Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

by Jim Bouton

  “Wayne, I just had enough,” Mincher said. “And I had to haul off and punch you.”

  Comer was still lying in the aisle feeling his jaw. “Well, that doesn’t make you a bad person,” he said.

  Tonight Comer got his revenge. Mincher was on the postgame radio show because he was the hero of the game. He hit a three-run homer in the first inning, and we won 3–1. The moment Mincher came into the clubhouse, Comer, who by this time was wearing only a jock strap, dirt and no teeth, ran across the room with an insane gleam in his eye, leaped on Mincher’s back and kissed him on the ear.

  This time Mincher didn’t punch him.

  Had a spot of trouble with Ranew in the bullpen tonight. He warmed me up when Schultz ordered that I get up early in the game. But later on, when I got up to throw on my own, he let me know his heart wasn’t in it. He stuck his glove up at every pitch and if the ball went into it, fine. Otherwise it bounced off and he had to go after it. And he took his time chasing it. If I have to wait a minute or more between pitches I’m not getting anything out of it, and he knows it.

  Another gimmick he uses is to throw the ball back to me erratically so I have to scoop it out of the dirt or jump into the air. Or he’ll steam it into me until my hand hurts.

  The fact that I hurt Pagliaroni’s thumb the other day, added to Ranew’s obvious reluctance, makes it hard for me to ask anybody to catch me. It’s part of the reason, probably, the knuckleball has been so in and out.

  Studying my statistics today I note that in the last fifteen days, I’ve pitched a grand total of six-and-a-third innings. That’s an even bigger reason for being in and out. My statistics scream out that I have to work to be effective. But I’m not getting the work. Not even in the bullpen.

  Not only that, but Jerry Stephenson is getting a start. Now, I like Jerry, but he was just called up from Vancouver, where he had an 0–3 record and an ERA of 4.78. Here’s a guy released by the Red Sox, picked up as a free agent, does poorly in the minors, gets called up and is handed a start. Who’s going to get the next start? Ray Oyler?

  JULY

  9

  There’s a promotion they run here in Seattle called “Home Run for the Money.” If a listener has his name drawn, he is assigned a certain hitter. If that hitter hits a home run in the right inning, the listener wins the jackpot. Sometimes there are several thousand dollars in it. And if the right hitter hits a grand-slam homer at the precise moment required, there is a $25,000 bonus.

  It so happened that, mirabile dictu, Fred Talbot hit a home run with the bases loaded tonight. And thus a man named Donald Dubois, who lives in Gladstone, Oregon, won $27,000. The applause in the stands had not yet died down when it was decided in the bullpen that tomorrow morning Fred Talbot would receive a telegram from Donald Dubois of Gladstone, Oregon, thanking him for his Herculean efforts and telling him that a check for $5,000 was in the mail as a token of esteem and friendship. Since the telegram was my idea, I had to send it. We agreed that my identity would be revealed only under penalty of death.

  I checked in with Marvin Milkes tonight and offered to go up to Vancouver and start a game there during the All-star break. I explained about how little I’d been pitching and said I’d like him to see what I could do as a starter, even if it was in the minors.

  So Marvin Milkes said, “I don’t know if we could guarantee about bringing you back.”

  I said the first thing that came to my mind. “What?”

  “Your coming back would depend on a lot of things; how you did when you were down there and our situation here with this club at the time. We have roster problems. It’s not always easy to get rid of a guy, to make room on the roster.”

  All of a sudden I got the feeling that I was being sent down, was asking to be brought back up and was being told, “Sorry, kid.” And here I was volunteering to go to the minors so that I would, in the long run, help the club. I mean, if it worked, they’d have another starting pitcher. And all Milkes could think of was obstacles.

  “Have you talked to Joe about starting?” Milkes said.

  I was shocked. Milkes was here last year when I had such success starting. You’d think he would have remembered that, talked to Joe about it. Nothing. Nobody talks to anybody around here.

  Another example. I went to Sal today and said, “Sal, I’ve only pitched six innings in fifteen days, and if possible I’d like a little extra time warming up. So if you think we’re getting into a situation where you might need me, give me a quick call so I can get a head start.”

  And Sal said: “What if we need you in a hurry?”

  With the Angels in town I took the opportunity to chat with Ed Fisher and Hoyt Wilhelm. I asked Fisher about the curse of inconsistency. “Everyone has the same problem,” he said. “Hoyt has it and I have. I’ll pitch for three weeks and it’ll be going real good for me and then for ten days I can’t throw one worth a damn and they hit me all over the place.”

  And Wilhelm said: “You know you can throw a bad one once in a while if you’re throwing a lot of good ones. But you can’t throw two or three bad ones in a row. Sometimes when I go out there I throw just about every one of them good. At other times it’s just nothing. And I get hit. It takes a lot of work and a lot of concentration. It’s that delicate a pitch.”

  Fisher came in to relieve tonight and got clobbered (in fact Talbot hit the grand-slam off him). And when I came in I pitched two scoreless innings, striking out three. Like Fisher said, that’s the way it goes.

  JULY

  10

  Freddy Talbot believes.

  The telegram read: “Thank you very much for making our lives so happy, Mr. Talbert. We feel we must share our good fortune with you. A check for $5,000 will be sent to you when the money arrives.” (I thought it was a clever touch to misspell his name.)

  As soon as he read the telegram, Talbot called over his faithful roommate and asked him to step outside. “You know anything about this, Merritt?” he said. “You think it’s a joke?”

  “Looks legitimate to me,” Ranew said, biting his lip to keep from laughing.

  On the bus to the airport for our trip to Minnesota, Talbot showed the telegram to Ray Oyler. “You think it’s for real?” Oyler said.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Talbot said. “If one of the guys had done it, he wouldn’t have misspelled my name.”

  “That’s right,” Oyler said. “And what are you going to do with the money?”

  “I think I’ll buy that boat I always wanted, one with a 95-horse-power motor. I’ll tell my wife I won it in a raffle. Otherwise she’ll want me to put the whole $5,000 in the bank. And whatever you do, Ray, don’t tell the writers about it. If they put it in the paper I’ll have to pay income tax on it.”

  Ray promised he wouldn’t tell.

  Because we were rained out in Seattle, Jerry Stephenson did not get his start.

  “How do you feel about missing your start tonight?” I asked.

  “My one start?” he said. “You mean my one big chance?”

  “Right. And how do you feel about the fact that you were going to get this one big chance with only one-third of an inning pitched in the last six weeks?”

  “Oh, I’ve pitched more than that,” Stephenson said. “Actually I have a total of two-and-two-thirds innings.”

  “Only two-and-two-thirds?” I said. “In six weeks? Has anybody said anything to you? Has this situation been discussed?”

  “Nope,” Stephenson said. “I’m just happy to be here. I’ll take whatever they give me. If they took off my hat and shit in it, I’d put it right back on my head and say thanks.”

  I think he means it. I’ve felt that way myself.

  But it can’t be too good for Stephenson that they called up Dick Baney today. He’s the right-handed pitcher who almost made the club this spring.

  JULY

  11

  Minneapolis

  There was a grave meeting before the game in Minnesota tonight. Joe Schultz had a clipping fr
om the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, a story by Bud Furillo. The story said that the Seattle ballplayers, upset at the way Marvin Milkes sat in the lobby at around curfew time, checking bodies, had gotten together and had Milkes measured for a suit. Milkes was very pleased at the idea, until the suit arrived. It was a bellhop’s uniform, with thirty-eight brass buttons. There were two pictures with the story: one of Milkes, the other of a bellhop.

  It was a terrific story in every respect but one. It wasn’t true. However, the possibility of fitting Milkes with such a suit had been discussed in the bullpen. And something like that gets around.

  “Now this kind of thing is bad not only for the general manager,” Joe Schultz said, “it’s bad for the whole organization. This may sound funny, but things like this can get turned around. If Marvin Milkes has to sit in the lobby and check, the wives might start wondering who’s staying out late and what they’re doing.”

  “And that’s bad,” Ray Oyler said.

  “We can all tell our wives it’s McNertney he was checking on,” Tommy Davis said.

  Everyone laughed. McNertney is thirty-two, single, and rumor has it he’s never been kissed. He spends all his spare time oiling his fishing rods and thinking about hunting in the winter. He hasn’t got time to stay out late.

  But Joe Schultz was serious. “Whoever gave out this story is a no-good cocksucker, I’ll tell you that,” Schultz said. “And I’m going to find out who it is.”

  At that point I felt a lot of eyes on me. Maybe I’m supersensitive, but it did seem that almost everybody checked me in case I was showing the white feather of guilt. And, of course, after the meeting, Fred Talbot said, loudly, as though he were kidding, “All right, Bouton, what’d you give them the story for?” In this kind of situation I’m always guilty until proven innocent.

  That’s what happened around the Yankees too. When Johnny Keane was manager and losing control of the ballclub, there was a story in the paper quoting an unnamed player as saying that Keane was a bad manager, that he was handling the club poorly, that none of the players liked him and that there was going to be a mutiny on the club any day now. And this all explained, of course, why the Yankees were losing.

  Naturally there was a clubhouse meeting. Keane made a short speech asking who had said those things and what we could do about it? Elston Howard leaped to his feet in a rage, waving his arms and shouting. “How the hell could anyone do such a thing?” he demanded. “When are we going to learn not to talk to these writers? We shouldn’t even let them into our clubhouse. And the guy who said those things, we ought to find him and fine him a thousand dollars.” And so forth.

  During this tirade I once again had that uneasy feeling that there were a lot of eyes on me. This was unfair. I never hid behind anonymous quotes. If I had anything to say to a newspaperman I said it. In fact, newspaper guys who considered themselves my friends sometimes wouldn’t print things I said only on the grounds that they didn’t want to hurt my career with the Yankees. Nevertheless, there were the eyes and all I could do was try to look as nonchalant as possible. I probably succeeded only in looking guilty.

  The next day I asked the writer of the story to tell me who his source was. He said he’d tell me only if I promised never to reveal it. I promised. And I have never revealed it. Until now. It was Elston Howard.

  Sometimes things just run away from a man. Take Pagliaroni. While Joe Schultz was making his speech about what a terrible thing for the ballclub the bellhop uniform article was, Pag was a vociferous supporter. “Damn right,” he said. “Dammit, yes.” And like that. But when the idea to do it first came up in the bullpen, Pagliaroni was one of its biggest boosters. I even thought he might run out and do it during the game.

  Before the game Dick Baney and I were walking across the outfield grass to the bullpen, and the crowd was buzzing, and the organist was playing, and Baney looked around and said, “Hey, you know something? This is fun, walking across the outfield with all the people looking down at you.”

  And I thought, “It’s true.” You forget how much fun it is sometimes just to walk across the outfield. And then I remembered sitting up in the left-field stands in the Polo Grounds as a kid and thinking to myself, “Cheez, if I could only run out on the field and maybe go over and kick second base, or shag a fly ball—God, that would make my year. I’d never forget it as long as I lived if I could just run across that beautiful green outfield grass.” And now, sometimes, I forget to tingle.

  Baney asked me if I ever got nervous on the mound. I told him no, that you’re nervous sometimes until you throw the first pitch, then everything seems to be all right. But I’ve been nervous. Like the first game I started in Yankee Stadium as a rookie in 1962. My first eight pitches were balls. Then, with two men on, I ran the count on the hitter to 3 and 1. My next pitch was ball four. I saw Houk step out of the dugout to come get me, not only out of the game, but to send me to the minors. Career over. Only the umpire called it a strike. Houk stepped back into the dugout. I got the hitter on a pop-up and went on to pitch the worst shutout in the history of the game. That’s when I gave up seven walks and seven hits, stranded fourteen runners and won 8–0.

  Then there was my first World Series game, 1963, against the Dodgers. It was the year Maury Wills stole all those bases. He was the first hitter and I stood there looking at him and thinking, “He’s going to get on, he’s going to steal second, we’re going to throw the ball into center field and I’m going to be humiliated on national television.” I remember being so nervous I could hardly throw the ball, and on the first pitch, Maury Wills, bless his heart, bunted the ball right back to me. Easy out. I’ve always been grateful to him for bunting that first pitch.

  When Dick Baney went into the game to throw his first major-league pitch everybody in the bullpen moved out to the fence to watch him. We wanted to see how he’d do against the Brew, which is what we call Harmon Killebrew. Inside I still think of him as the Fat Kid, which is what Fritz Peterson over at the Yankees always called him. I’d say, “How’d you do, Fritz?” and he’d answer, “The Fat Kid hit a double with the bases loaded.” Well, the first time the Fat Kid faced Dick Baney he hit the second pitch 407 feet into the left-field seats.

  After the game I was shaving next to Baney. “Welcome to the club,” I said. “You lost your virginity tonight.”

  “The only difference,” he said, “is that all you guys will still be here tomorrow.”

  JULY

  12

  Today Baney, who’s still here, asked me if I was throwing my knuckleball all the time now and I said that indeed I was. “Sal didn’t like that pitch this spring,” Baney said. “I guess he thought you were throwing it too much. I remember one time you gave up a homer on it and Sal said to Joe, ‘Now you see? That’s the pitch that’s going to get him into trouble.’”

  I said that was interesting.

  “Well, if Sal didn’t want you to throw it, and if you were getting hit, why did you keep throwing the knuckleball?” Baney said.

  “My wife told me to,” I said.

  “And there’s something I’ve always wondered about,” Baney said. “When you go to spring training with a club, even a minor-league club, they always tell you to work on something. Then you get hit and they get mad, no matter what you’re working on. So I still don’t know what to do in the spring—work on something or try to get the hitters out.”

  Welcome to another club.

  I made a terrible mistake today. I was chatting with Fred Talbot and said, “Hey, Fred, by the way, you ever hear from that guy you hit the home run for?”

  Fred’s eyes narrowed and he looked mean. “Were you the one who sent that telegram?” he said.

  “What telegram?” I said, feeling my stupid face breaking up into a giveaway smile.

  Now he was clenching his teeth. “I knew you sent the damn thing,” he said, “and I’m going to get you back for that. I know you sent that paternity suit thing too.”

  “Fred, I did not
send you the paternity thing,” I said, all injured innocence. “I may have sent you a telegram. I don’t know yet. What did the telegram say?”

  And he said: “I’ll get you back. I’m going to get you back on something, and when I do it’s going to involve your wife, your whole family, your friends back home, everybody in the whole damn country.”

  After the game Talbot got back at me. It was still so hot that a lot of the guys didn’t want to wait for the bus back to the hotel and grabbed air-conditioned cabs instead. We lined up for them, and when I started to get into one as the last man, Talbot, who was behind me in line, leaped in ahead of me and said, “Take the next cab, you Communist.”

  Got into the ballgame today. Pitched two-and-two-thirds innings and gave up two hits, one of them a tremendous double by a former teammate of mine at Western Michigan, Frank Quilici. We lost this one 11–1 and the Fat Kid hit another. The Seattle staff is impartial in the home-run race between Killebrew and Reggie Jackson. They both kill us.

  Too bad McNertney didn’t make the All-Star team instead of Bill Freehan of the Tigers. Freehan isn’t having anywhere near the kind of year McNertney is. This shows that the players are voting on reputation rather than current performance.

  Also, I think Mayo Smith should have had a manager from the Western Division as one of his coaches instead of three Eastern managers—Ted Williams, Earl Weaver and Alvin Dark. He could easily have picked Joe Schultz and left off Dark. Take a hike, son.

  JULY

  13

  I’ve had the feeling for some time now that Wayne Comer and I don’t get along. I can tell because every once in a while he says about me, “Get him the fuck out of here.” An example. One night we were sitting around in Don Mincher’s room waiting to look at some stag movies and Pagliaroni and I got into a conversation about a book we were both reading, Psycho-cybernetics. I had just launched into my expert opinion of it when Wayne Comer said, “Get him the fuck out of here.” Anyway, we’ve now lost four straight to the Twins, having dropped a doubleheader, and we’re waiting for the bus to leave for the airport. An elderly gentleman walks up to the bus looking for Garry Roggenburk. He wants to thank him for tickets that were left for him. He doesn’t actually know Roggenburk, but he’s a friend of Bob Locker, who left the tickets, and about fourteen others, in the names of various players. “I was with Locker’s group and I just wanted to thank you for leaving the tickets,” the old man said to Roggenburk. “I feel bad about how the afternoon went for you boys. It certainly was sad for…”