First Inning
IN 1968, I hated the first inning a little less than I had before. Over my career, the first, for me, was the worst of times. My earned run average for the first inning was an even 4.00, more than a run higher than the rest of the game. In the second, it plummeted to about half that much.
The problem, mainly, was control. Over my seventeen years in the big leagues, I walked 203 batters in the first inning, which was 37 more than any other. That might not sound so terrible, but consider that the leadoff and second hitters are typically Punch-and-Judy guys who have not earned the privilege of being pitched to carefully. I was loath to put a batter like that on base without giving him a chance to send Curt Flood a lovely can of corn. I'd pour it at him and let the little fellow hack away to his heart's content. At least, that was my intention. And yet, time and again, year after year, I began the game by letting one of those nuisances off the hook with four infuriating balls. Walking a singles hitter was a sin, and I was a wretched first-inning reprobate. To make it worse, the leadoff spot piled up a better batting average against me than any other place in the lineup, followed by the two hole, followed by the three. Inning one was my Valley of Doom.
For a long time, I assumed that I was warming up improperly in the bullpen. So I fooled around with different routines. I tried throwing for seven or eight minutes, sitting down for a while, then throwing another for seven or eight, simulating the flow of the game. Didn't help. Other times I'd crank up the velocity and effort level. Nothing seemed to make a difference. One night, I thought I'd stumbled upon a miracle cure. I'd washed my car that afternoon, then went out and pitched a gem with some of my best stuff of the season. Voilà! Naturally, I was out there soaping and scrubbing again five days later. Got lit up that night. There was another time when I shut somebody down after having an argument earlier in the day with my wife; but I didn't think it advisable to make a habit out of that. So I just stayed the course with what seemed sensible: loosening up, getting a feel for the breaking ball, finding the corners, and going all-out for the last few pitches.
Then, in 1968, the problem was suddenly solved. The breakthrough wasn't in my warm-up; it was in my control.
My ability to put the ball where I wanted it had been improving, if sometimes negligibly, since midway through the summer of 1961, when Johnny Keane relieved Solly Hemus as the Cardinal manager. I'd been unpolished when I arrived in St. Louis in 1959, and that might be an understatement-I led the league in walks in '61, my first year in the rotation-but my pitching skills weren't as hopeless as Hemus would have had me think. He held them in such contempt that, when he went over an opposing team's scouting report with the pitching staff, he'd pause and tell me not to worry about all that stuff, just try to throw some strikes. Maybe that's why I felt as I did about scouting reports. And Solly Hemus.
Johnny Keane, on the other hand, a milder man who had studied for the priesthood, was a cultivator and guardian of my confidence, which is something a pitcher requires when he's trying to locate a hard slider on the edge of the plate under the glare of thirty thousand people, including a couple base runners and, sixty and a half feet away, Hank Aaron. Or any other time he lets it fly. Although Keane was long gone by 1968, supplanted by Red Schoendienst, I truly believe that my success that year was mostly attributable to the trust I had that the ball was going to end up right where it was supposed to. To a degree that impressed both me and McCarver, it did so with inspiring regularity. I had become a control pitcher. Fastball, breaking ball; didn't matter. In 1968, I felt that I could close my eyes and sling the thing behind my back-I'd been a Harlem Globetrotter, after all-and it would find its way to the outside corner. The baseball had become my smart bomb.
Nevertheless, my first pitch to Dick McAuliffe was considerably high and outside. McCarver put his target in the center of the plate, at the top of McAuliffe's thigh, and I made him stand up, reaching left, to catch it.
* * *
I SUPPOSE YOU could blame that one on the World Series.
You'd think, by then, I wouldn't have let it get to me. I'd started three Series games in 1964 when we beat the Yankees and three more in 1967 when we beat the Red Sox, won the last five of them, which left me tied for the National League record, and been named the Series MVP on both occasions. So I wasn't awed and I wasn't frightened and I wasn't trying to do more than I'd done before. The only thing new to my experience was pitching game one in front of the home crowd, which happened to be the largest crowd in the history of Busch Stadium, with everybody a little louder than usual, and dressed better, in spite of so many men wearing silly white straw hats, courtesy of some giveaway or another. Like any World Series, there were cameras and umpires everywhere. None of that rattled me. But my adrenaline ran on pride, and my pride was fed by winning, and the World Series made my stomach growl. I was overeager, is all. A little too hungry. It only lasted a pitch.
The second one was another fastball, a four-seamer about 96 or 97 miles an hour on the inside corner at the waist, cutting toward McAuliffe's hands. Because of the action on it, a lot of batters mistook my four-seam fastball for a slider. I didn't change my grip to cut the ball that way-and we didn't call it a cutter in those days-but I held the four-seamer on the side a little bit and the movement happened naturally. McCarver says it was because of my deformed fingers. I wouldn't describe them that way, but my fingers are oddly symmetrical. My little finger matches my index finger in length, and the middle two stand even, as well. I have no idea what effect that might have had on the geometry of my pitches, but I do know that it had less-if there was any to start with-when I threw the four-seamer down in the strike zone, which I didn't do often. The four-seamer was the faster of my two fastballs, and I preferred to elevate it, especially to left-handers, like McAuliffe, who had to turn things up a notch to handle a pitch boring in on their fists at that speed. It was important to find out, as soon as possible, if he could do that. McAuliffe was a batter with whom I took nothing at face value.
I paid attention to a batter's stance, and generally factored it into my approach, but it can be hazardous to draw hard conclusions from such superficial information. For one thing, nearly every batter arrives at the same position to address the ball. For another, there was Dick McAuliffe. The Tigers' second baseman stood with his back foot close to the plate, his shoulders and hips pointed to first base, and his bat held up at ear level, his hands actually out in front of his nose. When a guy sets up with a dramatically open stance like that, it's tempting to assume he can't reach a pitch on the outside half of the plate. On the other hand, he has to close his stance and stride forward as he approaches the ball, which, ordinarily, made me inclined to bust him inside. But McAuliffe added a twist to that norm. After he picked up his right foot to start his swing and, ostensibly, square his body, he would put it down very close to where it had been to begin with. His shoulders never really squared. Even as the first pitch sailed outside, his motion had kept him positioned to pull it, if he could.
McAuliffe was unconventional in more ways than just that. He didn't fit the profile of a leadoff hitter. While he had the size and scrappiness associated with that spot, he didn't bat for a high average. He did, however, collect a fair number of home runs-16 that year, after three of the previous four seasons in the low 20s. I respected power. I also respected McAuliffe's competitiveness. In August, he'd earned a five-game suspension for rushing the mound and separating Tommy John's shoulder after John had buzzed him twice. His teammates called him Mad Dog. They knew better than to try to engage him in conversation before a ball game. He was the kind of player I could appreciate.
He was also one who thrived on challenges, much like me. Challenging, in pitching parlance, involves fastballs on the inner half of the plate, a standard point of origin for long flies that reach the seats. There was significant risk in challenging a guy with McAuliffe's home run potential; but I wasn't inclined to tread lightly with the leadoff hitter. The Tigers had enough big boppers in the middle of the order for whom I'd have to reserve my discretion. McAuliffe was getting the fastball in. I don't recall what the scouting report suggested for him, because I didn't pay it a lot of attention-the reports were based on what the Detroit hitters did against the fastballs and sliders of other pitchers, not mine-but I'm pretty sure it wasn't that. I didn't care. I needed to get started with my own scouting. McAuliffe, matching no familiar stereotype, was the kind of hitter I'd have to figure out for myself, probing, mixing, and challenging.
He swung from his heels and missed.
I went next with a slider away. It was the pitch that McCarver believed, and still believes-I don't disagree with him, which is a little unusual, in spite of our fast friendship-carried me to a higher level in 1968. In spring training that year, Tim had encouraged me to throw it. I'd always had difficulty controlling my breaking pitches on the arm side of the plate, which is outside to a left-handed hitter, and was reluctant to throw a slider that I was afraid might sweep right into the sweet spot over the middle. But McCarver convinced me that my control had improved enough that I could now deliver that pitch with conviction. He was right, and it made a profound difference. Left-handers were still the hitters that most threatened me, as a rule, but in 1968 I felt that I'd finally grabbed the upper hand against them. The numbers bore that out.
This slider, however, sailed high and wide for ball two.
McAuliffe hadn't yet seen the two-seam fastball. Because of the spin that carries it downward, the two-seamer is a heavier pitch than the four-seam fastball. With the sinking action, though, I wouldn't throw it inside to a left-handed hitter. For the most part, I didn't like to deliver anything down and in to lefties, because a pitch there is too easy for them to reach and rip by turning-McAuliffe, of course, was already turned-and dropping the bat head. I wouldn't have minded putting the two-seamer in that spot if I'd been able to start it off the inside corner to a left-hander and make it curl back for a strike, the pitch that Greg Maddux later perfected. But since I couldn't pull that off, I tried to keep it on the outer edge. The two-seamer to McAuliffe didn't quite make it there. It was down and centered, but that was effectively outside to him. He popped it foul on the third-base side, behind the Tigers' dugout, out of Mike Shannon's reach.
With the two-seamer on a 2-1 count, my preference would have been a ground ball to Julian Javier at second base. But now I was in strikeout position. Of the four pitches I'd thrown to McAuliffe, only one had resulted in a swing and miss. I went with another four-seamer at the belt, and got the same result.
* * *
NOT LONG AGO I was sitting in a St. Louis restaurant, near the new Busch Stadium, with Tim McCarver, and we were talking about my curveball. Actually, I was talking about my curveball, and he was swearing I never threw one. This is the man who caught me for seven full years and parts of three others. The man with whom, on the ball field, I shared such a singleness of mind that I'd often start my motion before he was finished giving his sign. The man with whom, off the field, I treasured a connection that, from the time we met in 1959-me a blunt, stubborn black man and Tim a rugged white teenager from Memphis, Tennessee, with all the sensibilities which that implies-had evolved both unforeseeably and wonderfully.
When Tim called for a slider, I was liable to throw him either of two breaking pitches. The main one, released with a stiff wrist, was a hard slider with good velocity-I'd estimate that, at least early in my career, it would reach as high as about 92 miles an hour-and a tight, darting downturn. But less often, I'd roll my wrist and the ball would come in slower and loopier, with a much bigger break. Tim always thought the off-speed, bigger-breaking ball was just a variation on the slider. To me, it was a curveball. That night over dinner, I finally got around to explaining this. McCarver was incredulous.
"How was I supposed to figure out what's coming?"
"I never realized you didn't know," I told him.
He paused for a moment, then held up the meaty palm that he had crammed inside his catcher's mitt for twenty big-league seasons. "I've been having trouble with my left hand," he said. "And I know for a fact that the reason I'm having this problem is the same reason the hitters did when they faced you. They couldn't predict where the ball was going, and neither could I. Nothing wore me out like you did. After the sixth or seventh inning, my third or fourth at-bat, I'd be hitting with eight fingers. The burning of the bone. The result is, I think of you every day of my life."
"You knew it was a breaking ball. I figured, you're a catcher-catch it. That was the mentality. I didn't realize how difficult it was. You always caught it."
"It's okay," he said quietly. "It's all made up for by what you accomplished."
"If I had to do it over again, Tim, I'd tell you what was coming."
It was a curveball that I threw on the first pitch to the Tigers' second batter, Mickey Stanley, who fouled it back to the right side, his body pulling out as he reached across the plate with his bat. If it had been a slider, he wouldn't have been so far out in front of it.
Stanley, a right-handed hitter, had been Detroit's starting center fielder all season, and some considered him the best in the American League at that position. Willie Horton, the Tigers' most dangerous power threat, manned left field, and when Al Kaline, their future Hall of Famer, broke his arm in May, Jim Northrup took over in right, eventually leading the club in RBIs. Kaline played a part-time role after he returned, but he'd gotten stronger late in the season and the Tigers' manager, Mayo Smith, was determined to find a starting spot for him in Kaline's first World Series, at the age of thirty-three. The solution-reportedly at the urging of Norm Cash-was to restore Kaline to right field, shuffle Northrup to center, and bring Stanley in to play shortstop. He'd never played short before, and it's probably the most demanding position outside of catcher (and pitcher, of course), but Stanley was considered the Tigers' best all-around athlete and was gifted with the glove. As a trial run, Smith started him at shortstop late in the season, taking over for Ray Oyler, a slick fielder who batted only .135 for the year. People remained skeptical that the Tigers would make such a drastic move in the World Series, but Smith was bold enough, and impressed enough by Stanley-and maybe badgered enough by Cash-to pull the trigger.
The new look was described by Curt Gowdy, the NBC announcer, as "the Gibson lineup." To me, though, it was the Kaline lineup. Or the Oyler-less lineup, which was just as meaningful. I'd made a nice living against eight-hole hitters. In a normal game, I'd get about eight strikeouts, and maybe five of them would be divided up between the opposing pitcher and the guy batting eighth. Without Oyler in the order, the Tigers didn't really have a traditional number-eight hitter. For me, that stunk.
Though not an exceptional hitter, Stanley was a capable one, and I watched with interest as my curveball navigated toward the outside corner and the Tigers' new shortstop read it wrong. I'd thrown the curve uncharacteristically well in my last start, the 1-0 shutout of Houston, and the feel for it seemed to be sticking around, suggesting that more of those might be in order for a while. There weren't many games in which I gave the batters a lot of looks at my curve-as a rule, it was a pretty shabby pitch, to tell the truth-but when I did, the majority came early. In the late innings, when my energy was sapped, the curveball was harder to command and reprimanded me by hanging in the wrong places. That was especially true on hot days like this one. I'd only thrown seven pitches, and sweat was already rolling down my face. My long sleeves might have had something to do with that, but I never took the mound without them, regardless of the weather. I preferred to keep the heat in; didn't want my arm to cool off. Besides, I liked sweat. It had its advantages. But I knew that, on this particular afternoon, because of the heat and the pressures of the World Series, the late innings were going to be a challenge, which meant my curveball would have a short shelf life. I committed to it early, while it still had some snap.
Even so, I didn't ordinarily use it against right-handed batters. The World Series, though, has a way of encouraging a little something different. I'd found that out the previous October. Boston's scouting report said that I didn't have much of a curve or slider, and I struck out a lot of Red Sox on breaking pitches they couldn't come to terms with. At the same time, though, you can't forget what brought you to the dance. Our scouting report urged me not to throw Carl Yastrzemski a high fastball. Really? High fastballs were my meal ticket, and I damn sure wasn't going to hold them back against the Triple Crown winner of the American League, no matter what he'd done to other people's. When I elevated four-seamers for Yaz in game one, he popped three of them up. It was the same story against Harmon Killebrew, albeit a strikeout, in the ninth inning of the 1965 All-Star Game, with the tying run on second base, and against Sadaharu Oh when we toured Japan, three pitches in a row. So much for scouting reports. Against the Red Sox, the book on one player-I forget who-was to work him with change-ups inside. First of all, my change-up was terrible. Secondly, I would never throw one inside; not even a good one. I might also point out that on the day after Yastrzemski went 0-for-4 against me in 1967, Dick Hughes and Joe Hoerner pitched him in accordance with the scouting report, and he hit two home runs.
The difference in the World Series is not the stage or the stakes, but the fact that you don't have a history with the opponent. There was no interleague play in my day. Most of the teams trained in Florida-our camp in St. Petersburg was just over an hour away from Detroit's in Lakeland, and we played the Tigers every year-but you can't learn much from exhibition games. For me, the World Series, more than any other occasion, was about pitching on the fly. On the afternoon of October 2, 1968, that translated into a few more curveballs than usual. After Mickey Stanley's reaction to my first one, I was convinced.
It's said that pitchers who throw extremely hard tend to have good curveballs, due to their arm speed and the spin they can generate. Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, and Dwight Gooden attested to that. I had the speed and the spin, but my curve was good only sometimes. The first one of the day suggested that this was one of those times. My slider, by contrast, was good more often than not. This day, however, early indications were inconclusive. My second slider of the day, like the first, sailed outside. It was better-placed and more tempting than the previous one, but Stanley resisted.
All year, I'd been able to home in on that outside corner, in particular, but when I missed it again, this time with a two-seam fastball, I was behind in the count and flirting with my old first-inning gremlin. To fight it off, I had to go back to what was working.
I got the slider sign from McCarver, gripped the seam, and broke off another curveball. It, too, was low and outside, but Stanley, still expecting anything but that, bailed out, swung tentatively, and missed badly.
A four-seam fastball was now in order. I didn't want to extend the count to 3-and-2. My heart wasn't set on a strikeout, but I'd be glad to have one, and the high heater had always been generous in that respect. This one was a good pitch, but Stanley fouled it back with a swing that wasn't lusty enough to discourage another.
For the fastball to follow, McCarver held his mitt on the outer edge of the strike zone and just below Stanley's waist. That way, I could use the target for either the two- or four-seamer. I went with the two-seamer, but once again it tailed low and outside. I had failed to avoid the full count.
At this point, the call was more difficult. With Kaline and Norm Cash behind him, I had no interest in walking Stanley. The inability to locate my fastball on the outside corner, the spot that for six months had been my own personal property, made me reluctant to come back with another one. The curveball was serving me best, but it was not yet a pitch in which I placed my faith in times of trouble. Meanwhile, I was determined to throw my first good slider of the day.
I was proud of my slider. Until 1959, when I spent most of the season with the Cardinals' Triple-A farm club in Omaha, where I grew up, I thought my slider was actually a curveball. At that point, I truly didn't have a curveball. The Cardinals' pitching coach, Howard Pollet, taught me how to twist my wrist and pull the ball downward to make it drop; but the pitch wasn't natural for me and it took a long time to make it legitimate; even longer to keep it out of the dirt. I had no such problem with the slider.
With the slider, in fact, I had become the mentor. I taught it to Steve Carlton, and there are those who think his slider was unequaled. McCarver, who caught him in St. Louis and later became Lefty's personal catcher in Philadelphia, is one of those. At a dinner in Cooperstown the night before Carlton was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Tim was asked to say a few words about him. He took the microphone and said that if Carl Hubbell goes down in history as having the best screwball and Sandy Koufax goes down as having the best curveball and Nolan Ryan goes down as having the best fastball, Carlton will be remembered as having the best slider the game has ever seen. Afterward, when everybody was milling around, I worked my way through the crowd, got in Tim's face, and said, "The best left-handed slider! Carlton had the best left-handed slider!" Yeah, I was proud of my slider. And with a 3-2 count on Mickey Stanley, I needed to get it right.
I didn't. Preoccupied with keeping it in the strike zone, I hung it. High and over the middle of the plate. Stanley slapped it into left field for a single. Given the quality of the pitch, it was the best I could hope for.
* * *
YOU WOULD THINK that, by 1968, I'd have some sense of Al Kaline as a hitter. He was in his sixteenth season-the man had won the American League batting title in 1955 at the mind-boggling age of twenty-and I was in my tenth. He'd been an All-Star thirteen times and I'd been selected five. He was the greatest Tiger since Ty Cobb. But I'd never thrown him a pitch. Except in spring training, for what that's worth. Which is not much.
In fact, I'd pitched against him-I think-late that spring. April 5, to be exact. Forgive me for not recalling the particulars of our matchup, if we had one. I was a little distracted that day. The night before, Martin Luther King had been murdered in Memphis.
The assassination occurred early in the evening, and I'd overheard something about it. Not sure what to believe, I hurried over to Lou Brock's room. Orlando Cepeda was with him, and the TV was on. "It's true," Lou said. In my grief and anger-I might have the order wrong there-I couldn't help thinking back two months earlier, when I'd walked past Dr. King in the Atlanta airport. I'd looked him at him and he'd looked back with what seemed to be recognition, but neither of us said anything. I wish I had.
At the ballpark the next day, Tim McCarver could see how distraught I was. He was well aware of how strongly I felt about the work Dr. King was doing-Tim and I often talked about race relations-and approached me to offer consolation. He said, "I understand how you feel as a minority, because I was brought up a Catholic in Tennessee, and Tennessee is only six percent Catholic."
"No, Tim," I told him, "you don't understand. You can't. You're white."
He said, "You know, you're right." And that was the end of the conversation.
Our talks usually lasted longer than that. Sometimes, when I vented about bias and attitudes and double standards and subtle discrimination, Tim would point out that people can change. On that score, he spoke from experience. He was a living example of it.
I won't get into specifics about the racial consciousness that McCarver brought to professional baseball as a teen-aged hotshot. Suffice to say that, coming from the South as he did, Tim was very noticeable in that way to not only me but a lot of the Cardinals, black and white. Our team, as a whole, had no tolerance for ethnic or racial disrespect. We'd talk about it openly and in no uncertain terms. In our clubhouse, nobody got a free pass. But of those who required some talking to, few entertained the subject as sincerely as McCarver.
From the beginning, he was kind of a pet project of mine. In our first big-league camp together, we were boarding the bus after an exhibition game in Bradenton and McCarver was eating an ice cream cone. The way he remembers it, he was drinking an orange soda; but this is my book, so it's an ice cream cone. Anyhow, I gave Curt Flood a little nudge and said, "Hey, Tim, can I have a bite of that?" He looked at me, looked at Curt, stuttered for a second, and said, "I'll, uh, save you some." Flood and I broke up.
I'll confess to being the leading agitator in the Cardinals' adamant-you could say aggressive-stance on race. If a teammate made any distinctions based on color, my practice was to confront him, let him know how we felt about it as a ball club, and give him every chance to change. Tim did, quickly and completely. It wasn't too long before he was like a brother to me; and still is. Maybe the best memento we share is the photograph that appeared in the New York Daily News after game five of the 1964 World Series, the occasion of my first World Series victory. I pitched ten innings against that great lineup-Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Elston Howard, Joe Pepitone, and the rest-and gave up just a couple unearned runs. Struck out 13. It was probably the greatest game of my life to that point, but we won it only because McCarver, all of twenty-two years old at the time, hit a three-run homer in the top of the tenth. The photo shows us in the clubhouse afterward, with me puckering up to give Tim-looking sharp in his crew cut, I might add-a big kiss on the cheek.
Of course, having a relationship like that left me at liberty to give him hell about anything and everything. At the top of the list was his throwing. In addition to being a fine hitter, McCarver was a terrific receiver and the best I've ever known at thinking with his pitcher; but he couldn't throw a lick. And yet, when a fast runner reached first base, he would invariably plod out to the mound, knowing I hated that, and say, "All right, now, give me a shot at him." I'd laugh and say, "Tim, I had a shot at the guy and didn't get him. What do you thinkyou're gonna do?" Or, "I don't have time to be watching him for you. And you're not gonna throw him out anyway." The visit almost always ended with, "Just get the hell back there and catch."
So imagine my surprise when, on the first pitch to Kaline-a swinging strike on a low fastball-McCarver threw out Stanley trying to steal second base. Quick release, right on the money to Javier. Stanley got up and kicked the bag on his way to the dugout. Loved it. Go get 'em, Tim!
* * *
LIKE ME, KALINE had broken into the headlines as a high school basketball player. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Baltimore, he'd been the first one in his family to finish high school. But while I took my basketball game to Creighton University, Kaline signed with the Tigers for enough money to make him a "bonus baby," which meant that, according to the rules of the day, he had to stick with the big-league team for two years. In most instances, bonus babies learned the game by watching the veterans for those two years, maybe got to the plate from time to time, when it didn't matter much, or tossed a few meaningless innings to get the general sense of it, and were then packed off to the minors to get started on their careers. Kaline never made it to the minor leagues. By his second season, he was Detroit's starting right fielder. That was the year before he won the batting title by hitting .340.
In 1968, notwithstanding his broken arm and limited playing time, he once again led the Tigers in hitting. It was only .287, but .301 got Yastrzemski the batting crown that season. Kaline also hit enough home runs in '68 to pass Hank Greenberg as the team's all-time leader. Willie Horton said he regarded Kaline as the club's Abraham Lincoln.
I was pretty sure that Lincoln couldn't catch up with my four-seamer, and was interested to see how Kaline played out in that respect. For all his accomplishments, he was a batter I intended to challenge. Not because of his age, necessarily, or his health, and certainly not out of overconfidence in the matchup. It was because he was right-handed.
For the most part, I didn't fret too much over right-handed hitters. I made an exception for Henry Aaron, and eventually settled for showing him curves or off-speed sliders and letting him smash the ball against our shortstop's shins. But Mays, Clemente, Banks ... I'm not saying those guys couldn't and wouldn't hurt me now and again; it's just that I had more to worry about from Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell, Billy Williams, or even a left-handed annoyance like Ron Fairly or Willie Davis. Ed Kranepool, for crying out loud.
The right-left dynamic is an old, familiar story. It's one of the principles behind platoons and pinch hitters. I guess it's a matter, for the most part, of a speeding baseball being easier to step into and hit when it's moving toward you rather than away from you; approaching from right in front of your eyes instead of the back side of your head. In my case, though, there was an additional factor. My philosophy of pitching was predicated on the outside corner. With a right-handed hitter at the plate, the outside corner was my glove side. With a left-handed hitter, it was my ball side. I simply had better control to the glove side. Much better. Against a right-handed hitter, I could pitch on my terms. Against a lefty, it was an ongoing negotiation.
So Kaline would be seeing fastballs to start with. After getting ahead of him with one-that was my usual MO-and enjoying the sight of the base runner being wiped out by McCarver's throw, I was back to the windup and energized. That called for another fastball; but my command of the corner failed me again. Low and away. So low and away that McCarver let it skip by and grabbed a new ball from the umpire, Tom Gorman.
Apparently, Tim had seen enough of the fastball for the time being. I was more stubborn than that, and, as always, expected him to be in my head. He usually was; but not this time. I shook him off. Actually, it wasn't a shake-off as much as a little turn of the head and raising of the eyes, a "Huh? You want that?" It always surprised me when McCarver didn't call for the pitch I was intending to throw. Once, with the bases loaded, I started into my windup as Tim put down his sign, and when I saw it-and it wasn't what I'd anticipated-I was so discombobulated that I balked in a run. I'd learned to take it slower and let him try a different finger. He complied, I nodded, the four-seamer came in above the belt, and Kaline fouled it back.
Now I was ready for McCarver's slider. I was so enthused about it, in fact, and so eager for a big, sharp break that would overmatch the Tigers' icon and put the rest of them on the defensive, that I overthrew the damn thing, high, ball two. I hadn't found my groove yet. Hadn't found my slider, either. That wouldn't do.
I gave it another shot. It was my best slider so far-not the curveball that Curt Gowdy called-darting to the outside corner and dropping to the knee. Kaline swung at it, my teammates headed for the dugout, and Tim rolled the ball back for Denny McLain.
* * *
THE NIGHT BEFORE game one, while I was taking it easy at my summer home in St. Louis with my wife (at the time), Charline, and older daughter, Renee, who was playing hooky from her school in Omaha, Denny McLain was at a local nightclub entertaining, as he often did-when he wasn't bowling (at one point, he evidently averaged over 200 in several leagues) or flying his plane to Las Vegas-on the organ. His selections included "Sweet Georgia Brown," which he dedicated to the former Globetrotter whom he'd be opposing the following afternoon.
It was hard for me to imagine the pace he kept up. I suppose that explained why he drank up to twenty bottles of Pepsi a day and kept a glass of it on his nightstand. McLain, it seemed, never slowed down, and he had no intention of doing so when the extra-long season was over. He had a two-week Vegas gig all lined for just after the Series, sharing a lounge with Shecky Greene. While he was dazzling the audience with "The Girl from Ipanema," I'd be tinkering on our house in Omaha, putting model cars together, listening to jazz records, and maybe strumming a few easy chords on my ukulele. We were, needless to say, different. McLain wore a mink coat in the minor leagues. I didn't have mink-coat money until I'd won the seventh game of a World Series. McLain had a phone in his car. He hustled people on the golf course. He hung around with Glen Campbell and Tommy Smothers. If he was being interviewed and the reporter's pen ran out of ink, Denny would hand him another one.
For all of that, there were a few similarities between McLain and me. We'd both grown up in the Midwest; Denny was from the Chicago area. We'd both had baseball drilled into us by strong family members-in my case, my older brother Josh; in his, his father. We were both right-handed power pitchers. We both liked to throw our fastballs up in the strike zone. But while McLain craved winning, I don't believe he detested losing-or giving up a run-nearly as much as I did. As great as he was in 1968, McLain led the American League in home runs allowed for the third straight year, and getting taken out of the ballpark never seemed to faze him. He purposely let Mickey Mantle hit one.
That was the occasion of his 31st win. It was the eighth inning, the pennant had been clinched, and the Tigers were up 6-1. Mantle, at the time, was tied with Jimmie Foxx for third place on the major-league home run list, behind Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. Mickey was a favorite of his, and McLain had told the Tigers' catcher, Jim Price, to alert him that the ball would be floating up there soft and fat. After lobbing up a cookie on the first pitch, which Mantle, reluctant to believe what he'd heard, just gawked at, McLain motioned with his hand that another one like it would follow. Mantle fouled it off, then backed out of the batter's box and stared at McLain, who indicated that one more was coming. Mantle crushed that one into the upper deck. I liked Mickey, too-who didn't?-but I couldn't conceive of any possible circumstance or sentiment that would persuade me to lay one in there, with generosity aforethought, for him or anyone else. I made the comment at the time that I would drop my pants on the mound before I'd defer that way to an opposing player. It was simply not in my DNA. Home runs, literally-along with losing-kept me up at night.
I suspect that some of Denny's teammates questioned the Mantle incident. They questioned a lot of things involving McLain. It was public knowledge that they had issues with what they perceived as the special treatment he received from Mayo Smith and the Tigers. From their perspective, McLain wasn't held to the team rules that applied to everyone else. While the rest of the club traveled together, McLain often flew his private plane. He regularly left the ballpark early after pitching, and the other players might not see him again until a couple hours before his next start. Once, after McLain had beaten the Yankees on a two-run homer by Kaline-whose style, as opposed to McLain's, was to not concern himself with style-the writers crowded around the self-promoting pitcher, as usual, and one of them remarked to Kaline, sitting alone, that his big blow must have been a mirage, since nobody was asking him about it. "No," Kaline replied, "it's just that I'm around all the time. You don't get a chance to talk to Denny much."
That was pretty much the way I'd have responded to a guy like McLain-with a kind of edgy humor. I didn't know him well, of course, but from what I could piece together, he reminded me a bit of Dick Allen, who would later be my teammate for one season. Allen showed up late for ball games and spring training, and he didn't jump through the same hoops that everybody else did, but I had no problem with him because, like McLain, he delivered in a big way. Great players can be rare birds, and sometimes you just have to let them do their own thing. When Dick Allen drove in 100 runs for us, I was damn glad to have him on the ball club.
McLain's lifestyle would ultimately catch up with him, in the form of suspensions-one relating to gambling, another to carrying a handgun on a team flight-and, later, jail, on a variety of charges. He was out of the big leagues by the time he was twenty-nine. But in the late sixties, he was as celebrated, and certainly as successful, as any pitcher in the game, averaging nearly 22 victories a year over a period of five seasons.
In 1968, McLain had been not only his league's Cy Young Award winner-an honor he'd claim again the next year-but its MVP, as well. We had that in common.
* * *
THE AMERICAN LEAGUE had nobody quite like Lou Brock. Oakland's shortstop, Bert Campaneris, was a premier base stealer and an excellent player, but he didn't create the ruckus that Brock did in the course of a ball game, or score as many runs, or hit for as much average or power. Lou was special, and as the Red Sox found out in 1967, he was extra-special under pressure. The aspect of his nature that allowed him to steal so many bases, in addition to his obvious speed, was the instinct he possessed to take advantage of every moment and opportunity; and there was no moment or opportunity like a World Series. Brock had devastated Boston: a .414 average, two doubles, a home run, and a record seven stolen bases. In game one alone, he piled up four hits and a pair of steals. I was happy to have the Corvette that came with winning the Series MVP award-even though I'd sold the one I received in 1964-but truthfully I thought Brock deserved it more. So did a radio station in St. Louis, and it presented him a car of his own choosing. That, too, was an opportunity Lou took full advantage of, requesting a swanky Cadillac Eldorado.
The trade that brought Brock to St. Louis, in June of 1964, was a turning point in Cardinal history. At the time, though, I frankly didn't care for it. In Brock's few years with the Cubs, I hadn't found it difficult to get him out, even though he was a left-handed hitter. He seemed tentative, and looked the same in the outfield. The Cardinals were in the market for an outfielder to replace Stan Musial, who retired at the end of the 1963 season, but I suspected that the deal would cause more problems than it solved. It involved three players each way, and included, from our side, Ernie Broglio, an accomplished right-handed pitcher who was my age and had, like me, won 18 games the year before, with a better earned run average than mine. Broglio was considered our ace. With his departure, I inherited that role, and while I didn't believe the trade was good for the ball club, I appreciated what it did for my confidence.
With Johnny Keane as the manager, the Cardinals, in fact, had a way of bringing out the best in promising, underachieving, mishandled players. Lou, a country kid from Arkansas who had played college ball at Southern University, was a very smart, very sensitive guy with a tendency to think and worry himself into knots. He was also enormously strong. Just before the Polo Grounds were torn down, he'd become the first player ever to hit a ball over the 483-foot sign in dead center field. But even so, the Cubs had wanted him to slap the ball around the diamond, like Richie Ashburn of the Phillies, and get on base for Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, and Ron Santo. Brock didn't steal many bases in Chicago. Keane, however, urged him to shake off his burdens and cut loose, both at bat and on the base paths. In the exhilaration of just being himself, Lou energized our club almost immediately, batting .348 the rest of the season.
In 1968, he had started slowly before getting it together to lead the National League in doubles, triples, and of course stolen bases for the third straight year on the way to eight out of nine. And now, as stepped onto the big stage to lead off the bottom of the first inning, I fully expected Brock-the best money player I'd ever seen-to make Denny McLain miserable.
McLain, pitching in short sleeves, wore his cap high on his head, with the bill pulled down like an awning over his eyes, and while my delivery was fast and furious, his was deliberate and smooth. He raised his hands behind his head, lifted his left leg, straightened it to the height of his eyes, and delivered the ball-most of the time-from directly over the top.
Brock was a first-pitch hitter, but McLain's opening fastball was too high for his liking or Tom Gorman's. There had been speculation, going in, that McLain might be at a disadvantage with a National League umpire behind the plate. National League umps wore their chest protectors under their coats, and they squatted down low, peering from the side of the catcher's head. Pitches around the upper edge of the strike zone were likely to appear high from their perspective. American League umpires wore bigger chest protectors outside their coats and stood straighter, directly behind and looking over the catcher, which made them more sympathetic to high strikes. Gorman was a National League ump, and McLain was a high-ball pitcher.
The theory made sense, but I didn't feel sorry for McLain. I depended on the high strike, too, and besides that, my history with Tom Gorman wasn't the happiest. There was one particular game in which he'd been giving me a hard time-a really hard time-and when I stepped up to bat I brought along an attitude, which didn't improve when the first pitch came in high, I let it pass, and Gorman said, "Strike one."
I said, "Tom, that ball was high."
He didn't respond. Then, when the next pitch resembled the first: "Strike two."
"Tom," I said, "that pitch was high, and if you're going to call it a strike when I'm batting I want the same pitch when I'm out there on the mound."
He said, "Yeah, well, go ahead and take it again."
I swung at the next one, returned to my seat, and when I went back to the mound he still wasn't giving me the high strike.
For the most part, though, the National League strike zone didn't trouble me. The way my fastball rode, it appeared to rise, and hitters tended to swing at it. I didn't need to count on the umpire, and I figured that McLain wouldn't, either. The Cardinals were a high-fastball-hitting team.
Behind in the count, McLain surprisingly followed with a curveball-a pitch he'd folded into his repertoire a couple years before-and Brock was out in front of it. Then a fastball buzzed inside, just off Lou's hip. When the high fastball returned, up around the shoulders, Brock chopped it to Stanley, which seemed like a good place to go. With Lou running, a bouncing ball to shortstop was never a certain out. But Stanley showed no signs of being a center fielder, and his throw reached Norm Cash in the nick of time.
On the air, Harry Caray wondered if Brock had purposely tested Stanley right off the bat. Believe me, Lou Brock would never hit a ball directly at anybody. We couldn't even get him to bunt.
* * *
FOR ALL OUR problems scoring runs, I thought the Cardinals had the best one-two hitters in the business. Curt Flood was the soul of our ball club. I might be a little biased, because Curt was my best friend on the team, but in my estimation he was the quintessential Cardinal-intelligent, funny, caring, selfless, and a hell of a player.
His reputation had been built mostly on speed and his brilliant defense in center field, but Curt was a consistent .300 hitter who, in 1968, had led the team at .301. Even more impressive, he was able to do that while consistently drawing out the count to give Brock a chance to steal second base, often putting himself in a two-strike hole. Curt was also very adept at moving Lou over to third by hitting the ball to the right side, and always willing to do it, even though it typically meant giving himself up. It was a tremendous feat to bang out 200 hits-he led the league with 211 in 1964-while doing all the team-first things required of a good two-hole hitter with a great base stealer in front of him. He made Brock better, made the hitters behind him better, and made the rest of us better, too.
I believe that Curt's mastery of situational baseball actually made him a more proficient hitter overall. Although he batted right-handed and crowded the plate, a high percentage of his hits fell into right field, and a high percentage of those came on inside pitches, which is uncommon. He had a knack for pulling the handle through an inside strike-they call it an inside-out swing-to angle the bat and hit the ball where it hadn't been pitched.
Hitting to the opposite field was a skill I'd always admired. I don't know if Flood learned it from Dick Groat, a former teammate who excelled at it, but they used the same method-hands in, so the bat head doesn't get out in front of the ball. At one point, Groat, at my request, walked me through the process. When I posed the same question to Stan Musial, though, the reply was a little different. Stan wasn't much for explaining. I happened to be standing behind the batting cage one day when Musial, the greatest left-handed hitter in the history of the National League, was in the box being Musial, and I took the opportunity to ask, "Stan, how do you hit the ball to left field that well?"
He looked at me, turned back to the pitcher, and said, "Like this!" Whap. Whap. Whap. About five line drives in a row, bullets to left field. Stan couldn't tell you how he did what he did-he'd just show you and laugh.
Flood was also unusually good at checking his swing. He'd often take a short, pretty good hack at the ball, then quickly-and Curt was quick-pull the bat back behind his head. More times than not, the umpire would call it a ball. And that's what happened on McLain's first pitch to him, a high curveball. Bill Freehan, the Tigers' catcher, didn't even ask Gorman to consult the first-base umpire about whether Flood had offered at the ball. It wasn't the custom then. In today's game, that would have been strike one.
Curt took a bigger swing at McLain's next delivery, the calling-card high fastball, and came up empty. When the same pitch came again, he foul-tipped it off Freehan's mitt.
With two strikes now, McLain paced around a bit, his head bowed in thought, fidgeted, stalled, wound up, and dropped his elbow down for a sidearm fastball, his first of the day. It was a pitch that had recently come into its own for him. This one, however, missed high-by National League standards, anyway-and perhaps inside, which surprised me. I would never throw a sidearm pitch inside to a right-handed batter, because he'd have a tendency to pull away from anything that came out of that arm slot, leaving him vulnerable on the outside corner and dangerous on the inner half. I dropped down infrequently, because my arm wasn't conditioned that way-even when I took ground balls in infield practice, which I liked to do between starts, I'd make sure to throw over the top, to loosen my shoulder-but when I did, it was always to a right-hander, and I always put the ball on the outer part of the plate. Or at least attempted to. When I succeeded, the batter rarely, if ever, reached it.
McLain doubled down on the same angle, located the pitch in the same place, and Flood fouled it off to the right. When he came sidearm for the third straight time, finally zeroing in on the outside corner, Curt lifted the ball into the shadows of right field, where Kaline, drifting to his left through the hot dog wrappers, grabbed it easily for the second out.
* * *
WHEN THE CARDINALS traded for Roger Maris prior to the 1967 season, he was considered to be washed up, at thirty-two, and hard to get along with. We found him decidedly neither.
He certainly wasn't the same hitter he'd been in 1961, when he won the American League MVP award for the second year in a row and broke Babe Ruth's single-season home run record with 61. Age and injuries and New York had beaten him down, sapped his power, and perhaps made him a little grumpy-toward the end of his time with the Yankees he had purchased a plastic hand with the middle finger raised and placed it next to his locker-but power was a commodity we were used to doing without and grumpy was a quality close to my heart. In our clubhouse, Roger fit right in. More important, he was a team player and a fundamentally sound one.
He was also a pleasant guy who took Mike Shannon off our hands. I say that in jest, because Mike was eminently likable, but he was in his own world-we called him Moon Man-and we found it interesting that Maris, so hardened and down-to-earth, would hit it off so well with him. Shannon simply made Roger smile, which is something he hadn't done a lot of in New York. Contrary to what we'd read about him in the papers, Maris wasn't chronically miserable. (Whitey Ford had said that, if he had to put together a cabinet, Roger would be his Secretary of Grievances.) He was just a plainspoken, chain-smoking North Dakotan who was happy to be away from high-rise apartments and the media capital of the universe; and happy to finally be happy.
By World Series time, Maris had already announced that he'd be retiring after the season. His two years with us had been much admired-the man never threw to the wrong base-but modest statistically. Roger was one of the best I'd seen at pulling an outside pitch, a talent that no doubt had served him well at Yankee Stadium, with its short right field. It would have brought him a good many home runs at old Busch Stadium, as well-if you ask me, that right-field pavilion was a menace to society-but the round, cookie-cutter new version, where we moved in 1966, played more fairly, which is to say that it was more of a pitcher's park. Plus, Roger's wrist bothered him.
When Maris spoke, everybody listened, and late in the year, as Detroit was wrapping up the American League pennant and McLain was winning his 30th game, he had said something unexpected that stuck with us. He told us that McLain might not be the Tiger pitcher we really had to worry about. He thought the guy who might give us the most trouble was their heavyset left-hander, Mickey Lolich.
Roger hadn't really crushed McLain in their previous encounters, but he looked confident when he settled into the batter's box with two outs. McLain started him with an overhand curve that swooped toward the inside corner, belt high. It was a pitch that I suspect Maris had deposited on the far side of many a right-field fence. He slashed at it and sent the ball in that direction, but times had changed. The park was big, the wrist was bad, and there was an Anheuser-Busch distributorship waiting for Roger in Florida. Kaline took a couple steps forward, out of the shadows, and brought the first inning to a close.
Copyright © 2015 by Bob Gibson and Lonnie Wheeler
