out of the game got cut today—Bill Edgerton. He figured to get cut because he was one of the five or six guys who were asked to move their lockers to the visiting-team locker room. Of course, they were told it had nothing to do with their ability or status, just that some guys had to move. By coincidence, most of them were cut today. The only one I was really interested in was Greg Goossen, whom I’d come to like, mainly because he had the ability to laugh at himself.
That’s what Milkes and Schultz should have done about losing to Arizona State—laugh. Or at least not take it so damn seriously. Except they probably think that the fans and writers are going to draw a lot of conclusions about a game like this and, alas, they’re probably right. You can’t educate everybody about baseball in two weeks.
Lou Piniella has the red ass. He doesn’t think he’s been playing enough. He’s a good-looking ballplayer, 6–2, handsome, speaks fluent Spanish and unaccented English. He’s from Tampa. He says he knows they don’t want him and that he’s going to quit baseball rather than go back to Triple-A. He says that once you get labeled Triple-A, that’s it. I suggested to him that this wasn’t the year to quit because the Seattle people were bound to make mistakes in their early decisions and I thought there would be a shuttle system between Vancouver and Seattle and that guys who didn’t stay with the club the first month might be called up real quick. But he said he was going to quit anyway and force them to do something. And since he cost $175,000 in the expansion draft he figures they’d rather make a deal for him than lose him altogether. He’s probably right. A lot of decisions in baseball are based upon cost rather than ability. Cost is easier to judge.
Now that the cut-down season is here we’ll soon be talking of deaths in the family. At least that’s what we did with the Yankees. When a guy got cut we’d say he died. Fritz Peterson would come over to me and say, “Guess who died today.” And he’d look very downcast and in the tones of an undertaker read the roll of the dead.
A player who wasn’t going well was said to be sick, very sick, in a coma or on his deathbed, depending on how bad he was going. Last year when I was sent to Seattle, Fritz asked me what happened and I said I died.
“You can’t die,” Fritz said. “You’re too good to die.”
Like Mae West once said, goodness has nothing to do with it.
On the Yankees the Grim Reaper was Big Pete. Once he whispered in your ear that the manager wanted to see you, you were clinically dead. I remember toward the end of one spring training, Don Lock, an outfielder with a pretty good sense of humor (he needed it, having spent a lot of years in the Yankee chain trying to break into an outfield of Tom Tresh, Mantle and Maris), barricaded his locker. He hung sweatshirts across the top, crossed out his name, piled up his gloves and shoes in front to form a barrier, then snuggled inside the locker holding a bat like it was a rifle, and fired it at anybody who came near. It was good for a few laughs, but in the end the Grim Reaper got him anyway.
Another way Big Pete would let you know you had died was by not packing your equipment bag for a road trip. There would be a packed bag in front of every locker except yours. Rest in peace. It’s kind of like, “All those who are going to New York City, please step forward. Not so fast, Johnson.”
When I warm up tomorrow I’ll be trying to recreate in my mind an abstract feeling I get when I’m throwing well. It can’t be explained. It’s a
feeling
, the feeling you get when you’re doing something right, a sort of muscular memory. I find the best way to arrive at this feeling is to eliminate all other thoughts and let my mind go blank. Sometimes, when you can’t find this feeling while you’re warming up, panic sets in. It’s one of the reasons I like to use a double warm-up. The interval
That’s what Milkes and Schultz should have done about losing to Arizona State—laugh. Or at least not take it so damn seriously. Except they probably think that the fans and writers are going to draw a lot of conclusions about a game like this and, alas, they’re probably right. You can’t educate everybody about baseball in two weeks.
Lou Piniella has the red ass. He doesn’t think he’s been playing enough. He’s a good-looking ballplayer, 6–2, handsome, speaks fluent Spanish and unaccented English. He’s from Tampa. He says he knows they don’t want him and that he’s going to quit baseball rather than go back to Triple-A. He says that once you get labeled Triple-A, that’s it. I suggested to him that this wasn’t the year to quit because the Seattle people were bound to make mistakes in their early decisions and I thought there would be a shuttle system between Vancouver and Seattle and that guys who didn’t stay with the club the first month might be called up real quick. But he said he was going to quit anyway and force them to do something. And since he cost $175,000 in the expansion draft he figures they’d rather make a deal for him than lose him altogether. He’s probably right. A lot of decisions in baseball are based upon cost rather than ability. Cost is easier to judge.
Now that the cut-down season is here we’ll soon be talking of deaths in the family. At least that’s what we did with the Yankees. When a guy got cut we’d say he died. Fritz Peterson would come over to me and say, “Guess who died today.” And he’d look very downcast and in the tones of an undertaker read the roll of the dead.
A player who wasn’t going well was said to be sick, very sick, in a coma or on his deathbed, depending on how bad he was going. Last year when I was sent to Seattle, Fritz asked me what happened and I said I died.
“You can’t die,” Fritz said. “You’re too good to die.”
Like Mae West once said, goodness has nothing to do with it.
On the Yankees the Grim Reaper was Big Pete. Once he whispered in your ear that the manager wanted to see you, you were clinically dead. I remember toward the end of one spring training, Don Lock, an outfielder with a pretty good sense of humor (he needed it, having spent a lot of years in the Yankee chain trying to break into an outfield of Tom Tresh, Mantle and Maris), barricaded his locker. He hung sweatshirts across the top, crossed out his name, piled up his gloves and shoes in front to form a barrier, then snuggled inside the locker holding a bat like it was a rifle, and fired it at anybody who came near. It was good for a few laughs, but in the end the Grim Reaper got him anyway.
Another way Big Pete would let you know you had died was by not packing your equipment bag for a road trip. There would be a packed bag in front of every locker except yours. Rest in peace. It’s kind of like, “All those who are going to New York City, please step forward. Not so fast, Johnson.”
When I warm up tomorrow I’ll be trying to recreate in my mind an abstract feeling I get when I’m throwing well. It can’t be explained. It’s a
feeling
, the feeling you get when you’re doing something right, a sort of muscular memory. I find the best way to arrive at this feeling is to eliminate all other thoughts and let my mind go blank. Sometimes, when you can’t find this feeling while you’re warming up, panic sets in. It’s one of the reasons I like to use a double warm-up. The interval
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