I’ve always been fascinated by greatness. Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Mantle, Koufax, Frank Robinson, Montana, Unitas, Russell, Jerry West, Michael Jordan, Jim Brown, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali …
Maybe, early on, it was my desire to be looked at and revered the way the great ballplayers were, to be the guy whom everybody stops to watch when he walks by or steps up to the plate. Maybe it was pure admiration. I grew up in a generation when black players were rising to the top level of major-league baseball, even dominating it, and those guys were heroes to me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a deep reverence for the stars of that era. They’re just fifteen or so years older than I, and I was captivated by what they did in the way of paving the road for minorities. But it wasn’t just the black players who intrigued me. It was the great players.
My favorites at the time were Willie Mays and Duke Snider. I didn’t say much about Snider because, if you were black, your favorite Dodger had to be Jackie Robinson. He was an icon in the black community, and so were the athletes who picked up where he left off—Aaron, Mays, Frank Robinson, Gibson, Ali, Marion Motley, Calvin Peete … They made us walk taller. I’d check the newspaper every morning, and if Gibson had pitched a shutout or Mays had hit a home run, I had a good day at school. It sounds like an exaggeration, I know, but that’s the truth.
The difference for me was that I grew up around the game but not around the players. There was nothing to see in Omaha, other than A-ball, which later became Triple-A. I never even made it to the ballpark. By the time I might have been interested in going, I was out of Creighton and playing for the Cardinals and Globetrotters. In my neighborhood, the only professional athletes we paid much attention to were Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis.
So I never gave a thought to being like Satchel Paige or Don Newcombe, or like Monte Irvin if I’d become an outfielder. I was mainly concerned with making a good living—which is why I stayed with the Globetrotters until the Cardinals said they’d make up the difference in salary if I quit—and with winning. We all have different ideals.
I wanted not only to play like the great ones and live like the great ones; I wanted to look like them. There was a certain way that Mays and Mickey Mantle wore their uniforms. They had their stirrups—their baseball socks—at a certain height. Mays left the top button unbuttoned, and if you were a superstar that was okay. He introduced tailored uniforms and tight pants, stuff like that. I thought it was cool. I wanted to wear my pants the way the stars did. I wanted to drive free cars like they did. I wanted everything about me to be just like them.
When I made it to the big leagues with the A’s, we trained in Arizona, where the Cubs and Giants also had their camps. That provided me with the opportunity to hang out with Ernie Banks, Fergie Jenkins, Billy Williams, and Willie McCovey. Mays didn’t run around with us, but that was okay because Willie was magical to me. I didn’t want to lose that feeling.
As it was, I was surrounded by my idols. I was a kid and they were who I wanted to grow up to be. Besides that, three of us were left-handed. I was in my glory.
You can learn a whole lot just by hanging out with guys like that. You can see for yourself what the best players eat, how they manage their schedules, how they respond to certain situations on the field and off it. You can start to see what it takes to be at that level.
But I didn’t make a study of greatness like Reggie did. To me, greatness meant that I shouldn’t give that guy anything good to hit.
I didn’t pal around with superstars, but I wasn’t oblivious to them either. It certainly made an impression on me in spring training of 1960 when I pitched against Ted Williams. I remembered distinctly—or thought I did—that I got two strikes on him with fastballs and then he ripped a curveball up the middle for a single. Years and years later, at an old-timers game, I brought that up with Williams and he said, no, that wasn’t quite how it was. He said he took a fastball for a strike and hit the curve on the second pitch. It’s understandable that I would remember pitching to him, because he was Ted Williams, but how in the hell could he remember batting against me? At that point, I was nobody. Except that I was a pitcher, and that was enough for Ted Williams. That, to me, is a study in greatness.
Bob was one of the guys I studied. His intensity and his determination—that spread-eagle with his legs stretched out and that flying follow-through—expressed a fierceness that I admired. I watched the way he instilled fear in the batter. Gibson was the most feared of all the pitchers. It was his combination of extraordinary ability and intense will.
To me, he was the pitching equivalent of Frank Robinson, who had the ferocity of a fighter and the reputation to go with it. In the heat of a big ballgame, I tried to summon the intensity of Gibson and Frank Robinson.
That intensity is something all great players have in common. They just show it differently. People thought Hank Aaron kind of glided along without much fire in him, but that’s not possible. That man had to be seriously driven to accomplish what he did for as long as he did and put up with what he put up with.
There might be great players who don’t bring it every day, but I don’t remember playing against any. I can say from experience that the great pitchers I saw were never off when I saw them. When I faced Roger Clemens, he had it that day. When I faced Tom Seaver, he had it that day. At least it seemed that way to me. Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mickey Lolich … I never went back to the dugout and said, “Man, he’s not throwing that good today.” And if a teammate said to me that he’s not, I’d say, “Well, take my jersey and put on my glasses and go up and stand on the left side of the plate with number forty-four on your back. You’ll see. He’s not throwing me that chicken salad that you’re gettin’!”
I didn’t need coffee or bennies or amphetamines or whatever to get amped for Nolan Ryan or Ferguson Jenkins. Against those gentlemen, you’d better be on your game from the moment you get up. Otherwise, you’re going to beat a path between home plate and the dugout. Because they’re going to be on it. If you don’t get them in the first three innings, you’ll be in for a painfully long day.
I didn’t ever go to Baltimore and Frank Robinson had the flu, or a stiff neck. He wasn’t in a slump. He wasn’t swinging bad. He wasn’t limping. My gosh, we’d go to play the Orioles and they’d have four twenty-game winners lined up for us. We got all of them. It wasn’t like, hey, McNally went to see the doctor today, he had a sore elbow. He didn’t have a sore elbow for us. When we went to see Mickey Lolich in Detroit, he had a big ol’ belly, he threw in the low nineties, he had a slider and a curveball to go with it, and he was going to be there for nine innings. That guy pitched 376 innings one year. He was going to be there until he either won or lost. When it was 1–0, either way, he was there, baby. When it was 5–5, he was still there. You had to be ready when you got out of bed.
That’s how it is with the great ones.
When we went to Shibe Park we’d go stand around where the players came out, but we weren’t allowed to speak to them. As a black kid, you weren’t supposed to be noticed. That’s how it was in those days. And that was okay. It was enough for me just to see those guys.
We’d watch Jackie Robinson walk by and get on the bus with Duke Snider, Clem Labine, Carl Erskine, Don Newcombe, Junior Gilliam, and Roy Campanella. But my most vivid memory is the Braves coming out one night. I’ll never forget seeing Hank Aaron wearing black slacks, a black turtleneck, and a houndstooth black and white sport coat. I’m sure Mathews, Spahn, Adcock, and all those guys were there. Lew Burdette, Bob Buhl, Del Crandall, Johnny Logan. But all I remember is Hank Aaron and Billy Bruton, a center fielder who was about my complexion.
I was just amazed. Right there, Hammerin’ Hank Aaron. He was the first major-league baseball player I’d ever seen up close.
I have to say I was never quite that enthused about seeing Hank Aaron. In fact, there was probably no player in the National League who enthused me less.
That man did not miss a fastball.
In Oakland I wore number nine, but when I came over to the Yankees that number was already taken by Graig Nettles. So I chose forty-four because of my admiration for Willie McCovey and Hank Aaron. I was also aware that Jim Brown and Ernie Davis had worn forty-four at Syracuse. Great number.
Aaron hit more home runs against me than anybody but Billy Williams, and McCovey was only one behind him. Reggie chose well.
But they were different types of hitters. McCovey was a fly-ball hitter and Aaron wasn’t. When he got to Atlanta, where the ball carried so well, Aaron began to lift and pull it more, but I thought he was a better hitter as a young player in Milwaukee, when he was swinging downward and smoking line drives all over the park. You know, he was a two-time batting champion in Milwaukee, and he might have made a run at four thousand hits if he’d stayed there. Either way, he was such a great fastball hitter that I threw him a lot of breaking balls, a lot of sliders.
The worst pitch in baseball is the changeup slider, but I’d throw Aaron that changeup slider and he’d be out on that front foot and hit rockets, two hops to the shortstop. All of our shortstops took balls in the chest off the bat of Aaron. They’d go, “Goddamn, Gibby!”
I’d say, “Hey, this is the way I get him out. He’s gonna knock you over, so be ready for it.”
Nobody had quicker hands than Aaron. He was a unique hitter and a unique player. Hank was so low-key and unassuming that he had about six hundred home runs before most people realized what he was all about. I’m still not sure they understand.
Frank Robinson was a guy who would drive himself, slide hard, take pitches on the elbow, and fight the third baseman for tagging him out. Aaron wasn’t like that on the outside.
The inside was another story. Henry Aaron had the calmness of a cobra. Don’t mess with him! He’ll fool you, for sure.
That man was quiet death with a bat at home plate.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear how I felt about opponents hitting home runs. I wanted no part of it. That’s why, to me, Willie McCovey was the scariest hitter in baseball.
He hit seven against me, and that was more than enough to make me wary of him, but don’t forget that for every game I pitched there were four more that I watched. And I always made it a point to pay attention when McCovey took his turn, just in case some other pitcher figured out something that I hadn’t thought of. That didn’t mean you could do the same thing, but it was worth taking a peek.
I was watching in St. Louis one night when McCovey hit a shot against Al Jackson that I’ll never forget. It was a hanging breaking ball. Usually his home runs stayed up in the air because of that long, arcing swing of his, but this one was a line drive to the upper deck and over the scoreboard. It hit a façade out there and bounced back onto the field. I’d never seen anything like it. We were sitting in the dugout talking, keeping an eye on Stretch—that’s what everybody called him—and all of a sudden there was stone silence. Then we all stood up to see. The only other ball I ever saw hit that even resembled that one was a home run Duke Snider hit in the old ballpark in St. Louis. That one hit off the clock on top of the stands in right field. It had to be five hundred feet. But the one McCovey hit had to be five-fifty, maybe six hundred. They didn’t measure them in those days, and Mickey Mantle always got credit for the longest home run at 565 feet, but I have to believe that this one was right there with it.
I was playing center field in 1969 when McCovey hit two home runs in the All-Star Game in Washington, D.C. One of them smashed against that cement block wall in center field where the clock was. They interviewed Stretch after the game and asked him if it was the hardest ball he ever hit. He had that thick, Mobile, Alabama, accent—he and Aaron were both from Mobile—and he said, “I don’t know … But I hit it pretty good.”
Stretch was a little calmer than Willie Mays and didn’t attract attention in the same way, but it was a mistake to underestimate him. Ask any pitcher from that era—Seaver, Jenkins, Gibson, Perry, whoever—and he’ll tell you the most feared hitter in the game wasn’t Mays or Clemente or Aaron; it was Willie “Stretch” McCovey.
If you didn’t pitch him accordingly, you’d be getting a new baseball from the umpire.
That was not a mistake I was likely to make. To me, McCovey was the ultimate power hitter. The trouble was, the Giants had a ridiculous batting order with him and Mays and Cepeda and Jim Ray Hart and Felipe Alou. Even their catcher, Tom Haller, had four home runs off of me. It wasn’t a lineup that allowed you to pitch around somebody very easily.
But none of the others put the fear in me that McCovey did. Not even Mays. He was right-handed.
Since McCovey and I were never in the same league, except for a few weeks he spent with Oakland in 1976, his impact on me was mostly social. The time I spent in Arizona with him, Fergie, and Billy Williams—another great player from Mobile—meant the world to me. As a young, ambitious, wide-eyed African-American, that experience just embraced me in a way that made me feel like I was part of something special.
Each guy took his turn buying dinner. At the time, I was making about twenty grand and those guys were all making a hundred, so I didn’t have to pay very often. But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was what I picked up by just being there. It brought about a comfort level with who I was. Before long, I became known as one of the first black guys who really spoke frankly about what he thought and experienced. A lot of that came from the poise and confidence I’d gained by being with those guys.
They were men who had already done what I was earnestly setting out to do. They sensed that about me, and they provided me with an understanding of the dynamics, politics, and challenges of big-time baseball. They made me better able to manage myself—my angst, in particular. They’d gotten through it, and they showed me how they got through it. They helped me understand the signage when I traveled down the road. Thank you, my friends!
They talked about being careful not to stay out too late, how one hour after one o’clock is worth two hours before. I soon figured out that it meant you should go to bed at eleven. And if you’re not with somebody before twelve, you’re probably not going to be with her after twelve.
You can’t drink, smoke, and chase women. You can do one and get by. Two will shorten your career. Three will end it.
That’s what I learned from those men. My guys!
My mentor with the Cardinals was George Crowe, a part-time first baseman who once hit thirty-one homers for the Reds. He was older, wiser, had been around the league, and he kind of took me under his arm. He also let me use his Jeep. In fact, we called him Jeep. He was more like a dad and a teacher than a teammate, and most of what he counseled me on had nothing to do with playing the game.
George didn’t make it to the major leagues until he was twenty-nine, and by the time I started to have some success he was finished. But he helped me make it through those first couple years when Solly Hemus was our manager. Thank God for Jeep.
One night, in 1974, it was my turn to drive and I picked up McCovey for dinner. We were going to a place in Phoenix called the Fig Tree to meet Billy and Fergie. Well, I’d won the MVP Award in 1973 and a guy had given me a T-top Pontiac. It was raining when I picked up Stretch, and the Pontiac was leaking—leaking on his side. After a little while of that, Stretch turned and said to me, real slow, “Man, Reggie, this thing is no star’s car.”
You don’t think that made an impression? To this day, I laugh when I think about it.
I love Stretch.
My teammates, and only my teammates, called me Buck. They knew how I felt about Willie Mays, and that’s what Willie’s teammates called him. Chuck Dobson, a pitcher for the A’s and a good friend, pinned that on me. I appreciated it.
More than anybody else, Willie Mays is the guy who got me jacked up about playing baseball when I was a kid. I was a fan who became a player, and a player who wanted to be Willie Mays. My goodness, what a player. Willie was one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game, and he could go oh-for-four and still beat you.
If I had to pick one position where I’d want my best glove, it would be center field. Curt Flood was my man out there. And maybe the best compliment I can give Curt is to say that he could play center field almost as well as Willie Mays.
Aaron may have been a better hitter, but in the outfield nobody was quite like Willie. A guy like Jim Edmonds is really good, but with Willie you knew what you were getting every day—except that, on some days, he would make plays you couldn’t believe.
One of the best things about the Cactus League was that we played the Giants and I got to see Willie Mays. It was like watching Michael Jordan. I’d stop following the game sometimes and just study Willie.
He could put on a show just by arriving. For a one-o’clock road game in Mesa, Willie would drive in about quarter to one. He had a big Imperial that Chrysler gave him, and he’d pull up by the right-field line, jog out onto the grass, and get loosened up a little. He’d warm up throwing underhanded in that signature style of his. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. We’d start, he’d bat twice, hit two line drives, then he’d be gone. The game wouldn’t be the same after that. Time to go get popcorn.
Mays didn’t hurt me as much as Aaron did, as long as I didn’t make a mistake or throw him a breaking ball. He had a skittish left leg. I’d come in on him and he’d spin out and go flying, and the ball would just miss the plate a few inches. He’d act like I was trying to kill him. So after doing that a time or two, I’d just throw him fastballs down and away.
Where Willie hurt me was in the field. Since the Cardinals didn’t hit many home runs, we expected to at least put some balls in the gaps. With Willie out there, that was asking a lot. There was plenty of substance along with that style.
There’s no style without substance.
There was also a lot of substance to Willie’s personality. With Mays, Henry, and Stretch, there’s a sensitivity that’s still in them. Ernie Banks was a different type. Ernie would make light of things to the extent that you’d never hear him talk seriously. A lot of people looked at him as insincere, a glad-hander; but I think that was simply Ernie’s way of masking his disappointment or anger, his way of handling the second-class-citizen sociology that came with being a minority. I know it bothered him. It affected him. His way of coping was just different than my way or Gibson’s way or McCovey’s or Aaron’s or Robinson’s or Mays’s.
They all had their own styles. Mays’s style was just a little flashier than the others’. Willie made you look.
He was everything a young black kid could hope to be one day.
If Willie Mays was the Michael Jordan of baseball, Frank Robinson was the Bill Russell. Fierce. Intimidating. Intelligent. A ballplayer’s ballplayer. A winner through and through. It was like having Gibson on the field seven days a week.
Frank became a mentor to me when I played for him in Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1970. I’d had a bad year with the A’s, only twenty-three home runs and sixty-six RBIs. It affected me. I was disgusted with myself, and showed my frustration in ways that were counterproductive. I had temper issues. I threw things. I broke things. Frank watched a little of that, then put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Take it easy for a second, would you? Get your mind in the game. What, don’t you think you’re going to strike out now and then? You don’t think you’re going to make outs? You don’t think you’re ever going to look foolish at the plate? Don’t forget, you only need one strike to hit. But you can’t hit when you’re angry. If you try to, you’re wasting your time up there. Be in control of your at-bat. Give your talent a chance. Don’t get in your own way!”
He said, “You should be a leader, Reggie. You can’t lead the way you’re acting. You’re a star, you get a lot of attention, and guys are going to want to follow you. If they follow you the way you’re acting, it’ll be all wrong. You’ll be taking them down the wrong path.”
When Frank Robinson spoke to me, I listened. He changed my thought process. He helped me mature and get rid of the young, dumb behavior that I was prone to. He made me understand that I wasn’t perfect and couldn’t be. He worked with me to develop some patience in my approach to the game. He coached me on how to control my temper and channel my emotion into something valuable. How to manage myself on the field. How to hustle without overhustling. How to be a professional. How to go about winning.
It might not have meant as much if I’d heard the same things from Mickey Mantle or Al Kaline or even my old hero, Duke Snider. I respected those guys, too, but their experience and history didn’t resonate with me as much as Frank’s did, or Gibby’s, or Stretch’s. The black stars had dealt with a special kind of anger and angst. They understood oppression. They were relevant to me. I listened to them with a sense of veneration.
Frank Robinson might have been the best I ever saw at turning his anger into runs. He challenged you physically as soon as he stepped into the batter’s box, with half his body hanging over home plate.
His fearlessness played a tremendous part in making him the hitter he was. He practically dared you to clip him or knock him down, and when you did, he’d use it as intensity. He seemed to gain strength from it. If you couldn’t drive him off the plate—and you couldn’t—then you couldn’t take away his outside corner. Frank Robinson refused to be bullied when he batted. He was the bully.
As a rule, I’m reluctant to express admiration for hitters; but I make an exception for Frank Robinson.
A lot of people remember the home run I hit into the light tower at Tiger Stadium in the 1971 All-Star Game. I was pinch-hitting for Vida Blue in the third inning, with a runner on, and we were down 3–0 at the time. Dock Ellis was pitching—this was five years prior to when he hit me in the face—and he served me a high slider on a three-one count. Al Kaline, who played his whole career in Detroit, called it the longest home run he’d ever seen. As Willie McCovey would say, “I hit it pretty good.”
But that alone was not what made the occasion special for me. What topped it off was that Frank Robinson was hitting cleanup for the American League and later in the same inning he hit a two-run homer that put us ahead for good. That made him the MVP of the game. Afterwards, when all the writers were asking me about the home run, I was able to dedicate it to Frank. This was the season right after he’d managed me in Puerto Rico, and it meant everything to be able to share the moment with the player I most respected. We also shared the awards. Plymouth gave me a four-speed Barracuda 440.
I’m indebted to Frank Robinson. Following the 1973 season, when baseball’s arbitration process was initiated, I was involved in heavy salary negotiations with Charlie Finley. I’d just won the American League MVP Award, which certainly worked in my favor, but Charlie despised parting with his nickels. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. The tipping point might well have been a telegram from Frank that called me the best player in the league. I came away with a $60,000 raise that nearly doubled my salary.
Talk about owing a guy.
When Dick Allen—he was Richie then—was playing with the Phillies, people seemed to think it was a terrible thing that he wore a mustache. Well, my father wore a mustache. I thought Richie Allen was pretty cool.
And he was. He never lost that cool over anything. He’d show up twenty minutes before a ballgame, no problem, stroll to the plate with that big forty-two-ounce club of his, and just whale on the ball. He’d smoke in the dugout. He’d skip spring training. That kind of stuff wouldn’t work for most guys, but it worked for Dick Allen. He had so much ability that you had to admire him.
He was my favorite Phillie. And he was a great guy, to boot.
He was a good teammate. Especially on the Cardinals. I’d never played with a guy who could hit home runs and deliver on command like Dick Allen.
It’d be 1–0 or 2–1 and we’d get to the sixth or seventh inning and Dick, who didn’t say much, would come over and tell me real quietly, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get him.” Then, often as not, he’d go up there and, bop, home run. We only had him in 1970, but in that season alone he must have handed me five ballgames. It started on Opening Day against Montreal, when he hit a homer to tie the game in the eighth inning and we won it in the ninth. In May, I was scuffling and really needed a victory, and he beat his old team with two home runs against Jim Bunning. In August—I don’t know if I should thank him for this one or not—he homered to tie a game against San Diego in the eighth inning and I had to pitch all the way through the fourteenth before we finally pulled it out. I wish we’d have had three or four Dick Allens.
No, he didn’t say much. And he let me know that, in his opinion, I said way too much. Dick told me to speak with my bat, not my mouth. Actually, he just pointed to his mouth and told me not to use that. Then he pointed to my bat and told me to use that. He was practicing what he preached, I guess.
He told me not to promote myself so much, and also not to complain about a called strike. He said, “I don’t ever want to see you arguing with an umpire. If you need more than one strike to hit, I don’t want to know you.”
At one point, Dick said something to a Sports Illustrated writer that I took exception to at the time. He said, “I look in the record book and I see Reggie has never hit .300. And I wonder how he can do all that talking.” But it was consistent with what he always told me to my face.
He also enlightened me quite a bit about the art of hitting. We had long, rambling discussions about hitting. That was a subject he knew a whole lot about.
He could hit a ball so incredibly hard that it was easy to look at Dick as just a raw, natural talent at the plate, and a lot of people did. But I can assure you that the man was a thinker up there. He certainly outfoxed me a time or two. It was always a duel with Dick, because he’d remember something you threw him three months before. Of course, I remembered, too. That’s what made it interesting.
Dick Allen was a special mix of talent, brains, and style. That’s why he appealed to me so much. He was the kind of player you just found yourself watching.
I borrowed part of my home-run routine from Dick. People claimed that I started the business of admiring your home runs and styling around the bases, but that’s not true. I actually got my inspiration from Harmon Killebrew. Harmon couldn’t run a bit, but I liked the way he stood at the plate for just a brief moment, taking in what he’d done. He always knew when the ball was gone. He’d wait for it to come down and then take one or two walking steps out of the batter’s box. He also had a nifty little flip of the bat that made it turn over once and land real nicely on the ground. His trot was slow and easy.
I didn’t do all of that. I copied the parts where he watched the ball for a second and flipped the bat, but then I ran the bases. I ran fast. And when I got home, that last part is what I took from Dick Allen. He walked the last four or five steps. I wasn’t quite that showy. I walked the last two or three. Then I touched the corner of the plate and peeled off.
I also grew a mustache.
I prided myself on being a workhorse, but nobody pulled a load like Sandy Koufax in his prime. That could be why his prime only lasted about four years and he had to retire at the age of thirty after going 27–9 with a 1.73 earned run average. In his last year, 1966, he led the National League with 323 innings. The year before, he led the league with 335. No wonder he couldn’t lift his arm to brush his teeth.
His teammate, Don Drysdale, put in almost as many innings, because the Dodgers used their starting pitchers on a four-day rotation. The Cardinals went with five days. The way it worked out, I usually ended up facing one or the other. Marichal would usually get shifted to another day when we played the Giants, so I stopped seeing him, but it seemed like I always lined up against Jenkins and Seaver, too. Red Schoendienst was our manager, and I could never figure out why he would do that. I asked him, “Red, why don’t you manipulate it so I don’t have to pitch against those guys and we’d make sure we win that ballgame?”
He said, “Oh no. You beat them, and we could sweep the series.”
I said, “I lose, and we could lose the series.”
Koufax was the worst guy to pitch against. It seemed like he could have shut us out right-handed. Whenever it was his turn, our guys would sit in the clubhouse before the game going, “Man, this is going to be a tough day.” We were intimidated before he even stepped on the mound.
Part of it was his reputation. Part was his fastball. And part was his curveball.
My first year in the major leagues was his first year out of the game, but I heard plenty about him from the guys I hung out with in spring training. Koufax was a guy whose name always came up.
In 1971, Vida Blue became a sensation for us at the age of twenty-one, a left-hander with electric stuff. He pitched twenty-four complete games that year and struck out over three hundred batters. There was a game against the Angels in Oakland when he went eleven innings and struck out seventeen. Meanwhile, Rudy May went twelve innings for the Angels and struck out thirteen. In all that time, neither team scored. We finally won, 1–0, in twenty innings. Anyway, Vida struck out one of their outfielders, Billy Cowan, five straight times. Cowan had played in the National League for several years, and it so happened that a few weeks earlier somebody had asked him to compare Vida Blue with Sandy Koufax. He had said, “He ain’t no Sandy Koufax.”
Vida must have remembered that.
Vida Blue actually threw harder than Sandy. Koufax had a light fastball that would, whoosh, sail up on you. But his curve was just devastating.
We only had two guys who could touch him, and they were two of the unlikeliest—Gene Oliver and Bob Uecker. Most of Uecker’s hits against him came in one season, but even so, it was astonishing enough to stick in my memory. Oliver just wore him out, and none of us could understand why or how. Gene was a big catcher who hit just about every batting-practice pitch out of the park—a great BP hitter—and that was about it. Except when Sandy Koufax was out there.
Otherwise, we were helpless against Koufax—until Brock figured out in 1965 that he could bunt on him. Once he was on first base he could run on him, too, because Sandy didn’t have a pick-off move; he had to either pitch to the plate or step off and throw to first. One game, Brock bunted twice for hits and both times stole second and third. Koufax was a gentleman, and it wasn’t easy to get him riled. Drysdale and Stan Williams were the ones who did most of the dirty work for the Dodgers. But leave it to Brock. The next time he came to bat, Sandy hit him in the back of the shoulder and cracked it.
Fortunately, I wasn’t pitching that day. If I’d been pitching, I’d have had to wait for Koufax to come up and he’d have gotten it. Usually, when Brock made somebody mad enough to hit him, I’d just knock down the first guy I saw, because you couldn’t be sure that the pitcher would still be around by the time his next turn at bat came up. But that particular pitcher would have been around.
It would have been my chance to do what nobody else on the club seemed to be able to—hit Sandy Koufax.
I did, however, put a ball in the back of his first baseman, Ron Fairly. He was the guy on the Dodgers who killed me. My goodness, that man must have had six thousand hits off of me. Actually, it was forty-eight, but that was even more than Billy Williams. He’d punch the ball over the shortstop’s head and you couldn’t strike him out. I tried to pitch him in, like I did a lot of left-handed hitters, and I didn’t have any luck with that. I’d pitch him away, make a good pitch, and he’d dump it over the shortstop’s head.
One day he had already poked a ball or two over the shortstop’s head and I got a base hit, and when I was standing at first he said to me, “Goddamn, Gibby, you’ve got such good stuff, I don’t know how anybody could ever hit you.” I didn’t say a word. Fairly was a schmoozer and he’d probably be a great guy at a party just to sit and talk to, but I sure didn’t feel like shooting the breeze with him at first base after he had dumped another ball over the shortstop’s head. I didn’t want to hear it. Get your base hits and shut up. Joe Torre was catching for us, and when Fairly came up to the plate the next time he turned to Joe and said, “I’m not going to like this at-bat, am I?” Smoked him right in the middle of the back. Get your damn hits and leave me alone. I couldn’t get him out and he says he doesn’t know how anybody ever hits me. Hit this.
My Ron Fairly was Dave Stieb, with that slider boring in on my hands. By the time he came into the league I was a veteran, and I’d learned to lay off the inside pitch from just about everybody but him. He was a right-handed power pitcher, which should have been right up my alley; but I went to bat fifty-five times against Dave Stieb and never had an RBI. He walked me a lot, probably because he wasn’t giving me anything to hit. Not a thing.
The other guy who tore me up was Tommy John, whom you might expect because he was left-handed and could put the ball wherever he wanted it. He approached me differently than Stieb; he seldom walked me. But his control was so good in the strike zone that I just couldn’t square the ball against him. I batted sixty-nine times against Tommy—in the regular season, that is—and never had an extra-base hit.
With that bias, I’d like to see Tommy in the Hall of Fame. He won 288 games and lasted twenty-six years in spite of revolutionary elbow surgery smack in the middle of his career. He actually had two careers—one before the surgery and another after. My other bias on his behalf comes from having played behind him in New York and California. You could learn about the game just by watching Tommy John pitch. He has more wins than any eligible pitcher who’s not in the Hall, and more than a lot who are.
For that matter, Bert Blyleven has only one fewer. As I see it, Blyleven’s numbers should put him in Cooperstown. He had enough stuff, wins, and strikeouts that I call him a Hall of Famer. That said, I don’t think he was quite the pitcher that Jack Morris was. Morris was one of the great pitchers of his era, and he was a winner, as well. During the time I played against him, he was very close to being the best pitcher in the American League.
Jim Kaat ought to be in there, too. He doesn’t have any elbow surgery named for him, but his career was a lot like Tommy John’s. Twenty-five years, 283 victories.
Kaat had something else in common with Tommy, and I’m not talking about being a crafty left-hander. He was two different pitchers. When he was young, he threw hard. After he hurt his arm a couple times, he became a magician. He stood funny on the mound, had an awkward motion, and he turned the element of surprise into an art. He’d quick-pitch, he’d sink the ball, he’d throw slop, he’d change speeds—anything to trick a batter and goad him into a mistake. He was also one of the best-fielding pitchers of all time.
Tony Oliva could be in the Hall of Fame very easily. Curt Flood could be in there, and not because of his contribution to the players’ union. He was nearly a .300 hitter and second only to Mays in center field. I’m prejudiced, no doubt, because Flood was one of my favorite people in baseball and he saved a lot of games for me, but I saw day after day what a great player he was.
Ron Santo is another guy who deserves to be in. He’s like a lot of good ballplayers who don’t get elected because they never made it to the World Series. I appreciate the fact that a lot of the reputation I enjoy came from the World Series. Same with Reggie.
Santo was like Mays in the way that he was kind of skittish on balls that came in too close. That’s why I didn’t have much trouble with him, although he didn’t remember it that way. I’d been doing some radio interviews at Randy Hundley’s fantasy camp, and somebody had evidently heard me say that Santo could never hit me. Santo got wind of it, and later that day he ran up to me and said, “Hey, I heard about that comment you made on the radio. I used to hit you pretty good!”
I said, “Really? I want you to check, and the next time I see you I want you to let me know what you found out.”
A few days after that, he got up to make a speech and he said, “You know, it’s nice to be here, seeing guys that I used to play against—guys like Gibson. You know, I didn’t hit him very well.” Evidently, he checked.
Not that my memory is infallible. Torre told me that he’d hit a home run against me and I told him he was full of it. So he found an old newspaper clip and sent it to me. He actually hit two. Joe could hit. He couldn’t run, but he could hit. He was with us in 1971 when he led the league in hitting at .363, with 230 hits. To hit .363 with his speed is an amazing accomplishment.
Joe’s close to a Hall of Famer as a player, but surely he’ll get in as a manager. I just hope he doesn’t keep hurting his image, which could have an effect with the voters.
Pete Rose, on the other hand, will not get in as a manager, and it’s looking like he won’t get in at all—at least in the foreseeable future. Good ballplayer? Yeah. Whole bunch of hits? Yeah. Do I care whether he gets into the Hall of Fame? No. He violated a sacred rule.
But I’ll admit it’s a tough call on where to draw the line. Between gambling and steroids and spitballs and the policies of the game and the laws of the nation, there are a lot of gray areas. I don’t pretend to have all the answers.
What I do know is that Rose was basically a singles hitter. I didn’t lose much sleep over singles hitters.