The Wrong Stuff

by Bill Lee

  There were two great comebacks that year. The Yankees came back from a fourteen-game deficit to catch us, and then we came back to tie them for first on the final day of the season. Give Zimmer some credit for that. He didn’t panic and neither did the club.

  Zimmer still managed to screw up our playoff game against the Yankees, though. He named Torrez to start. Nothing against Mike. He was a good pitcher and had given us a good year. But he had pitched badly in the second half of the season, and the Yankees always had eaten his lunch. That was my game to win. I had the Yankees’ number, and my arm was sound. On the morning of October 2, hours before the game, I grabbed our pitching coach Al Jackson and said, “Al, I can go today. I can give you at least five good innings.” Realizing that he wasn’t convinced, I picked up a ball and offered to throw a line drive, from the mound, over the center-field wall. Al laughed and told me not to bother. He liked me and he had said he wanted to get me into the game. But he knew there was no chance. Zimmer’s dislike of me was so large, he would rather lose the pennant than let me pitch.

  That playoff game flashed before my eyes. Yaz hit the home run to give us a lead against Guidry, and the fans shook Fenway with their celebration. But I knew we needed more than just that one run. I didn’t change that assessment when we scored another run in the sixth. I knew Mike wouldn’t pitch a shutout, and I knew he couldn’t go nine. He had pitched so many innings in the final weeks of the season that it was bound to take its toll. I could see he was tiring in the fifth. I wanted to run in and give him a rest. When Bucky Dent hit the three-run homer in the seventh, I flew into a rage. Not at Mike, who had pitched a gutsy game. My anger was directed at my favorite manager for not getting Torrez out of there when he was obviously spent.

  With one out in the bottom of the eighth, New York led, 5–4, but we had men on first and third. Gossage was pitching, and all I could think was, “Jesus, there’s a Carbo wind blowing out of here. Bernie could wrap this game up for us right now.” But Bernie was in Cleveland, watching the game on television. That crucial situation when he could win the pennant for us had made its appearance, just as I had predicted it would. The curse of Carbo was upon us. Gossage struck out Hobson and Scott; they never had a chance. Bob Bailey had pinch-hit against the Goose earlier and had taken three strikes. He claimed at least one of them sounded low. Bernie was having the last laugh. Gossage was a righthanded fastball pitcher, and Bernie was a left-handed fastball hitter. All three of those at-bats were tailor-made for him. Hobson, Scott, and Bailey were right-handed hitters, overmatched by the Goose. As the three of them struck out, I sat in the bullpen wondering if Zimmer and the front office finally realized what Carbo had meant to this team.

  We came close to tying it in the ninth, but in the end, Gossage got Yaz to pop up to Nettles with the tying run ninety feet from home plate. I sat in the bullpen in a state of shock. I wanted to run over to the Yankees and say, “Come on, let’s play another game. You guys won the division, that’s all taken care of. Let’s just play one more for fun.” I didn’t want the season to be over. I wanted more baseball. More Fenway.

  I knew there was no way I would be back there next year. I walked out onto the field after everybody had left, and I said good-bye to the foul poles and the bleachers. And I thought about the good times.

  I didn’t think about the games I had won there. I thought about the friends I had made. Most of them were teammates. How could I say good-bye to Yaz, or Fisk, or Luis? They had become a part of me. I thought of some of the writers—George Kimball and Leigh Montville, to name two—who had written nice things about me over the years. And I stopped to remember other friends, some of whom I hadn’t thought of in years.

  Bob Veale. I could never get over how much he looked like Willie Stargell. He and I would go bass fishing in Winter Haven. All those Southern good old boys would be out on the lake, whistling “Dixie” and wearing Confederate Army caps, when I would come rounding a corner, rowing this six-foot-four, 260-pound black gentleman. Bob would smile at them and say, “Good morning, how are you doing on this fine day?” Suddenly, there would be a wide circle between our boat and theirs. Didn’t bother us. We always caught a lot of bass. When Bob joined the Red Sox, he didn’t have control of his breaking ball, but he could throw just as hard as he ever did with the Pirates in his heyday. Oh, was he strong! He used to build up his arm by throwing an eight-pound shot from left field to right field. He threw it like a baseball. I tried to catch it once. That should prove how dumb I am. That sucker pulled me down to the ground, and buried my glove hand two feet under Fenway sod. Thank God, I caught it in the webbing or it would have taken off my right arm.

  Mike Garman had been a relief pitcher with us. I loved to be around him; he was so unpredictable. Once, after he got beat in a ball game, he decided it would lift his spirits if we stopped into a local tavern. On arriving, he announced that he wanted a shot from every bottle of liquor on the bar shelves. And he wanted the shots to be doubles. After about eight drinks, he became Hopalong Cassidy, yelling, “Yee-hah! Let’s go and party.” We went out and got into his car. Since there was no way I was going to let him drive, he insisted that he at least be allowed to give directions. He barked, “Turn left. Now, turn right. Make another left, and then turn right again.” After half an hour of this we were still in the bar’s parking lot. Mike, having tired of playing navigator, rolled down his window, hung his body outside the car, and threw up for forty-five minutes. Then he passed out.

  Randy Miller never got an opportunity to pass out in the major leagues, and that was too bad. He was a pitcher who bounced around the Boston farm system for a couple of years. He once told me that curveballs did not curve. It was space that was curving. The ball was going straight, but if you threw it slower than the speed of the earth’s rotation, the earth would curve up into it. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but I sure kept hoping Randy would make the team. It would have given me someone to talk to.

  How could I ever forget Dick Pole? He had gone through a bad stretch in 1976, pitching worse with each successive game. The word was he was going to be traded, released, or sent back to the minors. After a bad outing in Chicago, he sat in the back of the bus, drinking out of a flask and singing, “I’m gone, yes I’m gone.”

  Ballplayers do drink on the team bus. Why do you think so many of them carry attaché cases? It’s to store their stash. Dick had consumed five or six beers immediately after the ballgame, and had a few more drinks on the bus, so he was fried, but remorseful. Carlton and I decided to cheer him up by taking him out for a night on the town. After having dinner at the Four Torches, we decided to have a drink in every bar we passed on the way back to our hotel. I discovered an amazing thing that evening: There sure are a lot of bars in the Windy City. By the time we got to a place called Faces, we were hammered. While we were there, someone grabbed a microphone, and revealed that there was a celebrity from the baseball world in the audience. Fisk thought this was a reference to him. He stood up just as the announcer concluded his introduction by saying, “. . . so let’s hear a warm welcome for the Voice of the Chicago White Sox, Mr. Harry Carey.” Carlton responded by yelling, “Big fucking deal!” Not a good thing to say in a room filled with Chicagoans. They love Carey more than life. They almost had to call the National Guard to get us out of there in one piece.

  I thought about the Yankees. I hated what they stood for, but I enjoyed playing against them, especially when I beat them. Everytime we played them it was always a great ballgame. Except once.

  Thinking about them brought to mind Lou Piniella. He was my favorite Yankee. It amazed me how he could take all of Steinbrenner’s bullshit and still go out and do the job at the plate. It was as though he fed off all the crap. I loved his insights. He would say you can be hitting .300 at the end of June, and you can be hitting .300 at the end of August, but, if you’re a .250 hitter, you’ll be hitting .250 when the season ends. He once hit a home run off me after I had thrown him one too many
fastballs inside. After the game, he saw me and said, “Bill, you can come into my kitchen, but don’t you dare sit down to eat.”

  I also liked Mickey Rivers, even if he did punch me in the back of the head. I enjoyed watching him walk; his heels never touched the ground. And he always had an expression on his face that made it appear as if he had spent a lifetime staring into the Great Gorge. Listening to him talk was a wonder; it was as though he wasn’t on speaking terms with the English language. He was once quoted as saying, “I don’t get upset over things I can control, because if I can control them there’s no sense in getting upset. And I don’t get upset over things I can’t control, because if I can’t control them there’s no sense in getting upset.” Out of the mouths of babes . . . After hearing that, I could never again think of him as Mick the Quick. I thought it would be far more apropos to call him Altered States.

  I fixed on a mental image of Zimmer. A reporter had once asked me, “If Billy Martin is a rat, what is Don Zimmer?” I answered, “Don is a gerbil. A cute, puffy-cheeked creature.”

  Zimmer didn’t appreciate that, and I guess I should have apologized. To the gerbils. No sense insulting defenseless animals. I think my problems with Don stemmed from the fact that I always had an answer for him. For example, when the Red Sox had visited Puerto Rico for some exhibition games, he had told us that sports jackets were required apparel for the trip. I wore my jogging top. When he tried to reprimand me for it, I said, “You said we were to wear sports jackets, right? Well, this is a jacket, and jogging’s a sport.” Zimmer didn’t like that; he thought ballplayers should be seen and not heard, so we never got along. That was still no reason for him to put personal feelings ahead of what was best for the team. When we were taking our swan dive, he turned me into the Boston version of the Maytag repairman, making it impossible for me to help the club.

  I put him out of my mind. I wanted to concentrate on only the best things. Over the last few years, as baseball in America had escaped the clutches of the Industrial Revolution, the game had enjoyed a rebirth. Stadiums encouraged a laid-back form of active participation. Fans could come in, watch the game, drink a beer, and talk about current events. They could do all this without missing the beat of what was happening on the field. The ballparks had become like those coffeehouses in Austria, where Freud and Jung used to drink coffee and bullshit with each other. My thoughts turned to the fans. I loved Boston’s fans. They were baseball purists who lived for the game. They had supported us through the best and worst of times, demanding only that we give our best and that everyone have a good time.

  Reverend Smith and his wife were two of those fans. They used to sit out in the bleachers and root for us. I enjoyed entertaining them and the rest of the people out there. During batting practice, I would go out to the outfield and put on a show, hitting fungoes straight up into the air and catching them as they came back down. Once, while doing this, I slipped and fell. The ball smoked me in the chest, but I still caught it, lying prone. I got a standing ovation for that maneuver. Everybody thought it was part of my act. I was hurting. I ran off the field hyperventilating, and had to crawl around the clubhouse for an hour, trying to catch my breath.

  Mike Mulkern was a bleacher bum. I would kick bubble gum into the bleachers, and he would stand up and act as a goal post. My first couple of kicks were wide, but I soon found the range and would put the gum through his outstretched arms regularly. After a couple of weeks of that, he came down near the field and invited me to play football with him and his friends at Harvard Stadium. I became a regular member of their crew, and he became my best friend. With the help of him and our little group, I once played three games in one day. I pitched a shutout for the Boston Phoenix in an early morning softball game, beat the Orioles at Fenway that afternoon, and played on the winning side in a touch football game with Mulkern that night. It was one of the great days in sports history.

  I knew I was going to miss all my friends at the Eliot Lounge. I want Sparky Anderson to know that being able to go there is better than going to the Hall of Fame.

  I knew in my heart that I did not want to leave Boston, but I also knew that what I wanted no longer mattered. I had always said that, due to my outspoken manner, the Red Sox front office would get rid of me the moment I became a mediocre pitcher. I had gone 10–10 in 1978, and that was as mediocre as a record could get. Any day now, my body would be floating through Boston Harbor, drifting out toward the far reaches of the Atlantic.

  On December 7, 1978, Zimmer called me with the word. I had been traded to the Montreal Expos for infielder Stan Papi. It was the thirty-seventh anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The battleships and I had been kamikazed on the same date. My first reaction was to wait to hear who else the Red Sox got. But Stan was all that Montreal gave up. I couldn’t believe it. He was a lifetime .230 hitter. I thanked Zimmer for calling and hung up. A few days later, an official notice came from the Red Sox. It said, “Dear Bill, you have been (check one):— Sold—Traded—Released.” I liked that. The personal touch.

  The initial shock of the news wore off quickly. I had been prepared for it. I comforted myself with the thought that I wasn’t leaving the Red Sox; the Red Sox were Mr. Yawkey and Dick O’Connell. This team was just a front for a finance company in Cincinnati. They were so anxious to get rid of me, they had practically given me away. Zimmer and Sullivan didn’t like my mouth and had convinced themselves that I was washed up. Well, no matter what they thought, I had a little surprise for them. I knew my arm had completely healed, and I was determined to win so many games with the Expos that everytime Zimmer or Sullivan looked at my stats, they would kick themselves. Right in the balls.

  9

  Being traded to Montreal and the National League gave me a chance to be a complete player again. I would be allowed to go up to the plate with a bat in my hands. For that reason alone, the move saved me from the onset of terminal brain damage.

  I was excited about playing in a new league and being reunited with Expo manager Dick Williams. I was a pioneer, ready to explore a vast, uncharted area of the baseball universe. Shortly after the transaction was announced, Mary Lou and I were flown up to Montreal for a press conference. We were met at the airport by Sidney Maislin, a part-owner of the club, and his limo. He drove us to the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, telling us along the way how happy he was to have me with the Expos. The day was surrealistic. There was a lightly falling snow, but the climate was warm and sunny. Later that evening, the team held a dinner reception in my honor. I was getting turned on by the way the press and the city were reacting to me. The energy generated by an organization can make or break a player. This exhibition was a revelation, causing me to think, God, the people who run this game really know how to drag you down, but they also know how to throw a party. I had forgotten that.

  The Expos obviously wanted to make it clear that they didn’t care about what had gone on between me and management in the past. It was as if they were saying, “Okay, Lee. We’re going to treat you right and see what happens.” During the dinner I was presented with a bat. Attached to it was a note which read, “Hope you still remember how to use this.” One of the executives apologized for not having time to get my name inscribed on it. Examining the bat barrel, I discovered that they had given me a Bob Bailey model. I told them, “Oh, don’t worry. This will be fine. This sucker ought to have a lot of wood left in it. Bob never got it off his shoulder last October in Fenway.”

  In spring training, I found that Dick hadn’t changed. He was still the same man and manager. Williams runs a very professional camp. Coaches and players know exactly what is expected of them, and there’s never any time wasted. Dick told me he was glad to see me and that he had been trying to get me for the last year and a half. The first Expo player to greet me was Warren Cromartie. I had come tipping into the Montreal clubhouse in Daytona Beach carrying my knapsack and wearing my beard and my Bermuda shorts. The clubhouse guards tried to run me out of there, yelling, “No, no. The mi
ssion is on the other side of the canal.” Cromartie called them off me, informing them that I was the Expos’ new ace lefthander. Then he turned to me and said, “Well, Willie Lee, my man! How are you doing, Space?” I asked him who he was, and he said, “I’m Cro. Warren Cromartie. And I know all about you. I could not wait for you to get here.” I said, “Warren who?” I wasn’t being unfriendly; I just didn’t know anybody in the National League. I did see a familiar face in the clubhouse, though. Tony Perez came over to my locker, stuck out his hand, and said, “By the way, thank you very much.” God damned power hitters. They never forget a friendly arm.

  The Red Sox came in to play us an exhibition game, and when I showed up, the Boston writers were standing three deep around my locker, waiting to ask me whether or not there was life after the American League. After fifteen minutes of questioning, one of the writers said, “Bill, there’s one question we have been dying to ask you for a long time. Was there any sort of drug problem on the Red Sox?”

  I answered, “There sure was. I think the entire team abused nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol far too much.”