Destiny's Whipping Boys

Zimmer played half the 1955 season when Jim Gilliam had his only bad year. But he didn't get to his "real" position, shortstop, until Reese was injured in 1956. He was in the right place then, but it was going to be the wrong time. " Hodges hit a home run," he said, "and I was the next man up. Jeffcoat hit me."

Hal Jeffcoat's pitch shattered Zimmer's left cheekbone and detached the retina of his left eye. Friends suggested in vain that he quit ("What would I do for a living?"), and in the spring of 1957 the Dodger entourage was observing his reflexes carefully. One day in Miami Stadium he showed them Don Zimmer's kind of reflex action. Detroit's Jim Bunning, pitching with untidy speed, threw the highest and tightest of pitches, and Zimmer had to bail out. That kind of pitch can scare a man who has never been hit, and surely Zimmer had to become a fanny-in-the-dugout hitter sooner or later. Instead, he got up and hit the next pitch into the parking lot.

But the next three seasons were bitter years for Zimmer. He may not have invented his favorite expression, "Play me or trade me,'' but he is undisputed author of the phrase, "The Man don't like me," which he frequently employed within earshot of Manager Walter Alston. He had one last opportunity with the Dodgers, but again it came at the wrong time for Zimmer. In 1959 Los Angeles won the pennant the hardest way, with a team put together with string and glue. The Man could have and would have used any little bit of help he could get. That was the year Zimmer hit a melancholy .165.

Zimmer's weakness is his strength. There are 185 pounds packed on his frame, which is not nearly the 5 feet 9 it says in the book, and a number of those pounds are in the brawny arms that led Tommy Holmes of the New York Herald Tribune long ago to dub him "The Boy Blacksmith." And there is a strong mind in the strong body, which has often made Zimmer his own most formidable opponent. He wanted to hit home runs. His .238 lifetime average could be 30 points higher if he had ever recognized right field as fair territory, but the sight of a left-field fence has always aroused a sensual urge in him that he cannot resist for long.

A new Don Zimmer introduced himself at the Chicago Cubs' camp in Mesa, Ariz. in 1961. He had seen the light and shortened his stroke. No sir, it did not pay to go for the long ball, and he would not. He even asked the manager to bat him second so he could demonstrate his proficiency as a hit-and-run man. In the first inning the Cubs" lead-off man got on. Zimmer looked eagerly for the sign, then strode purposefully into the first pitch. The ball went behind the runner, as prescribed. It also went behind the scoreboard in right center. The next time up the new Don Zimmer almost spun himself into the ground trying to reach the fence again.

Another reconstructed Don Zimmer came to Pompano Beach this spring. He had caught 32 games in the Florida Instructional League during the winter, in an effort, at 34, to increase his utility and enhance his job security by becoming a catcher. He had broken only one finger.

"The guy didn't even want to hit the ball," Zimmer said, "but he was reaching out and he ticked it. There wasn't three people in the stands, but one of them was my wife and I said, 'God damn it,' loud. I knew it was broken, but I just stood there awhile. I didn't want to look at it."

Zimmer was catching again in 10 days. He is, surprisingly, in the right place. "A third catcher is the sort of luxury I don't believe I can afford," Manager Gil Hodges said. "But Don may solve the problem for me. He's a good catcher."

In the lexicon of baseball the barbarized adverb "real" delineates the exceptional. Tom Tresh has good speed; Willie Davis has the real good speed. Don Drysdale throws hard; Jim Maloney throws real hard. Zimmer is not a real good catcher, because, again, his timing was bad. "He should have made the change eight years ago," Hodges said. "He'd be a first-class catcher."

Gil tested his old buddy when he "let" him catch 10 innings in an exhibition game in Mexico City, where it is 7,500 feet high and they never water the infield. "That dust bowl," Zimmer said last week. "The first day we took a lap around the field and guys was gasping and pulling up before we got halfway." By the fourth day the team had largely overcome its anoxia, but almost all hands were weakened by varying degrees of dysentery. "When No. 14 [ Hodges] used a catcher as a pinch hitter in the third inning," Zimmer said, "I thought, oh, oh. Then he used the other one in the fifth, and I could see how it was going to be. I was it. I was running down to back up first on every ground ball, and by the eighth inning I was walking back. Yeah, I suppose it was kind of funny, but I'm battling for a job. I'm not fooling around."