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

trainer’s room with an icepack on his elbow. And I haven’t even had a twinge. It’s kind of scary. Maybe I’m not throwing right.
    Most pitchers are paranoid about their arms. You live in terror that you’re going to wake up in the morning and not be able to pitch anymore. You wake up in the middle of the night and you make a throwing motion to see if it’s going to hurt. In the morning the first thing you do is circle your arm just to see how it feels. In fact one of the reasons it takes injured arms so long to heal is that pitchers are constantly testing the aggravated part and making it worse. Trainers always tell you to give it a chance to get better, but what do trainers know about temptation? You got to
test
. I know sometimes I’ll be out with my family, eating in a restaurant maybe, and all of a sudden I’ll circle my arm over my head and I’m sure everybody thinks I’m calling the waiter or that I’m crazy. I’m just testing.
    It’s understandable. All a pitcher has is his arm. Pitching is a precise skill that requires a coordinated effort among many parts of the body. One small hurt and it’s all gone. Like a tiddly-winks champion with a hangnail.
    The guy pitching batting practice before me, fellow by the name of Paul Click, who won’t make the team, got hit with a line drive. Instead of ducking behind the screen in front of the mound he turned his back. I guess he thought that if he turned his back and closed his eyes the ball couldn’t find him. He got it in the back of the head and it opened up a lot of skin. It reminded me of the time when I was pitching in Baltimore, six years ago. I threw a low outside fastball to Jackie Brandt. He held back on it and at the last instant reached out and hit a line drive right back at me. I never saw the damn thing. It smacked me on the jaw and opened me up for about twelve stitches. Those were the days when I gutsed it, so I jumped right up and said I wanted to pitch. “Ralph, I’m ready, I’m ready,” I said. “I can pitch.” Johnny Blanchard was the catcher. “Not with two mouths you ain’t, Meat,” he said.
    They wanted to carry me off on a stretcher but I knew if my wife heard I was carried off the field she’d have a miscarriage. So I went off under my own power, bloody towel and all, and listened carefully for the ovation. I got it.
    Ovations are nice and some guys sort of milk them. Like Joe Pepitone. If he had just the touch of an injury he’d squirm on the ground for a while and then stand up, gamely. And he’d get his ovation. After a while the fans got on to him, though, and he needed at least a broken leg to move them.
    There was an intrasquad game today after the workout, and although I didn’t have to stay to watch it I did. That’s what you call showing desire. Jim O’Toole was pitching when I got there, and his curve wasn’t sharp and he was walking a lot of guys. He’s got about eight kids and spring training means more to him than a lot of other guys, but he was really laboring. I felt sort of sorry for him, but not very.
    Let me explain. It was rather early to be playing an intrasquad game and I thought, “I hope nobody gets hurt.” Then I had to amend that in my mind. I meant, “I hope I don’t get hurt.” I’ve always wanted everyone to do well. If I’m not playing I root for my teammates. But I don’t want them to do well at my expense. Even when I was in junior high school, I’d sit there hollering encouragement and all the time I’d be saying, “Gee whiz, if he’d break his leg I could get in there and play.” It’s not exactly the perfect attitude, but it’s the way I feel.
    Last spring Fred Talbot said to me, “When I’m out there pitching, are you rooting for me, Bouton?”
    “Yeah, Fred.”
    “Do you really hope I do well?”
    “Yeah, Fred. But not at my expense.”
    What I should have said was, “Yeah, Fred, I hope you do well. I hope you have a helluva year down there in Triple-A.” It ended