CHAPTER 17

The first definable face that emerged from the thick mist that descended on me when Mazeroski came to the plate was that of Ralph Houk—the tough, confident, chaw-chewing Yankee coach the ballplayers call “Major” for his rank in the Rangers during the war, and who is now Casey Stengel’s replacement as the Yankee manager. I was first aware of him when I sensed a movement on the first-base foul line and turned to see him coming toward me. I glowered at him. Whatever his reputation, as he came out over the baseline I looked upon him as an intruder. He came on, a slow nonchalant amble, looking off into the outfield, then down in front of his feet, never at me, and there was no apparent purpose in mind—just a man strolling across the infield—and then he came within the dirt circumference of the pitcher’s mound, climbing stiff-legged up toward me, and he put his hand out for the ball.

Perhaps he thought that I’d be relieved to see him. I don’t think he expected the belligerency that blazed in that pale face. He shifted the chaw to speak—and I could see a grin working at his mouth. He told me later that he’d relieved many pitchers in his time (he once managed the Denver team in the American Association) but that he’d never seen anyone like that—it was like… well… and with a headshake he’d left the sentence unfinished, as if it all beggared description.

“Needle-lily-eh?”

“What!” I cried at him.

“Need a little help, hey?”

I stared furiously at him.

“Kid, you look a little tired out,” he said patiently. “Don’t you want some help?” He kept his hand out for the ball.

“No, no, no,” I said. My voice came out in a croak. “Gotta finish. Lemme pitch just a li’l more.” But Houk didn’t turn for the dugout; he smiled, very broadly this time, and kept his hand out.

Like many pitchers, I wasn’t taking kindly to being removed—despite being as weak as a convalescent. It’s curious that no matter how brutally the opposition is treating him, a pitcher will often turn mulish when the manager reaches the mound. In extreme cases a pitcher will react to the indignity of being relieved by throwing the ball away in a rage. Pitching in Philadelphia, Walter Beck of the Dodgers turned away from his manager, and rather than give up the ball he wound up and hit the Lifebuoy sign with it, which in the old Baker Field was a very long toss from the pitcher’s mound indeed. Early Wynn of the Chicago White Sox chose to throw the ball at his manager, and threw it into the stomach of Al Lopez, stepping out to relieve him, with such accuracy and dispatch that legend has it that Lopez stumbled back into the dugout murmuring that his star pitcher had shown with his speed and control that he was not in need of relief. The most notable case of an intransigent pitcher involved Boston’s Carl Mays, so incensed at being relieved by manager Ed Barrow, and at the Red Sox team in general, that he not only threw the ball into the stands, but jumped the club and vowed he would never pitch for the Red Sox again. Barrow, naturally, suspended him, and after a legal tussle he ended up with the Yankees in New York, where on a fateful day in 1920 in the Polo Grounds (Yankee Stadium hadn’t been built) Mays unleashed from his swift swooping subterranean delivery the fastball which on its way over the inside corner of the plate caught Ray Chapman, a notorious plate crowder, paralyzed in this instance, on the side of the head and killed him.

Mays had a disposition well known in the leagues—there were players who thought he had a perpetual toothache—and, while his temper was in no way accountable for the accident, a manager must have thought twice before stepping out to relieve him.

Houk had no such trouble with me. I said “No, no” a few more times, but finally I took a step forward, dropped the ball in his hand, and stumbled off the mound.

I walked slowly toward the first-base dugout. Most of the players in the dugout were standing up, watching me come in, and many of them were grinning. Just as I reached the baseline, behind me Ralph Houk threw a single pitch to Mazeroski which in a sort of final irony, he hit high and lazy to Bob Cerv in left field. Since my back was to the diamond I didn’t see the ball caught, but when it was, the players in the field ran for the dugout, streaming by me without a word and clambering down the steps, most of them headed for the watercooler. I was bewildered by that rush of movement past me; I didn’t know what was going on until Billy Martin fell into slow step beside me. “Man,” he said, smiling broadly, “it’s OK… it’s over,” and I said weakly, “Sure,” and went with him into the dugout, where I turned and sagged down on the bench. The Sports Illustrated photographer assigned the story leaned into the dugout and took a picture at that moment: in it you see Whitey Ford, the Yankee pitcher, grinning and looking at the figure seated next to him visibly in some stage of shock—the mouth ajar, the eyes staring, the body itself slack and disjointed as if a loosely stuffed bag had been tossed on the bench. Some months later, an elderly English colonel caught a glimpse of that photograph and said the face reminded him of the stunned look of a bagpipe player who had survived the British thrust at Passchendaele in ’17. Someone else, with less reference to draw from but plenty of imagination, said no, the face belonged to a man who sees his wife lean out of the sofa during cocktails and inexplicably garrote the family cat with a length of cord. Whichever, I wore a look of bleak horror, and I remember Ford and Martin, who came over and squeezed in beside me, laughing as I sat between them.

“Know something?” said Ford. “We’ve been making book here in the dugout as to when you’d keel over.”

“No kidding,” I said weakly.

“Yup. He was sure sweating out there, wasn’t he, Billy? Leaking out of him like it was sawdust.” He leaned across me, waiting for verification and Martin’s comment. He was already grinning in anticipation.

“Sawdust? That was blood, man. First time,” said Martin, “I ever thought I’d be running in for a mound conference to find out what was going on was a funeral service,” and he and Ford leaned off the bench and bellowed with laughter that turned heads down the length of the dugout. They wanted to know what Martin had said, and so he said it again, and from down the line they were all looking and grinning. They called up the questions: “Hey, kid, what d’ja think of it, hey? How d’ja like it out there? Pretty rough, hey?”—their joshing friendly, but you could tell they were pleased their profession had treated me as roughly as it had.

“Flanked by Whitey Ford and the Yankee batboy just after my ordeal. The photograph was snapped as I dropped down between them—providing an accurate study of shock, in my case, and justified amusement from the ballplayers. They were not at all displeased that their profession had treated me as roughly as it had.” (Garry Winogrand)

“Really sumpin’,” I said.

“What’d he say?” someone called out.

“Really sumpin’ out there,” I repeated.

While I relaxed, still breathing hard and feeling the true luxury of strength flowing back in, the team sent its first batters up against Ralph Houk. There was a lot of enthusiasm, the players leaning on the dugout steps and shouting encouragement. They stood to divide the $1,000 prize if they could overcome the National League’s total of seven points gained off my pitching—four for Thomas’s home run, two for Robinson’s double, and one for Hodges’s single. It was a total substantial enough to invite comment from Martin. He turned to me and said: “That’s a lot of points you’ve given those characters with that sneaky slow ball of yours. You a National League fan, hey, kid?… You root for Pittsburgh or something?…”

“Oh gosh, no,” I said in dead seriousness. “I was really trying out there.”

“Really trying! Man, with all that sweat, dyin’ is the word you’re looking for: you were really dyin’ out there, man…” and he and Ford nearly fell off the bench with glee, whooping and coughing, and finally Martin said weakly, “Man oh man!” and headed for the watercooler down in the corner of the dugout. I laughed a bit too, but not as hard.

The general hilarity in the dugout died down rather quickly. Out on the field, in less than five minutes, Houk retired Kuenn, Fox, Mantle, Cerv, Howard, and Malzone—a qualified murderers’ row—with simple batting-practice tosses.

It was surprising, and sitting in the dugout you could sense the gloom that came with the frustration of not being able to drive those pitches out of sight. But in actual fact, if you go to the park early and watch batting practice you see that hitting a ball—even if it’s tossed easily over the heart of the plate—with power and accuracy is done relatively better by the professionals, but by no means to any degree of perfection. You see them swing and miss in the batting cages; they hit many fouls, their timing perhaps thrown off by the slow speed of the pitch, its arched trajectory incomparable to the clothesline blur of a ball thrown in competition. Lefty Gomez, the Yankee southpaw, on one occasion when he was ahead of the Washington Senators by nine runs, let up, just to see what would happen, and started lobbing his pitches over the plate. After his career, he used to say it was the only time he could remember retiring three batters on three pitches: the first man lined out, the second hit a high long fly to Joe DiMaggio in center, and the third grounded out to Phil Rizzuto at shortstop.

Houk’s lucky string was finally broken by the seventh batter, Mickey Vernon, who whacked a drive down the right-field line which pulled all the players on the dugout steps up onto the playing field to watch the ball’s flight—all of them yelling at it and applying tortured body English to try to push its trajectory into fair territory, and they let out a great whoop when the ball hit the foul pole for a home run and four points. They slapped Vernon on the back when he came into the dugout, and then hurled their encouragement after Billy Martin, the last man in the order—striding to the plate with their sole chance of copping the prize money resting on his emulating Vernon and picking up four points with a home run. He waited out a few pitches and then swung his bat around viciously and firmly on the ball, but despite that same scramble of body English on the dugout steps, the ball floated straightaway deep into right-center field and was hauled down there by Richie Ashburn. That finished the contest and gave the National League team the Sports Illustrated prize seven points to four. One or two of them were grinning as they ran for their dugout across the way. I thought it was as good a time as any to get out of the American League dugout. So I slid off the bench and headed down the runway for the showers.