Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud

by Joe Pepitone

  I’d never seen anything like the scene at this party. First of all, it was at this lavish place up some canyon, and there were a dozen movie stars and starlets present. We got there late, after the ball game, and there were already people in the pool—naked. They were not swimming. And anyone who felt like joining the action, guys and girls, they simply dropped their drawers and dove in. Couples were disappearing into rooms, and when the rooms were all occupied, couples started balling right out in the open, all over the place. Incredible! The later it got, the wilder it got.

  Finally, I turned to Mantle and said, “When are we going home, Mickey? We gotta play tomorrow.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” he said.

  I was watching the balling on the couch over here, the balling on the floor over there . . . and I began to think less and less about baseball.

  I saw a girl that all kinds of guys were after. She was small, blond, gorgeous, wearing one of those short-short skirts and the high boots that were already “in” in California then. I kept watching her, she seemed so cool, rejecting in a nice way all the guys who moved on her. I was afraid to even approach her, talk to her. But she saw me staring at her and started talking to me. She said her name was Alice, that she was nineteen and trying to get into modeling. We stood there for quite a while, rapping, rapping, rapping with one another, and the next thing I knew we were upstairs balling, balling, balling.

  She was the best piece of ass I’d ever had. When we finished, I just lay there staring at her, she was so good, so beautiful. Every time we went to L.A. after that, I saw Alice. I really got close to her, met her mother, the whole thing. It wasn’t until three years later that I learned—when her mother called me to see if Alice was with me in New York—that Alice had been thirteen years old that first night I was with her. L.A.—what a zoo!

  But that’s where the partying started for me, in Los Angeles, as it did for a lot of other ballplayers. Over the years, I’ve heard any number of guys say they might never have gotten into banging around so much if they hadn’t been exposed to that wild, wide-open scene. I know it really turned me on, and that I thought, with this going on, what the fuck am I doing being married?

  That thought was strengthened by living in New York. Barbara and I took an apartment in the Bronx, which I didn’t spend a whole lot of time in. I’d always thought of the Copacabana as being the greatest night spot in the city. I remembered reading as a kid that Mantle and Ford and Hank Bauer and Billy Martin, and the rest of the Yankee stars who liked a good time, all hung out at the Copa. At least until the night they got involved in a well-publicized scrap there.

  One night, early in the ’62 season Tommy Tresh and his wife and Barbara and I went to the Copa for dinner and a show. Sammy Davis, Jr. was on stage, and the joint was packed, full of celebrities I recognized. I kept pointing them out to Barbara: “There’s Joey Bishop.” “There’s Phil Foster.” “There’s Buddy Hackett.” I was thrilled.

  The Copa was also liberally sprinkled with older Italians in dark, expensive suits who sent drinks over to our table and came over to meet me. Many of them spoke in very deep, hoarse voices as they wished me well with great sincerity and emotion. “You gotta make us Italians proud, Joey,” they’d say. “We read all about ya. There aren’t many Italians in the big leagues wit your kinda ability. We’re countin’ on ya to make us proud.” Then they’d walk away with their huge diamond rings, and Carmine or one of the other maitre d’s would say, “That’s a very important man, Joe,” and nod his head. “Very important.” Translation: They were racket guys, some of the biggest names in the New York area.

  They impressed the shit out of me. In my eyes they were more important people than Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, or Mickey Mantle. I guess it was because I was born and raised in Brooklyn, had been around racket guys all my life, and had held them in awe as everyone in the neighborhood did. I remembered how I’d looked up to the small-timers who used to drive down the block selling hot merchandise off the docks, remembered the guy we’d bought the 400-dollar German hi-fi set from for 50 dollars the year before I’d signed, how I’d helped him unload it, carry it up to our apartment. I thought of Jimmy the Bug and how I used to find his numbers books under our doormat. He’d stash his record of the day’s business there rather than climb the extra flight of stairs, and no one would think of touching them. Jimmy the Bug was one of my biggest heroes as a kid, and here I was receiving tributes from guys who were so far over him in their mutual business that I couldn’t believe it. These were kings of the racket trade, superstars, and they all wanted to be my friend.

  I started hanging out at the Copa, without Barbara, because the second time I went there, alone, the racket guys not only made me feel good but they invited me to go to one of their private after-hours places. None of them had their wives with them. They were out having a good time, and to them good times meant sex. These guys had chicks in every borough, who welcomed them and their friends with open thighs. No chatting, no courting, no nothing. This was a different type of sex than I’d ever known. I didn’t have to go out and meet a girl and go through a whole big routine to get her into the sack. These girls were there. “Joey, I’d like you to meet this girl,” a racket guy would say, “you’ll like her. She got all the moves. I mean, nice. Here, take this number: Ginny. Mention my name, say I thought you two would like each other.”

  He’d hand me the phone number. I’d call. Terrific, she’d say at four-thirty in the morning. She’d meet me at the door in a see-through robe, or bare-ass naked, say, “Hi!” and sure enough she’d have all the moves . . . and then some. No talk, no bullshitting around—instant flesh on flesh, flesh in flesh, and YEAH! Screams of pleasure! At least, I thought they were, and many of them certainly were. Passion! Which translated to me as: I not only love you, Joe, but you’re great, an all-star lover.

  I really dug being with the racket guys. I always needed to feel that people liked me, and these people liked me. If I was Joe Schmoe, they wouldn’t have bothered with me. I knew this. The fact that they made a lot of me—liked to sit around talking baseball, liked to take me different places, fix me up—convinced me that I was somebody. Hell, I wasn’t even a regular with the Yankees, I was just a “scrubeenie,” as Phil Linz and Johnny Blanchard and the rest of us substitutes called ourselves, and these racket guys made me feel like I was a star. These important men wanted to be with me. Maybe they looked at me as a young Italian who was on his way up in a legitimate business, who didn’t have to worry about being sent away for ten years tomorrow, and maybe they wished they could be that way, could live like me. I don’t know. But some of these older racket guys had spent twenty-five, thirty years of their lives in jail, and the way I was trying to make a living had to look better to them.

  I knew they looked out for me, always protected me. Any time there was trouble, some problem coming down, one of them would brush by me right away when I’d come into the Copa and whisper, “You’re not with us tonight.” Or simply, “Hello, Joey, but good-bye for tonight,” with a wink. I remember sitting at a Copa table one night with ten of the biggest racket people in New York. The club photographer started taking pictures. The racket guys on either side of me said, “Hey, Joey—aren’t ya worried about this? You want we should get those negs?”

  “What, worried? I don’t care about pictures,” I said. “All I know is you’re nice people.” There were probably six undercover detectives taking Minox pictures every night at the Copa. I didn’t care.

  I didn’t know what any of the racket guys did. I didn’t want to know. That’s the way it had been when I was growing up. We always heard when anything happened, when anyone got muscled. But it was always within the families, who were vying among themselves for territory or whatever. If somebody got shot or killed, it was always another racket person, never an innocent bystander. I never personally saw or even heard of them hurting anyone I knew, anyone who wasn’t in the racket business. The wise guys, as we called them, were always
nice, just people in a different business, doing their own thing and risking a lot of years in jail. As I look back, I really don’t know if they were any worse than corporations that sell us inferior products at inflated prices and refuse to make good on the products when they don’t do what they are supposed to do. Or Vice-Presidents of the United States who make illegal deals for under-the-table money, lie about it, and then don’t go to jail. Or Presidents who cheat on their taxes, who cover up burglaries and invasions of privacy and lie and rip off the country, and receive a pardon.

  I very seldom went to the Copa with other players. Mainly, I’d go with friends from the old neighborhood—Lemon, Patty Boy, and a few girls I’d invite. I wanted to show my old friends that I hadn’t forgotten them, show them what a big man I was. I’d walk in with Lemon and Patty Boy and three good-looking chicks, get a table right up front, the maitre d’ would bring over a bottle of J & B immediately, I’d pour drinks, tell everyone to order anything they wanted, and pick up the whole tab at the end of the night. I knew I was showing off, but I genuinely enjoyed giving friends a good time. And when the top racket guys would stop by my table, invite me over to theirs, take me backstage to meet the entertainers, a damn shiver would go down my spine. I met the biggest celebrities—singers, actors, actresses I had listened to or seen in the movies for years—and I really dug it. I felt so goddamn tall.

  I’d be out almost every night the Yankees were in town, at the Copa, The Lounge, wherever the racket guys hung out. And along about four in the morning, one of them would say, “C’mon, Joey, we’re all goin’ to Rudy’s.” I remember several nights sitting with these guys in an after-hours place till 8 A.M., just rapping, flirting with waitresses, enjoying the scene. I was twenty-two years old, hyper, liked to be going, going, going all the time, and I just didn’t need much sleep. I’d go right to the ball park and be fresh, full of energy.

  Staying out all night didn’t help my marriage, didn’t do anything positive for the vibes between Barbara and me. But I was more concerned with who I’d meet when I was with these guys—with the ego-swelling feelings I’d get—than I was with making my marriage work, being with her, taking care of her. That’s where my head was then.

  The racket guys really pushed me to do well. They kept saying, “You gotta make us proud, so when you go out there, we want you to bear down, do good. And if we can help you in any way—any way, Joey—you just let us know.”

  One night, I’ll be goddamned if a couple of them didn’t think they’d come up with a way to get me off the bench. We were sitting around in an after-hours place when this guy turned to me, very seriously, nodding his head.

  “We’re gonna help ya out with that little problem ya got wit Skowron,” he said.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “He’s gonna have a little accident.”

  “No, no! I’ll win the job on my own next year.”

  “Joey—why wait? We’ll just get in touch wit him after a game, and the next day ya got the job. No problem. He won’t play real good with cracks in his legs.”

  “Shit, no! Don’t do that,” I pleaded.

  “Joey,” another guy said, “he’s not supposed to be playin’ ahead of a Italian.”

  They were not kidding. I finally made them promise not to go near Moose Skowron. But I began to see that while being around these guys could be fun, it could also be a little frightening. Of course, I was floating so high at this time, with my whole glorious future in front of me, that 1 wasn’t really frightened of anything.

  But one day, I have to admit, I got shook up by the racket guys. One of them, whom I’ll call Vince, phoned me at my apartment and said, “Joey, did ya happen to go to a party two nights ago?”

  “A party? No, I stayed home that night.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what I figured. Look, do me a favor and come on down here—we’re at The Lounge—right away. I’ll be at the bar wit a bunch of the guys. You come over and say hello, just don’t mention your name. Would ya do that?”

  “Sure, I can be there in twenty minutes. But what’s the problem? You sound angry.”

  “Well, some shitface here is fucking over your name, and I want to straighten this out.”

  When I walked into the saloon, Vince said, “Hiya, kid, come here and have a drink with us.” I recognized six of the seven guys at the bar and nodded to them. Vince said to the guy I didn’t know, “Say, tell the kid about the party ya were at the other night.”

  “Christ,” the guy said, “you won’t believe it. It was the worst fucking thing I ever saw. Joe Pepitone was at this party, and there was a lot of fucking going on, naked girls running all over the place. Well, right in front of everybody—Pepitone went down on seven girls.”

  I was speechless, because the older Italians have this thing about sex where the man never demeans himself with a woman. And to them, going down on a woman was the most demeaning act you could perform. You just didn’t do it, period. At this time even I believed this, and had never gone down on a woman—-didn’t until a year or so later. I’d always wanted to, but I was hung up by those old beliefs that had been hammered into me.

  Vince said to the guy, “You know Joe Pepitone, huh?” “Sure.”

  Vince nodded. “And you saw him go down on seven girls?” “Yeah, right in front of everyone.”

  Vince nodded. Then he pointed at me. “You ever seen this kid before?”

  The guy stared at me. “No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”

  Vince said, “This is Joe Pepitone.” Then he punched the guy in the belly— “And he don’t go down on cunts!”—and chopped him on the back of the neck. The guy went down on his face, and Vince kicked him in the side. “You come around here spreading lies like that about this kid!” he yelled, furious. Several of the others at the bar stepped over and kicked the guy, cursing him angrily.

  Vince grabbed my wrist. “C’mon, Joey, kick this sonofabitch!”

  “No, Vince, I don’t want to kick him,” I said.

  “Kick him! He disgraced you!”

  “Vince,” I said, “I can’t be bothered with a piece of shit like him.”

  “He called you a muff diver! Kick him!”

  By this time the guy was all bloody, groaning, barely conscious. “Look at him, Vince,” I said. “He’ll never say anything like that again.” Then I leaned over and jabbed a finger at the battered hulk on the floor and yelled, “But watch your mouth, bastard—or next time I will kick you!”

  They picked him up like a corpse, carried him to the door, and tossed him into the gutter.

  Of course, when I finally did start going down on girls—if there was any chance at all of them running into racket guys—I’d tell them, “Don’t ever mention this to anyone, honey.” I had them cross their hearts and sign their names in blood.

  IX

  “I’ll have your job next year, Moose.”

  Playing as a fill-in, I never knew when I was going to get a start until the last minute, and that was a disappointment. I couldn’t get tickets for members of my family who wanted to see me play when I never knew if I’d be playing. My grandfather was particularly anxious to see me in action, he was so proud of me. The first game that I got word two days in advance that I was going to start, I had my Uncle Louie bring Vincent Caiazzo to the stadium. It was a night game against the Angels, and I got them great seats, right behind the visiting dugout. I think they were the first fans in their seats.

  During batting practice, I popped three balls into the right-field stands, then I trotted over to see my grandfather, who was beaming from ear to ear. “You gone do good tonight, Joe,” he said. “I feel.”

  We chatted for a couple of minutes, and then Gene Autry, one of the Angel owners, sat down in the box right next to my grandfather. I introduced myself to him, then introduced my grandfather and my Uncle Louie. Gene Autry was very gracious, and he smiled politely when my grandfather said, “Oh, you the cowboy from the movie!”

  In
the game, Leon Wagner of the Angels hit two home runs and drove in three runs. I hit two home runs and drove in four runs. That was the final score, 4–3. Louie told me that after the game my grandfather tapped Gene Autry on the arm and said, “Hey, you shoulda have my grandson on your team, Gene Autry. Then you win.”

  I think I went something like o-for-30 at bat after that. But I didn’t get upset. I realized I just couldn’t stay sharp at the plate when I was sitting down four or five days between starts. I knew damn well I could hit major-league pitching if I got a chance to play regularly. In fact, I kept teasing Bill Skowron: “I’ll have your job next year, Moose.”

  When we were up at West Point for our annual exhibition game, a number of the guys boxed in the cadet ring. Hector Lopez, who displayed anything but good hands in a baseball glove, had very good hands in boxing gloves. He beat the shit out of anyone who went in with him. Ellie Howard knocked Jim Bouton out cold, and there was a lot of cheering, because Bouton already wasn’t the most popular Yankee even though he was a helluva pitcher. Skowron came over to me with a little grin on his face and said, “Come on, Pepi, let’s you and I get in there.”

  “Get lost, idiot,” I said, moving away from him. “There’s no way I’m going in that ring with you.” His body had earned him the nickname Moose, and it was a very accurate description. I don’t think I was a great favorite of Skowron’s from the first time I was sent in to replace him for defensive purposes. As I trotted past him, I said, “Jeez, Moose, you must have the baaad glove.”

  Early in the season I roomed on road trips with Skowron, who was a conscientious player. He never missed curfews. Since I seldom observed them, we were not ideal roommates. He claimed I woke him when I came in late, but I never noticed him even stir. He also slept like a moose. He kept warning me that he was going to lock me out one night—and I’ll be goddamned if he didn’t.