Foul Ball Read online

  Foul Ball

  My Life and Hard Times Trying

  to Save an Old Ballpark

  Jim Bouton

  Copyright

  Foul Ball

  Copyright © 2005 by Jim Bouton

  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Electronic edition published 2012 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795323218

  For more information about Jim Bouton and Foul Ball, visit www.JimBouton.com.

  DEDICATION

  For the determined citizens of Pittsfield, Massachusetts—those “Marching Veto Warriors” who pounded the pavements, stood in the rain, trudged through the snow, rang the doorbells, passed out the flyers, haunted the supermarkets, and braved the cold at the all-night vigils to gather the signatures that forced the government to cancel its plan to build a new stadium that would have doomed their beloved old ballpark.

  You will be the “first pitch” throwers on Opening Day—whole long lines of you spread across the infield—at a restored Wahconah Park. If there ever is such a day.

  Keep your arms loose.

  Contents

  DEDICATION

  Introduction

  1 “Fuckyouski!”

  2 “A good plan without money is better than a bad plan with money”

  3 “Salting the earth”

  4 “We’re like the U.S. Marshalls”

  5 “I like our fifty-fifty chances better today than I did yesterday”

  6 “Frankly I don’t give a shit, I’m only in this for the money”

  7 “Hey, anybody can have a bad day, okay?”

  8 “An unbelievable amount of shit”

  9 “The fix is in”

  10 “Go take a shower”

  11 “You’ve got to fight the madness”

  12 “Somebody get Mr. Bossidy a chair”

  13 “We’re gonna give ya a fair trial, and then we’re gonna hang ya”

  14 “The secret meeting”

  15 “We gave it to Fleisig knowing full well he’d fail”

  16 “Weapons of mass distortion”

  17 “The sub-plot about pollution has got to be cut”

  18 “I promise you it will be different this time”

  19 “Baseball’s Garden of Eden”

  20 “Not in my wildest dreams”

  21 “You guys are starting to rub me the wrong way”

  22 “The Attorney General fucked us”

  23 “What is the matter with you people?”

  24 “And if you quote me I’ll deny it”

  25 “Whodunnit?”

  Postscript

  Cast of Characters

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Documents

  Suggested Search Terms

  “Like me, you could… be unfortunate enough to stumble upon a silent war. The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. Either way, you’re accountable.”

  —Arundhati Roy

  INTRODUCTION

  I never intended to write this book. For months I had been throwing notes in a file to write a different book. It was going to be about my 1940s childhood, a Huckleberry Finn-type adventure tale of underground forts and tree huts, inventing games and choosing up sides, and being the only ten-year-old in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, with a paper route and an overhand curve that dropped off a table.

  Then I got caught up in a more exciting adventure.

  You are no doubt familiar with America’s most costly hostage crisis, perpetrated by the owners of professional sports teams: “Build us a new stadium,” they warn, “or you’ll never see your team again.” This is intended to spread panic in the streets, or at least in the mayor’s office and in the newspapers.

  The only people, besides team owners, who want new stadiums are politicians, lawyers, and the media. Politicos like to swagger around a palace—and stadiums are the modern palaces—the bigger the better, especially for mayors suffering from stadium envy. They like to watch games from the owner’s box in full view of the TV cameras and hang out in the clubhouse with the players. This is in addition to the usual perks, graft, kickbacks, and patronage that accrue to politicians on big construction projects.

  For lawyers, a new stadium offers a virtual buffet. First they get to represent the team against the city, then the city against the people. Then they draft the arguments against a ballot question, and if that doesn’t work, they draft the language of the ballot question. Then the bond guys come in and collect astronomical fees for underwriting the municipal debt that will pay for the new stadium. Why do they get so much money for doing that? It would take a lawyer to explain it.

  The most insidious of the new-stadium supporters are the media, the so-called free press that Thomas Jefferson once said was more important to a democracy than a legislature. Sportswriters, disguised as journalists, pour out the pro-stadium ink, not just because the swankier press boxes make them feel Big League, but because their bosses frequently own part or all of the team. Even “hard news” reporters and “independent” columnists know which side their laptops are buttered on.

  Those who don’t want new stadiums includes just about everyone else—people who: (1) prefer spending tax dollars on schools and hospitals, (2) don’t own adjacent real estate, (3) know how to add and subtract.

  We’re not just talking about a few million dollars of corporate welfare. The amount of public money spent on sports stadiums over the past fifteen years is estimated to be in excess of $16 billion. And that’s just what’s visible.

  Why do so many new stadiums get built if most people don’t want them? Because most people don’t get to vote on the matter. New-stadium proponents—who also know how to add and subtract—do everything in their collective power to keep the question off the ballot. As Rudolph Giuliani so eloquently put it when asked why New Yorkers should not be allowed to vote on a new stadium, “Because they would vote against it.”

  The fiercest competition in sports these days is not between teams or leagues but between governments and their own citizens. New stadiums are often guided past the rocky shoals of referendums by lame-duck mayors, friendly courts, and compromised county executives—all supported by dire warnings from the local media that the loss of baseball, or the end of the world as they know it, is at hand.

  “If we build it, they will come” has evolved into, “If we don’t build it, they will go.”

  No community, no matter how loyal to its team or financially strapped, is exempt from this shameful tactic. A perennial target is New York City, which faces the theoretical loss of the Yankees to New Jersey—where owner George Steinbrenner has been threatening to move for the past dozen years. It’s a bluff, of course—as if Steinbrenner really wants to be a big shot in East Rutherford—but it’s a useful excuse for mayors needing a rationale to do something that makes no economic sense whatsoever, at least according to studies done by consultants not on the city payroll.

  In spite of the evidence and his understanding of the people’s wishes, Yankee fan Rudolph Giuliani, in his last act as mayor, pushed forward plans for two new stadiums—one each for the Yankees and Mets, to show what a nonpartisan guy he is—totaling $1.6 billion! The teams themselves would pay a small portion of that sum for cosmetic reasons, but the bulk of the $1.6 billion, plus cost overruns and a minimum of $300 million in transportation upgrades, w
ould fall to the city, landing on its taxpayers.

  And this was after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with the city facing a budget gap of $4 billion and a projected debt of $40 billion!

  By the way, for you landmark preservationists, one of the proposed sites for a new Yankee Stadium, other than the rail yards on the west side of Manhattan, is McCombs Dam Park across from the old Yankee Stadium, which would then be demolished to make room for a parking garage. There’s no word yet on whether this will be called “The Garage That Ruth Built.”

  Did anyone from the Yankees or Mets express appreciation to the city for this proposed bonanza? Not exactly. Steinbrenner indicated that he was actually more thrilled for his fellow New Yorkers. “Our fans shouldn’t have to wait on line for restrooms and concessions,” he said unselfishly on their behalf.

  The latest refinement in the owners-holding-teams-hostage game is the threat of eliminating teams altogether via “contraction”—baseball’s linguistic equivalent of “collateral damage.” This is what faced the Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins, whose taxpayers have had the temerity to refuse to build new stadiums. In the Twins’ case, taxpayers refused to build a second new stadium to replace the Metrodome (which opened in 1984), which itself had replaced Metropolitan Stadium where I once pitched against Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva. It was only in the negotiations with the Players Association that averted a strike in 2002 that the contraction threat was lifted. But even that is temporary. Part of the deal is that the owners can contract up to two teams after the 2006 season. I wonder if the decision to wait had anything to do with the fact that the most obvious candidate for a 2003 contraction would have been the last-place Milwaukee Brewers—the commissioner’s daughter’s team.

  It’s a national epidemic that gets even crazier as you go down the ladder from the majors to the minors. In minor league towns new stadiums are promoted not just as a necessity but as a bargain! Lured by free parking and $2 hot dogs, fans are flocking to multimillion dollar stadiums built with their tax dollars. It’s as if Joe Sixpack were to help pay for a movie theater in order to get fifty cents off on popcorn.

  Unfortunately, there is no vaccine for economic illiteracy. Since 1985, no fewer than 113 minor league baseball stadiums have been built with taxpayer dollars. And the cities let this happen. What’s more, they compete with one another to see who can offer the best deal to some team or league—at the expense of their own citizens.

  Let them eat hot dogs!

  With this in mind, I had followed with some interest the fortunes of Wahconah Park, one of the oldest ballparks in America. Located in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in the heart of the Berkshire mountains, Wahconah Park has hosted professional baseball since 1892. To attend a game there—with its wooden grandstand, corrugated roof, and plastic owls dangling from the rafters to ward off the pigeons—is to step back in time.

  Baseball aficionados, who rank everything from the ballparks to the bratwurst at the concession stands, consistently rate Wahconah Park among the top ten venues in the country. Money magazine calls it “the definitive old-time minor league experience” and ranks it in the top five. “Just a little bit of heaven,” says Sports Illustrated. It leads the league in superlatives. “This rugged Berkshire beauty” has also been called “a great baseball cathedral,” “one of the gems in the Northeast,” “a throwback to another era,” and “Rockwellesque,” to name a few.

  The place reeks of atmosphere, incorporating the three necessary ingredients for a great ballpark—intimacy, character, and an evocation of the past. This last is the most important, for it is baseball, above all the other sports, that connects the generations. I still remember the day I became a New York Giants fan—at the age of seven. It was 1946. My dad, just back from the war, was digging a dry well in front of our house in Rochelle Park.

  “Who’s your favorite team, Dad?” I asked.

  “The Giants,” he said. Simple as that.

  From that moment on I rooted for Bobby Thomson and Willie Mays and Whitey Lockman and the rest of the guys. Once or twice every summer my brother Bob and I would go to the Polo Grounds to watch the Giants. We’d go a couple of hours early and sit in the upper deck, above the big Chesterfield pack that hung on the facade, and try to catch balls during batting practice.

  The Polo Grounds was especially interesting because it was primarily built for football. Wedging a square baseball field into a rectangular stadium chopped off the foul lines at 280 feet in left, 259 in right, and ballooned out center field to 505 feet. Cheap home runs coexisted with titanic outs.

  Not unlike Wahconah Park, whose quirky dimensions offer its own sublime balance. With a grandstand as close to home plate as the pitcher—which is great for fans—there aren’t many easy pop fouls, a gift to batters. This is offset by the 434-foot death valley in right center, a gift to pitchers. The park giveth and the park taketh away.

  It also hath a history. In 1922 the legendary Jim Thorpe, America’s greatest athlete, played center field and went three-for-four for Worcester against the hometown Pittsfield Hillies of the Eastern League. Two years later, a first baseman for the Hartford Senators by the name of Lou Gehrig played three games there, going three-for-nine with a long home run over the center-field fence. In 1925 Casey Stengel, playing for Worcester, was “banished from the park” following a confrontation with “the arbiter” after getting called out on strikes. The park also hosted boxing, featuring greats Willie Pep and Sugar Ray Robinson.

  What Wahconah Park may be most noted for, however, is the fact that it was built backwards. As a result, the sun sets over the center field fence and shines in the batters’ eyes for ten minutes or so on certain nights. But it’s not a tragedy. The umpire suspends play, the players retreat to their dugouts, and the concession stands rake in a few extra bucks. It’s a sun delay—Mother Nature’s own marketing opportunity.

  I once pitched at Wahconah Park back in 1972, when I first toyed with the idea of a comeback, and what was then a Texas Ranger farm team gave me a tryout. I’d been up for a weekend in the Berkshires with my family, staying at a local B&B, and I drove over with my glove and spikes—you never know when a pitcher’s mound might become available. I had decent stuff that day, but apparently not enough—for a thirty-three-year-old pariah author.

  Now I actually live in the Berkshires, in a town called North Egremont, and Wahconah Park is only a half hour north. But no more tryouts. I just watch the games.

  And often reflect on the meaning of a ballpark.

  When I was a kid, you started by playing in the backyard—catch, punch ball, running bases. Or you went down to “the field,” usually behind a school. Home plate was a bent piece of rubber imbedded in the ground between two scooped-out holes that filled with water when it rained. The pitcher’s mound was actually a pit, with a block of wood sticking up that you could break your ankle trying to pitch off. Bases were pieces of paper with rocks on them. Balls were wrapped with black friction tape. Game balls were wrapped with white adhesive tape from your mom’s medicine cabinet. Practice balls had yarn flying off them as they sailed through the air.

  As you got older you played on fields with grass and team benches, in front of girlfriends who sat on blankets, and old men who watched through a chain-link backstop behind home plate. It was baseball, but it wasn’t official. It wasn’t a real ballpark, where the big kids played. That would come later—if you were still good enough.

  And I was barely good enough at Bloom Township High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois. That’s where I transferred in my sophomore year when our family moved to the Midwest. For me, this was a personal disaster of epic proportions. Instead of being a three-sport star at an all-white high school of 500 kids in Ridgewood, New Jersey, I was a pimply-faced bench warmer at a multiethnic sports factory of 3,400 kids on the south side of Chicago.

  After my first day of practice for the freshman/sophomore football team—which could have beaten the varsity in Ridgewood—I came home
black and blue and discouraged. When my father asked what the problem was, I said, “Dad, these guys are shaving!”

  As a third-string quarterback, I never got into a game. I never even made the basketball team, and barely made the freshman–sophomore baseball team. This was particularly heartbreaking because my dad had scouted the high schools in the area and had picked Bloom partly because it had such a good sports program.

  And a great ballpark! Built in 1926, Heights Park, as it was called, was a beauty. It had a covered wooden grandstand, set back from the field just like in the pros. It was painted dark green and smelled of lime and cement. There was even a concession stand so people could eat hot dogs while watching a game. I just didn’t want to be one of the watchers.

  But that’s what I was. Sitting out in the bullpen, watching games I never got into. That’s where I got the nickname Warm Up Bouton, because all I ever did was warm up.

  Coach Fred Jacobeit was a nice man but he already had plenty of pitchers, including a guy named Jerry Colangelo who now owns the Arizona Diamondbacks. Jerry and another kid, Miles Zeller, did most of the pitching. They even got to pitch a few games for the varsity. Nothing was worse than sitting in class and watching Colangelo and Zeller leave early for a varsity road game.

  That summer, for the first time that I could remember, I did not play baseball. Instead, I worked as a stock boy at the Homewood A&P, stamping “two for thirty-nine cents” on the Contadina tomato paste. The only good thing was the baby food, which was all I could eat because my braces were killing me. I was very depressed. When my old girlfriend from Ridgewood came out to visit, all she could say was, “Jimmy, what’s happened to you?”

  My junior year wasn’t much better. During Careers Week we had to choose a profession and write a report. But I didn’t even know who I was, let alone what I wanted to be. The guidance counselor had said we should choose something that suited our personalities. So I did my report on the life of a forest ranger. I’d fit in perfectly with the other squirrels.