Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud

by Joe Pepitone

  Barbara had delivered our second child during the season, Joseph Anthony, Junior. Barbara’s water broke on the drive to Misericordia Hospital, and I saw my son in less than an hour. I was thrilled. He was brand new, pink, and shiny, and he looked just like me. He already had thick black eyebrows.

  I knew that the only reason I was staying married was because of the kids, and Barbara may have felt the same way. We had absolutely nothing going together; I was making no effort to bring us together, and neither was Barbara. The bad vibes, arguments, attacks on one another were constant. But Barbara wanted a house in the suburbs, so we bought a $40,000 colonial in Riveredge, New Jersey. We thought it might change things, which was stupid. We didn’t stand a chance if I didn’t change my lifestyle, and I wasn’t about to. I was still out screwing around all the time. Even when Barbara was with me, I was coming on with other girls right in front of her. If I really dug a girl, I’d give her my home phone number. I was compelled to fuck everything I could, compelled to keep going, night after night, in search of fun, happiness. It surely was an elusive rascal.

  Reflecting on it now, it wasn’t fun, it was wacky. I think I was simply trying to escape through sex the pain that was crouching deep inside my head; the guilt that went back to my father’s death. Each conquest pushed aside for another night the memories I couldn’t bear to think about. Of course, all the time I was accumulating more guilt over the treatment of my family, and while it was small, insignificant, in relation to those feelings about Willie, my self-destructive performance took its toll.

  Soon after we moved into our house, I found that I couldn’t make it with Barbara any more. That didn’t help my head. For years I’d merely had to look at my dick, and it would pop up. Suddenly, I couldn’t do anything with my wife, and I quickly gave up trying. Outside I was always ready, at home always limp. It wasn’t just because I was tired from all the other activity. I was tired after screwing three other girls in one night, but I’d done that in the past and had always managed to take care of my homework. In Riveredge, with my wife I had a perpetual headache. It was sure as hell my fault, not hers.

  I took to sleeping in my daughter’s room to escape from the bad scenes in our bedroom. Eileen and Joseph were the only reasons I came home at all. I was particularly close to Eileen, my firstborn, who was so bright, so much fun to be with. I loved taking her around with me, to parks, shopping, anyplace. I got such a kick out of talking to her, watching her grow. Sometimes, just being with her, pushing her on a swing, I’d choke up and tears would come to my eyes. I’d feel like my heart was going to burst.

  As bad as things were at home, they were nothing but good with the Yankees. The whole baseball scene was a great escape. I dug being with the guys, making them laugh, having their attention focused on me. That was something my father had always had, and I’d always admired it. Most of the guys on the team understood and seemed to enjoy my practical jokes. On one road trip in 1963, I had knocked on the doors of several of the players, and when they opened them, I tossed in lighted firecrackers. Columnist Milton Gross of the New York Post got word of this, and asked shortstop Tony Kubek about me.

  “Joe says we keep him loose,” Tony said, “but he doesn’t realize he’s keeping us loose. He’s our Good Humor man. He talks a lot, and acts up a lot, and keeps thinking of jokes to play, but nobody’s resented him. You just understand that from the beginning he was trying to get the fellows to like him.”

  Right on, Tony! Sometimes, of course, the butt of a practical joke would not think it was all that funny. During spring training in 1964, my roomie Phil Linz really got pissed off at me. One day I was down on the docks in Fort Lauderdale with Bud Zipfel, a young first-baseman, and we saw an enormous swordfish hanging there—and nobody around. We swiped the fish, threw it in my car, and drove to the Yankee Clipper Motel, where the club was headquartered. We carried the slimy monster into my room and put it in Phil’s bed. The sheet just covered it.

  Phil came in about 3 A. M. and, being a thoughtful roommate, didn’t turn on the lights. He undressed and crawled right into bed. I’d been lying there for two hours waiting for him, and it was worth the wait. When he felt that cold smelly thing against his body, he leaped out of bed with a scream and peed in his pants. He put the light on, saw that fish in his bed, and almost hit me.

  “You no-good sonofabitch!” he hollered.

  “Phil, what are you talking about? I didn’t put that thing there. I wouldn’t touch a slimy thing like that.”

  “You put it there, all right, you prick!”

  “Phil, I didn’t! You gotta believe me.”

  He didn’t talk to me for two weeks after that. Everyone else thought it was funny.

  The guys definitely liked to laugh, particularly when we found ourselves in a tough pennant race in ’64. We were in third place in August and had to win thirty games out of our last forty-one to edge out the White Sox by a game. The kidding around did keep the team loose, as Kubek suggested. The guys never tired of ribbing me about my nose, which I couldn’t do a lot to improve, and my hair, which I was constantly rearranging because it was leaving the front of my head at an accelerated pace.

  I remember a typical clubhouse scene one Sunday morning in Kansas City, because Leonard Koppett wrote about it in the New York Times. We were all sitting around watching the introductions for an exhibition football game. I’d won the previous night’s game with a three-run homer, and everyone got on me, imagining me as a pro football player.

  “After Joe caught a pass, he’d tuck his helmet under his arm and comb his hair,” said Whitey Ford.

  “What would you do if there was a fumble, Joe?” Mantle said. “The ball is lying there, and three guys are diving for it. You wouldn’t go near it, would you? You’d say, ‘Aw, come on, fellas,’ and zoom off in the other direction.”

  “He’d be the kind of guy who likes to catch passes in the open,” said Ford.

  “They’d have to design an extra large face mask to cover his nose,” said Bill Stafford.

  “Yeah, and when he lined up at end,” Bouton said, “the referee would stop the game and yell, ‘That face mask is offside.’”

  “I don’t think that’s so terribly funny,” I said in a hurt voice. “I was one of the greatest football players you ever saw in high school.”

  “Bullshit!” everyone yelled, and that’s what it was, but good bullshit. Good for morale.

  I had a little trouble with my own personal morale in ’64, because fans booed me all season long. I guess my error in the ’63 Series had a lot to do with it. And where I made only eight errors in ’63, I made eighteen in ’64. But, hell, I was getting to more balls, covering more ground, than any other first-baseman in the league. I led the league in putouts and assists. So I finally said the hell with the boos. Mantle got booed, DiMaggio got booed. The fans paid their money, and they had a right to react any way they wanted to. When you’re booed, I told myself, at least you know you’re being noticed.

  It wasn’t a bad season. I was picked for the All-Star game—as a reserve, but I was on the team. For the season I had twenty-eight home runs and one hundred RBIs, despite a .251 batting average, which would’ve been a lot higher if I hadn’t been out screwing around every night. I didn’t hit worth a damn in the Series, which we lost to the Cardinals in seven games. I had a grand-slam home run, but only three other hits in twenty-six at-bats: a .154 average. At least I was consistent; that’s what I’d hit in the ’63 Series.

  The thing that pissed me off most about ’64 was that Yogi Berra was fired as manager in October. The word was that Yogi didn’t know how to handle the players—and I knew the player who was most often out of line. I know some of the guys made fun of Yogi when he announced the lineup, because he couldn’t pronounce several names. But he made me play. I’d come to the ball park after being out all night and go to Yogi’s office, blood dripping out of my eyes. “Man,” I’d say, “I’m sick. I can’t make it today.”

  “You�
�re playing.”

  “But, Yogi, honest to God, I’m gonna throw up.”

  “You’re playing.”

  I played 160 games, I often hit the shit out of the ball on those days, too. I’d be so bleary-eyed, I was afraid I couldn’t get out of the way of a fast ball, and that would make me concentrate like crazy. Generally, in my early years, if I got two hits right away in a game, I wouldn’t concentrate after that. But never on hangover days. Speed pitchers kill.

  Probably the incident that most contributed to Berra’s getting fired occurred in mid-August when we were in a losing streak. We’d just lost a doubleheader to the White Sox in Chicago and were on the bus headed for the airport. We were no longer in first place and everyone was quiet, kind of down. I was sitting next to Phil Linz, who suddenly pulled out a music sheet and propped it up on the back of Ellie Howard’s head in front of us. Then he pulled out a harmonica. “What are you doing, Phil?” I asked.

  “I’m gonna practice my harmonica,” he said.

  “You got to be shitting me!”

  “Phil,” said Mantle, sitting across from us, “you better put that away.”

  “We lost,” Phil said, “but there’s no reason to cry over it.” He started playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and there was no question but that he needed some practice.

  Most of the guys smiled, which was good, because the bus had resembled a morgue. But Yogi, sitting up front, got angry. He stood up and yelled, “Phil, shove that harmonica.”

  “Christ,” Phil said to me, “we lost, but we don’t have to act like we’re dead. This is ridiculous.”

  “Phil,” I said, “you do what you gotta do—but you might get in trouble.”

  He brought the harmonica back up to his mouth and started playing again. Yogi hopped up and came storming back to us, saying, “I told you to shove that harmonica up your ass.”

  “Why don’t you do it?” Phil said. “Here.” With that he tossed the harmonica to Berra who, furious, slapped at it in midair. The harmonica slammed down on my lower thigh, tearing my pants and scratching my leg. Yogi and Phil were yelling at one another now, and it was getting ugly. I jumped up shouting, “Corpsman, corpsman! I’m wounded!” I was trying to get everyone laughing, to break the tension and bad vibes.

  Then dour Frank Crosetti, not one of the most popular Yankee coaches, stood up front and yelled, “Goddamnit, this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my thirty years in baseball.” Everything got quiet as Yogi returned to his seat. But the bad vibes stayed in everyone’s mind.

  Of course, the next day the entire incident became a big joke, and everyone kidded Linz, which helped keep things loose during the stretch run. Linz was quickly signed up by a harmonica company and made about $25,000 for his trouble, which he invested in a saloon called Mr. Laffs that was successful for years. I thought of buying a base fiddle to bring on the team bus so I could pick up some extra bread. But I never seemed to have the price of a base.

  Berra didn’t hold anything against Linz, who filled in for the injured Tony Kubek at shortstop and made an important contribution to our winning the pennant. So in the long run, Yogi instinctively handled the guys pretty damn well. He knew everyone’s moves and was very shrewd in his own way. I remember after the sixth game in St. Louis—which we won on my grand-slam home run as Jim Bouton pitched a gutty ball game without a lot of stuff—I asked Yogi if I could borrow ten dollars. By this time I’d spent all my Series meal money as well as my salary check.

  “Sure,” said Yogi, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a roll of bills the size of his hand. He started peeling though them, unfolding one after another: 20s, 50s, 100s. He must have had five hundred dollars on him. “Jeez, Joe, I don’t have a ten-dollar bill,” he said.

  “Well, let me have a twenty,” I said. “I’ll give you the 10 dollars change later.”

  “No, no,” he said. “You asked for 10 dollars.” He shoved that roll back in his pocket.

  “You cheap bastard,” I said to his disappearing back.

  But I loved him. I know that getting fired must have shocked the hell out of him. After we’d lost the seventh game, Yogi was supposed to join a bunch of us who were going out to dinner in St. Louis before we flew home. But as we headed out of the clubhouse, Yogi said to me, “I can’t go with you guys after all, Joe. I’ve got to meet with the front office. I guess they want to talk about next season. Look, Joe, I want you to come down to spring training a little lighter in February. Okay?”

  Obviously he had no idea he wouldn’t be in spring training with us. I assume he got the word at that meeting right after the seventh game, and I think the decision to fire him had been made after the harmonica incident. It wouldn’t have mattered even if we’d won the Series. When it was announced that our new manager would be Johnny Keane, who beat us in the World Series, I felt the Yankees had made a bad mistake. We were strictly a power-hitting ball club, with four or five guys who could hit between twenty and forty home runs a season. Keane had only two power hitters on the Cardinals, Bill White and Ken Boyer. He liked to hit-and-run, steal bases, play for one run at a time. We were used to going for the big inning, and I didn’t know if the two styles of play could be meshed in New York.

  Soon after the Series, I had to go to Youngstown, Ohio, to speak at a banquet. Since I would be gone at least overnight,

  I asked Barbara where she might be reached, because I liked to call and check on the kids, and Barbara was spending some evenings at her girl friend’s house. She said she would be at her friend’s, wrote down a phone number and handed it to me.

  After the banquet in Youngstown, I started to call her. But when I looked at the phone number she’d given me, I realized it wasn’t her girlfriend’s. I knew that number. I looked it up in my pocket address book, and I was right. Recently, I had wondered whether Barbara had any sex going on the side. I had no reason to suspect her, but I was a jealous guy, just like my father. I called the number she had given me.

  “Barbara,” I said, “what’s going on, damn it? This isn’t your girlfriend’s number. Where the hell are you?”

  “Joe, I’m right in the neighborhood,” she said. “I didn’t tell you, because I was afraid you’d make a scene. I knew you wouldn’t understand. There’s a group of people here for a little party, that’s all.”

  “Who are you shitting?” I said angrily. “Now listen—”

  She hung up the phone. I slammed down the receiver and went back into the all-but-cleared banquet hall. Blackie Gennaro, who handles all the blacktop paving around Youngstown, and who ran the banquet, saw that I was depressed. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  I told him, briefly, what was going on. Earlier he had told me that he was going to Florida in the morning and he had asked me to join him. I’d told him I couldn’t, that I had to get home. Now he said, “Well, shit, man, don’t go home angry. Come on to Florida with me for a few days. Relax, get away from your troubles.”

  “I don’t have any clothes with me,” I told him.

  “No problem.”

  It was almost two o’clock in the morning, but Blackie called his tailor. In fifteen minutes we met him at his store, Lord Chesterfield Clothes. Blackie gave me two suitcases and filled them with four suits, slacks, socks, shirts, underwear, shoes, about a thousand dollars’ worth of apparel. By noon the next day we were in Miami.

  We were supposed to stay two weeks, but we were partying every night and I think we might have stayed forever. About a month later, two private detectives knocked on the door of my room. “Your wife’s looking for you, Mr. Pepitone. If you don’t get home today, you’re going to be hauled in and charged with desertion.”

  Throughout the trip home, my head was all messed up. What am I gonna say to the kids, being gone a month in the off season? I knew it was time to end the marriage, but how could I give up my kids? How could I leave my little girl and my son?

  The big thing in my mind was, No matter what happens when you get there, don’t let anyth
ing hurt you. You’ve got to push aside any pain and say fuck it. So I went home with a head that was scrambled, not knowing what to expect, what I would do—except that I was determined not to let anything hurt me.

  I drove up to our house in Riveredge, and sitting on the front porch were six suitcases full of my clothes. The suitcases were open to the weather, lying flat. I bent down and looked at the clothes, which were mildewed, moldy, as if they’d been out there for weeks. Will you look at this shit! I thought. I tried the front door and it was locked. My key wouldn’t open it. Barbara had changed the lock. I kicked in the door and walked into the living room.

  Barbara came running in from the kitchen carrying Joseph in her arms.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you?” I asked.

  “I want a divorce!” she yelled.

  “Why?” I said. It occurred to me that wasn’t a very clever question, but I didn’t dwell on it. Barbara started screaming about my behavior, all my fucking around.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I yelled.

  “I want you out of this goddamn house right now!” she screamed. “For good!”

  “Where’s Eileen?” I asked, because losing my little girl was the main thing on my mind, and I could feel the pain rising in my head.

  “She’s next door, playing.”

  I wouldn’t go see her until after I’d packed, I decided, walking out to the open suitcases on the porch. I began rummaging through the mildewed clothes, and remembering the day Eileen was born. I was playing in Amarillo, Texas, and Barbara had stayed in Florida with her parents to have our child. Barbara, who had gained sixty pounds, wanted to be with her family doctor. We were off on a road trip the day the baby was due, traveling in a sleeper bus, and I had the driver pull over every half hour or so when we saw a place with a phone. I kept calling, calling. Finally, at a blistered-paint Mexican restaurant, I got the word on the telephone. A nurse told me I was the father of a little girl. I let out a yell, and everyone in the place looked at me like I was crazy. I bought a big box of cigars, ran onto the bus and passed them out. I’ll never forget, when we returned from the road trip, waiting at the airport and seeing Barbara walk down the ramp with my child. When I held Eileen in my arms for the first time, she smiled, and I went out of my mind.