Suitors of Spring, The: The Solitary Art of Pitching, from Seaver to Sain to Dalkowski (Summer Game Books Baseball Classics) (16 page)

Bo sips from his glass, then sips again, and finally says with raised eyebrows, “I met my wife through Heff. She’s one reason I quit baseball. I’ve got this thing going with her, a divorce action. It’s no big thing but it started to get me down a little. I haven’t done much these past months except try to get amnesia.” He raises his glass and smiles. “But it was my own fault. Some guys love to get their dummy knocked by a broad. And to top it off, she’s a Leo. Man, those Leo broads are very tough. Very self-righteous. Always reminding you of how
you
blew it. Ha! As if you needed reminding! I split finally when she said she wanted to be a bunny den mother at the Playboy Club in Denver. How’s that, Babe, trippy? A bunny mother? What’d that make me, a bunny daddy?”

While Bo speaks, the room and its occupants remain essentially unchanged. It is now 11
a.m
. Len is still sleeping by the glass doors while the painter and telephone repairman work around him. Linda is still tidying up in that floating, ethereal way of hers. Phil is still moaning into his hands. Bonnie is still painting her toenails. Chris, the prophet, is the only person to have altered his orbit. He is sitting cross-legged on the floor, leafing through pages of notes he will use for this afternoon’s sermon at Schwab’s drugstore. Satisfied, Chris reaches for the one available telephone Belinsky somehow missed in his earlier rage, and begins dialing. He asks the operator to put him through to Secretary of State Rogers. “In Washington, D.C.,” he adds. Belinsky stops talking and motions toward Chris with his glass. He raises a finger to his lips and in an exaggerated manner cocks an ear. Chris tells the operator he is trying to locate the sacred Hopi burial grounds. “It’s somewhere in the Mojave desert,” he says. “The Secretary would know. What? This is Chris. Tell him Chris is calling.”

Belinsky shakes his head and laughs silently to himself. He sips the last of his drink and then shakes the glass so the ice cubes tinkle. Linda looks over and nods. Bo does not begin talking again until Linda returns with another full glass.

“My wife wasn’t the only reason I quit,” he says. “You could say I no longer heard ‘The Tunes of Glory.’ I never liked baseball that much, at first anyway. I only signed a contract to get out of Trenton. Things were getting a little tacky for me there. I was hustling pool and hanging around with some bad people. At the time $185 a month and a ticket to some witches’ monastery in Pancakesville, Ga., didn’t look so bad. I quit baseball a number of times over the years, but for one reason or another I always came back. I almost quit in the spring of 1962. The Angels wanted me to sign a standard rookie contract and I refused. Then a few months later I pitched the no-hitter. The rest is history. I threatened to quit a few times after that no-hitter, like when they shipped me to Hawaii for hitting that sportswriter. It was like they were sending me into exile. I felt disconnected from things, so I threatened to quit. But that was just a bluff on my part.

“There was no way I could quit. I had learned to love the game by then. That’s funny, isn’t it, Babe? Me, the guy everybody said didn’t love the game enough. Hal I ended up devoting 15 years of my life to baseball. Man, I loved the fucking game. I just didn’t take it seriously, that’s all. I mean, Babe, I don’t take myself seriously, how could I take a game seriously. It’s just a game for little boys. To play it you’ve got to be a little boy at heart. The problem is some of these apples—you know, jocks—take it too seriously. They let the game define them. They become, say, a great hitter, and they begin to think of themselves as great in ways that have nothing to do with their baseball talent. They define themselves in ways they aren’t. They get a little act and they take it all so fucking seriously.

“I never let any game define me. I was serious when I pitched, but once off that mound I defined myself. So what if I loved a few broads or took a drink? That didn’t make me a bad guy, did it? I tried to live my life the way I wanted, with a little style, a little creativity. In the long run it wore me down, physically and mentally. Not the playing around, but fighting those bastards who misunderstood me. The apples said I was bad for the game. My managers were always trying to straighten me out. They’d call me into their office and try to read my act. You know, ‘Come on, kid, what seems to be bothering you? You can tell me, I’m on your side.’ And when I opened up, when I stood there with my insides hanging out, they buttoned themselves up. The next day they’d run to the front office and I’d get shipped to the minors again. Those bastards! They wouldn’t pull dead rats off their own mothers!”

He takes a sip from his glass, calms himself and then continues. “It was then I realized this wasn’t a man’s game. Men chase broads and get drunk and are straight with you. They don’t have an act. They aren’t hypocrites. For example, when I was going with Mamie they called me into the office every day and told me she was no good for me. Finally, when I wouldn’t listen, they shipped my ass to Hawaii. And while I’m there I get this call from Mamie telling me that the same front office people who shipped me out were trying to rip her off while I’m gone.” He smiles and nods his head. “Is that trippy or isn’t it? . . . If only I didn’t see that shit I would have been all right. But I had this goddamned third eye, and when I saw things I shouldn’t have I overreacted. Usually it was in a way that made no sense, like getting drunk or something. Maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe I see things out of proportion, or things that aren’t even there. Maybe I just don’t know how to express what I feel. Who knows? You tell me, Babe. You’re my Doctor. . . .

“Anyway, I always felt the front office and the manager and the players should be one big family. They shouldn’t take sides against each other. Man, you live part of your life with these people. They are, in a sense, your family. The owner should be like a father to you, take care of you, protect you. Take my last year at Cincinnati [1970]. Everybody knew I was on the way out. So why didn’t the bastards start me one game, just one last game? Why couldn’t they let me go out in style instead of letting me rot on the bench? Or the Angels. The fucking Angels! They had an old-timers’ game recently and they didn’t even invite me. I wouldn’t have gone if they did, but Jesus, Babe, they’ve got my glove and spikes in their Hall of Fame! I pitched the first no-hitter in California major league history! I did it before Koufax or Marichal or any of those fuckers.”

Bonnie, who has finished her toenails, stands up suddenly and yawns. She looks down at her toes and wiggles them. “How do they look, Bo?” she says. Belinsky looks at her, open-mouthed, stunned. “What, Babe?”

“My toes, Bo! How do they look?” She wiggles them again.

Belinsky shakes his head wearily and then smiles. “Babe, they look beautiful. Really beautiful.”

Bonnie, satisfied, looks around the room, sighs and says, “Bo, there’s nothing to do. I’m bored.”

“Why don’t you read a book, Babe?”

“Oh, Bo, I can’t stand still long enough to read a book. Maybe I should go swimming.”

“Sure, Babe, that’s it.” Then he points to the painter and adds in a whisper, “Go topless. It’ll freak him out.”

Bonnie purses her lips and says, “Bo, you’re terrible!” She walks out of the room, her hands contorted behind her back unhooking the top of her bikini.

“She’s some chickie, isn’t she?” says Belinsky. “All she needs is a little silicone and I’ll have to call up Heff.” He laughs. “About a ton of silicone.” He sinks back into his chair and begins cracking his knuckles. He is staring straight ahead at the chimney, which he seems not to see. His eyes pass through and beyond a picture of Len in a full-faced beard. Len’s picture is superimposed over a poem that reads: “The drifter has vanished/The dreamer, with age, has gone blind.”

Belinsky turns suddenly and leans over the arm of his chair, the room reflected in concave miniature in his dark glasses. “You know, I played 15 years of baseball and never made a dime off it. I wasn’t that interested in success, that’s why. I loved the game, Babe, not success. Most ball-players are whores at heart. Do you think Seaver or Ken Harrelson play the game because they love it? You bet your ass they don’t. They love what it brings them, Babe. I could never give up enough of myself for success.

“Len Schecter approached me about a baseball exposé long before he ever hooked onto Jim Bouton. I told him I wasn’t interested. I couldn’t rat on guys I’d played with, even if they were bastards. That’s not my style. I was the last of baseball’s true sportsmen. My heart was in the game—the game, the fucking game, that’s all. I never stashed baseball. You know what I mean? Stash! Stash! Stash!” He stands up and thrusts his hand down his leg as if into his pants pocket. He repeats the gesture again, again, again, while saying, “You can’t stash ‘sport’. Those other bastards talk about ‘sport’ and they mean ‘business,’ they mean something they can stash in their pockets. Man, you can’t stash baseball. If you’re lucky, you capture it awhile, you go through it at some point in your life and then it goes away and you go on to something else. Some guys try to live off it forever. Babe, it’s a sin to live off ‘sport.’”

Belinsky sits down again. He is quiet for a moment, trying to compose himself. Then he says softly, but in measured tones, “I mean, baseball is a beautiful thing. It’s clean. It stays the same. It’s an equalizer. It moves slowly in a time when everything around us is rushing like mad. It’s a . . . gee, what am I trying to say. It’s a breath of fresh air blowing across the country. Don’t laugh, I mean it! Listen, during World War II when those Jap kamikaze pilots flew down the smokestacks of our ships, do you know what they screamed? ‘Fuck Babe Ruth!’ That’s right, ‘Fuck Babe Ruth!’ Not ‘Fuck Knute Rockne!’ or ‘Fuck Bronco Nagurski!’ but ‘Fuck Babe Ruth!’ That’s the way I feel about the game, even today. I just never knew how to express myself properly, that’s all. I loved the game, but I love it my way, not the way people told me I should love it.

“I owe baseball. It kept me straight. Who knows what I might have been without it. Baseball was the one big thing in my life—if my life contained any big thing. My running around with broads, that was just passing time. It was baseball that mattered. I mean, Sport keeps you clean, but only for a while. In the long run it isn’t even Sport that matters, it’s you. You’ve got to know when to get off or else you start handing out too many transfers.”

Belinsky reaches down for his glass, picks it up, then, without taking a sip, returns it to the table. “Take this house,” he says with a sweeping gesture of his arm. “I’m just a guest here. No matter where I’ve been or who I’ve been with, I’ve always been just a guest. I like it that way. I’m like camouflage. I blend in anywhere—but not for too long. Pretty soon I think I’ll head for the Islands. If I stand around here too long I’ll kill the grass. That’s the way I’ve set up my life. I don’t want to take root anywhere. You hear about good soil here or there and you’re curious, but really you’re afraid to find it. I mean, Babe, you take root, you give your trust to someone, and it’s bound to fall apart. I don’t want to be around when things fall apart. I’m more spiritual than people think. I don’t do malice to anyone. I don’t like to see people hurt. When I sense things are falling apart—I have this radar—I snap alert, and then I’m gone. Follow the sun, Babe. That’s it, I follow the sun. . . . I hate it, this way I am. But who chooses to be what he is, huh? It’s in the stars, Babe, in the stars. I would like to be devoted to someone or something. . . . I just never found anything I could lend myself to. The age of chivalry is dead, Babe. There are no more heroes.”

He smiles and stands up. “Nothing left worthy of devotion, know what I mean? That’s why my way is best. Don’t forget, ‘He who plays and runs away, lives to play some other day.’” He throws his head back and laughs, that self-mocking laugh. Then he holds up his empty glass and says, “Excuse me, Babe. I need more Wheaties. Besides, this conversation is getting a little heavy. Too heavy.” He laughs again as he moves off. “Too heavy, Babe.” He moves with a long and graceful stride, his body shifting delicately from side to side, his weight slightly forward on the balls of his feet. And yet he moves so lightly, ever so lightly, a man on hot coals, a cat about to spring or flee, leaving not the slightest indentation on this thick carpet over which he passes.

A Jouster with Windmills

He searches the hotel room for a round object. Finding none, he picks up an ashtray from the table beside his bed. “Imagine this a baseball,” he says. The ashtray is black. It is made of cut glass and it is square. He grips the ashtray in his right hand as if it is a baseball. His first two fingers and thumb encircle three sides of the square perimeter. His other two fingers are knuckled under its base. “Now, to break off a real fine curveball,” he says, “you have to turn your wrist like this here.” He holds the ashtray at eye level about a foot and a half in front of him. His right arm is not quite fully extended. He tilts the ashtray upright so that his first two fingers are on top, his thumb below, and he is looking directly into its scooped-out center. He holds the ashtray as if it is a small camera through which he is sighting, although it is too far away. Now he begins to rotate his wrist very slowly so that his top fingers move away from him and down, and his thumb moves toward him and up. Soon the ashtray is level, as it was when resting on the table. His hand is cocked as if the ashtray is a pistol he is aiming; his thumb closest to him, his first two fingers farthest away. He continues to rotate his wrist in this direction until the ashtray has turned 180 degrees from its original position and he is staring directly at its base. The original position of his fingers and thumb has been reversed too, and now his thumb is on top and his first two fingers on the bottom.

“See,” he says, “it’s a very simple, natural motion.” He repeats the whole procedure, only this time he rotates the ashtray in a more fluid, sweeping manner so that as his wrist turns he is simultaneously drawing that ashtray into his chest. Again it’s all done in perfect slow motion, very gracefully, almost with tenderness, as one might draw a beautiful woman to one’s chest.

“It
is
a natural motion,” he says in soft wonder. “It’s real easy and natural.” He repeats it again and again and again, each time drawing that woman to his chest until it is apparent that his repetition is only in small part for his student’s sake, and more for his own. With each repetition he seems to be reaffirming the clarity and logic of that motion, and he takes great pleasure in each reaffirmation. As he repeats that motion, over and over and over, he speaks in a soothing drawl, that opiate that softens resistance, that makes one helplessly open and receptive to his teaching. It is as if one was asleep while the recording of a foreign language played over and over, until, upon waking, one discovered he has learned a new language. Only it is not really learned, not acquired consciously, but rather absorbed as if through osmosis. And it is absorbed so effortlessly that it seems not so new after all. It becomes something natural one has possessed all along, although buried, and for which this teacher deserves credit only for nudging to the surface. And then this new possession—rather, this old possession newly discovered—becomes in one’s own mind one’s very own in a way nothing learned can ever be.

He stops, puts the ball in his left hand and says, “If you throw it right the ball should break something like this here.” He cups his now empty right hand and draws a backward
S
in the air. “See, it goes away from a batter and down at the same time.” He draws another backward
S
, then another and another, each one drawn gracefully, with care, the shape of that beautiful but elusive woman he has committed to memory. He takes the ball in his right hand and, standing beside his bed, he begins his motion. He is wearing a pale blue shirt, a dark blue tie and navy flared slacks. He pumps, reaches back, kicks, moves forward and at the last possible second pulls that woman to his chest.

John Franklin Sain, the 53-year-old pitching coach of the Chicago White Sox, is a big man, almost 6-3 and over 200 pounds. He has one of those thin men’s builds that with age takes on weight through the chest and arms while the legs remain thin. His face is small-featured, leathery, creased, and his checks are lumpy from years of chewing tobacco. He would look to be a very gruff man, without tenderness, if not for his smile, which is faint, and his eyes, which are a clear, youthful blue. That smile (not a smile, really, just a show of teeth) and those eyes (wincing, vaguely distant) lend him the air of a man perpetually scanning the horizon for uncertain shapes and shadows, quite possibly for windmills, whose presence he is sure of but whose form escapes him.

When Johnny Sain became the White Sox pitching coach in the spring of 1971 he inherited a staff that had recorded the highest earned-run average (4.54), had allowed the most hits (1554), had given up the most home runs (164) and had been touched for the most runs (822) of all 12 American League teams in 1970. The White Sox finished last in team pitching in the American League. Their most successful pitcher was seven-year veteran Tommy John, who won 12 games and lost 17. Under Sain’s tutelage in 1971 the White Sox finished fourth in the American League in team pitching and fifth overall. The staff ERA was 3.12. The Sox placed three pitchers in the top 15 of the American League; produced one 22-game winner, journeyman knuckleballer Wilbur Wood, who had won a little over twice that many games in his previous eight years in the majors; and unveiled two of the game’s brightest new prospects in Tom Bradley, a rookie, who won 15 games and posted a 2.96 ERA, and Bart Johnson, who won 12 games with an ERA of 2.93. As a team the White Sox finished third in their Western Division after having finished dead last a year before, and there was much speculation that the club’s rookie manager, Chuck Tanner, might be voted the American League’s Manager of the Year.

Before coming to the White Sox, Sain was the minor league pitching coach for the California Angels in 1970. It was there that he met Chuck Tanner, then the manager of the Angels’ Pacific Coast League team, Hawaii. At that time Sain also first noticed Tom Bradley and another present-day White Sox youngster, Steve Kealey, also a pitcher. “This is the second year I’ve worked with Johnny Sain,” says Kealey. “When I was in spring training with the Angels I only talked to him once. The Angels’ front office wouldn’t let any big-leaguers talk to him. They told us to stay away from Sain.”

Before going to the Angels, Johnny Sain had been the major league pitching coach of the Detroit Tigers from 1967 to 1969, when he was fired. During those years Denny McLain won 31 games and 25 games in successive seasons; after Sain left Detroit, McLain managed to lose as many as 22 games. Earl Wilson won 22 games under Johnny Sain, the only time in his 11-year major league career he was a 20-game winner. Mickey Lolich, although only a 19-game winner under Sain, became a 25-game winner shortly after Sain left Detroit. “Johnny Sain made me a 20-game winner,” says Lolich today. “Without his help I never would have done it.”

Before going to Detroit, Sain was the pitching coach of the Minnesota Twins from 1965 to 1966, when he was fired. During those years Mudcat Grant and Jim Kaat became 20-game winners for the first and only times in their careers, and Dave Boswell and Jim Perry improved so much that they would become 20-game winners shortly after Sain left the Twins.

Before going to the Twins, Sain had been the pitching coach of the New York Yankees from 1961 to 1963, when he was not fired but simply was not rehired by the team’s new general manager, Ralph Houk. While Sain coached, Yankee pitchers Jim Bouton, Ralph Terry and Whitey Ford became 20-game winners for the only times in their careers. Ford won 66 games and lost only 19 in his three years under Sain; Ralph Terry won 56 games in three years with Sain, which was more than half as many games as he had won in his 12-year career. Jim Bouton won 21 games under Sain, and when Sain left the club in 1963 Bouton said of him, “I admire Johnny Sain more than any man I’ve ever met.”

Sain began his coaching career in 1959 with the Kansas City Athletics, where he worked with, among others, Dick Drago, who was then a minor-leaguer but today is one of baseball’s better pitchers. Prior to his first coaching venture Sain had been an outstanding relief pitcher with the powerful New York Yankees of the 1950s. In 1951 he won only two games at the tail end of the season, but they were such crucial victories, putting the Yankees into the World Series, that his teammates voted him a full World Series share. In 1952 Sain was 11 and 6 as a relief pitcher, and the next year he was 14 and 7. The Yankees won the pennant and the World Series in both years.

But Johnny Sain’s reputation as an astute major league pitcher was not built in the Fifties, but in the Forties, when, with Warren Spahn, he was a perennial 20-game winner for the Boston Braves. From 1946 to 1950 Johnny Sain won 20 or more games in one season four times. Spahn did it three times. The two men accomplished their feats with such apparent ease (Sain threw the last pitch in his first 48 major league victories) that their rabid Boston fans deified them.

Johnny Sain, a native of Havana, Ark., a tiny hamlet at the foot of the Ozark mountains, signed his first professional baseball contract for the sum of $50 per month with Troy, Ala., of the Class D Cotton State League at the age of 18. After one pitching appearance, in which he was shelled unmercifully, he was given his unconditional release. Within the next three years Sain would be released by three other minor league teams, all of which felt he did not have sufficient speed to become a major league pitcher. One major league scout watched Sain pitch a shutout and then wrote his front office, saying he hadn’t seen a ballplayer on the field. In fact, Sain himself never had “the wildest dream” he would become a major-leaguer. He thought of his summer ballplaying as simply a brief hiatus from his true vocation of automobile mechanic, like his father, or possibly waiter, which he had been in a Clarksville, Ark., café in the 5:15
a.m
. to 9
p.m
. shift. He had earned enough money on tips at that café to pay his way to a tryout camp in the mid-Thirties, where he signed his third Class D contract, from which he was shortly thereafter released.

When Sain finally managed to put together two respectable seasons in pro baseball (he was 16 and 4 and 18 and 10 in successive years with Newport, another Class D team), his manager told him to bring a first-basemen’s glove to spring training the following year. He had batted .315 as a part-time first-baseman and his manager was sure that was the only way Sain would ever make the majors. Luckily for Sain, many young pitchers were drafted to fight World War II that year (1941), so he was forced to remain a pitcher. That spring, after five years in Class D leagues and after having been released four times, Johnny Sain made the jump to the Double A Southern Association. The following spring he so impressed Boston Braves’ manager Casey Stengel that Casey brought him north to start the 1942 season. At the time Johnny Sain was a quiet 25-year-old rookie with a good curveball, little speed and decent control. Used solely as a relief pitcher, Sain posted a 4 and 7 record and a 3.90 ERA before he, too, was drafted at the close of the 1942 season. He joined the Navy Air Corps that winter, along with Ted Williams, Joe Coleman and Johnny Pesky. However, true to form, Sain spent 22 months trying to earn his flight wings while the others earned theirs in less than a year. “I’ve always been a slow learner,” says Sain today. “That’s helped me a lot both as a player and coach. I have to go over things again and again before they stick in my mind. But when they do, they stick better than if I had picked them up real quick.”

From 1942 to 1946 Sain pitched in various service leagues throughout the South, and those four years became, in effect, an extension of his minor league training. He used them wisely to develop an assortment of new breaking balls (sliders and various speed curveballs), to experiment with ways of setting up hitters and to prepare himself mentally for the moment when he returned to the major leagues. He improved so rapidly that at one point he struck out Ted Williams three consecutive times in a service game. Still, when Sain returned to Boston in 1946, fans and writers alike expected little from the 29-year-old relief pitcher who had spent the equivalent of 10 years in the minors. Only his manager, Billy Southworth, noticed Sain’s vast improvement, and he told sportswriters during spring training, “You’d better pay attention to Sain over there. He just might win 20 games this season.”

Sain won 21 games in 1946 and lost 14. He posted a 2.21 ERA, the best of his career. Another Boston Braves’ pitcher, 24-year-old Warren Spahn, managed only eight victories that same year, although he would soon overshadow Sain in notoriety (and longevity) if not in performance. Sain and Spahn pitched together for five years, from 1946 to 1950. Their fans believed the Braves could defeat any team in the world in a four-game series, provided only that the heavens blessed them with “Spahn and Sain and a day of rain.” (Ironically, Sain was mentioned last because his name more aptly rimed with “rain,” as if even the gods of posy had conspired against him). From 1946 to 1950 Johnny Sain won 94 games, Warren Spahn 85. However, it was the left-handed Spahn—younger, more ebullient, with that stylish form and classic repertoire (blazing fastball)—who captured the imagination of writers and fans. Even his profile deserved attention by its very sharpness, while Sain, older, more mature, soft-spoken, with only modest ability, seemed the epitome of blurred edges. Where Spahn was blazing, witty, outspoken, Sain was workmanlike, reliable, serious, and a man of few words. In fact, Sain was so reticent in those days that he failed to tell his wife, the former Doris McBride, he was a major league pitcher until months after their marriage. He also refused to contribute to team discussions whenever the topic concerned his methods for dispatching opposing batters. He had never been coached in the minor leagues (no one considered him enough of a prospect to waste the time) and had had to educate himself slowly, painstakingly over 10 years. And so he had grown quite protective of his hard-earned pitching knowledge.

Because of Sain’s reputation for dependability (he seldom missed a turn on the mound even when his arm was sore) and his inherent unobtrusiveness, the baseball world of 1948 was somewhat stunned when that July, a few days before the All-Star game, Johnny Sain threatened to quit baseball. “I meant it,” he says today. “I was gonna walk away from the whole thing.” Sain had won 21 games in 1947 and 11 games by the 1948 All-Star game, and now he demanded that Braves’ owner Lou Perini renegotiate his contract for $30,000. What had apparently angered the previously unflappable Sain was news that Perini had just shelled out almost $80,000 to a 17-year-old left-hander named Johnny Antonelli, while he, a proven 20-game winner, had had to settle for $21,500 that spring—a figure he had not been happy with even then. Eventually Sain got his $30,000 and a two-year contract to boot, but he had set a precedent for himself that he was to repeat numerous times over the next 10 years when negotiating both as a player and a coach.