by Joe Pepitone
It kills me that they act this way toward a man who has always taken care of them any time they needed help, who provided housing for everyone, who laid money on everyone when they didn’t have it. And now they cast him aside—-without even realizing it. I see it because I have been away so much. My family doesn’t realize it; they don’t mean to discard this man they all love. But they do it.
One day some months ago during a Sunday get-together, my grandfather and I went outside after the meal. We sat and talked for almost an hour, and the tears kept swimming to my eyes when he spoke: “You know, Giuseppe, you people, you aunts and uncles, my daughters and my sons, they think I’m a crazy, that I getta so old I no longer know anything. But, listen now, I wanna tell you. I know more than any of them. I know everything they talk about. I know everything they thinking. Before they say, I know.”
I hugged him to my chest and kissed him on the cheek. I love my grandfather so. He is a great man, and has always been a great man.
After our talk, I said we should go back inside, rejoin the family. “You go, Giuseppe,” he said, waving a hand. “I stay here a while.” He smiled and I patted him on the shoulder.
Everyone was still sitting around the table, and I stood in the doorway a minute listening to the conversation. All I heard were people complaining about their health, moaning about the fact that they were getting older, and discussing the dead, running down one member of the family after another who had passed away. It was an Italian habit, this dwelling on the dead, one that my father had never believed in. Any time this kind of talk began when he was alive, he would tell a story, make a joke, have everyone laughing, living in the present. He believed in fun, and as I stood there I pictured him laughing, remembering him just as he was, his head thrown back, his teeth flashing. And, God, I wished he were still with us, wished he were there to turn the conversation. If Willie were there, Vincent Caiazzo would not be sitting out front in the sun alone, smiling and enjoying life by himself.
I sat down at the table next to Stevie, who rolled her eyes upward. I shook my head. Then I pulled out some grass and began rolling a joint.
“Joe,” said my mother, “put that away.”
“That’s not funny, Joe,” said my brothers, sounding like a chorus. “That’s not funny at all.”
“Shut up, all of you,” I said. “You do what you gotta do, and I’ll do what I gotta do. To put up with you people, I’ve gotta smoke this shit.”
The whole scene was depressing. It’s always depressing to see people you love acting stupidly, showing no feeling at all for others. I know my family felt that way about me for years. I gave them ample reason to be concerned about me, about my self-destructiveness, and I’m sorry about that. Truly sorry that I brought them down so many times. I know now that you can’t fuck over yourself without messing up the people you care about most, and with that knowledge comes the greatest pain of all. You do what you have to do, and you pay the price—but you pay it doubly when you see how it has hurt others you love.
It’s been one helluva long and painful education process. I feel like a guy who was left back in kindergarten twelve times, like I could never get it right no matter how often the lessons were pounded into me.
But for the first time in my memory, I’m happy, really happy. Not for a day or a week or a month—constantly. I love being with Stevie and Billy Joe, worrying about them, taking care of them. In November of 1974, we rented, for only $250 a month, a terrific house on the beach in Queens, and I could hardly wait until the summer came so we could really enjoy it as a family. Stevie is the most relaxed, together girl I have ever known. She lets me go out in the evening if I have to. “Just tell me when you’re coming home,” she says, “and take care of yourself.” So I don’t go out often. It’s nice just being with her, even though she’s quiet, an interior person, and I’m hyper, an extrovert. She’ll sit around reading, because she reads everything she can get her eyes on. I’ll be watching television or listening to music. But after an hour or so without hearing a word from her, I’ll think something’s wrong.
“Stevie, what did I do?” I’ll say.
“Nothing,” she’ll say, looking up from her book.
“You talked more when we were going together,” I’ll say.
“I’m just relaxing, Joe.”
“Well, say something once in a while, breathe hard, let me hear the wind come out of your nose. Don’t make me worry that you’ve died there.”
“Joe, I love you.”
Then it’s okay. Then everything’s okay.
I just wish our restaurant had done better. It started strong. I was able to pay off all of my suppliers within six weeks after we opened. During one of those weeks, a waitress got sick and Stevie filled in for three nights and made eighty dollars in tips. We were on our way, getting ready to expand into the empty store next door, which would double our seating capacity. Then the economy really began to go bad, and the business became up and down. One night packed, the next night empty. After a good night, I always felt fantastic. I’d come home and find that my two dogs—one of which was a Great Dane puppy who tended to go wild—had destroyed the living room. I’d just clean up the mess and yell at them.
After a bad night at the restaurant—when I’d also been hit by another subpoena from Diane—I’d come home in a foul mood. If the dogs had torn up the place, I would beat the hell out of them. I would also be sharp-mouthed with Stevie over nothing things.
“Joe, close the restaurant,” Stevie would say. “It’s not worth it if owning the place makes you so upset.”
“Stevie, don’t tell me that,” I would say. “I don’t want to hear that. I didn’t open the restaurant to close it. You’ve got to stick with me, hon. You gotta keep me going. All I gotta know is that we care for one another, that’s all I care about. If I have nothing in the world, as long as I have you and Billy Joe, I’m gonna be feeling pretty good, hon. But you gotta stick with me.”
“Joe, you know I’m going to stick with you. I just don’t want to see you upset. Just relax. It’ll work out.”
Things will work out, as long as we’re together, even though I finally did have to close the restaurant. I lost nine thousand dollars on it. So it goes. I don’t want to be rich. I just want to make enough money to care for my family simply. As long as I can sit around at night and play with my son, yell at my dogs, and be with Stevie—it’s beautiful. Making them happy, that’s my whole life.
I realize even now that I may get bored with this life, that the pressure to care for my family and try to keep what I have in these difficult times may get to me. When I review my past record, I can’t honestly offer any guarantees. I know I still have miles to go before I sleep nightmareless. But now I can look back with at least a little perspective on where I’ve tramped, and on whom. Could anyone possibly allow himself to go through anything even vaguely resembling that kind of pain again? Knowing full well from this vantage point that it would be even worse one more time? When I get depressed now, I think back on those shudderingly grim years, and no matter what’s coming down, the future looks blindingly bright.
Two weeks after we moved into our house at the beach, on Thanksgiving Day, we found that we would never have a chance to walk in the sand and swim in the surf there. We had planned to have Thanksgiving dinner together, just the three of us. We got up early and took the turkey out of the refrigerator, but four hours later it became apparent that we should have left it out all night to defrost. We drove to my mother’s for dinner. That evening we got a phone call from the lady who lived next door to us in Queens. Her voice was choked. Our house had burned to the ground. An electrical fire had flashed through the house and destroyed everything we owned—all our clothes, furniture, appliances, and the dogs. Our fire insurance had not yet been transferred.
Stevie was so strong, composed. Until we went to bed that night. Then she began thinking about the dogs, and she started crying and couldn’t stop. I held her, tried to comfort he
r. But she was hysterical, she had held it in for hours, and had to let it out.
“Go ahead, hon,” I said. “It’s all right. Get it all out, and everything will be all right. Maybe it’s New York, maybe this place is a jinx. Most of the pain in my life has happened here. Maybe we should move. Maybe it’s just as well that everything’s gone, that we can just pick up and go, start fresh someplace else* We have each other and Billy Joe, and nothing else means a damn thing.”
I hugged her to me as hard as I could without cracking her ribs, and we went to sleep like that. I had a supergory nightmare.
The next morning, Stevie was together and I was depressed at breakfast. My mother saw my head down and said, “Now, Joe, don’t you start doing that stuff all day,” and she drew on an imaginary cigarette without letting any imaginary smoke out. I smiled. My mother, this incredible woman, she knows me, knows my escapes so well. I guess that’s why I feel that in the long run I really don’t have anything to worry about. I wish to God that Willie Pepitone were still alive. I wish it with all my heart and soul. But as long as Angelina Pepitone is present, she will take care of me: feed me and clothe me, and give me a dime every day.
XXV
Epilogue
Unfortunately, Angelina wasn’t able to take care of me on May 16, 1988, when I was led out of a Brooklyn courtroom in handcuffs.
I was on my way to serve a six-month jail sentence for possession of Quaaludes and drug paraphernalia, both misdemeanors. As I said at the time, “I feel like I shouldn’t have got the sentence, but I got it and I’m going to go and do it, come out, and maybe see if I can get back into baseball.’’
As bad as that situation was—and it really was bad—it could have been a lot worse. A year and a half earlier, a jury had found me not guilty of four more serious charges, including A-1 felonies that carried mandatory fifteen-year sentences. I was absolutely not guilty. But who ever knows what a jury is going to decide?
Since I’d never been in prison before, I didn’t know what to expect. My lawyer was assuming the worst. He asked the judge to put me in protective custody in Rikers Island, because “certain elements of the general population might seek to antagonize him.’’ He argued that “no matter how tough you are, there’s always someone tougher who wants to add another notch to his belt."
So I was nervous, no question about it. And I was ashamed. When the judge had sentenced me two years earlier, he did a pretty good job of rubbing it in. He said that he found it “particularly sad that someone who graced New York in Yankee pinstripes will now have to serve his time with the New York Department of Correction in their prison stripes.’’
A cheap shot? Sure. Unnecessary? Absolutely. But I couldn’t argue. It was sad alright, not to mention scary. I was going to be locked up with hardened criminals. I was sure they’d instantly size me up as some pussy former ball player and try to take me down. So it was a complete shock when I took my first walk down the cell block at Rikers. Inmates on both sides chanted “Joe Pep! Joe Pep! Joe Pep!” It was incredible.
Then again, I’ve always been popular with the fans.
How did I wind up there? It was a classic case of being in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time. In March 1985, I’d been partying with a girl I’d just met for two straight days. And I do mean partying. Some friends of hers came by and I asked them to give me a ride home to Canarsie. On the way, we were stopped by undercover cops as we were driving in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. As the police approached the car, the guy in the driver’s seat handed me a .22 pistol and said, “Here, hold this.” “No fucking way am I holding that!” I said, with my hands in the air.
So he slipped the gun between the front seats. Sure enough, the cops found it almost as soon as they started searching the car. “Gun!” one of them yelled.
And that’s when things got really hairy. The cop behind me grabbed the back of my neck and—bam!—slammed my face against the top of the car. “Hey, stop! I’m Joe Pepitone! I played for the Yankees! My brother’s a New York cop—a detective!’
Let’s just say he wasn’t impressed.
But, an hour or so later, he and the others were impressed after we were hauled into the station. As I was standing there, in a complete daze, the cops all suddenly burst out in applause. That’s because one of them held up ten ounces of cocaine, which he said he found in the car. It was the first time I’d seen it, that’s for sure. But I knew I was in a shipload of trouble.
Even when I was cleared of the more serious charges, I went to jail—for two misdemeanors. My lawyer had argued for probation and community service. No dice, said the judge. As my brother Vinnie said at the time, “He was treated differently because his name is Joe Pepitone.”
If you’ve read this far you know that I’ve had a lot of great times in my life along with a lot of challenges—many of which I brought on myself. Without question, this period was one of the most challenging. As I said at the time, it was the toughest thing ever—tougher than Koufax. Fortunately, a lot of people went to bat for me and kept in touch, including a lot of ex-teammates. But, apart from my mother, no one stood up for me like George Steinbrenner.
When I was busted, George immediately called my mother, Angelina. He recommended a terrific lawyer and paid all of my legal expenses. He took care of everything.
And it wasn’t the first time. In 1980, after I’d been out of baseball for seven years, my wife Stephanie wrote a letter to George. She told him that “the only thing Joe wants to do” is return to the Yankees. When she showed me the letter, I said, “Nah, I don’t fit into their image.” Still, we sent it off—but not before I added a P.S.: “George, I promise to get a haircut.”
A year later, I was the Yankees’ minor-league hitting instructor. After a stint with the Class A Greensboro Hornets, I was sent to the AA farm team, the Nashville Sounds. At that time, Nashville was loaded with talent. Buck Showalter played outfield and first base. Otis Nixon played short. Willie McGee was in center. And they had a young outfielder/first baseman named Don Mattingly.
Early in the season, I got a call from George. “We want Mattingly to be a full-time first baseman, Pep. You played the position your whole life. Work with him.”
So Mattingly and I hit the field the next day. A year earlier, when he was with Greensboro, Mattingly played 112 games in the outfield and just fourteen games at first (while batting .358). Within fifteen minutes, I could see that he was a natural first baseman. He did everything I told him, and did it perfectly. Then he came out the next day and did it exactly the same way, without my having to repeat myself. That year he played 90 games at first and 55 in the outfield (while hitting .316). Of course, he went on to win nine Gold Gloves as a first baseman for the Yankees and was the American League MVP in 1985.
George gave me a $15,000 raise for that bit of coaching genius.
In 1982, I was promoted to the major leagues to replace Mickey Vernon as the Yankee batting coach. It was a big step, and I didn’t want to fuck it up. Also, I was aware that my reputation as a free spirit might affect how I was perceived. I said at the time that I wanted the players to consider me “Joe Pepitone the hitting instructor rather than the clown of yesteryear.”
While I wanted respect, I had no plans to get all scientific about hitting. When I was hired, a reporter asked me about my philosophy of batting. "I believe in Yogi’s theory,” I said. "If the ball looks good, hit it.”
Soon after I was moved up to the majors, George called again. This time he wanted me to work with Dave Winfield—who at that point was hitting everything in sight. I said, “George, I’m happy to work with Dave. But he’s on fire right now and I’m not sure what I could possibly tell him.”
“He’s got a hitch in his swing. I don’t like it. Work with him,” the Boss told me. So I went to Dave and told him that Mr. Steinbrenner wanted me to work with him on his hitting. And I basically said to him, “All I can tell you is, ‘keep up the good work.’”
In the next
game Winfield went something like 4 for 5. George gave me a $5,000 raise.
I’ve often said that if it wasn’t for George Steinbrenner, I’d be fucking dead. Like a lot of Yankees who went through tough times—Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden come to mind—I got his complete support. He liked me. He knew the fans liked me, and—most important—he considered me part of the Yankee family. He did many, many good things for me that no one ever knew about, because he never made a big deal of it.
In fact, after I served two months of my sentence at Rikers, George helped me get into a work-release program with the Yankees. I got involved in minor-league player development, which was great. After every game, I had to be back at Rikers within two and a half hours.
I sure wish George had been around in October 2012, when lightning struck again. Actually, this time it was “Superstorm” Sandy that struck. And it wiped me out.
After the house in Queens burned to the ground in the 70s, I moved to Massapequa on Long Island. As Sandy approached, my girlfriend Irene Thomas and I decided to ride out the storm at home. (Stevie and I had split up years earlier, though we remain good friends.) In the middle of the night, we woke up to the sound of something swimming through 4.5 feet of water—in the bedroom. It was our dog, Hobo. And boy, was he paddling!
We lost fucking everything to Sandy, including about $175,000 worth of furniture, hundreds of records, a jukebox, hunting rifles. Everything. My boat had been on a trailer in the backyard; after Sandy hit, both the boat and trailer were floating out to sea. But worst of all, the memorabilia from my baseball career was completely destroyed. I’d had three Gold Glove Awards. Gone. My newspaper clippings since high school. Gone. Stuff from the 1963 and 1964 World Series. All gone.
I spent a week after the storm sleeping on the floor of the house. Everything had gotten wet and the place smelled horrible. I had to go scavenging for firewood in order to heat the place. It was like living in the wasteland after the bomb dropped in Planet of the Apes.
