8
Three weeks had passed in spring training 1968. New Indians manager Alvin Dark summoned me into his office for a private chat. Little did I imagine I would leave the room with a feeling of career freedom. He informed me that, unlike my previous big-league skippers he was going to allow me to dictate my own pitch selection.
Finally!
Another benefit of the Dark hire was new pitching coach Jack Sanford, who had just retired after a long career that included a 19-win season in Philadelphia that earned him National League Rookie of the Year honors and a 24–7 record for the Giants that placed him second in the Cy Young Award balloting. Sanford had recently spent three years with the Angels as a teammate of Jim Fregosi and Bobby Knoop. They knew all about the drawbacks of signaling my pitches from the dugout, the ease with which they’d been stolen, and the weak position it left me in on the mound.
Joe Adcock should have known as well—he was a teammate of all of them in California. But he was the man calling my pitches as manager of the Indians in 1967. That it was my worst season was no coincidence. Sanford had learned what Adcock had not. And he was determined to follow Dark’s lead and allow me to call my own pitches. He would also help me chart my course against the opposition du jour by going over the individual hitters. We would talk about the best approach against each as peers. It was the relationship between coach and pitcher for which I had yearned for years.
Only once did Dark call a pitch for me. It was a crucial situation during the opening series of the 1968 season against the Angels and he had a strong feeling, which I did not mind. It was the first inning, two on and two out, when dangerous power-hitter Don Mincher stepped to the plate. I had run the count to 3–2 and felt tempted to fire a fastball because it was my best control pitch and I knew I could not walk in a run. But Dark called for a curveball. He understood that I struggled to throw strikes with my hook but he had more confidence in me than I had in myself. Self-assuredness, even after all those years in the big leagues, was still not my strong suit. Mincher was definitely not expecting what ballplayers call the Uncle Charlie. It buckled his knees. In the immortal words of legendary Detroit Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell, he stood there like the house on side of the road and took a called strike three. I will never forget the look I got from Mincher as I walked off the mound. His mouth was agape and his eyes, wide as bowling balls, watched me all the way to the dugout. I felt a tremendous sense of pride. I could have jumped with joy if it would not have embarrassed me in front of the fans. (In that same game I hit Mincher in the face with a fastball. He once expressed the belief that I felt worse about it than he did. That is certainly possible. I remember visiting him in the hospital. He missed the next two weeks of the season.)
Pitching for Dark allowed me to see the light. I embarked on the finest run of my career to date after growing accustomed to the added responsibility. My earned run average dropped to under 2.00 on May 21 and remained there the rest of the season. From that date until late August I never allowed more than three earned runs in a game. I struck out 40 batters in 27 innings during one three-game winning streak and 40 more in 24 innings in another three-game run.
I knew I needed to keep runners from crossing the plate because my team-mates certainly were not doing so. Not only was it the Year of the Pitcher, when scores were so low that major league baseball lowered mounds the next season to increase offensive production, but my team was among the weakest offensively in the sport. From late April through Independence Day, the Indians averaged just two runs per game in my starts. It is no wonder I compiled only a 15–14 record that year despite a 1.81 ERA that ranked among the best in baseball history. Though Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn denied it, I was and am to this day certain they also made the balls livelier in 1969.
Victories were hard to come by but not a good time off the field. My desire to live a celebrity lifestyle had been fulfilled, which was certainly an unfair reality to my wife Carol, who tried to limit my drinking when I was home because she cared about me. Her admonitions proved far weaker than my narcissism. But when I was traveling with the Indians, the road was my playground. I drank and womanized. I was not alone in my unfaithfulness though in all the teams I played with it was a rarity and the promiscuity was nothing like what some in the media depicted, but a few of us tried.
The baseball routine, however, was conducive to it. We were young men who were relatively attractive. We could frequent bars or clubs well into the night—it was not all that hard to avoid team curfew cops—and sleep in with or without our so-called sexual conquest until noon if we desired. There were certainly enough women who fawned upon athletes to go around. Among them were stewardesses who traveled as we did and stayed in the same hotels. I had many chances but often preferred to get drunk, thus ruining any tryst. Lord knows I tried but drinking and drunkenness proved far more important than the skirt.
Hanging out with celebrities also bolstered my sagging ego. We had several who would join our workouts or just spend time with us. Among them was Bob Hope, a Clevelander and minority owner of the Indians. Fellow legendary comedian Jerry Lewis hung out with us after shows in town. He even showed off some pretty impressive skills in the batter’s box and on the mound. I got a picture of him clowning around with me in the clubhouse after a workout. Another celebrity who visited was Chuck Connors, star of the TV western The Rifleman and friend of Dark. Connors definitely knew his way around athletic venues. He played one season as a first baseman with the Cubs after a short career with the NBA Boston Celtics.
I also met film stars at the Old Tucson, a studio located in an area west of Tucson where we held spring training. Among them was Paul Newman, who in 1967 was filming a western titled Hombre. A former minor league teammate Paul Gleason, who went on to play unsavory characters in such movies as Trading Places and The Breakfast Club, often accompanied us to movie studios when we visited Los Angeles. I visited Gleason during my short stint with the Yankees while he was acting in a Broadway play.
A couple times in New York I dined at the legendary Toots Shor restaurant with Jackie Gleason among the visitors. He was a sports fanatic. I considered myself a fine pool player but I made the mistake of challenging Gleason, who had starred alongside Newman in a film about the game called The Hustler. He was among the best amateur players I’d ever seen. And that is saying something, considering I owned a family pool hall in which the likes of Willie Mosconi and Minnesota Fats thrilled patrons with exhibitions as did many of the local Pittsburgh greats.
Diversions help many players survive the 162-game grind. During the 1969 season I teamed with “mod” power-hitting outfielder Hawk Harrelson, who had arrived in Cleveland that year, to recite the legendary “Who’s on First?” routine made famous by Abbott and Costello. We nailed it. We filmed our bit, which would often be shown by Harrelson years later during rain delays after he became a color analyst on White Sox broadcasts.
The celebrity lifestyle certainly tested my morality and I often failed that test. Alcoholism played a significant role because it impaired the judgment needed to make a principled choice. Early in my career I stayed true. But my desire to challenge myself, the notion that I could achieve anything, combined with my narcissism, led me to frequent infidelity that I perceived as personal triumphs. Sometimes I was too drunk and would fall asleep after accompanying a young woman back to the hotel. Depending on the stage of my alcoholism, I yearned to be known as a great lover. I was not interested in the more typical barflies. I was into real beauties because they fed my self-esteem. I had affairs with two movie stars, one of them a big name who will not be identified here. I remained friends with one of them after my recovery. I shared dinner in California with her and her husband, a successful music producer who did a lot of work with Sonny and Cher. He invited me to the studio to watch them record albums. I also had a rendezvous with one of Dean Martin’s backup singers.
I befriended a bevy of beautiful, sophisticated women who were not household names, such as a college professor and financial advisor. Often I began drinking at a bar and one of the single ballplayers would follow me. I would get so drunk that I could not continue in the social situation and the teammate would take the women home instead.
One time in Baltimore I met a woman at a restaurant while eating and drinking. I was so plastered I could not perform as a man should when I took her to the hotel. She simply left. I called her on our next road trip and she agreed to meet me in New York. I bought her dinner and drinks after a game but again got smashed. By the time we got to the lobby I needed a teammate to help me into my room. He left with my date and I never heard from her again.
The concept of love and of being a lover escaped me. How could I be loyal to Carol Ann when my first loyalty was to my narcissism? I had been married to her for several years. She loved a man incapable of loving her back. Her anger and frustration grew. I made promise after promise to her that I would stop drinking but I never kept my word. In the late 1960s we would negotiate my alcohol intake. She wanted me to drink only at home as she was frightened to death I’d get hurt or hurt someone else in my drunken state. Sometimes I tried to get on the wagon but I would eventually hop back off again. Little could I have imagined back then her reaction had I come clean about my infidelities on the road.
What Carol could not do with me my manager did in 1969. Dark sat me down during spring training and spoke to me in a fatherly tone. He demanded nothing from me. But he knew after spending the 1968 season with me that I had a worsening alcohol problem. So he challenged me to take a year off from drinking. I promised him I would. And I kept that promise. Not a drop of booze passed my lips from that moment until the worst year in Indians history since 1915 had mercifully ended.
I cannot claim my sobriety either aided or hindered my performance on the mound in 1969. After all, I had remained to that point a periodic drunk who maintained a schedule of boozing that kept me sober leading up to and through my scheduled starts. But one can cite the best control of my career as evidence that abstinence had a positive effect. My 3.2 walks per innings pitched ratio was easily my finest before or after, and I managed an 18–14 record with another poor offensive club.
Among the defeats we registered was one in mid-September when my temper got the best of me in Baltimore against the soon-to-be American League champion Orioles. I was going after my seventeenth win, but I was trailing 3–1 in the sixth inning when I confronted umpire Larry Barnett after throwing a 3–2 slider down the middle of the plate to my former teammate Chico Salmon. Barnett had been squeezing me all day. I had complained several times about his strike zone and my anger finally boiled over. I walked toward Barnett and had to be restrained by teammates. He ejected me from the game, walked to the mound and said, “Give me the ball, punk.” I wheeled around and tried to fire it over the 109-foot stands and out of the park. I nearly succeeded. It landed three rows from the top. My reply to Barnett? “Go get it, you son of a bitch.”
Orioles players spent the following days in batting practice trying to heave baseballs to where I did but to no avail. Some even used fungo bats in an attempt to reach the spot. No dice. Baltimore manager Earl Weaver finally took notice and ordered his players to stop under the threat of a $100 fine. That was big money back then. I recall that my mound opponent on that fateful afternoon was Mike Cuellar, who later became one of my friends and a golfing buddy in Florida.
My insecurity and the effects of the alcohol sometimes reared its ugly head and I would revert to guessing on the mound instead of taking control and throwing what I believed to be the best pitch to a particular batter. But years later I finally gained some appreciation for what I’d achieved in my career. I recognized the heavy burden that had been placed on my shoulders in 1969, and not only from the pressure of maintaining sobriety. The trading of rotation-stalwart Sonny Siebert and sudden struggles of Luis Tiant left Sudden Sam as the only premier pitcher on the staff. It was no wonder we finished 62–99. I was not carrying a monkey on my back. It was more like a gorilla, but I rose to the occasion.
Yet to this day I do not know how I achieved that. I had stopped drinking, albeit temporarily, but I still lived in the same alcoholic fog that had plagued me all my life. I remained in a low-level depression. I could have explained to Dark when he asked me to stop drinking in 1969 that I had not allowed it to affect my performance so I should be free to do whatever I wanted off the field. But there was no demonizing or condescension in his tone or approach to what he was asking of me so I felt compelled to comply.
Perhaps if I had been a different man the year of abstinence would have inspired me to kick the drinking habit for good. But I was still plagued by depression, insecurity, and poor self-esteem. The early days of drunkenness in the mid-1960s that had put me in a happier place and allowed me to feel normal were slipping away. When the 1969 season concluded, I not only picked up where I left off but began to lose control of my drinking in frequency and moderation. After my last start I bought a six-pack of beer and began drinking it in the clubhouse. I will never forget the look of disappointment from Dark when he walked by and realized my abstinence was over.
At that point Dark met with Sanford, who agreed to accompany me to bars whenever we were on the road to limit my alcohol intake. Little did I know at the time Dark was simply trying to protect me, especially since I had become an angry drunk who would engage in barroom brawls.
Dark cannot be blamed for me jumping off the wagon. First of all he could not be responsible for the off-the-field actions of Sam McDowell, let alone every player on his team. In addition his primary goal was to win games and keep his job. The miserable mark in 1969 placed him in the hot seat. He tried in vain to keep me on the straight and narrow following a couple of embarrassing DUIs after we broke camp. He threatened fines if he ever caught me drinking, but after three lousy outings early in 1970 he feared the ultimatum was wrecking my performance so he called me aside and gave me the green light to booze.
I returned to the scheduled drinking that allowed me to stay sober as I prepared for starts and on days I pitched and embarked on the most dominant stretch of my career. I even emerged during that period as a control pitcher, which combined with my overwhelming stuff had batters making weak contact or shaking their heads, returning to the dugout as strikeout victims. From mid-May to early August I compiled a 13–2 record, won seven straight decisions during one stretch, and averaged 2.5 walks per outing. I hurled complete-game victories without walking a batter against Boston and Minnesota, two of the most powerful offenses in the American League.
And still the media was unsatisfied. In mid-August I was again featured prominently in a Sports Illustrated article (though New York Jets superstar quarterback Joe Namath landed on the cover), this one painting me as an underachiever. Writer Pat Jordan compared me unfavorably to Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts, who had won twenty or more games for the Phillies every year from 1950 to 1955. Jordan asserted that since Roberts could rack up such victory totals for a weak Philadelphia club I should have done the same with Cleveland.
Jordan either failed to delve further into the numbers or elected to ignore them. First of all, my peak arrived at a far younger age than that of Roberts, who was a more experienced pitcher. Second, I compiled about the same ERA during those periods in our careers despite Roberts’s boasting far superior control. Third, the Phillies were not nearly as bad offensively as were the Indians of my era. They scored far more runs for Roberts than my teammates did for me, yet I never complained publicly. If I had pitched for Detroit, Boston, or Minnesota I would have won twenty several times.
Sports Illustrated cited me as stating that I lived for challenges so if I knew I could retire a batter with one pitch, I would throw a different pitch his next time to the plate. My quote, which was picked up by other media outlets, was misconstrued. I always used the best pitch in my repertoire against any batter until he proved he could hit it. But I also knew that taking the same approach with the same hitter every at-bat was a recipe for disaster because he would know what was coming. I wanted to keep batters guessing. That put me in control. Yes, I lived for challenges. But I never weakened any opportunity to retire a hitter simply for the sake of a challenge. That would not have been fair to me or my teammates.
Another focus of the article portrayed me as dishonest with the media. It listed statements I had made about my motivations as a pitcher, among them about my desire to break franchise strikeouts records set by the immortal Bob Feller. That stemmed from my first trip to Cleveland after signing with the Indians when a reporter asked me if I would like to break Feller’s records and of course I said, “Yes. Who wouldn’t?” The papers the following day falsely claimed I said that I signed with the Indians so I could break Feller’s records, which was not at all what I meant. But that line followed me throughout my career no matter how often and vigorously I tried to debunk it.
Sports Illustrated also quoted me as admitting that I no longer cared what I told reporters. But that was only true in the case of Plain Dealer writer Bob Dolgan. I just did not want to mention him by name in a national publication.
One accurate claim in the article was uttered by local television sportscaster John Fitzgerald, who offered that I had been hurt earlier in my career by bad publicity and that I felt people expected too much from me so I hid behind a few conflicting remarks so I would not get hurt again. Fitzgerald called me a big kid who was afraid of getting hurt, which was true. I had grown as a pitcher but I remained very immature as a person. And early in my career, when some of those contradictory statements were made, I simply reacted to questions asked of me without thinking about how I had answered them weeks or months or years earlier. In nearly all cases I was not being dishonest.
My performance in 1970 earned me another All-Star Game nod but was not good enough for acerbic Indians radio announcer Bob Neal, whose dour personality years earlier clashed so badly with his booth partner Jimmy Dudley that they never even talked to each other on or off the air. During his time with the Indians, including when I failed twice to win my twentieth game in 1970 (despite pitching well), he claimed publicly that I had a “million-dollar arm and ten cent head.” Our feud became media fodder. I retorted that Neal was unpopular for a reason.
This is not to indicate that I always performed to my potential. When you do not believe in yourself, poor performance becomes a fait accompli. I was quoted correctly in Sports Illustrated as saying I was more or less forced into a baseball career, never believed I was very talented, and continued to feel that way well after I had been pushed into the majors before I was ready. So when baseball insiders, media members, and fans demanded that I live up to my so-called potential, it had the opposite effect. Whatever I accomplished on the mound was never enough. That is especially true for an alcoholic. I hated the demands made of me. I rejected accountability and responsibility.
That mindset extended back to my youth. You must understand that I was never happy. I did not feel even the slightest appreciation for my achievements until after my recovery in the 1980s. I enjoyed challenges and thought overcoming them would bring me contentment. But my alcoholic personality dictated that I could never be satisfied. I had dreams early in life of being a doctor or an NFL quarterback. Given my personality, it would not have mattered. I would still have suffered from the same problems. So I looked for outside stimuli such as drinking to make me happy. What I would not understand until after I hit rock bottom and took responsibility for my well-being was that the solution was internal.
One historical baseball event added to the intrigue of the 1970 season. My run of fine performances earned me second spot in the pitching rotation at the All-Star Game in Cincinnati. What proved far more noteworthy about that game than my three shutout innings in which I allowed just one hit was the final play. The American League and National League were tied at 1–1 in the ninth inning. Hometown hero Pete Rose was on second base when fine Cubs hitter Jim Hickman lined a base hit that was scooped up by Kansas City center fielder Amos Otis, who fired it home. My Indians teammate Ray Fosse, who was blossoming into stardom, fielded the ball on one bounce as Rose was barreling to the plate but Rose arrived a split-second before the ball. He crashed into Fosse to score the winning run. While the National Leaguers celebrated yet another All-Star Game victory during their long run of triumphs, Fosse sat on his haunches in pain.
Most interesting about all of it for me was the reaction. Many believed Fosse and I hated Rose but we did not. He had invited us to dinner the night before and was extremely gracious. Rose said he planned to slide on the play but Fosse was blocking him in front of the plate, which was true. I had no reason to doubt Rose.
A subsequent x-ray seemed to reveal nothing wrong with Fosse’s shoulder. Cleveland doctors cited only a bad bruise but such was not the case. The inflammation and swelling prevented a shoulder separation and fracture from showing up on the x-ray. Fosse could barely lift his arm to catch pitches or throw the ball. But the expectation among ballplayers in that era was to play through pain. So he did not tell Dark and the manager did not ask. Fosse, who appeared destined for greatness, was never the same. He remained a decent hitter but lacked the power that marked the first half of the 1970 season.
Meanwhile, my issues, more emotional than physical, were about to take a devastating toll on my career as well. I certainly had not learned any lessons by the dawning of the 1970s. I had through the first year of that decade stopped my drinking from weakening my performance on the mound. But now it was about to destroy my career.