Standing in front of the dugout, Sullivan glanced up into the box seats behind first base, hoping to catch a glimpse of his parents and wife. He’d left them tickets at will-call, but with the opening night festivities about to start, they still hadn’t arrived.
He was surprised at how jittery he was, and not because his family wasn’t there yet, but rather because his managerial debut was about to commence, ushering in a whole new chapter in his life. Every spring and summer since he was a kid, his life had been consumed with being a baseball player—catching, throwing, hitting. He’d put on his spikes, jock, and uniform at least two thousand times. He looked like a baseball player. He talked like a baseball player. He thought like a baseball player. His tax returns said he was a baseball player. But on this night, April 17, 1964, for the first time in his life, he was no longer a baseball player. He was a manager.
He no longer had to worry only about his own performance. Now he was responsible for every player on the team, every hiccup, every pulled muscle, every thrown bat, every passed ball, every loss. He couldn’t wait to get started.
“How do you feel?” asked Finley, on the field for his duties as batboy.
“I wouldn’t mind having a couple more power hitters,” replied Sullivan. “But I’m excited.”
Finley turned to the real batboy and asked him how much he got paid per game. “Fifty cents,” the boy replied.
“All I got were broken bats and scuffed-up balls,” said Finley.
Sullivan glanced toward the stands again. Still no sign of his family. His parents, Ralph and Ruby Lee, were driving up from Dothan to see their son’s managerial debut. So were several carloads of Haywood’s old high school friends. Since signing his big bonus contract and starting his playing career, he and Pat had made their off-season residence in her home state of Florida, but he had always managed to return to Dothan at least once a year to visit his parents, show off his kids, and reconnect with old buddies. For opening night, Pat had left the three kids with her parents in Lake Worth and flown to Birmingham.
As he looked out over the field and its lush green grass and pristine chalk lines, there was a sense of calm and confidence in Sullivan’s posture, as if all roads he’d taken in his life had ordained his arrival at this moment. He’d been the captain of the football, basketball, and baseball teams in high school; at the University of Florida, he was elected captain of the football team as a junior. As a major leaguer, despite never having achieved stardom, he had always been a student of the game. Sitting in the dugout or in bullpens across America, he didn’t waste his time spitting, scratching, or checking out the girls in the stands; he did what managers constantly harped on their players to do: “Keep your head in the game.” He always paid attention to detail.
As the Jones Valley High School marching band took the field in preparation for playing the national anthem, he turned once more to the stands. Finally, he spotted Pat and his folks. They waved. He nodded.
For the Sullivan family, the baseball axiom “You can’t see the whole game unless you see the first pitch” had now been honored.
In the bullpen, starting pitcher Paul Seitz, a six-foot-three, twenty-three-year-old right-hander from Columbus, Ohio, took off his green jacket and slowly started warming up. Sullivan had tapped him for the prestigious opening night pitching assignment after a commanding seven innings of two-hit ball in his last start in spring training. Not only was he getting to pitch the first-ever integrated game in Birmingham, he would be getting to do it with Charlie Finley watching—a good night to shine. He was the hardest thrower on the staff.
For Sullivan, choosing the starting pitcher for opening night had been the hardest decision in his new career so far. With an abundance of good arms to choose from, he fretted over the potential damage to the fragile psyches on his staff that his decision might have. He had to think both in the short and the long term.
As Seitz started to throw a little harder in his warm-ups, he felt tightness in his shoulder. Nothing serious, he figured, probably due to the change from the heat of Florida to the cool night air of April in Birmingham. And as far as it being cool, it wasn’t nearly as cold as the game he pitched his sophomore year at Ohio State against Xavier. It was snowing at the start of that game… and he pitched a no-hitter.
Prior to spring training, Baseball Digest had listed him as a “can’t miss” prospect in its summary of top young players. For the third year in a row he was on the A’s forty-man roster and spent the first month in Florida with the big-league team. And for the third year in a row, he didn’t get in an exhibition game. Not a B-squad game, not even a “scare” (the players’ term for getting the call to warm up in the bullpen but not getting in the game). No records were kept on such things, but Seitz was pretty sure it was a major-league record for futility.
Getting ignored at big-league camp three years in a row had not been good for his ego, but his spirits were buoyed on his first day at Diamond City in Daytona. Coming out of the locker room, he was greeted by Sullivan with a big smile. “Welcome,” Sullivan said. “Really glad to have you with us.” For Seitz, it was the first time in his five years of pro ball that he felt valued by a manager, although he hadn’t even thrown a pitch. Other than that, he knew little about Sullivan.
As for the historic significance of the game he was about to pitch, it was something he was only vaguely aware of. He’d seen news footage of the church bombing, and he’d witnessed the South’s Jim Crow way of life during his initial year of pro ball in 1960, first with the Selma Cloverleafs in the Class D Alabama-Florida League, and then with the Burlington Indians of the Class B Carolina League. By and large, however, current events and civil rights were outside his purview. At Ohio State, he was a PE major.
There had been no rah-rah pre-game pep talk from Sullivan. That wasn’t his style. Besides, he figured Belcher and Finley’s promise to take the team to Hawaii if they won the pennant was better than anything he could say to fire them up. He assumed they’d all watched the news or read the paper and knew what was at stake.
In the bullpen, Seitz paused his warm-ups. The stiffness he’d initially felt was still there, but he figured it would go away once the game started. He was more concerned with all the opening night hoopla that was throwing him off his normal pre-game routine. He stepped off the mound to watch.
On the field, the Jones Valley High School marching band played what seemed like the tenth straight football fight song, and when that mercifully ended, Birmingham mayor Albert Boutwell summoned Finley to home plate and presented him with a key to the city. Surprisingly, Finley kept his remarks short.
“I just want everybody here tonight to know how much I love this city,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can to make the Barons a winner, even if it means I gotta take ’em to Hawaii. I’m glad to see such a nice turnout tonight. I hope you’ll continue to support us during the year.”
In the bullpen, Seitz resumed his throwing as the Barons and visiting Asheville Tourists were introduced, players trotting out to line up along the first- and third-base lines. The second loudest cheer was for Sullivan, a lot of it generated by his buddies from Dothan. The loudest cheer went to “Shaky Joe” Grzenda, the ace of the 1958 pennant-winning Barons and arguably the most popular Baron ever. (Teammates nicknamed him Shaky Joe because he drank two pots of coffee and smoked three packs of Lucky Strikes every day, sometimes working so fast on the mound that he would light a cigarette on the bench, leave it burning as he went out and retired the side, then come back and finish it off with a final quick puff or two.)
Following the introductions, Seitz concluded his warm-ups, draped his jacket over his right shoulder, and then stood at attention as the Jones Valley High School marching band played the national anthem.
After the last note, he plopped a fresh wad of Red Man tobacco into his cheek and headed for the dugout as Sullivan and Asheville manager Ray Hathaway met at home plate with the umpires.
“How do you feel, Droopsy?” asked Lindblad as Seitz sat down next to him on the bench.
“Guess I’m about to find out,” replied Seitz.
Nicknamed Droopsy because of his laid-back, laconic personality and the slope-shouldered way he ambled on and off the field (Baseball Digest called it a “farmer’s walk”), Seitz had deadpan facial expressions that sometimes made it hard for coaches to get a read on whether he was fully engaged in the game. It wasn’t that he didn’t care… he was just a taciturn young man, courteous and polite, but a guy who could yawn in a house fire.
Birmingham would be Droopsy’s eighth team in five years in the game, and it had not always been a smooth journey. Like every player in pro ball, he’d been a star in high school, pitching a no-hitter and earning a scholarship to pay for the $75-per-semester tuition at Ohio State. He lived at home with his parents in the working-class Linden McKinley neighborhood and drove a Cushman to school. After pitching the no-hitter against Xavier in his second start his sophomore year, he heard the dreaded four words from his girlfriend: “I think I’m pregnant.” Turned out she wasn’t, but he didn’t win another game the rest of the year. His junior year, however, he set the Buckeyes’ single-season strikeout record. In June, he signed a $15,000 bonus (spread out over three years) with his favorite team, the Cleveland Indians.
After going 13–12 in his first two years in the Cleveland organization, two important things happened to him over the winter of 1961: The A’s purchased his contract and he got married in a big church wedding in Wooster, Ohio, not to the girl who’d thought she was pregnant but to Carol Gordon, a tall, brown-eyed black-haired beauty who taught baton twirling for the Columbus Parks and Rec.
He spent the next two seasons putting a lot of miles on his Oldsmobile Delta 88 hardtop, bouncing from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Binghamton, New York, to Portland, Oregon, to Lewiston, Idaho, and then back to Columbus in the off-seasons, where he tried to sell insurance, although no matter how many pep talks he got from the sales manager, he couldn’t peddle the policies.
But all that was behind him. Heading to the mound at Rickwood to start the 1964 season—with the Jones Valley High School marching band playing another football fight song in the background—he had high hopes. Carol, pregnant with their second child, was back in Columbus with their young son and the Olds 88.
After a pat on the butt from Sullivan, Seitz took his “farmer’s walk” to the mound. Completing his eight warm-up pitches, he could still feel the twinge in his shoulder. Of course now wasn’t the time to complain. It would work itself out, he hoped.
He wasn’t going to complain about the mound, either, but it was way too flat for his liking. Like all pitchers, he preferred a mound that made him feel as if he were standing on Mount Everest, throwing downhill at the cowering Sherpas. This mound made him feel as if he were in a foxhole, throwing uphill.
After the throw down to second, he took the ball from twenty-eight-year-old third baseman Tony Frulio, the oldest player on the team and Sullivan’s pick to be team captain.
Finally, after months of anticipation, tension, and an unreported bomb threat, professional baseball was back in Birmingham. The Checkers Rule was dead, and now a raucous crowd of 6,592, with blacks and whites sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, heard the umpire’s cry:
“Play ball!”
Seitz peered in for the signal from catcher Velazquez. One finger. Fastball. Seitz fired a room-service fastball right down Broadway. Asheville’s leadoff hitter, center fielder Don Bosch, swung, sending a screaming line drive into the gap in left center, the ball rolling all the way to the wall for a stand-up double.
Seitz walked the next batter on four pitches.
Stepping off the mound, he stretched his right arm over his head, the knot still there.
He walked the next hitter, too, loading the bases with no outs.
Sullivan hustled to the mound to settle him down. “Paul, you’re steering the ball,” he said. “Is your arm okay?”
“Just a little tight, but I’m fine,” Seitz answered.
On Sullivan’s way back to the dugout, he motioned toward the bullpen for Rich Allen, a lefty, to start warming up… and in a hurry.
When Seitz fell behind in the count to the cleanup batter, the crowd stirred, hesitant to start booing their starting pitcher in the first inning of the first game. Kneeling next to the Barons’ dugout, Finley shouted encouragement. Next to him, Sullivan motioned for first baseman Rosario to go talk to Seitz to buy time for Allen to get loose.
With the count 2–2, Seitz uncorked a wild pitch, allowing the runner on third to waltz home as the other runners advanced to second and third.
“Come on, Paul,” encouraged Sullivan, fighting to stay calm.
The next pitch was ball four, loading the bases again. Even though he’d faced only four batters, Sullivan had seen enough, signaling to the bullpen for Allen.
Waiting for Sullivan to come and give him the hook, Seitz’s shoulders sagged. He wanted to cry; he wanted to hide.
In front of the biggest Baron crowd in a decade, and with Charlie Finley taking it all in, he had just laid the biggest turd ever. He hadn’t retired a single hitter; he’d walked three and thrown a pitch so wild that a dump truck couldn’t have blocked it. His ERA was infinity. And worst of all, he’d let down his manager—the man who’d picked him above all the others to open the season.
Leaving the field, his eyes stayed fixed to the ground. He could only be thankful that Carol, who wasn’t enamored with the baseball life, was in Ohio and had missed this catastrophe.
“Hang in there,” offered Sullivan.
His words did little to soothe the pain. Seitz wondered if was time to resurrect that career, such as it was, in insurance.
After the game, Sullivan was joined in his office by Finley and Belcher. If anybody could find sunshine in an opening game loss, it was Belcher. He’d orchestrated the first integrated game in Birmingham Baron history, and the largest Rickwood crowd in years had shown up to witness it. There’d been no fights, no ugly racial slurs at the players, no attacks with razor blades, and best of all the bomb threat before the game turned out to be a hoax… at least on this night. Belcher still hadn’t told anybody about it.
“Not the way I wanted to start,” said Sullivan. “I think we’re going to have trouble scoring runs.”
“I’m gonna get you some help,” promised Finley.
Sullivan hoped that meant Tommie Reynolds would be coming soon.