Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud

by Joe Pepitone

  Toward the end of his final season, Mantle’s next home run would be the 535th of his career. He would pass Jimmie Foxx on the all-time list. Only Babe Ruth, Henry Aaron, and Willie Mays had hit more home runs in the majors than Mickey.

  We were playing in Detroit, and Denny McLain was pitching for the Tigers. McLain had already won thirty games in 1968, and he had something like an 8-0 lead against us in the late innings. Mantle came up for his last time in the game, and on the first pitch I almost collapsed in the on-deck circle where I was kneeling. McLain just lobbed the ball in, right down the middle. Mickey was so startled, he froze, just watched the ball float past him.

  He looked out at McLain, who had a shocked expression on his face, like, What was wrong with that? Mickey understood. He made a little gesture with his bat: A bit lower, Denny. I didn’t believe it. McLain smiled.

  The next pitch floated in right where Mickey had called for it, and Mickey fouled it off. Bill Freehan, the Tiger catcher, chuckled. McLain grimaced: What do you want? Mickey nodded: Just one more. McLain lobbed it up and Mickey drove it into the upper deck in right field at Tiger Stadium. The fans gave him a tremendous hand as he rounded the bases.

  I stepped up next and, figuring McLain was in a good mood, signaled with my bat where I’d like a pitch. McLain smiled, went into his windup, and fired a fast ball that hopped about a foot over the inside corner of the plate—a pitch nobody could hit. The players on both benches roared.

  Mickey and I became very close in that month I bunked with him, and one night we got into some really heavy shit. It was late, and we’d had a pile of booze. He told me something that I’d always heard be believed, but I’d never heard it from him before. Mickey’s father had died at age thirty-nine, and he talked about that, and about the fact that there was a history in his family of males dying young. Mickey said he was convinced that he would die before he was forty, that he’d had that feeling for years, and now there weren’t too many left on his calendar.

  I couldn’t do much to comfort him. I told him that I felt the same way. My father had died at thirty-nine, his father had died at about forty-two, and a number of other men on the Pepitone side of my family had got dead early.

  Mickey leaned his head on my shoulder and started weeping, saying, “It’s too young.” I put my arm around him and hugged him. “Take it easy, Mick,” I said. “Take it easy.”

  He couldn’t stop crying.

  “What the fuck difference does it make?” I said. “It’s been fun. There’s been some real shitty shit, too. Fuck it.”

  Then I told him about a time when I was eight or nine years old. My father and I were out crabbing early one morning on the Cross Bay Bridge. I remembered how still the air was, and how the bright-bright sun was hitting the water at such an angle that it looked like a vast mirror on one side of the bridge, and on the other side the water was bumpy, and it looked like you could reach out and touch the bumps, smooth them, even though the water was way beneath us. It was kind of otherworldly, nice. I looked up at my father and said, “Dad, I feel like I’m never gonna die. Like I’m gonna live forever and ever.” He gave me one of those smiles that warmed my whole body.

  But after Willie died like he did, and I went through that bad year, it suddenly came to me: I’m also going to die young. I’ll never make forty, either. That’s how it’s going to be. That’s how it is. I’d talked to the shrink about it, and he couldn’t convince me otherwise. I told Mickey that that was why I partied so much, why I tried to stuff in so much living when I could. Then I laughed, but there was no mirth in it. Underneath that laugh, I was thinking about my father, wishing he were sitting with us right then, with Mickey Mantle and me. Things wouldn’t have seemed so bleak.

  XVI

  “Okay, Frank, if you’re God like they say you are—let’s see you make that shot.”

  I was still very much a celebrity freak. I still loved to be around big-name racket guys, big-name show business stars. Acceptance by these people continued to do something large for my ego. This fact had caused trouble between Diane and me. She thought my liking to hang out with celebrities was bullshit and said so. She was right, as she was right about so many things, but I couldn’t see it. All I could see was that being around these people made me feel good. Or seemed to. And anything that made me feel good was the only thing that mattered to me.

  When I went to Florida in the fall of 1964, I met Frank Sinatra and went to a party with him. That experience really blew my mind. Frank Sinatra was like a God to me—all that talent, all that power, the way he lived exactly as he pleased, having to answer to no one for what he did. Who the hell, I asked myself, had more control of his life than Frank Sinatra?

  Leo Durocher introduced me to Frank. I was going into the nightclub at the Eden Roc Hotel to see the show when I ran into Leo in the lobby. I think he was a coach with the Dodgers then. Anyway, we’d bumped into one another several times at night and had shared some laughs. So we chatted there in the lobby for a couple of minutes, then Leo asked if I’d like to sit at Sinatra’s table. Frank had a big table down front for his friends, and Leo said there were several empty seats. Lead the way, Leo.

  He took me inside and introduced me to Jilly Rizzo, who was probably Sinatra’s closest friend and unofficial bodyguard; the actor Harry Guardino; comedian Pat Henry, who was just going backstage because he led off shows for Frank; and about six beautiful girls. Sinatra did a great show, and afterward we all went backstage to congratulate him. Leo said, “Frank, I want you to meet Joe Pepitone of the Yankees.”

  “Hey, paisan!” Frank said, jumping up and hugging me. I stood there, paralyzed, with a stupid little smile on my face. “I know he’s with the fucking Yankees, Leo,” Frank said. “Hits left-handed, plays first base better than anyone the Yankees ever had, and makes the All-Star team every year when he’s brand new.” He hugged me again. “Good to see you, Joe.”

  Jilly had his houseboat—a huge, fantastic showpiece—docked right across from the Eden Roc, and afterward we went over there and partied all night. When the sun came up I was still sitting there, just staring at Frank, the same thing I’d been doing all evening. Joe Pep from Brooklyn, hanging out with God.

  After the ’68 season I started dating a girl I liked. I actually saw her three or four times. One day I went out to her place on Long Island, and she told me a friend of mine lived right down the street. Pat Henry, the comedian. So I took a walk down there and rang Pat’s bell.

  “Hey, Joe, how are you?” he said. “Come on in. I’m just getting ready to pack. I’ve got to go see Frank in Palm Springs.” I followed him to his bedroom. “Say, why don’t you come with me, Joe?”

  “To Sinatra’s? I don’t know if he’d go for that. What’s going on out there? I mean, what’re you going to be doing?”

  “Not a helluva lot. Just screwing around, mainly. Why don’t you come? There are going to be a bunch of people there. Frank’s got all these cabanas behind his house for guests to stay in. He’d love to see you. Come on along. We’ll have some laughs.”

  I walked out the door, and as soon as I got outside I started running to my car. The girl came out of her house. “I’ve got to go see Frank Sinatra,” I yelled to her. “Give you a call when I get back.” I raced to my apartment in Brooklyn, threw my best clothes into a suitcase, and met Pat Henry at Kennedy Airport about ten minutes before our flight took off.

  As Pat had said, there were a bunch of people at Frank’s, including Harry Guardino, and Jilly Rizzo, who owns a club in New York but has a house near Sinatra’s in Palm Springs, California. That evening we all went into Frank’s audiovisual room, which was about the size of a small theater, except there were couches to sit on. Someone said there was over fifty thousand dollars’ worth of sound equipment set in the walls. There was a control console with all kinds of switches and dials and buttons and rheostats by the couch where Sinatra sat. All of a sudden I heard a whirl, a panel opened in the ceiling at the end of the room, and a scr
een descended. Then a projector popped out of the wall behind Frank.

  “When this comes on, Joe, start snoring,” said Jilly, who was sitting beside me.

  “Yeah, snore loud,” said Pat, laughing. He was sitting on the other side of me. “This’ll kill you.”

  An old reject grade C gangster movie came on the screen, starring people no one had ever heard of. The film was so bad it was funny as hell. But it hadn’t been on more than a minute when Jilly, Pat, everyone started snoring as loud as they could. When I was sure everyone was participating, I snored, too. The snores got louder and louder. Frank had all kinds of trays sitting around the room full of packs of cigarettes. When the snores reached a peak, suddenly one of those trays full of cigarette packs caromed off Pat Henry’s head. He let out a yell, and I slid down next to him, so that my head was lower than the back of the couch.

  “For Christ’s sake, Frank!” Pat said. Everyone except Pat laughed.

  After the movie, we sat around talking and drinking for a couple of hours, and Jilly said to me at one point, “Joe, you don’t know Frank that well yet, so I think you should know that he loves opera music. And sometime in the evening, he’s gonna play some opera music on the stereo. Don’t say anything when it comes on. Be absolutely quiet, because Frank is very serious about this. He loves opera music and he likes to conduct when he plays it.”

  Sinatra? I thought. Opera music? Frank Sinatra likes to conduct opera music?

  Jilly was not kidding. Some drinks later into the evening, Frank stood up and shouted, “Quiet! Music time. Time for you clowns to absorb a little culture.”

  Harry Guardino, who was sitting on a couch in front of us, hated opera music. He was making that clear to the person sitting beside him: “We gotta go through this bullshit again.”

  “Harry,” said Frank, “shut the fuck up.”

  Harry shut up, the lights went out, and the music came on—reverberated off the walls, made the whole room vibrate with sound. I sat there with my hands folded, breathing as softly as I could, because there was a very heavy air of intimidation in that room. Frank always had a couple of heavyweights around like Jilly Rizzo, and I didn’t want to do anything that would upset Frank. I really admired him, respected him as a great entertainer, as a music genius. And I really dug the fact that anything he wanted he could get, because that’s the way I wanted to be at the time. The first time I met Frank I saw him drinking Jack Daniel’s, so I started drinking Jack Daniel’s. But now I sat there liking this scene and hating it. I was enjoying it because I admired the man so much, but then I thought, Do I want to hang out with a guy under these fucking terms? Be afraid of somebody—which I have never been, even around some of the toughest racket guys in the world?

  So I sat there for almost an hour, fearfully listening to opera. I peeked over my shoulder and saw Sinatra, his head going up and down and his arms waving in front of him, conducting with an imaginary baton the music that was swelling and crashing around us.

  Abruptly, I saw Harry Guardino’s head disappear on the couch in front of me. Then I saw Harry was on the floor, crawling on his hands and knees toward the back of the room in the dark. I peeked over my shoulder again. Frank was still conducting. I peeked over my other shoulder and saw Harry was by the door. His hand reached up, turned the knob, and he opened the door a crack.

  The instant that slice of light burst into the room, the ceiling lights came on, the music went off, and Frank Sinatra was standing over Harry holding a .45 automatic.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going, Guardino?” Frank said. “Get back to your fucking seat.”

  Harry did not hesitate.

  After holding my breath for almost an hour, when the opera music finally was over, I was so tense I could still hardly breathe. Fortunately, Frank came over and started talking to me about baseball, about Leo, about life in New York City. He was very loose, warm, fun. He laughed at my stories, put his arm around me and loosened me up. I relaxed and started enjoying myself again.

  A while later, Frank said, “All right, everyone, let’s shoot some pool.”

  We went to this beautiful room that had huge fireplaces on either side of it, and a pool table that looked like it had been hand-crafted. The game, Frank said, would be pill pool. We each took a pill from a leather bottle, not letting anyone else see it. The number on that pill was your ball. If you sunk your ball, you won fifty dollars from everyone else in the game. If you sunk anyone else’s ball, you won from that player. I only had about two hundred dollars in my pocket, but I was fairly confident. I’d played enough pool as a kid to become a pretty good shooter.

  In the first game I drew the “1” pill. Harry broke, nothing went in, and I was up next. And the “1” ball was hanging on the edge of the corner pocket. From where the cue ball lay, I had a clear shot. There were seven other guys in the game, and I was already counting the 350 dollars that was coming to me.

  I stepped up to the table, tossed my pill on the cloth, and said, “The game’s over.” I leaned down to line up the shot, and just as I hit the cue ball—crash—a wooden gambling block bounced on the table and knocked my ball away from the pocket. The cue ball I’d stroked hit the wooden block, which Sinatra had thrown.

  “All right, Frank,” I said, “that was my ‘1’ ball. I won the money.”

  He was leaning on his cue stick, grinning. “Joe, this is my game, this is my table, this is my house—and we are playing my rules. What we happen to be playing tonight is called Dirty Pool.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said, turning to the others. “Will you look at this shit!”

  Pat shot next and missed the “2” ball, but he left a simple shot for the man after him—Sinatra. He smiled, chalking up his cue stick. He leaned over the table, lining up the shot into the side pocket. I picked up a twenty-pound log off the hearth of the near fireplace. As Frank stroked the cue ball, I threw the log onto the table in front of the “2” ball. It ripped the cloth. I was scared to death, but I blustered right ahead.

  “Okay, Frank,” I said, “if you’re God like they say you are—let’s see you make that fucking shot.”

  His stick fell out of his hand, and he fell forward on the table roaring. He looked over at Jilly and said, “Where the fuck did we pick up this crazy bastard? He’s beautiful.” He kept laughing.

  I let out a sigh of relief. It was about five in the morning by this time, and Frank said, “That ends the pool shooting for tonight. Let’s eat.” He’d had his cook stay over and he told him to fix us a huge pile of pastafazool, which is peas and macaroni, one of Frank’s favorite dishes. So as the first light of dawn shone on the windows, we were sitting there eating pastafazool and drinking wine. I was thinking, This is one very peculiar god.

  Everyone was up the next morning a little after nine, I guess because Frank was. Two girls came to the door, and Frank told them to come in. They were wearing big badges on their chests and collecting for some Palm Springs charity. It was apparently a big annual charity; anyone who didn’t contribute got put in jail for a day, as I recall.

  We were all in the living room, and Frank turned to Jilly Rizzo and said, “Give me a thousand dollars.” He turned to Harry Guardino, “Give me a thousand dollars.” To Pat Henry, “Give me a thousand dollars.” He was going around the room, and everyone was reaching for his wallet, pulling out cash.

  Holy shit, I thought, thinking about the two hundred dollars I had on me, he’s going to ask me to throw in a grand and I’m going to have to say, “I can’t. I haven’t got the money.” I’ll be embarrassed to death.

  I edged over toward the door to the patio. Frank saw me: “Hey, where are you—?”

  I ran outside and dove into the pool, fully clothed. I held my breath on the bottom as long as I could. When I came up, Frank was crouched on the edge of the pool with his hand out and a smile on his face. “You crazy bastard, give me twenty-five dollars.” I peeled off twenty-five damp dollars and handed them up to him.

&nbs
p; That afternoon, four or five girls came over to Sinatra’s, and we all sat around talking and having a good time. There was one really striking girl, a tall redhead with great big eyes and a husky, sexy way of talking. She turned me on, and I was rapping away with her, really digging her. I noticed Harry Guardino eyeing the girl from across the room. I kept talking away, telling the girl a story, laughing. Then I saw Harry was slowly creeping toward us. I told the girl about a great painting that was hanging in the dining room, and took her to see it. We went in there, admired the painting, and I kept her there, talking by ourselves. For about two minutes. Harry appeared in the doorway, staring at the girl. I maneuvered her around so her back was to Harry.

  In a moment, Harry came over and tapped me on the arm. “Excuse me,” he said. “Joe, could I speak to you for a second?” He grabbed my arm and led me away from the girl. He stopped about ten feet from her and whispered, “I just want to tell you something, man. Give it your best shot—because I’m cutting in on you with that chick.”

  I looked at him. He was serious. “All right,” I said. “Go ahead and take it over if you can—if you can handle it. If I lose, I lose. But I don’t think you can take this chick away from me. We got a nice thing going here.”

  So we both marched back over to the girl and started doing our things, turning on all the charm, using all the moves, doing every number we could think of. He’d say something to her, and I’d top him. I’d come on with something to make her laugh; Harry would come back with a story that made her laugh harder. We wandered back inside and continued to play Can You Top This? Harry and I were really laying it on, and the girl was obviously digging it. Abruptly Harry laughed and walked away, as if he’d been kidding.

  Then a bedroom door off the living room opened, and Frank stepped out and stood there observing us. For about five minutes he stood there, listening to one of my anecdotes. “Honey,” he finally said. The girl, who was standing in profile to him, didn’t hear Frank. “Honey,” he said a little louder. He had his index finger crooked and, when she turned her head toward him, he wiggled it. Two rapid bends of the finger, no words.