by Studs Terkel
In the barn, we have the tack rooms, where the grooms and the hot walkers live. A hot walker earns sixty dollars a week. He can’t afford an apartment, he lives in the tack room. They have two cots. It’s almost like a stall. You can put a horse in there if you wanted. A groom makes about $100. The exercise boys earn a little more, about $150. So they usually get apartments. I really don’t know what the average jockey gets. I average around sixty thousand a year. I don’t know if we average more than three or four years. I have no idea how long I’ll continue. I wish I could ride another ten years, but . . . My ambition is to win the Kentucky Derby. It’s still the most honored stake of all. I’ve come awful close two or three times to riding in it. I’m riding for Mr. Scott now. Say he comes up with a colt that’s a two-year-old that I ride and I’ll ride him next year and this horse works his way to the Derby. I have worked my way up there with him. Mm-hmm, could happen.
Through experience you know what to do. Whether the stick will make him run, whether hand riding, whether hittin’ him on the shoulders, hittin’’em on the rear, whistling or talkin’ to ’em. You try everything. If one doesn’t work, you try the other.
I’m pretty relaxed now, but when I first started riding—the night before a big stake I’d get very little sleep. You lost two, three pounds from just nervousness, just by going to the washroom and thinking about it. Especially when you run one of the favorites. You have to fight this. I have to really get rid of the butterflies or I’m really gonna make a big mistake. Actually just mind over matter. Concentration.
What I’ve learned as a jockey sometimes drive me crazy. I’ve gotten where I could look at animals and see personalities in them. Most of what I’ve learned is patience. It comes with love of the horses. A lot of times a horse will do something that could even get me hurt. At first you want to hit him, correct him. But then you realize he’s just an animal. He’s smart but not smart enough to know that he’s hurting himself and is gonna hurt you. He’s only doin’ it because it’s the only thing he knows how to do.
Let me tell you somethin’. Animals got traits from humans. You put a nervous person around a nervous horse and he becomes a nervous horse. It’s helped me to understand humans, too. By understanding the horse, the animal himself, his moods, his personality, his way of life, his likes, his dislikes—humans work the same way—you have to accept them for what they are. People do things because it’s the only way they know. You try to change them to your way of thinking, but you have to accept people the way they are.
POSTSCRIPT: “I would like to see the sport treated differently. I would like to see the politicians out of it. I would like to see the states own all the tracks. People that own the tracks now are draining them . . .”
STEVE HAMILTON
He is a well-traveled relief pitcher, having been with the Washington Senators, New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants, and Chicago Cubs. “I live in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. Morehead, Kentucky, is a town of only four thousand. I’m not a hero there ’cause everybody knows everybody.”
It is Saturday evening in the late August of 1971. We’re in Chicago at a downtown hotel. His team, the San Francisco Giants, in first place but slipping fast, had lost this afrernoon to the Cubs.
Several times I’d go downtown in Manhattan and somebody’d stop me and say, “Aren’t you Steve Hamilton?” This made me feel all puffed up. It made me feel good that people knew me. Whether guys admit it or not, I think most of them feel good when they’re recognized. They feel they’re something special. Everybody gets a kick out of feeling special. I think that’s one part of this game.
I’ve never been a big star. I’ve never done anything outstanding. I feel I’ve been as good as I can be with the equipment I have. I played with Mickey Mantle and now I’m playing with Willie Mays. People always recognize them. Yogi Berra, people always recognize him. Yogi has a face you couldn’t forget. But for someone to recognize me!
“I signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1958, with their farm club. Back and forth in the minors.” He was working on a master’s degree. A scout signed him up. “I told them I was twenty-one. I was really twenty-three. He felt I wouldn’t have a good chance if I was twenty-three, so I went along with him. Now I give my right age. I’m thirty-six.” (Laughs.)
Age is very important in baseball. If you’ve got two prospects of equal ability, one kid’s twenty and I’m twenty-three, they’re gonna take the boy that’s twenty. They think they’re gonna have him longer. That’s why it was important to the scout that I be twenty-one. Scouts get some money back if you make the big leagues. Most of us in baseball who are thirty are considered old men. Lotta times when Larry Jansen54 wants me to get in the bull pen he’d say, “Pappy . . .” (Laughs.) I don’t feel old, but in baseball I’m ancient.
The average time in the big leagues is two to four years. When you consider that only one of about seventy that sign a contract even make the big leagues, that’s a very short life. In the minors, guys’ll play eight, nine years. He’s getting really nothing. He makes about five thousand dollars a year. If he hangs on long enough, he may make ten thousand. But he has no winter job and he becomes an organization man. They figure he can help young players. And age is passing by . . .
In the minor leagues we spent a lot of hours riding in buses, and they were so hot and you didn’t have too many stops to eat. You ate poorly because you had bad meal money. We got $1.50 a day. But you were young. When I was with a class B league, I got a long distance call. My wife went to the hospital in labor. It was the first baby. I had to get home. The ticket was forty-some dollars. We didn’t have it between us (laughs)—the manager, everybody. I got there a day late. I thought baseball players made so much money. (Laughs.) That’s why I wanted to play it, loving the game too.
To be perfectly honest with you, I’m ready to quit. I feel I don’t want to play any more. I’m losing the desire. I suppose I can play for several more years, but I don’t quite have the same spring in my legs. I’d be the first to admit it. My arm is good, because I never did throw hard. I was never a power pitcher. I was always a curve ball pitcher, control. You don’t lose it this quick. But I’m tired of traveling. I’m tired of the hours and I’m losing the zest. When this happens it’s time to leave.
People say we’re lucky we have airplane travel. It means they can schedule more games. We play 162 games now. Before, we played 154 in the same amount of time. Now we play more night games. Last night we played a game in St. Louis. It was over about ten forty. We had to get dressed and take a forty-five-minute bus ride to the airport. We took our short fifty-five-minute flight to Chicago. We had another thirty-five-minute bus ride from the airport to downtown. We got in here last night around two o‘clock. The bags were late coming in. They had a mix-up. Three thirty, we’re still waitin’ up for our bags. It adds up to a real long night, when we had to play a game today.
There’s a rule that says if there’s a flight one hour and a half or less, you can schedule a night game and day game the next day. The old umpire who said, “You can’t beat them hours”—that was another time. (Laughs.) Another thing, when you travel by train, you don’t worry so much about crashes. Everybody—in the back of their mind—thinks about it. There’s a little bit of worry, especially in bad weather. We were coming into Milwaukee last year and while we were bouncin’ around, comin’ in for a hairy landing, Pete Ward said, “Babe Ruth never hit sixty home runs traveling like this.” (Laughs.) The tension’s really rough. On the train they were relaxed. They talked, they slept. When they came in, they didn’t go from one bus to another. I don’t think conditions are that much better now.
A longer season, more games scheduled, and longer spring training. We start playing exhibition games right away. Here again, a night game last night, a day game today, a doubleheader tomorrow. We were to have an off-day Monday, but they scheduled an exhibition game Monday night in Minnesota with the Twins. (Laughs.) Then we get on a plane after that game
and travel all the way to San Francisco to play the next day. (Laughs.)
What’s the purpose of this exhibition game?
Money. (Laughs.) Willie Mays once played for Minneapolis and they’re capitalizing on his name. The Giants are guaranteed so much money and Calvin Griffith55 is gonna make a bundle. It’s gonna hurt us, because we need the rest. Here we are in the pennant race and we’re tired. We’re goin’ rather badly. We were lookin’ forward to the day off. Maybe you just want to sleep all day, or just relax and get away from it. But we’re playing Monday night just to make extra money for someone. It kinda hurts, 56
For a day game I get to the park about ten. We sign anywhere from one to two dozen baseballs every day. When I was with the Yankees, we signed six dozen each day. We used to hate that. People in the front office have friends they want to give them to. I don’t know where all these balls go. Six dozen a day! Eighty-one days! That’s a lot of baseballs! (Laughs.)
On the road, ball players are great bargain hunters. Nobody wants to pay the retail price for anything. So we spend time going to our little wholesale places. In each town it’s different. In New York it’s sweaters. In Los Angeles it’s suits. In Atlanta it’s shoes. I’ll read quite a bit. That’s primarily what I do when I’m on the road. My roommate’s a great movie fan.
People criticize pitchers. But in the past few years the baseball’s hotter. It’s wound tighter and can go further. Anybody can hit a home run now. Everybody swings for the fence, and you’re more nervous about throwing a strike. Old-timers say they just reared back and threw the ball. Now you get wild because you’re hesitant about throwing that ball over the plate. So that makes the game longer.
There’s not much talk about the craft any more. Say, you’ve got a fella who’s an outfielder. He’s learned in the minors that there are certain ways you catch a ball. You’ve got to learn which base to throw it to. You’ve got to know how to scoop up a ball. Nobody comes to see a fellow because he’s a good outfielder. What he comes to do is hit. He’ll come out early in the batting cage and he’ll hit and hit and hit. He won’t shag flies, he won’t catch fungoes. It’s not important to him. There’s no status in catching a fly ball. I’m sure that’s the way it is with a lot of jobs. You work on the things that bring you the most fame and fortune.
The average fan can’t understand it. They think you’re overpaid and you’ve got great working hours. They read about the superstars and huge salaries. For most of us the money’s not that great, when it’s only for a short time and it doesn’t really help you when you’re out of baseball. There are only six hundred of us, and we’re the tops in our profession. To play baseball you’ve got unique skills. There’s a great to-do about our salaries, but no one questions the income of the six hundred top lawyers or top insurance men—the kind who own the ball clubs. I’ve always wondered about that.
You can be traded any time they want to trade you. There’s no guarantee. You may just move your family and you get traded again. You’ve got seventy-two hours to go from one club to another. We feel the player should have some say-so over where he goes and where he leaves. Let’s say a kid comes up from the minors. He’s here a month and they ship him back. He’s brought his whole family with him . . .
“I have two girls and a boy. In about six months we’re gonna have another one. If you don’t take your family to spring training, there’s six weeks right there. Before they come and join me in the season, there’s about five more weeks. They’re here for about three months in the summer. But I’m gone for a month and a half.
“I miss my family. My wife had to be head of the household. She has to do everything. If the sewer breaks down, if the commode doesn’t work, she has to take care of it. She pays all the bills. She does it all. I’m not the head person any more.”
In the last ten years baseball has changed a lot. We’re getting more college boys. When I first went into the game, they used to get on me, call me “professor,” because I had a college education. Today more of ‘em are thinking about what they’re gonna do when they get out of baseball. Sometimes they’re criticized for being too conscious about later life. It’s crazy not to. I’ve seen guys over thirty playing minor leagues. They’ll play baseball in the summertime and work nonskilled labor in the wintertime. They’ve got no future at all. There’s nothing they’re trained to do. You’d be amazed at the number of ballplayers that have no means of income and are in bad shape. Most of ’em are old-timers and some of ’em are pretty famous.
You hear so much about welfare. How do you get around it? They’ve criticized our Players’ Association for not helping old ballplayers. Why should the onus be on the modern player? Why not the owners? They played for them. They made the money for them.
“I was players’ representative with the Yankees for five years. I was the American League rep for four of those years. In the early days, someone took the job Because no one else wanted it. There was a big problem. We really had no permanence. To keep the Players’ Association in turmoil, all you had to do is keep trading player reps. I couldn’t prove it, but I know player representatives’ life expectancy was fairly short. We were always in a state of confusion.”
You always hated to say anything against the owners because you were made to feel you were lucky to be playing baseball. You should be thankful for it. Never mind you’re not getting a fair shake, you’re lucky to be there and you shouldn’t ever, but never, criticize the major league owners or the administration. One of the first things my coach in college told me when I went into pro baseball: “Don’t be a clubhouse lawyer.”
A clubhouse lawyer was a troublemaker. Don’t make waves, man. Don’t rock the boat. Just go play, do your job, and be happy, you hear? That stuck with me. I was a good boy. There were very few clubhouse lawyers. They were branded right away as being loud-mouthed hotheads who didn’t care about the game. It seems to me a person who speaks out against injustice is not a clubhouse lawyer. He’s just exercising his rights.
“The good of the game” is what you hear so much about. Everything owners do is for “the good of the game.” They talk about baseball as a sport. But they move teams around from city to city strictly for money. A new team in Seattle two years ago cost the people about five million dollars. It sold for a tremendous amount. Here’s a club that’s supposed to be losing a lot of money. Yet there was an interested buyer. No club in baseball loses money. Every club makes money. I don’t see how you could call it a sport. It’s big business.
Company ownership has replaced the individual owner. This became apparent to me when we signed the first agreement with the owners. There wasn’t one baseball team that was called, say, the Boston Red Sox. It was Golden West and CBS and Charles Finley Enterprises. They’re all parts of corporations. This is how they make money. It’s a super tax write-off. There’s no way that any club that’s part of a corporation can lose money. Finley’s Oakland team is part of his insurance company. The Yankees are CBS. The Giants are part of a land corporation. It’s impersonal.
A lot of owners don’t really want to know players. Then you become more than a name. You become more than a piece of paper they can trade or sell or release. They insist on knowing you as a thing. It’s easy for them to manipulate. But when you become involved with somebody, it’s difficult. The only way to run a successful baseball operation is to treat the players as things.
Or as children. This bed check, watching players. Why would you check on men over twenty-one? Call their room, make sure they’re in bed? It makes you feel funny. You’re an adult and yet they do this to you. Your phone rings. You’re asleep. Say it’s twelve thirty. You’ve gone to sleep at eleven. They call, “Hey, are you in?” (Laughs.) You wake up out of a deep sleep. Okay, now you can’t go to sleep until four in the morning. (Laughs.)
Blacklist? I have no proof, but—Clete Boyer was one of the best defensive third basemen in baseball. He was released by Atlanta for criticizing the management. You’ve got teams in the penn
ant race who can use him. He wasn’t picked up by a single club. I’ve a hunch there’s collusion between managements. He’s now playing in Hawaii. If this wasn’t a blacklist, there never was one.
The association has helped us in contracts. I’m not a businessman, so they really rip me up. Now we have someone to help us. The minimum was five thousand dollars in the beginning. Then it was seven thousand until three years ago. Then it went up to ten. It’s going up to $13,500 next year. This was a super battle. When you consider how much the cost of living’s gone up, it’s not out of line. And you don’t stay long in baseball. You’ve got to recognize it.
You’ve got a lot more freethinking players today. They never thought much of it before. We all had the attitude: Don’t question it. There are a lot of guys trying to take your job and they’re all pretty good, so you’re lucky to be here. If you’re a big star, you don’t worry about it because you’re making a hundred thousand dollars a year. You could care less. I don’t blame ’em. If I have $125,000 a year and lived in one town, I’d be more reluctant to criticize a ball club. The owners treat the star very well because he’s their meal ticket. Those guys usually don’t kick. But a lot of that’s changing now. Today ballplayers are more concerned with helping each other. The young fellow is more aware also of world events and what’s going on. We talk a lot more of social problems.
