The Saga of Sudden Sam by Sam McDowell & Martin Gitlin

Author:Sam McDowell & Martin Gitlin [McDowell, Sam & Gitlin, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538156414
Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
Published: 2021-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

11

A SOUR BITE OF THE BIG APPLE

Gabe Paul had not turned any cartwheels over my behavior and downfall in Cleveland when he was general manager of the Indians. I had done nothing in San Francisco to convince anyone in baseball that my life or career were headed back in the right direction. Yet as spring was about to turn to summer in 1973, I reunited with Paul, who along with Yankees manager Ralph Houk believed I remained viable enough to stick in the rotation during the early stages of a pennant race. Go figure.

I have always suspected that the Giants talked Paul into taking me back with the claim that he had knowingly traded them damaged goods after the 1971 season. I barely spoke with Paul after the deal was consummated between the Giants and Yankees. He told me on the phone that I was getting a chance to start over, gave me some details about meeting the Yankees in Oakland, and that was it. I never said a word after Hello. And I did not talk to him after I arrived because Paul did not hang around the clubhouse. New Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was far more visible to the players. (Steinbrenner had been on the verge of buying the Indians in 1972, and many have speculated whether the club would have remained terrible for another two decades if the deal had gone through.)

The Yankees did not require a sizzling start to embark on a battle for first place in what was an incredibly balanced Eastern Division. They were only a few games over.500 but a half-game out of first place when I arrived. The club made it easy for me. It required just a short trip across the bay from San Francisco to Oakland to join them for a series against the Athletics. And I showed up drunk.

I had flown to Oakland to join the club but remained in my hotel room guzzling for three days rather than going to the ballpark. Among my curious visitors was new teammate Ron Blomberg, who that year earned the distinction as the first designated hitter in baseball history—the American League adopted the designated hitter for that season, and he happened to be the first to come to the plate. Blomberg could scarcely believe his eyes when he entered. My room was littered with liquor bottles and beer cans.

He wrote about that experience in his 2021 book that revolved around his relationship with legendary Yankees catcher Thurman Munson, who was killed in 1979 practicing take offs and landings in a plane he’d bought to fly to his beloved hometown of Canton, Ohio. Blomberg opined that I threw harder than Nolan Ryan, no small feat given that the Express fired fastballs consistently at or above 100 mph.

That is not what Blomberg remembered most about my ill-fated stint in the Big Apple. He related a story in his book about he and Munson spotting me wearing a fluorescent-orange suit and sleeping drunk in a gutter on Boyleston Street at 1:30 a.

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