The Conman

by Mike Murphey

  Conor waited and watched a Days of Our Lives marathon on the soap opera channel as A.J. worked the phones. Periodically, A.J. emerged from the bedroom for a drink or something from the fridge.

  “Just talked to Lou Gormon with the Red Sox!” he’d announce. Or “Peter O’Malley says the Dodgers are interested!”

  “In what?”

  “They’re getting back to me.”

  “What about the Mariners?”

  “I left a message for Lee Petty.”

  “I know they want me.”

  “Hey, it’s one thing for a coach to fudge the rules a little and say something during a phone conversation. A GM can’t do that. He’s got a procedure to follow. If they want you, we’ll know soon enough.”

  As return calls poured in, everyone focused on the C package. A.J. said they would hold out for at least a B. The consensus response: “Well, if anyone offers a B, let us know. We like your guy.”

  A.J. emerged beaming from the bedroom. He’d begun the day wearing a three-piece suit. He’d shed his jacket and vest sometime around noon. His tie disappeared a couple of hours later. Now, he wore a t-shirt, boxers and black socks.

  “The Mariners called back,” A.J. said. “They offered a B package.”

  Conor jumped from the couch and punched the air. “Yesssss.”

  “They wanted to know if we’d gotten any B offers. I told them we had one other.”

  “Do we?”

  “No.”

  “What now?”

  “They’re gonna call back.”

  “Okay. One other thing . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “Put your pants on. If George Steinbrenner calls, he’ll know you aren’t wearing pants.”

  Before A.J. retrieved his trousers, though, the phone rang again.

  “A.J.? This is Mitchell Preston again. We’ve thought it over, and we’ll bump our offer to a B package. We’re in a pennant race here, and we believe one more solid lefthander could make the difference.”

  “That’s good to hear, Mr. Preston. But we have a B package offer from the Mariners already.”

  After a moment of silence, Preston said, “We really want him. What kind of money are the Mariners offering?”

  “Um . . . major league minimum—$68,000, prorated to time he spends in the majors. And they said the call-up will come pretty soon.”

  “We’ll offer $80,000 if we can get this thing done tonight.”

  A.J. hesitated. “We’ll need time for Conor’s attorney to go over the contract.”

  “A.J., this is a standard contract. Oh, and please tell Conor I hope there are no hard feelings. I hope we can let bygones be bygones.”

  “Okay . . . okay. We’ll . . . we’ll get right back to you.”

  “. . . and he said kind of a weird thing right at the end. He said he hoped there are no hard feelings and wanted bygones to be bygones.”

  “Yeah. I should have reminded you. Mitchell Preston is the guy who screwed me by keeping me at A ball when other Angels coaches told me I was ready for Triple-A. He’s also the guy who handed me my first release. He told people I’d never have the mental discipline to pitch at the major league level. Then he hung up on me. For him to bring it up at all tells me he hasn’t forgotten any of it.”

  “Okay. What do you want to do? I mean, this is business, and twelve thousand bucks is twelve thousand bucks.”

  Conor didn’t hesitate.

  “Call Preston. Tell him bygones are not bygones. Tell him we’re gonna sign with the Mariners. I hope I never need twelve thousand dollars so bad that I have to trust a guy like him again.”

  Calgary Cannons

  Triple A Baseball

  1989

  “The Calgary Cannons?” Kate asked. “Should I find our passports?”

  “They say I’ll only be there for a week while I clear waivers and they make a spot on their forty-man roster.”

  “We’ve heard things like that before,” Kate said.

  “Yeah, I know. You guys sit tight. Hopefully, you’ll be coming to Seattle.”

  Seven days later, Calgary Manager Rich Morales shook Conor’s hand. “Go get ’em, Conman, you got the call.”

  I took a cab from SeaTac International Airport to the Kingdome, arriving mid-afternoon. Walking into a new clubhouse is always a deep-breath kind of a moment. These were people who, for the most part, I didn’t know. People whom I’d live with as close as family for long months. People who, to a large extent, controlled my fate. Pitching well is only part of it. Your teammates have to catch it. And they have to put runs on the board. They carry you over the rough spots, and you do the same for them. Having a couple of people you know provides a kind of crutch while the others size you up.

  The only guy I knew here was Jeffrey Leonard, but we weren’t close during our time with San Francisco

  I found my way through the Kingdome’s shadowy catacombs to the home clubhouse. I took a deep breath and pushed open the door. Most players sat at their lockers, involved in their afternoon rituals. The clubhouse guy showed me my spot. I said a couple of polite hellos as I made my way.

  There came a single voice, joined by another, then another, until half the clubhouse, it seemed, stood and chanted, Starman! Starman! Starman! Starman! Baseball gossip travels fast.

  I waved and took a bow.

  Finally, I was ready.

  I allowed a run during my first appearance as a Mariner. It would have been more, except for Jeffrey.

  When we were together on the Giants, Jeffrey Leonard was a looming, scary sort of presence. He preferred the nickname HacMan. Some sports writers, though—drawing on inspiration from Alcatraz’s proximity to Candlestick Park—dubbed him Penitentiary Face. Like a lot of sluggers, Jeffrey didn’t have much use for pitchers. When we’d all be on a bus driving to a ballpark on the road, I’d always sort of duck a little when he walked down the aisle.

  On my first appearance as a Mariner, I had bases loaded with one out when the batter hit a shot into left field, too much out of the gap for Ken Griffey Junior to reach. Jeffrey was at the end of his career, and not the quickest of left fielders. His primary job with the Mariners was to mentor Griffey in his rookie year and keep the cocky nineteen-year-old out of trouble. But HacMan put on an all-out sprint and made a diving grab that limited to damage to one run.

  After the game, Jeffrey found me on my clubhouse stool. He modified his scowl in his best attempt at a smile and presented a huge black fist for a bump. Referencing the sun ball, he lost all those years ago in Chicago, he said, “I owed you that one, Conman. Welcome to the team.”

  I allowed my second run twenty appearances later.

  Seattle Mariners

  Seattle. A franchise steeped in failure and frustration. Over its thirteen-year history, the Mariners had never finished above .500. This team, though, oozed with young talent.

  At the trading deadline they sent Mark Langston to Montreal for Randy Johnson, Brian Holman and Gene Harris, bolstering a roster that already included Eric Hanson, Mike Jackson, Billy Swift, Ken Griffey, Jr., Jay Buhner, Jeffrey Leonard, Alvin Davis, Edgar Martinez, Harold Reynolds, Jim Presley and Omar Vizquel.

  Most of my pitches were painted onto corners. When I missed, though, Omar would perform some sort of defensive miracle at shortstop, or Presley would smother it at third base. My screwball performed its baffling pirouette. When chance allowed the meat of a bat to find it, Griffey executed a circus catch in center, or runners were snuffed by Buhner’s cannon from right. The Conman appeared thirty-one times, striking out twenty-two, walking ten, and posting a 2.81 ERA. If I’d sucked, the legend of the Conman would have been limited to dinner conversations with A.J. and Baze and Fat Brad. The combination of being good and eccentric and old, though, attracted attention.

  “Hey, can we do a story about the Starman! thing?” the newspaper guys asked.

  “Sure.”

  “And you were released how many times?”

  “Well, nine so fa
r.”

  “And you were once traded for . . .”

  “Yeah, a hundred dollars and a bag of baseballs. And they made me deliver the baseballs. That wasn’t as weird, though, as when I drove from Phoenix to Connecticut with two pitching machines crammed into my back seat, because Charlie Finley was too cheap to rent a truck.”

  Sports Illustrated called me the man who’d had more cups of coffee than Juan Valdez.

  “You got in a fight with Wilbur Spalding?”

  “Well, I was young and stupid at the time.”

  “And they won’t let you go back to Venezuela?”

  “That’s what they said . . . and they had guns.”

  “Al Rosen discovered you when he happened to ride by on his bike in Golden Gate Park and saw you throw a no-hitter in a beer league?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. That’s what happened, all right.”

  thirty-six

  Phoenix

  Off-Season

  1989-90

  “Okay, we’ve got a house. The Mariners want me back. A.J.’s working on a new contract. You don’t know anyone in Phoenix, so you can’t find people who want me to wash dishes or supervise bingo. I’m taking the winter off.”

  “Off from what?” Kate asked. “You’re not planning to play?”

  “Phoenix to Golden Gate Park is a long weekend commute. I’ll work out at the Tempe complex. I’m talking about not having a winter job.”

  “So, what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. Sit around and watch the soaps?”

  They lived in Scottsdale. A straight shot of just a few miles took him to Tempe, the Mariners Spring Training home. He didn’t even have to get on a freeway. For the first time ever going into spring, his name appeared on a twenty-five-man roster. A.J. told him negotiations appeared promising.

  Off-Season

  1989-90

  “Lee, you’ll have to bear with me here. I’m just a neophyte at this agent stuff.”

  A.J. Cohen faced the Mariners assistant GM across a desk at the team’s downtown Seattle offices located a couple of long-tosses of a salmon away from Pike Place Market. The windows looked west, the blue expanse of Puget Sound and snow-capped mountains of the Olympic Peninsula beyond.

  A.J. presented Lee Petty with 1989 statistical rankings of major league pitchers. Conor’s performance during the final three months placed him twenty-fifth on the list, just behind Cincinnati’s Norm Charleton of Nasty Boys fame, and the Met’s John Franco.

  “Let me point out a couple of things,” Petty said. “First, Conor is ten days short of being eligible for arbitration this season, so anything we provide beyond the Major League minimum is generosity on our part. Not that we don’t want to compensate Conor fairly. He certainly performed beyond the minimum level, but Charleton is well-established . . .”

  A.J. offered his apology.

  “Look, we know Conor isn’t Norm Charleton. We know he’s not John Franco. We know he’s got to prove himself longer than a half-season in the majors. And if Charleton enters arbitration, he’ll get what? Four hundred thousand? We won’t ask for that.”

  “Okay, what are you thinking?”

  A.J. smiled. “Well, again, tell me if I’m out of line, because I’m just a neophyte here. Maybe $200,000 . . .”

  Petty’s eyebrows lifted briefly, betraying his poker face. “Well, A.J., $200,000 is probably doable.”

  “. . . and a few performance incentives.”

  The eyebrows drooped. “We have to be a little circumspect about performance incentives, A.J.”

  A.J. knew what Petty expected. Most players asked for $50,000 or $100,000 payoffs as they hit certain statistical thresholds over a season. Typically, those thresholds were weighted toward the final third of the year. Bonuses for making an All-Star team or being named to a major award were often tacked onto many contracts.

  “Again, what do you have in mind?”

  “How about five thousand dollars?”

  “Come again?”

  “Five thousand. At fifteen appearances. Or is that unreasonable? Again, I’m just a neophyte . . .”

  “Well, sure.”

  A.J. offered a schedule. Five thousand dollars at fifteen appearances, five thousand more at five game increments up to fifty appearances. Ten thousand at sixty games, twenty thousand at sixty-five topping out at thirty thousand for eighty appearances.

  “I won’t get eighty appearances,” Conor told A.J.

  “We know that, and they know that. You have to put a big number at the end, though. A big number makes the little numbers more palatable. Especially when they know you won’t hit that big one.”

  Petty looked at the incentives schedule and said, “Let me think about this. We’ll get together next week.”

  “Cha-Ching!” Conor announced as he walked into the visitors’ clubhouse at Cleveland Municipal Stadium late that May.

  “What?” demanded bullpen mate Mike Jackson. “What cha-ching? There’s no cha-ching in May.”

  Cha-ching was the code phrase a player used to announce he’d hit the threshold for a bonus payout. Conor made his fifteenth appearance, and the Mariners owed him five thousand dollars.

  Conor grinned and repeated, “Cha-ching.”

  Players held modest clubhouse celebrations recognizing teammates who achieved a bonus. Soon several gathered at Conor’s locker, trying to understand.

  “It’s what my agent negotiated,” Conor said.

  That impressed everyone. Granted, Conor didn’t go out of his way to say the payoff was only five thousand. But cha-ching was cha-ching.

  Two weeks later, Conor cha-chinged again. Now his teammates’ curiosity became intrigue, which only deepened with each subsequent cha-ching. Again, he disclosed no dollar amounts.

  “And your agent negotiated these bonuses?”

  Conor shrugged.

  “Tino Martinez talked to me while I was waiting for you last night,” A.J. said a few days later. “He wants me to be his agent.”

  “Yeah, a couple other guys asked me about you,” Conor said. “What did you tell Tino?”

  “I told him no. I told him I’m just a neophyte at this. I said I’m not too worried about fucking up your contract, because I’ve known you since second grade, and you’re not paying me anything. I said I’d feel really bad if I fucked up some real baseball player’s contract.”

  The buzzard circling those contract negotiations during the early months of 1990, though, was the sixth labor disruption of major league baseball since 1972. The previous five-year contract would expire at the end of 1989. The two sides argued about revenue sharing, salary caps and adjustments to the arbitration process. As talks stalled, owners decided not to wait for players to strike. The day pitchers and catchers were supposed to report for Spring Training, the owners locked us out.

  Conor laughed as he recalled his initial panic.

  “Finally, I’m ready, and now this,” he’d complained. “Why doesn’t the damned angel just strike me with a lightning bolt and be done with it?”

  Best not second-guess a baseball angel. The lock-out worked in my favor.

  The lockout ended March nineteenth. The owners pushed the seasons start back to April ninth, giving us less than three weeks to prepare.

  “We can’t look at a lot of people,” Mariners manager Jerry Latham told the twenty-five-man roster gathered before him. “This is our team. Do what you need to do and get ready.”

  Grinning, Conor told Kate, “I think I’m a lock. I don’t have enough time to screw this up.”

  Thoughts of 1990 brought a rush of memories to the mountaintop.

  Nolan Ryan pitching for the Rangers at the Kingdome. Me watching from the dugout.

  “Look at him,” Conor told pitching coach Paul Michaels. “Watch his back foot. He slides it forward. He’s pitching four inches in front of the rubber!”

  “Yeah, he does that sometimes.”

  “Why don’t they stop him?”

  Michaels shrugged. “He’
s Nolan Ryan.”

  I worked the seventh inning of the same game, two strikes on Rafael Palmeiro, a runner at second. If ever I needed an extra four inches on my fastball, this was it. I slid my left foot forward, came set, and delivered.

  “Balk! That’s a balk!” screamed two umpires in unison.

  And Dave Parker.

  Every pitcher has that one guy he can’t get out. At least my guy wasn’t some .200 banjo hitter, who couldn’t get a ball past the infield. My guy played nineteen years in the bigs, 1978 National League MVP, three World Series rings.

  Dave Parker hit the Conman like a speed bag.

  The 1990 season brought Parker—at the end of his long career and not quite the force he once was—to Milwaukee. That same season the Mariners and Brewers fought one of the epic brawls of baseball history. Animosity rooted in Spring Training of 1989 exploded as the teams contested a pair of scuffles during each end of a doubleheader. Two months later, Mariners catcher Dave Valley suffered a broken leg when Brewer Bill Spiers took him out with an aggressive slide at home plate.

  Finally, playing at the Kingdome the last day of June 1990, Brewers pitcher Bob Sebra hit Mariner Tracy Jones, who charged the mound. The resulting free-for-all flared, sputtered and reignited three times, taking the mass of combatants from home plate to first base and then right field over a span of twenty minutes.

  Just like the Angels-Twins brawl on the day of my Major League debut, I couldn’t help but be aware of the sheer size of our opponents. Yes, the Mariners had Jeffrey Leonard and a 6-10 Randy Johnson. The Brewers’ behemoths, though, included Greg Vaughn, Don Baylor, B.J. Surhoff, Chris Bosio, Dale Sveum and . . . Dave Parker, a genuinely large human being.

  Since Conor didn’t know any Brewers well enough to recruit as a passive wrestling partner until order was restored, he floated on the fringes of the battle, keeping his head on a swivel, tugging at a jersey here and there. He hugged it out with the aforementioned Vaughn for a few minutes, then extricated himself during the first lull, adding, “Yeah, good meeting you, too, Greg.”