The Wrong Stuff

by Bill Lee

  We lost the first game, and our lead, when the Tigers beat us, 4–1, behind Mickey Lolich. In the third inning of that game, that funky piece of baserunning I had alluded to earlier occurred. We had Harper on third and Aparicio on first with a man out, when Carl hit what looked like a sure triple. Harper scored, and Aparicio was about to do the same, when he slipped rounding third. He completely missed the bag and was forced to reach back to touch it. Unfortunately for us, Luis’ hand and Carl’s foot reached for third base at exactly the same moment. Two baserunners sharing the same bag is a no-no. Yaz was called out. Instead of a big inning with Lolich on the ropes and ready to be put away, we ended up with only one run. The shock of the mishap took the wind out of our sails. What made the accident so strange—besides the fact that Aparicio was the best baserunner on the club, if not in the league—was the remembrance that the same mix-up, involving the very same players, had also occurred in Detroit on the first day of the season. Lolich was the winner of that game, too. I guess the gods of baseball were trying to give us a clue that this was not to be our year.

  Tiant went against Woody Fryman in the second game of the series. We scored an unearned run in the first, and for five innings it looked as though that would be enough. But Detroit tied it in the sixth. Next inning Luis was able to get only one man out. McAuliffe doubled and then scored on a single by Al Kaline, who took second on the throw home. With Duke Sims, a left-handed hitter at the plate, Kasko came out to the mound and signaled for me to come into the ballgame. This was it.

  My heart was pounding when I set myself on the pitching rubber, but I was no longer nervous. I felt like a wild animal ready to pounce on anything that moved. I liked that feeling; it usually indicated that I was going to do well. That expectation seemed justified when I was able to induce Sims to tap a slow roller back to Aparicio at short. As soon as it left his bat, I thought, That’s an out. But it wasn’t. Playing far back on the slow-moving Sims, Luis was unable to come in quickly enough to make a play on the ball. Sims was safe at first, and Kaline had moved over to third. The next batter, Norm Cash, tried to score Al with a suicide squeeze. Yaz, playing first, raced toward the mound, scooping the ball up in one fluid motion but bobbling it for an error as he tried unsuccessfully to get Kaline at home. The score was 3–1. We got out of the inning without suffering further damage, and I pitched a scoreless eighth, but it wasn’t enough. When we made the final out in the ninth inning, that two-run deficit had remained unchanged.

  After the game the clubhouse was a mortuary. There was no sound except for the whispered by play between the writers and various players, and the sobbing of Yaz in his locker. It was an emotional experience, coming as close as we did only to lose it on the next-to-last day of the season. I felt hollow and a little insane. Trying to console myself with the thought that this had been a character-building experience didn’t work. By the time we left the ballpark I was pissed. In one and two-thirds innings against Detroit, I had given up no earned runs on two base hits. I could have done that kind of job for Kasko all summer. If he had used me instead of locking me in his doghouse, the season would have turned out differently. At least, I thought it would have. Then I asked myself why I was damaging my mind with these poisonous ideas. When I got home I scooped out my brain and tossed it in the dishwasher. After a two-hour cleaning, I put it back in my head and felt as good as new. Last season was over. I was ready for next year.

  5

  The mound is my personal zone. I compete with myself in an attempt to place each pitch more perfectly than the one that preceded it. I could always relate to Kirk Douglas in Young Man with a Horn, trying to strike that note that nobody had ever hit before. I was always trying to throw the perfect sinker.

  Being on the mound puts me in a relaxed state of super-consciousness. The feeling is laid back, but still intense. Everything is slowed down, yet you are able to perceive things at an incredibly fast rate. Line drives shot up the middle may look hard to the observer in the stands, but they never seemed dangerous when they were hit back to me. They floated to the mound in slow motion. When your arm, mind, and body are in sync, you are able to work at peak performance level, while your brain remains relaxed. It’s Zen-like when you’re going good. You are the ball and the ball is you. It can do you no harm. A common bond forms between you and this white sphere, a bond based on mutual trust. The ball promises not to fly over too many walls after you have politely served it up to enemy hitters, and you assure it that you will not allow those same batters to treat the ball in a harsh or violent manner. Out of this trust comes a power that allows the pitcher to take control of what otherwise might be an uncontrollable situation. During those moments on the pitching rubber, when you have every pitch at your command working to its highest potential, you are your own universe. For hours after the game, this sense of completeness lingers. Then you sink back to what we humorously refer to as reality. Your body aches and your muscles cry out. You feel your mortality. That can be a difficult thing to handle. I believe pitchers come in touch with death a lot sooner than other players. We are more aware of the subtle changes taking place in our body and are unable to overlook the tell-tale hints that we are not going to last on this planet forever. Every pitcher has to be a little bit in love with death. There’s a subconscious fatalism there. All baseball players attempt to suspend time, and the bitch of it is we’re only partially successful.

  I felt like I was about to attain a level of mastery in 1973 much like those little bald-headed kids who study Zen with their teachers in the Himalayas. But I didn’t know where I would be making a practical use of my knowledge. There were heavy trade rumors surrounding me during the winter of ’72, rumors that were founded in the truth that Kasko wanted to get rid of me. I asked Eddie about them on the first day of spring training. He didn’t exactly give me a vote of confidence, telling me that no player should be shocked if he’s traded. Hearing that, I went a step further. I asked him what my chances were of sticking with the club. Eddie gave me his most sincere look and said, “Bill, we’re going to have to see. As it stands now, you’ll have to beat out John Curtis and Roger Moret.” Curtis and Moret! I couldn’t believe this. Curtis was a starter and was already penciled into Kasko’s projected rotation for ’73. That meant I had to battle Moret for a spot, and that was crazy. Roger had pitched all of five innings with us the year before, having spent an entire season in the minors. Despite Eddie’s erratic use of me, I did manage to turn in a winning record, and I had the second lowest ERA on the staff. Only Tiant’s was better. None of that meant anything. Eddie had made it quite clear in our discussion that I was battling for Moret’s spot. I thought it should have been the other way around.

  Moret and Curtis did make the club, but that wasn’t enough to keep me from coming north with them. Our pitching had looked awful in exhibition games, and I was one of the few pitchers to have a decent spring, forcing Kasko to keep me on the team. All my spring-training performance did, at first, was win me a spot on the roster. It certainly didn’t get me into any ballgames. Kasko didn’t have me pitch an inning until an April 16 outing against the Tigers. I pitched four and two-thirds innings, giving up two hits and only one earned run. That was a pretty good performance, considering what little work I had been getting. From the day I had pitched my last game in Florida to the day I came on in relief against Detroit, I had gone eighteen days without getting into a box score. I became philosophical about it, figuring Eddie was looking out for my best interests. Pitching on two weeks’ rest, I could have stayed in the majors until I was ninety. And then I would have retired only because of the difficulty I would probably encounter while fielding bunts. Pattin started that game against Detroit. He got jocked, surrendering eight runs in three and two-thirds innings. After yielding a home run to Willie Horton, Pattin charged home plate and started screaming. I freaked. I thought he was yelling at Horton, which, given the fact that Willie is built like a small condominium, was not the wisest thing to do. This was a mis
reading. Marty was actually yelling at umpire Joe Brinkman, who was considerably smaller than Mr. Horton. Willie hit the home run, but Pattin took it out on the umpire. That was the day I decided that Marty was a genius. Three days after that appearance Kasko used me against the Tigers again, this time in relief of Tiant. I pitched five and two-thirds innings, giving up only two runs. I was happy to be getting the work, but both times I had been brought into games that were lost causes. It appeared that Eddie was going to banish me for another season, to mop-up-man’s limbo. That may have been his intention, but, as the season progressed, our pitching continued to get splattered, and I continued to pitch well. Eventually, I was brought into situations when the game was on the line and, when I continued to get people out, Kasko was finally convinced to give me a shot as a starter.

  On May 1 I started against the Rangers and got slammed for ten hits in six innings. I gave up six runs but escaped without the loss. McGlothen was handed that when he gave up the tie-breaking run in relief. I thought I was horseshit, but Kasko said he didn’t think I pitched as badly as the score indicated. I kept waiting for the punch line, but there wasn’t any. Instead he told me I would get another start. As I said, our pitching was really awful. Four days after that debacle against Texas, I went seven and two-thirds innings against the Twins, winning 5–1. Another four days went by, and then I pitched my first major-league complete game, beating Cleveland, 4–3. I was 3–0 with a 2.95 ERA, prompting Eddie to announce that I was part of the regular rotation until further notice.

  I had mixed emotions about starting. I enjoyed the challenge that came from knowing that the first pitch I threw in a game was an important one, and I liked the steady work. It had mopping up in 19–2 ballgames beat by a whole lot. But I hated the four days between starts. It drove me nuts. I play for the fun of the game and the sense of pure competition. But I would still get mad when I lost. I hated losing. As a reliever, if I had a bad outing I could go out and get blitzed that night, waking up the next morning ready to redeem myself. But as a starter I had that gap between games, subjecting me to too many days of penance. Ideally, I would have liked to have been Babe Ruth in his days with the Sox. I would have pitched every fourth day and played the outfield in between starts. That would have been great.

  Of course, these weren’t the days of Ruth. This was 1973, and I wasn’t even allowed to hit anymore. I loved to swing the bat, but pitchers fell victim that season to the designated hitter. The DH rule was the bastard son of Bowie Kuhn and Charlie Finley. This had to be a one-night stand, because it was surely baseball’s oddest coupling. They claimed it would increase offense, but what it also did was force starters to pitch more innings than they should have, thus increasing the risk of injury to their arms. It robbed the game of its strategic possibilities in the late innings and turned every pitcher in the league into half a ballplayer. Once Finley got that aberration in place, he tried to sell baseball on the idea of the three-ball walk as another way to perk up scoring. I wondered why they just didn’t get rid of pitchers altogether. They could have just put the ball up on a tee and let the batters swing away to their hearts’ content. Or better yet, they could have disposed of all the players. Just play out the schedule on a computer. For years I’ve been called a rebel. Well, I’m not. It’s guys like Finley who are the rebels. I’m a baseball traditionalist.

  I hated the DH and all the other new wrinkles that had been introduced in an attempt to corrupt the game. I wanted to go back to natural grass, pitchers who hit, Sunday double-headers, day games, and the nickel beer. And no more instant replays. I want fans paying attention out there. The instant replay used to blow my great-grandfather’s mind. Every time a reprise of a great catch was shown, he’d exclaim, “I don’t believe it, he did it again!” We have to drive these atrocities out of baseball. It will be doing the entire country a great service. Baseball is the belly button of America. If you straighten out the belly button, the rest of the country will follow suit.

  Hitters loved the DH rule. Especially older players who had lost their mobility in the field but could still hit. The Twins had Tony Oliva with his bad knees in that category, and Tommy Davis was the Orioles’ most dangerous hitter, even without an ankle. Our club countered with Orlando Cepeda. He was amazing. I thought if they could ever design a wheelchair that he could hit from, he would have hit .400 and won the MVP award. He put on the most astonishing hitting exhibition I had ever seen in Kansas City. He hit a double into the left-field corner in the first inning. Next time up he doubled into left center. In his third trip to the plate he doubled to right center. In his last at bat, he hit a two-bagger down the first-base line. I had never seen anybody use an entire field that way. Of course, all these shots would have been triples if he could have run at all. It was like watching a right-handed Rod Carew with power but absolutely no speed. Orlando had a great year with the bat for us, but by next season he was gone. The club couldn’t afford to carry a guy who couldn’t play the field. A few years after he left baseball he was picked up for possession of marijuana, as he was departing the States for his hometown in Puerto Rico. I wanted to handle his defense of the charges. I would have had him claim that the pot he was carrying was only for his own personal consumption, and that he had no intention of dealing it. Even if Orlando were carrying about six suitcases filled with the stuff, I would have argued that he expects to live to see his one hundred and twelfth birthday, and the stash only would have lasted until his eighty-second year.

  Tiant used marijuana, but he never smoked it. He put it in a mixture with honey, liniment, and other herbs. He would have it rubbed into his arm a few hours before he pitched. That was the secret of his longevity. One of the trainers massaged it into Luis’ wing. I don’t think he knew what it was, but he was always very happy after working Luis over. He would sit on our bench while Tiant pitched, looking very content.

  I pitched well during my first month as a starter and began to enjoy the responsibility of regular work. Stamina was no problem. I paced myself until I got past the sixth inning, then I pretended I was pitching in short relief. When I did get into trouble, I could turn the ball over to our bullpen. Bob Bolin was having a great year, sharing relief duties with Bob Veale. I loved Bob Veale. Six feet six inches and two hundred thirtyfive pounds of pure gentleman. He was nicknamed Johnson because of his habit of calling everybody on the team Johnson. Bob wasn’t much for remembering names. Also in the pen was a young pitcher named Don Newhauser. He was a righthander who would have been a star if it wasn’t for his habit of hanging upside down in the bullpen. When asked why he did it, he explained that it gave him a different perspective on the ballgame. I could buy that. He had a great arm and a lot of heart, but he fell on his head while hanging upside down in the Kansas City bullpen, hurt his back, and ruined his career. That was a shame. With these guys backing up the starters, our pitching straightened itself out and we started to win ballgames. Only two things marred this happy period for me.

  One was the release of Siebert. Sonny had the best arm on the staff, but Kasko had it in for him. Eddie was of the old school. If you were injured, but there wasn’t any bone showing, you were supposed to play. Sonny was a great physical specimen, a former All-American in basketball, but he was a fragile commodity and could not pitch unless he was 100 percent physically. After he hurt his ankle running on a beach in late ’72, we could not get him to take his regular turn. Kasko never forgave him for that, and he got rid of him—trading him to Texas—the first chance he got. Sonny had been my roommate. He used to stand in front of a mirror at four in the morning, practicing his pitching motion. He was a good guy, but it was tough to sleep with all those lights on. Still, I didn’t think it was a good idea to let him go, and I said so publicly. As luck would arrange it, the next time we faced Texas Siebert was matched against me. I beat him 10–3. I was not surprised to discover that beating him that way didn’t bother me. He was my friend, but between the lines he was just another opponent.

  T
he other incident that cast a temporary pall over the opening weeks of the season was a fistfight with my teammate and biggest admirer, Reggie Smith. Reggie and I had never gotten along. I’m still not sure why. I am sure that he was the greatest piece of baseball machinery that I had ever seen. There wasn’t anything a person could do on the playing field that Reggie couldn’t do better than anybody. He could hit for power and average from both sides of the plate, run like a world-class sprinter, and play center field as well as anybody in the league. He also came equipped with the greatest arm I had ever seen. Once, during a rain delay, Yaz and Smith were sitting in the dugout discussing their arms. They decided to pass some time by having a contest to see who could throw the ball farther. Yaz had a great gun. He jumped out of the dugout, took a running start and heaved the ball from the first-base line to the base of the left-field wall. A great throw. Reggie did not take a running start. Stepping from the dugout, he walked over to the spot Yaz had thrown from, reared back, and threw. We never saw that ball again. It cleared everything. I could not get over the power and majesty of his toss. Reggie would get off a throw like that in a ballgame, and he’d just awe the opposition. But Reggie could never hit a cut-off man, and he was constantly throwing the ball over the third baseman’s head. You couldn’t even back up his throws, they were so fast and high. He loved to show off his arm’s strength, but he had zero accuracy.