Jim Bouton - Savannah Braves
Mediocre ain’t gonna cut it!
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
The baseball season is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. A fast start will almost certainly be met with a slump. A slump will test your character. It will challenge your self-confidence. It will be a dark period that makes you question everything. It will break you if you let it. How you handle the slump will determine your future.
I got off to a fast start with seven consecutive wins and an ERA less than one run per game. I was riding the wave. Life was good! Then, the baseball gods turned against me. I was still pitching good, giving up one or two runs per game, but my team wasn’t scoring any runs. All of a sudden, I had lost three games in a row. No reason to panic – yet!
Bouton joined the Savannah Braves, and we became roomies on road trips. We had a young team. None of our players had played higher than AA, except Bouton and me. In fact, it was most of the guys first year in AA.
Some of the players still resented Bouton for taking a spot on the roster, which caused their friend to lose his job. However, all of the players respected Bouton’s youthful exuberance for the game. Here was a thirty-nine year old man competing with a bunch of guys in their early twenties. He out hustled everyone. He was always engaged and ready to help. He was a good teammate. You would have never known that he had played for the New York Yankees, made an All-Star team, pitched and won World Series games, wrote a best-selling book, and starred in a TV series. Here was an accomplished man with nothing to prove but was out hustling a bunch of kids that had everything to prove. How could you not want to be friends with a guy that loved the game – loved life – as much as Jim Bouton?
I lost two more close games. I was still pitching well, but we weren’t scoring runs. My record had deteriorated to 7 wins and 5 losses. A slump doesn’t normally start with one bad performance; it is more like a mountain that starts to erode and suddenly turns into a landslide. You have to stay strong and trust yourself. But, there’s no consolation in pitching well if you don’t win. At the end of the day, WINNING matters!
On road trips, Bouton and I would talk about baseball and life. I remember one conversation involved a pitcher on our AAA team that had a mediocre record that was called up to the Big League team. I complained to Bouton that it wasn’t fair that this particular pitcher was called up instead of another pitcher, who happened to be a friend of mine, that had a similar record. Bouton’s response was simple, “If two people are mediocre and one has to be selected, then the selection is left to chance. If you don’t want to leave the decision to chance, then your record must be clearly better than your competition.” His response was so obvious. But, how many of us are satisfied with mediocrity, then surprised when we are not selected for promotion?
Grayson Stadium was the home of the Savannah Braves. The stadium was built in 1926, and the locker room probably hadn’t changed much since Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron and Jackie Robinson played there during their minor league days. The player’s lockers were approximately 3 feet wide x 3 feet deep x 7 feet tall wooden boxes that were held together by multiple coats of ugly green paint. In the middle of the room was a table that was usually empty and next to it was a large plastic trash can that was usually full. A couple years earlier, Dale Murphy and Barry Bonnell had drawn a cartoon caricature of a giant sand gnat on the white cement wall above the lockers to warn future players of the annoying pests that awaited them as they entered the field. (Note: the only thing that would keep sand gnats from devouring you was Avon Skin-So-Soft. The downside of using the Avon product was that you smelled like a French whore, which might attract other annoying pests after the game.)
I arrived early at the locker room to prepare for the game. I had 7 wins – 5 losses, and this would be my thirteenth start – a chance to break the slump. As I looked around the locker room, I noticed that all of the everyday players (i.e. non-pitchers) had six brand new Louisville Sluggers in their lockers. There was nothing a hitter valued more than a new bat, not even sex! This was a good sign. My teammates had new bats, so it made sense that we would score lots of runs and I could add a “W” to my win column.
It wasn’t meant to be. I left the game in the seventh inning behind 3 to 0. I didn’t pitch particularly well, but you can’t win if your team doesn’t score runs. I was going to lose my sixth game in a row. I was ready to kill somebody! I left the dugout and stormed into the locker room and started throwing stuff and kicking over everything that wasn’t nailed down. When my outrage was finally spent, I sat down in front of my locker and looked around the room. The first thing I noticed was all those fucking new bats. Why the hell do these guys deserve new bats when they can’t fucking hit? Only one thing to do. I collected all of the new bats from their lockers and put them in the trash can located in the middle of the locker room. Then I showered and left the ballpark.
Bouton was renting a small beach house at Savannah Beach. The next day, he called and invited me to come out to the beach and have lunch. We sat outside eating grilled fish and drinking fresh squeezed juice. (Bouton was a health nut before it was cool to be a health nut.) Lots of small talk. I finally had to address the proverbial elephant in the room and asked him what the reaction was when the guys found their bats in the trash can. He said everyone was pretty mad and suggested that I apologize. I said, “Fuck ‘em if they can’t score some runs!” He laughed and said, “It never hurts to apologize, especially if you don’t mean it.”
I didn’t apologize, and nobody said a word about it during the next four days. Then it was time for me to pitch. As I recall, I struggled to pitch six innings while giving up five runs; however, my guys went on a hitting spree and scored fourteen runs! After coming out of the game with a substantial lead, I headed to the locker room to have a cold beer and take a shower. As I rounded the corner, I found my locker full of the same Louisville Sluggers I had left in the trash can. My teammates got even. I got my eighth win! Slump broken! But more important, we came together as a team. Fuck me!
Thank you for reading – comments welcome!