Suitors of Spring, The: The Solitary Art of Pitching, from Seaver to Sain to Dalkowski (Summer Game Books Baseball Classics) (9 page)

Kison enjoyed the anonymity with which he was greeted in Baltimore. It allowed him to eat his meals in peace and then sit unnoticed in the chaotic, baggage-strewn lobby of the Lord Baltimore Hotel and watch the spectacle of his first World Series with a detachment denied his more illustrious mates. Manny Sanguillen, for instance, could not step from an elevator without being besieged by autograph seekers who were drawn to him as much by his perpetual grin as by his blindingly-white Panama suit with its lapels equal to the wingspan of a 747. On the other hand, Dock Ellis, a heavy-lidded, petulant-faced man who seemed always bored or angry or maybe just in need of sleep, was too forboding a presence to be approached for autographs. Besides, he was always striding across the lobby in that high-waisted, stomach-thrusting strut of his to answer one of his innumerable pages (“Call for Mr. Dock Ellis!”); or else he was surrounded by sportswriters to whom he was expounding on the quality of his hotel accommodations, as if he were not only the Bucs’ starting pitcher in the first game of the 1971 World Series but also a dark-skinned Temple Fielding in wedge-heeled boots.

At night, while Kison sprawled across his bed and watched television or telephoned his fiancée in Pittsburgh, the ballroom of the Lord Baltimore would be noisy with sportswriters and baseball people from all over the country. At dinner one might find himself beside Paul Richards, vice-president of the Braves, his leathery face as mean and inscrutable as a hawk’s; Jim Fanning, general manager of the Expos, a trim, impeccably dressed man with a lipless smile; John Mullins, special assistant for the Astros, with whom one insanely expects to begin all conversations with “What’s up, Doc?” because he so closely resembles a certain cartoon character; Joe Torre, National League batting champion, looking unusually thin but still as dark and sinister as a villain from “Gunsmoke”; Dave Bristol, manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, perpetually smiling, smiling, smiling . . . and available; Dick Young, sportswriter for the New York
Daily News
, a jut-jawed little man who seems always to be arguing with cab drivers and who considers himself the moral conscience of sport; Milton Gross, sportswriter for the New York
Post
, a slightly hunched-over, furtive-looking man who talks only out of one side of his mouth as if distrusting even what
he
has to say; Roger Angell, sportswriter for
New Yorker
magazine, a balding, bespectacled, mustachioed man who seemed to be constantly brushing dust from his slacks, and was once described as a writer of “ethereal” sports pieces; Arthur Daley, Pulitzer-prize winning sportswriter for
The New York Times
, a tall, gray, dignified-looking man with an incongruous Gomer Pyle grin and the dazed look of one who has just caught the drift of a conversation that has long switched to another topic; Walter “Red” Smith, dean of American sportswriters and a recent addition to
The New York Times
, a white-haired, pink-faced little man whose nose is always sniffing heavenward as if in search of a fresh lead or, possibly, just a carrot; Al Hirshberg, co-
author
of
Fear Strikes Out
, a diminutized version of J. William Fullbright, who once asked Dick Young to autograph a baseball, after which he told Young, “It’s my nonentity ball, only nonentities can sign it.”

After dinner the sportswriters adjourn to a makeshift bar in the hallway outside the ballroom. There, over bourbons and scotches, they form small circles and rehash past Series, spin tall tales, swap guesses as to the outcome of this Series (heavily favored toward the Orioles because of their experience and pitching). Or maybe they just test a potential lead on their cohorts, a lead that if favorably received might appear in tomorrow’s column. In one circle, Red Smith, rocking on his heels, sniffing heavenward, is speaking in a thick Irish brogue. Arthur Daley, his arms folded tightly across his chest, stands silently beside him, and Dick Young, with anxious eyes, edges ever closer to this prestigious twosome.

In another group, Milton Gross is telling a young sportswriter covering his first World Series that he, Milton Gross, was the first “chipmunk” of sportswriting.

“What’s a chipmunk?” says the novice.

Milton, speaking out of the left side of his mouth, explains to the novice that a “chipmunk” is a sportswriter who asks his subject an outrageous question (like Popeye in “The French Connection”: “Did you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?”) with the hope that the stunned subject will respond with an unprepared, and equally outrageous, answer.

“But why a ‘chipmunk?’” repeats the novice.

“Because in the long run,” says Milton, “all we do is nibble around the edges.”

“But what about the heart of a story?” says the novice. “Don’t you ever try to get to the heart of the matter?”

Milton smiles and shakes his head. “Kid, when you’ve been in the game as long as I have you’ll learn there is no heart.”

Inside the ballroom, after the dishes have been cleared away and only cups of coffee or glasses of scotch and bourbon remain, the general managers, farm directors and managers of various teams huddle at the round tables, one of which is possessed by the Atlanta Braves, another by the New York Mets and still another by the Chicago White Sox. At the latter, Chuck Tanner, smoking a long cigar and looking confident, is whispering to his director of player personnel, Roland Hemmond, who is scribbling on a napkin with a felt-tipped pen. Finished, Hemmond shoves the napkin in his coat pocket and stands up. He nods briefly to Tanner, who sits back in his chair, takes a long drag on his cigar and watches Hemmond scurry over to the table of another American League Club. Hemmond talks animatedly with that club’s farm director and a trade is proposed which, if consummated, will alter the destinies of men, like Bruce Kison, who are blissfully unaware that their destinies are, at this precise moment, being decided by others.

“Sometimes I think the Series is just an excuse for the front-office people to get together and make trades,” says one such executive. “The only problem is that after enough scotches who the hell knows whom he traded to whom? I have this horrible dread of waking up with a hangover some morning to answer a telephone call from another GM who just wanted to confirm the fact that last night, at about midnight, I traded my entire infield to him for a shortstop who is batting .231 in the Carolina League. B-r-r-r-r.”

When the ballplaying began, the heavily favored Orioles took the first game handily. They knocked Dock Ellis out of the game in the third inning and, as it developed, out of the Series, too. After the game a weary Murtaugh told reporters that Ellis had pitched with a sore arm. “You gentlemen didn’t see the real Dock Ellis out there today,” he said in a barely audible voice, and then added that Ellis was through for the Series. Beside his locker, Ellis, surrounded by reporters for the last time this year, was saying, “There wouldn’t have been no World Series without my factin’. I gave you guys something to write about before it even began.”

Sunday’s second game was rained out, but on Monday the Birds picked up where they left off, grabbing a 1–0 lead in the second inning and adding two more runs in the fourth before Murtaugh relieved starter Bob Johnson with his skinny rookie Bruce Kison. Appearing in his first World Series, Kison threw nine pitches. Eight of them were balls, and he was promptly yanked in favor of his future best man, Bob Moose. The Birds erupted for six more runs in the following inning, and for the rest of the game the record 53,239 fans in Memorial Stadium yawned. The crowd was stirred only briefly in the seventh inning when Linda Warehime, the female member of the Birds’ ground crew, came streaking up the left-field line to dust off the bases, as is her custom.

A few years ago Linda was barely a teen-ager. With her long-legged, boyish stride, her floppy white bellbottoms and her long yellow hair flying in her wake, she looked like anyone’s tomboy neighbor streaking across the field. When she reached the infield she would dust off each base with her broom and also dust off the shoes of her beloved Orioles—Boog and Davey and Mark and Brooks. When she worked her way around to the opposing team’s third-base coach she would either dust off his shoes, too, plant a demure kiss on his cheek, or else play a harmless prank on him, any of which would draw a roar of approval from the partisan crowd.

Now, well into her teens, Linda Warehime came onto the field in the seventh inning of the second game wearing white, thigh-high boots, black satin hot pants and a snug-fitting orange jersey. Her once-boyish stride had shortened considerably. It had also taken on a certain attractive twitch which, combined with her new outfit, lent her an air decidedly not tomboyish. When she reached the Pirates’ third-base coach Frank Oceak she lowered her broom as if to dust off his shoes, then swept dirt all over them. Oceak, the 59-year-old father of two daughters, aimed a swift kick at Linda’s backside, but fortunately for both, he missed. Later, Oceak admitted that he really did want to kick Linda Warehime because, as he put it, his team was losing and it was no time to be making sport of such a serious affair. Besides, Oceak added, “there’s a time and place for everything.”

In the locker room after the game, which the Birds won 11–3, Kison was asked by sportswriters if he had been nervous in his first World Series appearance, and if that hadn’t accounted for his wildness.

“No,” he said. “I just wasn’t used to the mound, and that might have thrown my control off. But, no, I wasn’t nervous.”

When asked if Murtaugh would use him again in the Series, Kison replied, “I don’t think about those things. I just sit back and wait and let things fall into place. If he uses me, okay. If he doesn’t, okay, too. I just hope we win, that’s all.” (The following day Kison picked up a paper and read that his wildness was caused by his nervousness at being in his first World Series, which was to be expected of such a rookie.)

The third game moved both teams to Pittsburgh (a town described by one writer as “full of shot-and-a-beer guys whose sole ambition is to own a house off the highway with a propane gas tank in the backyard”) and its massive concrete and felt billiard table known as Three Rivers Stadium. This is one of those perfectly proportioned ovals similar to ancient coliseums, but so oppressively modern as to be without odor (except, when new, of fresh gypsum); without blemish (no worn patches of grass, no obstructive pillars, no garrishly advertisement-plastered outfield fences); and without character (one can buy a private, glass-enclosed, sound-proof booth so removed from the action that its occupants can be seen watching the game on portable television sets). Its rows of brightly painted seats bank gradually away from the playing field like seats in a movie theater. This eliminates obstructed views but also places most seats beyond the first few rows at a great distance from the field. At such a distance on a muggy afternoon the players become blurs of gray and white, gliding in slow motion over a perfect pale-green cloth, pursuing a baseball that can be heard but not seen, performing an eerie ballet akin to that of the tennis players in the movie “Blow-Up.”

In the third game the baseball was also unseen by the Oriole batters. They managed only three hits off the serves of veteran Steve Blass, and the Bucs won their first game of the Series 5–1. Blass, a 29-year-old veteran of modest success, is known amongst sportswriters as the Bucs’ resident intellectual and wit. He is also a pitcher of only adequate talent but great desire, and he throws the ball with such a flurry of arms and legs that he resembles a young boy trying to impress his elders and willing to fall on his face, if necessary, to do it.

Still, the Pirate victory was looked upon by most knowledgeable fans as simply a delaying action, a prolonging of the Orioles’ inevitable triumph. The win was brought about by that superior individual effort (from Blass) one must expect in such a confrontation of professionals, but which, in no way, had a bearing on the accepted script.

Now, in the fourth game, events and characters would revert to type. This was the first night game ever played in a World Series and, broadcast on television at prime time, it would draw 100,000,000 viewers, not to mention the paltry 51,378 fans who would watch at the stadium. Before the historic game, Ken Smith, curator of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., scrambled all over the field collecting mementos of this occasion—such as the first baseball ever used in a night World Series game, which, in fact, it wasn’t, since it was plucked spotless from a box and handed to Smith.

Standing around behind home plate during batting practice was Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of all baseball. Kuhn, a husky, dignified-looking man in a gray pinstripe suit and black wingtip shoes, was led to a spot behind home plate by a group of photographers. He was given a monstrous metal cup, which is the World Series Trophy, and told to stand in that spot until he was joined by Earl Weaver and Danny Murtaugh. When the two managers appeared on either side of Kuhn, one of the photographers yelled, “Okay, smile Commissioner,” and when he did, the photographers began taking pictures. While the commissioner grunted and tried to smile under the immense weight of the trophy, Murtaugh and Weaver chatted across him and his trophy, as if the trophy, one empty vessel, was suspended by another. When the photographers had taken enough pictures they unceremoniously left the commissioner for greener pastures. Weaver trotted back to his dugout and Murtaugh, his hands stuffed in his back pockets, walked deliberately back to his. The commissioner, still smiling and sweating, stood by himself with his trophy for a long moment before finally saying, “For chrissakes, somebody help me with this thing or I’ll be here all night.”

The photographers, meanwhile, had spotted Linda Warehime in the stands alongside the Orioles’ dugout. Linda had become something of a minor celebrity since Oceak’s misdirected swipe at her rump. She was standing in the midst of a group of teen-agers clamoring for players’ autographs. Linda would have been indistinguishable from that group if not for the sullen, abused look on her pouty face, which indicated she was not used to the neglect she was now experiencing in a foreign stadium. She brightened considerably, however, when the photographers spotted her and led her onto the playing field. When they began taking her picture in front of the Orioles’ dugout, the other teen-agers realized with a groan that they had had a celebrity in their midst without knowing it.