In A Strike Zone Of His Own

Palmer bears scant allegiance to Baltimore. He will abandon it and return to the West as soon as he is through playing. But he is a rarity among today's athletes; he perceives the interlocking needs of players, owners and cities. Already, he points out, people in baseball are dividing teams into a new version of the haves and have-nots—the cans and cannots. The cannots are unable to afford to be competitive; they cannot afford even to try for the pennant.

"The most depressing thing of all is to play on a team that you know right from the start of the season hasn't got a chance," Palmer says. "I almost signed with Houston instead of the Orioles. Think how different everything, all these years, would have been if I had done that. I would have been Larry Dierker. Think of him, all these years, pitching for that team. Now think how much worse it would be if you knew that you were with a team that not only couldn't win this year, but couldn't win any year."

Playing in one of the smallest market areas in the majors, the Orioles are fast approaching such status. Only recently the finest franchise in baseball, the organization is now threadbare. Fully one-fifth of its players are playing out their options. Management has been reduced to trading its malcontents to New York and getting odds and ends in return, instead of waiting for the end of the season, when it will get nothing for them. On the Orioles' bus during their most recent trip to New York, Jackson cheerfully called out to his teammates, "Who wants to go apartment hunting with me?" Palmer suspects that if Jackson and the others leave after the season, the Orioles also will unload him to a rich team, give up the ghost completely and become an official cannot.

"A large part of the problem is that Marvin Miller sits up there in New York and makes his decisions in a New York frame of mind," says Palmer. "There is a different attitude about this whole player thing in New York than there is in places like Baltimore. I'm sorry, I'm no owners' man, but is it to the players' advantage to move around, if there aren't many places to move to?

"Leave Baltimore aside. Take a city like Milwaukee. I don't know anything about it, except whenever I play there, I think to myself, 'This seems like a nice town.' The people are nice, there are nice restaurants. But who's going to want to play there if he's got a chance at a bigger city or a better team—and pretty soon all the bigger cities will have the better teams, so it'll be even more one-sided.

"Look, I'd love to play in L.A. Take Bobby Grich, who's another one of our guys playing out his option. He comes from California. If you come from there and you can make $80,000 or whatever in either place, where would you rather play, L.A. or Baltimore?

"But look, the Orioles offered me a good salary. It was fair enough. They've got to gamble that I'll give them three more healthy years. I've got a home here. It is a good team. We had a chance to win when the season started. Until you've won, you'll never know what really counts.

"I'm only 30, but players who are just two or three years younger than I am are from a whole different generation. They have different life-styles, different wants and needs. We just wanted to make the major leagues. They're all concerned about where they'll play. I didn't even know where Baltimore was when I signed. Really, I just knew it was on the East Coast.

"And all this is sad because nobody's going to want to play here or in Milwaukee. Pretty soon there might not be any baseball in Baltimore or Milwaukee. Is this good? Is this really good for the players? I guess in the end it comes down to: how selfish do we want to be?"

Weaver sits in the dugout, sucking on his Raleighs. He tilts his cap back on his head when he holds these audiences. The dugout is his best place. He never was much good on the field. He must hate guys like Palmer. As a player Weaver was a profane little scuffler, limited and lacking. He is short. Palmer is tall. Weaver is trained for nothing except baseball. If Palmer did not have a good arm, his blue eyes alone would still be enough to get him by. Weaver did not grow up with servants on Park Avenue or across the street from Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Weaver tries his best to drive Palmer crazy by maintaining that any major league pitcher should be able to get his curve over every time. It is his little game: you ain't perfect, Jim Palmer.