by Joe Pepitone
The girl’s face lit up. “Excuse me,” she said to us. Frank leaned his mouth close to her ear, slipped an arm around her waist, and ushered her into the bedroom. The door closed behind them.
I stood there with my mouth open, staring at the door. It opened in a few moments and the girl came out carrying a small portable color television set.
“Look what Frank gave me,” she said to me. “Isn’t he sweet?” She went around the room and showed that television set to each of the other girls. She was beaming as if he’d awarded her the chairmanship of the board of RCA. When she’d finished her tour, she carried the television set back into the room. Once again the door closed. This time it stayed closed.
I walked over and started talking to Harry Guardino.
That evening we all went out to dinner at Frank’s favorite restaurant in Palm Springs, the Ruby Dunes. On the way we passed an enormous house with ten or fifteen cars parked in the driveway. “He must be having a helluva party,” I said.
“No,” Frank said, “that’s Red Skelton’s house. Red owns all those cars. But he doesn’t drive the Buicks, the Oldsmobiles, the Pontiacs—only the Rolls and the Mercedes you see at the back of the line. He keeps all those cars there because he’s convinced burglars will think there’s a crowd in the house.”
I laughed. The used-car lot in Red Skelton’s driveway was actually his home-protection service.
There were about a dozen of us who went into the Ruby Dunes, and the maitre d’ arranged a big table for our party. I had observed that Pat Henry had this thing about wanting to be close to Frank all the time. It was as if he felt that if he wasn’t right at Frank’s elbow every moment, he’d fall out of favor. Pat is a good comedian, a funny man. But for years an awful lot of his work had come from kicking off Sinatra’s shows. Frank had Pat precede him, warm up the audience before every show, and I’m not sure this did a lot for Pat’s confidence in himself.
Anyway, when we sat at the table, I happened to be next to Frank. Pat came hustling over and said to me, “Hey, Joe, let me sit there.” No reason, no explanation, but he said it in such a way that I would have felt bad if I hadn’t given him the seat. I shrugged and moved.
Frank ordered several bottles of wine and we were having a good time. I was diagonally across from Frank, sitting between a girl and Jilly, and there was some funny conversation. But Pat Henry wasn’t hearing much of it. His contribution was to say every few minutes, “Frank, you want some more wine?” “Frank, you like some bread?” “Frank, you need cigarettes?”
He was driving me crazy. I got disgusted. I was also getting pretty high on the wine, which made Pat’s performance bug me more. I pushed my chair back and stood up, wanting to get away from the scene for a couple of minutes.
“Where are you going?” Frank said.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said. “You think I should tell you every time I go to piss?”
He chuckled. “Go on, you crazy bastard.”
Hanging on the wall outside the bathroom was this big blowup picture of a bare-assed baby lying on a fur rug. There was a metal plate on the bottom of the frame that said the baby was Frank Sinatra. I was standing there looking at it, and weaving slightly from the wine and Pat Henry, when Frank walked up beside me.
“Joe, you know who that is?” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “There’s a clue on the plate.”
“Well, why the fuck are you standing here looking at it like that?”
“I’m trying to decide whether I should kiss your ass like some of the other people at the table out there.”
He laughed, but I didn’t think it was all that funny.
Frank loves Harry Guardino and thinks he’s one of the finest actors in the business, but every time Harry was subjected to that late-evening opera music he’d go berserk. He couldn’t stand it. Several times Harry had made such a scene, he told me, that Frank had actually thrown him out of the house. “He’s nuts, playing that shit,” Harry told me, “punishing his friends. Conducting, for Christ’s sake!”
The second evening Harry had made it through the opera music with merely a number of initial god-awful sounds spewing from his throat. On the third night, though, when the music came on, Harry jumped up off the couch he was sitting on.
“Fuck you, Frank, and fuck your operas,” he shouted. “This time I ain’t gonna give you a chance to throw me out of here.” He walked out and went home.
It was really something to see Frank Sinatra conducting that opera music, to watch him get into it, leave the rest of us in that room and slide right inside that orchestra that was producing all those sounds, become a part of it, the conductor of every instrument. He was such a musical perfectionist and had such an ear that you could see he was hearing things none of the rest of us heard. It was thrilling to watch. It would have been more enjoyable for me if I could have shaken off that heavy feeling of intimidation that ran through me during the performance. But I couldn’t shake it, and that was the first time I ever wondered whether hanging out with celebrities was all that great.
XVII
“Everybody likes to give his mother something, and I can’t give mine anything except trouble.”
The Yankees did not call a press conference to announce my contract signing for the ’69 season. I’m sure they tried to trade me, but found they couldn’t get much for me after two dismal seasons in a row. Another factor was that the Yankee management wasn’t at all sure that Mantle was coming back. He didn’t. But he also didn’t announce his retirement until after the Baseball Players’ Association had won better pension concessions from the owners in April. Mickey’s support of the demands helped the rest of us, which showed class.
Houk told the press during the winter, “I would say that Pepitone will have to earn whatever job he winds up with in the spring. He didn’t hit left-handers much last year, so I’d have to figure him as a part-time performer. I’ll have an open mind when training starts. All I want is the best team we can field. This will be the first time Joe has really had much competition for a job, so maybe it will be good for him.”
I wasn’t worried. I knew what I could do if I wanted to. I wouldn’t find out if I wanted to play until I reported to spring training. I arrived at 10:30 P.M. because heavy rains delayed all the flights out of Palm Springs, California. I knocked on the door of coach Harry Craft’s room at the Yankee Clipper Motel 163 in Fort Lauderdale and said, “Is Ralph mad at me for being so late?” Harry did a double take. I was wearing a yellow big-apple cap, oversized pink-tinted shades and carrying a shoulder bag and a clothes bag. Harry finally recognized me and said, “No, Joe, a lot of the guys are late because of the Players’ Association strike.”
I knew this was probably my last chance to show I wanted to stay with the Yankees. That appealed to me, as did returning to first base full time. I felt good in the spring and worked my ass off—as well as my waist, getting it down from thirty-six inches to thirty-three. It made me more agile. I felt good, hit well.
I told the late Milton Gross of the New York Post, “New York needs a star, and if I can do it I can own the town. I can make a load of money. I can live. But I’ve got to have fun. I’ve got to be happy in anything I do, and I have to be left alone. I don’t put on an act for anybody. I’m me.”
The writers spent a lot of time trying to figure out who, with Mantle gone, would be the Yankee leader. Some reporters even asked me, but I couldn’t quite see myself in that role. Social director, perhaps, if they were pressed for such a man. A radio interviewer asked Vic Ziegel of the Post, “Can Joe Pepitone be the Yankees’ spiritual leader?”
“He has enough hair to be the spiritual leader,” said Vic. “But he lacks the beard.”
I was now missing so much hair in front that even using a hair dryer-blower to tease it into a bouffant wouldn’t cover the skin in front. I had begun wearing a partial hairpiece in front, but I hadn’t told anyone. Now after games I would put a handkerchief on my hair before taking a
shower, and I wouldn’t stick my head under the water. Better still, I bought a yellow rubber rain hat to shower in. Afterward I’d comb, blow, and arrange my hair, then spray it to hold it.
Dick Howser, a former teammate who had become a coach, would say, “Joe, you don’t need a batting helmet. All we have to do when you get up is paint NY on your forehead.”
It was all fun. I remember a doubleheader early in the season against Washington in which I hit a tenth-inning home run to win the first game. A writer asked me what kind of pitch I hit, and I said a fast ball. Bobby Murcer, who was dressing nearby, said, “I was near second base when Dennis Higgins threw it, and it was a slider,”
“Bobby’s hitting five hundred,” I said. “If he said it was a slider, it was a slider.” I never cared all that much once the ball was in the stands. But Higgins, a relief pitcher, was also in the second game when I came to bat. I told Ziegel afterward, “I was thinking, Maybe this guy is gonna throw at me because of the homer. The one thing I didn’t want was to get hit in the head the last time at bat. It might mess up my hair.”
When I set myself in the batter’s box, I heard Washington catcher Paul Casanova say, “Joe, good luck. And hang loose.”
I thought, Uh-oh, that’s it, he’s throwing at me. If they want to drill you, they can drill you. There’s no way he can miss me.
The first pitch came in and I was ready to dive out—only the ball was low and outside, four feet away from me. I stepped out of the box and glared at Casanova.
“What is this ‘good luck’ stuff?” I asked him. “What’s this crap about ‘hang loose’? You trying to scare me?”
“No, Joe,” Casanova said. “All I meant was good luck for the season.”
I had a pretty good season statistically, all things considered. I won another Gold Glove award at first base, led the team in home runs with twenty-seven, and drove in seventy runs, even though my batting average was only .242. But I was still going as hard as I could at night. I remember getting up so many mornings, crawling to the window and looking out at the sky, craning my neck in search of black clouds. “Rain, damn it,” I’d say. “Rain!” When I first joined the Yankees I’d get up in the morning, see there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and cheer: I’d feel great. It’s going to be a beautiful day for baseball. Now I prayed for rain, hailstorms, a plague of locusts upon us . . . anything that would allow me not to report to the stadium.
Going out wasn’t always all that swell, either. For the last few seasons I had been hearing more and more bullshit in saloons. Everyone knew who I was because I was always in the papers; my whole life had been on newsprint. 1 was colorful, I was news, and I always talked to writers.
So I’d be in a joint sitting across from a guy who had a few drinks in him, and he’d say—purposely loud enough for me to hear—“There’s Joe Pepitone, the asshole.” Or, because of the fact that I dressed mod and because of the way I wore my hair, “There’s Joe Pepitone, the faggot.” Or I’d walk into a place and a girl at a table would squeal, “Oh, that’s Joe Pepitone! I want his autograph.” And the guy sitting with her would say, “What do you want his autograph for? He’s a queer.”
I don’t know how many times I heard that kind of shit. The words would vibrate through my head, make me furious. I wasn’t brought up to sit still behind bullshit, not by Willie, not by the neighborhood I came up in. I had to learn to control myself, learn to bite my tongue or leave the place. I’d say to myself, Fuck it, they’re envious of you, don’t let it bother you. This may be one of those hard-ons who gets off trying to push ballplayers, who wants to provoke you into slugging him just so he can sue you. There are a lot of those around.
I’d often meet a guy in a club and we’d exchange two sentences, then the guy would say, “I always thought you were a prick, but you’re a nice guy.” Again I’d have to bite my tongue. Sometimes I’d get disgusted and say, “Well, fuck you, buddy. You thought I was a prick? Well, I am a prick. Shove it up your ass, if you don’t like it.” Then I’d walk away, because I just didn’t need that shit. Why should anyone think that way about a person if they don’t even know them? And if they did think it, why—when they find out different—do they say it?
This was one of the reasons why Mickey Mantle became so reclusive in his last years with the Yankees, because he got tired of the crap he heard spoken about him whenever he went out in public. There’s only so much a man can walk away from, can ignore.
For some reason, I heard more crap during the 1969 season than ever before. It was like all the bad-ass freaks were out en masse. I remember dropping into a friend’s bar one night in Chicago. I’d met this guy, whom I’ll call Ralphie here, on my first trip to Chicago in 1962. He was in the rackets and had just taken over the bar. Over the years we’d become good friends. He was about my age, and we sort of grew up together.
So I stopped in to say hello to Ralphie and ordered a drink at the bar. A guy walked right up to me and said, “You’re Joe Pepitone. Mr. Cocky. You’re a real fucking smart-ass hotshot on a ball field.”
“Man, what the fuck are you talking about?” I said. I knew right away this was a racket guy, a junior wise guy; tough, out to prove something to himself. I’d never seen a top racket guy ever come on with anyone like that. A top racket guy would tell anyone he had trouble with to move on, or he’d move him. No bullshitting around.
“Come on with me, Mr. Cocky,” the guy said.
“Come on where? You don’t even know me.”
“I know you, smart-ass. Come on outside.”
“What the fuck did I ever do to you?”
“I don’t like your act. I don’t like the way you play ball. I don’t like the things you say in the paper. You think you’re such a great player, such a great lover. Shit. Come on outside.”
“You call those reasons for fighting?” I was scared. I read the guy as mean, and I didn’t know what he had on him. But I didn’t think he’d pull out anything in the bar. “If you’re gonna start something,” I said, “you better do it right here. Take your shot. I’ll fight ya.”
“Outside, you smart-ass punk!” he yelled.
Just then Ralphie, whom I hadn’t seen on the other side of the room, heard the loud voices and picked up on what was happening. The next thing I knew, the guy was flying against the wall. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Ralphie said angrily. “This kid’s been a friend of mine for seven years.”
“What seven years? He’s a fucking smart-ass and I’m gonna straighten him out.”
Ralphie grabbed the guy by the shirt and smacked him in the face. “This kid’s a friend of mine, and you ever lay a hand on him you’re gonna find your ass in the fucking lake.”
Then the wise guy started apologizing to me. “Get away from me, asshole,” I told him. But I was goddamn happy Ralphie had been around to look out for me. There are a lot of crazy-mean wise guys around like that nut. And I never wanted to find out what any of them were carrying, or what in fact they might do outside in the dark.
I also had a problem that year in a bar in Detroit. Mel Stottlemyre and I went in for a drink after a game. Earl Wilson, the Tiger pitcher, was sitting at the bar. I met a girl from the Playboy Club and started dancing with her. I was wearing trim-fitting pants, which I always wore, and a shirt that was open in front to show my hairy chest. I heard some big bastard at the bar yell something, but I couldn’t make it out over the music. When we danced a bit closer to the bar, I heard him say, “Look at that faggot dancing with that pretty girl.”
I just laughed and said to the girl, “Don’t pay any attention to that clown.”
But Mel turned to the guy and said, “Keep your mouth shut.”
The guy ignored him. “Look at the faggot,” he said loudly.
“Listen,” said Mel, “that guy is a friend of mine, and he’s no faggot. Now keep your mouth shut.”
When I heard this, I had to say something or Mel was going to get into a thing with the fat-mouth. “And if you don�
��t keep your mouth shut,” I said to the guy, “I ’m gonna shut it.”
“You ain’t gonna do nothing, faggot,” the guy said.
I leaped over the low railing between the dance floor and the bar, I grabbed the guy around the throat, and my momentum drove his head down on the bar. I started banging it as hard as I could. He broke my grip, flopped to his feet, and picked up a chair. He threw it and I ducked. Then I stepped in and punched him. As I started to hit him again, two arms wrapped around me from behind. The guy spun me around and said he was a detective. He snapped handcuffs on my wrists, saying, “You’re under arrest.”
“What the hell are you arresting me for?” I said. “That guy started the whole thing.”
“I saw what you did. You attacked him.”
Mel confirmed my story. I glanced at Earl Wilson, who was still at the bar and whom I’d known for years. With a second witness, I’d be freed in a moment. But Earl Wilson wouldn’t even look at me!
Mel and I had to sit down with the detective and explain the whole incident in detail before he took the handcuffs off me. Then I had to go to the station house and press charges against the other guy to protect myself, in case he pressed charges against me.
When I returned from spring training in 1969, I lived in a building on the East Side of Manhattan called the Carriage House. But creditors were still pressing me, particularly Barbara’s attorney. So I moved in with a friend I’ll call George who lived with his family in Brooklyn. I’d met George through a very close friend, Dominic Morello, who owned the Diplomat Club in Brooklyn. I was looking to get into some business that would make a lot of money and allow me to pay my debts and give me a hedge against the future. I was only twenty-nine, but I was already wondering how long I could make myself keep playing baseball. I thought about opening a lounge, a restaurant, something to capitalize on my name which was always in the papers. Then it occurred to me that men’s hairstyling was about to become a big thing. Everyone was wearing long hair now, and it had to be styled regularly by professionals to look nice. Your average barber just didn’t know what to do with long hair, and many of them weren’t interested in learning. All they did was cut in the old-fashioned way and bitch because they were losing business.
