The Mouth That Roared (7 page)

The next day at the ballpark, my ankle hurt like hell. The other commandos tried to cover for me by helping me get dressed and out onto the field. Fortunately, I wasn’t pitching that day. After a while, Lucchesi and trainer Pete Cera noticed me hobbling around. I told them I sprained my ankle going after a ground ball.

In addition to making uninvited visits to country clubs, I won 12 games at High Point, second-most on the team. At the end of the season, the Phillies promoted me all the way to Triple-A Miami, which put me just one step from the major leagues.

*

When I signed with the Phillies after my junior year at the University of Delaware, I was still several credits shy of graduating. During my off-seasons, I took classes at Temple University and UD in an attempt to earn my degree in business administration. I liked the idea of having an education to fall back on in case my baseball career didn’t pan out. But more than that, I just wanted to finish what I started.

While I was playing at High Point, Sylvia graduated from Conrad High School. She enrolled at UD that fall. In January 1958, a few days after Sylvia’s 18
^th
birthday, we got married and then honeymooned in the Poconos. After that, she moved in with me at my mom’s house. More than 50 years later, we’re still together.

In the first years of our marriage, Sylvia went wherever I did, continuing her studies in whatever minor league city we happened to be in. We agreed to put off starting a family until she completed her education. This pleased her parents, who had been concerned that marrying young would interfere with her getting a college degree.

Sylvia completed her first two semesters in Delaware and then hit the road to join me in Miami for the 1958 season.

You hear a lot about the rough life of a minor leaguer: low pay, long bus rides, backwater towns, that kind of stuff. I experienced all of the above in Mattoon, Reidsville, High Point, and to a lesser extent, Salt Lake City.

My Triple-A experience in Miami didn’t exactly follow that script, however. I spent the tail end of the 1957 season and all of 1958 playing there. Long before the Florida Marlins relocated a few miles south and became the Miami Marlins, multiple minor league clubs used that name, including a Phillies farm team that played in the International League between 1956 and 1960.

For newlyweds, Miami was an exciting place to spend a few months. We lived in a motel on the 79
^th
Street Causeway, a lively part of town back in the late 1950s. Sylvia says if she ever writes a book, it will tell of the colorful characters we met at the motel’s communal swimming pool.

Our neighbors included a gun runner who made regular trips to Cuba to sell his wares; a contractor who earned and squandered millions of dollars in the construction business, all in the span of that single summer; a downtrodden widower who lost his wife in a hurricane; two lesbians; and a busty stripper whose husband may or may not have been her pimp. The gal who ran the motel was a former B-movie actress whose head shots adorned the property. In addition to telling stories of near-stardom in Hollywood, she’d fix mai tais for everyone at the pool.

When Sylvia wasn’t hanging around the pool, she was in class. She took 16 credit hours during the summer session at the University of Miami. One of the qualities Sylvia and I share is taking pride in the tasks we set out to do. With an eye toward becoming a schoolteacher, Sylvia took a full load of education classes and got three As and a B. She was so conscientious about her studies that she passed on accompanying me to Cuba when the Marlins played the Havana Sugar Kings. The next year, Fidel Castro seized power in the country.

Sylvia has a passion for travel. Just recently, she returned from a two-week solo trip to Thailand and Myanmar. To this day, she regrets not visiting Havana before it was closed off to Americans. What’s worse is that the University of Delaware, which approved her to take classes in Miami, would only transfer her grades back as Cs.

*

My Miami team consisted mostly of older players hoping for a last go-around in the majors. Baseball had taken its toll on them and their families. I recall a time at the Miami airport when the wife of one of my veteran teammates showed up at the boarding area clutching a handful of papers. Apparently she had stumbled upon a batch of letters he had written to another woman.

“You son of a bitch!” she screamed at him before ripping up the letters and tossing them in the air.

The next set of papers he saw were divorce documents.

I witnessed the seamier side of minor league life in Miami, but I also saw extraordinary grace.

The oldest player by far on the Miami team was Satchel Paige, who turned 52 midway through the 1958 season. He was a right-handed pitcher who dominated the Negro Leagues for 18 seasons but didn’t have an opportunity to pitch in the majors until his early forties. Satch went 10–10 with a 2.95 ERA for Miami in 1958. It was the second season in a row that he tallied 10 wins and a sub-3.00 ERA. I was amazed by what he could still do at such an advanced age. He was thin and wiry and didn’t move around really fast, but he had unbelievable command of his pitches. I’m proud to say I got to play with Satch during his last season in the Phillies organization. Remarkably, he remained active a while longer. At 59 years of age, while pitching for the Kansas City A’s, he threw three scoreless innings against the Boston Red Sox.

*

I had a decent season in Miami but did nothing to set myself apart from the other guys hoping to get called up to the majors. I was one of five pitchers to start at least 15 games that season but the only one to finish the season with an ERA above 3.00. After four years in the minors, I still wasn’t ready for the big leagues.

My return trip to Havana in 1959 came as a member of the Buffalo Bisons, who replaced the Miami Marlins as the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate.

Sylvia’s studies again kept her from the trip of a lifetime. She was back finishing up a semester at the University of Delaware. By 1959, Cuba had become a volatile place, and International League officials ordered us to stay in our hotel to avoid trouble. Later that summer, gunshots rang out during a game between the Sugar Kings and the Rochester Red Wings. A Rochester coach and player were grazed by bullets, prompting the game and the rest of the series to be called off.

I got on a roll in Buffalo, pitching one complete game after another. For the first time in my professional career, I had control of the strike zone. By dramatically cutting down on walks, I didn’t have to constantly pitch with runners on base. As a result, my ERA dropped significantly.

With the Phillies stumbling toward a last-place finish in the National League, it served to reason that they’d again look to the minors for pitching help. I had no doubt that Buffalo manager Kerby Farrell was keeping them apprised of my performance.

*

After going the distance for a fifth consecutive start, I experienced extreme pain in my right arm. I didn’t think too much of it, because I figured even strong arms like mine get sore from time to time, especially after so many complete games. All of those starts took place while Lake Erie was still frozen over, and pitching in the bitter cold couldn’t have helped the situation. During the third complete game, I felt tightness in my arm around the seventh inning. I rubbed hot ointment on it in the dugout and went out and finished the game. I was on a roll and didn’t want to admit I was hurting. I stayed sore throughout the next two outings. I hoped a few days of rest would cure the problem. But by my next start, on Mother’s Day, the pain was so acute that I had to take myself out of the game in the third inning. By that point, I could barely reach home plate with my pitches.

Sylvia was in the midst of a six-week summer course at the University of Buffalo when I returned to Philly to get my arm checked out. She was a good sport about staying in upstate New York without me.

In Philadelphia, I met with Phillies trainer Frank Wiechec to talk over the situation. I was relieved to hear Frank say he thought I had nothing more than a strain. All I needed was additional rest, he said.

Those starts for Buffalo convinced me I was a big-league-caliber pitcher. As I missed games waiting for my arm to heal, I couldn’t help but worry. I saw the way shoulder and elbow injuries had turned Robin Roberts of the Phillies from a consistent 20-game winner into a sub-.500 pitcher. Robbie’s natural ability and knowledge of how to pitch allowed him to remain a productive major leaguer. I, meanwhile, had yet to pitch an inning in the big leagues. If my arm didn’t get better, I wouldn’t have the same savvy and experience to fall back on.

On Frank’s orders, I abstained from all physical activity during the winter of 1959. When I reported to spring training the following February, my condition hadn’t improved. My arm still hurt and my fastball still lacked pop.

As long as I played, I never found out the exact nature of the injury. The only surgery I ever underwent came at the ripe old age of 77, when I could no longer lift my right arm.

In Buffalo, I simply tried to cope with the pain and adapt to pitching with it. In 11 starts in 1960, I pitched four complete games. With less velocity on my pitches, I relied on hitting my spots. To my coaches, it appeared I had successfully adapted to my new set of circumstances.

Those months in Buffalo included one last visit to Havana, the final trip of any International League team. As we departed Cuba after the three-game series, we saw plumes of smoke rising from American-owned oil tanks. Not long after that, the Havana Sugar Kings became the Jersey City Jerseys.

And bad arm and all, I became a member of the Philadelphia Phillies.

The 1960 Phillies were never going to be confused with the 1927 Yankees—or even the 1959 Phillies. Nobody understood that better than manager Eddie Sawyer. Fired two years after leading the Phillies to a National League pennant in 1950 and then rehired in 1958, only to see his team lose and lose some more, he had evidently given up hope. Following an Opening Day loss to the Reds in 1960, he announced his resignation. Before walking out the door, he muttered something about being 49 years old and wanting to live to see 50. His plan worked. Sawyer died in 1997 at the age of 87.

To the surprise of many, the Phillies went outside the organization to replace Sawyer, bringing in Gene Mauch, who had been managing the Red Sox’s Triple-A affiliate in Minneapolis.

Mauch, a former journeyman infielder who played for six major league teams, had no experience as a major league manager. With his hiring, he became the youngest skipper in the game. The 1960 season marked the beginning of his 26-year managerial career with four different teams.

When I got called up to the Phillies in mid-June, the team was already 16 games out of first place. In light of the team’s woes, general manager John Quinn figured he’d give some younger players a shot. To make room for me, the team demoted veteran right-handed pitcher Ruben Gomez. I narrowly missed out on becoming the first Delaware native ever to play for the Phillies. About a year earlier, pitcher Chris Short, who hailed from Milford, had earned that distinction.

With the Phillies bound for another losing season, I got a chance to prove myself as a starting pitcher.

In the first inning of my major league debut in San Francisco, I faced Willie Mays—and walked him, the second of three walks I yielded that inning. My wildness led to two Giants runs. By the time I struck out Mays in the fourth inning, we trailed 5–0. I took the loss that day.

Five days later, I started against the Cubs and gave up three runs in 6⅔ innings. I left with the game tied and got a no-decision in a 4–3 Phillies win.

I had yet to embarrass myself. I had also yet to dazzle anyone.

On June 28, 1960, I went to the mound at Connie Mack Stadium for my third major league start against the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. As in my previous two outings, my goal was to keep us in the game and avoid an early hook from my manager. But after two walks and an error loaded the bases in the first inning, it looked like Gene might be getting some exercise. But a fly out by John Roseboro ended the threat.

It was smooth sailing from there—until the ninth inning. We led 2–0, and I had surrendered just two hits. But I gave up a hit and a walk with only one out.

Though I had thrown more than 130 pitches, Gene stuck with me. I got Roseboro to fly out and Charlie Neal to ground out to end the game. With that, I became the first Phillies rookie in more than two years to throw a shutout.

“Yes, sir, he pitched a nice game,” Dodgers manager Walter Alston told reporters in the visitors’ clubhouse. “He deserved to win. Only three or four foul balls were hit good.”

That game boosted my confidence. On a good day, when I hit my spots, I could hold my own in the big leagues. On a bad day, when I couldn’t locate my pitches, it was like I was throwing batting practice.

For the remainder of the season, I split my time between starting and relieving. I finished the year with a 3–6 record and a 4.06 ERA on a Phillies team that finished in the National League cellar.

My arm felt fine as long as I did resistance exercises and long tosses that helped improve my range of motion and arm strength. But that regimen didn’t help me rediscover my good stuff. It was frustrating knowing my right arm would never be the same as it was in the minor leagues.