A False Spring

I stayed with the Colonels until the Braves made their first roster cuts. Those players walked across the street to the Colonels' camp, and all of the rookies there, like me, were promptly shipped by train to Waycross. At the time, I had pitched only two inconsequential innings (one earned run, three walks) in an intrasquad game but was still under the delusion the Braves had glimpsed something in my erratic 3-3 performance the previous summer at McCook that, although it had escaped even me, had convinced them I should play at Louisville in 1960. What I did not know was that it was the policy of most major league organizations to give their young prospects a taste of life at the top (or, as in my case, near the top) during at least one spring training; then, upon experiencing minor league camps at such places as Waycross, they would be inspired to rise to a level of play that would guarantee their never going back.

Furthermore, baseball clubs, unlike most employers, believed young prospects should be started at the top of their profession each spring and then be allowed to sink to the true level of their ability. It was not uncommon for a player to begin spring training with a major league team and work his way down through the minor league system until he finished the season in Class D. Each drop was mildly traumatic and often produced a confusion and panic that affected a player's performance in a way that all but ensured the next drop. Often an organization knew precisely at what level a prospect would play but kept this knowledge from him so that his anxiety mounted as his stature declined.

I lay shivering beneath the cold sheets of my cot in the third barracks at Way-cross. Around me other players slept. The cots, only a few feet apart, were lined up at right angles to both long walls so that from mine I was looking directly at the feet of a player on the opposite side. The room was long and narrow, with about 20 cots against each wall. In the middle was a picnic table and an old electric heater that was turned on against each morning's rawness by the first player to wake up. At one end of the room was a screen door leading outside to the cafeteria; at the other end were two partitions on either side of a narrow hallway. Behind the partitions were lavatories consisting of a few sinks, a long urinal and three doorless toilet stalls. The stalls were littered with Playboy centerfolds and pages from The Sporting News . Farther down the hall were four small private rooms. Each was occupied by a veteran—one who had returned for two or more years without having been invited to the major league camp at Bradenton.

In 1960 I was in my first spring training and the thought that someday I might be accorded such preferential treatment filled me with pleasurable anticipation. When finally I did return to Waycross for the second straight year I, too, was given my own cubicle. And, like those veterans I had envied, I, too, hooked up my elaborate stereo system and I, too, saw in the eyes of the younger players who slept at the other end of the barracks a look of envy as they passed my room. But by then I took no pleasure from that room, that meager compensation for a stalled and fading career. I soon hated it, saw it for what it was—a cell; the isolation ward in which I had been quarantined so as not to contaminate those younger players with the virus of my incurable failure.

I got out of bed and turned on the electric heater. From the center of the room I could see into the hallway where two players, wearing only shorts, were studying a bulletin board. Every morning before daylight one of the scouts would pin sheets of colored paper to that board. On each of the sheets was typed the name of one of the camp's minor league managers—Alex Monchak, Red Murf, Joe Brown, Billy Smith, Travis Jackson, Bill Steinecke—and below it, in two neat columns, the names of the players who were assigned to him for the day's game. The players' names shifted from manager to manager during the course of spring training. The manager under whose name a player appeared on the last day of spring training would be the manager with whom he would begin the season. At Waycross there was no official mention of the teams those managers would lead during the season, but the word got around. Everyone knew that Monchak managed Austin of the Double A Texas League, Murf managed Jacksonville of the Class A Sally League, Brown managed Cedar Rapids of the Class B Three-I League, Smith managed Boise of the Class C Pioneer League and Jackson managed Davenport of the Class D Midwest League. And this year Bill Steinecke would manage Eau Claire of the Class C Northern League.

Small tragedies were played out in the minds of the players as they scanned the board for their names. Those whose careers were shakiest always woke first. They went immediately to the bulletin board and looked for a pink sheet with this message: "Will the players listed below please report to Mr. Cecil's office before nine o'clock this morning." Richard Cecil, a husky, blond young man, was the Braves' assistant farm director—at present he is president of Cecil & Associates, sports and leisure time consultants—and it was his task each morning to hand out unconditional releases. It was an unpleasant job over which he had no control. The decisions had been made the night before by a vote of all the scouts, coaches and managers in camp. Dick Cecil was merely the functionary who, the following morning, would slide a piece of paper across his desk and ask the released player to please sign his name, thus formally terminating his association with the Milwaukee Braves. Some refused, as if they could prolong a career simply by declining to sign the document that ended it. Some signed in stunned silence; others cried, begged, pleaded with Dick Cecil for another chance; and still others exited defiantly, cursing, crumpling the release and flinging it into Dick Cecil's face.

But that was just bravado. Their true feelings had been bared at the moment they read their names on the bulletin board at six o'clock in the morning. Each moved like a sleepwalker back to his cot and sat for long moments, then looked around the room to see if anyone was watching, then slid his suitcase out from beneath the cot, swung it up and filled it quickly with his belongings, the small space around the cot suddenly bare and soon to be filled by the possessions of some new player in camp. They moved in quick silence so as not to wake others who would then be witness to their humiliation. They got dressed, glanced about the room and left. They let the screen door close with great care so that it would not make its usual fierce slap, and then, without saying goodby to anyone, often without even picking up their official release from Dick Cecil, they went home.

Once there, they faced interminable questions. What had happened? They tried to explain: the manager, a sore arm, no batting practice. Some lied, said they'd quit. After a week or so the questions diminished, and they began to forget. They took a job, got engaged, put aside their boyish dreams. Then one day, about a month after they had returned, they received a registered letter. The envelope was adorned with a savage Indian. They fingered their unconditional release, stared at it, their day ruined, possibly the week; they were forced now to abandon the false spring of their lives and begin again.

With time they would discover that their experience had marked them off from their contemporaries who, no matter how talented, had never gone to spring training, never, even for a week, been a professional athlete. It was as if they had been privy to a vision, had been blessed with a divine grace that would always remain a mystery to the unblessed. They learned to play to this grace, to build around it myths about that experience, which, to them, had been no big thing at the time. They had seen no mysteries, but they did not let on. They took pleasure even in the manner in which their town's sports-wise people now referred to them: "He was the boy who went away." Vague, yet oddly precise. The boy who went away—that was all anyone knew. He had gone away and then come back and whatever had occurred in between only he knew. It elevated him. He floated above those whose talents would forever be circumscribed by the fact that they had never gone away. Of such a stay-at-home people would say, "He was good. The best around. But who knows for sure? He never went away."

Such young men—those who never went away—simply stopped playing the game. They hoarded their small winnings and saw them devalued with the years. When they eventually realized their mistake—the enormity of it (for an athlete, anyway)—it was too late. In trying to preserve modest successes, untainted by failure, they had tainted not only those successes, not only others' remembrance of their talents, but also their very character. They lacked courage. Everyone had seen it. They had been so afraid of losing that they had lost more than any of those athletes who had gone away and been released and had come back home.