We All Had A Ball

Yeah. I got my longest hit ever against a team managed by Leo Durocher.

Did I tell you about the first time I met Leo? It was in Scottsdale Stadium in the spring of 1970 that I, a cub reporter, innocently introduced myself to him. And he, standing outside the third-base dugout, pointed his finger at me and began to address, at the top of his lungs, the players who, a few months before, had been the '69 Cubs: "I want everybody to hear this! I'm not talking to this guy! I'm not saying a word!"

Just before he disappeared under the stands, he turned and added, "And he knows why!"

I didn't then and don't now. But it got to me. I loved baseball, and Durocher went all the way back through Willie Mays and Coogan's Bluff and the Gas-house Gang to Ruth. I couldn't shake the feeling that there must be something about me that didn't fit into the national pastime.

Did you ever run into Durocher again?

Not until camp week 13 years later. At the banquet after the big game, he took the occasion to make an emotional talk. He confessed why the '69 Cubs folded: "They didn't give me 100 percent."

What a thing to say at this point! Would the man never let up?

"They gave me 140 percent." Ah. The Cubs had pressed. Durocher was conceding that he'd chewed on them too hard.

He also apologized publicly for embarrassing Santo nastily in a celebrated 1971 clubhouse meeting. After the banquet, Durocher and Santo embraced.

Durocher didn't apologize to me. He glared at me once but with no hint of recognition. He had relieved me, however, of one burden. I still don't know what made me anathema, but I do know it wasn't my fault that the Cubs didn't win in '69.