Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) by Bouton Jim

Author:Bouton, Jim [Bouton, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780795323232
Publisher: Sports Publishing LLC
Published: 2012-03-20T05:00:00+00:00

JULY

12

Today Baney, who’s still here, asked me if I was throwing my knuckleball all the time now and I said that indeed I was. “Sal didn’t like that pitch this spring,” Baney said. “I guess he thought you were throwing it too much. I remember one time you gave up a homer on it and Sal said to Joe, ‘Now you see? That’s the pitch that’s going to get him into trouble.’”

I said that was interesting.

“Well, if Sal didn’t want you to throw it, and if you were getting hit, why did you keep throwing the knuckleball?” Baney said.

“My wife told me to,” I said.

“And there’s something I’ve always wondered about,” Baney said. “When you go to spring training with a club, even a minor-league club, they always tell you to work on something. Then you get hit and they get mad, no matter what you’re working on. So I still don’t know what to do in the spring—work on something or try to get the hitters out.”

Welcome to another club.

I made a terrible mistake today. I was chatting with Fred Talbot and said, “Hey, Fred, by the way, you ever hear from that guy you hit the home run for?”

Fred’s eyes narrowed and he looked mean. “Were you the one who sent that telegram?” he said.

“What telegram?” I said, feeling my stupid face breaking up into a giveaway smile.

Now he was clenching his teeth. “I knew you sent the damn thing,” he said, “and I’m going to get you back for that. I know you sent that paternity suit thing too.”

“Fred, I did not send you the paternity thing,” I said, all injured innocence. “I may have sent you a telegram. I don’t know yet. What did the telegram say?”

And he said: “I’ll get you back. I’m going to get you back on something, and when I do it’s going to involve your wife, your whole family, your friends back home, everybody in the whole damn country.”

After the game Talbot got back at me. It was still so hot that a lot of the guys didn’t want to wait for the bus back to the hotel and grabbed air-conditioned cabs instead. We lined up for them, and when I started to get into one as the last man, Talbot, who was behind me in line, leaped in ahead of me and said, “Take the next cab, you Communist.”

Got into the ballgame today. Pitched two-and-two-thirds innings and gave up two hits, one of them a tremendous double by a former teammate of mine at Western Michigan, Frank Quilici. We lost this one 11–1 and the Fat Kid hit another. The Seattle staff is impartial in the home-run race between Killebrew and Reggie Jackson. They both kill us.

Too bad McNertney didn’t make the All-Star team instead of Bill Freehan of the Tigers. Freehan isn’t having anywhere near the kind of year McNertney is. This shows that the players are voting on reputation rather than current performance.

Also, I think Mayo Smith should

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