Still Foolin’ ’Em

by Billy Crystal

  The official contract was for $4 million! But the nice part was that the Yankees gave me three days to come up with the money. We worked it out so that I would be the DH—designated Hebrew. Even though I wasn’t going to be in the field, I needed to prepare. As you get older, there’s a fine line between getting a walk and just wandering away from the batter’s box. So I went into training.

  Reggie Smith, the former great player who’d trained my “Maris and Mantle”—Barry Pepper and Thomas Jane—for 61*, has a baseball academy in Encino, California. He is a great teacher, and a better man. When I told him what was happening, he was almost as excited as I was. We didn’t have a lot of time, but every day I worked on my swing with Reggie and his son (also a great teacher), against live pitching. As I left the West Coast for this great moment—accompanied by my good pal Robin Williams and some dear friends from high school—I was hitting eighty-five-mile-per-hour fastballs and felt as ready as a fifty-nine-year-old comedian can feel as he’s about to play for the New York Yankees.

  * * *

  Trivia freaks will know that I was the oldest person ever to play for the Yankees, and the first player ever to test positive for Maalox. I actually did have to undergo routine testing. When they asked me for blood and urine, I gave them my underwear. The day before the game, I met with Yankee manager Joe Girardi. He wanted me to lead off and play left field. I said that was too far to run. We agreed that I would lead off and DH and have just the one at bat. Joe wanted me to score a run if I could. I wasn’t sure (again, that’s a long way to run), so we agreed that if I did get on base, Johnny Damon would pinch-run for me. It would be more theatrical, so to speak. I signed my contract with Lonn Trost and Jean Afterman and went and got dressed in the clubhouse. I knew most of the guys in there and had been in the clubhouse many times, but this felt unreal—I was one of them. In a strange way, I was very relaxed about it. It was so natural for me to wait until everyone had left the clubhouse so I could take off my clothes and put on my uniform. Just like high school gym class.

  The team was on a road trip, and I spent that day working out with Derek and José Molina, who’d stayed back in Tampa. I took batting practice with Jeter and José while a small crowd and many camera crews looked on. I was on my game, hitting line drive after line drive. I know I shocked everyone, which was a great feeling. But I was in great shape and ready. Tino Martinez was throwing me sixty-mile-per-hour fastballs while Janice videotaped from a distance. Derek saw her and motioned for her to come over by him at the cage. She whispered to him, “How fast is Tino throwing?”

  “One-oh-seven,” Derek whispered back.

  * * *

  I couldn’t sleep that night. It was really happening. I arrived at the park early the next morning. Girardi met me and we hung out a little, and to this day I can’t thank him enough for welcoming me the way he did. This was his first year with the club, and the last thing he needed was some aging leading man as his leadoff man. Yet he treated me like a ballplayer, which is what I was that day. I did my pregame stretching and conditioning drills with the club and, of course, was then ready for a nap. Batting practice was amazing. I was in the cage with Derek and Damon and Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada. When the guys nodded to one another that I was okay, I was on cloud nine. The hard part was that once batting practice was over, we had about an hour and a half till game time. I could feel my sphincter tighten, as well as my lower back and hamstrings. Now it wasn’t just fun, it was really on.

  I had lunch with Derek and Jorge and tried to be cool, but I was getting more and more anxious. Jorge and Derek were so easy with me. We all ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches: the same meal I always had before games in high school and all the league games I’d played in and, actually, before hosting the Oscars. After lunch I went to put my game uniform on, and that’s when the pranks started. My shoelaces were cut, so when I went to tie them, they came off in my hands. The toes on my socks were cut as well, so when I pulled them on, my foot went through. I took it all in good stride, trying to act like nothing bothered me, as I knew the guys were watching. I was careful putting on my cup, as the fear of hot sauce loomed. The pranks continued—my hat switched with one that didn’t fit, my glove missing, a belt with no holes—until it was time to go to the dugout.

  The stands were full as I bounded onto the field with the team to loosen up. A big roar from the crowd made me feel great, until I realized that A-Rod and Jeter were standing next to me. The national anthem was played, and I had a tear in my eye as I looked into the stands to see my brothers, Joel and Rip, and my daughter Jenny, and of course Janice. Mike Mussina threw a perfect first inning, and then I was up. When the announcer introduced me with “Leading off for the Yankees, the designated hitter, number 60, Billy Crystal,” I just about lost it. Since I’d been a kid, playing with my dad, brothers, or friends, I’d always dreamed of this moment, and now it was real. The crowd gave me a tremendous hand as I left the on-deck circle. “Hack,” (meaning swing) said Jeter, patting me on the helmet.

  March 13, 2008. Dream come true for Jeter.

  The Pirates’ pitcher was Paul Maholm: six foot two, 220 pounds, from Mississippi. Never been to a Seder. I was nervous, but the one thing I was not nervous about was getting hit by a pitch. It never entered my mind. If Maholm hit me, I’d sue. You ever see a Jew get hit by a pitch? They get plunked in the leg and they grab their neck. Whiplash! Once I’d found out the date of the game, I’d gone to the Pirates’ website to see who’d be pitching. I’d then watched Maholm strike out Barry Bonds. A real confidence builder. I studied his motion and his release point and tried to visualize what hitting off him would be like. As I approached the plate, the ump greeted me, as did the Pirates’ catcher. I watched Maholm’s warm-up pitches, looking for the release point I had seen on the website, and told myself, I can do this.

  “Play ball!”

  I stepped in. Since 1956, from the time I had seen Mickey Mantle play in the first game at the stadium I’d gone to, I had wanted to be a Yankee.

  So there I am in the batter’s box fifty-two years after that first game, my heart beating into the NY logo on my chest. Maholm is staring in for the sign, and I’m staring back, trying to look like I belong. Here comes the first pitch: ninety-two miles an hour. Ball one. I never see it, but it sounds outside. The ball makes a powerful thud in the catcher’s glove. I want to say, “Holy shit,” but I act like I see one of those every day. In fact, I do: on TV, not in the FUCKING BATTER’S BOX. The count is 1 and 0. He comes in with a fastball, a little up and away, and I hit a screaming line drive down the first base line, which means I didn’t hit it that hard but I’m screaming, “I hit it! I hit it!” Someone yells, “DOUBLE!” Which would be tough because I can’t run like I used to and on my way to second base I’d have to stop twice to pee. The last time a Jew my age ran that fast, the caterer was closing down the buffet.

  But I’m still thinking double. The ump is thinking, Foul ball. I had made contact with a major league fastball. Okay, 1 and 1. Ball inside, 2 and 1, and another ball and it’s 3 and 1. I’m this close to getting to first base, just like at my prom. I look over, and Derek Jeter is in the on-deck circle yelling, “Swing, swing!”

  The windup, the pitch. It’s a cutter. The nastiest cutter I’ve seen since my bris. But I swing and miss. The first time I’ve swung and missed in two days at Tampa. Now it’s 3 and 2. The crowd stands up. This is my only shot, my only at bat. Ever. Maholm winds, I look to the release point, and there it is: eighty-nine miles per hour, a cut fastball, the same pitch he threw to that obstructer of justice Barry Bonds. I swing over it. Strike three. I’m out of there.

  I head back to the bench, but before I do, I check with the ump: “Strike?” He shakes his head no: low and inside. I’m so mad I missed it, and also mad I didn’t take the pitch, that I almost don’t hear the crowd standing and cheering. The guys are giving me high fives. Girardi hugs me, then Kevin Long, the great hitting coach, and then Jorge. Then, for
the first time in baseball history, they stop the game and give the batter a ball for striking out. A-Rod hands it to me, saying, “Great at bat!” My teammates greet me as if I’ve just hit a home run. Mariano Rivera hugs me, and others keep saying the same thing:

  “Six pitches, man, you saw six pitches!”

  I sit with Yogi Berra and Ron Guidry for a few innings, and if that isn’t cool enough, I’m asked to come up to Mr. Steinbrenner’s office. In full uniform I walk into the boss’s lair. He gives me a big hug and then says with a straight face that I’ve been traded for Jerry Seinfeld. I thank him over and over again for a chance to be a Yankee, and he says he loved it and, most importantly, the fans loved it. That’s what it’s really all about.

  * * *

  Once the game is over and I’ve done my press, the clubhouse attendants hand me my uniform as a gift. Before I leave, I ask who was pulling those locker room pranks on me before the game.

  “LaTroy Hawkins,” I’m told.

  “What can I do to get back at him?”

  “You want me to shit in his shoes?” someone asks.

  “No, but thanks—maybe something more clever,” I suggest. One of the attendants then says he has an idea. LaTroy has just gotten a pair of new dress shoes, so let’s screw them to the wall of his locker. How he thinks of that so quickly, I have no idea. He returns with a drill, and we take LaTroy’s brand-new $700 shoes and screw them to the back wall of his locker. Janice made fun baseball cards of me as a present, and I put one in each shoe, with a note saying, “Don’t fuck with my stuff.” I leave wishing I were coming back the next day.

  I’ve had some great moments in my career, but nothing compares to the fact that I can say, “I was the leadoff man for the New York Yankees.” I realize, of course, that this was a once-in-a-lifetime event. But I say to all of you, as my mom said to me: Do something special on your birthday. Whatever you do, celebrate the fact that you’re here, and that people love you and you love them. We only do this once.

  Let Him Go

  My first memory is of being in a cemetery. I guess I was three years old, not aware of where I was, because I was playing leapfrog on various headstones as my family and the rest of the mourners were saying the Jewish prayer for the dead for my aunt Rose. Rose was a tiny wrinkled Russian woman with one arm several inches longer than the other. My dad claimed it was because she played trombone. She was so Russian-looking that you had the feeling you could twist her head off and another, smaller version of her would be inside. Anyway, I was just jumping away, carefree, on the flat chiseled granite markers when my father gently grabbed me by the back of the neck and said, “Don’t do that.” Thus began my relationship with my dad and death.

  Growing up, I was always around the old, the sick, and the complaining. My relatives were very matter-of-fact about death: That’s it, and that’s all. “When I go, you can have my sweaters for half price.” Although my relatives were a joyous group, a low-hanging fog always seemed to surround them, and one by one they disappeared into it. My father led the parade by dying suddenly when I was just fifteen years old.

  I missed him terribly for most of my life, always regretting never having had the chance to be face-to-face again, so I could say I was sorry about our last heated encounter. When I became a father and then a grandfather, there was always an empty pocket in my soul. Every time I’ve had a personal moment of joy—like my wedding, or the births of my daughters, their weddings, the births of my four grandchildren, or successes in my career—I’ve wished I could have shared it with him. This search for my father always becomes tangled with the vines of my own aging. We never had a chance to grow older together.

  After my father’s death, his brother Berns, my uncle, took on an important role in my life. He always knew how to talk to me. Maybe it was the artist in him that understood that my jokes were my sketches, and my monologues were my paintings. He knew how to praise and how to form a criticism (which is more difficult). As time went on, life started to catch up to him—or, more accurately, death started to. It became clear that this giant was getting shorter every day. Normal functions were being robbed from him, yet he never complained, except to say, “The golden years are brass.”

  After he collapsed at Jenny’s wedding brunch, he made me his medical proxy, which meant that at some point in his inevitable demise I would be the one to say, “No more, that’s enough.” Somehow, I never thought that day would come. But in August 2008, I got an urgent phone call from his doctor in New York, who told me that Berns had had what appeared to be a stroke, and death was imminent.

  “What do you want to do if we get into that area where a decision is needed whether to resuscitate him or not?” he asked me.

  I suddenly felt angry at my uncle. I knew he’d given me this power because he loved and trusted me, but I really didn’t want it. “It’s tough playing God,” his doctor said.

  “It’s tougher playing nephew,” I responded weakly.

  Berns was in a semicomatose state for weeks, a humbling and insulting journey for this vibrant warrior. I felt a strong urge to say to him, “Uncle, maybe it’s time to stop fighting,” but then I would get scared and mad at myself. Some days, there were flickers of hope, which I clung to, the way a little child hangs on to the first dime he is given. You squeeze it as hard as you can, so no one can take it away. But I was now sixty years old, so far from the carefree child in a cemetery jumping on headstones—stones that now bore the names of all my uncles and aunts, grandparents, my dad, and now my mother, as well.

  Growing older with Berns was one of the great gifts in my life. I wasn’t ready to say, “No more, that’s enough.”

  One night, alone and exhausted by the consuming worry about Berns, I fell asleep early. Janice was visiting her parents, who were nervously preparing for a most delicate surgery on my father-in-law. It seemed that impending doom was everywhere. I awoke startled, in the dark, feeling scared and suddenly very cold, which was strange, because it was August and I don’t use the air-conditioning. I felt someone next to me, standing alongside the bed. I was frozen with fear, and as cold as I was, I was also sweating profusely. I turned slowly and fearfully, thinking it was some sort of home invader. In the dark, I saw a shadowy figure that appeared to be wearing a long black coat, with a cowl covering its head. I didn’t have the courage to look at its face, though I could sense that it had one. It didn’t speak, but I felt a message being transmitted into my head: “Let him go.… It’s time.” These words were repeated several times before I sensed that the presence had left. The room was warm again. I looked at the clock; it was three-ten in the morning.

  My heart was beating through my soaked T-shirt. I flipped on the light and walked around the house, splashed some water on my face, toweled off. I gazed out the window at the night and its stars, and I knew what had happened. My father had come to me, to tell me it was okay to let Berns go. I had seen those shows where people swear they’ve been visited from the “other side,” and I’d never believed them. Now I did.

  Performing 700 Sundays had given me some sense of peace and closure. The last scene in the show has me meeting my father in heaven, and he forgives me. After each performance, I would feel so enriched, so grateful for the chance to act this out. But that was a play; this was so real. It sounds crazy, but I really believed he had come. I stayed up until Janice returned the next day.

  “It was the air conditioner,” she said, looking at me as if I had three heads.

  “No, I didn’t have it on.” I felt like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters. I also told a few friends what had happened. Some nodded and listened patiently; others, I got the feeling, thought I had imagined it or simply made it up, considering the circumstances. I must have sounded like those people in the trailer park who swear that a spaceship landed and a little green man emerged and asked them for change for a twenty. But I never questioned the experience.

  Unnerved by the encounter, to say the least, I received a call just as I land
ed in New York. I was there to attend the final game at old Yankee Stadium. ESPN had requested that I commentate for an inning during this final broadcast. Since Dad had introduced me to it in 1956, the park had become a sanctuary for me. If ballparks can be called cathedrals, then this was my synagogue. The phone call was from the doctor, who told me Berns might not last the night. One of those evil “hospital infections” had found an easy target. I entered his hospital room with terrible fear.

  I wasn’t there when either of my parents died, and I’d been angry at them for not waiting for me. But God doesn’t have to wait for anyone, does he? I held Berns’s hand and whispered the punch line of a dirty joke he had told me when I was a kid; it was our way of saying hello. “An eagle swallows a mouse whole and is flying up to the clouds when the mouse crawls out of the eagle’s asshole and says, ‘Eagle, how high are we?’ The eagle says, ‘Five thousand feet.’ A few minutes later, the mouse again asks, ‘Eagle, how high are we?’ ‘Ten thousand feet,’ says the eagle. One last time the mouse pops his head out and asks, ‘Eagle, how high are we?’ The eagle says, ‘Twenty thousand feet,’ and the mouse says, ‘You ain’t shitting me, are you?’” So that’s what I whispered in his ear: “You ain’t shitting me, are you?”

  He moved his head slightly, sensing where I was, and a huge diamond of a tear rolled down his exhausted face and onto his gown, the stain spreading. “Don’t cry, Uncle, you’re going to get better,” I said. I think he wasn’t crying for himself; he was crying for me. I left hours later, sure I wouldn’t see him again.

  I slept in my clothes, alongside the phone. It rang at nine the next morning. “Come, Billy,” his aide told me. “The fever broke and he’s very alert.”