A False Spring

Over the winter following my first season at McCook, I had grown an inch and a half taller and 15 pounds heavier. I thought nothing of it until the first time I threw a fastball in spring training. Not only had my pitch gained speed but it had also acquired a lightness that caused it to rise perceptibly. The faster a ball cuts through the air, it seems, the less force gravity exerts on it, and so the ball becomes lighter and rises. I was fascinated by this new toy. Batters sighted the course of the ball, waist high, and swung. When they looked back and saw the ball in the catcher's glove at a level with their eyes, they shook their heads.

But there was a drawback to the added speed and movement of my pitch. Now when I threw a fastball waist high, it often rose out of the strike zone. Even so, I had great success, since most batters were so anxious to impress managers that they swung at pitches they would have taken during the season.

From my first day at Waycross I had been assigned to Boise, Idaho of the Class C Pioneer League. After a few weeks it became so obvious I would pitch at Boise that I no longer bothered to check the bulletin board in the morning; my name always appeared third from the top on a sheet under Billy Smith's name. At first I was disturbed at being assigned to such a "lowly" club, but eventually I learned that Boise was a showcase for all the best young pitchers in the Braves organization. The Braves packed Boise with such talented hitters and fielders (many of whom could have held their own at Cedar Rapids or Jacksonville) that it was virtually impossible for the team's young and inexperienced pitchers not to have a winning record. It was not uncommon for a pitcher to have both a winning record and a 4.75 ERA. If a pitcher can't win at Boise, the saying went in camp, he can't win anywhere. The Braves believed it was important for young pitchers like me to gain confidence (even if that confidence was artificially stimulated) because once a pitcher thought himself a winner, he became a winner. This was certainly true of me at the time. I had always had confidence in my natural talent, that is, in my ability to throw a baseball harder than most, but I had yet to discover whether or not I was a winner. Success in baseball requires a synthesis of a number of virtues, many of which have nothing to do with talent: self-discipline, single-mindedness, perseverance, ambition. These were all virtues I was positive I possessed in 1960, but which I discovered I did not. Nor have I acquired them since.

The manager of the Boise team was a 30-year-old North Carolinian who had played 11 years in the minor leagues with out ever having advanced higher than the Class AA Southern Association. Billy Smith had been a first baseman, and even at Boise he occasionally played that position. He was 5'9" and he weighed 160 pounds. He had a frail, young boy's build. He had blue eyes and extremely fine, short, sandy hair. His markedly white skin turned pink in the sun. He had one of those Audie Murphy faces that must have been exquisitely pretty when he was a child and burdensomely adorable when he was a teen-ager, and which in his 30s made Smith look 15 years younger than he was. He chewed tobacco and seldom spoke, possibly because his thick drawl was high-pitched and whiny when he became excited. In general he was a taciturn man, with a reputation for hardness that his looks would have denied in his adolescence, but which he had managed to cultivate in his 30s. All of Billy's players, 10 to 15 years younger than he, admired his toughness. When an opposing pitcher knocked down one of his players, Billy Smith was the first man out of the dugout to challenge him. He protected his men. After a particularly satisfying victory or a dispiriting loss, he went drinking with his players. When I heard such stories, the thought that I would be a part of that kind of camaraderie so thrilled me that I couldn't wait to get to Boise, Idaho and pitch for Billy Smith. I would have, too, except for an incident that appeared trivial when it happened but which, I see now, damaged my career in a way I could never repair.

Billy made it known to his players during the spring of 1960 that he was not bound to take to Boise "certain bonus babies" then on his roster. He would damned well have the final say over the players he took, he said, or he would tell the front office where to go. And the players he would take would not necessarily be the most talented, or those with the biggest bonuses, but those who had proved to him, Billy Smith, that they unquestionably had the right attitude.

Billy did not define for us precisely what that attitude was. But he did drop hints by praising certain players in camp, like Tony Cloninger, and disparaging others, like Mike Marinko. Cloninger, a $100,000 bonus pitcher from Lincoln County, N.C., worked harder than any player in camp. When told to run 10 wind sprints, he ran 20. He seemed always to be sweating, always to be working painfully hard at tasks that seemed either senseless or so much easier than he made them. He had the knack of taking the simplest task and making it an ordeal. At first I thought this was just, his desire to prove that despite his huge bonus he did not expect a free ride through the system. Eventually, I realized that Tony was proud of his ability to do things the hard way, proud of his refusal to quit even when he knew his efforts were absurd. In 1960 he pitched for Jacksonville and Austin. One day he would become a 20-game winner for the Atlanta Braves. When his fastball disappeared a few years after the 20-win season he refused to accept that fact. He threw harder—that is, with greater effort. I saw him pitch against the Montreal Expos in 1969. His career was all but over then, and he lasted just three innings. After he was relieved he walked to the right-field bullpen and began firing fastballs to his bullpen catcher. He threw for five innings, as if punishing himself would restore his career. I remember thinking at the time that he was the same pitcher at 28 that he had been at 19. I talked to him after that game. He told me he was close to his 100th major league victory. He needed only a few more wins. Nothing would stop him from reaching that goal, he said, not even the sore arm he was suffering from. He just pitched with it, he said, and didn't tell his manager about it. If he told his manager about the arm he might miss a turn on the mound, he said.

Marinko, a left-handed pitcher from Bridgeport, Conn., had signed with the Braves when he was 20 years old. At that time he stood 6'3" and weighed 155 pounds. In 1960, at the age of 28, he was 6'4" and weighed about 200. He had become the hardest-throwing pitcher in the organization and one of the hardest throwers in baseball. Still, he was odd. He had unusually long, thin arms that so embarrassed him he wore a sports coat in the hottest weather. He would walk about the camp in Bermuda shorts, a T shirt and a plaid wool jacket. He was indifferent to his career. He ran wind sprints only when he felt like it. One day at Waycross he hooked up in a pitchers' duel with Juan Pizarro, at that time the brightest prospect in the Braves system. For six innings Marinko was so much more dazzling than Pizarro that scouts and managers and players came from all over the camp to watch him throw. The crowd behind home plate grew inning after inning and, in the excitement over Marinko's speed, Pizarro was forgotten. In the sixth inning Marinko told his manager he didn't want to pitch anymore. The manager asked why. "No reason," said Mike, "I'm just bored." "That's not good enough," said the manager. "O. K." said Mike, "I have a sore arm." And he just walked away. He went over to another diamond where he got someone to hit him fly balls in center field, and while the crowd behind the screen of Diamond No. 1 watched, he fired ball after ball in to home plate. Eventually Pizarro would go on to stardom in the major leagues, while in time Mike Marinko would be celebrated as an outfielder for a slow-pitch softball team in Bridgeport, Conn.

I was so determined to impress Billy Smith with the Tightness of my attitude (as if it were a three-button suit with narrow lapels one just slipped on) that I affected an earnestness the remembrance of which embarrasses me to this day. There was no task too menial or unpleasant (for example, carrying bats to and from the diamond) for which I did not volunteer. And when I suffered a painful but not serious sore arm, I told no one. I knew it wasn't serious, was just a spring training sore arm that would heal with a few days' rest, and so, when Smith asked for a batting practice pitcher one day I couldn't resist volunteering. My arm was so sore that my pitches barely reached the plate. The batters swung so far ahead of my lobs they either hit them foul or missed them entirely. They complained to my catcher, Joe Torre. He fired the ball back to me and said, "Put something on the damned ball!"

"Mind your own business," I said. I lobbed another pitch and the batter swung and missed. He said something to Torre. Joe stepped in front of the plate. He held the ball up in front of his eyes and said, "If you can't put anything on this"—and he fired it back at me—"get the hell off the mound." He turned around and I threw the ball at the back of his head. I missed and the ball bounced off the screen. Joe flung down his glove and his mask and started toward me. We surely would have come to blows if Billy Smith had not come between us. With a hand against our chests, he told us to cool off, forget it. I was surprised by the look on Smith's face as he separated us. His eyes were wide and his voice had a tremor in it.

I was glad he stopped us. I had no desire to fight with Joe Torre, who at 19 already had the manner of a 30-year-old veteran. Joe was fat then, over 220 pounds. He had astonishingly dark skin and ponderous black brows that were frightening. He, too, was earnest that spring. Joe's earnestness was genuine, however, not recently picked off the rack like mine. He was unwavering in his dedication to baseball. He tolerated no lapses of desire or effort from himself or his teammates. Joe viewed my feeble lobs during batting practice as "unprofessional." He was right. I should either have admitted to my sore arm and not pitched or else ignored the pain and thrown at good speed. My weak compromise hurt my teammates.