Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

by Jimmy Breslin

  “You know what I tell him? I tell him, ‘I’m going to have you driving a taxicab by August.’”

  In the next twenty minutes the Mets got another run in the eighth, then a big one in the ninth. And the boy friend slapped the bar. “We’re in,” he said. “We cash a bet.”

  “That’s the greatest comeback of my time,” she said. “That team fights. Imagine. They lose the game by only one run.

  “Baby, you’re beautiful,” she told her guy.

  He needed a shave.

  By September the redhead had seven subscriptions to True Confessions magazine for her beauty parlor, and things were humming.

  “I’m here to stay,” she said. The subscriptions are for three years. I want to name my joint ‘Mets’ Hairdressers’ but I don’t think any of the customers would understand.

  “Dopes. They spend their time reading about Elizabeth Taylor. Give me the Sporting News and the line on the Mets. That’s all I want out of life, mother.”

  5

  “They’re Afraid to Come Out”

  THE SECOND HALF OF the season for the New York Mets was, generally speaking, a catastrophe. The second half of the season consisted of the months of July, August, and September, although some of the more responsible players on the team insisted it never really happened. Whatever it was, it left an indelible impression on many of those connected with the club.

  In Rochester, New York, during the winter, Casey Stengel sat in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel and, in the middle of one of his highly specialized lobby seminars, he stopped and shook his head.

  “Everybody here keeps saying how good I’m looking,” he said. “Well, maybe I do. But they should see me inside. I look terrible inside.”

  And in Tilden, Nebraska, one afternoon, Richie Ashburn called a Philadelphia advertising agency to tell them that he would certainly like to retire from baseball and take their offer to announce the Philadelphia Phillies games.

  “Weren’t you making more with the Mets?” he was asked.

  “Yes, quite a bit more.”

  “Why did you quit, then?”

  “Well,” he said.

  He meant he was taking a big cut in pay for the privilege of not having to go through another year with the Mets.

  From a non-Met viewpoint, however, the last part of the 1962 season was something else. It was not rough. It was, instead, the finest thing to happen to the sport of baseball since Abe Attell helped save the game by deciding that, seeing as long as it made people so mad, he was not going to become involved with anyone who was trying to fix World Series games.

  You see, in the last fifteen years baseball has needed help. This is becoming a tired, predictable game. It is overexposed on television. It is played too slowly to maintain a hold on this fast-moving era. And, probably worst of all, it has become so commercialized, and the people in it loaded with so many gimmicks, that it all reminds you of the front window of a cheap department store. For money, a baseball player will go to the end of the world to embarrass himself. One word from Madison Avenue, the world center for poor taste, and a ballplayer will rub some hog-suet compound into his hair and say it isn’t greaseless. Or he will make a toy-company commercial that should be jammed by the FCC. Or, most sickening of all, for a check of $500 or so he will show up at any dinner of any organization this side of the Murder, Inc., Old Timers Association and sign autographs for the kids, mutter some sort of speech, then disappear out the side door with the waitress from the cocktail lounge. All of it is demeaning at best, and in the long run harmful to the game. Other athletes from other sports go in for this too, and they have the same quick-buck air about them, but since baseball is the biggest sport it is the one in which this sort of thing is most prevalent. And most sickening. The idea of a ballplayer taking money to go out and promote his own business is, at best, disgraceful.

  And, in the playing of the game itself, baseball acts as if we are still in a depression and nobody has any place to go. There is the manager’s strategy. With nominal maneuvering, a major-league manager can halt a game for ten minutes while changing pitchers. Baseball still thinks this is 1934. Only this is 1963 and people are working and have money and move around and spend it. The entire character of leisure time has changed drastically. Since 1945 everything has changed with it except baseball, and that is baseball’s trouble right now.

  But last season the New York Mets came to the rescue. Dressed in their striped uniforms, with blue lettering and orange piping, they put fun into life. It was hell to play for them, but for anybody who watched them it was great. This was what you wanted out of life. This was Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz or the Marx Brothers in Room Service. The Mets tried to play baseball, and the players trying to do it were serious. But the whole thing came out as great comedy, and it was the tonic the sport needed. People did not follow the Mets. They loved the Mets.

  Absolutely anything the Mets did last season, from a viewer’s position, was great. They were great during the season. And even in the long winter layoff they didn’t let anybody down. In January, for example, the Mets called up their three best pitchers from the minor leagues. They were Larry Bearnath, who won 2 and lost 13 at Syracuse; Tom Belcher, 1-12 at Syracuse; and Grover Powell, who was 4-12 between Syracuse and the Auburn, New York, club. The three had a combined record of thirty-seven losses and only seven wins.

  “I saw all their old pitchers,” cab driver Martin Goldstein, hack license 437-265, assured us one afternoon. “But I can’t wait to see Stengel bring one of these new ones out of the bullpen.”

  It will be hard to top the final half of last season, however. All of it went along the lines of the night game the Mets played against the Reds at Crosley Field on August 10, although dates are of no consequence here because things were substantially the same each day or night the team took the field.

  In the third inning of this particular contest, Frank Robinson of the Reds led off with a double down the left-field line off Al Jackson, the Mets’ pitcher. Wally Post then grounded out, Robinson holding second. Robinson then stole third. The batter, Don Pavletich, walked. There was now one out, men on first and third. The Mets’ infield came up a step or so. The hope was for a sharply hit ground ball which could be converted into a double play or a play at home plate to prevent the run from scoring.

  Jackson pitched to Hank Foiles, the Reds’ catcher. Pitched beautifully, too. Al’s curve was coming in low, the kind of pitch that winds up being hit on the ground. Which is exactly what Foiles did. He hit a sharp one-hopper toward first. Throneberry made a great stop. Then he straightened up and looked around. He found that the ball had been hit so sharply that it gave him all the time he needed to make an inning-ending double play any way he wanted.

  Here was Pavletich running toward second. He wasn’t halfway there. Throneberry could throw to second for one out, then take the return throw and get the batter. That would be easy. Foiles was still scrambling away from the batter’s box. There was another play Marv could make too. He could step on first and then throw to second. Only then they would have to tag Pavletich out at second. That could be dangerous, for Robinson might score in the meantime. But you still had plenty of time. When you have time you rarely make errors. Marvin stood alongside first base, the ball firmly held in his glove, and thought it out. Then he made his decision.

  He threw to the plate. His throw arrived just after Robinson slid across with a run.

  There were now runners on first and second with one out. Pitcher Jackson seemed to sway a little on the mound. Then he threw four balls to Vada Pinson, and that loaded the bases.

  Don Blasingame stepped in to hit. By now, Jackson had talked himself into trying again. He stretched, then came in with that good low curve once more. Blasingame slapped a hard ground ball straight at Rod Kanehl at second base. It was a certain double-play ball. Kanehl, in his exuberance, neglected to field the ball. It kicked off his leg, and another run scored. The bases were still loaded.

  Jackson now
has forced the Reds to hit into two certain double plays. For his efforts, he has two runs against him on the scoreboard, still only one man out, the bases loaded, and a wonderful little touch of Southern vernacular dripping from his lips.

  Jim Maloney, the Cincinnati pitcher, stepped in. The count ran to three and two on him. Then, for some reason, the Cincinnati baserunners broke with the pitch. With two out, this is normal. But there was only one out here, and there is a slight suspicion somebody on the Reds was so mixed up by now he thought there were two out and he had the runners going. At any rate, Jackson came right back with that low curve, and Maloney went for it and here came another grounder straight at Kanehl. This time Rod wasn’t going to make any mistakes. He kept his head down, scooped up the ball, and flipped it to second with the same motion. It was a fine move for starting a double play. Except Blasingame, running from first with the pitch, was now standing on second. He was safe. So was everybody else. During the maneuvering, the third Red run of the inning came across.

  Jackson held out his glove for the ball, scuffed the dirt, then looked down for the sign so he could pitch to the next hitter. Don’t ever say Al Jackson is not a well-trained pitcher. People come out of West Point and go on to become big generals and they don’t have this kind of discipline. And when Leo Cardenas got in to hit, Jackson came right back with that curve ball and he got Cardenas to go for it and hit into the dirt.

  The ball went right at Charley Neal at shortstop. The temptation was to go for the inning-ending double play, short-to-second-to-first. It looked easy. But you were not going to get Charley Neal into a sucker game like this. No, sir. Charley straightened up and fired the ball to first base to get one out. The fourth run of the inning came across.

  When this happened, Richie Ashburn, out in right field, turned around and looked up at one of the light towers. In his time Ashburn had seen many things. Granny Hamner in a clutch: he always moved the runner up a base. Joe DiMaggio going after a fly ball: he covered half an outfield and never seemed to do anything hard enough to work up a sweat. Jackie Robinson bothering a pitcher: he would brazen the guy into a mistake. He had, Richie felt, seen just about everything. Except this.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know I’ve never seen it before,” Ashburn mumbled.

  Then he turned around and watched as Jackson finally got the third out and headed for the bench with the all-time record for making batters hit into consecutive double plays that did not work. As he got to the dugout, Stengel thought kind things about him.

  “If I let this man go out there again, he may never be the same,” Casey said. He ordered Ray Daviault to come in and pitch the fourth inning. This he neglected to tell Jackson. So when the Mets made their third out Al picked up his glove and went out to the mound. He was in the middle of a warm-up pitch when the public-address announcer proclaimed, “Now pitching for New York, Number 35, Ray Daviault.”

  Jackson stopped dead.

  “Everybody here crazy,” he announced.

  It went pretty much like this from the first day of July until the last day of the season, in September. Only a true hero could win a game for the Mets. Jackson, who was to wind up losing twenty, began to trust nobody. When he won a game, he won it by pitching a shutout. Even then, he was never too sure until he was back in the dressing room.

  There was a night game in St. Louis that showed this. Jackson had a 1-0 lead as the ninth inning began. Ken Boyer was the first Cardinal hitter. Boyer hit sharply down the third-base line. Felix Mantilla went the wrong way for the ball, and it went through into left field. The Mets’ left fielder was Joe Christopher. Casey Stengel had put him into the game for defensive purposes. Christopher advanced on the ball, then touched it several times before finally holding onto it. Boyer had pulled up at second by the time Christopher was able to make the throw.

  With one pitch the Mets had not only allowed the first man up to reach base, but they also had allowed him to advance into scoring position. Jackson, however, did not fold. He bent his back a little more and got the next two hitters. Then Red Schoendienst came up to pinch-hit. He is old, this Schoendienst, and maybe he has never been the same since being hit with tuberculosis a couple of years ago. But he is still Red Schoendienst, and in a spot like this he is dangerous. Jackson worked carefully on him. He got Red to go for an outside curve. Red hit a high pop foul alongside first. It was an easy third out. The fans started moving toward the exits. The Mets’ outfielders started to come in for their showers. The bullpen crews reached for their gloves. Everybody moved but Jackson. He had been around too long. He was staying where he was until the result was official.

  Throneberry circled under the pop fly. First he moved in a little circle. Then he began to move in a bigger circle. With a great last-moment stab, Marvelous Marv got his glove on the ball. The ball hit the thumb part of Marv’s glove and bounded away. Jackson then walked Schoendienst.

  The next hitter was Bob Whitfield. He slammed a pitch right back at the mound. Now pitchers are not out there to make heroes of themselves. In self-defense they’ll stop a batted ball. But only for that reason. Generally they like it much better if the ball goes past them and is handled by an infielder. That’s what infielders are for. But this case was different. Jackson knew all about his infielders. He knew all about his outfielders too. He caught one glimpse of the ball as it buzzed toward his shoetops. Then Al Jackson went down for it. The thing could have hopped up and broken his jaw just as easily as not. It didn’t matter to Jackson. He knew the only way he could win was to risk his life. With a loud slap, Jackson stopped the ball. Then he came up and threw to Throneberry at first. Marvin held onto the throw. The game, for a wonder, was over.

  It was things like this that made an indelible impression upon a nineteen-year-old boy from Stockton, California, named Robert Garibaldi. Last July, Garibaldi, a sophomore at Santa Clara, was the most sought-after pitching prospect to come along in many years. He was a left-hander, and the bidding was up to $125,000 for his signature on a contract.

  The Mets had sent Red Ruffing, the old Yankee pitching ace, to look over the kid for them. Ruffing’s report was short and impressive: “Has big-league speed. Has big-league control. Ready right now.”

  On July 3 the Mets were in San Francisco. By the end of the fourth inning they were trailing by a tidy 10-1. Out of the dugout came Stengel. He ran up the right-field line and disappeared through a door leading to the clubhouse. Many people were speculating that Casey had decided he couldn’t take any more. They were wrong. Stengel most certainly could take more. In fact, Casey Stengel at this point thought he could do anything. He had just heard that the Giants were going to sign Garibaldi the next day. So he had made a hurried date with George Weiss to drive to Stockton, sixty miles away, and try to charm Garibaldi into going for a Mets contract.

  Charm the lad he did.

  “He was wonderful,” Garibaldi says. “It was great meeting him. I’d read about him all my life.”

  Stengel and Weiss sat down in the boy’s living room and talked for two hours with him. They got down to money. The Giants reportedly had offered $130,000. The Mets certainly would top that, Weiss assured the boy. The boy said thank you, but there was no money in the world that could make it worth his while to pitch for the Mets. He signed with the Giants the next day.

  This statement seemed borne out a week or so later when the Mets were in Milwaukee. The ace of their bullpen, Craig Anderson, who was in the midst of losing sixteen games in a row, needed a rest. For a relief pitcher Stengel called upon Wilmer (Vinegar Bend) Mizell. This one came on to walk the first three batters to face him in the seventh. Then he decided to effect pin-point control and he served up a pitch that Joe Adcock hit six miles for a grand slam home run. Out came Vinegar Bend. Stengel waved to the bullpen for somebody else. Nobody came.

  “They’re afraid to come out,” everybody said.

  For a Mets pitcher there were only two possibilities every time he took the mound. Either he
was going to be hit for some of the longest home runs in baseball history, or he was going to have to stand around and watch his teammates make those astonishing plays.

  Sometimes it was a combination of everything. There was one bright Sunday in July in Cincinnati when the Mets lost two games. Not easily, either. It all began the day before, when Roger Craig, with the class of a real professional, had walked over to Stengel and volunteered for relief pitching in the doubleheader. Stengel nodded. It touches an old guy like this when a pitcher volunteers to work between starts. So in the ninth inning of the first game, with the score tied 3-3, Casey took Craig up on his offer. Roger came in from the bullpen, and immediately Cincinnati sent up Marty Keogh as a pinch-hitter. Craig threw him one pitch. Keogh did not swing. Craig threw another pitch. Keogh swung. He hit the ball eight miles and the Reds won, 4-3.

  “They get beat on favors now,” everybody said.

  Craig, however, was only part of the day’s show. During the course of the eighteen innings the Mets managed to set some sort of an all-time record by getting four runners thrown out at home plate. In the first game Choo Choo Coleman was out trying to score from second on a single to left. In the second game Stengel jauntily ordered a double steal in the second inning. Cannizzaro was on first and Kanehl on third. Cannizzaro broke for second and drew a throw. Kanehl raced for the plate. The Cincinnati shortstop, Cardenas, cut off the throw, fired home, and that took care of Kanehl. In the fourth inning Elio Chacon, on first, put his head down and tried to go all the way around when Jerry Lynch, the Reds’ left fielder, messed up a single. Chacon never saw Vada Pinson, the fine center fielder, come over for the ball. He should have, because Pinson, as he demonstrated here, throws quite well. He cut down Chacon at home by six yards. Finally, in the fifth inning, with Jim Hickman on third and breaking for the plate with the swing, Kanehl hit the ball hard. And squarely at third. Hickman was out by a mile at the plate.