by Bill Lee
Ivy was a big righthander with a good fastball and a back-breaking hook. He could bury a batter with curveballs. I could never figure out why he didn’t make it to the majors. Whatever he lacked, it wasn’t a sense of humor. Ivy was equipped with the world’s greatest vocabulary. One day he sat at his locker, moaning, “This club is going nowhere. It can’t win. The trouble with this club is there’s too much decision on it.” The consensus was that he meant “dissension.” Another time he ambled up to me and said, “You know, Bill, you and I are both pitchers, but we’re not the same. I get them out with smoke, while you finance them.” I’m not sure if he meant “finesse them” or if he actually believed I was paying hitters off to miss the shit I was throwing up there. My pride allowed me to settle on the former.
Ivy could be particularly devastating on the back of the bus. Minor-league life revolves around long boring bus rides with baseball games played in between. In order to quell the monotony of an endless trip, we would take part in an initial quiz. One guy called out a set of celebrity initials and everyone else would try to guess who the person was. When it was Ivy’s turn, he stumped everyone for the duration of the trip. His entry was B.D.K. No one could get it. We spent the better part of an hour on it. Finally, as the bus pulled into the parking lot, Ivy said, “C’mon, that one’s easy. It’s Billy De Kid.” I’m still not sure which was funnier, that answer or the fact that at least three guys walked off the bus shaking their heads, saying, “I knew that was it,” over and over again.
I pitched well at Pittsfield. Two games stand out in particular. The first was a game against Salem that almost got me killed. I had come on in relief, runners on first and third, with Salem’s big home-run hitter at the plate. I threw him the sinker and he hit a comebacker up the middle. Catching it behind my back, I turned and threw a perfect strike to start a game-ending double play. I didn’t catch the ball in back of me to show anyone up; the way I follow through with my delivery made it impossible to catch it any other way. Don Hoak, the Salem manager, didn’t see it that way. He was all over me, yelling and screaming at me from the clubhouse to the team bus. If he had a gun, so help me, he would have shot me. He yelled, “Lee, you fucking lucky son of a bitch, you can’t get away with that shit. You can’t make a play like that to beat us.” I looked at him and said something bright like, “Well, I just did.” He dived off the deep end trying to get at me. He started punching at the bus window and kept pounding and screaming until we pulled out. I just stayed in my seat, shaking my head and saying, “Now, now, Tiger, it’s only a game.” A few years later Hoak died of a heart attack. Boy, you could see that coming.
The other game I remember featured a magic moment. We were playing against Manchester. I wasn’t pitching that day, but the manager called on me to pinch-hit in the last inning. I represented the winning run. The pitcher threw me two breaking pitches high and outside that I took for balls, and then came in with a fastball down the chute. I cold-cocked it, hitting a long fly toward the center fence. Adios, amigo. As I rounded first and got ready to go into my game-winning home-run trot, I looked up just in time to see the center-fielder jump up and fling himself over the fence to make a great catch. Unbelievable. I started screaming like a madman, feeling pain, joy, denial, and excitement all at once. And then I became two people. While half of me went through all those emotional transitions, the other half stepped back and watched, thinking, God, isn’t this fun. Everything that baseball is was wrapped up in those precious seconds.
That near homer took on added significance, since it came in what turned out to be my last appearance in a Pittsfield uniform. The next day, June 24, 1969, I was called up by the Red Sox. Jim Longborg had gotten hurt, busting up his toe badly while attempting to lay down a bunt. That’s one of the hazards of being tall; it’s a long way from your eyes to your feet, and you can’t always watch out for them. I’d had a feeling something was up. The night before our manager had told me that I wasn’t going on our next road trip. Explaining that we were going to be gone for only three days and that I wasn’t scheduled to start anyway, he suggested that I might as well stay home. He had this big smile on his face all the while he was telling me this. I went home to my ski chalet in South Hancock and found a message to call the Boston front office. When I did, one of the brass got on and said, “Bill, Lonnie’s hurt and Bill Landis and Sparky Lyle are on Army duty. We’d like you to come up and give us a hand.”
I liked that. They made it sound as if I had a choice. Actually, I wasn’t too anxious to leave. I was throwing well, and we had a great ballpark. The sun set behind the center-field fence on a low angle, and if you kept the ball down, as I always tried to, no one could hit you. But on the other hand, I had never seen Boston or Fenway Park, and I was always interested in broadening my horizons. I told him I’d be happy to do whatever I could to help the club. The last thing he told me before hanging up was that I shouldn’t pack a heavy bag, because I wasn’t going to be up for too long. Nine years and 102 days later, I was gone.
Driving down the turnpike into Boston, I caught my first glimpse of the lights of Fenway and of its notorious left-field wall, the Green Monster. The stadium was so close to the highway you could almost touch it as you rode by. A sign warned me that the next exit was about two hundred fifty yards ahead to the right. I figured, great. All I have to do is get off here and cut back to the ballpark. No problem. It took me two and a half hours. In my entire life I had never seen streets like they have in Boston. They call the city “The Hub” because it’s laid out like a wheel, with spokes. The problem is none of those spokes lead anywhere. It was nuts. I drove around, all the time able to see the stadium lights but unable to find a way to reach them. This did not seem like a good omen. The thought occurred to me that I might have crashed, died, and gone to hell without realizing it. I was condemned to drive an eternal highway that would only bring me past the ballpark without ever letting me enter its gates. I kept looking in the rearview mirror, expecting to find out I had just crossed over into the Twilight Zone. Just as I was about to panic I got hold of myself and adapted. Deciding that this was a foreign environment and that the only way to conquer it was to submit to it, I humbled myself in surrender to the Boston topography and became caught in its spiritual flow. I also stopped and asked for directions.
I got to the park in between games of a doubleheader with the Cleveland Indians. I had just enough time to get into uniform, introduce myself to manager Dick Williams, and run out to the bullpen before the start of the second game. I got to pitch right away, throwing four innings and giving up only one run. It wasn’t easy. I walked the first two guys I faced, and a single thought immediately flashed through my mind: I am fucking this up. After putting runners on first and second, I had to face Hawk Harrelson. Hawk had been a big hero in Boston only the year before, leading the league in runs batted in and named American League Player of the Year by The Sporting News. He had been dealt to Cleveland at the start of the season in an unpopular trade, and the fans were going crazy when he came up to the plate. I got him in the hole right away with two strikes, and then I threw him a sinker. Hawk hit a two-hopper to third, and George Scott made a great stab in the hole, throwing to second to start a 5–4–3 double play. Max Alvis struck out to end the inning. It was really fun. The Indians had some hitters on that team—Harrelson, Tony Horton, and Jose Cardenal— but I wasn’t interested in who they were or what they were hitting. They were just meat to me. Tom Satriano, a Dedeaux disciple from SC, was my catcher, and I just threw whatever he called for. I hadn’t had time to go over batters with him or anything like that. I had just finished meeting everybody in the bullpen, when the coach turned to me and said, “Kid, you’re in there.” Williams was like that. He’d get somebody and then he’d use him right away so he could find out what they were made of.
Dick was a lame-duck manager at the time, though few people knew it. Yastrzemski hadn’t run out a ground ball, and Dick fined him something like a thousand bucks. Carl
didn’t like getting drop-kicked in the wallet, and the Red Sox owner, Mr. Yawkey, didn’t like having his favorite player shown up. The incident polarized the club. It became the Williams cartel against the Yaz and Yawkey cartel. Yaz was the highest-paid superstar in the game, and Yawkey signed the checks. Williams was just the manager, and before the season was over he was history. The press made a big deal out of it—Dick was good copy and popular with the writers—and for two years the fans were so incensed that they booed Carl religiously. I came up after their run-in, so I had no idea who was right. But I do know that Carl and Mr. Yawkey were very close. Yawkey was often seen with him, picking his brain in order to find out what the club needed. I have to believe Yaz exerted some influence.
Most of the players weren’t crazy about Dick. If a player made an error, Williams would conduct his postgame interview right near the guy’s locker and point out how horseshit he was. While the press gathered around, he’d stand there and look at the player and say, “Yeah, we had a pretty good little game going until Andrews fucked up that ground ball.” Not too many players appreciated that. Dick hated losing. I guess we all do, but Williams was a little more vocal about it than most. He had an acid sense of humor, quite funny actually, but it rubbed a lot of guys the wrong way. I think it affected Carl to the point where he couldn’t play hard for Dick.
Darrell Johnson was our pitching coach. He didn’t say much to me. What pitching advice I did get came from my peers. Lee Stange or Ray Culp would discuss certain situations with me or the tendencies of certain hitters, what they liked to swing at on a particular count. The best piece of advice I got was given to me by Ron Kline. Ron had been in the majors for seventeen years and had led the league in saves in 1965. But now that he was at the end of the road, I used to sit next to him in the bullpen, hoping to grab any bits of information he would occasionally drop. One afternoon he educated me on the various grips he employed, showing me how he held his fastball, his curve, and even his spitter. When he reached the end of the lesson, he cautioned me to pay strict attention because he was about to reveal the most important grip of all. Holding out two fingers and a thumb semicircled in front of his lips, he proudly announced, “This is how I hold my shot glass.”
I actually surprised a lot of people on the club. When they got me they had heard I was a control pitcher. So I finished the season 1–3, with twenty-eight walks in fifty-two innings pitched. My only win came in relief against Detroit on September 20. I was really horseshit, but I did manage to get fortyfive strikeouts. I was throwing a lot of fastballs. Dick was using me in short relief, and I never had enough time to work my breaking stuff in. I was getting so pumped up for the brief time I was in there that I was throwing the ball by hitters whenever they weren’t walking or kicking my ass. By the time I had calmed down enough to throw my proper stuff, I was pinch-hit for. I must have been very nervous, though I wasn’t aware of any preconceived anxiety over being in the major leagues. When Boston signed me the only thing I worried about was doing well in the minors. There was never any thought given to the majors; I took each day as it came. When I suddenly got called up to the Red Sox, I found myself psychologically unprepared for the jump. So I threw too hard. Ted Williams has said that pitchers are the dumbest people on earth, and I guess he has something there. Nobody had to tell me that my strength was hitting the corners and keeping the ball low. But there were days when the adrenaline would be racing and the ball would say, “Come on, Bill, throw me through that wall,” causing me to rear back and do my Sandy Koufax impersonation. It would work for about two batters. I’d blow both guys away, walk the next batter, and then give up a satellite to a .220 hitter. That would drive Williams and Johnson nuts. Once Johnson came out to me and said, “How can you keep throwing those fastballs when they keep getting creamed?” I told him I was stretching out my arm. He reached down, grabbed his nuts, and said, “Oh, really? Try stretching this!” He was right. I had no business going away from my strength, especially when it caused me to play right into the hands of my weakness.
A lefthander’s first good look at the left-field wall, the Green Monster in Fenway, is an automatic reason for massive depression. And that’s when it’s viewed from the dugout. From the vantage point of the mound it looms even closer. I felt like I was scraping my knuckles against it every time I went into my motion, and I was always afraid that it would fall down and kill Rico Petrocelli at short. That wall psyched out a lot of good pitchers. Great control pitchers would come into Fenway and suddenly not have it that day. They’d pitch too fine, walk a few guys, and then be forced to stand back to watch the rocket’s red glare. It could be demoralizing. Everybody talks about the advantage right-handed pull hitters like Petrocelli gained there, but left-handed hitters do almost as well. Ted Williams, Yaz, and Freddy Lynn won batting titles playing there, and they swing from the left side. It’s just not a park built with the welfare of pitchers in mind.
The key to pitching at Fenway, whether you are right-handed or left-handed but especially if you’re a lefty, is to keep the ball outside and away on righthanders and down and in on lefthanders. Make that ball sink to lefthanders. Your lefty hitter is going to try to shoot your pitch the other way so he can jack it against or over the wall. If he can’t get the ball up he’s going to hit a two-hopper to the second baseman. You can make the temptation of the wall work for you. The Monster giveth, but the Monster can also taketh away. You just have to know what to feed it. I had some success with it. When I started winning big for the Sox, the writers compared me to Mel Parnell, the lefty who pitched for Boston in the forties and fifties. I checked up on him and discovered that Parnell had a smashed middle finger that caused him to throw the ball off his index finger, making his pitches sink. That was interesting. I was always having the callouses shaved off my index finger. Obviously, we both threw off the same digit and were able to keep the ball on the ground, enabling us to win a lot of games in Boston. I also found one legend about the Monster that should be exposed as a lie. The markings claim it is 315 feet from home plate at its nearest point. Not by my measurements. I once threw a screwball to Luis Aparicio while he was still with the Chicago White Sox. He dented the wall with it. Without the benefit of a tape measure, my ego will not permit me to believe that there is any way Luis could hit my screwgie 315 feet on a line. Somebody is lying.
It did not take long to get used to life in the majors. I was never overawed by ballplayers, and everybody on the club treated each other as equals. Yaz was the biggest name on the team, but he was one of the first to introduce himself to me. He really tried to make me feel at home. The guys on the club would good-naturedly get on his case in a heartbeat. Everytime the team bus passed a junkyard, someone would yell, “There’s Yaz’s Ford on the left.” They were constantly making fun of his clothes. He had this mock London Fog raincoat that cost him about ten dollars. We spent hours trying to hatch new plots to steal it and put it out of its misery. Someone would confiscate it and stick it in a garbage can. You really couldn’t tell it apart from the rest of the stuff in there, but Yaz would always find it. He’d go digging through the trash, haul it out, smooth out the wrinkles, and put it back on. I think we finally had papers served on it. We had it deported as an illegal alien.
The big chuckle when I first joined the team came over Big Yaz Bread. I’m not crazy about ballplayers doing commercial endorsements, but if you’re going to do them, you had better be well paid, because your teammates will give you nothing but grief for it. And then try to get a free sample. Free or not, I wasn’t going near that bread. It looked like there should have been a surgeon general’s label on the side of it, warning, “This bread contains no vitamins known to man.” I believe you could take a whole loaf, grind it up, and then use it to make one good golf ball. It would explode in your stomach and force your throat to expand like an accordion. I’m not sure, but I think it might have been Phil Gagliano who delivered the best line I ever heard about the stuff. Phil bit into a slice, spit it
out, made a face, and said, “We should feed this to the Orioles. Then we’d win the fucking pennant!” That was the sort of line that was guaranteed to break up everyone. Especially George Scott.
Scott was great. He loved to laugh and play baseball and he loved to hit those long taters. Everybody knows what a great first baseman he was, but he was also the best third baseman I’d ever seen. He played a lot of third the year I joined the club, and he was awesome. The only reason he wasn’t used there regularly was because he was an even better first baseman. George deserved every Gold Glove he ever won. Once Bert Campaneris, while he was still a shortstop with Oakland, bunted the ball on me down the first-base line. He pushed it, but he didn’t quite get it past me. I came in and made the play in one motion, but I got off a bad throw, skipping the ball through Campy’s legs. George went inside the bag on the foul side of the line and picked the ball cleanly from between Campy’s legs for an out. That was remarkable.
The Red Sox were blessed with a lot of power when I came up. Yaz hit over forty homers that year, Reggie Smith hit twenty-five, and Tony Conigliaro hit twenty. That was the year of Tony’s comeback. He had been beaned by Jack Hamilton two years earlier, an accident that nearly blinded him. He hit the ball well for us that year, but there was always something crazy happening to him. The weirdest episode occurred when he hit a home run against Seattle and wrenched a back muscle while doing it. By the time he reached second base he was in such agony that he had to be replaced by a pinch runner, who finished the trot home for him. I had never seen that happen before.
Tony’s brother Billy came up in ’69. He was a good ballplayer who did everything well and made good contact at the plate. But everybody expected him to be another Tony C, and he wasn’t big enough. He didn’t have Tony’s power. I think living in his brother’s shadow hurt him. He would have been much better off if he had come up in a different organization.
