The Wrong Stuff by Bill Lee

Author:Bill Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307422491
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2009-03-09T04:00:00+00:00

7

I should have known that 1976 was going to be a bad year, when I spit over the Great Wall of China, and the wind blew it back in my face. Another tip-off should have been provided by Tiant’s wig. Luis had bought a rug over the winter. In the past, with his shiny bald head, he had resembled a cuddly Buddha, but, when he reported to spring training, that wig made him look more like a two-toned Mercedes.

Darrell Johnson had done his best to trade me during the off-season. Failing to do that, he instead traded Moret to the Atlanta Braves for left-handed relief pitcher Tom House. When the deal was announced, Johnson told a reporter, “Lee’s lucky he’s still here. He’s like a cat. He’s been falling out of trees all year and landing on his feet.” When that quote was relayed to me, I said that was a pretty witty line for Darrell, and I wondered who had been writing his material for him.

The Moret trade was no surprise. Roger was a good pitcher, but he was uncomfortable in the Boston organization. He felt misunderstood and mistreated. The players called him Wrong Way. I don’t know why. He was usually headed the right way, but he did have a habit of falling asleep while going there. He did that once while driving his car. He was doing eighty when he nodded out. The car slipped under a rock, tearing off part of his roof and almost killing Roger in the process. Only the fact that he was so completely relaxed saved his life. He did miss that evening’s game, spending most of the night in a local hospital. The next day, the front office read the riot act to him. I’ll never forget how that stunned him. He sat in front of his locker, shaking his head, saying, “They keep talking about fining me, or suspending me, or trading me to another club. But nobody has asked me how I am or what the X-rays showed.” That really blew him away.

I could never figure out how the collective brain of the Red Sox front office worked. If it worked at all. It was one of the great unsolved mysteries of my life. Immediately after coming within one run of the world championship, management started taking the team apart. Moret went to Atlanta, Beniquez, who had played sensationally in ’75, went to Texas for Fergie Jenkins. And Carbo was traded in mid-season to Milwaukee for Bobby Darwin. We had been the deepest team in the majors—that’s one of the reasons we came so close to winning it all—and the first thing they did was get rid of our depth. Petrocelli was fazed out at third and eventually replaced by Butch Hobson. Hobson, a rookie who had graduated from our farm system, made some great plays when he first came up, but his arm was terrible. Not weak, it just lacked accuracy. He certainly was an aggressive player, sometimes too aggressive.

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