A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (76 page)

If Yogi had been at the World Trade Center
on 9/11 nobody ever would have heard of Osama bin Laden. If he had
been on the Titanic, “global warming” would have melted that
iceberg. You want this guy sitting next to you during turbulence.
You want to share a hospital room with him before surgery.

In 1964, the Yankees all made fun of Yogi
and he was going to be fired. He told Phil Linz to stop playing his
harmonica on the bus but Linz refused. Berra knocked it out of his
hands. “On any other team, they would have folded,” said Jim
Bouton. “With the Yankees, we won 40 of 50 and the pennant.”

In the 1973 play-offs and World Series,
every move he made seemed to work out. He is the one guy associated
as a hero with both the Mets and Yankees. Berra is as much a symbol
of New York as the Statue of Liberty, and has an accent that is
straight out of the Bronx even though he is from Missouri. He lived
in New Jersey for years. Mob guys give him respect.

Whitey Ford was 24-7 with a 2.74 earned run average
in 1963, but lost the Series opener to Koufax 5-2. He was beaten
twice in the four-game sweep. He was 17-6 with a 2.13 ERA in 1964,
when Yogi made him player/pitching coach. He lost his one start to
St. Louis in the World Series, and retired in 1967 having won 236
games with a 2.75 earned run average. He was 10-8 with a 2.71 ERA
in Series play, earning induction to the Hall of Fame in 1974, when
he fittingly entered with Mantle.

Like Juan Marichal, Ford is slightly below the likes
of Koufax, Bob Gibson, and Tom Seaver in the all-time pantheon, but
as a big game pitcher his name ranks among an elite group that
includes Christy Mathewson, Koufax, Gibson, Catfish Hunter, Curt
Schilling and Josh Beckett.

Bill "Moose" Skowron was traded to Los Angeles in
1963 where he hit .203 for the World Champion Dodgers. He played
until 1967 with Washington, the Chicago White Sox, and California,
hitting .282 with 211 homers, and a .293 average in 39 World Series
39 games, along with eight homers.

Joe Pepitone took over as the
starting first baseman when Skowron left in 1963. He was
immediately hailed as one of the next great Yankee stars when he
hit 27 home runs. A review of Pepitone's career in the 1960s
indicates that the term "star" may have applied to him; or close to
it. He hit 28 home runs in 1964, 31 in 1966, and 27 in 1969 with
100 RBIs. He went to Houston in 1970, then the Cubs until 1973
before retiring after a stint with Atlanta. His career numbers:
.258 with 219 homers. Pepitone, however, is best known as
symbolizing the "new breed." He was the first player to bring a
blow dryer into the clubhouse. Jim Bouton and pitcher Fritz
Peterson once secretly filled it with talcum powder during the
seventh inning of an apparent easy Yankee win. After blowing the
game the clubhouse was silent when Pepitone turned on the blow
dryer. The powder made him look like "an Italian George
Washington," wrote Bouton in
Ball
Four
. On another occasion, Pepitone put a
piece of pop corn on his genitals and brought it to the attention
of the team's trainer, claiming some new form of venereal
disease.

"Jesus, Joe, what the hell have you
done to yourself?" the trainer exclaimed. Pepitone's prowess with
women, his career coinciding with the "sexual revolution" in the
funnest Fun City of them all, was legendary. He was proud of
his
size
, happy to
publicize it so the women of America would be enticed.

When he played in Chicago, he tooled to and from the
ball park, on the road and at home, in a limousine, and wore a fur
coat, Joe Namath-style. He grew his hair long, sported a Fu Manchu,
and epitomized the style of his day. He drank and experimented with
drugs.

The polar opposite of Joe Pepitone was Bobby
Richardson. He never hit more than .267 after his near-MVP
performance of 1962, and retired as a Yankee in 1966 with a .266
lifetime average. He became a Christian pastor and successful coach
at the University of South Carolina. He helped make college
baseball popular in the South. Long dominated by Southern
California, over the next decades the Southeastern Conference came
to achieve parity with the Pacific 10.

Clete Boyer played for the Yankees through 1966,
then went to the Braves, where he played between 1967 and 1971
(including their division champions of 1969). He retired with a
.242 average, but did not win the Gold Gloves he otherwise deserved
because his career paralleled Baltimore's Brooks Robinson. His
brother, Ken was the Most Valuable Player of the National League
when he starred for St. Louis in 1964, leading the Cardinals to a
World Series win over Clete's Yanks.

Tony Kubek's production dropped
each year after 1962. He hit only .188 vs. Los Angeles in the 1963
Series, and retired after 1965 with a .266 average. He became Joe
Garagiola's popular broadcast partner on NBC's Saturday
Game of the Week
.

Elston Howard became the first
black American League MVP in 1963 when he hit 28 home runs, drove
in 85 runs and batted .287 (no less than 11 blacks had won in the
N.L. since 1949). He batted .313 in 1964 and finished his career
with Boston, ironically the last club to bring a black player to
the big leagues. He helped the Red Sox down the stretch of their
"Impossible Dream" pennant, then retired in 1968 having batted .274
lifetime with 167 homers. He became a coach under Billy Martin and
helped keep the peace during the volatile
Bronx is Burning
summer of 1977, when
Martin and Reggie Jackson feuded. He coached under other managers
and remained a loyal Yankee.

Tom Tresh never realized his great potential. He hit
.269 with 25 home runs in 1963 and slammed 26 home runs in 1965,
but was traded to his home state Detroit Tigers in 1969, retiring
shortly thereafter with a .245 average.

Hector Lopez played in New York through 1966 and hit
.269 in his career. He batted .286 in 15 Series games. Johnny
Blanchard was traded to Kansas City and retired in 1965 with a .239
average, but he was a .345 hitter in 15 Series games.

Ralph Terry was 17-15 in 1963 but did not start a
game in either the World Series with the Dodgers (1963) or the
Cardinals in (1964). He was traded to Cleveland in 1965, where he
was 11-6. After stints in Kansas City and with the Mets he retired
in 1967 with 107 wins.

Bill Stafford was never effective again, not winning
more than five games for the Yanks and A's until 1967, finishing at
43-40 lifetime. Rollie Sheldon was 5-2 in 1964 and went to Kansas
City in 1965 before retiring after playing for Boston in 1966. Jim
Coates went to Washington in 1963 and later pitched for the Reds
and Angels through 1967, finishing with 43 wins. Bud Daley retired
after 1964 with the Yanks, a 60-64 pitcher. Marshall Bridges went
to the Senators in 1964, then retired after the 1965 season. Luis
Arroyo pitched six games in 1963 and retired with 44 career
saves.

Mel Allen hosted a popular national
TV baseball program called
This Week in
Baseball
, his "How about that?" line heard
by millions for years. Phil Rizzuto stayed on as the Yankee
announcer for many years. Eventually, former Cardinal Bill White
became his partner (before White became president of the National
League). Aside from exclaiming
"Holy
cow!"
he was also famous for stating, "How
about that Bill White?!" White was his "straight man." "Scooter"
passed away in 2007.

Jim Bouton became a true star in 1963 and 1964. He
was 21-7 with a 2.53 ERA in 1963. In the World Series, he lost a
classic 1-0 pitcher's duel at Dodger Stadium to Don Drysdale. In
1964, Bouton was 18-13 with a 3.02 earned run average, then pitched
New York to two wins over the Cardinals with a 1.56 ERA in the
World Series. His unnatural straight-overhand pitching delivery,
which caused him to knock his hat off his head on most pitches, put
too much strain on his arm and he suffered a debilitating injury in
1965, when he had a 4-15 record.

Bouton had not built up any goodwill with the
Yankees. He hung out with Pepitone and Phil Linz, "new breed" types
who were not considered sufficiently respectful of the Yankee
tradition. He did a "crazy Guggenheim" face that the club felt was
a disgrace to the pinstripes. The writers loved him because he
dealt them all the dirt they wanted, but teammates and club
executives knew it was coming from Bouton. As the Vietnam War
heated up, Bouton's outspoken opposition made him popular with
liberal writers, unpopular with patriotic teammates and Yankee
bigwigs.

Bouton noted that when the police came on the field
to break up a fight, Ralph Houk wandered what in the hell they were
doing there. "They should be over at the university where they
belong," he said, in reference to protests at Columbia.

A more conventional player may have survived his
injuries, but the club was just waiting for an excuse to unload
him, even though he was popular with the fans; "my public," he
called them.

Bouton struggled, did a turn in the
minor leagues, and became a knuckleball pitcher. He was rescued by
expansion when he made it with the first-year Seattle Pilots (later
the Milwaukee Brewers) in 1969. He was traded to Houston late in
the season, and was a member of the hard-throwing Astros' pitching
staff that kept the surprising club in
The
Wild, Wild West
into September.

Bouton could not get pitching out of his system. He
played on an independent minor league club, where one of his
teammates was Kurt Russell, later a marquee actor. In 1978, kindred
spirit Ted Turner, who shared Bouton's Left-wing political views,
signed him to an Atlanta Braves contract. He made it back to the
Major Leagues, more a side show than a legitimate big leaguer, but
fans enjoyed seeing him.

What made Bouton's return to The
Show even possible in 1978, however, was the publication of his
book,
Ball Four
in
1970.
Ball Four
is
to this day the highest-selling sports book, and one of the
greatest Best Sellers, of all time. Controversial as it was, and in
some cases still is, it may well be the best baseball book - and
sports book - ever written. It made Bouton rich and famous; it
changed his life, and changed baseball the way Babe Ruth's home
runs and introduction of the lively ball did in 1920.

It was the brainchild of New York sportswriter Len
Schecter, who suggested that Bouton tape record his observations on
baseball and life in diary form throughout the 1969 season, all to
be edited by Schecter in time for a release date in the summer of
1970 by an obscure publishing house. Schecter was a hated figure
among athletes, coaches and front office executives. His style was
to hang around like a parasite, overhearing snippets of
conversation not meant for his years, then print it as fact in his
articles.

Bouton spent parts of 1969 with Seattle, in the
minor leagues, and with Houston. While it centered on events on
those teams and in that year, he also spiced the book up with
ribald memories of the Yankee clubs he played on in the 1960s, his
feelings about Vietnam, and the political attitudes of teammates.
One of the key selling points of the book was Bouton's "oddball"
reputation, which he never ran from, and how he differed from
average baseball players.

What infuriated most was his unmasking of Mickey
Mantle as a diva, albeit a good guy at heart; total lack of respect
for Ralph Houk, particularly his tenure as the general manager; or
Yankee pitching coach Jim "the Chicken Colonel" Turner; the
backwards attitude of coaches and baseball people in general; the
sexual antics of married players and drug use of players, mainly
the use of "greenies," which were amphetamines that pepped players
up before games; and his own politics, which caused several
teammates to call him "a Communist."

Ball Four
was read by every young kid in America, it seemed, including
me. When young minor leaguers like myself got to professional ball,
we knew what to expect - clubhouse rituals, groupies, partying,
humor - because Bouton had described all of it
perfectly.

It spawned many books, by Bouton
and others, in particular
The Bronx
Zoo
by Sparky Lyle. It created a genre: the
"tell all."
Bouton was the Jacqueline Susann
of baseball, only his book was not a novel. Bouton did not
get into any of the 1962 World Series games, but he was a member of
the Yankee staff. He returned to San Francisco as a member of the
Astros in 1969 and wrote that it brought back good memories,
particularly the unique smell in the Candlestick visitor's
clubhouse.

When the book came out Mantle, his
former Yankee teammates, and everybody else associated with the
Yanks, was incensed at Bouton. He was
persona non grata
at Yankee Stadium.
Mickey did not talk to him for a long time. He was called a
"(expletive deleted) Shakespeare." He and Schecter were described
as "pariahs." Commissioner Bowie Kuhn investigated the drug
allegations. Numerous players faced angry wives suddenly apprised
of previously-hidden road trip dalliances, even though Bouton's
descriptions were tame and did not name names. He was a "traitor"
who broke the unwritten clubhouse "code of silence" for money; lots
and lots of it.

Bouton also cashed in as a New
York sportscaster, but he was not very good at it. A television
version of
Ball Four
was laughable and short-lived. Bouton was not a good actor,
either. Many felt he got what was coming to him when his own
extra-marital affairs were exposed, causing his wife to leave him.
Later, his beloved daughter passed away. By that time, the exposes
of
Ball Four
and
athlete's peccadilloes far above any of that were well known. Time
healed most of the wounds. Bouton never re-entered baseball in an
official capacity not because of the book, but because at heart he
was not cut out for it. He had ability and was competitive, which
led him to brief success, but baseball's customs and even the game
itself bored him.