Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (9 page)

The most painful thing about it is that you know you’re damaging something. It’s pain, but it’s fear, too. Sometimes the pain is like you get when you bang your funny bone. It hurts like hell. Only when it’s your funny bone you know it’s a passing thing. When it’s your shoulder you think you might be snapping a muscle or ligament and you’ll never be able to throw again. Pain and fear are a tough combination.

I try to stay away from the club doctor. This is something I learned in my first season. I was at Auburn, N.Y., and I got hit with a line drive that broke the thumb on my pitching hand. The Yankees flew me to New York to see Dr. Sidney Gaynor. I walked into his office with my dad and he said, “Who are you?”

I told him my name and said the Yankees had told me to see him.

He pointed at my dad. “And who are you?”

“I’m Jim’s dad.”

“Anything wrong with you?”

“No.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Well, I just came along with Jim.”

“We don’t need you. Stay out here.”

He took me into another office, took the cast off my thumb and bent it every which way. Then he told me it was broken and that it should have a bandage instead of a cast and that I shouldn’t bump it into anything.

My dad couldn’t believe the way Dr. Gaynor had spoken to him and I said he must just have had a bad day. I was sure he wasn’t that way all the time. But I found out later he
was
that way all the time.

When I had my arm trouble in 1965 I went to him and he put me through some stretching exercises and said, “You got a sore arm.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “It hurts when I throw.”

He was offended. It was like I had told him he had gravy on his tie. “If it’s sore, don’t throw,” he said.

“For how long? A day, a week?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He was growling by now. “When it starts feeling better then you can start throwing again.” Real scientific.

I believe Dr. Gaynor was actually offended when you came to him with an injury. You were imposing on his time. I’m sure there were a lot of guys who chose not to go to him with injuries because they didn’t want to take his guff. I know I did. Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford would go to other doctors sometimes and once Mantle got a vitamin shot from a quack who used an unsterile needle, and almost missed a World Series with a bleeding abscess on his hip.

I overheard Lou Piniella having a heated discussion with Joe Schultz and, nosy as I am, I asked him what it was about. Piniella said that a couple of players had heard Joe tell a sportswriter yesterday that if Piniella couldn’t throw any better than he was throwing he wouldn’t make the club. Lou said his arm had bothered him last year and he just wanted to nurse it this spring. I can understand why he was upset. He’s only been here two weeks and that’s not enough time to get your arm ready or for them to decide that someone could make the club or not make it. It’s ridiculous, particularly since Lou hit .300 last year with a Triple-A club and he was one of their $175,000 draftees. Sounds like somebody up there wants to unload Lou Piniella.

Either that, or Joe Schultz is pushing the panic button. It’s a managerial disease Johnny Keane fell victim to when he managed the Yankees. John was a good, decent man, and no doubt there was lot of pressure on him. He seemed to feel that each day was the most important day of the season and it started right with the opening game of spring training. John always seemed willing to sacrifice a season to win a game. And this caused a lot of long-range problems. Guys played when they were hurt and then were out longer than they would have been if they hadn’t been pushed back too soon. Mantle used to love to tell about his conversations with Keane. He said they’d go like this:

“How do your legs feel today, Mick?”

“Not too good.”

“Yes, but how do they feel?”

“It hurts when I run, the right one especially. I can’t stride on it or anything.”

“Well, do you think you can play?”

“I don’t know. I
guess
I can play. Yeah, hell, what the hell. Sure, I can play.”

“Good. Great. We need you out there. Unless you’re hurt—unless it really hurts you. I don’t want you to play if you’re hurt.”

“No, it’s okay. I hurt, but it’s okay. I’ll watch it.”

“Good, good. We sure need you.”

After a while we used to joke in the outfield. I’d go over to Mick and say, “Mick, how does your leg feel?”

“Well, it’s severed at the knee.”

“Yes, but does it hurt?”

“No, I scotch-taped it back into place.”

“And how’s your back?”

“My back is broken in seven places.”

“Can you swing the bat?”

“Yeah, I can swing. If I can find some more Scotch tape.”

“Great. Well, get in there then. We need you.”

Poor Steve Barber was in the training room today getting some diathermy on his shoulder. He says his arm doesn’t hurt. Ballplayers learn after a while that you don’t tell anybody you have an injury if you can possibly avoid it, even a teammate. It might get back to the coaches, get spread around and be blown up out of all proportion. More important, it’s because you don’t want to admit it to yourself.

Pitched three innings, gave up five hits, one of them a tremendous home run over the left-field fence by a guy who caught me in Seattle last year, Tom Egan. Tommy Davis said he could follow the flight of the ball pretty good, until he lost it in a cloud. A very bad day for the knuckleball. It just didn’t knuckle. The overhand curve was working pretty good and some of the fastballs hopped pretty good. Who knows, maybe my old motion is coming back. The sirens are still singing.

Steve Barber went three innings and pitched pretty well. Maybe his arm doesn’t hurt him after all—except that he was in the diathermy machine again this morning. Steve reminds me of a guy who was with the Yankees for a while, Billy Short. He was a little left-hander with a face on him like a kewpie doll. He was constantly getting diathermy and ultrasound on his arm. He even wanted to use a machine between innings, and once he asked the trainer if he could bring the ultrasound out to the bullpen so he could get it on his arm during the game in case he had to warm up.

I know exactly how he felt. I’ve wanted ultrasound on my arm between pitches sometimes. Or novocain.

I was judge in an age contest today. Bill Stafford, Ray Oyler, Don Mincher and Tommy Davis. I said Oyler looked oldest. They laughed, because that made Oyler a four-time winner. In the book, Tommy is twenty-nine, the rest thirty, Oyler included, which made me glance into the mirror myself. I still look to be in my mid-twenties. I’m glad the mirror doesn’t reflect what’s in my arm.

Mike Marshall was in the Tiger organization for a while and he says that, like the Yankees, they frown on players telling reporters the truth. A reporter asked Mike what he was being paid and he said he didn’t feel he could say, but it was less than the minimum. The reporter printed it and asked how the hell the Tigers could be paying their No. 1 reliever less than the minimum. So Mike got called in by Jim Campbell, the general manager. Campbell wasn’t angry that Mike was making less than the minimum, but that he told.

I asked Mike if he’d ever talked to Johnny Sain about contracts and he said he hadn’t. Sain gives you good advice on how to get money out of a ballclub. John’s a quiet guy and follows most of the baseball rules about keeping your mouth shut, but he’s not afraid to ask for money if he thinks he deserves it. He was with the Boston Braves in 1948, the year they won the pennant. It was Spahn and Sain and then, dear Lord, two days of rain. Warren Spahn and Sain were the staff and Sain really put it to John Quinn, who was the general manager. Sain had had a big argument in the spring about his contract and signed for less than he wanted. Now the team was just home from a western trip and fighting for the pennant and Sain went to Quinn and said, “I’d like to talk about my contract.”

“We’ll talk about your contract next winter, when it comes up,” Quinn said.

“No, I’d like to talk about it now,” John said.

“What the hell,” Quinn said. “You signed a contract and we’re going to stick by it. We can’t renegotiate a contract during the season.”

“Well, you’re going to renegotiate this one,” John said.

“What the hell do you mean by
that
?” Quinn said.

“I’m supposed to pitch Thursday,” Sain said. “But unless you pay me what I wanted in the beginning I’m not pitching.”

That meant it would be Spahn and rain and pray for a hurricane, and then maybe a flood. So Quinn tore up his contract and gave him a new one, and John won 24 games. He used to say to me, “Now, don’t be afraid to climb those golden stairs. Go in there and get what you’re worth.” Those golden stairs.

Ruben Amaro is here with the Angels and I was happy to see him. We were good friends in New York. He’s the kind of guy, well, there’s a dignity to him and everybody likes and respects him. He’s outspoken and has very strong opinions but he never antagonizes people with his positions the way I sometimes do. I wish I could be more like him.

Roger Repoz is with the Angels too, and I asked him if he had linguine last year in our restaurant in Detroit. He said he was keeping the faith.

More conversation about positive thinking today. When I pitched in the World Series in ’63 and ’64, I won two out of three games and the only thought that went through my mind before and during the game was, “Please don’t let me embarrass myself out there.” No thought of winning or losing. If you told me beforehand that I would lose the game but it would be close and I wouldn’t be embarrassed, I might well have settled for that. I was terrified of being humiliated on national television and in front of all my friends. Now, that’s certainly not positive thinking, and yet I was able to win ballgames. Maybe there is a power to negative thinking.

Arm felt pretty good today after pitching yesterday and I don’t know whether to attribute it to the aspirin or the bottle of Beaujolais I polished off at dinner. Or maybe it was the ice I put on my elbow.

Marty Pattin pitched today and looked good. He reminded me of when I was a young phenom. Straight overhand pitcher, good rising fastball, hard overhand curve. He’s a little guy but cocky, with lots of guts. When I saw him throwing free and easy like that it really made me want to find my old stuff.

I looked over Maglie’s record today and noticed that he had his best years after coming back from the Mexican League and was thirty-three years old. So I’m wondering if I’m not going to end up being a fastball, curveball pitcher again this year. But then I remember what it was like last year; how frustrating it was to find my motion and get my rhythm, and how I’d get hit and then not get any regular work. All of which tells me I better stick to the knuckleball.

I guess you could say I’m torn.

Ding Dong Bell gets his first start against Arizona State U. tomorrow and he says he’s not ready. I told him it’s no sweat because if anybody makes this team it’s going to be old Ding Dong, no matter what happens this spring. He said he realized that, and he’s going to go out there and just keep from getting hurt.

Pitching against a college team, you can’t look good no matter what. If you do well, they’re just college kids. If you don’t, you’re a bum. Yet the kids are in better shape than we are and can be a pain in the ass.

Batting practice is the time to stand around in the outfield and tell each other stories. At first we all sort of kept our distance, standing fifteen feet apart and doing the job the way it’s supposed to be done. By now, though, we’re standing in clumps of five or ten and take turns catching whatever fly balls happen to come our way.

It was Dick-Stuart-story-day today, and this one was about the time Johnny Pesky was managing the Red Sox and Stuart was playing for him and showing up late for a lot of things. For some reason this upset Pesky, so he called a meeting to talk about MORALE. Stuart was late for it. In fact he didn’t show up until about half an hour before the game (three is considered about right) and he walked right into the middle of the meeting. All eyes were on him as he opened the door to the clubhouse and, without missing a beat, opened his double-breasted jacket, paraded to the center of the room with his hips swinging, did a pirouette and said, “And here he is, nattily attired in a black suede jacket by Stanley Blacker, with blue velveteen pants and shoes by Florsheim. The handkerchief is by Christian Dior.” Everybody went nuts. Even Pesky had to laugh.

Stuart’s a beauty. I remember a game we played against him in Boston with Earl Wilson pitching. On the first pitch of the game somebody hit a foul pop fly between the catcher and first base and Earl ran over to call who was supposed to catch the ball, and he made a tragic mistake. He called Stuart. The ball dropped to the ground in front of him with a sickening thud.

Earl picked up the ball and stormed back to the mound. The next pitch was another pop fly, this one in fair territory. Earl ran over screaming at the top of his lungs, “I got it! I got it!” He wasn’t taking any chances. At the last second, guess who ran into him and spiked him? Dick Stuart. The ball went flying and the runner got two bases.

Now Wilson’s got a spiked left foot and a man on second and he’s steaming mad. The next pitch is a ground ball on the first-base line and Earl runs over, picks it up, whirls to throw to first and Stuart isn’t on the bag. First and third.

Wilson slammed his glove down and walked toward the dugout like he was quitting right there, but he thought better of it and came back to the game. And Stuart? Stuart was his usual jovial self. He knew he had bad hands and there was nothing he could do about it.

Curt Blefary is another guy with classically bad hands. When he was with Baltimore, Frank Robinson nicknamed him “Clank,” after the robot. Once the team bus was riding by a junkyard and Robinson yelled for the driver to stop so Blefary could pick out a new glove. (If you’re going to shake hands with a guy who has bad hands you are supposed to say, “Give me some steel, Baby.”)