by Gutman; Bill
Because the operation hadn't been done before, Tommy John was told he would recover use of the arm, but pitching was very doubtful. John was determined to prove the doctor wrong. Though he couldn't even grip a baseball at first, he gradually began working the arm back. He sat out all of the 1975 season, but when 1976 arrived, Tommy John was at the Dodgers' training camp at Vero Beach, Florida. His teammates couldn't believe it.
The Dodgers nursed him slowly into the rotation, and when the year ended he was 10-10. No one could believe John had come back. The next year he proved he was no fluke. The operation seemed to give him more of a natural sinker and he became one of the best pitchers in the National League, finishing the 1977 season with a 20-7 record.
"It's a miracle, that's all there is to it," said teammate Bill Russell. Others echoed the thought and began calling Tommy the man with the bionic arm.
Tommy John continued to pitch with success. After the 1978 season he went over to the Yankees and had several oustanding years in New York, winning twenty-two games in 1980. He was still pitching in 1986, some twelve years after his injury and operation. He had already won well over 200 major league games. After his retirement he will be a serious candidate for the Hall of Fame.
A miracle of modern medicine? And an incredible story? Both, for sure. But don't leave out the human element--the determination of Tommy John.
Chapter 6
TOUCHING ALL THE BASES
Many things that happen in baseball can't really be categorized. These are stories that bear retelling because they are unusual and unique. So this final chapter will simply be a mixed bag of some of the funny, strange, and amazing baseball tales that have lived on down the years. So, in essence, we will finish by touching all the bases.
There's an old saying that things aren't always what they seem to be. It's an axiom that applies to baseball as well as anything else. Just ask Norm Miller, an outfielder with the Houston Astros in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The Astros were playing the Atlanta Braves one day when Miller wound up on third base during a Houston rally. Relief pitcher Cecil Upshaw fired a low, outside fastball and catcher Bob Didier went out to get it. Suddenly, something white was spinning toward the backstop. Third base coach Salty Parker figured it was a passed ball and shouted to Miller to run home.
Thinking the same thing, Miller broke for the plate. Only catcher Didier didn't bother to run after the white object. Instead, he just stood at home plate and tagged the surprised Miller out as he came in. You see, the object that had spun toward the backstop wasn't the ball. It was a small, white plastic cast that Didier had been wearing on an injured finger. Upshaw's pitch had knocked it right off the catcher's hand.
"The most surprised and embarrassed guy in the whole ballpark was Miller," said one of the Braves. "He was a sitting duck and there was nothing he could do about it."
There have been players, too, who weren't quite what they seemed. In the midst of a torrid pennant race in 1957, the Milwaukee Braves called up a twenty-seven-year-old rookie outfielder from their Wichita farm club for the final months of the season. His name was Bob Hazle and he had played in just six big league games two years earlier with Cincinnati, batting a paltry .231.
But for forty-one games in 1957, Bob Hazle was Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Ted Williams rolled into one. He hit .403, drove in key runs, and helped the Braves to the National League pennant. Along the way he was given the nickname "Hurricane," and Milwaukee fans thought they had another superstar on their hands.
Oh, were they wrong. Baseball can be a strange game. In the World Series against the Yankees, Hazle lost the magic. He hit just. 154 in four games. He would never find it again. In 1958, the Hurricane was nothing more than a light breeze. He batted just. 179 in twenty games and then was shipped over to Detroit. There, he did a bit better, getting to .241 in forty-three games.
But the next season Hazle was gone, never to play in the majors again. Strange enough, his tremendous surge with the Braves in 1957 left him with a lifetime .300 average for his short career. In 110 games, Hurricane Hazle hit .310. It just goes to show you what one good year can do.
There have been a number of other players who have started out as if they were headed directly to the Hall of Fame only to derail before anyone could get a good look. Sometimes an injury is the culprit, but other times the player mysteriously loses the magic.
In 1955, the St. Louis Cardinals brought up a nineteen-year-old pitcher named Lindy McDaniel. He appeared in four games that year, and the next season became a budding relief star with a 7-6 record in thirty-nine appearances. The season after that he was mainly a starter and compiled a solid, 15-9 mark.
But that same year, 1957, Lindy wasn't the McDaniel everyone was excited about. The Cards had brought up his eighteen-year-old brother, Von, right out of high school. Von, a right-hander like Lindy, made two brief relief appearances, then started against the Brooklyn Dodgers. He promptly shut the Brooks out on just two hits. Magnificent.
Von continued in the rotation. In his seventh start he was even better, blanking Pittsburgh on a single hit, and he didn't walk a batter. The kid really seemed to have it all. He finished his rookie season with a 7-5 mark and the Cards saw a superstar in their future.
But the next year something was wrong. Von wasn't the same pitcher. His mechanics were all fouled up. He seemed to have lost his pitching motion. Appearing in just two games without a decision, he was returned to the minors. But it was just no use. He couldn't get straightened out down there, either. Whatever he had briefly in 1957 was gone. He would never again appear in the major leagues, and his baseball career was over at age nineteen.
Older brother Lindy, however, became one of the most successful relievers in history, pitching for twenty-one seasons until 1975. His 987 mound appearances were the most ever with the exception of knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm. He pitched successfully for five different clubs and won 141 games. Funny things happen in baseball. The McDaniel brothers are a case in point. Lindy who was, and Von, who might have been.
Then there are injuries. Many promising careers have been shortened or ended by unexpected and severe injury. Perhaps the most notable and recent case was that of Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax. For the last five years of his career, 1962 to 1966, Koufax was as good as any pitcher who ever lived. But an elbow injury led to an arthritic condition, which worsened as the fastballing left-hander continued to win.
Finally, at the end of the 1966 season, in which he had a 27-9 record, 317 strikeouts, and a 1.73 earned run average, Koufax suddenly retired, his injured elbow too painful and the specter of permanent damage too frightening for him to continue pitching
It's happened to other players, too. But perhaps for the strangest case of injury ruining a career it's necessary to look at Pete Reiser. The Brooklyn Dodgers brought Reiser up as a twenty-one-year-old in 1940, and he seemed to have everything. He became a regular the next season and promptly led the National League in hitting with a .343 batting average. A year later, Pete Reiser was already showing signs of taking his place among the all-time greats of the game.
By July, he was running away with another batting race, hitting over .380 with talk of a .400 season. But in the middle of the month, the National League discovered Pete Reiser's only weakness. It was the outfield fence. He couldn't seem to stop when he was going after a fly ball. The first fence he hit was in St. Louis, and it wrecked his season. While he wasn't out of action that long, his injury took away the edge and his batting average fell to .310 by season's end.
Unfortunately, Reiser didn't learn. He kept running into outfield walls, even after parks began to use warning tracks. Because of injuries he hit only .277 the following year and then was a part-timer until retiring in 1952. Sadly, his list of injuries from collisions with outfield walls reads like a day at the emergency room.
Starting with a number of concussions, plus severe bumps and bruises, Reiser also suffered two broken ankles, a broken right elbow, and se
vere injuries to his left knee and left leg. The injuries not only shortened his career, but limited his effectiveness as well. His manager at Brooklyn, Leo Durocher, put it this way:
"Pete Reiser might have been the best baseball player I ever saw. He was a switch hitter, had power from both sides, could run fast and throw well. One year early in his career he stole home seven times. He had everything but luck."
The luckiest break Pete Reiser could have received would have been the elimination of all outfield fences. Then he might have been a superstar.
Some superstars, of course, never hit an outfield wall but often act as if they had. For some reason, many of these zany performers were pitchers. Maybe they got that way sitting around between starts, but the tradition surely goes back a long way.
At the turn of the century there was a left-hander named Rube Waddell, good enough to win 191 games during the course of his career and be elected to the Hall of Fame. But besides winning ball games, Rube Waddell did some strange and unpredictable things. One day, for instance, while he was pitching, he tore out of the ballpark to chase a fire engine. When his team took the field for the next inning, Waddell was among the missing. Let's hope he enjoyed watching the fire.
In 1904, while pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics of the new American League, Waddell pulled perhaps his craziest stunt.., and it helped make him a legend among flaky left-handers. Rube was en route to a twenty-five-win season, so his teammates had a world of confidence in him. When he went into the ninth inning leading Cleveland, 1-0, they figured the A's had it made. But suddenly Rube wavered, and the Indians loaded the bases with nobody out.
As the next batter came up, Rube began gesturing wildly to his outfielders. No one knew exactly what he wanted, but knowing Waddell, they were suspicious. By now, they were yelling at him to pitch, but he refused. He kept gesturing to his outfielders. Finally, someone figured out what he wanted.
Rube Waddell wanted his three outfielders to come in and sit around the pitcher's mound. He refused to throw a ball until they did. Knowing Waddell, it was a matter of taking him out of the game or doing as he requested. So finally they came in and sat. Waddell smiled and went back to work.
And guess what Rube Waddell did with his outfielders sitting around him and the game on the line? He cranked up his fastball and promptly struck out the side!
Continuing in the great tradition of Rube Waddell, there was Vernon "Lefty" Gomez. Winner of 189 games for the New York Yankees between 1930 and 1942, Lefty was another southpaw who would sometimes rather stare at passing airplanes than throw the baseball.
But when the chips were down, Lefty could handle most of the batters in the American League. One player who gave him all kinds of fits was Jimmie Foxx, old Double-X, and one of the most feared sluggers of his time. Asked how he pitched Foxx, Lefty said: "I give him my best pitch and then run to back up third."
Another time, with Foxx up, Gomez shook off the first sign catcher Bill Dickey flashed to him. Then he shook off another, then a third, then the first one all over again. Finally Dickey went out to the mound and told Lefiy he had to throw something.
"Let's wait awhile," Lefty said, in dead earnest. "Maybe he'll get a long-distance phone call."
Lefty also occasionally decided to pull his own brand of practical joke at a time it could have easily affected the outcome of the game. His second baseman for many years was Tony Lazzeri, an outstanding fielder who was known as one of the smartest players in the game. One day Lefty was on the mound with the bases loaded and no one out, a dangerous situation.
So Lefty bore down and got the next batter to hit a comebacker to him. It looked like an easy mound-to-home-to-first double play. What did Lefty do? He turned around and threw the ball to Lazzeri, who was standing between first and second. The shocked Lazzeri just stood there with the ball as a run scored and the bases remained loaded. When he demanded an explanation, Gomez just smiled and said: "I've been reading in all the papers what a smart ballplayer you are and how you always know just what to do with the ball. So I just wanted to see what you would do with that one."
Lazzeri just shook his head and returned to second. He should have known better. After all, he was dealing with the unpredictable Vernon "Lefty" Gomez.
There have been other strange characters on the mound over the years. Right-hander Billy Loes, who pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s, once bobbled a slow bouncer and claimed he "lost it in the sun."
Then there was Bill Lee, who pitched for the Boston Red Sox in the 1970s. His nickname was "Spaceman," and it wasn't for being an astronaut with NASA. Ask Lee a question about anything and he'd give a long, long answer, most of it not even remotely related to the question.
He also trained by going for long runs, five or ten miles, but not on a track or a lonely road. Lee ran through the streets of Boston, because he wanted to mingle with the people. And he often made pit stops at local hangouts to talk to the fans.
A consistent, if not big winner, Lee wore uniform number 37. One year he requested Red Sox management give him number 337. Why, they wanted to know.
"Because if you turn number 337 upside down it spells LEE," he said. "Then if I stand on my head, people will know who I am."
But perhaps the most legendary of the super flakes was Jay Hanna Dean, the man universally known as Dizzy. Diz made the Hall of Fame on his pitching skills, though his career was cut short by an injury suffered in the 1937 All-Star Game. A line drive broke his toe, and when he tried to come back too soon, he altered his pitching motion and hurt his arm. But in his heyday with the St. Louis Cardinals' Gas House Gang, he was as unpredictable as he was talented.
In 1934, Diz pitched the first game of a doubleheader against Brooklyn. He held the Dodgers hitless into the eighth inning and finished with a three-hit shutout. In the second game, his brother Paul pitched a no-hitter. That angered Diz. He wasn't jealous that his brother had thrown a gem. He was fuming at him for something else.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" he hollered at Paul. "If I'd have known you were gonna pitch a no-hitter, I'd have pitched one, too."
Another time in Boston, Diz bet someone he would strike out Vince DiMaggio every time he faced him. Vince was Joe DiMaggio's older brother, and not quite the same kind of hitter as the Yankee Clipper. Well, Diz got him three straight times, but when Vince came up for a fourth time there were two out in the ninth inning with the tying run on second.
Diz got two quick strikes on DiMaggio, but then Vince hit a high foul pop behind the plate. The Cardinal catcher prepared to catch it when Diz began screaming:
"Drop it! Drop it or you'll never catch me again!" Startled, the catcher let the ball drop. It could have ended the ball game, and Manager Frank Frisch was so upset he jumped up to pull Diz out of the game. But he jumped so hard that he hit his head on the top of the
dugout and staggered back, dazed.
Diz went back to work quickly and, as he used to say, fogged a third strike past DiMaggio to win the game, and his bet. The sum total of the bet he worked so hard to win was all of eighty cents!
But perhaps the best example of the fun-loving Dean came in the 1934 World Series. That was the year of the Gas House Gang, when the Cards won the pennant at season's end and then faced the Detroit Tigers in the series. It went the full seven games, and the brazen Diz calmly predicted he would shut out the Tigers in the finale. He made his prediction even though he would be pitching with just one day's rest.
Sure enough, the Cards rallied early and took a 7-0 lead. That was all Diz needed. He began clowning around on the mound and in the dugout, enjoying every moment of the final game. At one point the Tigers' slugger Hank Greenberg came up. The book on Greenberg was that he killed the high outside pitch. So what did Diz decide to do? Right. Challenge Greenberg high and outside. Greenberg promptly hit a liner that almost took Diz's head off. The next time Hank came up, Diz was ready to do it again until Manager Frisch threatened to take him out of the game.
&n
bsp; "You wouldn't take me out while I'm pitching a shutout," Diz protested.
"Lose Greenberg again and you'll find out," Frisch growled.
The thought of leaving the most enjoyable game of his life was too much for Ol' Diz. He promptly struck Greenberg out. Then about the seventh inning Diz called his manager back to the mound.
"Do you think Hubbell's a better pitcher than me?" he asked.
Frisch was puzzled. Carl Hubbell was the great Giants' hurler whose screwball made him a Hall of Famer.
"No, you're better," Frisch said, trying to please his pitcher.
"Well, then if he can throw the screwball, I ought to be able to do it."
So Diz went back to work again. Here it was, the seventh game of
the World Series and he decided to experiment with a pitch he had
never thrown in his life. Manager Frisch couldn't believe it. But
that was Dizzy Dean for you. Despite everything, he won the game,11-
0, and the Cardinals were World Champs. Nothing could have made Diz
happier.
One of the tragedies of baseball is that black players were not accepted into the major leagues until Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. The unwritten rule or color line dated back to the nineteenth century. So before 1947, the top black ballplayers had their own teams and leagues. The Negro Leagues, as they were called, produced some of the greatest ballplayers of all time. Perhaps the most amazing was Leroy "Satchel" Paige. Old Satch was a tall, thin right-hander with a blazing fastball and all the other pitches that went with it.
From the time he began hurling in the Negro Leagues back in 1926, Paige set some records that were truly amazing. And whenever he pitched for black all-star teams against white major leaguers, he dazzled them. There's little doubt that Satch was one of the greatest pitchers ever. And there are some who say he would have been the absolute best.