by Jim Bouton
Of course, he still has the other advice ringing in his ears. So now he’s supposed to hit a corner, low on the knees, with a hard fastball. This is wonderful advice. Ball two. Ball three.
“Got to come in there now, but not too good.”
That’s really beautiful advice. Especially with a good hitter up there who may well be swinging at 3 and 0. Sure enough, Baney threw a good fastball—belt high. It got hit into center for a double and two runs. And as the ball went out there Sal shook his head and said, sadly, “Too high, too high.”
How many inches are there between the belt and the knee? How many pitches can you control to that tolerance? How many pitching coaches are second-guessers? Answers: Eighteen inches. Very few. Most.
And this kind of bullshit goes on during most ballgames. The same things are said over and over in the same situations. They all come to the same thing. They’re asking you to obey good pitching principles; keep the ball down (most hitters are high-ball hitters), don’t make the pitch too good (don’t pitch it over the heart of the plate), move the ball around inside the strike zone and change speeds (keep the hitter off balance), and get ahead of the hitter (when you have two strikes on a hitter and two balls or fewer, you may then throw your best pitch as a borderline strike and the hitter will have to swing to protect himself).
This is the essence of the battle between the pitcher and the hitter, and it doesn’t do any good to yell this kind of advice to a pitcher in a crisis situation. He knows it as well as he knows his name. But pitching coaches use shouted advice as protection. If they shout enough advice they can’t be wrong.
Old Chicken Colonel Turner was a master at this. He’d sit in the dugout and shout to Stan Bahnsen, “Now, keep the ball down, Bahnsen,” and Stan would throw a letter-high fastball that would get popped up into the infield and The Colonel would look down the bench and say, “The boy’s fastball is moving. The boy’s fastball is rising.” Two innings later, same situation, the very same pitch, home run into the left-field seats. The Colonel looks up and down the bench and says very wisely, “Got the ball up. You see what happens when you get the ball up?”
Then you’d get a weak left-handed hitter up in Yankee Stadium and somebody would throw him a change-up and he’d hit it for a home run into the short porch and The Colonel would say, “You can’t throw a change-up to a left-handed hitter, boys. Not in this ballpark.” A week later a guy would throw the same pitch to the same kind of hitter and the guy would be way out in front and The Colonel would say, “Change-up. One of the best pitches in baseball. You can really fool the hitter with it.”
Whatever the result, The Colonel always knew the cause. And in the little world of baseball, he is not alone.
Merritt Ranew hit a pinch-hit home run that tied the game up in the ninth inning. He got a very cold reception in the dugout. The reason is that nobody wants to play extra innings in a spring game. It happened that we scored two more runs in the inning and won it, but it was a narrow escape and nobody was very happy with Ranew. By coincidence I have a soft spot in my heart for extra-inning games in the spring and believe that every player—at least every player who doesn’t have the team made—should feel this way. I made the Yankee ballclub in an extra-inning spring game.
This was in 1962, and I wasn’t even on the roster. They asked me to pitch the ninth inning of a game against St. Louis when we were behind by a run. We tied it up in the bottom of the ninth, so I wound up pitching five scoreless innings and lost it on an unearned run. But four days later I got to pitch in another game, and then two more, and I made the club. If I’d pitched only one inning in that first game they might never have taken another look. In fact, all the scrubeenies pray for extra innings in the spring. Or at least they should.
MARCH
18
Tempe
We lost an 8–5 ballgame today and I did my part, giving up two runs in a single inning. There was a triple on an ankle-high knuckleball (I hate triples off ankle-high knuckleballs), and then Tommy Davis lost a fly ball in the sun and it fell for a double.
When I was a kid I might have run out there and kicked him in the shin. I actually used to do that. I would stop the game and scream at a kid if he made an error, and everybody hated me for it. In recent years, though, I’ve turned full circle. I may say to myself, “Ah, Tommy, you should have had that,” but I go out of my way to show absolutely no reaction. I don’t pick up the resin bag and slam it down, and I don’t kick dirt, and I don’t stare out at the player.
The reasons are selfish. First of all, people think terrible thoughts about you when you do that kind of thing, and I don’t like people to think terrible thoughts about me. Secondly, you get on a player that way and he may miss the next play too. So I say nothing.
While warming up to come into the game I was wondering if my wife was in the park. I enjoy playing baseball better when I know there are friends or family watching. It’s a bit of hot dog in me. I got a special kick when my parents and my brothers used to come to a ballgame because it seemed like I was putting on a special performance just for them. I’ve pitched some of my best games when I knew I had left a lot of tickets for my countless admirers. The longest game in the American League was played in Detroit a few years ago. I pitched the last seven innings for the Yankees in a 22-inning game and there were fifteen Bouton passes sitting up there behind the dugout, all relatives of my wife. I really think I did better because I knew they were there. Sometimes, when I know there are no friends or family present, I pretend they’re home watching on television, thousands of them. You take your ego trips, I take mine.
Lost the game today, so we had a chance to prove we could be more silent than thou. After a loss the clubhouse has to be completely quiet, as though losing strikes a baseball player dumb. The radio was blaring when we came into the clubhouse and Joe Schultz strode the length of the room, switched it off and went back to his office. After that you could cut the silence with a bologna sandwich. The rule is that you’re not supposed to say anything even if it’s a meaningless spring-training loss. Feeling remorse has nothing to do with it. Those who did poorly in the game and those who did well, even those who didn’t play, all are supposed to behave as if at a funeral.
The important thing is to let the manager and coaches know you feel bad about losing. I’m sure they believe that if you look like you feel bad about losing then you’re the type who wants to win. So you go along with the little game. And they played this game real hard with the Yankees when I got there, but every once in a while Phil Linz, Joe Pepitone and I would giggle about something after a losing game and we got some pretty nasty stares from the old guard.
This was what was behind the famous Phil Linz harmonica incident. It was in 1964, when Yogi Berra was manager, on a bus ride from Comiskey Park to O’Hare airport in Chicago. It was hot, we were tied up in Sunday traffic, we’d blown a doubleheader, we’d lost four or five in a row, we were struggling for a pennant and tempers were short. Linz was sitting beside me, stewing because he hadn’t played, and all of a sudden he whipped out a harmonica he’d bought that morning and started playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The reason he played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was that it was the only song he knew how to play. He really played very respectfully and quietly, and if “Mary Had a Little Lamb” can sound like a dirge, it did.
Yogi, who was sitting in the front of the bus, stood up and said, “Knock it off.”
Legend has it that Linz wasn’t sure what Berra said, so he turned to Mickey Mantle and asked, “What’d he say?”
“He said play it louder,” Mantle explained.
Linz didn’t believe that. On the other hand he didn’t stop. In a minute Yogi was in the back of the bus, breathing heavily and demanding that Linz shove that thing up his ass.
“You do it,” Linz said, flipping the harmonica at him. Yogi swatted at it with his hand and it hit Pepitone in the knee. Immediately he was up doing his act called, “Oooooh, you hurt my little knee.
” Pretty soon everybody was laughing, even if you’re not supposed to laugh after losing, especially a doubleheader.
And that was really all of it, except that I should point out that in the middle of it all Crosetti stood up and in his squeaky voice screamed that this was the worst thing he’d ever seen in his entire career with the Yankees.
Ray Oyler was racked up at second base by Glenn Beckert of the Cubs, and when he came back to earth he was heard to call Beckert a son of a bitch. This is not on the same order as motherfucker, but he didn’t have a lot of time to think.
It has become the custom in baseball to slide into second base with a courteous how do you do, so when somebody does slide in hard everybody gets outraged and vows vengeance. A few years ago Frank Robinson slid into Bobby Richardson with murderous aplomb and the Yankees were visibly shocked. How could he do that to our Bobby? We’ll get him for that. Actually this was a National League play and the Yankees simply weren’t used to it.
Before the game, Joe Schultz asked me how the old knuckleball was coming along and I said fine. I was ready to pitch. Indeed, I added, it was my opinion that if a knuckleball pitcher got himself into proper shape he could probably pitch every day because the knuckleball takes almost nothing out of your arm. I was about halfway through this little speech when I noticed that Schultz was staring over my shoulder into the blue, blue sky. If I had said I just cut my grandmother’s throat from ear to ear, he would no doubt have said, “Fine, fine.”
Managers don’t like to be told who should play and who shouldn’t, and who should be a starting pitcher and who shouldn’t, and when Joe started feeling I was telling him I should be a starter he turned me off. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have just lathered my face.
MARCH
19
Phoenix
Two talks today from my main men, Schultz and Maglie; one okay, the other terrible.
Schultz said we weren’t in shape and that we were making physical mistakes that we wouldn’t if we were—in shape, I mean. (I’m not sure I understood that.) But then he obviously felt he’d hurt our feelings and tried to take it all back. “Shitfuck,” he said, using one of his favorite words (“fuckshit” is the other). “Shitfuck. We’ve got a damned good ballclub here. We’re going to win some games.”
I agree. I don’t see how we can avoid it.
What Schultz is afraid of, I guess, is that we might get down on ourselves and then, well, the losing might never stop. Baseball players are a special breed for getting down on themselves. When they do, it’s look out below.
The meeting with Maglie was disappointing, largely, I guess, because he was my hero when I was a kid and I expected a lot out of him. Also because he didn’t get along with Dick Williams, the Boston Red Sox manager. I count that as a good sign because managers, being what they are, often don’t get along with coaches who have something on the ball. I thought Sal Maglie might turn out to be another Johnny Sain. Afraid not.
Maglie started out saying, “Look, you guys got to concentrate out there. You’re not concentrating.”
Now what the hell does that mean? There are about thirty pitchers here, young and old, and not one of them isn’t concentrating when he’s pitching. I mean I know nobody is out there thinking about going out to play golf or about how the beer is going to taste after the game. If anything, most of us are concentrating too much, getting too tense, trying to do too much. Johnny Sain always told guys who had control problems that they were trying too hard to throw the ball to a specific spot, not that they weren’t concentrating. Sain would compare pitching to a golfer chipping to a green and say that if you tried for the cup you might miss the green. The thing to do was just hit the green, pitch to a general area.
Control was our big problem, Sal said. We’ve walked eighty and struck out only forty and the ratio should be the other way around. He’s absolutely right. But he’s got the wrong reason.
Then he surprised me by mentioning my name. “Some of you guys think you can get by on only one pitch,” he said. “You can’t do it. Nobody is a one-pitch pitcher.” He added: “Bouton, they’re just waiting for your knuckleball. You got to throw something else.”
In the immortal words of Casey Stengel, “Now, wait a minute.” Are we trying to win ballgames down here or are we trying to get ready for the season? What I have to learn is control of the knuckleball. And I’m not going to learn it by throwing fastballs. I tried to explain that to Sal after the meeting and he said, well, yes, but I should have some other pitches to set up the knuckleball.
I said I agreed with him 100 percent. I said it because I’m in a shaky position here and the first thing you got to do is make the ballclub, and you don’t make ballclubs arguing with pitching coaches.
Afterward in the outfield we talked about one-pitch pitchers. Ryne Duren was a one-pitch pitcher. His one pitch was a wild warm-up. Ryne wore glasses that looked like the bottoms of Coke bottles, and he’d be sort of steered out to the mound and he’d peer in at the catcher and let fly his first warm-up pitch over the screen and the intimidation was complete. All he needed was his fastball and hitters ducking away.
And just for the hell of it I got into a conversation with Maglie about when he was a great pitcher, and I asked him what he used to get the Dodgers out with in his glory days with the Giants. “Ninety-seven snappers,” Sal Maglie said.
So much for one-pitch pitchers.
Anyway, Gary Bell said not to worry about Maglie. “Last year in Boston he told one of the newspaper guys I’d never last throwing across my body,” Gary said. “Crissakes, I’ve been here fourteen years. You think he meant I’d never last past fifty?”
MARCH
20
Tempe
Day off, so I’ll take the opportunity to discuss the beanball. Everybody asks.
When I used to throw very hard I was always concerned that I would let a fastball go and hit somebody in the head. Occasionally I would dump somebody by accident and I’d run right up to the plate to see if he was all right. I fractured Wayne Causey’s arm with a fastball and I felt terrible about it for days.
The beanball (it’s sometimes called “chin music”) is a weapon. Hitters don’t like pitchers throwing at them, and there are guys in the league who have a reputation for not hitting as well after they’ve been thrown at a few times. Nor do I look down on pitchers who use it as a weapon. They’re probably shrewder than I am. I’m just not a crafty person, I guess, especially when it comes to pitching. I probably should have cheated more. I should have thrown a spitter. I should have used a mudball. I didn’t, and I’m not sure why, except that when I was successful throwing real hard, I didn’t need to. And when I was going bad, I was so bad nothing would help.
Only once in the years I’ve been pitching has anybody ever ordered me to throw a duster. It was last year at Seattle and Joe Adcock, a man I like, was the manager. I came into a game in relief and John Olerud, the catcher, came out and said, “Joe wants you to knock this guy on his ass.”
I couldn’t believe it. So I said something clever. “What?”
“Joe wants you to knock this guy on his ass.”
“I just got in the game. I got nothing against this guy.”
“Well, he says to knock him on his ass.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “I haven’t thrown that much. I’m not sharp enough to know where the hell I’m throwing the ball. I’m not going to do it. You go back there and tell him that you told me to knock him down and that I refused and if he wants to say something afterward let him say it to me.”
Adcock never said a word.
I mean, what if I screw up a man’s career? I’m going to have that on my conscience for… well, for weeks maybe.
The fact is, though, that I once did throw at a guy. I mean to maim him. His name was Fred Loesekam. He was in the White Sox organization and he was a bad guy. He liked to slide into guys spikes high and draw blood. During warm-ups he liked to scale baseballs into the dugout to se
e if he could catch somebody in the back of the head. He even used our manager for target practice. So I took my shots at him. We all did. Once I threw a ball at him so hard behind his head that he didn’t even move. The ball hit his bat and rolled out to me, and I threw him out before he got the bat off his shoulder.
When you throw a ball behind a hitter’s head you’re being serious. His impulse is to duck backwards, into the ball. If you’re not so serious and all you want to do is put a guy out for a piece of the season, you aim for the knee. An umpire will give you two or three shots at a guy’s knee before he warns you. Mostly, though, I hardly ever brush anybody back on purpose. And if I throw a knuckleball high inside, the hitter might decide to just take it on the chin and trot down to first base.
And don’t believe it when you hear that a pitcher can throw the ball to a two-inch slot. A foot and a half is more like it, I mean with any consistency. When I first came up I thought major-league pitchers had pinpoint control, and I was worried that the best I could do was hit an area about a foot square. Then I found out that’s what everybody meant by pinpoint control, and that I had it.
Of course, hitters hear things from the bench: “Stick it in his ear!” That’s almost as good as throwing at a hitter because now he thinks you’re going to, and that’s half the battle. I know not what course others may take, but for me, my most precious possession is the three balls I’m allowed to throw before I walk somebody. If I give up one of them merely to frighten the hitter, I’m giving up half my attack. I decided long ago I couldn’t afford that.
MARCH
21
Death came calling today. Joe Schultz gathered a bunch of guys in his office and told them that because of space requirements they’d have to work out on our other field with the Vancouver squad. “You’re not cut,” Joe said. “Your stuff is still in your locker and you’re still on the team. Don’t draw any conclusions from this.”
It wasn’t really death. It was just the priest coming to your bedside to say a few choice Latin words. Among the casualties were Steve Hovley, Rollie Sheldon, Skip Lockwood and Jim O’Toole. One of the guys who got the call, Lou Piniella, didn’t go into Joe’s office, but sort of sulked outside. “Come on in, Lou,” Joe said. “It’s not going to be anything bad.” Lou knew better.
