The Mouth That Roared (10 page)

A couple of buddies at the DuPont Company in nearby Wilmington helped me get interviews there. And a former ballplayer friend of mine, Harry Anderson, who worked for a machine company in Elkton, Maryland, that manufactured heavy machinery, arranged for me to meet with the owner of the company.

“Dallas, you’ve got all these years in baseball, and the game’s been a part of you forever,” Harry’s boss told me. “If you come here, you might end up running the company, but you’re going to start low.”

Sylvia shared that point of view. She had seen the ups and downs of my playing career, because she had been by my side every step of the way. She knew the ’64 season had taken a toll on me and encouraged me to wait a while longer before deciding to write off baseball.

Coming to terms with my father’s death helped straighten out my thought process. He and I were never close, and for much of my adult life I resented him for allowing alcohol to take over his life. His drinking caused him to lose the family business, but it also caused him to look in the mirror and confront what he saw. He loved fixing cars, but because of his addiction, he couldn’t do that for a living anymore.

He also saw he had been neglecting his family. He began to take an interest in my career, but not in an overt way or because he hoped my salary could help support the family. It was because he was proud of me. It crushed him to see me sent to the minors in 1964. And I held that against the Phillies, particularly after he passed away.

In hindsight, I realized the Phillies weren’t to blame. I hadn’t pitched well enough to assure myself a spot on the roster all season. Everybody has to earn his keep, and I hadn’t. That experience gave me insight that I later used when I became a major league manager and general manager.

*

The Phillies wanted to give me an opportunity to play in the majors, if not for them, then for a team willing to pay a few bucks for me.

At the end of spring training in 1965, they sold me to the Washington Senators on a 30-day trial basis. If the Senators liked my performance, they could pony up $20,000 to keep me. If they weren’t satisfied with their purchase, they could return me to Philadelphia.

It bothered me that the Phillies didn’t want me anymore, but I decided I would no longer take baseball personnel matters personally.

I did okay with the Senators, starting a couple of games and relieving in others. According to the terms of my sale, Washington wouldn’t have had to pay the Phillies a nickel if I accepted a demotion to one of their minor league teams. So, they tried to demote me. That’s how cheap the Senators were at that time.

If I was going to finish my career in the minor leagues, I wanted it to be with friends and allies in the Philadelphia organization. So, I returned to the Phillies and reported back to Arkansas to finish out the 1965 season.

My wife, Sylvia, and our two young children, Dana and John, had just arrived in Little Rock to move into an apartment that would be our home until the Phillies decided to recall me.
If
the Phillies decided to recall me, that is.

When I got to the apartment complex, Sylvia met me outside our unit with a frown on her face. “We’re leaving,” she informed me. “It’s filthy.”

So, we went back to the motel where I’d been staying until the apartment got cleaned up.

It sure wasn’t the big leagues. I remember getting stuck on an airport runway in Little Rock after an all-night flight from the Pacific Northwest. The Spokane Indians, managed by future Phillies skipper Danny Ozark, sat on the Trans World Airlines flight with us. On our way east, we had dropped off the Denver or Salt Lake City team. Or maybe it was both. That’s how long the flight felt. The Pacific Coast League must have gotten a heck of a deal on the booking of the TWA Constellation, a huge plane with three tail wings best known for making military transports during World War II.

I guess some signals got crossed, because when we landed at 5:00
AM
, no one was at the airport to roll a stairwell up to the plane. It was already 90 degrees in Little Rock, and the plane didn’t have air conditioning. All I wanted was for somebody to open the goddamn doors!

We waited and waited. Finally, my teammate John Boozer, a country boy from South Carolina who liked spitting tobacco juice in the air and catching it in his mouth, had an idea.

“If they’re not coming for us, we’re just going to have to go to them,” he said.

Booze convinced the flight crew to open the cabin door and release an escape rope. One by one, we shimmied down the rope onto the tarmac.

*

The Phillies came back to earth in 1965. A season after coming agonizingly close to a pennant, they finished sixth in the National League. They wouldn’t sniff the playoffs again until the 1970s.

I can’t help but think Gene Mauch’s style hurt the Phillies in the long run. He managed the team to winning records from 1962 to 1967, but his lack of people skills undermined the team’s chances of getting to the next level.

Gene’s inherent mistrust of younger players was one of his most significant flaws. In 1965, the Phillies had a 22-year-old pitcher who had performed well in the minors and in his first outings in the majors. But Gene simply didn’t like Ferguson Jenkins, so he had general manager John Quinn trade him to the Cubs for two pitchers in their midthirties. “It’s the best deal we could have made,” Gene told the newspapers at the time. “I think it complemented our staff exactly the way we wanted.” The pitchers acquired by Philadelphia stuck around the majors another couple of years. Fergie reeled off six straight 20-win seasons with the Cubs during a Hall of Fame career.

In June 1968, with the Phillies at .500, Gene got fired. He went on to manage the Expos, the Twins, and the California Angels. Though he got close a few times, he never managed in a World Series.

I’ll be the first to admit that Gene possessed extraordinary baseball knowledge. And I’d like to think some of it rubbed off on me. He was a firm believer in the value of fundamentals and playing the game the right way, offensively and defensively. He expected his teams to build big innings by hitting in the clutch and running the bases well. I embraced this philosophy when I later became a manager. For all his faults, which included the belief that all of his players were dummies, Gene influenced me a lot.

*

As one of the few major or minor leaguers who remained in the Philadelphia area during the off-season, I became a regular on the banquet circuit, representing the Phillies at all manner of engagements in the Delaware Valley. Every late fall and winter for several years, I appeared and spoke at about 75 events, earning $25 a pop. In the process, I handed out more goddamn Little League trophies than you could shake a stick at. Occasionally, I walked away with some hardware myself. As a sign of appreciation for my attendance, some of the groups would present me with a plaque.

There were no GPSs back then, so I spent a lot of time getting lost on the back roads of many towns and suburbs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. That made me nervous as hell, because I knew the banquets couldn’t start without me.

Eventually, I got my routine down pat. My go-to opening line was, “I know your banquet committee requested a 20-game winner. Well, here I am. Unfortunately, it took me five years to get there.” That always got a yak. So did my Gene Mauch stories.

I also stated an opinion that probably didn’t sit too well with some of the coaches in the room.

“I hear a lot of people say it doesn’t matter if you win or lose; it’s how you play the game,” I began. “I disagree. When you hire a lawyer, do you care how he presents the case? No—the only important thing is whether he wins or loses. Would you be happy with a heart surgeon who tried his best but didn’t perform a procedure correctly? Of course not. Winning matters in terms of your growth as an athlete. Winning is important in life.”

After my speech, every kid stepped forward to accept a trophy for participation.

Sylvia joined me at one of the events, which honored a local fire department. Appropriately, I guess, the event took place at the fire house. I was about to give my speech when the goddamn siren went off! We had to take a break until the fire engine was loaded up and on its way. That was Sylvia’s last banquet.

Every now and then, I’m approached by men in their fifties who say they heard me speak at a Little League banquet in Downingtown, Ardmore, or some other locality. That was a long time ago. My rousing oratory must have made quite an impression on them.

*

The Phillies moved their Triple-A affiliate to San Diego for 1966, and that’s where I played that year until the Phillies sold me again, this time in the middle of the season, to the Mets. After four major league relief appearances with New York, the Mets returned me to the Phillies, who immediately put me back in Triple-A. I led San Diego with 14 wins that season, leaving no doubt I was still a very capable minor league pitcher.

Having turned 32 during my brief stay with the Mets, my playing days were winding down. But I knew I wanted to stay in baseball in some capacity. After the 1966 season, I talked over my options with Phillies farm director Paul Owens and Ruly Carpenter, who was gradually taking over the day-to-day operations of the organization from his father.

We agreed I still had plenty left in my arm to pitch in the minors, so it was decided I’d spend the 1967 season as a player-coach in Reading, Pennsylvania, the location of the Phillies’ new Double-A affiliate. Pope, who himself had been a player-manager in Philadelphia’s farm system, felt the Reading gig would prepare me well for a future job in the front office. In preparation for the assignment, I went through spring training in Clearwater as Reading’s pitching coach and continued in that capacity during the season, in addition to pitching every fourth day.

The season in Reading turned out to be a lot of fun. Playing in a fifth different town for manager Frank Lucchesi, I posed a sub-2.00 ERA for the first time in 13 seasons of professional ball. I also got a taste of working with young players, including 21-year-old shortstop Larry Bowa.

At least one pitcher on the squad hardly needed any tutelage from me. Released by the Cubs earlier in the season, future Hall of Famer Robin Roberts was attempting a comeback with the Phillies. At the age of 40, he was back in the minors for the first time in 19 years.

Here was a guy with 286 major league wins playing in shabby stadiums with dingy, cramped clubhouses and lousy pitching mounds. But the man who is today memorialized with a bronze statue outside of Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia was determined to work his way back to the majors. He pitched well in his time at Reading, going 5–3 with a 2.48 ERA and striking out 65 batters against just seven walks.

Robbie and I had been friends for a long time, and our time in Reading brought us even closer together. My association with him is one I’ll always treasure. He was a wonderful guy with a sharp baseball mind. I loved talking pitching with him.

In mid-June, a spot on the Phillies’ major league roster opened up after pitcher Chris Short got hurt running in the outfield before a game. Robbie was battling a leg injury at the time. A few days later he ended his comeback attempt.

Much to my surprise, I got the call to Philadelphia to replace Short.

At that time, players needed five full years in the majors to qualify for a pension. I was 108 days shy of that, so Bob Carpenter saw to it that I got recalled to the big league club. It was a very nice gesture on his part. The chance to pitch one last time for the Phillies and get my pension provided me with closure. And it eliminated any lingering resentment I felt toward the organization for demoting me to the minors in 1964.

The Reading pitchers were in capable hands in my absence. Lucchesi was a veteran manager who knew how to handle players.

It was just like old times in Philadelphia. In two of my first four outings, I got absolutely bombed. In the other two, I pitched well.

*

After the 1967 season, I retired from the game with my sights set on joining the Phillies front office. But Pope had other plans for me.

“Dallas, you’re not coming in immediately,” he informed me. “I know you want to join us right away, but you’re going to manage our Class-A team in South Dakota.”

I had seen small-town America during minor league stops in Mattoon, Illinois, and Reidsville, North Carolina. And with my playing career over, I looked forward to settling down with my growing family. A job in South Dakota managing short-season Class-A ball, even for just a few months, didn’t appeal to me.

Fortunately, my relationship with Pope allowed for brutal honesty.

“There’s no way in hell I’m doing that,” I told him. “I feel like I’m ready to come into the front office right now.”

“Nope, Dallas, you might feel like you’re ready, but you won’t really be ready until you know what it’s like to handle 25 guys all by yourself, two or three thousand miles from the home office.”

Damn that Pope and his superior logic!

I accepted the assignment.

I was supposed to be paid $7,000 to manage the South Dakota team. That was $10,000 less than I earned in my final season in the majors. I had to mount another protest: “Christ, Pope, I have three kids and one on the way! I can’t live on that.”

Pope pulled some strings and got me a few extra thousand dollars.