Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) (12 page)

Maglie started out saying, “Look, you guys got to concentrate out there. You’re not concentrating.”

Now what the hell does that mean? There are about thirty pitchers here, young and old, and not one of them isn’t concentrating when he’s pitching. I mean I
know
nobody is out there thinking about going out to play golf or about how the beer is going to taste after the game. If anything, most of us are concentrating too much, getting too tense, trying to do too much. Johnny Sain always told guys who had control problems that they were trying too hard to throw the ball to a specific spot, not that they weren’t concentrating. Sain would compare pitching to a golfer chipping to a green and say that if you tried for the cup you might miss the green. The thing to do was just hit the green, pitch to a general area.

Control was our big problem, Sal said. We’ve walked eighty and struck out only forty and the ratio should be the other way around. He’s absolutely right. But he’s got the wrong reason.

Then he surprised me by mentioning my name. “Some of you guys think you can get by on only one pitch,” he said. “You can’t do it. Nobody is a one-pitch pitcher.” He added: “Bouton, they’re just waiting for your knuckleball. You got to throw something else.”

In the immortal words of Casey Stengel, “Now, wait a minute.” Are we trying to win ballgames down here or are we trying to get ready for the season? What I have to learn is control of the knuckleball. And I’m not going to learn it by throwing fastballs. I tried to explain that to Sal after the meeting and he said, well, yes, but I should have some other pitches to set up the knuckleball.

I said I agreed with him 100 percent. I said it because I’m in a shaky position here and the first thing you got to do is make the ballclub, and you don’t make ballclubs arguing with pitching coaches.

Afterward in the outfield we talked about one-pitch pitchers. Ryne Duren was a one-pitch pitcher. His one pitch was a wild warm-up. Ryne wore glasses that looked like the bottoms of Coke bottles, and he’d be sort of steered out to the mound and he’d peer in at the catcher and let fly his first warm-up pitch over the screen and the intimidation was complete. All he needed was his fastball and hitters ducking away.

And just for the hell of it I got into a conversation with Maglie about when he was a great pitcher, and I asked him what he used to get the Dodgers out with in his glory days with the Giants. “Ninety-seven snappers,” Sal Maglie said.

So much for one-pitch pitchers.

Anyway, Gary Bell said not to worry about Maglie. “Last year in Boston he told one of the newspaper guys I’d never last throwing across my body,” Gary said. “Crissakes, I’ve been here fourteen years. You think he meant I’d never last past fifty?”

Tempe

Day off, so I’ll take the opportunity to discuss the beanball. Everybody asks.

When I used to throw very hard I was always concerned that I would let a fastball go and hit somebody in the head. Occasionally I would dump somebody by accident and I’d run right up to the plate to see if he was all right. I fractured Wayne Causey’s arm with a fastball and I felt terrible about it for days.

The beanball (it’s sometimes called “chin music”) is a weapon. Hitters don’t like pitchers throwing at them, and there are guys in the league who have a reputation for not hitting as well after they’ve been thrown at a few times. Nor do I look down on pitchers who use it as a weapon. They’re probably shrewder than I am. I’m just not a crafty person, I guess, especially when it comes to pitching. I probably should have cheated more. I should have thrown a spitter. I should have used a mudball. I didn’t, and I’m not sure why, except that when I was successful throwing real hard, I didn’t need to. And when I was going bad, I was so bad nothing would help.

Only once in the years I’ve been pitching has anybody ever ordered me to throw a duster. It was last year at Seattle and Joe Adcock, a man I like, was the manager. I came into a game in relief and John Olerud, the catcher, came out and said, “Joe wants you to knock this guy on his ass.”

I couldn’t believe it. So I said something clever. “What?”

“Joe wants you to knock this guy on his ass.”

“I just got in the game. I got nothing against this guy.”

“Well, he says to knock him on his ass.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “I haven’t thrown that much. I’m not sharp enough to know where the hell I’m throwing the ball. I’m not going to do it. You go back there and tell him that you told me to knock him down and that I refused and if he wants to say something afterward let him say it to me.”

Adcock never said a word.

I mean, what if I screw up a man’s career? I’m going to have that on my conscience for… well, for weeks maybe.

The fact is, though, that I once did throw at a guy. I mean to maim him. His name was Fred Loesekam. He was in the White Sox organization and he was a bad guy. He liked to slide into guys spikes high and draw blood. During warm-ups he liked to scale baseballs into the dugout to see if he could catch somebody in the back of the head. He even used our manager for target practice. So I took my shots at him. We all did. Once I threw a ball at him so hard behind his head that he didn’t even move. The ball hit his bat and rolled out to me, and I threw him out before he got the bat off his shoulder.

When you throw a ball behind a hitter’s head you’re being serious. His impulse is to duck backwards, into the ball. If you’re not so serious and all you want to do is put a guy out for a piece of the season, you aim for the knee. An umpire will give you two or three shots at a guy’s knee before he warns you. Mostly, though, I hardly ever brush anybody back on purpose. And if I throw a knuckleball high inside, the hitter might decide to just take it on the chin and trot down to first base.

And don’t believe it when you hear that a pitcher can throw the ball to a two-inch slot. A foot and a half is more like it, I mean with any consistency. When I first came up I thought major-league pitchers had pinpoint control, and I was worried that the best I could do was hit an area about a foot square. Then I found out that’s what everybody meant by pinpoint control, and that I had it.

Of course, hitters hear things from the bench: “Stick it in his ear!” That’s almost as good as throwing at a hitter because now he thinks you’re going to, and that’s half the battle. I know not what course others may take, but for me, my most precious possession is the three balls I’m allowed to throw before I walk somebody. If I give up one of them merely to frighten the hitter, I’m giving up half my attack. I decided long ago I couldn’t afford that.

Death came calling today. Joe Schultz gathered a bunch of guys in his office and told them that because of space requirements they’d have to work out on our other field with the Vancouver squad. “You’re not cut,” Joe said. “Your stuff is still in your locker and you’re still on the team. Don’t draw any conclusions from this.”

It wasn’t really death. It was just the priest coming to your bedside to say a few choice Latin words. Among the casualties were Steve Hovley, Rollie Sheldon, Skip Lockwood and Jim O’Toole. One of the guys who got the call, Lou Piniella, didn’t go into Joe’s office, but sort of sulked outside. “Come on in, Lou,” Joe said. “It’s not going to be anything bad.” Lou knew better.

Piniella is a case. He hits the hell out of the ball. He hit a three-run homer today and he’s got a .400 average, but they’re easing him out. He complains a lot about the coaches and ignores them when he feels like it, and to top it off he’s sensitive as hell to things like Joe Schultz not saying good morning to him. None of this is supposed to count when you judge a ballplayer’s talents. But it does.

Besides, Schultz has his problems. They’re named Tommy Davis, Wayne Comer, Jose Vidal and Jim Gosger, and somebody has to go. I’m sure that whoever is sent down will be the best of them.

The fellow I feel rather sorry for is Rollie Sheldon. His record is about the same as mine, except he’s got fewer walks, and I’ll wager he’s wondering why I’m still here and he’s getting the message. All I can think is that my knuckleball made me a better bet, a stick-out among the mediocrities. Of course, a couple of poor performances by me and Joe Schultz will be telling me I don’t have to worry either.

I was also rather sad about Claude “Skip” Lockwood. Hate to lose a funny man. The other day we were talking about pitching grips in the outfield (it was the day after I’d been mildly racked up by a couple of doubles) and Lockwood asked me, “Say Jim, how do you hold your doubles?”

About a week ago Lockwood said, “Hey, the coaches are calling me Fred. You think it means anything?”

“Don’t worry about it, Charley,” I told him.

And today he came over and said he was a little confused, that he didn’t know which field he was supposed to be working on. He said he guessed things were getting better for him. “Last week I didn’t know who I was. Now all I don’t know is where.”

I should point out that the Lockwood case is a perfect example of what happens to a guy who reports an injury. He was scheduled to pitch in one of the first two exhibitions but came up with a sore arm. Four days later he went to Sal and said he felt fine. This was almost two weeks ago. He still hasn’t pitched. When he asked Schultz about it the dandy manager said, “I didn’t want to take a chance with your arm.”

That’s a crock of crap. What it amounts to is having a reason to cut a young guy. If you can cut him for some reason other than his pitching it’s just that much easier on your psyche. Decisions, decisions.

It’s also why, when you ask Steve Barber, while he’s sitting in the diathermy machine, if he’s having trouble with his arm, he says, “No, no. I’m just taking this as a precautionary measure.”

Sure enough, after the two workouts today on the two fields, the Grim Reaper struck. Five or six of the guys who were told not to worry this morning were cut this afternoon. Sheldon, Goossen, Lockwood, Bill Stafford and a couple of guys I don’t know.

As I drove home after the game I passed the Vancouver practice field and saw Goossen working out at first base. He’s hard to miss, with his blocky build and blond, curly hair, working without a hat. I was already missing him and the nutty things he does and I thought here’s a field that’s only about fifty yards away and yet it’s really hundreds of miles away, the distance between the big leagues and Vancouver. Those guys all work out at different times, change in different locker rooms, listen to different coaches. They moved into a different world when they got cut from the big club. There were no tears, no sympathy, no farewells and no handshakes. And no one goes down to that field to tell Goose to hang in there. One day he’s here and the next he’s gone. It happens every day and it’s a reality to all of us, yet I can’t help thinking how strange it is. There should be more fanfare when a guy leaves, more goodbyes, more hang-in-theres. And once in a while maybe we should stop when we drive by the practice field and give Goose a wave and let him know we still like him and that he’s still alive.

There was a notice on the bulletin board asking guys to sign up to have their cars driven to Seattle. Price $150. The drivers are college kids. I think I’d prefer Bonnie and Clyde. I say this because I remember college and how I drove an automobile in those days and I would not have hired me to drive my car. Still, a lot of guys put their names on the list—very tentatively.

Baseball players’ words to a beautifully tender song (actually overheard in the clubhouse division): “Summertiiiime, and your mother is easy.”

Steve Hovley was dancing to a tune on the radio and somebody yelled, “Hove, dancing is just not your thing.”

“Do you mind if I decide what my thing is?” Hovley said.

So I asked him what his thing was. “I like sensual things,” he said. “Eating, sleeping. I like showers and I like flowers and I like riding my bike.”

“You have a bike with you?”

“Certainly. I rent one. And I ride past a field of sheep on the way to the park every day and a field of alfalfa, and sometimes I get off my bike and lie down in it. A field of alfalfa is a great place to lie down and look up at the sky.”

I sure wish Hovley would make the team.

When I got to the ballpark this morning I ran into Frank Kimball, one of the young catchers. He was standing under the eaves in order to keep out of the pelting rain, his soggy equipment bag beside him. I knew, but I asked anyway. “What’s up?”

“I just got sent down.”

“Too bad. When did you find out?”

“They did it chickenshit. They told me in the office when I went to get my paycheck.”

“You mean Joe didn’t tell you?”

“No. And when I went back to him to ask him what the story was he said he was sorry, he forgot to tell me.”

Eccch
.

I haven’t been pitching very well and I think that as a result my sideburns are getting shorter. Also, instead of calling Joe Schultz Joe I’m calling him Skip, which is what I called Ralph Houk when I first came up. Managers like to be called Skip.

I’m scheduled to pitch in the doubleheader they have scheduled tomorrow. I’ll be at Scottsdale to pitch against the Cubs and a good outing by me could clinch a spot on the staff—maybe. What I’ve got to concentrate on this time is control and throwing other pitches besides the knuckleball. Whatever Sal Maglie says, Jim Bouton does. I’ll impress the hell out of him with my curve and fastball and I’ll just use the knuckler to get them out.

Scottsdale

We lost a heartbreaker in the tenth, 7–6, but my heart wasn’t broken. Indeed, I counted it as a pretty good day. Sorry about that, folks. I pitched three innings, gave up two hits and no runs and was ahead of most of the hitters. I used a good mixture of fastballs, overhand curves, change-ups and knuckleballs. Take that, Sal Maglie.

Going in to pitch those three innings I told myself that it was life or death, that everything depended on the way I pitched, that my dad was extremely interested in how I did and I would be calling him after the game. It was a good psyche job. Not only did I give up no runs, I popped up Ernie Banks and I popped up Ron Santo, both on knuckleballs. After each inning I looked up at my wife in the stands and we exchanged smiles, and in the last inning I pounded my hand into my glove in triumph and when I looked up at her she was as happy as, in the immortal words of Harry Golden, a mouse in a cookie jar.