Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) by Jim Bouton Read Free Book Online

this category too. I remember Yogi standing around the batting cage trying to explain hitting to some of the guys and he started to talk about his hands and his legs and he couldn’t make himself clear. Finally he said, “Ah, just watch me do it.”
    Second, there’s the athlete who’s educated. If they’re pitchers they try to figure out the mechanics of rotation and the aerodynamics of the curve ball. If they’re hitters they try to figure out force and velocity in relation to weight. Jay Hook comes to mind. He was a pitcher with an engineering degree from Northwestern University. He had all the tools: big, strong, good stuff. But he was always too involved with the mechanics of pitching. Ballplayers often say, “Quit thinking, you’re hurting the club.” I really believe you
can
think too much in this game, and Hook always did.
    The third kind is the one who is intelligent enough to know that baseball is basically an instinctive game. I like to think that’s me. So what
I
do, kiddies, is work hard, stay in shape, practice—then, once I’m on the field I let my instincts take over. Also, I don’t smoke.
    Euphoria: Bob Lemon called me by my right name.
    Now a few hundred words about Frank Crosetti, coach. Cro, as we fondly call him, is fifty-eight years old, bald as an egg and, we all assume, rich as Croesus. We assume he’s rich because he’s always checking the stock tables and because between 1932, when he began to play for the Yankees, and 1968 when he left as a coach, he had pulled down some 23 World Series shares in addition to his considerable salary. And no one has noticed him spending very much of it. In addition, starting at age fifty, he elected—possibly through foolishness, more likely through greed—to collect his player pension. When the pension was raised by a considerable amount—only for those who had not yet started to draw on it—Cro sued to get the higher rate. He lost, but I haven’t noticed any holes in his shoes.
    I have to give him credit, though. He’s out there every day, his beady little eyes shining, not an ounce of fat on him, taking calisthenics with all us kids and never missing a beat; jumping-jacks, pushups and everything. Another thing he does is get up every morning at 6:45 a.m. and take a long, pre-breakfast stroll. When he was with the Yankees, once in a while he’d run into some of us coming back from a night on the town. We’d try to get by with a “Good morning, Cro, nice day.” I doubt he was fooled. There was even some suspicion that Cro was turning in reports on the hours some players kept, although it has never been confirmed and must be considered a rumor.
    Cro’s a coach like every other coach, except his twin fortes are saving baseballs (he’s a strong company man) to the point of jumping into the stands after them, and chasing photographers off the field. He’s the self-appointed photographer-chaser of the Western world. If a photographer should just happen to step into fair territory during practice, there’s Cro, screaming from the other side of the field, “Hey, what’re you doing? Get off the field!” He’s got this high, squeaky voice, and when he was with the Yankees half the club was able to imitate it. So at night, when we’d be getting on a bus and you couldn’t see individual players, Cro would get aboard and somebody would yell in his voice, “Hey, for crissakes, get the hell off the bus. What’re you photographers doing on the bus?”
    Don’t get the idea that I consider Cro a lovable old man, butt of little jokes but a heart of gold. Like most coaches he’s a bit of a washerwoman and sometimes a pain in the ass. I had an odd run-in with him when I was with the Yankees. The unwritten rule on the club was that if a pitcher was knocked out of a game early he could dress and watch it from the stands if he wished, just so long as he was back in the clubhouse after the game—in case the manager had a few nasty words to say to him.