Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud

by Joe Pepitone

  I was loose, enjoying the training season. “This is going to be my year,” I told the sportswriters. “I have the best contract I’ve ever had, my mind is free, and everything looks great. I won the Gold Glove the past two years at first base, now my goal is to win it as an outfielder. I don’t think anyone’s ever won the Gold Glove at two positions.”

  One of the writers asked me if I would showboat it as much in the outfield, and I told him, “Sure, I’m a bit of a showboat. If I’m feeling free and easy and can showboat a little, then I hit better, play better, and enjoy baseball more. I’ve always hit better as an outfielder, perhaps because I don’t have to worry about fielding as much there.

  “I like to hear the fans’ reaction, so I’m looking forward to playing center field. If you make a good play at first base, there’s polite applause. But if you make a sensational catch or a good throw in the outfield, they come right up out of their seats. That’s what I like.”

  It was true. I loved to have the fans react to me. That’s why I’d always been something of a hot dog on the field. Why not give fans something to turn them on? Baseball is essentially a dull game with a lot of dead time between plays. I always believed that the players who gave the fans something extra to yell about were doing the game a service. They booed me more than they cheered me, on balance, but I loved all the noise I drew.

  I gave everyone ample reason to boo in 1967. I was back on the old nightly partying treadmill, staying up till all hours of the morning. And at age twenty-six, I just couldn’t bounce back as quickly any more. Not being in shape also made me susceptible to injuries. I missed thirty games with injuries that season, and there were a lot of others I played in hurting. I had to play, because it seemed half the team was in Lenox Hill Hospital that season. Only their injuries weren’t the result of screwing around at night. I kept getting hit on my right elbow at bat, which sapped my power. On a couple of those fast balls, I think I was just too tired to get out of the way. On the season I hit exactly thirteen home runs, drove in sixty-four runs, and batted .251. Those 64 RBIs led the team. No wonder we finished next to last.

  Diane had managed to hold up through a season of bad times. She was hanging in, struggling along, trying to keep us going. But the key to our ultimate split went into the lock on the season’s final day.

  I had the names and phone numbers of about 150 girls I’d been balling written on slips of paper in my cubicle at the stadium. We had to clean out our lockers for the incoming football Giants, and I put all those slips of paper in a suitcase, along with some other things I wouldn’t be needing over the winter. I told Pete Sheehy, the clubhouse man, to store that bag for me at the stadium. I had to go off to a banquet right after the game. A limousine was picking me up, and a friend was dropping off my wife to drive my car home. I had another suitcase of clothes that I did want for the winter, and I told Pete to put that in the trunk of my car.

  “Fine, Joe,” he said. “No sweat.”

  No sweat, shit. He put the wrong suitcase in my car. I did the banquet out on the Island and got home late that night. I opened our apartment door, and Diane was sitting on the couch with a drink in her hand, looking like she’d been crying all evening. Her eyes were red, puffy . . . and full of pain.

  Laid out on the carpeting like a mad mosaic were those 150 slips of paper with a girl’s name and telephone number on each of them. And among the batch were names of Diane’s closest girl friends I’d balled. For one of the few times in my life, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just stood there, staring at all that bloody evidence, and feeling the pain on my wife’s face creep into my stomach.

  Diane finally got up off the couch. “Sit down, Joe,” was all she said. Then she turned, walked into the bedroom, and closed the door.

  I walked through that sea of paper with the names scrawled on them, and every time I saw the name of one of her girl friends, I felt a jab in my gut. I lay down on the couch, but I didn’t sleep that night.

  In the morning I apologized, I was sincerely sorry—I always was, every time I hurt her—because I felt shitty myself. Diane still didn’t say anything, didn’t berate me, didn’t tell me to get out, as she had every right to. I swore to her that I would stop the shit, and this time I meant it. Or thought I did. I didn’t go out for two months, stayed home every night with Diane trying to make up for the agony I had laid on her. It was the only thing I could do.

  We tried to make love, and I failed. I couldn’t get it up. I tried and tried. Suddenly I wanted her so badly. We waited a few days, and it worked. It was good, very good. Then nothing again. Just sweat and strain and anguished breathing. The next night the good feelings would be back, I’d get excited, we’d jump right into bed, start making it, and—wham—the feeling was gone, the guilt was back. And I’d roll away, limply, throw my arm up over my closed eyes, and just lie there with the pounding in my head. “Joe,” Diane said, “it’s all right.” It wasn’t all right, nothing was right.

  After two solid months of this, I couldn’t stand it any more. Diane went out shopping one day, and I just sat there thinking. It was crazy. I couldn’t make this work. Even if we got through this, I couldn’t change my basic pattern. That lifestyle was the only thing that was getting me through the nights. It was bizarre, berserk, but I was making it through to each new dawn, and I didn’t see how I would otherwise.

  I called our baby-sitter in the building to come stay with Lisa, packed up all my clothes, and left Diane a note: “Nothing’s happening, and I don’t think anything’s going to happen,” it said. “We’ll see. Joe.”

  I drove to my mother’s house in Brooklyn and waited for Diane to call. I waited and waited, for days. Then I realized: she’s not going to call. I sat in my mother’s apartment, looking at the old family photographs displayed around the room, and I said to myself, fuck it, it’s no good, so forget it. I loved her, but I couldn’t live with her. I thought about the night before Diane and I were married. We were driving someplace in the city and we got into a fierce argument. Funny, I couldn’t remember what it was about. All I remembered was that I slowed the car as we yelled at one another, slowed to about fifteen miles an hour, and suddenly Diane opened the car door and dove out into the street. I looked out and saw her rolling on the asphalt behind me. I jammed on the brakes and ran to her, held her. That was one way to put an end to an argument.

  After five days of sitting around my mother’s, I couldn’t stand it there, either. I moved in with a friend in Brooklyn. Within two weeks I knew that everyone concerned was better off. I went back to visit Diane and Lisa every so often, stayed overnight. I still couldn’t make it with Diane in bed. I tried. Christ, I tried everything I could. I wanted to make it with her, and Diane wanted to make it. Like our marriage, because of me it was just no good.

  Then on visits we just began talking, trying to sort things out, ease the pain a bit. Even that was no good. It just brought out all the bad vibes in her, all the shit I’d put her through. I asked her to talk about some of the good times, too, to remember some of the great feelings we’d shared, the nice moments. She’d been hurt too much.

  She wanted me to change, to come back. I wish I had been able to change. I wanted to, but I just wasn’t ready. I still had to be out, party, be with people. I couldn’t stand to be with myself alone.

  I had to have a lot of shit going all the time, because I’d get instantly bored, have to move on in minutes. I’d go out with a real dynamite-looking chick—show-off-able pretty, lovely breasts, perfect legs. One night, and it would be over for me. I had to go elsewhere. As soon as I balled a girl, case closed. It was the same with a hard-to-get chick. I’d stay after her for days, weeks. Till I balled her. Then the challenge was over and I wouldn’t see her again. I didn’t want to get involved with anyone. I’d been involved twice too many times.

  At first I worried about how I’d feel being away from Lisa. I remembered when I drove to my house to see Eileen that day and saw the For Sale sign on it. It wa
s like someone had hit me in the back of the neck with a baseball bat. Eileen was gone forever. But it wasn’t like that with Lisa. She was right across the river in New Jersey. I could see her any time. I didn’t feel as if I’d lost her.

  Living alone, I really began to feel better. I’d been lying, cheating, deceiving for so many years, it was a relief not to have to do that shit any more. I thought about how, when something went wrong between Diane and me—or Barbara and me—I’d run away. Find me, wife, I’m in one of fifty saloons in the city. I was running so hard, even my conscience couldn’t keep up to me. Here I was still running, but on my own, with no one to fuck over except myself.

  The Yankees didn’t cut my salary after my awful season. At the press conference to announce my signing for 1968, Lee MacPhail, the general manager, said, “Joe never uttered a word of complaint, but moving to the outfield the way he did just for Mantle’s sake after being the best defensive first-baseman in the league—that was a difficult thing to do.”

  I told everyone, “It was a bad year, and I just have to take it as it came, without excuses. But now the biggest thing in my life is the season coming up. I’m determined to prove I can do well. This year means everything to me, to the ball club, to my family—and to my lawyer.”

  Someone pointed out that I had a lot of injuries, saying you can’t play well when you’re hurt. “But you get injuries when you’re not in top shape,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t come out to the ball park quite as early as I should have and get properly loosened up. That’s the kind of thing I’m going to change. I also started last year overweight. I came in at two-eighteen.”

  I heard one of the writers up front say to the guy next to him: “Does he mean two-eighteen A.M.?” I smiled, thinking, Man, at 2:18 A.M., I was just shifting my act into gear.

  I was sincere about wanting to get in shape for the ’68 season. I even went down to spring training early and began working out. When the season opened, I was probably in the best condition I’d been in since 1963. I was down to 201 pounds, my muscles were loose, toned. I felt great.

  But in the season’s third game I suffered a freak accident. We were playing the Twins at the stadium and Ted Uhlaender lined a shot to right center. I raced over and cut off the ball, stabbed it before it went through to the wall. I whirled and threw off balance to second. It was a good play, holding Uhlaender to a single, but it wasn’t worth it. I threw so hard that a bone in back of my left elbow cracked. It hurt like hell. I thought it was a pinched nerve, because I’d had those before. I tried one practice throw and the pain jerked my head down to my chest. X-rays revealed the fracture.

  The thing that pissed me off was the fans. They booed the shit out of me when I left the game. I didn’t stay mad. After my picture appeared in the papers the next day showing the cast on my arm, I got a lot of nice letters.

  I was sidelined for over a month, but I didn’t allow myself to put on weight or get too much out of shape. I ran regularly, and when I returned to the lineup I went on one of my streaks at bat. I drove in nineteen runs during my first twenty games back, including five home runs, and batted .295. The problem was I didn’t do much the rest of the year. I hit fifteen home runs all told, drove in fifty-six runs, and batted .245 for the season. I had some other injuries, including a torn muscle in my side that I sustained swinging a bat, and missed almost sixty games altogether.

  But the main reason I hit so badly was that I simply lost all interest in baseball in 1968. Hell, I was twenty-seven years old now, and I was sick and tired of being told everything I had to do—how to dress, how to wear my hair, the exact time I had to be someplace or they’d take money out of my salary, how I should perform on a baseball field how I should think, for Christ’s sake, the same shit I’d been hearing for a goddamn decade of my life.

  We had these outfits we were supposed to wear when we traveled as a team. A blue blazer with a Yankee emblem on it, a blue tie, gray slacks. We looked like we were all about to make our first Holy Communion. What bullshit. Everyone would board the airplane dressed like that, and I’d get on wearing blue jeans and a sweater.

  Houk would say, “Come on, Joe, where’s your blazer and slacks?”

  “They’re dirty. I didn’t have a chance to get them cleaned.”

  “Well, next time you wear them,” he said.

  The next trip I got on the plane wearing the filthiest, most wrinkled blue blazer and gray slacks anyone had ever seen. I’d tied the jacket and pants in knots to set the wrinkles in them, then soiled them on the floor.

  When we went on the road again, I wore one of my own outfits and Houk just shook his head. Some of the other players had things to say. “Shit, he dresses like that, why can’t I?” Two reasons: they didn’t have the guts to butt heads with the establishment, and they couldn’t have gotten away with it because they weren’t very good ballplayers. I knew what they were thinking, even though they never said anything to my face. Fuck them, I said to myself. I never bugged them, told them what they had to do. It was none of my business what they did, and it was none of their business what I did. The veterans who were still around, Mantle, Tresh, they didn’t care how I dressed. They were comfortable in their own skins.

  I also found in 1968 that I hated the outfield. You run in, run out, sit down, stand around and pray for a ball to be hit your way, give you something to do besides talk to the monuments in center field. I just had too much time out there to think about everything except baseball. Too much time to think about old guilts that tracked me like collection agencies. Too much time to think about my father’s death, about blown marriages, about lost children, about debts.

  Early in this season I went to Bill Sherr’s office to beg for an increase in my allowance. He stood up behind his desk with a smile on his face and stuck out his hand. “Congratulations, Joe,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “You’re all through living on an allowance,” he said. “Your debt’s wiped out.”

  “No shit?” I said. “You mean I’m clear?”

  “All clear.”

  “Wow!” What a relief! I almost did a cartwheel. I was free!

  “If you like, Joe,” Bill Sherr said, “I’ll go on handling your checks so you won’t have to worry about getting in trouble again.”

  “Mr. Sherr,” I said, “I think l’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never ever let myself get in a situation like that again. I just can’t believe it—I’ve finally got everything paid off.”

  “Right, but you’ve got to watch your spending, Joe. You’ve got to keep up your payments to Barbara, and you’ve got to take care of Diane and Lisa now. You’re making a good salary, but you’ve got to meet your obligations or you’ll be right back in a hole in no time.”

  “I think I’m old enough to handle it now. I don’t ever want to go through that scene again.”

  I left Sherr’s office, and before I was outside I was already thinking about things I wanted to buy, about spending—about living again! I went right out and bought a new car, a whole mess of new clothes, anything that caught my eye. Yours truly, Joe Pepitone, New York Yankee star. I could sign fucking tabs again, take people out, enjoy!

  Within two months, I owed over twenty thousand dollars out on the street again. Once more the line of creditors started forming behind me, started knocking on my door, ringing my phone, bugging me.

  In a game on September 3 of that season, against Baltimore, with left-hander Pete Richert pitching, Houk sent up Rocky Colavito to pinch-hit for me. It was the first time in the majors I’d ever been replaced by a pinch-hitter. Writers reported that I was shocked. I was a little embarrassed, but not shocked. I hadn’t hit left-handers all season. In my good years, I’d hit them better than I’d hit righties, because I’d concentrated more against the lefties. But I wasn’t doing the job, and even though the Yankees as a team had a .214 batting average, we had tremendous pitching from Mel Stottlemyre, Stan Bahnsen, and Fritz Peterson and had a chance to finish in the first divisio
n, in the money. As it turned out, we finished fifth. Houk platooned me—I batted only against right-handers—from September 3 on.

  If the truth be told, I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t mind a little rest. I had had a very strenuous season at night.

  XV

  “Cheer up, Slick.”

  The 1968 season wasn’t all bad. At one point when I was in between apartments in Brooklyn, I moved in with Mickey Mantle at the St. Moritz Hotel in Manhattan. Mickey lived in a suite there during the season. I loved the guy. We’d had a lot of laughs together over the years, we’d been close, and I was sure this would be his final season with the Yankees. He played in too much pain to continue, even though he could have used the money, because his “investment counselors” over the years had put his bread into some very steep holes in the ground.

  The night before our annual exhibition game at West Point, Mickey and I went out to celebrate St. Cadet’s Eve. The day at the U.S. Military Academy was always a lot of fun, and we didn’t have to worry about what time we got in that morning. I never worried, but Mickey was much more concerned about his health. It was at this time that I began wondering how well I would have done with the Yankees if I’d ever been just a little bit concerned about my hours. Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford had always enjoyed having a drink now and then, now and then, now and then. But they were careful. They knew when to stop and come home. They were going to make the Baseball Hall of Fame. I would make the Hall of Fame only if they introduced a new category: Most Times Fined for Lateness. I never drank that much, but early on someone sure as hell busted my watch.

  Since we could sleep on the bus ride up to the Point, we didn’t devote a lot of energy to checking any clocks the night before. I think we got back to the St. Moritz about 5 A.M. It was just an exhibition game, and neither of us figured to play more than an inning or two. And it didn’t matter whether we hit the ball or not. So we hit a bunch of saloons, then I took Mickey to one of my favorite after-hours places, and a rollicking good time was had by all.