Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

by Jim Bouton

  I was absolutely not prepared to say I gave the umpire the wrong schedule card if Joe Schultz said anything to me, but he never said a word. Nobody was mad, including Maglie, who said it was a good thing I’d run the day before in my backyard. He was kidding about the fact that it rained yesterday and I called and asked whether I should come in or whether I could just run in my backyard. All the whole thing cost me was $10 to the pitchers kitty for being late and $1 for missing infield.

  I once came late to a game when I was with the Yankees—a World Series game. I wasn’t pitching or anything, and it had rained all morning and I assumed, correctly, that there would be no batting practice, so I came in time for infield. But they’d called a pregame meeting and I missed it, so when I walked into that clubhouse there wasn’t a single smile. Everyone was highly offended that I should take the Yankees and baseball and the World Series so lightly as to show up forty-five minutes before game time. I could have stayed out all night and come to the game with a hangover and I would have been forgiven. But I couldn’t come late.

  We split two games with the Orioles and lost our first today to the Tigers. So we’ve lost two out of three to the big kids and who knows where it will all end.

  Fred Talbot had a marvelous story about Mel McGaha, who had a short run as manager of the Kansas City A’s. McGaha called a meeting during spring training for eight o’clock on a Friday night, an unforgiveable sin. Guys had to leave their families and dinner parties and come in from all over the place. When they got there, McGaha said, “Boys, I’m glad you all got here tonight. We’re not really having a meeting. I just wanted to see how quick we could all group up if we had to.”

  With the Tigers in town I’ve tried to call Johnny Sain and talk with him about my knuckleball and tell him how well I’ve been doing since I came back from Vancouver. I’ve missed him at the hotel a couple of times, but I’ll keep trying.

  I know Detroit needs relief help and they could get me cheap. If he looks in the newspaper he’ll see a 4.2 ERA, although since I’ve returned from the minors it’s only a bit over 3.0. In my last ten appearances I’ve given up one earned run, walked three and struck out eight. I’ve given up only five hits in eight innings. Of course, my own club doesn’t seem very impressed, but that’s another story.

  I get the feeling that Sal and Joe just don’t trust me. I think they’re convinced that I need more than just the knuckleball to get by for more than an inning or two. One of these days they’re going to need me for five or six innings and I’ll show them. I’ll show them. I’ll show them. I think I’ll show them.

  Now they’re talking about using Talbot as a starter, and this reduces my chances, except that the seer my wife went to this winter told her that our fortunes wouldn’t rise until June. So I guess I won’t get a start until then.

  Do I really believe all of that? No, I don’t.

  Before we left the park today we were told that tomorrow’s game would start at twelve-fifteen because of national television and that we’d have to take batting practice at ten-thirty. “Ten-thirty?” said Pagliaroni. “I’m not even done throwing up at that hour.”

  MAY

  31

  Tony Kubek and Mickey Mantle were here to do the TV broadcast and before the game Mickey was down in the clubhouse. With me standing right there, Joe Schultz says, “Mickey, what do you think of a guy who comes to the ballpark fifteen minutes before the game starts?”

  Mickey shook his head sadly. “I know he’s got some strange ideas,” he said.

  Don Mincher was worried about appearing on national television. “My mother’s going to watch this ballgame in Alabama,” he said, “and she’s going to notice first thing that I’m not using the batting helmet with the earflap on it. And tonight she’s going to be on the telephone, guaranteed, asking me why I’m not wearing my earflap.”

  Between innings of the game I got up in the bullpen and worked with the iron ball Mike Marshall keeps out there. Talbot was certain I was only doing it so I would get on television, and maybe I was, partly. After the third time up Talbot said, “Jesus Christ, Bouton, why don’t you just run across the field and slide into second base and get it over with?”

  The people who watched this game on television saw some of the dumbest baseball ever played this side of a sandlot. I hope Kubek and Mantle pointed it out to all the Little League, high school and college players who were watching, but somehow I doubt it. So I’ll do it here. It started in the first inning when Joe Sparma walked Tommy Harper, leading off, on four straight pitches. Hegan was the next batter. Ball one. On ball two, way over Hegans head, Harper tries to steal second and is thrown out. Sparma still hasn’t thrown a strike. Two more balls and Hegans is on first base. Sparma has thrown eight balls in a row and he’s got one out.

  Tommy Davis up. First pitch, ball one. Second pitch is shoulder high, a ball, but he swings at it and tops it down the third-base line. He had no business swinging, of course. By now he should have been wondering if Sparma would ever throw a strike. Instead of wondering, he’s thrown out at first. In the meantime, with two out and second base all his very own, Hegan decides to try for third. It’s very important that he go to third base because he can score from there on a base hit. He can also score from second on a base hit. So he needs to go to third base like Frank Howard needs more muscles. Of course, he’s out from here to there, and Sparma is out of an inning in which all he threw was ten pitches—all balls.

  A couple of innings later Al Kaline, of all people, steals third with two out. Can’t imagine what he was thinking of.

  To cap it all off, we lost the game 3–2, and I didn’t get into it. Diego Segui did. Since my win in Boston two weeks ago I’ve made just four appearances and pitched a total of four-and-a-third innings. We got starters around here who get knocked out in the second and third inning and this relief ace can’t get any pitching in. I’m getting psycho about it, starting to feel the way I did in New York: that there’s some kind of conspiracy to keep me out of ballgames just when I’m starting to throw good. I even have this morbid fear that someone in the front office has discovered I’m writing a book and is trying to work me out of the system. Then there’s this weird one. It occurs to me that the Yankees may have prevailed upon Milkes, or the Pilot organization, to soft-pedal me so that I won’t embarrass them. These two clubs have made quite a few trades and I know it embarrasses the Yankees to have Hegan doing so well here. So maybe they said, “Do us a favor, don’t let Bouton look good.” My wife says that soon the voices will be after me.

  Maybe my problem is that I’m not merchandising my product properly. Knuckleball. It’s got no pizzazz. How about Super Knuck? Or maybe I can borrow one of Satchel Paige’s names for a pitch: Bat Dodger. Why not Super-Knuckling Bat Dodger? Or High-Velocity Super-Knuckling Bat Dodger? Nah. It’s got to be short and snappy. Maybe tomorrow I’ll ask Sal to think of a name for my pitch. He’ll probably say how about working on that pitch they call The Curve?

  Got a letter congratulating me on my great victory in Boston from Fritz Peterson today. It’s an indication of how far down I’ve fallen when one miserable win calls for congratulations. Fritz said a lot of guys on the Yankees agreed that I had a real good knuckleball. Then he wrote: “It’s a good thing Jim Turner taught you that pitch before you left New York.”

  There was also something about Fred Talbot. Fritz said that Talbot seemed to have changed a lot in the last year and that I’d probably like him now. I showed Talbot the letter and he said, “That son of a bitch. I thought he always liked me.” I guess Fred is changing. The other day, after he won in Cleveland, I reminded him that he’d already matched last year’s output of wins (one). A couple of years ago he’d have gotten angry. Now he just laughed.

  Of course, he was damn lucky to get that win. We had an 8–2 lead in the fifth, and when he went in to pitch I told him all he had to do to get the win was to keep from getting a heart attack. I admit he pitched well. He gave up only three hits in five inning
s. But I couldn’t help a feeling of jealousy stealing over me like green slime. Here I’d been scraping and scuffling, pitchin’ in mop-up situations all year long, and I end up scratching together just one win, against Boston no less, in extra innings, and here comes Fred, he’s with the club just ten days, and he absolutely waltzes to a win. Oh well, it’ll make my comeback speech at the Americana Hotel that much more interesting.

  The latest adventure of Mike Marshall has him feuding with Sal Maglie about his screwball. A screwball is a curve ball that breaks in the opposite direction of a curve ball: When thrown by a right-handed pitcher it breaks in on a right-handed hitter. Mike wants to throw screwballs and Sal wants him to throw curve balls, so they’re at each other all the time.

  “Why don’t you just throw screwballs and tell Sal they were curve balls?” I suggested.

  “I would,” Marshall said. “But then the catchers tell Sal what I’m throwing.”

  See, the catchers are angry at him for trying to call his own game. So they go back to the bench and commiserate with Sal when he complains about the way Marshall is pitching. Mike won fifteen games last year and until recently he’s been our most effective pitcher. They haven’t disproved any of his theories. Why can’t they just leave him alone?

  I’m afraid Mike’s problem is that he’s too intelligent and has had too much education. It’s like in the army. When a sergeant found out that a private had been to college he immediately assumed he couldn’t be a good soldier. Right away it was “There’s your college boy for you,” and “I wonder what our genius has to say about that?” This is the same kind of remark Sal and Joe make about Marshall.

  I think Sal and Joe put me right up there with Marshall in the weirdo department. They don’t believe that my kind of guy can do the job, so when I am successful they’re surprised. When Fred Talbot does the job, well, he’s from the old school, blood and guts, spit a little tobacco juice on it.

  Another thing. When I was winning a lot of ball games my double warm-up was a great idea, an innovation, maybe even a breakthrough. After I hurt my arm, the double warm-up became a terrible idea. It was sapping my strength. In fact it was downright weird.

  JUNE

  1

  We came from behind three times tonight to beat the Tigers 8–7. I pitched a third of an inning, coming in with a man on second. I got Tom Matchick on a ground ball back to me on a 3-and-2 count. After the game I told Joe Schultz that the reason I went to 3 and 2 was that I needed the work. “I figured you were doing something out there,” Joe Schultz said.

  In the clubhouse Joe delivered his usual speech: “Attaway to stomp ’em. Stomp the piss out of ’em. Stomp ’em when they’re down. Kick ’em and stomp ’em.” And: “Attaway to go boys. Pound that ol’ Budweiser into you and go get them tomorrow.”

  This stuff really lays us in the aisles.

  Jerry Neudecker was the umpire at third base. His position is just a few steps away from our bullpen and he stopped by, as umpires will, to pass the time between innings.

  “Why is it that they boo me when I call a foul ball correctly and they applaud the starting pitcher when he gets taken out of the ballgame?” says Neudecker.

  Says I: “Because, Jerry, the fans recognize the pitcher as being a basically good person.”

  He laughed.

  Actually I think umpires can be too sensitive. They have this thing about a word. You’d think it was sticks and stones. The word is motherfucker and it’s called the Magic Word. Say it and you’re out of the game. I have only one question. Why? Now think about that.

  One of the things baseball players take pride in is their crudity. The day Brandon was sent down, for example, Gary Bell, who is his friend, asked if he would mind leaving his tapes so the guys could continue to listen to his good music while he was gone. Which is like the guy in spring training who went up to a rookie and said, “Hey, if you get released, can I have your sweatshirts?” The crudity takes other forms. Like the fellow who rooms with the great chick hustler. The hustler will spend all of his time pounding the streets, spending money in bars, working like hell at running down girls. His roommate just lounges around the room, watching television, taking it easy. And he does great just taking his roommate’s leavings.

  Then there’s the tale Jim Gosger told about hiding in a closet to shoot a little beaver while his roommate made out on the bed with some local talent. Nothing sneaky about it, the roommate even provided the towel for Gosger to bite on in case he was moved to laughter. At the height of the activity on the bed, local talent, moaning, says, “Oh darling, I’ve never done it that way before.” Whereupon Gosger sticks his head out, drawls “Yeah, surrre,” and retreats into the closet.

  After he told us the story, “Yeah surrre” became a watchword around the club.

  “I only had three beers last night.”

  “Yeah, surrre.”

  And I’ve known ballplayers who thought it was great fun to turn on a tape recorder under the bed while they were making it with their latest broad and play it back on the bus to the ballpark the next day.

  Johnny Sain returned my call this morning and we had a long talk. I told him how my knuckleball was going and he asked me what pitch I was using for my off-pitch to go with it when I needed a strike. I said fastball. He suggested I use a slider instead. His reason is that when a hitter is looking for a knuckleball and gets something else, he thinks, “Fastball!” He may have time to adjust. But if the ball does something, has a little movement to it, he’ll be fooled.

  I said I’d try it, sort of cut my fastball a little and see if it would move. I asked him if he could use an elderly right-handed knuckleball pitcher in Detroit and he said, “No chance. We’ve got four pitchers now who’ve all pitched less than ten innings this year. That Mayo Smith (the manager) is not a very good man to pitch for. The last guy to pitch a good game is his man, and he overuses him and neglects everybody else. There are three or four pitchers on the club he doesn’t even talk to.”

  He told about what had happened with a guy named Mike Kilkenny. He’s a left-handed pitcher and Sain had been teaching him to get left-handers out by coming sidearm on them. It can be a really effective pitch. But Kilkenny pitched in an exhibition game recently and, with the bases loaded, he came sidearm on a left-handed hitter and plunked him in the ribs. Said Smith: “When I saw you come sidearm I liked to die. You take that goddam sidearm pitch and shove it up your ass.”

  So here’s another case where the manager is trying to make rules for his pitchers that go right over the head of the pitching coach.

  Not long ago John went home for a day and Smith took the pitchers to the outfield and ran them hard, foul line to foul line. Sain was angry when he found out. So he went into Mayo’s office and said, “Is this the pitching staff that led all baseball in complete games last year?”

  “Yes, it is,” Mayo said.

  “Well, are we going to follow a formula that I used last year or one that hasn’t been successful here for twenty-five years?”

  “I guess we’ll stick with what’s been successful,” Mayo said.

  But he didn’t like it. I’d bet right now the Tigers don’t win the pennant again.

  I told John about the trouble I’d been having getting enough work and how they always want to save me for the seven innings I never pitch. John laughed and said that he personally was a believer in throwing before a game, and that what he does is take a guy out of sight into the bullpen and let him work. He said if a pitcher is just throwing on the sidelines his arm can bounce back in 20 minutes. He’s been able to sell pitchers on that, but it’s hell selling managers.

  JUNE

  2

  Big meeting before the game about personal appearances and autograph signing. It was proposed that we charge no less than $100 for any personal appearance and no less than $100 an hour for autograph-signing sessions. I said I didn’t think it was a very good idea because it would work a hardship on the lesser-known player who could not c
ommand such a large fee. A player like Harper or Mincher or Davis might get that kind of money but a Gus Gil or a John Gelnar, guys who might be offered $25 or $50 for an appearance, might never get any shots at all. I suggested that it be left up to the individual what he wants to take for an appearance.

  So Steve Barber said, “This is a big-league town and these people are going to have to learn to go big league.”

  And Don Mincher said: “If we go for $25 and $50 we’ll never get it up there where it belongs.”

  And Brabender said, “If you want to dance, you’ve got to pay the fiddler.” (This got a big laugh because it’s what we say to a guy who’s been out drinking the night before and has to do a lot of running with a bad body to get the alcohol out of his system.)

  And O’Donoghue said: “We made that mistake in Kansas City, where the guys went for $25 or $50 and that’s all we could ever get.”

  So I said: “Well, if a guy doesn’t want to go for $50 he doesn’t have to. He can pass it on to one of the lesser players. Besides, suppose it’s a friend, or a good cause or something.”

  Then Joe Schultz said: “Well, whatever you do, I think you should all get together on it and everyone do the same thing. Hell, you guys are big-league ballplayers. Just make it a club rule and everybody will stick to it.”

  So much for my doctrine of laissez faire. The tyranny of the majority over the minority will always be with us. The vote was unanimous, except for my abstention. If someone offers me $25 or $50 and can’t afford more, I’ll take it.

  The next thing we talked about was signing autographs for kids before the ballgame. Apparently there is a league rule that supposedly prohibits players from signing autographs when they’re in uniform on the field. The rule is ignored. Some players were upset by this. Said Brabender: “If you don’t feel like signing and you say you’re not allowed to and some other guy comes up behind you and starts signing, you look like an ass.”