Larry Dierker, who pitched the first game, has tremendous stuff. I can’t believe how young he looks, like a high school kid. He made me want to look in a mirror for wrinkles. Doug Rader, the third baseman, has an interesting face: curly red hair, big smile, looks half-Jewish, half-Italian. You look at him once and you figure he’s your friend. Wade Blasingame, pitcher, is the mod dresser on the club. He looks like a Latin lover and smokes a long thin cigar. Norm Miller is one of the club characters. He’s called Jew, and doesn’t mind. Before the game, Miller was doing the radio-broadcaster bit, interviewing Ron Willis, relief pitcher. “How does the team look to you this year, Ron? How about Gary Geiger? He’s doing a fine job this year in right field, isn’t he?” Geiger is sitting right there. “No,” Willis says. “No, no, no. He’s doing a brutal job. Just brutal.”
“Thank you, Ron. Now tell us about the pitching situation.”
“No, I won’t tell you about the pitching situation.”
“Then to what do you attribute the success of the team this year?”
And Willis says, in a voice loud enough to carry the whole bench, “Oh, of course, Harry Walker. No doubt about it. Harry Walker is the reason for the success of this team.”
Harry never turned a hair.
It was exciting to sit out in the bullpen in an Astro uniform in beautiful Busch Stadium with people, real live people, 27,000 of them, in the stands. It was like a goddam World Series. Dierker was losing 1–0 in the eighth when Harry called down and told me to loosen up. Me and Fred Gladding. I guessed Gladding was going in if we tied it or went ahead, and I’d go in if we remained behind, which we did. I went in to pitch the last of the eighth. The knuckleball was a doll. An easy one-hopper back to me, a pop fly to first base, then I struck Del Maxvill out on a 3-and-2 knuckleball. Edwards did a fine job catching it. He dropped a few, but none of them got by him to the screen.
When I sat down on the bench, Leon McFadden, the infielder, sat down next to me and said, “A 3-and-2 knuckleball? Man, you were giving those guys some shit out there.” I told him I’d pay him later.
Jim Owens, the pitching coach, wanted to know how come I threw a 3-and-2 knuckleball. I told him that first time around I want to earn a little respect. I want everyone to know that I’m liable to throw that pitch in any situation—3 and 2 or 3 and 0. And I want to do it right off in situations that aren’t too crucial. It wouldn’t have hurt much to walk Maxvill. But I want them to know that they can’t count on getting the fastball.
Still, we lost 1–0.
I still haven’t talked to Bobbie. I had tried to call before the game and got the babysitter. She said Bobbie had taken Mike and Dave to see The Sound of Music. I told the sitter not to tell her I’d been traded, that I’d call between games. And then I thought, “Good grief, she’ll put on the Seattle game and hear it on the radio.” As it turned out, she didn’t. She read it in the paper when she got home. “Oh good,” she said to herself. “A picture of Jim.” That’s how she found out.
She said she was excited and happy for me and we arranged to talk on the phone again and make plans for her to join me. She was happy to hear that I’d already pitched my first successful inning for the pennant-contending Houston Astros.
We won the second game 4–2 with two runs in the ninth. Julio Gotay got a pinch single with the bases loaded. After what I’d been watching and playing with, this looks like a super team, especially the double-play combo—Joe Morgan and Denis Menke are only great.
It was hard for me to feel part of it. It was weird sitting there trying to cheer for guys I didn’t know. Hey, come on, let’s get a hit, No. 14; you, the tall fellow, what say you get on base for us; lean into one, there No. 7.
I got to learn the names of these guys.
On the bus back to the hotel I was treated to several stanzas of “Proud to Be an Astro.” There’s a printed songsheet and all rookies get a copy. The song is sung with great gusto—to the tune of Tom Lehrer’s “It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier”—in the back of the bus and Harry Walker doesn’t seem to notice. Sample verses:
Now, the Astros are a team that likes to go out on the town,
We like to drink and fight and fuck till curfew comes around.
Then it’s time to make the trek,
We better be back to Buddy’s check,
It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro.
Now, Edwards is our catcher and he’s really number one,
Dave Bristol said he drinks too much and calls some long home runs,
But we think John will be all right,
If we keep him in his room at night,
It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro.
Now, our pitching staff’s composed of guys who think they’re ‘pretty cool’,
With a case of Scotch, a greenie and an old beat-up whirlpool,
We’ll make the other hitters laugh,
Then calmly break their bats in half,
It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro.
Now, Harry Walker is the one that manages this crew,
He doesn’t like it when we drink and fight and smoke and screw,
But when we win our game each day,
Then what the fuck can Harry say?
It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro.
Johnny Edwards says that the most popular verse is the last one.
Back at the hotel I ran into Dooley Womack. He’d sent out his laundry and was waiting for it to come back before he joined the Seattle club. He made me feel a little better about the deal. He said the Astros gave up a minor-leaguer in addition to him, and he understood the Pilots were expecting some cash too. He didn’t know how much.
Dooley told me he was making $25,000. So here I am making $22,000 and I’m traded for a guy making three thousand more, another player and cash. By rights I should be able to go in and demand at least $3,000 on the spot. Fat chance. But I’m going to think about it.
Curt Blefary invited me up to Jimmy Wynn’s room, where some of the guys were sitting around, talking about the games and having a few drinks. Blefary, Wynn, Don Wilson and I. A few of the other guys drifted by and left. At two-fifteen the phone rang and Wynn answered. It was Mel McGaha, the coach, and Wynn said, “Mel, I’ll tell you who’s here, so you don’t have to bother calling their rooms.”
And McGaha said, “I don’t want to know who’s there. Tell them to go back to their rooms right now.”
“That’s it, men,” Wynn said. “Curfew. It’s not Mel’s fault. He’s got a job to do.”
AUGUST
27
Plans. Bobbie and the kids are flying to Houston to join me on Sunday, the thirty-first. We’ll live in a hotel for the ten-day home stand and then she’ll fly to Chicago to go to her brother’s wedding in Allegan, Michigan. She’ll stay with her folks until the end of the season, except she may be able to join me for a few days in Cincinnati near the end of September. We’re having our car driven from Seattle to Michigan by a schoolteacher and his wife who advertised in the paper. It will only cost us about $75 for gas. The air fares are murder, but what the hell, it’s only money.
Today Don Blasingame was wearing a blue bellbottom suit, blue shirt, a blue scarf at his throat and was smoking a long thin cigar, brown.
“Little boy blue,” Fred Gladding said, “come blow my horn.” And everybody on the bus went “Oooooh.” Blasingame feigned indifference.
Back-of-the-bus story about spring training: A lot of times during the exhibition season you change your clothes in the hotel because there are no clubhouse facilities. So you go down to the lobby in your shower slippers, carrying your spikes in your hand. On this day we’re told, Joe Torre of the Cardinals swears, his roommate, already leaving with his spikes in his hand, picked up a girl in the corridor and in a matter of moments, had talked her into his bed. The quote from Torre: “The last thing I remember seeing was my roommate screwing this broad and all he had on was his baseball socks and shower slippers.”
The Astr
o game is mock anger. It’s a teasing humor that can be quite funny even if it’s directed at you. It goes like this:
Tom Griffin pitched a gutsy game. He’d been having trouble with his arm and at the start of the game he looked like he was just pushing the ball up there. Bob Gibson was firing seeds for the Cards, and I thought, “Forget it. It’s all over.” The first two Cards got on base and I covered my eyes. But Griffin hung in there and wasn’t taken out until the tenth—and then for a pinch hitter—with the score 1–1. He was sore when Harry took him out. “I’m trying to win a ballgame here,” Harry said.
We scored four runs in the tenth and won 5–1. Now the guys gave Griffin the business.
“Who the hell you think you are, Griffin?”
“You know, by getting mad at Harry taking you out, you reflected on Fred Gladding. Whatsamatter, don’t you trust Gladding?”
And Gladding said, “That’s right. You just showed you have no confidence in me at all.”
“Now, wait a minute, Fred,” Griffin said. “I’ve got confidence in you.”
“Bullshit,” Gladding said. “You don’t have any confidence at all. You don’t think I can do the job.”
On the bus, while Blefary, Dierker, Edwards, Wynn and a few other guys sang a couple of choruses from “Proud to Be an Astro,” Gladding apologized to Griffin. “I was just kidding,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. “Nice game, bubble ass.”
And Blasingame immediately jumped in. “Did you hear what he called you, Tom? Bubble ass? Jesus, that’s absolutely uncalled for.”
And so on.
There’s a different relationship between whites and blacks on this club than there is in Seattle. Although there was no trouble in Seattle, there was a certain distance. Generally Davis and Simpson and Harper went their separate way. Pagliaroni and Segui were quite friendly and had dinner at each other’s homes and there were no strained relations. Yet there was not a lot of—what else to call it?—segregation. Here it’s obviously different. It’s as though the blacks go out of their way to join with whites and the whites try extra hard to join in with the blacks. Blefary and Don Wilson room together on the road, and this is probably unique in baseball. In Jimmy Wynn’s room the other night, the group was thoroughly mixed. Tonight Miller and I were having milkshakes and Joe Morgan and Jimmy Wynn came over and sat down with us. It doesn’t seem forced, and I think it’s worth a lot to the ballclub.
Of course, the humor sometimes gets self-consciously heavy-handed. Like one time Norm was supposed to play in a game against some tough pitcher, but he had a bad ankle and at the last minute Harry Walker decided to let him rest another night. Naturally the word went right out that Miller had asked out of the lineup, which everybody knew wasn’t true. And soon there was a song called “Jew the Jake” sung to the tune of Hava Nagilla.
It just struck me that I’m playing for a team that has beaten the St. Louis Cardinals two out of three and we’ve got Don Wilson, one of our aces, going tomorrow, and we’re in a pennant race, and we won tonight because their shortstop made an error in the tenth inning and opened the door and we stepped in, just like the old Yankees used to. I think I’m going to cry.
When I got back to the hotel, Harry Walker was standing in the lobby with Jim Owens and a couple of the other coaches. They asked me to join them, and Owens asked me what my longest stretch in a game was this season.
“About five innings,” I said. “But I could have pitched longer.”
“We were just thinking,” Harry said.
“I know he likes to run those long sprints,” Owens said. “So his legs are in shape.”
“Yeah, he just might be able to give them fits,” Harry said. “Niekro stopped them 1–0 tonight.”
And I think, “What the hell is going on here?”
“We’re just thinking about it,” Harry said. “There’s a possibility we may start you against Pittsburgh on Friday.”
“Oh well, hell, sure,” I stammered. “I think I can do it.” Of course, after facing Niekro’s knuckleball they might not think much of mine.
“Well, shit, if you can throw it like you did the other night, that jumps around good enough,” Owens said. “You’d give them fits. The knuckleball screws up the mind.”
“We’re just thinking about it,” Harry said again. “We wanted to know how far you’d gone with it.”
“I’m ready,” I said. “But don’t hesitate to use me before in relief if you need me. I can pitch in relief, then start the next night.”
I walked away, my head buzzing. Here the Seattle Pilots, fighting to stay out of last place, wouldn’t take another chance on starting me and the Houston Astros, in the middle of a pennant race, may just do it. Beautiful.
The Pilots ended their losing streak with a 2–1 win against Baltimore. Brabender pitched. I felt happy for them. I found I wasn’t rooting against them the way I rooted against the Yankees. I guess I’d like Joe Schultz to keep his job. But I wonder what the guys think about getting Dooley Womack. I hope Dooley gets hammered. That way maybe somebody will wise up to Marvin Milkes.
We lost a 2–1 heartbreaker in extra innings. It was tough to take. On the other hand, President Nixon today nominated Judge Haynsworth for the Supreme Court. I think that will turn out to be a more famous defeat.
AUGUST
29
Houston
I start tonight against Pittsburgh. I decided I wasn’t going to be nervous. I wasn’t going to let my stomach churn over. It was the Bard or Johnny Sain or somebody who said, “He who would be calm must take on the appearance of being calm.” So that’s what I did. I tried to look relaxed, and after a while I felt relaxed. Shakespeare or somebody would have been a helluva pitching coach.
I don’t think Bobbie would have been very good at it, though.
I called to tell her about the start and she said, “You? Why you?”
Lovely girl.
Why me, at that? I guessed because of Niekro’s success against the Pirates. I also guessed because of doubleheaders, which have jammed up the pitching staff. And I guessed because Harry Walker likes to take chances.
The trouble for me in a pressure situation is that the knuckleball isn’t like other pitches. Throwing conventional stuff in a tight situation, I’d just throw harder. It didn’t take any thinking, just more muscle. Whitey Ford once said to me during a World Series game, “Kid, you’re throwing nervous hard out there.” But with a knuckleball, if you start cutting loose, it starts spinning and you spend a lot of time watching baseballs fly over fences.
Still, the pressure, I think, is one of the most exciting things about athletics, and it’s one of the reasons I have so much fun playing. I remember sitting on the bench before my game in the 1963 Series. I was to pitch against Don Drysdale. Houk was sitting about five feet away from me on the bench and for some reason we were all alone. And I said, “You know something, Ralph? Whether I win today or lose, this sure is a helluva lot of fun, isn’t it?”
Houk understood. I could tell because he didn’t say, “Whaddaya mean lose? We’re gonna win,” the way a lot of other managers would have. All he said was, “It sure is. I know just what you mean.”
I’m getting a big kick out of Blefary. He’s called “Buff,” short for Buffalo, because he works so hard. If I had to be in a foxhole I’d like him in there with me. He’s the kind who picks up hand grenades and throws them back. He’s a perfect Marine, yet he doesn’t seem to have the Marine mentality. One winter he spent his time, not selling mutual funds, but working with retarded children. Blefary on the pick-off play: “Now if you see me reaching for my throat—like this—that means you go into your stretch position, take your set, don’t even look over. As soon as you get to your set, turn around and fire over there, hard and low, between the runner and the bag. I’ll be there.”
“And if you see me going for my throat,” I said, “it means I’m choking to death.”
Which reminds me of Joe Pepitone’s pick-off play. In the 19
64 World Series with Lou Brock on first base, I gave the pick-off sign to Pepi and when I took my stretch position and looked over toward first, he was standing there shaking his head, tiny shakes because he didn’t want anybody to see. It was the first time I ever saw anybody shake off a pick-off sign. It was in the 1963 Series that he lost a throw from third base in the shirts of the crowd and was the goat of the game. Now he didn’t want to handle the ball any more than he had to. Just for the hell of it, I gave him the sign again a few pitches later. I wanted to see if he’d shake me off again. He did.
“Bulldog,” said Curt Blefary, “if we get back to the Dome no more than four games out, we’re going to win it. We don’t get beat in the Dome.”
Then Don Wilson came over and said, “When we get back home, we’re going to win this thing. We just don’t lose in that motherfucking Dome.”
The idea is that I’m not supposed to lose there either. I’m willing not to.
Spec Richardson got on the bus to the ballpark last night and there were five Latin players talking Spanish. He stood listening for a while, his eyes shifting back and forth, as if he understood what they were saying. Finally he said, “Abbadabba dabbadabba.”
When we got into Houston last night we stopped off at the Astrodome so the players could pick up their cars. I went inside to look at it. I’d been there once, with the Yankees, when it first opened. The only thing I remembered was this huge band that played seven songs during the evening, five of them “Dixie.”
Also last night, I was standing in the skin part of the infield before the game and Miller came over and said, “Hey, you’re not allowed to stand on the infield dirt.” I asked why. “Because Jimmy Wynn was fooling around in the infield and he’s an outfielder and he got hit on the finger and couldn’t play, so Harry made a rule. Every time something happens, we have a new rule.”
It shouldn’t matter that much what happens to me tonight. If I win, I’ll be all the way back from the basement. On the other hand, if I lose, it will still have been a pretty good season. Still, I’ve been having all kinds of insane thoughts. On the airplane last night I thought, “Damn, if this plane goes down I hope the newspapers at least have me listed in the probable starting pitchers.”