5
The Indians brought me up for a show-off start against the Senators on September 15, 1961. I do not recall if I knew that the Senators boasted the premier offensive club in baseball, but facing the likes of Harmon Killebrew, Earl Battey, and Bobby Allison certainly presented a challenge for a kid still six days from his nineteenth birthday.
Though it was a cold night, that only 4,500 patrons clicked through the turn-stiles at Cleveland Municipal Stadium for my major league debut shows how turned off Indians fans had become since the trade of Rocky Colavito to Detroit.
Like most ballplayers, I recall vividly everything about my first taste of the big leagues. I was surprised to have been promoted though I did sport the only winning record among the Salt Lake City starters despite a rather high ERA. My teammates and I spent much time discussing who would and would not get the call. I never considered myself a hotshot—that lack of confidence was part of my problem—so I figured I fell into the latter category.
I drove all the way from Salt Lake City to Cleveland in a white Thunderbird along with teammates Max Alvis and Jim Lawrence (who received two at-bats at the end of the season and never returned to the big leagues). I had purchased the car with my bonus money after my first experience in winter instructional league. The three of us were jam-packed against all our suitcases and equipment bags but did not stop until we arrived, instead taking turns driving and sleeping.
I was not only younger and more immature than Alvis and Lawrence but my lack of interest in major league baseball when I was growing up resulted in a lack of knowledge about the guys I was about to play with. I knew little about the Indians except some of their names like Woodie Held, Gary Bell, Chuck Essegian, Tito Francona, and Vic Power—and of course Jimmy Piersall, my roomie during spring training. The entire experience was like a journey into the unknown. I was in awe walking into the Cleveland clubhouse for the first time—seeing how big it was in comparison to our facilities in Salt Lake City though miniscule by today’s standards.
I was nervous, which looking back was a positive emotion because at least I was feeling something. I had to that point gone through life on and off the field robotically. Essegian took the lead in a very kind, caring way in trying to put me at ease. I appreciate that to this day because back in that era new teammates rarely befriended rookies until they had earned their way onto a major league roster. One example was Bell taking me out two years later for what became my first drinking binge after he’d concluded I deserved the attention of a baseball veteran.
The calming presence of Essegian proved to have a positive effect. With my parents, sister, and brother-in-law in the stands—they all drove over from Pittsburgh—I outpitched Twins starter and future Cleveland teammate Jack Kralick into the seventh inning though, typically, I walked five. I would have earned the victory had reliever Frank Funk not blown the save after maintaining a 2–0 lead with two outs in the ninth. I might have hurled a complete-game shutout had I not broken two ribs trying to throw too hard in chilly temperatures.
It has been sixty years but I still remember the pitch that sent me out of the game. It was a 2–2 fastball I fired to Clevelander and future Indians teammate Rich Rollins in my eagerness to strike him out. It resulted in ball three and the broken ribs. I was dispatched to the hospital for x-rays that determined I was done for the year. No biggie—the season was almost over and after the examination my parents accompanied me to a wonderful ice cream parlor on Euclid Avenue that specialized in fancy sundaes. I was healed in time for winter ball in Puerto Rico.
That first full season in professional baseball tested me both socially and professionally. I had been forced away from family and friends in my comfortable, familiar little Pittsburgh bubble and thrown unprepared mentally or emotionally into an entirely new world. I was not alone. Other rookies to the pro game were trying to handle the same experience. But my self-centered and alcoholic personality driven by narcissism prevented me from realizing that we were all in the same boat. I only cared about how my new life was affecting me.
I recall vividly my first spring training in Tucson in 1961. Upon my arrival in Arizona I checked into my hotel room, unpacked my bags, hung up my clothes, and flipped on the television set. I began reading the printed material provided by the Indians about the ins and outs of camp when my designated roommate entered. It was none other than Piersall, whose emotional issues on and off the field would eventually inspire the movie Fear Strikes Out. He stepped about ten feet into the room and stared at me. “Hi, I’m Sam McDowell,” I said with a friendly tone. “I’m not rooming with a rookie,” he replied in a rather unfriendly tone before grabbing his two suitcases and marching out. Piersall was not about to share a room with a first-year player. So I stayed by myself for three weeks until leaving for Daytona. Single rooms, especially for rookies, in spring training or the regular season were unheard of in those days.
That my personality allowed me to remain unaffected by events that for other teenagers might have proven traumatic was not necessarily a bad thing. But I was overwhelmed by the company I kept. Even though the vast majority of players in camp were ordinary minor leaguers or mildly accomplished major leaguers, I saw them all in my eighteen-year-old mind as superstars. I sat in the clubhouse looking around in awe. That feeling was more memorable to me than any of the rather uneventful happenings on the field.
I experienced what I feared to be my first bit of trouble as a professional player during that short spring training stint in Tucson, though it was not my fault. We were in Mesa playing against the Cubs. Indians manager Jimmy Dykes, as is customary for exhibitions, had scheduled his pitchers for that game and I was not among them. Around the seventh inning Harder asked me and several others to clear the bench, take a shower, and leave the facility so there would be enough room for everyone in what was the tiniest clubhouse in the Cactus League. But when Gary Bell hurt his ankle, Dykes ordered Harder to call me in to pitch. He should have been able to find me in the shower—that is where I had been ordered to go. Never mind logic. Dykes called me over on the bus returning to Tucson and informed me that I had been fined. I complained that I had been told to take a shower and he replied that I should have been ready anyway. It turned out the joke was on me, just a typical gag played on a rookie. There was a fine of five cigars.
I took it in stride. No green kid was going to rebel against his manager. I yearned to stay on his good side but I also wanted to show that two could play that game. The next morning I visited the glass case in the hotel lobby and picked out the four cheapest, lousiest cigars I could find as a way to “pay my fine” to Dykes. They cost me a total of twenty cents. I presented them to my cigar-loving manager who told me in no uncertain terms that those “ropes” did not befit a man of his stature. I returned to the glass case and purchased the most expensive cigars I could find—set me back four bucks—and handed them to Dykes. All was well.
My fine performance against the Twins proved a bit of an anomaly for that point in my career. I actually regressed statistically over the next couple years as I bounced from the big leagues to the minors and received no help from anyone in trying to transform from a thrower to a pitcher. My struggles on the mound became more pronounced. And worsening issues off the field did not just nearly cost me my career. They almost cost me my life.
My arm was that of a man among boys. My head and heart were those of a boy among men. My immaturity was battling my talent in the early 1960s. And my talent was losing. The loneliness, sadness, and depression that plagued me as a child only worsened in my early years as a professional athlete. I remained in a fog with neither the motivation nor direction necessary to stick and thrive in the Show.
No conscious thoughts about my craft entered my brain as I stood on the mound, executed my windup, and delivered. Ignorance was not bliss. I felt I had to be satisfied getting paid for playing a game because I had no idea how to maximize my effectiveness. I boasted far more ability than my peers yet I was in awe of them. I was twenty going on twelve.
Mechanics were not the problem. My father used his expertise in engineering and anatomy to explain to a young Sam McDowell the inner workings of the human body and how it can be best contorted to execute the most effective windup, arm angle, release point, and delivery. But my ignorance of the science of pitching prevented me from taking that knowledge and running with it. I also lacked focus and concentration. I understood nothing of the strategy of pitching. How could I get hitters out consistently and efficiently? I couldn’t.
It proves that scouting is an inexact science. Harder was only partly right when he claimed after my three-day workout in Cleveland at age seventeen that all I required was experience. He was correct that I boasted the capacity to unleash a wicked variety of pitches. My stuff often trumped my ignorance of the science of pitching. I could sometimes overwhelm hitters with my velocity and movement. But I could not reliably throw strikes. And I certainly could not locate within the strike zone. Heck, I was giving nearly one batter per inning a red carpet to first base. They understood that my wildness motivated me to fire multiple fastballs in a row. No pitcher throws hard enough to blow away professional hitters with heater after heater. They were eventually going to time it up and destroy mine, especially when I could not spot them. Learning and embracing the science and strategy of my craft would have allowed me to overcome my poor control and maximize the effectiveness of each pitch in my repertoire. But I was throwing in a fog through which I could not see. Little did I understand at the time that the fog was part of a disease about which I remained unaware.
I simply tried to outguess opposing hitters in what often resulted in a losing struggle. The coaches were no help. Rather than teaching me what to throw to particular hitters on particular counts and why, they grew frustrated with me. Among them was Indians manager Birdie Tebbetts, who after taking over the job in 1963 decided to call all my pitches from the dugout. At no time did he sit me down and explain his reasoning so I was forced to take the initiative. I asked him twice why he was dictating my pitch selection and he replied unsatisfactorily on both occasions that I should just follow along and he would transform me into—his words—a superstar. It was not the first time he uttered that proclamation. He told me the same thing when I arrived for spring training.
Wrong. He only prevented me from growing as a person and as a pitcher. I did not need any help in that department—we were working in tandem on maintaining my lack of maturity. I had no idea what I was doing on the mound. I was simply trying to throw fastballs by hitters or bouncing curveballs in the dirt in the hope they would swing.
I can understand in retrospect the immediate motivation for Tebbetts to call my pitches. He was trying to win ballgames. The job security of any major league manager is precarious. But his efforts backfired. I lacked the emotional investment game to game, knowing that I was not fully responsible for my performance. I pitched no better in 1963 than I had in 1962 when I bounced from Salt Lake City to Cleveland. I performed far better in the minors than I did with the Indians. I allowed 144 hits and 114 walks in 152 innings during those two seasons combined. Yielding one hit per inning is fine for most pitchers but it was inexcusable for one with my talent.
I was only twenty years old chronologically with the maturity level of a young teenager. The goal should have been development. Rather than groom me into a pitcher who could thrive by teaching me the game within the game then allowing me to execute what I had learned, the Indians were stifling me. I had an excuse for my failures. I could blame them on somebody else. Nobody—not Sandy Koufax, not Nolan Ryan, not Aroldis Chapman—boasts the velocity to fire nothing but fastballs for strikes and thrive against major league hitters. That certainly applied to Sam McDowell, who by that time could match miles per hour with the best of them. Though radar readings were a futuristic concept in the early 1960s, it can surely be ascertained that I was throwing at over 100 miles per hour given that I was clocked at 103 well past my prime in the mid-1970s and was determined to have boasted the third-fastest fastball in major league history.
Like Koufax and Ryan, I struggled mightily with control early in my professional career. Such was not a problem in amateur ball. High school batters could not catch up to my fastball and flailed away at curves that featured far more break than anything they had previously seen. But as I grew physically after signing with the Indians, my fastball gained even more speed. It was no wonder that Cleveland Plain Dealer writer Bob Dolgan nicknamed me “Sudden Sam” when I first arrived in major league camp in March 1961 and the established slugger Harmon Killebrew exclaimed that my fastball arrived “all of a sudden.” The problem was the faster I could throw, the faster I wanted to throw. By the end of the 1961 season I was overthrowing it.
That exacerbated my existing control problem, which was based on weak confidence and concentration. My wildness was not only a reflection of fear of getting hit. It was also a combination of poor focus brought about by lack of faith in my knowledge and abilities as well as myself in general. It did not help when right fielder Bob Nieman misjudged an easy fly ball that fell for a hit then came back to the dugout and before anyone could say anything, spouted, “I shouldn’t be out there as a caddy for a rookie pitching.”
In order for a pitcher to master control and location, he must believe if he throws a pitch toward a certain spot, the odds are a positive result will prevail. At that time I doubted I could ever throw a pitch to a certain spot. I hoped for an area. I had neither trust nor the courage to gamble on the outcome. It became a chicken-and-egg problem. I did not have the focus to feel confident on the mound. And I did not feel confident enough in my focus to throw confidently.
The numbers proved it. From my professional debut in 1961 to the end of June 1963, after the experiment of calling pitches by Tebbetts had failed and the Indians returned me to Triple-A Jacksonville, I had walked 374 batters in 478 2/3 innings combined in the minors and majors. Issuing seven walks per nine innings, especially given that such wildness precludes locating within the strike zone, is a recipe for disaster. Making matters worse was that my hits-to-innings-pitched ratio was rising. It is no wonder that my ERA during my first two full seasons in Cleveland soared to an ugly 5.79. Yeah, I was barely out of my teenage years. But I was too darn talented to post such horrible numbers.
The failure I experienced from the start of my major league career threatened to become ingrained in me. The realities for young hurlers in that era, decisions made by the Indians, and my own crisis of confidence conspired to hold me back starting in 1962 after I had made the team out of spring training.
All pitchers at that time were forced to overcome the uncertainty of whether they would be used as a starter or reliever in the big leagues. Few were groomed as either. The better pitchers generally started and the leftovers were used out of the bullpen despite exceptions such as Dick Radatz. The modern era in which relievers with explosive stuff are trained as setup men and closers was decades away. I wonder if I would have eventually been projected as a closer given my over 100 mph fastball and sharp-breaking slider and curve. But the great unknown of whether I would start or relieve, often on a day’s notice, did not help me prepare for my next outing.
Compounding the problem in 1962 was Mel McGaha, the former major league pitcher who preceded Tebbetts as Indians manager and resident pitch-caller for Sam McDowell. McGaha bounced me from the bullpen into the rotation like a Super Ball. He dictated my selection when I pitched in relief, setting up a special signal from the dugout to catcher John Romano. Perhaps McGaha felt justified in his actions when I allowed 15 earned runs and 18 walks in just 11 2/3 innings over 4 starts and just 3 runs in 13 2/3 innings and 3 walks in 7 performances out of the bullpen. But he was doing me no favors. The goal was to transform me into a pitcher whose outcomes matched his abilities. As McGaha, Tebbetts, and future Indians manager Joe Adcock failed to learn in future years, calling my pitches did not place me on the road to realizing my potential. It only exacerbated all the internal problems I was having.
Meanwhile, my body and life were changing. During much of high school I was a six-footer carrying 180 pounds. Then I continued to grow only in one direction. I eventually shot up five-and-a-half inches yet did not gain a pound. The Indians grew alarmed as I went from solid to skinny. They sent me to the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic to launch a weight-gain plan that included downing milkshakes, vitamins, and protein mixes. I gained nary a pound. Then I married Carol Ann in the winter of 1962. By 1963 I had started to gain weight. She fattened me up with three squares a day, and when I arrived at spring training I tipped the scales at 220. Birdie immediately demanded I lose the weight I had gained. I did that, but I slowly added a few pounds over the next few years and spent most of my career at about 220.
The most dramatic change would occur a year later. Call it an awakening, call it an epiphany. I had not before 1964 felt an insatiable drive to succeed. I was a merely a child playing a game. I was in fantasy land. I had little idea what I was doing and had no map to find my way. But a sense of pride and intense anger erupted within me that spring. The seeds of my discontent were planted when Tebbetts again began calling my pitches and I allowed a home run into a strong wind to Giants slugger Orlando Cepeda that to this day remains in orbit. I received after the game a message from Birdie that he and general manager Gabe Paul wanted to meet with me back at the hotel. That is when I was told of yet another demotion, this time to Portland, where the organization had moved its Triple-A affiliate.
I was incensed. I was hurt. In retrospect I realize that after my poor performance in spring training the move was justified, but I also understand that nobody had been willing or had the foresight to help me grow as a pitcher. My rage inspired me to inform Paul that I would refuse to return to Cleveland if Tebbetts was still calling my pitches. His reply was equally forceful. He threatened to “bury me in the minor leagues.”
I can still feel the anger I experienced leaving the hotel room, packing my stuff for minor league camp, and moving it all to the another complex and motel. A psychologist sitting with me could write a five-thousand-page paper on the changes that were taking place within me mentally and emotionally at that time.
Former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton once wrote in his controversial 1970 book Ball Four that the minor leagues were all very minor after he had been demoted. He was right. Once you experience the majors you always feel cheapened being sent down. It is one thing for kids rising through the system who know they are still being seasoned to accept a stint in the minors. It is quite another for someone like me who had pitched in the big leagues in each of the past three seasons to get banished again, especially given my anger at what I rightfully perceived as a lack of teaching from the coaching staff.
The minor leagues indeed felt all very minor. The locker rooms were much smaller and dank. The competition was weaker—I had finally gained enough understanding to feel that it was beneath my talents. And the daily allowance was certainly smaller. My teammates in Portland, who knew that I was earning a higher salary, frequently asked to borrow money so I set up a system in which I charged 20 percent interest if they did not pay me back within a week. I figured justifiably that minor leaguers could not afford that, and so they returned what they borrowed on time. But I was not a bank. I was a pitcher whose career was at a crossroads. My back was against the proverbial wall. I was furious.
The event proved cathartic. For the first time I felt motivated by a sense of pride and purpose. I had experienced an awakening.