The Wrong Stuff Read online

  My voicing of these views in public, I discovered, earned me a lot of enemies in the media. Especially among the older writers. They wanted to know how I had the nerve to offer opinions on issues outside the provinces of sports. I was told to shut up and play ball. I paid no attention to them, feeling that all of us, even ballplayers, had an obligation to work for the good of humankind. My critics countered that I was being irresponsible, claiming that people would follow me blindly simply because I was a celebrity. I felt if that was the case, it was a sad thing. I didn’t believe my views would, or should, carry more weight with the public just because I made my living playing baseball. If that was the case, however, it was due to society’s faulty view, not mine. I also knew one other thing. If instead of working against, say, the nuclear arms buildup, I had joined the “America, Love It or Leave It” crowd, those same writers who criticized me would have made me out to be a pitching patriot. It wasn’t the sight of a ballplayer who voiced his opinions that bothered them. It was the fact that those opinions were so drastically opposed to their own beliefs.

  My teammates paid little attention to anything I said. As professional ballplayers, all they cared about was performance on the field. Once the 1975 season got into full swing, nobody could complain about our work between the lines. We were cooking.

  It never fails to knock me out when people come up and talk about the year we won the pennant. Everyone tries to pinpoint a certain game as the most critical one, and they want to know what I was thinking on such and such a pitch. The answer to the latter question was always the same: “Everything but the game.” My mind spins off on tangents all the time. When pitching, the game becomes an adjunct to some current fantasy. My mind drifts away and comes back only if I’m hit hard. But if I’m getting people out, I lock into a flow, allowing me to coast through my random thoughts. For example, it may appear to the casual observer that I’m pitching to Reggie Jackson with the bases loaded. But in my head I’m having an audience with a guru in the Himalayas. That keeps pressure off of me. Of course, a line drive off my kneecap will bring me back in a hurry, but I didn’t get hit by many of those. This mental state contributed greatly to my success. Hitters couldn’t guess what I was going to throw, because I never had a clue. That gave me an advantage over them that I wouldn’t have had if I had been a slave to an orthodox thinking pattern. It was hell on my catchers, though.

  I also don’t recall any crucial games that season. The whole year flew by in a rapid blur, with one game running into another. What I do remember is Wise, Tiant, Moret, and Willoughby pitching their nuts off, and Lynn and Rice playing as if they were on a mission from God. And a whole team pulling together, whipping ass on an entire league. We were awesome.

  That was Freddy Lynn’s golden year, but Burleson might have been our least expendable player. Shortstop was the one position our depth couldn’t cover. We had no one to replace Rick if he had gotten hurt. Luckily, he only missed four games that year. He was a scrapper. I would load the bases, and he would trot over to the mound, saying, “Get the ball down and make them hit it to me. I’ll turn two on the sons of bitches.” The way he said it, I felt that if I failed, I would have been in physical danger. The Rooster had a menacing air about him.

  I had seen him lose control of himself once in Minesota. A fan in the lobby of our hotel had made an obscene remark about our club. It was something quaint, like, “The Red Sox eat my dick.” Rick tore into him, yelling at the guy as he crumbled to the ground in fear. It was devastating. I thought the guy was going to shit all over himself. I finally pulled Burleson off, saying, “Rick, I don’t think the guy can hear you,” and I’m sure I was right. You could have blown a trumpet in the guy’s ear and he wouldn’t have noticed. He was too busy watching his life flash in front of his eyes. Rick turned to me, and said,

  “Jesus, Bill. I’m sorry. I just winked out on him.” Thank God Burleson filtered most of his aggression through his play on the field. I remember thinking years later, when the Iranians were holding our embassy people captive, that instead of the Marines we should have sent Burleson and Petrocelli over there. They would have come back in forty-eight hours with the hostages, the Ayatollah, and a couple of million barrels of oil.

  Those people who disliked my speaking out on issues had a field day when I took a stand on busing in Boston. None of them realized that that was precisely what I wanted them to do.

  The Red Sox had been playing well up until mid-June, when we hit a bad streak just as the Yankees were making their move. New York had been favored by the odds-makers to win the pennant, and when they started to come on, many reporters took the opportunity to write their “How Will Boston Blow It This Time?” columns. On June 23 we got whipped by the Indians, 11–3. The fans were all over us that evening, booing the club as if it had just lost the pennant. Yaz had a particularly bad game. After striking out in the eighth inning, he slammed his bat into the bat rack and bruised his left hand. Minutes after the game ended the writers were on us like vultures, lighting down in our locker room and asking whether or not we thought we could ever recover from such a terrible beating. After asking these and other equally dumb questions, they tried to get to Yaz. Carl had ducked into the trainer’s room—which was off-limits to the press—and wouldn’t come out. He just refused to deal with the bullshit.

  I could understand that, so I created a diversion. Determined to give an insane response to an insane situation, I picked up a trash can and heaved it across the clubhouse. I yelled, “Boston is a horseshit city, a racist city with horseshit fans and horseshit writers. The fans boo Yaz when he’s playing his heart out, and they boo Fisk who always gives his all. They are all afraid we’re going to lose their precious little pennant! If the writers and fans in this city want to quit on us, fine. Then they’re quitters. But what can you expect? The only guy with guts in this town in Judge Arthur Garrity!”

  Garrity was the federal judge who had ruled in favor of the compulsory busing of schoolchildren in order to achieve racial integration in the Boston public school system. That was not a popular decision. Minutes after he delivered it, Garrity was being burned in effigy throughout the city. I thought he had done the right thing. But I also knew that by making an issue out of it at this precise moment, I would take the media spotlight off whatever was temporarily ailing us and goad most of the writers into forgetting about Yaz so they could take out after me.

  It worked. For the next couple of days, no one remembered we had even played a game against Cleveland. Instead of reading how we were blowing the pennant, fans were treated to articles about Bill Lee and his big mouth. I got a lot of hate mail over that incident. One of the nicer pieces said, “I thought you were an asshole before, but now I know it.” My favorite letter came from City Councillor Albert “Dapper” O’Neil, a leader of the antibusing movement. The letter was typed on paper bearing his official letterhead. It was the funniest thing I ever read. The typing ran all over the page, the punctuation marks were misplaced, and an easy word like serious was spelled s-e-r-i-l-u-s. The letter accused me of being ignorant, cast severe doubts on my ability as a pitcher, and questioned my manhood. It ended with a postscript asking me if I had the guts to write a reply. I did. I wrote, “Dear Mr. O’Neil, I think you should know that some moron has stolen your stationery and is writing letters to me on it.”

  I had known this was going to be our year when Fisk got hurt and the team didn’t fold. Carlton had been injured for a good part of 1974, and the team collapsed without him. I was partially to blame for his getting hurt in ’75. During an exhibition game against the Mets, I threw a sinker to Joe Torre that was supposed to go down and away, but instead headed down and in. Joe had a funky stroke, and, when he fouled the pitch off, the ball shot off his bat at an odd angle. Fisk, reaching down to get the ball, had his right leg stretched out. From the mound, I could see that one of his nuts was hanging out, pinched between his thigh and his cup. The ball nailed it. Oh, did that make me wince. Carlton went
down as if he’d been shot. He would be unable to play for the first two months of the season. I felt awful about it, but I rationalized that this was my temporary contribution to zero population growth. That accident only fortified my feelings about cups. I didn’t believe in them. I always wore a jock strap, but I never wore a cup. It was one of the reasons I developed such quick hands; I was always able to protect my private parts. The only reason I even wore a jockstrap was to keep my balls in place. I never worried about them getting hit, but I did not, under any circumstances, want them bouncing around while I was trying to pitch.

  With Fisk on the disabled list, Tim McCarver, Bob Montgomery, and Tim Blackwell handled the catching duties. They helped keep us from going under by contributing heavily on defense and holding their own on offense. I saw their performances as evidence that we finally had the bench strength we had always needed.

  McCarver was great. I called him “Old Second Inning,” due to his habit of having to take a dump in the john between the first and second inning of every game. He had the most reliable body clock in the world; we used to set our watches by him. Timmy had been on three pennant winners—and two world champions—with the Cardinals. He was a tremendous addition to our club. He had no arm left, but he possessed an invaluable knowledge of the game and the art of setting hitters up. He was our morale-booster, possessed of an incisive wit that allowed him to put the game in its proper perspective and to pass along constructive criticism in a manner that was well received. He was also a gentleman. You could make the rounds with him at night, secure in the knowledge that the moment you passed out, Timmy would be there to catch you and load you into a cab, sending you safely home.

  McCarver was released after Fisk returned to action. Timmy was hitting .381 when they let him go, but even if he had been hitting .081 it was a bad move. Contenders need veterans like him who accept their role, have the best interests of the club at heart, and can deliver in the pinch. Management figured, “Well, he can’t throw any more, and we’ve got two backup catchers who are younger than he is.” They failed to see the intangible virtues he brought to the team. It wouldn’t be the last time they would make that mistake.

  Lynn and Rice bugged my eyes out the first time I saw them play on a regular basis. I think Freddy had one slump all year. Before it got too severe, several of us took him out for an evening of mayhem and got him ripped. He was yelling and singing, and I ended up carrying him back to our hotel in midtown New York. I opened the door of his room, threw him on the bed, and left him there. The next day, he went four for five. End of slump.

  Freddy was an ebullient kid with an infectious enthusiasm for the game. Rice was his opposite. He was very quiet and a bit surly when he first came up. But that was just a defense. He turned out to be a warm guy who was harboring an unspoken resentment toward the Red Sox front office. He let it out later, accusing the Boston management of not bringing him up sooner because of his color. The Red Sox were something of a racist organization, but I don’t believe color had anything to do with his not being brought up sooner. I think it was a tailoring problem. When he was ready to play in the majors, the club didn’t have a uniform big enough to fit him. Jim was one big, solid piece of muscle. Once, Evans and Carbo were going at each other in right field during batting practice. Evans had said something about Bernie, so Bernie got pissed and tagged him. Bernardo was like that. He was pure oxygen looking for a flame to test the theory of spontaneous combustion. Evans came back with a right hand, and the two of them started wrestling each other. Rice broke it up. He did this by first separating them, picking them up off the ground, and holding them aloft. One in each hand. He then politely asked them to calm down. Instant serenity.

  When Dick Allen retired, Jim inherited his title as the strongest man in the game. I once saw him snap a bat in two. On a checked swing. The head of the bat nearly decapitated the third-base coach. Seeing this, the umpire was quick to rule, “No swing. Ball one. Okay, Jim?” He wasn’t about to risk getting Rice mad because Jim is not of this earth. I think he was raised near a landfill containing nuclear waste and was slowly exposed to radiation. It’s the only possible explanation for his superhuman strength.

  The Yanks caught us briefly in late June, but then we passed them and were never headed. Baltimore started to make their move in the final weeks of the season. In early September we could feel their crab breath on our necks. A Baltimore disk jockey traveled to Kenya, seeking a witch doctor who would cast a spell on us on behalf of the Orioles. The doc did cast the spell, but warned that it would be useless unless the Orioles refrained from consuming meat, candy, and alcohol for the rest of the season. They also had to vow that they would refrain from having sex for twelve hours prior to each game. No wonder they couldn’t catch us. We held them off and clinched the division with a September 27 win over New York. I didn’t have much to do with our stretch drive. My elbow had almost expired, a victim of the designated-hitter rule.

  On August 24, I beat the White Sox for my seventeenth win of the season. I didn’t get another victory the rest of the year. Obviously, I wasn’t destined to win twenty. If I had been, I would have done it that year. Shortly after that win, our pitchers started taking batting practice in preparation for the World Series. There was no DH in the Series back then, and Johnson wanted us to be ready to face live pitching. I loved it. The first time out in the cage, I hit a few home runs and really started hot-dogging it, trying to hit each successive shot a little bit farther. After being held out of the batter’s box for so long, I did not want to leave. The next day my muscles were sore from overswinging, but I paid no attention. I took batting practice again, got jammed by a pitch, and swung too hard. I had hyperextended my arm, tearing a small tendon in my elbow. I was useless for the next six weeks and didn’t completely heal until the World Series started. The injury kept me out of the playoffs against Oakland.

  We took the A’s in three straight, clinching the pennant in Oakland with a 5–3 win. As soon as that game’s final out was made, we went berserk. Mr. Yawkey made his way into our jammed clubhouse and invited all of us to a victory celebration he had already scheduled for that evening. I attended, but I don’t remember very much of it. I got blitzed forty-five minutes after it started and stayed in that condition until we met Cincinnati.

  I was up for the Series. I liked the idea of competing against the best in a forum that allowed small margin for error. That Cincinnati team was the Big Red Machine. The scouting report on them was amazing: “Pitch around Rose, pitch around Morgan, pitch around Perez, etc.” According to our scouts, the best strategy to use against the Reds was to start the game with the bases loaded, five runs in, and their pitcher at the plate. Then you had a chance.

  The Reds should have hired Jack Webb to manage them. I had never seen a team so well schooled in basics as they were. They were the third most fundamentally sound team I had ever seen. Only the USC Trojans of 1968 and any one of the Taiwanese Little League champions would rate higher. The Reds were a club that took its personality from one individual: Pete Rose. Pete and his club were always battling you. Rose is extremely carnivorous, an obvious flesh-eater. Meat diets tend to bring out man’s competitive nature, while robbing him of the ability to show compassion for his fellow human beings. Carnivores are not concerned with problems outside of baseball. All they care about is scoring the winning run and having the opposing shortstop placed on the dinner menu.

  I had no anxiety before the American League playoffs. I knew I wouldn’t be pitching, and, like the rest of the club, I figured Oakland was ready to be taken. I did experience some anxious moments before the Series started. I was afraid we’d be swept out of the Series without winning a game. I was fearful not because a sweep would have been embarrassing; I didn’t want to beat the Reds four in a row, either. I knew that these games would be our last chances to play ball for the rest of the year, and I was afraid it would be over too quickly. I wanted to string out the fun and excitement for as long as it could la
st.

  Tiant’s seventy-year-old father, a former pitching star in Cuba, threw out the ball for the first game in Boston. The Red Sox and the State Department had been able to bring Luis’ mother and father over from Cuba, allowing them the privilege of watching their son pitch in a World Series. During the pregame festivities, the elder El Tiante walked out to the mound and threw the ceremonial first ball to Fisk. He threw a strike. Then he threw another strike, followed by still another. I’ll tell you something, he was in great shape. Every pitch he threw had mustard on it and he probably would have kept throwing if someone hadn’t led him off the mound. I swear, he could have gone nine.

  His son pitched the opener for us against Don Gullett. It was a close duel for a while, but then we blew them away. Tiant threw a five-hit shutout. I started Game Two. While warming up, I noticed the Reds watching me from their dugout. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing, I was throwing so much junk. Most of them were laughing, and I thought they were going to knock each other over, racing to the plate to hit against me. Pete Rose was their lead-off hitter, and I struck him out. I didn’t hear too many peeps out of them for the rest of the afternoon.

  It was a weird game. The day was drizzly and the basepaths were sloppy. We put six men on in the first two innings, but scored only one run. The Reds tied the score in the fourth, and then we got a run in the sixth to take the lead, 2–1. That’s where matters stood when the sky opened up and the umpires called a rain delay. As we waited in our clubhouse for the game’s resumption, we were joined by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Kissinger and about three hundred Secret Service men. Kissinger sat on a table, signing autographs for the writers and players. At one point he informed one of his agents that he had to go to the bathroom. The Secret Service men had to check out our john before he used it, making sure that no revolutionaries were coming up through the plumbing. All they found was the Tidy Bowl Man. They frisked him for hidden weapons, but he was clean.