by Jim Bouton
The knuckleball was fine tonight against Oakland—when it knuckled. When it didn’t, it got hit for two home runs. That was in the first of three innings I pitched. One ball was completely still. It must have looked like a watermelon floating up there. Float like a watermelon, fly like a rocket. The other rolled a bit and was hit just as hard. On the other hand, I threw only four pitches in the whole three innings that didn’t do what they were supposed to do. It’s aggravating, of course, that two of them were hit out of the park, but the others jumped so much that I struck out Reggie Jackson and Rick Monday, and the rest were tapped for pop flies and grounders.
After the game, McNertney told me that Sal Bando thought it was a better knuckler than Wilhelm’s because it breaks more sharply and it’s thrown harder. I’m not sure how to take that, since it was Bando who hit one of the homers off me.
Meanwhile, in the dugout, I found out from Darrell Brandon that Sal had thrown a fit when the home run was hit. He had a toothpick in his mouth at the time and he threw it hard on the ground (so hard a tree may yet grow on the spot) and said, “Jesus, he’s got to start throwing something else. They’re just waiting on that knuckleball.”
I think McNertney understands the situation better. “Keep throwing it,” he said. “It’s getting better. Had a real good one tonight that was really jumping down. So a couple of them spun and they hit them out. But you got to go with it. Even 3 and 0.”
It was a weird game. We were behind 4–0 and 6–1 and tied it at 6–6. They went ahead 8–6, and we damn near came back again but lost it 8–7. Now we’re six games under .500 and in last place, and something is going to happen around here. Marvin Milkes is not a guy who will sit around in a situation that calls for panic.
This afternoon Gary Bell and I hired a car and drove up to the Berkeley campus and walked around and listened to speeches—Arab kids arguing about the Arab-Israeli war, Black Panthers talking about Huey Newton and the usual little old ladies in tennis shoes talking about God. Compared with the way everybody was dressed Gary and I must have looked like a couple of narcs.
So some of these people look odd, but you have to think that anybody who goes through life thinking only of himself with the kinds of things that are going on in this country and Vietnam, well, he’s the odd one. Gary and I are really the crazy ones. I mean, we’re concerned about getting the Oakland Athletics out. We’re concerned about making money in real estate, and about ourselves and our families. These kids, though, are genuinely concerned about what’s going on around them. They’re concerned about Vietnam, poor people, black people. They’re concerned about the way things are and they’re trying to change them. What are Gary and I doing besides watching?
So they wear long hair and sandals and have dirty feet. I can understand why. It’s a badge, a sign they are different from people who don’t care.
So I wanted to tell everybody, “Look, I’m with you, baby. I understand. Underneath my haircut I really understand that you’re doing the right thing.”
Emmett Ashford was behind the plate tonight and did an especially good job calling the knuckleball. A couple of times I threw it knee-high and the ball seemed to drop into the dirt. But it was only after it had crossed the plate, so he called both of them strikes. Some umpires call the pitch where the catcher catches it, not where it crosses the plate. If he catches it as a ball, it’s a ball. But Ashford was great.
He missed one pitch. It was when a guy was stealing second and McNertney came out of his crouch to get the ball. This blocked Ashford’s view and he called it a ball. I yelled at him. “But Emmett, it was a perfect strike.” That’s all I said, and it was true, but I felt guilty about having said anything at all. I try to be especially nice to Ashford because everybody else harasses the hell out of him. He’s not exactly the best umpire, but he is far from being terrible. He doesn’t miss that many calls, and when he does, he misses them on both sides, like any good umpire. But other umpires talk behind his back. Sometimes they’ll let him run out on the field himself and the other three who are holding back in the dugout will snigger. I hate that kind of stuff. I mean, I don’t mind it when it’s pulled on a ballplayer. But Ashford, for goodness sakes.
And, of course, the players pick it right up. As soon as he makes a bad call they start yelling, “Oh, that hot dog son of a bitch.” Sure he’s a flashy umpire and sure he does a lot of showboating. That’s what got him into the big leagues in the first place. It’s his bread and butter. Instead of bitching the players ought to give him credit for hustling. He hustles every minute he’s out there, which is more than you can say for some umpires.
It’s not hard to understand why he’s resented, though. They feel he doesn’t belong in the big leagues with his way of umpiring. Besides, he’s a Negro, and they believe he’s here just because of that.
It must be terrible for Ashford. When you’re an umpire and travel around the big leagues in a group of four and three of them are white and the kind of guys who let you run on the field by yourself—well, it can make for a very lonely summer.
I know about lonely summers. In my last years with the Yankees I had a few of them. You stand in a hotel lobby talking with guys at dinnertime and they drift away, and some other guys come along and pretty soon they’re gone and you’re all alone and no one has asked you what you’re doing about dinner. So you eat alone. It must happen to Ashford a lot. And it’s one of the reasons I can’t bring myself to argue with him.
Encountered Marvin Milkes sitting in the lobby tonight, and whether he knows it or not that’s fairly nerve-racking. Anytime a general manager is on the road with his club there’s a feeling that a trade is in the works. From the way things are going here, I get the feeling that the front office watches the game, and when you throw a strike you’re immediately in their plans for the near future, and when you throw a ball you’re on the trading block. The players go up and down like some crazy yo-yo, and what that looks like most is a panic operation.
Brought a copy of the Berkeley Barb back to the clubhouse and several of the guys were crowding around to read it when John Kennedy said, “Bouton, I bet you bought that paper.” I told him I had. “Now, how did I know it was you bought that paper?” he said. Dunno, John. Extrasensory perception?
MAY
3
Steve Barber pitched a pretty good game while I was down on the farm, but he was in trouble again yesterday, loading up the bases with none out in the first. He said he couldn’t get loose on the sidelines, and the only time his arm bothers him is when he’s loosening up. He says once he gets into the game he’s fine.
Oh.
Another thing Sal Maglie looks like is the friendly neighborhood undertaker. You can just see him standing in the mortuary doorway saying, “Oh yes, we have something very nice for you in mahogany.” And Gary Bell recalled the old Digger O’Dell line, “Well, I’ll be shoveling off now.”
The friendly undertaker really put it to Marshall the other day. He told him that if he didn’t use better judgment on the selection of his pitches, they’d be called from the bench by S. Maglie, pitching coach. Mike was furious. Any pitcher would be. As Johnny Sain has pointed out, a pitcher will in the course of his career throw to thirty or forty catchers, work for ten or fifteen managers and pitching coaches. If he let all those people tell him what to throw he’d never amount to anything but a confused pitcher.
Anyway, the discussion with Sal seemed to do something for Marshall because he went out today and pitched a fine game. He lost 3–2, but in his heart a pitcher counts that as a victory, just as the hitter counts as a hit the sharp line drive that somebody makes a leaping catch on. Marshall went all the way and gave up only four singles, probably the only four mistakes he made in the game. Well, five. The other one was not getting enough runs.
I was warming up late in the game in case Marshall’s sturdy arm should falter, which, considering the closeness of the game, was rather encouraging. After I gave up those two home runs I naturally went
to the bottom of the pile. But I think two good innings after that redeemed me.
The other man warming up was John O’Donoghue. He’s pitched one scoreless inning for the club so far and that puts him right on top. Indeed, the way things are, any new man is No. 1 until he gets hit, which is soon enough.
Today’s Marvin Milkes’ stories concern Gene Brabender and Merritt Ranew. The Benders been having a tough time—thirteen runs in seven innings, or terrible enough to receive serious notice. So Milkes told him he has three more starts to straighten out, and if he doesn’t do well in them he could just mosey down the road.
Ranew was called up to fill in for Larry Haney, who had to put in some service time. Ranew had been hitting like .400 at Vancouver and in his first game here he got two hits. Today he got another and he’s hitting the ball good every time up. So Marvin Milkes told him, “You keep hitting the ball like that and you’ll be back up here again sometime.”
And never is heard a discouraging word.
MAY
4
Darrell Brandon wanted a start and got it, just by asking for it. He also got shelled, lasting an inning and a third. He thinks he knows what happened. “I was good last night,” he said. “I stayed in my room. Called my wife. Drank nothing stronger than orange juice. Then I read from the Gideon Bible and went to sleep. Then I last an inning and a third and I got two greenies in me I got to work out in San Francisco. Never again.”
As for me, I was only as good as I had to be last night and I also lasted an inning-and-a-third and three earned runs. That puts me on the bottom of the heap again and depresses the hell out of me. I figure two like that and my ass is back in Vancouver.
We were playing trivia on the back of the bus the other day, and among the questions were:
What was the name of Roy Rogers’ dog?
What was the name of the cat in the Buster Brown Show?
What three pitchers were sent down to the minor leagues with less than five innings of work among them?
The answers are Bullet, Midnight, Dick Bates, Bill Edgerton and Jim Bouton.
Brandon and I felt so badly about the whole thing we dragged Gary Bell off to a Chinese restaurant and I ate bird’s nest soup, which disgusted them both.
Gary Bell and I have become the Falstaffs of the back of the bus. Gary entertains with quotes, anecdotes and insults, and when he goes back to his real-estate book I do my routines. In a trivia game recently I asked who the moderator of “You Asked For It” was. The answer was Art Baker, which led me into my “You Asked For It” routine. “We have a letter from a listener, Mrs. Sadie Thompson of Jablib, Wisconsin.
“Mrs. Thompson writes: ‘Dear Art, I’ve always wanted to see a cobra strike an eighty-year-old lady. I wonder if you can arrange this on your show.’
“Yes, Sadie Thompson out there in Jablib, we went all the way to India for you and not only did we get a cobra, we got a bushmaster, the most deadly snake in the world. And right before your eyes the snake will be placed into a glass cage with sweet little white-haired Mrs. Irma Smedley. Here comes the snake into the cage, and just look at that sweet little old lady tremble. The snake strikes and that’s it, ladies and gentlemen, the end of Mrs. Irma Smedley. Remember now, it’s all because you asked for it.”
The boys ate it up. Sick humor is very big in the back of baseball buses and “You Asked For It” is almost as good as “Obituaries You Would Like To Read.” Tune in next week, folks.
Some of the mores and manners of the back of the bus crew. Others who usually sit in the back are Oyler, Mincher, Kennedy, Hegan, Rich Rollins (The Listener), Gene Brabender (Lurch), Pattin (who does the Donald Duck) and Gosger (who does a splendid Porky Pig). The middle of the bus is dominated by Tommy Davis and his groovy tape machine, and the quiet guys sit in front, guys like Gus Gil and Freddy (Poor Devil) Velazquez. Mike Marshall also sits in front looking for somebody to play chess with him. I’ve played with him a few times and he’ll thump me pretty bad. But then when he sees me start to lose interest he’ll let me come close to beating him. That turns me on again for a while. He makes me feel like the donkey chasing the carrot on a stick.
One of the favorite back-of-the-bus games is insulting each other’s wives, sisters, mothers and girlfriends. Some of the guys, among them Brabender and Marshall, refuse to participate in this game, but sometimes they’re in it anyway. That’s because any man who laughs when another man’s wife or mother is insulted is automatically chosen as the next victim. Back-of-the-bus is a very rough business.
MAY
6
Seattle
The worst part of playing baseball is that you become a part-time father. I feel as though I’ve been on the road for a month—first with the Pilots, then with Vancouver, now back with the Pilots again. It’s not terribly tough on a man and his wife, in fact absence often makes them appreciate each other more. But it’s unsettling to the kids. They don’t have a man around, and then when they do, well, you don’t feel like disciplining them. You just want to enjoy them.
Before the game with the Red Sox tonight, we terrified pitchers huddled together and whispered about the power that club has. We decided that if Fenway Park in Boston is called “friendly,” then the stadium here would have to be considered downright chummy. After the pitchers took batting practice, we were wondering if we should stay in the dugout and watch the Red Sox hit. We decided it would not be a good thing for us to see.
We saw enough in the game. They beat us 12–2. Brabender started and went four innings, having thrown nearly 100 pitches. It was not all his fault. There were about four errors behind him and we wound up emptying the bullpen. I came in with two runners on and stranded them and had a perfect inning-and-a-third. Then Brandon, Aker and Segui were stomped. So I should be back on the top of the heap again. Baseball isn’t such a funny game.
I was asked if I’d go to a women’s club dinner and say a few thousand well-chosen words and I said sure. I sort of like that kind of thing. Besides, it shouldn’t hurt my standing with the front office, knowing I’m a guy who does that well. My only condition was that I be allowed to bring my family along. I’m away enough without leaving them to make a speech.
MAY
7
I caught Joe Schultz without a liverwurst sandwich today, backed him into a corner and asked him, gently, about my chances of starting a game. I talked fast. I told him that I felt strong enough to go nine innings with the knuckleball and that I could relieve besides if he needed me.
So Joe said, “We got four starters now.”
I told him I knew that and that I didn’t want to bump anybody. I just wanted him to keep in mind that I was available and could step in at any time. I pointed out that a knuckleball pitcher should be a starter, like Niekro in Atlanta.
So Joe said, “He doesn’t throw all knuckleballs.”
I told him he throws 90 percent knuckleballs, sometimes more.
So Joe said, “He throws only about 80 percent knucklers. The rest of the time he throws curveballs and fastballs and change-ups.”
I wanted to tell him, well, maybe, but if I were a starter I’d have time to warm up properly and work in all those other pitches. I decided to let it ride. Because even if I do get a start I’m going to throw 95 percent knucklers. I’ve been through that war. So I said, “I think I can do the job. Give it some consideration.”
He said he would, which is better than nothing. Somewhat.
Warming up in the bullpen tonight I got back the good knuckler, the one I had last year. They moved like a bee after honey, and I was throwing them real hard. Haney was catching and he said, rubbing a knee, that he’d never seen anything like it. “If you can just get someone to catch you,” Haney said, “you’ll be all right.”
MAY
8
Another day off. Took the family on a ferry ride to the Olympic Peninsula. Stayed at a cabin on a lake and hired a little motor-boat, and I don’t know who had more fun, me or the kids. Pitching seemed v
ery far away.
MAY
9
Mike Marshall pitched a helluva game tonight, shutting out Washington 2–0. A two-hitter, one of them by Frank Howard, called Capital Punishment. McNertney and I had a talk about the game when it was over. He said Mike called about 30 percent of his pitches, less than the usual 50 or so. Mike has some interesting ideas on what kinds of pitches should be thrown. He thinks a completely random pattern is best, that the hitter should never have an inkling of what’s coming next. As a result, if a guy gets a hit off a curve ball he may get a curve the very next time up. On the other hand, McNertney believes that if you get a guy out on fastballs, you keep throwing him fastballs until he proves to you he can hit them. As for me, I throw the knuckleball.
Incidentally, the pitching staff was happy to learn tonight that Marvin Milkes had stationed a man outside the ballpark to measure the home runs that the Senators hit out of sight. Instead Marshall threw his two-hitter. Take that, Marvin Milkes.
The meeting before the game was marvelous. When we went over the hitters, Gary Bell had the same comment on each one: “Smoke him inside” (fastball inside). Frank Howard, McMullen, Brinkman, Epstein—every hitter. “Smoke him inside,” said Gary Bell.
It got to be funny as hell after a while, because not only did he get no opposition, but he was taken seriously. According to the gospel of Gary Bell you pitch to the entire Washington team by smoking them inside.
I guess Marshall smoked them on the inside.
Chatted with Brant Alyea, the outfielder, about what was happening with the Washington club. He said Ted Williams was doing a fantastic job. “I’m just beginning to realize that baseball is at least 65 percent psychological,” he said. “Williams has these guys so psyched they actually think they’re great ballplayers. Brinkman’s starting to think he’s a hitter for crissakes and he’s hit .200 all his life. Now he’s up to .280. The team is up, the guys are emotionally high and Williams actually has them believing they’re winners.”
