Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud

by Joe Pepitone

  Holy shit, I thought, the Mummy really wants to skull me! “Get off the mound, you bum!” I shouted to Coates. “You can’t pitch and you never could pitch. You should be a shower monitor.”

  Coates started in toward me, and I started out toward him. The plate umpire, Larry Napp, grabbed me. “Go fuck yourself, Mummy,” I yelled at Coates, brave now that he was out of the game. Fortunately, I never had to bat against him again.

  Jim Bouton I disliked from the moment I started playing with him at Amarillo in the Texas League. In my mind he was always a self-centered prick who never cared how he hurt his teammates. If an outfielder dropped a fly ball or an infielder made an error that affected the outcome of a game he was pitching, Bouton always bitched to the writers. He’d say things like, “This club will be all right if we ever get a center fielder.” Or, “All this club needs is a second-baseman.” He didn’t make a lot of friends among his teammates with this kind of comment.

  In one of our early years with the Yankees, Bouton and I had a fight on an airplane. We were flying to Denver to play an exhibition game. Bouton had been annoying everyone by crawling around on the floor and trying to give hotfeet. I passed him in the aisle and gave him a little punch in the arm. I forgot that was his sore arm. He jumped up and threw about five punches at me. I blocked them with my arms. Ellie Howard stood up between us, and I lunged over Ellie and rapped Bouton a glancing blow. Then we were both pulled away.

  But when we got to the clubhouse in Denver, I was still angry because I hadn’t landed a solid punch on Bouton. I started antagonizing him, calling him an asshole and everything else to provoke him into a fight, but he just sat in front of his locker. Yogi Berra came over and grabbed my right wrist and Bouton’s right wrist and tried to pull our hands together. “Come on, you two,” said Yogi, “make up. Shake hands.” Bouton and I were pulling away from Yogi, stretching him until he looked like a crucifixion figure. Yogi tugged our hands closer and closer. The instant they touched, I was still so pissed that I threw a punch at Bouton with my left hand. The great fighter missed again.

  The only time I really “got” Bouton was after a game in Detroit. He was in a bar with a chick who kept looking over at Clete Boyer and me. We weren’t having much luck in the place, so when Bouton left with the girl, we followed them outside. “Hey,” I called to the girl, “where you headed?” She turned and walked right over to us and we started coming on with her. “Jim,” she said over her shoulder, “I think I’ll go with these guys.” We walked off and left Bouton standing there. When we got the girl to the hotel, it turned out she was into weird sex beyond anything even I had imagined. We finally had to throw her out of the room.

  Bouton and I were in Houston together when his book, Ball Four, came out, and I read it and got mad as hell. Not because of the things he said about me; I couldn’t complain about the truth of any of them. What pissed me off was that Bouton didn’t reveal any real truths about himself, about any of his sexual interests on the road. He embarrassed other players, but he didn’t write anything that embarrassed himself.

  Again I tried to provoke him into a fight in the clubhouse. “I hope you choke on the blood money you’re making on that book,” I told Bouton, and called him every filthy name, said every nasty thing I could think of. Anyone else would have had to hit me. Bouton did the right thing. He just smiled and turned away, saying, “Joe, I got the money.”

  I wish I had been born ten years later, because I’d have some money, too. Not only have baseball player salaries shot upward, but today guys have their lawyers or agents negotiate their contracts—professionals who know how to get top dollar out of the front office. When I was playing, if you took your lawyer with you to the general manager’s office to negotiate your contract, your lawyer had to sit outside. You went in and dealt with the general manager, stepped out to talk to your lawyer, then went back in and got beaten down yourself. If I was playing ball today, I might be a fairly well-to-do individual. Although my wife says that’s very debatable.

  Stevie and I moved to Brooklyn in the spring of 1974, rented a little house, and settled down to just live. It was nice being close to my family again. Every Sunday there was still a huge dinner for twenty or thirty people at my grandfather’s, a two-family house where my mother also lives. After my father died, my mother had gone into a shell, never going out, never having any real fun any more. Something of her died with Willie. But within the last year or so, my mother had finally come out of her shell. She’s still a very attractive woman, only fifty-two, and it warmed my heart to see her getting out, doing things, enjoying life again after all those years,

  I bought a twenty-foot powerboat and, through the first half of the summer, just went fishing and snorkeling, renewed old friendships with Lemon and all the guys, and relaxed. It was nice, after fifteen years of baseball, to do nothing in the summer. I was keeping my eyes opened for a small business to go into, either alone or with one partner. I definitely wasn’t interested in any more lounges or anything elaborate, just something that would be enjoyable to run and bring in a decent income. Having Stevie and Billy Joe, I didn’t need a whole bunch of money to be happy.

  XXIV

  Finally . . . a little perspective.

  Beginning with the night my father died, and virtually every night of my life since then, I have had nightmares that scare the hell out of me. Gory, grisly, violent, vicious scenes that follow pretty much the same theme nightly. I’m jumping on some guy—I can’t tell who—and I’m throwing punches and kicking and gouging, and nothing is happening. The guy is laughing at me. All of a sudden, he pulls out a knife and slashes me, and I feel the pain, see the blood. Then I want to wake up, and I always do. As soon as I feel the pain, I wake up. When I fall asleep again, I’m right into a similar nightmare. I’ve become so used to them after all these years that when I don’t have a nightmare I worry the next morning. I’m nervous, upset. Something’s out of kilter. The nightmares are so much a part of my life, they are like old friends, or old familiar enemies . . . something I am supposed to experience as regularly as breathing. Small wonder.

  When I look back on my life, I can’t believe how crazed I was. I think I understand what started it all. But I don’t understand why I extended the bullshit for so long, why I had to put myself through so much grief for so many years without making some changes. I guess I was too screwed up to change, so I kept turning the screw deeper and deeper and deeper . . .

  I think of all the balling I did, and how it gave me good feelings for a while. Then the good feelings started lasting only during the sex itself. When the sex was over, I began to feel miserable. As the years went on, the misery increased, intensified, lasted longer and longer. Yet the misery didn’t stop me.

  The only thing that even began to change me was getting older. Not more mature, just older. I couldn’t screw as much any more. Then I discovered that I could not only do without it—in those compulsive, frantic, no-feeling terms—but that cutting back on the bullshit sex also cut down my misery cache. Fuck me.

  After being with a girl, I used to say, “What a great fuck she was! What a great fuck!” Then one day it occurred to me to ask myself, What the hell is a great fuck? The best sex of all is easy. When you get right down to it, the best sex of all is provided by your five fingers. They know what your dick likes best, how it likes to move. Only you and your hand know for sure.

  The only really great sex partner is someone you care about more than anything. That’s why getting to know Stevie was the one thing beyond aging that helped me to change. After I blew the marriage to Diane, I thought I would never find a girl I’d want to be with all the time, a girl that I could sit around with night after night and get off by just being present. I was grasping so hard for love that, until I met Stevie, I never realized that I’d never been in love before, that I didn’t have any idea what love was.

  When I go to some of the bars I used to hit regularly, the first thing the owner wants to do is fix me up with
some girl. “Thanks,” I tell them, “but I’m out of that game. Retired.” I just drop in to have a couple of drinks, rap, laugh. I like to sit and talk to chicks, to dig into their heads, see what’s moving them, what they’re into. It’s a better, more meaningful game.

  I had a falling-out with my best friend, not long ago, because every time we went out together he was trying to get laid. “Look,” I’d say, “that’s fine for you, but don’t try to drag me along. I’m sick of that bullshit.” He’s over ten years older than I am, and he’s never grown up, never tried to change. I’m trying to change, and it doesn’t do me any good to pal out with him any more. It’s a shame we still can’t be close. We had so many laughs together, so many good times. We’d do anything for one another, and I’m sorry we have to go our own ways now. But that’s the way it’s got to be. I have to think of myself, what’s best for me.

  I still do some things that are out of line. I have a ways to go. But the improvements I’ve made in myself—small to some people—are like moonshots to me. I was such a liar, such an asshole for so long, that I came to hate myself, to hate almost everything I did. Now, finally, I really believe I’m a nice guy. I’m concerned about other people. I try never to put down anybody, to hurt anyone. I’ve hurt too many people . . . so many.

  My last year with the Cubs, I visited my children when we played in California. Eileen, who was almost twelve then, was a tall, beautiful girl. Her mother had her dressed like Little Bo Peep: a long dress, curled hair. She didn’t like it. I didn’t like it because she didn’t like it . . . and I heard the words again: “Daddy, don’t leave me.” Eileen remembered me. Joseph Jr., my first son, who was a big boy for ten years old, didn’t know who I was. I didn’t cry in front of them.

  I haven’t done all bad. I’ve always had a soft heart to go with my crazed head. I don’t know how many times I’ve met a stranger in a bar over the years who started telling me how desperate he was, telling me a horror story that was no worse than mine. But it would touch me so much that I’d reach for my wallet and give him every cent I had on me. I was always in financial trouble, but I was out just fucking around. The hundred dollars or so that I had on me would actually help this guy. He would make better use of it than I would. Of course, I have to admit that at least part of my motivation came from a childhood belief that God would note my generosity when I died.

  I remember as a kid, when the March of Dimes collection container was passed in The Itch theater, I’d always put in all the money I had on me. The other guys would put in a dime and save fifteen cents for the candy store later. I’d put in my quarter and think, Maybe God won’t let me ever be paralyzed.

  Although I don’t spend a lot of time in church, I’m still Catholic and I still believe in God. There’s nothing wrong with having faith, believing in something. Until it’s proven different to me, I’m going to believe. It can’t hurt, even if you do have to wonder.

  I think about that story I heard when I was growing up in the Church. About the kid who goes to mass with a pocket full of peanuts. The priest shouts, “God is everywhere!” And the kid freezes, saying to himself, “I hope He’s not in my pocket eating my peanuts.” Now I wonder, What would it be like to reach in your pocket and pull out God?

  One of my greatest regrets is that I wasn’t at least semisane about my finances. I made a lot of money playing baseball, particularly in the last years. And I’m still in debt. The only thing good about going to Japan was that my creditors didn’t follow me there. When I came back, I was moving around—Kansas City, Chicago, Brooklyn—and it took a while for the bill collectors to run me down. I hadn’t seen a process server in so long, I was beginning to feel lonely.

  In August of 1974, I opened a little restaurant in Brooklyn: “Joe Pepitone’s Italian Dugout.” It cost me about nine thousand dollars to convert a luncheonette into a restaurant. I hustled around and lined up the suppliers, got a big stove, a walk-in refrigerator, tables, chairs, and I supervised the remodeling. It was a nice little place, not fancy, a restaurant that served good food, wine, and beer, at inexpensive prices. Perfect for a neighborhood business. Throughout the weeks it took me to get the place ready, I kept saying to Stevie and to my mother, who was helping in the kitchen, “Where are the bill collectors? What are those guys waiting for?”

  The night we opened the restaurant, a guy walked in with five other people. “Joe,” he said to me, “I’ve got some good news for you and some bad news.”

  “Give me the good news first,” I said.

  “All these people with me are starving, and we’re gonna eat everything on your menu.”

  “Terrific. What’s the bad news?”

  He handed me a subpoena to appear in court with Diane. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “I’ve got a whole wall in my house papered with these things, but there’s one blank spot. Now I can finish decorating. Thanks.”

  When Stevie and I had started living together in Chicago, we’d bought three thousand dollars’ worth of furniture on time. For over two years we lived in the same place, and the furniture store never sent us a bill, even when we got married and our address was in the newspapers. We were ecstatic because this was a first—a creditor forgetting about Joe Pepitone. Recently, about three and a half years after I bought that furniture—half of which I sold before we moved from Chicago—I got a postcard in the mail that asked me to call Ray something at a New York phone number. I didn’t know Ray something, but I called.

  “What number do I have?” I asked.

  “You’ve got the right number,” the guy on the line said.

  “Well, what does this company do?”

  “This is a collection agency.”

  “Do you know who this is?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” I hung up. But I’ll hear from him again. I’ll hear from all the bill collectors.

  I never cared about money until the last few years. All I wanted to do was spend it, live today, screw the future. Everyone I knew worried about money. That was what responsible people did. I rebelled against every single responsibility. All of them. I could have still lived well, more enjoyably, by spending sensibly, not charging everything. I guess I was more interested in bucking the conventional. I never worried about the bills until the collectors caught up with me. But I still don’t understand—having lived almost two and a half years on fifty or sixty dollars a week—how I allowed myself to get back into heavy debt again and again. There’s still an awful lot I don’t understand fully.

  I do know that everything happened to me too soon, when I was too young to handle it . . . getting shot, my father dying, being a big star as a child. From the minute I played with the best team in Brooklyn I had everybody trying to grab me, hook into me, praise me, make me think I was something special. Then I signed the bonus contract with the Yankees, made the best team in baseball at age twenty-one, and suddenly bigger, more important people were trying to grab me. All the racket guys who wanted me to hang out with them. They introduced me to dozens of celebrities, and they told everyone, “Hey, look who I got with me—Joe Pepitone, who’s gonna be a big star, make us all proud.” I became convinced that I was special, that I could do no wrong. Things happened so fast, I couldn’t put anything in perspective. It would have been difficult for most people. For a baby who was also plagued by guilt and uncertainty, it was impossible.

  I’ve run into some of those racket guys since I’ve been back in New York, and they all say the same thing, “You coulda made us all proud, Joey, but you got nothin’ upstairs. You disgraced us.”

  “What are you doing to me?” I asked them. “I’ve shamed you? I didn’t kill anybody. What did you do to make me proud the last twelve years? What, tell me?”

  That kind of talk bugs the shit out of me. I know I should have done things a lot differently. But I hurt myself more than anyone else. I was doing what I had to do then. I thought I was digging it, enjoying it. It turned out o
therwise, but that’s past. Sure I disappointed a lot of people. And some people disappointed me. But I don’t put down anyone for what they did. These people who used to love me and now say I disgraced them, all they’re telling me is that they were using me. Over the years, it became clearer and clearer that some people were hanging around me just because of my name, my image.

  I know I asked for it, that I used my name to get laid. I didn’t give a shit about anything then except getting laid. But when I finally began to have some self-pride—which is the greatest thing in the world—I started wondering, Does this girl really like me or does she just dig the world I move in? This is a tough thing for any celebrity to face. When you’re a star and you have some money and you like to go out and have a good time, does the chick dig all that alone? What does she think of you? I began to wonder about everyone who hung out with me, even my best friends. Do they really like me, or do they just like what I can provide? It’s not a pleasant thought.

  This is why I don’t think that anybody in the limelight, who’s a star, can be completely happy. He has to constantly wonder about his real regard in the eyes of everyone he’s close to. I wonder how often Frank Sinatra thinks about this. I wonder, How many times has he used his name—or wiggled his finger—to get a piece of ass?

  I guess I became a celebrity freak because of my father, because he was such a star to me and I wanted to win his approval. The celebrities I admired all gave me approval, so I kept seeking them out. It took me a long time to realize how foolish I was. But I am not alone in being so close to something that I didn’t see what I was actually doing.

  I see that my own family, without knowing it, is suddenly ignoring my grandfather, and I get so upset I could cry. Vincent Caiazzo is approaching age ninety-two, and when we all assemble at his house for Sunday dinner, I see that everyone shunts him aside, giving him none of the attention he deserves. I say, “What’s going on here?” And several members of my family say, “Well, he’s getting old. He’s getting senile.” “Are you crazy?” I say. “He’s as hip as he ever was, a wonderful old man.”