Boarding the bus in front of the Parsons, Lindblad and Hoss eyed Sullivan settling into his front-row seat and setting down a brown leather briefcase next to him. They had seen him carrying it several times when he left the ballpark in spring training.
“Whattya think he’s got in there?” asked Hoss.
Lindblad contemplated his response. In the baseball world, there was always a fine line between wit and insult. Lindblad decided that Hoss could handle it.
“He’s got your release papers in there,” he said.
In the three games in Columbus, Hoss and Campy had both gone 1 for 12, including 0 for 8 the last two games. They were both hitting below .100 after the first week of the season.
Sullivan’s briefcase actually contained the blank player-evaluation forms he was required to submit to the Kansas City front office after every game. It also held a copy of the Columbus Ledger and Profiles in Courage by JFK.
Sullivan wasn’t about to release Hoss. He was, however, trying to figure out how to get him and Campy jump-started. He was also considering giving Lindblad a shot at starting.
“I’ll bet he’s also got some travel brochures for Hawaii in there,” added Lindblad. “I’ll send you a postcard when we get there.”
“Shit. You get a couple guys out and all of a sudden you’re Dizzy Fuckin’ Dean.”
For Sullivan, one of the best surprises so far had been Rosario. He was hitting .529, easily the best on the team.
Sullivan had known that Rosario would be an asset defensively. Not only was he flashy around the first-base bag, doing the splits and sweeping his glove with flair after routine catches—which elicited calls of “perro caliente” (hot dog) from the opposing dugout—but he routinely dug balls out of the dirt. This was his fifth year in pro ball, the first four spent in the Cardinals’ organization. In those four years, he had a combined batting average over .300, as good as anybody in the organization, but the Cardinals thought he had an “attitude problem” and left him unprotected in the draft. Kansas City decided to take a chance and purchased his contract. Sullivan had read the reports of the “attitude problem,” but knew from experience that players sometimes get on the bad side of a manager, for either real or perceived issues, and get written off. (This was especially true with black and Latin players.) Sullivan was determined not to pre-judge Rosario. So far, he had seen no signs of the “attitude problem,” and as long as Rosario was making all the plays at first and ripping the cover off the ball, he’d let him be as flashy as he wanted. He also seemed to have a steadying influence on Campy.
In the first week, Sullivan had Rosario hitting eighth, but he was going to juggle the lineup and move him up to fifth. With the sometimes fragile psyches of players, most of whom had batted cleanup in high school, Sullivan knew this could create ripples. But he’d told himself that he couldn’t get bogged down worrying about players’ feelings every time he made a move… otherwise he’d go nuts. He was a manager, not a shrink.
Statistically, the logical choice would be to move Campy and Hoss down to seventh and eighth in the order, or even sit them on the bench. But playing a hunch, Sullivan elected to leave his keystone combination in the one and two slots.
In the first game against Macon, they got five hits between them: three for Campy, two for Hoss.
A few days prior to the Barons’ arrival in Macon, seventeen black college students decided to stage a sit-in at the lunch counter of Liggett’s Drug Store in nearby Warner Robins. In the past, blacks had been allowed to buy merchandise at the store, but not to eat there. “You niggers need to leave,” the manager told them as they sat down at the lunch counter. “This place will never integrate.” The police quickly arrived, arrested the students, and hauled them off to jail, where they sat for two days with nothing to eat but cold beans. Shortly after that, blacks demanded access to the swimming pool at Macon’s Baconsfield Park, but rather than integrate, city officials closed the pool.
Before the first game, Sullivan warned the black players that Macon fans had a reputation for hurling racial insults.
“Just ignore them,” he advised.
Sullivan’s warning proved accurate. A fan behind third kept up a steady barrage aimed at Campy. “Hey, Banana Boy,” he yelled. “Go back to Africa.”
Sullivan’s first reaction was to question the guy’s grasp of geography. Then he realized that Campy didn’t understand a word the dimwit was yelling, so the dimwit was wasting his breath.
Sailing along with a five-hitter going into the bottom of the ninth—the Barons leading 2–1—Stanley Jones was in control, justifying Sullivan’s faith in giving him a second start after a bad first outing. The decision had been based not on the color of Jones’s skin or the fact that he was from Birmingham, but on his confidence in Jones, who’d pitched well in spring training, and the fact that he’d had a 2.47 ERA the previous year, the second best in the Carolina League, with 121 strikeouts and only 34 walks.
But when Jones walked the first two hitters in the ninth, including the Peaches’ cleanup hitter, Lee May, Sullivan waved in twenty-two-year-old right-hander Ken Knight from the bullpen. In his fourth year of pro ball, Knight had compiled an impressive 21–7 record, mostly in relief.
With two outs and runners on second and third, Sullivan signaled Knight to intentionally walk the next hitter, Len Boehmer, who was hitting over .400 in the young season.
Catcher Woody Huyke gave Knight a target a foot outside. Knight lobbed the pitch, but instead of hitting Huyke’s target, the ball floated like a beach ball over the outside part of the plate. Boehmer swung, lining a shot to right for a base hit, scoring the runners from second and third, losing the game for the Barons and sending Jones to his second loss.
In the Barons’ clubhouse, the players waited to see if Sullivan would upbraid Knight. It’s frustrating enough to get beaten in the ninth inning, and to have a starting pitcher lose after pitching so well. But to lose it on a careless mistake was an invitation for a manager to throw chairs.
Knight sat in front of his locker, head down, looking for a rock to crawl under. Sullivan approached, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t do that again,” he said calmly.
Sullivan waited in front of the Dempsey Hotel, where Blue Moon Odom washed dishes on weekends. Accompanied by Bill Posedel, the minor-league pitching instructor for the A’s, Sullivan was waiting for a ride to go scout the high school pitching phenom. Minor-league managers and pitching instructors didn’t usually scout amateur players, but Blue Moon was an exception. Sullivan had received a call from Charlie Finley asking him to check out Odom when the Barons were in Macon. Was he as good as advertised? The only two games he’d ever lost had both come on passed balls by the catcher.
Kansas City scout Jack Sanford picked up Sullivan and Posedel and drove them to Ballard-Hudson High, home of the Maroon Tigers, the defending state champions in Georgia’s Negro Class AA Conference. Sullivan had talked on the phone to Finley, who’d personally flown to Macon to try to persuade Blue Moon to sign with Kansas City. Finley had eaten dinner with Blue Moon and his mother at their duplex, and listened to Blue Moon’s high school coach say that Blue Moon wouldn’t be making his decision until after he graduated in five weeks. Finley promised he would top any offer Blue Moon received.
Arriving at the field, Sullivan and the other two men took a seat in the rickety bleachers behind home plate. They weren’t alone—eight other scouts were also on hand. In the top of the first, Blue Moon struck out the side, nobody even getting a foul tip off him. “That last pitch must’ve sunk a foot,” Sullivan enthused. “You can’t teach that.”
In the bottom of the first, Blue Moon drilled a savage double to left, driving in a runner from first.
“He’s a great all-around athlete,” added Sanford.
In the second inning, he struck out the side again.
In the seventh and final inning, he still had a no-hitter. With two outs and the count 1–2 on the hitter, Blue Moon tugged at his hat, and then fired a fastball. The batter swung, but not until the ball was in the catcher’s glove.
Blue Moon nonchalantly walked off the mound, greeted by his coach and teammates. Not only had he pitched his seventh no-hitter and struck out seventeen (out of a possible twenty-one), he was also the star at the plate, getting three hits and driving in the Maroon Tigers’ only two runs.
“I’d love to have him pitch for the Barons,” said Sullivan.
“Finley may take him straight to the big leagues,” said Posedel.
“That would be a mistake,” said Sullivan.
Baseball players, by both custom and instinct, are wildly superstitious. Infielders won’t step on the foul line coming off the field; batters won’t change their underpants if they’re on a hitting streak; pitchers will smoke Kools instead of Marlboros on the days they start; hitters will put on their left shoe first and drink half a Coke before a game. But of all baseball’s rituals, one of the oldest and most rigidly observed is the superstition of teammates’ not acknowledging that their pitcher has a no-hitter going.
Going into the bottom of the eighth of the final game of the Macon series, with the Barons leading 5–0, right-hander Nicky Don Curtis hadn’t given up a hit… and in the Barons’ dugout an odd silence was interrupted only by inane chatter, including banal contributions from Sullivan.
Sullivan had taken a chance in keeping Curtis on the Barons’ roster. The handsome twenty-two-year-old right-hander with a thick Oklahoma drawl hadn’t done well in 1963, recording an unspectacular 4–10 record and a 4.58 ERA in A ball. But in spring training, Sullivan had seen something he liked—a lively fastball and decent control—so he brought him north with the Barons. Curtis lost his first start against Columbus, but as he’d done with Jones, Sullivan gave him a second start.
With one out in the eighth inning and only five outs to a no-no, Boehmer, the guy who’d smacked the errant pitchout the night before, lined a base hit to center. Good-bye, no-hitter. Curtis shook it off and held the Peaches hitless the rest of the way for a 5–0 victory.
“The hell with superstitions,” said Hoss. “Next time I’m telling him he’s got a no-hitter going.”
After observing the Baron pitchers for three days, Bill Posedel submitted his report to Hank Peters, the A’s general manager. It included this observation:
They’ve got a bunch of Major League arms here with Birmingham, and a heckuva manager to keep them developing. These boys really like Sullivan, and more importantly, they respect him and really hustle for him. I’ve got a feeling that this club is going to do alright in this league.