Foul Ball

by Jim Bouton

  JG: Yeah but the league can’t have both Fleisig and Wirz sitting out. And then tomorrow you guys meet with Frank Boulton [Atlantic League] and he gets in the mix.

  JB: Fleisig’s new stadium scenario is a long shot for the Northern League. Bob Wirz’s sale to us is a better fit. The league could back both of us and see who wins, but why take a chance when we’re a sure thing with Wirz’s franchise? Boulton’s only in the mix if you guys aren’t with us.

  JG: As to the Northern League you are correct. Why not back both Wirz and Fleisig and let the chips fall where they may?

  JB: The league’s downside there is that if Fleisig wins it’s only temporary and they’ll still have two teams in limbo.

  JG: I agree. And what if Bossidy resurfaces?

  JB: Bossidy is a new-stadium proponent and lacks Wahconah credibility.

  JG: Remember Miles is not only a commissioner he is also a multiple team owner. He would not have gotten involved if he did not have an agenda that he could see to the end.

  JB: The fact is that the people of Pittsfield love their old ballpark and any owner not committed to that can’t make it in this market. Won’t Fleisig see that for the good of the league?

  JG: Fleisig is most interested in Fleisig. And even if he’s not real he’ll gear up to fight just for the leverage… which can be a lot of different things—an extension of time, or money, or…

  JB: The more time that passes the stronger we get because a new administration will be for Wahconah Park and we’re the only ones committed to that. Anything else is just games and won’t look good in the long run.

  JG: If the longer it goes the better, why not shoot out the lights in ‘O2 and propose for ‘O3?

  JB: We’re committed to Wahconah however long that takes. Eventually it should end up with us because we have the people behind us. Power to the people.

  JG: Right on.

  JB: Why does the Northern League want to screw around with an uncertain future?

  JG: I don’t think they do. Just trying to understand where everybody else is coming from. I think the city thinks it has options and most of them are not real.

  JB: I don’t know where everybody else is coming from but Chip and I have been up front from the beginning. There is nobody who doesn’t understand who we are and what we want.

  And that’s how it went. Hidden agendas—the mayor, Fleisig, Wolff, Goldsmith, Bossidy. We’re playing poker with a gang of hustlers and sharps, and all our cards are face-up on the table. We’re not the U.S. Marshals. We’re a couple of greenhorns, in suits and ties, just off the train.

  JULY 31

  TUESDAY—ISLIP, NY

  Let’s hope Frank Boulton deals straight.

  I enjoyed showing Chip how to get to Long Island via the ferry. He’s always looking for a novel route to get someplace. We parked down below and walked up to the top deck to feel the ocean air.

  “What did you think of Goldsmith’s comment last night about Bossidy?” I asked. “Do you think he’s still in the game?”

  “It’s possible,” said Chip, “but I don’t trust anything Goldsmith says. I sure wouldn’t want to be his partner.”

  “He and Tom Murphy would get along great,” I said. “It was Murphy’s comment about there being no other proposals that convinces me there will be. Because if Bossidy is involved, Murphy would certainly know it.”

  “The park commissioners meet in two weeks,” said Chip. “We’ll know who was bullshitting us by then.”

  EAB Park in Central Islip is another one of those well-appointed, cookie-cutter stadiums they want to build in Pittsfield. The 6,000-seat facility cost $22 million and is part of the Atlantic League constellation of stadiums, built or under construction—largely with public funds—since the league began play in 1998. Other new stadiums are located in Atlantic City, Newark, and Somerset County, New Jersey; Aberdeen, Maryland; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and the one being built in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. Only Nashua, New Hampshire, boasts its existing “historic” Holman Stadium, where Dodger legends Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe once played.

  “We’ll sell Frank on the historic value of our ballpark,” said Chip, as we pulled into the parking lot a little after three o’clock.

  “Wahconah Park can be the Wrigley Field or the Fenway Park of the Atlantic League,” I said.

  Frank Boulton is a big guy, about fifty, with a helmet of blond hair and a boyish face. First thing he did was give us a tour of the facility, which he insists is “a ballpark, not a stadium. I associate a stadium with football, or something big and cold.” We accepted Frank’s homey definition. EAB Park is home to the Long Island Ducks, which Frank owns and operates in addition to his duties as league commissioner.

  Then we were escorted into Frank’s office, where we were joined by Bud Harrelson, the former Mets player and manager who is now the president of the Atlantic League, and Joe Klein, former major league general manager with the Rangers, Indians, and Tigers, who is now the league’s executive director.

  Joe was the manager of the Texas Ranger farm team in Pittsfield when I had that tryout at Wahconah Park back in 1972.

  “I don’t know why the hell you didn’t sign me up that day,” I said to Joe. “Nobody even reached the warning track off me.”

  “Right after you left,” he said, grinning, “we released the six guys you pitched to.”

  Last week, at our meeting with Acton and Goldsmith in New York, Goldsmith had said that Miles Wolff and Frank Boulton don’t like each other personally. So it was somewhat of a surprise that Frank had nice things to say about Miles.

  “I like Miles,” said Frank. “He’s a good operator. But the Northern League is going to fold; they’re not going to make it. Miles wants my help. We’ve talked about having us absorb a few teams from the Northern League. Maybe create a short-season division.”

  “We’d be one of the stronger franchises in that division,” I said.

  “You have to understand,” said Frank, “we’re a new stadium league—except for Nashua, where we’re doing a major upgrade.”

  “We’re planning a major upgrade for Wahconah Park,” said Chip. “New concessions stands, bigger bathrooms, extra seating, expanded locker rooms.”

  “Wahconah Park could be the Fenway Park or the Wrigley Field of the Atlantic League,” I said.

  “Our 140-game season might be too long for the Berkshires,” said Frank. “We start the first week in May and go to the middle of September, with another two weeks for playoffs.”

  “Pittsfield used to have a 140-game schedule,” I said, “when Joe was there with the Rangers, in the Eastern League.”

  “It can get pretty cold and wet up there,” said Joe.

  “Here’s what we can do for 2002,” said Frank. “You play forty-nine games at Wahconah and ninety-one on the road. The home teams would pick up your travel for the additional road games because they’d have the extra gate revenue.”

  “We’d play with an option to buy,” said Chip. “If we’re as successful as we think we’re going to be, we can exercise our option and join your league. If we’re not successful, we’ll just grab our balls and go home.”

  “We’d probably also exercise our option,” I said, “if the Atlantic League has that short-season division.”

  “But it would be your option,” said Frank, “not the league’s. What if you’re not successful and we’re stuck with you? Or you are successful and join the Northern League?”

  “If we’re not successful,” said Chip, “it would be foolish of us to throw good money after bad. We wouldn’t do it.”

  “And if we join the Northern League,” I said, “we at least solve your scheduling problem for 2002.”

  “It sounds like it might work,” said Frank. “Let me talk to the board and I’ll get back to you.”

  “We’d need a letter,” said Chip, “confirming whatever understanding we have.”

  “Draft what you want and send it to me,” said Frank. “I’ll take a lo
ok at it.”

  “When is the latest you need to know that we’ve got Wahconah Park?” I asked.

  “We normally make up the schedule right after Labor Day,” said Frank. “We could probably put it off until the middle of September. But that’s the cutoff. When are you going to know by?”

  “We should know something by the end of August,” said Chip.

  Now we could relax and enjoy the ballgame.

  But not before Frank made sure that we were stocked up with Long Island Ducks souvenir programs, hats, T-shirts, water bottles, and the most coveted item in the stadium—excuse me, ballpark—official bobble-head doll replicas of Ducks mascot Quackerjack. Plus two Quackerjack mouth-horn quacker things.

  Ever the congenial host, Frank invited us to watch the game from his box seats next to the dugout. And, as if that weren’t enough, I was invited onto the field to throw out the first pitch, for which I received a nice ovation from the capacity crowd, the twenty-sixth consecutive sell-out and thirty-fifth so far this season, according to the official Ducks news bulletin.

  The only thing better would have been a capacity crowd at historic Wahconah Park.

  “The cool of the evening.”

  That’s how my old Yankee pitching coach, Johnny Sain, described the feeling a starting pitcher has after winning a tough ballgame. You sit back and relax, knowing you’ve accomplished something and don’t have to go back out there again for a few more days. That’s how it felt to Chip and me on our ferry boat ride back to Bridgeport, standing on the deck with the night air in our faces and the stars and the city lights in the distance.

  “I like these guys,” said Chip.

  “Me, too,” I said, “Especially Frank. He’s direct and straightforward, and he seems honest.”

  “It felt like we were being welcomed into the fraternity of baseball owners,” said Chip.

  “It’s not that chummy a club,” I said. “You probably wouldn’t like most of the brothers. And I’d get blackballed, for sure.”

  “But I got the feeling we can work with the Atlantic League,” said Chip. “I never had that with the Northern League. We’ve never met them, but we certainly didn’t get honesty or respect over the phone, or in the newspaper quotes.”

  “I bet Miles felt uncomfortable about it,” I said. “My vague memory is that he’s a good guy. He probably got pressured into it by the scumbags in Pittsfield.”

  “Tony leaned on him a little,” said Chip.

  The moonlight was glancing off the water. The moon almost always makes me think of Laurie. The night she died, Paula and I had a driver take us to the hospital in New Jersey because neither of us was in any shape to drive. It was a three-hour trip under a full moon. I try not to associate the moon with Laurie, because I don’t want to feel sad all the time, but sometimes I’m not successful.

  “You know I put a big stone in the backyard,” I said. “I had picked it out to use as a headstone for her grave in New Jersey but the cemetery wouldn’t accept a natural stone. I set it in a grove of trees, and I can see it from the windows. Sometimes I go out and touch it or stand next to it. It helps me connect to Laurie.”

  “We never knew Laurie,” said Chip. “But Cindy and I really wish we had. And I’m sorry you never got a chance to know my dad before his accident.”

  Almost exactly a year before Laurie died, Chip’s dad suffered a broken neck after falling backwards trying to fix a light bulb. Ever since, he’s been confined to a wheelchair and on a respirator. He’s living at home in East Greenbush, New York, about an hour’s drive from Chip.

  “How is your Dad?” I asked.

  “The same,” said Chip. “Some days are better than others. I don’t know how my mother does it.”

  “I like the fact that you bring him to all the family functions,” I said. “It must be a great comfort to have his grandchildren around.”

  “I think it is,” said Chip. “But then I think about what he’s missed these past five years, watching the boys grow up. You know, he was a good skier, a very active man. We could have had some great times.”

  “I can’t imagine Laurie like that,” I said. “Spending two thirds of her life, damaged and helpless. She was a dynamo, like your dad.”

  There was a long silence as we leaned on the rail, looking out at the moon.

  “So is it waxing or waning?” asked Chip.

  “Using my special code, ‘shadow-right-decline,’” I said, “I see that it’s waxing.”

  “Very good,” said Chip.

  “In view of our meeting with the Atlantic League today,” I said in the car on the way home, “what do you think our chances are now?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” said Chip. “But I like our fifty-fifty chances better today than I did yesterday.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Frankly, I don’t give a shit,

  I’m only in this for the money”

  AUGUST 1

  WEDNESDAY

  Here’s the latest from the Northern League, in a message left on Chip’s answering machine:

  “Hey Chip, this is Jim Goldsmith… uh, just reporting in. I don’t really have any… uh… good news to report… uh… Bob Wirz and… uh, has not really, uh… warmed up to your position… um, he is, uh… sort of made a decision that he’s going to continue his effort in Lynn… uh… and, and uh, and that uh… that’s the situation as it stands… stands is not, you know is not something that’s entertaining for him to try and do… uh… I… I’m traveling throughout the week, and uh… I will try to speak to you soon.”

  “Sounds like dissembling to me,” said Chip.

  “Or, he could have been eating taffy,” I said. “With dentures.”

  Today I pitched batting practice to Shige Tanabe and assorted friends. One of the new additions is home-builder Jeff Polidoro, who backed Shige in the sushi restaurant they own in Great Barrington.

  “The thing I like about Shige,” said Jeff, “is his work ethic. He came to my work site and asked if he could help. I had him carve the openings for the door locks. I couldn’t believe how quick and how perfect he was. He’d finish what I gave him and come back and ask, ‘What more work?’ And I’d give him another dozen locks to do. So now I’ve got a homeowner with sushi-grade door locks.”

  Chip and I plan to give Shige a booth at our “Taste of the Berkshires” food court. But we haven’t told him yet because he’d probably start planning the menu.

  AUGUST 2

  THURSDAY

  Paula and I were looking out the window at our unfinished patio, which I haven’t had time to do anything about. My plan is to build a multilevel stone terrace with steps leading down to the backyard. But even if I had time, we still couldn’t afford to do it right now.

  Paula worries about the patchwork way we make a living—from my motivational speaking, some freelance writing, sporadic royalties from Ball Four, her radio commentaries, and sales of books, baseballs, and photos from my web site.

  “What if the economy turns bad?” said Paula. “And companies can’t afford motivational speakers anymore?”

  She usually says something like this at three o’clock in the morning when she can’t sleep. Paula says she’s a light sleeper because I’m not, and somebody has to worry about things.

  “If the economy goes bad,” I mumbled, “companies will need even more motivation and I’ll make a fortune.”

  “But we’re getting older,” said Paula, “and who wants to listen to old people?”

  “I’ll be a wise old people,” I said. “Now let’s get some sleep.”

  “And you’re spending too much time on Wahconah Park,” said Paula. “It’s such a long shot.”

  “My whole life is a long shot,” I said, irritated.

  “I’m serious, Jim,” said Paula. “What if we can’t pay our mortgage and they come to take away our beautiful home?”

  “We’ll spend our last fifty dollars on an AK-47,” I said, and I went back to sleep.

  AUGUST 3

 
; FRIDAY

  Chip and I may need an AK-47 to get a lease on Wahconah Park.

  Chip got a call this morning from Frank Boulton, who said he could lease us an Atlantic League franchise for 2002, but he couldn’t give us the option to buy. Chip explained that we couldn’t spend money on Wahconah Park without knowing whether we’ve got an Atlantic or a Northern League franchise beyond 2002. Frank said he was going to call Miles Wolff to see what could be done about getting us a Northern League franchise.

  Lotsa luck.

  This is a big downer for us. We were counting on Frank to give us that option to buy, which we could exercise for 2003 and beyond or, more likely, use it to pry a Northern League franchise loose from Miles Wolff. And we wanted to have something from one of the two leagues for a “show and tell” at the next park commissioners’ meeting, whenever they have it.

  “It looks like we’re going to need some help on this,” I said. “Maybe it’s time to meet with Steve Picheny.”

  Steve Picheny is a big mover and shaker in the Berkshires. He and his wife Helice are involved in all kinds of civic and charitable endeavors. Picheny is a very smart businessman. Our only hesitation with Steve is that if he likes the idea he may want to get involved, which we’re afraid might mean “take over.” And we’re having too much fun doing it by ourselves.

  “Steve’s aware of what’s happening,” said Chip. “Whenever I see him, he always wants to know if he can be helpful. Did you know that his lawyer is Jeff Cook of Cain Hibbard Myers & Cook?”

  “That’s what Steve told me yesterday,” I said. “And today he left a message on my answering machine saying, ‘I told Jeff you guys were terrific and that your hearts were in the right place.’”

  By 11:00 this morning, Chip and I and our well-placed hearts were on our way to Picheny’s office in Great Barrington. It’s at the end of Railroad Street, above the new steak house he had just opened called Pearl’s.

  “Now remember,” said Chip, as we parked the car, “don’t open your kimono.”