slider. Hummer. I’d show hitters the hummer and tell reporters that if it hit an old lady in the spectacles, it wouldn’t bend the frame. But I could always, by going back to my old form, rear back and throw hard. Not often. Maybe ten times a game. Right now I could still throw pretty good, if you had a glove and the sage was down and we walked over there into Gray Field. But for just about ten minutes, that’s all. And I wouldn’t be able to comb my hair tomorrow.
“Well, now, pitchin’, you know, is a shell game. You move the ball. You make the hitter guess. There’s more than two pitches you can throw at any one time, so the more often he’s guessing, the better off you are. The odds are he’ll guess wrong. That was mostly how I won so many dang games. Thinkin’ ahead of ‘em. Foolin’ ‘em. Slider away. Curve away. Fast one on the hands. Curve on the hands. Curve away. There’s a strikeout in there without one spitter, but maybe I faked it three times.”
“Why would you do that article?” I said. “What was the point in confessing?”
“Bad reckoning, I got to say. It wasn’t money. Frankly, we were trying to legalize the pitch. The objection to the spitter is that it was supposed to be hard to control. Not everybody can control it and not everybody can throw it, but I controlled mine and Murry Dickson controlled his, which broke upward, and so did Harry Brecheen. I was famous
as a control pitcher and here I was gonna knock the argument to pieces. I was led to believe that if one man could prove that it wasn’t a dangerous pitch, the spitter would be legalized. That’s what I set out to do. But the article made it appear, or the folks who read it seemed to think, that the spitter was all I had. Made me look bad, an’, of course, nothin’s been legalized. The game is all for the hitters. The other year hitters had a bad season, so they got hysterical. They lowered the mound. Hitters come back strong. Now are they gonna come back and do something for the pitchers? Hell, no.
“The batter’s sitting in the circle with a pine tar cloth. Puts tar on his hands, up to his elbows, if he wants, and rubs that bat and gets up there and squeezes and it sounds like a dad-gum car comin’ by you, screechin’ its wheels.
“But if it’s a poor old pitcher, he better not put his hand in his pocket, or touch his hat ever, ‘cause they’re gonna come runnin’ to shake him down. I don’t get it.”
The sun was flickering behind a stand of oaks.
“Here,” Roe said, “to prove my argument, do you think that, as smart as umpires were then and as smart as they are today, a man could have stood out and throwed the spitter time after time without one of them snapping onto you? When people say all I had was a spitter, I tell ‘em they’re insulting the intelligence of umpires.”
“But when umpires asked you for the ball, you rolled it to them.”
“That’s right. They had no business asking. If a man is runnin’ around on his wife, there’s only two ways he can be caught. That’s for him to be seen or for him to admit it.
“If they want to say I’m breaking the rules with the spitter, to hell with ‘em. I sure wasn’t goin’ to admit it when I was pitching.”