Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (3 page)

I signed my first major-league contract at Yankee Stadium fifteen minutes before they played “The Star-Spangled Banner” on opening day, 1962. That’s because my making the team was a surprise. But I’d had a hell of a spring. Just before the game was about to start Roy Hamey, the general manager, came into the clubhouse and shoved a contract under my nose. “Here’s your contract,” he said. “Sign it. Everybody gets $7,000 their first year.”

Hamey had a voice like B.S. Pully’s, only louder. I signed. It wasn’t a bad contract. I’d gotten $3,000 for playing all summer in Amarillo, Texas, the year before.

I finished the season with a 7–7 record and we won the pennant and the World Series, so I collected another $10,000, which was nice. I pitched much better toward the end of the season than at the beginning. Like I was 4–7 early but then won three in a row, and Ralph Houk, the manager, listed me as one of his six pitchers for the stretch pennant race and the Series.

All winter I thought about what I should ask for and finally decided to demand $12,000 and settle for $11,000. This seemed to me an eminently reasonable figure. When I reported to spring training in Ft. Lauderdale—a bit late because I’d spent six months in the army—Dan Topping, Jr., son of the owner, and the guy who was supposed to sign all the lower-echelon players like me, handed me a contract and said, “Just sign here, on the bottom line.”

I unfolded the contract and it was for $9,000—if I made the team. I’d get $7,000 if I didn’t.

If I made the team?

“Don’t forget you get a World Series share,” Topping said. He had a boarding-school accent that always made me feel like my fly was open or something. “You can always count on that.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll sign a contract that guarantees me $10,000 more at the end of the season if we don’t win the pennant.”

He was shocked. “Oh, we can’t do that.”

“Then what advantage is it to me to take less money?”

“That’s what we’re offering.”

“I can’t sign it.”

“Then you’ll have to go home.”

“All right, I’ll go home.”

“Well, give me a call in the morning, before you leave.”

I called him the next morning and he said to come over and see him. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” he said. “We don’t usually do this, but we’ll make a big concession. I talked with my dad, with Hamey, and we’ve decided to eliminate the contingency clause—you get $9,000 whether you make the club or not.”

“Wow!” I said. Then I said no.

“That’s our final offer, take it or leave it. You know, people don’t usually do this. You’re the first holdout we’ve had in I don’t know how many years.”

I said I was sorry. I hated to mess up Yankee tradition, but I wasn’t going to sign for a $2,000 raise. And I got up to go.

“Before you go, let me call Hamey,” Topping said. He told Hamey I was going home and Hamey said he wanted to talk to me. I held the phone four inches from my ear. If you were within a mile of him, Hamey really didn’t need a telephone. “Lookit, son,” he yelled. “You better sign that contract, that’s all there’s gonna be. That’s it. You don’t sign that contract you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”

I was twenty-four years old. And scared. Also stubborn. I said I wouldn’t sign and hung up.

“All right,” Topping said, “how much do you want?”

“I was thinking about $12,000,” I said, but not with much conviction.

“Out of the question,” Topping said. “Tell you what. We’ll give you $10,000.”

My heart jumped. “Make it ten-five,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “Ten-five.”

The bastards really fight you.

For my ten-five that year I won 21 games and lost only 7. I had a 2.53 earned-run average. I couldn’t wait to see my next contract.

By contract time Yogi Berra was the manager and Houk had been promoted to general manager. I decided to let Houk off easy. I’d ask for $25,000 and settle for $20,000, and I’d be worth every nickel of it. Houk offered me $15,500. Houk can look as sincere as hell with those big blue eyes of his and when he calls you “podner” it’s hard to argue with him. He said the reason he was willing to give me such a big raise right off was that he didn’t want to haggle, he just wanted to give me a top salary, more than any second-year pitcher had ever made with the Yankees, and forget about it.

“How many guys have you had who won 21 games in their second year?” I asked him.

He said he didn’t know. And, despite all the “podners,” I didn’t sign.

This was around January 15. I didn’t hear from Houk again until two weeks before spring training, when he came up another thousand, to $16,500. This was definitely final. He’d talked to Topping, called him on his boat, ship to shore. Very definitely final.

I said it wasn’t final for me; I wanted $20,000.

“Well, you can’t make twenty,” Houk said. “We never double contracts. It’s a rule.”

It’s a rule he made up right there, I’d bet. And a silly one anyway, because it wouldn’t mean anything to a guy making $40,000, only to somebody like me, who was making very little to start with.

The day before spring training began he went up another two thousand to $18,500. After all-night consultations with Topping, of course. “Ralph,” I said, real friendly, “under ordinary circumstances I might have signed this contract. If you had come with it sooner, and if I hadn’t had the problem I had last year trying to get $3,000 out of Dan Topping, Jr. But I can’t, because it’s become a matter of principle.”

He has his rules, I have my principles.

Now I’m a holdout again. Two weeks into spring training and I was enjoying every minute of it. The phone never stopped ringing and I was having a good time. Of course, the Yankees weren’t too happy. One reason is that they knew they were being unfair and they didn’t want anybody to know it. But I was giving out straight figures, telling everybody exactly what I’d made and what they were offering and the trouble I’d had with Dan Topping, Jr.

One time Houk called and said, “Why are you telling everybody what you’re making?”

“If I don’t tell them, Ralph,” I said, “maybe they’ll think I’m asking for ridiculous figures. They might even think I asked for $15,000 last year and that I’m asking for thirty now. I just want them to know I’m being reasonable.”

And Houk said something that sounded like:
“Rowrorrowrowrr.”
You ever hear a lion grumble?

You know, players are always told that they’re not to discuss salary with each other. They want to keep us dumb. Because if Joe Pepitone knows what Tom Tresh is making and Tresh knows what Phil Linz is making, then we can all bargain better, based on what we all know. If one of us makes a breakthrough, then we can all take advantage of it. But they want to keep us ignorant, and it works. Most ballplayers in the big leagues do not know what their teammates are making. And they think you’re strange if you tell. (Tom Tresh, Joe Pepitone, Phil Linz and I agreed, as rookies, to always tell. After a while only Phil and I told.)

Anyway, on March 8, my birthday, Houk called me and said he was going to deduct $100 a day from his offer for every day I held out beyond March 10. It amounted to a fine for not signing, no matter what Houk said. What he said was, “Oh no, it’s not a fine. I don’t believe in fining people.” And I’m sure it never occurred to him just how unfair a tactic this was. Baseball people are so used to having their own way and not getting any argument that they just don’t think they
can
be unfair. When I called Joe Cronin, president of the league, to ask if Houk could, legally, fine me, he said, “Walk around the block, then go back in and talk some more.”

After walking around the block and talking it over with my dad, I chickened out. Sorry about that. I called Houk and said, “Okay, you win. I’m on my way down.” I salved my wounds with the thought that if I had any kind of a year this time I’d really sock it to him.

Still, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have signed. I’d have called him back and said, “Okay, Ralph, I’m having a press conference of my own to announce that for every day you don’t meet
my
demand of $25,000 it will cost
you
$500 a day. Think that one over.”

Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten $25,000, but I bet I would’ve gotten more than eighteen-five. I could tell from the negative reaction Ralph got in the press. And I got a lot of letters from distinguished citizens and season-ticket holders, all of them expressing outrage at Houk. That’s when I realized I should have held out. It was also when Ralph Houk, I think, started to hate me.

The real kicker came the following year. I had won eighteen games and two in the World Series. Call from Houk:

“Well, what do you want?’”

“Ordinarily, I’d say winning eighteen and two in the Series would be worth about an $8,000 raise.”

“Good, I’ll send you a contract calling for twenty-six-five.”

“But in view of what’s happened, last year and the year before that, it will have to be more.”

“How much more?”

“At least thirty.”

“We couldn’t do that. It’s out of the question.”

A couple of days later he called again. “Does $28,000 sound fair to you?”

“Yes it does, very fair. In fact there are a lot of fair figures. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-two. I’d say thirty-three would be too high and twenty-seven on down would be unfair on your part.”

“So you’re prepared to sign now.”

“Not yet. I haven’t decided.”

A week later he called again and said he’d sent me the contract I wanted—$28,000.

“Now, wait a minute. I didn’t say I’d sign for that.”

“But you said it was a fair figure.”

“I said there were a lot of fair figures in there. I said thirty-two was fair too.”

“Are you going back on your word? You trying to pull a fast one on me?”

“I’m not trying to pull anything on you. I just haven’t decided what I’m going to sign for. I just know that twenty-eight isn’t it.”

By now he’s shouting. “Goddammit, you’re trying to renege on a deal.”

So I shouted back. “Who the hell do you people think you are, trying to bully people around? You have a goddam one-way contract, and you won’t let a guy negotiate. You bulldozed me into a contract my first year when I didn’t know any better, you tried to fine me for not signing last year, and now you’re trying to catch me in a lie. Why don’t you just be decent about it? What’s an extra thousand or two to the New York Yankees? You wonder why you get bad publicity. Well, here it is. As soon as the people find out the kind of numbers you’re talking about they realize how mean and stupid you are.”

“All right. Okay. Okay. No use getting all hot about it.”

When the contract came it was like he said, $28,000. I called and told him I wouldn’t sign it. I told him I wouldn’t play unless I got thirty.

“No deal,” he said, and hung up.

Moments later the phone rang. Houk: “Okay, you get your thirty. Under one condition. That you don’t tell anybody you’re getting it.”

“Ralph, I can’t do that. I’ve told everybody the numbers before. I can’t stop now.”

Softly. “Well, I wish you wouldn’t.”

Just as softly. “Well, maybe I won’t.”

When the newspaper guys got to me I felt like a jerk. I also felt I owed Ralph a little something. So when they said, “Did you get what you wanted?” I said, “Yeah.” And when they said, “What did you want?” I said, “Thirty.” But I said it very low.

Now, I think, Ralph really hated my guts. Not so much because I told about the thirty but because he thought I went back on my word.

Four years later Ralph Houk was still angry. By this time I had started up a little real-estate business in New Jersey. A few friends, relatives and I pooled our money, bought some older houses in good neighborhoods, fixed them up and rented them to executives who come to New York on temporary assignment. Houses like that are hard to find and Houk, who lives in Florida, needed one for the ’69 season. After a long search he found exactly what he wanted. Then he found out I owned it. He didn’t take it. Too bad, it might have been kind of fun to be his landlord.

Of course, I may misunderstand the whole thing. It’s easy to misunderstand things around a baseball club. Else how do you explain my friend Elston Howard? We both live in New Jersey and during my salary fights we’d work out a bit together. And he always told me, “Stick to your guns. Don’t let them push you around.” Then he’d go down to spring training and he’d say to the other guys, “That Bouton is really something. Who does he think he is holding out every year? How are we gonna win a pennant if the guys don’t get in shape? He should be down here helping the club.”

I didn’t help the club much in 1965, which was the year the Yankees stopped winning pennants. I always had a big overhand motion and people said that it looked, on every pitch, as though my arm was going to fall off with my cap. I used to laugh, because I didn’t know what they meant. In 1965 I figured it out. It was my first sore arm. It was my only sore arm. And it made me what I am today, an aging knuckleballer.

My record that year was 4–15, and we finished sixth. It wasn’t all my fault. I needed lots of help and got it. Nevertheless my spirits were high waiting for my contract because of something Houk had said. He’d been painted into a corner with Roger Maris. There was a story around that after Maris hit the 61 home runs he got a five-year, no-cut contract. But he’d had a series of bad years and should have been cut. So to take himself off the hook with Maris, Houk said that anybody who had a poor year because of injuries would not be cut. Fabulous, man, I thought. That’s me.

When I got my contract it called for $23,000, a $7,000 cut.

“But, Ralph, I was injured and you said…”

“You weren’t injured.”

“The hell I wasn’t.”

“Then how come you pitched 150 innings?”

“I was trying to do what I could, build my arm up, trying to help the team.”

Somehow he remained unmoved. I guessed it was my turn to be humble. “Look, Ralph, I know that people think you lost the battle with me last year and I know some of the players are upset that I got $30,000. So I know there are reasons you have to cut me. Tell you what. Even though I could stand firm on the injury thing if I wanted to, I’ll make a deal with you. Cut me $3,000 and we can both be happy.” He said okay.