4
It was as if someone had to bludgeon me over the head with a bat to make me realize that I had pitched my way into a baseball career. Not until scouts began offering gobs of money did I finally understand. Yet I still did not grasp the importance of what was happening to me. I did not comprehend the significance of making decisions that would affect the rest of my life.
My parents were protective. They wanted me to make the best choice but my father believed I would require as much coaching as possible. That is why one of his demands of all organizations was that I be placed at the lowest rung of the minor leagues upon signing a professional contract. I am not certain that stipulation was made because he recognized my immaturity or if he simply wanted me to take a path through the system similar to that of other players despite my status as arguably the premier prospect in the sport at that time.
In the years preceding the annual major league amateur draft, which was created in 1965 to even the playing field and provide teams with the worst record an opportunity to select the best talent, clubs tried to outbid each other. Scouting was of paramount importance. Baseball sleuths who failed to find great players or who misread a player’s potential did not remain employed for long. Front office personnel such as general managers who consistently allowed rivals to snag eventual superstars without making a strong attempt to sign them were also routinely dispatched. Debates raged within organizations about the future of high school and college players.
There were few disagreements about me. I was universally wanted. Scouts viewed me as having a similar level of potential as Sandy Koufax, another left-hander who had in the late 1950s yet to blossom because despite averaging one strikeout per inning he could not consistently find the strike zone. I displayed excellent control in high school and other amateur competition. I consistently fanned at least two batters per inning because I not only threw a fastball that promised to get faster as I grew further into my body, but thanks greatly to my father I had developed major league–quality breaking pitches. It was no wonder that all sixteen major league teams made my parents an offer.
What was mind-boggling was my lack of appreciation for how their thirst for my services was about to affect my future. The perpetual fog I lived in that remained with me as I began my professional career included not recognizing where I was; not understanding my position; being desensitized to my environment; immaturity; depression; lack of a true sense of reality; and taking everything for granted. My career outlook was limited to having a little fun and getting paid for it.
The recruiting process began in earnest my sophomore year at Central Catholic when three scouts consistently attended my high school games in the spring and amateur league contests in the summer. They were not legally allowed to speak with me until graduation but they would periodically buy me ice cream after games. Among the scouts who showed a strong interest was Cy Williams with the Detroit Tigers. He lived in upstate New York but always drove down to watch me pitch. As a sophomore especially, but beyond as well, those visits had no effect on me. I did not recognize or understand the seriousness of his interest. He conversed often with my parents but not me. Williams sometimes drove me home from Colt League games when my coach (Jim Green) could not. He grew so close to my family that when I did not sign with the Tigers my sister refused to speak with me for a month.
My parents sheltered me from what became a bit of a circus as the number of scouts grew during my junior and senior years. Their protection played a role in my ignorance about what was happening to me but I do recall reading that the Pirates signed a California kid named Bob Bailey to the biggest bonus ever offered to an amateur player (Bailey never emerged as an All-Star but enjoyed a long and fruitful major league career) and I liked the idea. As a teenager who desperately sought attention, landing a huge bonus and receiving national media recognition for it was precisely what floated my boat.
My mother shunned that notion. She was not about to allow anyone else dictate the process of recruiting her seventeen-year-old son. The only club I thought about specifically through the whole thing was the Pirates and not because they were my hometown team but because of their $108,000 offer to Bailey. But my parents dictated everything. They insisted that there be no negotiations for my services. All major league teams were notified that they could pitch only one offer and that I and my parents would then make the final decision. I vividly recall sitting on the porch with Carol Ann and discussing the bids that had been placed.
Eventually the proposals were all in. My parents called me in to the dining room and handed me a list of teams and their offers. I noticed that eight of the sixteen presented bonuses of exactly $50,000, which led me to believe there was a bit of collusion involved. But when I feasted my eyes on the $75,000 deal offered by the Cleveland Indians, it was all over. That the Pirates gave Bob Bailey this same year a $108,000 bonus, I believe, was the main reason why they failed to offer any more than the stated $50,000 even though I was considered one of their favorites. What my parents apparently did not realize and I certainly did not since I never read the contract in its entirety was that part of that bonus was my salary for the next five years unless or until I reached the majors. I actually earned $160 per month for the next three months and nothing for winter instructional ball in St. Petersburg, Florida.
I knew little about Cleveland or the Indians, who had gained a reputation over the years for perennially strong pitching staffs. Among their premier talents had been another hard-throwing left-hander named Herb Score, who had appeared destined a few years earlier for a Hall of Fame career until a line drive by Yankees hitter Gil McDougald slammed into his eye. Score was never the same afterward. He had been traded to the White Sox by the time I made it to Cleveland in 1961. My first experience with Score came after I had been demoted to the Triple-A Jacksonville Suns in 1963. I had been assigned to stay in the same hotel as the visiting club. As luck would have it, one afternoon while I was eating before a night game, Score walked into the same dining room. He noticed that the waiter was talking baseball with me and asked if I was with the Suns. He invited me to eat with him, which I considered unreal because the opposition was considered the enemy in those days. He was always a very unpretentious and modest man, and I got to know him better in later years when he was a long-time broadcaster of Indians games on the radio.
It is somewhat unlucky that I signed with Cleveland after high school graduation in 1960. That was the first year of what became known to Indians fans as the Curse of Rocky Colavito. Three months before I signed and only a couple days before the regular season began, the hugely popular power-hitting out-fielder had been traded to the Tigers for singles hitter Harvey Kuenn. The swap angered the vast majority of the fan base and even inspired protests in Cleveland. Though no one lousy trade can be responsible for decades of misery, the fact is the Indians remained at or near the bottom of the standings for the next thirty-three years. They did not vault back into contention until leaving Municipal Stadium for Jacobs Field in 1994. Their massive struggle is one reason why, after competing in every playoff and World Series event in amateur baseball, I never came close to participating in a World Series in the professional ranks.
Not that I gave any thought to future Indians fortunes when I signed with the organization. I barely gave thought to my own future but I certainly received the kind of attention I always craved. I was invited to reveal my decision on the iconic, nationally televised game show To Tell the Truth, which aired on June 16, 1960. The experience numbed me but scared my mother, who was asked to travel with me since I was underage at only seventeen years old. She couldn’t sleep the night before, which left her extremely tired. The network had a limousine deliver us to the hotel. We had separate rooms where we waited for our ride to the studio. When we got to what we were told was the green room—which was not green—my mom was escorted to the audience and I was told what to expect.
The program featured me as one of three contestants claiming to be Sam McDowell. A panel of stars that included actors Polly Bergen, Don Ameche, and Tom Poston hurled questions about baseball our way to determine before voting which one of us was the budding star. I towered over the other two contestants, though one of them certainly looked athletic enough to fool the guessers. The other was a bespectacled kid who looked nothing like a premier baseball prospect, and he gave himself away quickly by not knowing that Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history.
The questions were mostly a can of corn. I was asked, “What happens if a batter’s bat tips the catcher’s mitt?” I was a bit surprised at the obscurity of the question, which made me hesitate a bit before answering correctly that the hitter is awarded first base for interference. I was also asked the difference between a no-hitter and perfect game, who on the diamond rubs up a ball, and how a pitcher delivers a curve. I am not certain if my answers proved unsatisfactory to the panelists but only Poston guessed correctly. The other votes went to the other contestant who answered his baseball questions well enough to trick the other three.
I was a bit stiff during the show but I managed to crack a smile when I was told to stand up and reveal my identity as the audience clapped. My mother, meanwhile, sat proudly throughout. We later took in The Sound of Music on Broadway, for which a friend had procured us tickets. It was a dream come true for my mom but she was so tired she slept through the entire performance.
Soon I was off to Cleveland for a show-and-tell with the media. After watching a couple of my workouts, Indians pitching coach Mel Harder exclaimed, “All this kid needs is experience to pitch. He has all the mechanics and all the pitches.” He was technically right. What he did not understand was that I was eons from being ready to adjust to better competition for there is far more to pitching than talent alone.
I returned home then left the next day for Lakeland, Florida, to launch my professional career. The Indians might have placed me higher in their organization than the Class D Lakeland Indians to start had my parents not insisted that I be sent to the lowest rung to get my feet wet. What the team did not know was that aside from the physical aspects of pitching, I was not prepared for any level. Coaches and managers back then never explored and dealt with the mental and emotional challenges faced by their players, let alone a seventeen-year-old kid leaving home for the first time. They worked on mechanics and considered the job done. Mechanics were not my problem. My father had made certain of that.
My numbness to the entire situation continued as I flew down to the Sunshine State. I felt nothing positive or negative about starting my career in Class D. I experienced no excitement, no dread, no nervousness. I was neither over-confident nor underconfident. I did not know what to expect partly because I gave it little consideration. The mechanical way I had gone through much of my life and athletic exploits continued. I could not even focus on the tasks at hand because they were part of this great unknown. Where was I going to stay? Who was going to greet me? Who was I going to meet? Where was I going to go when I got there? None of it even entered my mind until I arrived.
The answers to questions I never asked came soon enough. The Lakeland team trainer picked me up from the airport and delivered me to a house in which seven other players were staying. I later fetched my equipment bag and got a ride from my new teammates to the stadium, where I met manager Charlie Gassaway, who introduced me to the rest of the team. Upon dressing for my first game I realized I did not have the standard underwear. During my amateur playing days I simply put a jock strap over my underpants and then slid on my uniform. But these guys had special socks, special underpants, special under-shirts, special socks. I purchased one and all from the clubhouse manager and finally looked like a professional ballplayer. From that point forward I watched my teammates carefully. Whatever they did, I did. It was a wise approach. I just wish I had not taken the same one a few years later when it came to drinking.
The $75,000 bonus provided by the Indians certainly put me in a higher tax bracket than my teammates, most of whom were at least a year or two older than me. But I did not spend it frivolously. I did purchase a Cadillac—I was so young I had to convince a teammate to sign for it—but only because the seven of us needed it as we were too cramped in just one car. And it was far from a bright, shiny new vehicle. It was a 1949 model with windows that did not work, which resulted in the frequent rains of Florida often splattering us as we drove along. It was no wonder the darn thing cost only $100. I learned late in the season that I had been assigned to winter ball in St. Petersburg after a month of vacation back in Pittsburgh so I simply parked the Cadillac by one of the many nearby Lakeland lakes and left it there. I came back a month later to find the car still there and in perfect working condition for my trip to St. Pete.
At one point while I was still in Lakeland my family drove down to watch me pitch. Our team was scheduled to play in a ballpark in Palatka built in what can best be described as a swamp. Rain would result in an overflow past the fence and bring in snakes, including water moccasins, and motivate outfielders to hightail it back to the bench. Sometimes we would notice spiders in our shoes when we finished games. Naturally we would want to clean ourselves after playing there but there were only three shower heads above a dirt floor.
I pitched the previous day; therefore I only had my running to do. So Gassaway allowed me to stay back as long as I got my exercise work done. But I learned that I had broken baseball etiquette. A player was not supposed to beg off unless he was on his deathbed. I learned that lesson again when Carol Ann was having our first baby. My manager and general manager then were adamant. I had to stay with the team. Fortunately times have changed.
Early in my professional career I received a rude awakening to the segregated South. I freaked out upon my arrival at the stadium in Lakeland when my eyes caught sight of a sign in front of the right-field seating that read “For Negroes Only.” I was a northern kid who was ignorant of the racism of the Jim Crow period that had barely begun to erode. My father had worked with African Americans. I played alongside and against black people on every sports team in Pittsburgh. Great players were great players and bad players were bad players in my heart and mind. African Americans were in my classrooms and cafeterias in school. I never noticed differences based on race. But they were certainly treated differently on my team. When we took our few road trips we were forced to drop our black players off at a hotel where they would be accepted and we would go on to our hotel. I felt quite uneasy about it. I even witnessed my first cross burning in Lakeland but did not at that time know what it was. The whole experience was quite eerie.
I displayed a more humorous youthful ignorance of the ways of the world when we took our first road trip of the season to Daytona Beach. (Remember, I was only seventeen years old.) When we arrived at our Daytona Beach, I noticed many beautiful woman hanging out in the lobby. Later that day I asked a team-mate if I would be permitted to date one of them after the game. He laughed his ass off but did not reveal why until we returned to the clubhouse to change into our uniforms. That is when he elicited the hearty laughter of my teammates by telling them of my intention. Why was everyone laughing at my expense? I eventually learned that those women were prostitutes. That they were in the hotel lobby came as no surprise to the older guys, including the veterans of minor league baseball who were accustomed to staying in cheap hotels also frequented by ladies of the night. I had learned my lesson by the time I advanced to Triple-A when we stumbled upon another house of ill-repute. It was the Peachtree Manor in Atlanta, where we played before the Braves moved there from Milwaukee. And no, I never “dated” any of them.
It is hard to believe that my baseball career had not risen to the top of my priority list at that time. I was still a kid playing a man’s game. My focus and attention on my pitching would affect everything in my personal and professional life. But I did not grasp the concept. I did not understand the importance of how well I performed. I never looked forward to my future. Rather, I took everything day to day, moment to moment. I anticipated the end of my first professional season so I could enjoy mindless pursuits such as simply hanging out with Carol.
I was not destined to spend much time with her. Two weeks after I got back to Pittsburgh I received a plane ticket to St. Petersburg for winter ball. Soon I was back in the same environment, which exacerbated my existing emotional and mental problems. I felt like I did not belong. I suspected irrationally that I had not earned my way to that level. I believed that my teammates, many of whom boasted two or three or four years of experience, were superior to me. I placed them on a pedestal, viewed them as icons. I vividly recall my first day of winter ball heading into the training room for a Band-Aid after cutting myself and seeing teammate Bob Gordon conversing with another player from the training table. Just saying hello to them I felt like I was interfering. I felt so uncomfortable about that encounter that I did not interact with Bob the rest of the season.
The mindset that I was not worthy of attention or had not earned my status in the game made me feel awkward with all the publicity I received in Pittsburgh immediately after signing the huge bonus with the Indians and beyond. I was asked to speak at various functions, including my old high school, which made me feel uncomfortable. I was uneasy because in my mind I had not accomplished anything yet. Never mind that I had earned that bonus as the most accomplished prep pitcher in America. I did not see myself that way.
I have written about my existence as a kid in the fog of an alcoholic personality. I have written about my narcissism and craving for attention. And perhaps at that point in my life only the desire to be accepted inspired me to want to help others in need. Or maybe a positive aspect of my personality that would be allowed to realize itself in counseling well after I retired from baseball was emerging.
One example revolved around my mother. I had sat down with her after returning from Lakeland following my first pro ball experience. I asked her for an update, and she complained about the cost of the home mortgage. Rather than offer to help, I could only think about spending time with my girlfriend. But when I got back to Pittsburgh following winter ball I took more of an interest in the financial concerns of my mom. I asked her the balance on the mortgage and she blurted out $10,000. So I wrote a check for that amount and handed it to her. She shed tears of happiness. At first she refused to accept the money but she did eventually, and it felt wonderful to relieve some of her worries and stress. It was a rare spark of selflessness from self-centered Sam.
But it was not the only one. In spring training the following year I played a role in the rescue of an endangered woman and it made me feel good. The rather harrowing story began in Tucson, where I was working out with the Indians before my transfer to minor league camp in Daytona Beach. I befriended an attractive waitress while staying at the Roadway Inn—nothing flirtatious about our relationship or with any intention. One day another waitress sidled up next to me and asked if I knew her colleague and I confirmed that I did. She told me that her friend’s divorced husband had pretty much kidnapped her and her son in the middle of the night and taken them to his house in the middle of the desert. I learned that the waitress I had been talking to was afraid to inform the police. So I did.
We drove with the policeman to the residence and he rescued the woman and her child. But she had no place to go. She had been living with the waitress who informed me of the kidnapping and her three children and had been looking for a permanent home. So she thankfully and gratefully accepted my offer to put her up in a hotel. I paid for her stay until she could find a place of her own. Soon the husband called the Indians and even my mother complaining about my involvement and making up lies about the incident. He claimed I was still interfering, which was a fantasy since I had already left for Daytona Beach.
That is where we stayed in an old army barracks and practiced every day on a field filled with fire ants that enjoyed biting us. But I was content just to be playing ball and getting paid for it. I rarely thought about anything in particular. That complacency prevented me from understanding anything that was happening to me in my personal and professional life. I spent time walking up and down the boardwalk with teammates, winning stuffed animals by shooting little basketballs into little rims, and then being asked by shady carnies not to come back because I was simply too accurate.
I often recall more vividly than anything that happened in games the camaraderie and funny moments outside the realm of competition during my early playing days. That is certainly true of my first winter ball experience. I remember watching with my teammates the 1960 World Series between the Pirates and Yankees. Though I still knew little about major league baseball, I had become aware of a few of the Pittsburgh players while pitching batting practice at Forbes Field, and I joined in the celebration around the tube when Bill Mazeroski slugged the only series-clinching home run in the history of that fall classic. He mashed it off Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry, who it turns out spent time as my roommate with the Indians in 1965.
Those who have complained with some justification that my poor control prevented me from maximizing my potential must learn the story of Steve Dalkowski. The Baltimore organization pitcher became the talk of the Grapefruit League in the early 1960s. The buzz became so great that I could hardly wait for our scheduled game against a group of Orioles minor leaguers. Dalkowski is believed to this day to have been the hardest thrower in the history of the sport, yet his inability to fire strikes would forever keep him out of the major leagues. His reputation seemed well-earned to me after watching him pitch and hearing the sound of his fastball cracking into the catcher’s mitt. That great stuff does not make one a superior pitcher becomes obvious if you track the career of Dalkowski. I was learning that lesson myself at the same time.
I realized during my first year in professional ball and then later what I should have known before my career began. The talent differential between the amateur game in Pittsburgh and even the lowest rung of the minor leagues was vast. Plus there were so many intricacies about pitching that I needed to learn. It was mind-boggling. But rather than soak in as much knowledge as possible, I continued to live in a fantasy world. I remained in a fog, interested only in having fun and getting paid for it even after the Indians catapulted me from Class D to the Triple-A Salt Lake City Bees to start the 1961 season.
I tried in vain to pitch as I did in the amateur ranks and get away with it. Harder was correct when he told the assembled media in Cleveland that I boasted the perfect mechanics and an assortment of pitches to thrive at the major league level once I got a bit of seasoning. But what neither he nor I understood was that I had never been forced to learn the nuances of my craft and the strategies required to maximize my vast talents. In high school I simply fired fastballs by the average hitters and mixed in a few sharp-breaking curves against the better ones. The results were overwhelming. But there were no average hitters in professional ball, not even in Class D. They were the cream of the crop from the high school and college programs. I had very good control against amateur competition. My condition and daily throwing program had made my body, shoulders, and arms strong. By the time I got to Lakeland I was throwing harder than ever. But I struggled greatly with my control.
I did not comprehend this, nor did I learn why it was happening for several years. What I noticed was that I could no longer throw my fastball by hitters even though I had attained greater speed on it. My velocity did not scare hitters as it did in high school. I also could not get away with mistakes anymore. When I hung a curveball, it got hit hard rather than fouled off. I compared my situation to the amateur all-star games I pitched in when I faced the best hitters in the city. About three or four hitters in the lineup provided a challenge yet I was still throwing no-hitters and one-hitters. But in the minors everyone I faced was an all-star from his city. And they had all progressed from their prep days. I had to improve as well but that did not happen until I shed my robotic approach, until frustration and anger forced me to learn the strategies of pitching. That watershed moment was not exactly right around the bend.
I had previously not needed to throw quality strikes. My pure stuff overwhelmed batters. In professional ball I would not survive unless I hit the corners, moved the ball to all four quadrants, mixed up my pitches. I pitched more fearfully than confidently. The result was my first experience with control issues that would haunt me throughout my career, though I learned to overcome them during my best seasons. I walked 80 batters in just 104 innings during my one year at Lakeland but still won about half my decisions and compiled a respectable 3.35 ERA by escaping jams on pure stuff. I learned quickly that pro ball would be no walk in the park unless I cut down on all those walks in the park.
The problem was neither physical nor mental. It was immaturity. I required an adjustment. I needed to gain an awareness of the science of pitching. My teammates understood. They respected that I was trying as hard as I could. They knew I had received a huge bonus, but there was no resentment that I could detect. The control problems stemmed from watching the same stuff that baffled amateur hitters getting slammed for line drives. But that was the only stuff I had.
I had to become a pitcher, not a thrower. It would not happen overnight but the Indians were not about to wait. Rather than move me along slowly through the system to accommodate the wishes of my parents, they had skyrocketed me to the Triple-A Salt Lake City Bees in 1961, my first full season in professional ball. I spoke years later with co–minor league director Bob Kennedy about what some would perceive as an undeserved major promotion, and he told me the organization had wanted to challenge me to see if I could handle it.
I could not handle it—at least in regard to control. I managed to compile a 13–10 record as the only starter on the club with a winning record. I kept my team in most games. But nobody was teaching me how to pitch. Batters remained quite satisfied taking my offerings and jogging to first base. My wildness became more pronounced. I walked 152 batters in 175 innings as my ERA ballooned more than a point from a respectable 3.35 with Lakeland to a loftier 4.42.
At least I stayed sober despite a curiosity about drinking that nearly sent Salt Lake City manager Freddie Fitzsimmons into spontaneous combustion. Fitzsimmons was a standout pitcher for the New York Giants in the 1920s and 1930s and managed a terrible Phillies club during World War II. He was sixty years old when he was managing me with the Bees. One vow I made upon the start of my professional career in my ever-present desire to draw attention to myself was to stay away from booze. After all, most players drank a beer or two after games. They were even supplied by the teams in the clubhouse. That remained my motivation until I discovered that I could draw more attention drunk and that boozing temporarily strengthened my confidence in social situations and made me feel more normal. Anyway, one very hot day I gave in to temptation and had started to drink a beer when Fitzsimmons bolted from his office screaming about the mental mistakes we had made in the game. He then noticed me drinking the beer and embarked on another rant. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled. Message delivered. I did not take another sip the rest of the year.
Teetotaler Sam walked nearly twice as many batters as any Salt Lake City pitcher that year but he posted its only winning record—we were quite a poor club. And the Indians were eager to show off their flame-throwing bonus baby. My major league debut was right around the corner.