X

“Ok, KO.”

We opened the ’63 season in Kansas City, and when I ran out to take infield practice I suddenly got so nervous I could hardly get my breath. I couldn’t believe it. Joe Pepitone—the loose, fun-loving kid from Brooklyn who had started quite a few games for the Yankees in ’62, and who now was a regular—was opening the season as a nervous wreck. I couldn’t hold on to any throws during practice. Every time I stretched for the ball, it popped out of my glove. I wanted to quit, run into the dugout, and get a drink . . . do anything to get off the field.

Once the game started, the tension ended. I hit two home runs and a double. As I trotted off the field, I said to myself, Shit, I hope I can think of a way to tense up before every game.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter. I went into a slump after the first game, but remained cool because I knew that I had a sweet stroke at the plate and that the balls would start falling in if I kept swinging. I burst out of it, started coming up with some big hits, and—shock of shocks—at midseason made the American League All-Star team. Mickey Mantle was the only other member of the Yankees who was voted by the league’s players to start. I realized there was a certain amount of happenstance involved in my selection, that Vic Power of the Twins and Jim Gentile of the Orioles—the main competition for the first-base position—had started the season badly. Yet I had so much self-esteem, so much confidence in my ability to outhit and outplay everyone I’d seen in the field, that I felt I could have beaten them at their best. There just wasn’t anything I couldn’t do on a ball field. I was consistently making good contact at bat. Even when I struck out on three pitches, I at least took my cuts—went up there playing my game, going with my strength. When I went down swinging, I always felt, Up yours, man. Next time I’m gonna beat you, because I’m better than you—I can do you no matter what you throw me!

Shit, I felt like I owned New York, and I was determined to ball every chick that ran in it. I got right back into the Copa scene, and the sex took me outside myself. Now I not only had my name and my affiliation with the perennial world champions of baseball—I had the bat and the glove on the field. I was barely a second-year man and I was already an All-Star. With Mantle hurt, sidelined prior to the game, I was the only Yankee, other than manager Ralph Houk, to make the trip to Cleveland.

I went o-for-4 at bat, but I was introduced to the crowd on national television before the game, and I knew my mother and my Uncle Louie and my grandfather Caiazzo and Lemon and all my friends were watching Joe Pep, age twenty-three, the baby robin who had grown up to become the best first-baseman in the American League. In Cleveland I got to meet a lot of stars I’d been reading about for years, meeting them close up, as an equal. I also got laid three times.

It was a super trip because, while I had a ball in New York, the balling on the road usually took a certain amount of effort to arrange, and I wasn’t really interested in courting, even though I was passionately interested in its end result. What I most admired were the friendly “automatics” that occasionally occurred out of town.

Like on our first trip to Minnesota in 1963. A teammate, whom I’ll call Bob, and I stowed our gear in the hotel and went right downstairs and out the door to look for girls. We were standing under the marquee like in the movie Marty: “What’re we gonna do tonight?” Then I saw this neat-looking girl—about thirty, lots of breast, sexy eyes and mouth—walking toward us.

“Hey, where are you going?” I said to her. “What are you doing out on these mean streets in Minneapolis alone? Why don’t you come along with a nice couple of guys, and we’ll have a drink, something to eat?”

She walked right over to us and looked at me like a dance-hall girl from an old movie, knowing but nice. “Who are you,” she said, “some ballplayers?”

“Yeah, we’re with the Yankees,” I said. “I’m Joe Pepitone and this is Bob.”

She threw back her head and laughed, in a nice, enjoying way. “Where would you like to go? You two look like fun.” I told her we’d go up to our room for a while, order from room service, relax and get to know one another, then go out. So we went to our room, and the girl walked in ahead of us, both of us eyeing her tail wiggle.

“We’d better call room service,” Bob whispered. “I’ll see what she wants to order. Jane,” he called to her from the foyer, “would you like us to order something to drink?”

“Don’t bother,” she said, pulling a bottle of vodka out of the huge handbag she was carrying. “They have ice in the rooms here.” She went over to the radio, turned it on loud to some rock station, and began making half-time dance moves to the sounds.

“Jesus Christ!” I whispered to Bob, “this is too easy. She must be a pro. We better get us some rubbers. We might catch some diseases or something.”

“Joe, I’m not into rubbers,” Bob said. “Where you gonna get ’em?”

“I’ll call room service,” I said. “You occupy her.” Bob walked over and started dancing with her. She had opened the top two buttons of her blouse and melted right into him. I called room service. “This is Joe Pepitone of the New York Yankees,” I said. “Let me speak to the bell captain.” He came on. “Look,” I said, “I’m in room seven fifty-six, and I need some rubbers.”

“No sweat,” he said. “How many you need?”

“Uh, how—” I said, not being a whole lot more familiar with them than Bob, “—are they sold? I mean, how many to a pack?”

“Three to a box.”

“Bring two boxes.”

He must have had them in his pocket: in 68 seconds he knocked on the door, very discreetly. I gave him ten dollars and said thanks. He made a “Ballantine ring” sign with his fingers as I closed the door. I looked around and Bob was no longer dancing. He was standing in the middle of the room with his mouth open staring at the girl. She had her blouse off and was dancing out of her skirt, her arms over her head, a smile on her face. I signaled Bob: “Pssst!” I signaled him again: “Psssssst!” Shit! I said to myself. “Bob,” I finally said, “could I see you a moment?”

He came out of his trance, walked over to me. I looked past him at the girl, who was still dancing with that smile on her face. She was now down to her panties and bra, and her fingers were behind her back, unhooking the latter garment. “Man, we better use these rubbers, Bob,” I whispered. “Here’s a pack for you. I’ll go into the bathroom, give you first shot.”

I closed the door behind me, took off my clothes, thought about that chick getting down to her skin, that smile on her face, those sexy little dance movements . . . and felt myself come to attention. I looked at my watch: Hell, he’s had twelve minutes, if he’s not finished, at least I can observe.

I walked out of the bathroom, and in the middle of the bedroom floor was a crinkly unrolled rubber, lying there like a burst balloon from one of our water fights in Auburn. Three feet beyond it was another wrinkled, unrolled rubber on the floor. And standing next to the bed where the naked girl lay, was Bob with the third rubber from his pack in his hand—trying to stuff his cock into it. The girl was covering her mouth, stifling a giggle.

“How,” said Bob, seeing me, “do you work these fucking things?”

“You roll ’em on, man,” I said. “Roll ’em on.”

He made one last stuffing effort, then threw the prophylactic on the floor and shouted, “Fuck this thing! I don’t need it!”

In seconds Bob was straddling her chest getting head, and I was kneeling behind him with my thing in her thing. Bob started going, “Ow!” “Ow! Ow!” He looked over his shoulder at me with a pained expression, and I started laughing.

“Shh,” I whispered, “we’re gonna turn her off.”

“Ow!” said Bob. “Ow! Ow!” His head tilted up in the air in pain. “Excuse me, miss,” he said to the girl. “You’re hurting me.”

“I am?” she said. “Sorry.” With that—pop—she pulled out her teeth, uppers and lowers, and placed them on the bed beside her.

I started laughing so hard I fell forward against Bob’s back, felt the tears running down my cheeks. “Bob,” I screamed, “you finally made the ultimate! She’s gonna give you a gum job! Hold on!”

She did, too. And didn’t charge us a cent. I figured we must have been good.

I thought of myself as a lover, not a fighter. But, next to my start in the All-Star game, it was a fight that brought me the most national attention during the ’63 season. The punches were thrown in an August series against the Indians at Yankee Stadium. I had murdered Cleveland pitching all season, with twenty-five hits in fifty-six at-bats. In this game it was obvious that the Indian pitchers were out to intimidate me—which is probably the worst thing a hitter can allow to happen.

In the third inning, starter Barry Latman bounced a fast ball off my right wrist, knocking me to the ground and sending pain shooting up to my elbow. I rubbed it away and took first, giving Latman a dirty look. But in the eighth inning, relief pitcher Gary Bell threw a fast ball behind me. Gary Bell never had any control trouble, and I felt anger simmer up in me as I stepped back into the batter’s box. The next fast ball came right at my ribs. I leaped backward, and the ball just nicked my shirt. I jumped up and headed for the mound, mad as hell. Home-plate umpire John Stevens grabbed me, saying, “Take your base, Joe.” Then he called out to Bell, “That’s a fifty-dollar fine, Gary.” Bell had turned his back and was rubbing up another ball nonchalantly.

You sonofabitch! I thought as I trotted toward first. You could kill a man with a fucking fast ball—or at least break a rib! By the time I reached the bag, I was furious.

“I’ll get you, you prick!” I yelled at Bell.

“Come on!” he yelled back.

I took two running steps toward him, when I felt someone wrap his arms around me from behind. I struggled, thinking the guy was going to hit me in the back of the head or something. Then, holding me tightly, he wrestled me to the ground. I was six feet, two inches tall and weighed 185 pounds now, and I flipped the guy onto his back and hit him with two hard lefts to the head. The guy was Indian first-baseman Fred Whitfield, a nice fellow—but you never know what might happen when you’re grabbed from behind. The next thing I knew, the players from both benches and both bullpens were on the field hugging one another, because baseball fights are almost always a series of solid hugs to the chest performed by peacemakers. Ralph Houk, a very strong, very tough man, ran out to protect me, and wrestled Woodie Held to the ground. When Ralph got up, he couldn’t find his cap. Then he looked at Held dusting himself off, and saw a Yankee cap on Held’s head. The entire fracas was over in about twenty-six seconds.

But it put an end to the Indian beanball tactics. I was ejected from the game and fined 250 dollars, which the club paid, and became an instant hero. The last-place Mets were outdrawing us at the gate, and one writer wrote, “In that raucous moment of Glory, Joseph Anthony Pepitone accomplished what sociologists the world over declared Couldn’t Be Done. He stole the hearts of some Mets fans. In fact, he became the biggest Yankee folk hero since Billy Martin demonstrated years ago that a shot in the mouth is worth two into left field when it comes to drawing fans.”

I was at my cubicle when the players trooped in after the game. Mantle came right over to me. “Anything I can get you, Joe?” he said in a mock-frightened voice. “A beer? Anything at all? Can I shine your shoes?”

Everyone kidded me for about an hour, and when I finally left the clubhouse, I passed Whitey Ford and said, “See you tomorrow.”

“Ok, KO,” said Whitey.

The next day someone had pasted an eighteen-inch picture of Gary Bell on my locker and signed it, “All my love, Gary Bell.” The day after that, the mail started pouring in—some fifty letters, a number of which said I was a disgrace to baseball. But there were three thousand extra fans in the stands, so what the hell. Maybe, I thought, I can get a raise. Most of the letters went more like this one: “I’ve always been a fan of yours, but your recent sudden burst of energy convinces me that someday you’ll be in the Hall of Fame.” A Saint Christopher Medal fell out of the envelope, which was nice, but what I needed was a new chain for the medal I’d been wearing around my neck. In the scuffle the chain had been broken.

I overheard a writer asking Mantle about me, and Mickey said, “He’s the freshest rookie I ever saw. But he’s a helluva fielder and he’s got a quick bat like Ted Williams had. He’s going to be one of the best ballplayers we’ve seen in a long time.”

Mickey was sitting at the picnic-style table in the center of the clubhouse filling out requests for tickets on two sheets, one for members of your family, the other for guests. I wrote in a name on the family sheet, and Mickey said, “Is that name family? Nobody has a name like that.”

I laughed. “That’s my Uncle Louie. He’s a hood from Brooklyn. Don’t be a snotty veteran, Mick.”

Yogi Berra sat next to me and used a Mantle line, saying, “I wish I could buy you for what you’re really worth, and sell you for what you think you’re worth.” I laughed anyway.

Pete Previte, the clubhouse man, came over and said, “Get on those balls, Joe.”

“As soon as I get dressed,” I told him. I hated to sign baseballs, and every day there were a dozen or so in a box on the table which all the players were supposed to sign. You had to have a specially bent hand to sign your name on a baseball, and I signed as few of them as I could. But when I got to my cubicle this day, I saw that Previte had gotten even with me. I pulled on the white sanitary socks that we wore under the blues, and I saw more skin than white. “If you don’t sign the balls, he gives you sanitaries with holes all through them,” I said to Linz, who was seated at his cubicle next to mine. “Pisses me off.”

“Then sign the balls,” he said, laughing.

Ten minutes later Previte was standing beside me. “C’mon, Joe, sign the balls.”

“Just a minute, for Christ’s sake. I gotta finish dressing, don’t I?”

“You also gotta sign the balls.”

Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean, who were in to cover us on NBC’s “Game of the Week,” came over. Reese told me he wanted to get some closeups of me for the pregame show. “I’d better shave then,” I told him.

By the time I shaved and finished putting on my uniform, it was time to get out on the field. I didn’t sign a single ball, and Pete Previte cursed me as I ran out. I loved it; just as I had loved, as a kid, saying I would go to the store for my mother, not do so, and somehow manage to get away with it. Games were fun when you won them.

I continued to love New York’s night life, too, and the bills kept piling up like the dog shit on Manhattan’s streets. One morning I drove to Yankee Stadium for an afternoon game, parked my Corvette in the player’s lot, and headed for the entrance. I was surprised to see two employees of the Copa waiting by the gate—two guys who were good friends.

“What the hell are you guys doing here at this hour?” I said. “The game’s not till one-thirty.”

“We’re not here for the game, Joe,” Bob said. “We were sent us to see you about your bill. You’re gonna have to come up with some money . . . or you’re gonna have a problem.”

“A problem?” I said. “You mean to say you’re gonna hit me? You gotta be kidding, man, we’re friends.”

He shrugged. “Joe, this wasn’t our idea. We were told what to say.”

“Look, I’ll take care of the bill. I know it’s running a little high, but I’m good for it. I’ll have my World Series share in a few more weeks.”

“Sure, Joe, sure. Just don’t forget.”

“You guys know me better than that. Shit.”

I didn’t pay the bill, of course, because I had too many other real living-expense bills to pay. I avoided the Copa except when I had cash on me. But nothing more ever happened. I wasn’t strong-armed. I didn’t really care. I wasn’t worried simply because I wasn’t afraid of anything in those days. I found the whole thing exciting, another game. It was a kick being able to talk your way out of anything.

I got into a bad rut at the plate in August, which I went into batting around .290. I had hit twenty home runs already, and thought how nice it would be to hit thirty in my first full season. I started trying to pull everything down the short right-field line in Yankee Stadium, which threw off my stroke. I’d always been primarily a straightaway hitter. From August 7 until September I, I didn’t hit one home run, and my average fell below .270. I finally realized what I was doing, recalled how those close-in right-field seats had fouled up other hitters who tried to pull the ball too much. I went back to my normal swing and finished the season strongly—a .271 batting average, 27 home runs, 89 RBIs.

We faced the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, and I didn’t hit worth a damn against their super pitching staff. Two singles in thirteen at-bats, no runs batted in. And I became the goat of the Series, according to the press, when I dropped a throw from third-baseman Clete Boyer that let in the winning run in the fourth and final game in L.A. It was my error, but it wasn’t an easy play because there was a mass of white shirts in the stands behind third. When Clete released the ball, I picked it up, then lost it in those shirts. The real problem was that the ball had been hit so hard that I never expected Boyer to get to it, and I didn’t get over to the bag quick enough. Still, I really couldn’t understand all the excitement over my error. Sure, I blew it. But we’d lost the first three games to the Dodgers, and there was no way we were going to win four in a row against pitchers like Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Johnny Podres.

When our plane landed in New York after that loss, there was actually a crowd at the airport to boo me. Unbelievable! A reporter pushed through the throng to interview Houk, and the first thing he asked was about Pepitone and the fact that Skowron had been traded to L.A. Houk was short with the man, telling him to look up our season’s averages. “Pepitone outhit him all year,” Houk said, even though Moose had hit well in the Series. The reporter said he didn’t know that, and Houk exploded. “Get the hell away from me if you don’t know baseball. What the hell are you asking me questions for?”

Still, the airport scene was nothing compared to that night in Brooklyn. It was late, and I stayed at my grandfather’s house, where my mother lived, because it was closer to Idlewild than my apartment in the Bronx. I was exhausted and went right to sleep. A few minutes later—this was the middle of the night—I heard my grandfather yelling. I got up and saw him shouting out the window and shaking his fist.

I looked out the window, and down in the street in front of the house were over a hundred people. They had a dummy of me strung on a lamppost. They lit the dummy and pulled it up with a huge cheer.

“Go on home, you crazy bastards!” I yelled. “Get the fuck outta here!”

Then I saw—running out of the door, swinging a bat—eighty-one-year-old Vincent Caiazzo. The crowd opened, stepped away from that whirling bat. I ran out after him and started punching at everyone I got close to. Luckily for me, the police screamed up in their cruisers moments later. Brooklyn, I thought, how the fuck did I ever get through my first seventeen years in this crazy place?

All in all, though, being the World Series goat made me a lot of money in the off-season. I was in great demand on the banquet circuit, at four hundred to five hundred dollars an appearance plus expenses when I spoke out of town. I loved going out of town. Not only was the money good, the screwing was good. And I obviously had this compulsion to keep fucking outside my marriage. There were always wonderful girls on the road and at the banquets themselves. I got involved one afternoon with such a turned-on chick that I didn’t even make the banquet appearance. I called in sick, which to some degree I was, even though I thought I was well. Very well.

Late in October I drove from my apartment to visit my mother in Brooklyn. She had remained close friends with Lucy, the sexy lady from the old neighborhood whom we’d all been semi in love with as kids. Lucy had moved out West some years ago. But she happened to be back visiting my mother this day. She was still very attractive, with smoky eyes that sent out moist messages. We sat around talking about old times, about baseball, joking, kidding. Then my mother left the living room to fix lunch, and Lucy moved next to me on the couch and started asking me about sex in baseball. I told her about some of the girls, how the life of a major-league player was balls and strikes off the field as well as on. She smiled and put her hand on my thigh.

The next afternoon I met her at the Golden Gate Inn in Brooklyn. We balled all day and into the evening—five times. After the last one she looked me in the eye, her arms still around my neck, her legs around my waist, and said, “You know, you’re much bigger than your father was, and he came very fast.”

I leaped to my feet. “Don’t you ever talk about my father!” I yelled. “Don’t ever say anything about him!”

The revelation shook me. I knew my father could not have done much, if any, banging around. Willie was always with his family—too much so at times. And even though I’d suspected he might have seen Lucy on the side a time or two, a suspicion is not a fact. I guess I secretly had wanted to sustain the image of him as faithful to my mother.

Yet the thought crossed my mind as I drove home to the Bronx later that night. Willie was a helluva man, but he hadn’t come close to my record with chicks, and he hadn’t become a major-league ballplayer, either. As I turned off the FDR Drive to the Bronx, a rock station blaring out of the radio, it struck me that it was all too fucking complicated for me. So I thought about where I’d go the next evening.

The following day, early in the afternoon, I got a call from my mother. “Joe,” she said, “the most awful thing happened. Lucy, who was sitting here with us two days ago—she had a stroke last night. It paralyzed half her body.”

I offered my sympathies, hung up, and immediately called Lemon. “Lemon,” I said, “sit down because you won’t believe this. But I want to tell you how good I am. Are you listening?” I paused. “I was with Lucy yesterday, your first real love, and we screwed five times. A few hours after I left her, she had a stroke. How many girls have you screwed so good that they had a stroke afterward?”

That’s how fucked up, depraved, degenerate I was at the time. Worse, a couple of months later on a trip out West, I went to see Lucy at her place. She was paralyzed on one side, only half her body could move. I did her. She could move only one hand, one side of her mouth, but it was wildly sensuous to me. That was the bag I was headed for, the way my mind was working—the freakier the sex, the better.