Read Online Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) by Jim Bouton - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jim Bouton
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would you?” Fritz said he wouldn’t, so they put him in with Dooley Womack, young pitcher. He was three months younger than I.
The Yankees thought I was a bad influence on Fritz. They had some funny ideas about bad influence. What I did bad was talk to newspapermen and talk around the clubhouse about things that were on my mind, politics sometimes, and religion. That’s breaking the rules. The word was around: Don’t talk to the newspapermen. Hell, baseball
needs
the newspapermen. So I broke a rule. But suppose you break the rules about staying up late and getting drunk. That’s okay. It may hurt the team, but it’s better than talking to newspapermen. You figure it.
As for teaching Peterson to do the wrong things, the only thing I ever taught him was how to throw that change-up he uses so effectively. And he still enjoys giving me the credit.
We were sitting around the clubhouse and I asked Sal the Barber about the days when he pitched for the Giants against the Dodgers. He said yeah, he’d never forget those days. “You know, it’s a funny thing,” he said. “When I pitched against the Dodgers I didn’t care if it was the last game I ever pitched. I really hated that club. If I could’ve gotten that feeling every time I pitched I’d have been a lot better pitcher.”
I’ll have that feeling at least a couple of times this year. When I pitch against the Yankees.
MARCH
6
Steve Hovley sidled over to me in the outfield and said, “To a pitcher a base hit is the perfect example of negative feedback.”
Sal Maglie said he hadn’t seen me working on my breaking ball, and he’s right, because I haven’t. So tomorrow I’ll have to work on that too. Damn, I can’t believe the games are starting so fast. Tomorrow’s the first game and I don’t even know who’s pitching. Still, it will be kind of exciting to see how we do. I guess starting out with a new team is sort of like setting out to discover America. Sort of.
Gary Bell is nicknamed Ding Dong. Of course. What’s interesting about it is that “Ding Dong” is what the guys holler when somebody gets hit in the cup. The cups are metal inserts that fit inside the jock strap, and when a baseball hits one it’s called ringing the bell, which rhymes with hell, which is what it hurts like. It’s funny, even if you’re in the outfield, or in the dugout, no matter how far away, when a guy gets it in the cup you can hear it. Ding Dong.
At a pre-workout meeting Joe Schultz told us to learn the signs or it would cost us money. This is a lot different from Houk’s theory. Houk’s method was to be as nice to us as possible and if you missed a sign he would alibi for you. You could miss them all year and he would never get angry. I guess he figured that someday you’d come to like him enough to start paying attention to the signs. But the Yankees sure missed a lot of signs. Even when we were winning.
MARCH
7
Okay, boys and girls, tomorrow is my birthday and I’ll be thirty years old. I don’t feel like thirty. I look like I’m in my early twenties and I feel like I’m in my early twenties. My arm, however, is over a hundred years old.
Had our first spring-training game, the first real test for the shiny new Seattle Pilots. Today was the day. This was it. For keeps. The big one. Against Cleveland. Greg Goossen was the designated pinch hitter under the experimental rule that allows one player to come to bat all during the game without playing in the field. “Are they trying to tell me something about my hands?” Goossen went around saying. “Are they trying to tell me something about my glove?” And after that he became the first Seattle Pilot to say, “Play me or trade me.”
I was watching the game today for some signs of what kind of team we’re going to have this year. There were lots of them, but I’m still not sure. Like we gave up two runs in the first inning on the first four pitches and I thought, “Oh, oh. Move over, Mets.” But
The Yankees thought I was a bad influence on Fritz. They had some funny ideas about bad influence. What I did bad was talk to newspapermen and talk around the clubhouse about things that were on my mind, politics sometimes, and religion. That’s breaking the rules. The word was around: Don’t talk to the newspapermen. Hell, baseball
needs
the newspapermen. So I broke a rule. But suppose you break the rules about staying up late and getting drunk. That’s okay. It may hurt the team, but it’s better than talking to newspapermen. You figure it.
As for teaching Peterson to do the wrong things, the only thing I ever taught him was how to throw that change-up he uses so effectively. And he still enjoys giving me the credit.
We were sitting around the clubhouse and I asked Sal the Barber about the days when he pitched for the Giants against the Dodgers. He said yeah, he’d never forget those days. “You know, it’s a funny thing,” he said. “When I pitched against the Dodgers I didn’t care if it was the last game I ever pitched. I really hated that club. If I could’ve gotten that feeling every time I pitched I’d have been a lot better pitcher.”
I’ll have that feeling at least a couple of times this year. When I pitch against the Yankees.
MARCH
6
Steve Hovley sidled over to me in the outfield and said, “To a pitcher a base hit is the perfect example of negative feedback.”
Sal Maglie said he hadn’t seen me working on my breaking ball, and he’s right, because I haven’t. So tomorrow I’ll have to work on that too. Damn, I can’t believe the games are starting so fast. Tomorrow’s the first game and I don’t even know who’s pitching. Still, it will be kind of exciting to see how we do. I guess starting out with a new team is sort of like setting out to discover America. Sort of.
Gary Bell is nicknamed Ding Dong. Of course. What’s interesting about it is that “Ding Dong” is what the guys holler when somebody gets hit in the cup. The cups are metal inserts that fit inside the jock strap, and when a baseball hits one it’s called ringing the bell, which rhymes with hell, which is what it hurts like. It’s funny, even if you’re in the outfield, or in the dugout, no matter how far away, when a guy gets it in the cup you can hear it. Ding Dong.
At a pre-workout meeting Joe Schultz told us to learn the signs or it would cost us money. This is a lot different from Houk’s theory. Houk’s method was to be as nice to us as possible and if you missed a sign he would alibi for you. You could miss them all year and he would never get angry. I guess he figured that someday you’d come to like him enough to start paying attention to the signs. But the Yankees sure missed a lot of signs. Even when we were winning.
MARCH
7
Okay, boys and girls, tomorrow is my birthday and I’ll be thirty years old. I don’t feel like thirty. I look like I’m in my early twenties and I feel like I’m in my early twenties. My arm, however, is over a hundred years old.
Had our first spring-training game, the first real test for the shiny new Seattle Pilots. Today was the day. This was it. For keeps. The big one. Against Cleveland. Greg Goossen was the designated pinch hitter under the experimental rule that allows one player to come to bat all during the game without playing in the field. “Are they trying to tell me something about my hands?” Goossen went around saying. “Are they trying to tell me something about my glove?” And after that he became the first Seattle Pilot to say, “Play me or trade me.”
I was watching the game today for some signs of what kind of team we’re going to have this year. There were lots of them, but I’m still not sure. Like we gave up two runs in the first inning on the first four pitches and I thought, “Oh, oh. Move over, Mets.” But
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