Читать книгу Rage - Peter Golenbock - Страница 10

1

CHILDHOOD

I GOT HIGH FOR THE FIRST TIME when I was six years old. I went to the dentist’s office and he gave me nitrous oxide, and I loved it. When I came home and my parents asked me how the visit went, I said, “I have good news and bad news.” I was a pretty precocious six-year-old.

“What’s the bad news?” my mother asked.

“I had sixteen cavities.”

“What’s the good news?”

“I didn’t feel a thing.”

The dentist had given me laughing gas, and I spent the whole time floating up near his ceiling and doing loop-de-loops in and around the dentist’s chair, so there was no pain, and I really enjoyed it.

At age twelve I was an altar boy, and one of the benefits of the job was access to the wine that was supposed to be offered to Jesus. I noticed the friendliness of our three parish priests after they drank all His wine. The monsignor and one of the priests only took sips, but the second priest would drink the wine down to the bottom of the cup. I wanted to feel like the second priest. So, at the end of each mass, instead of pouring the wine out, I would drink it. I would drink all of it.

At age twenty I was carefree. I had been a high school pitcher and a star athlete with one hell of a fastball. I was six foot three, 200 pounds, and in American Legion ball I had almost thrown two perfect games in a row. It was all so easy. I just had to rear back and throw, and if the ball found the strike zone, the batter usually didn’t stand a chance. I was clocked somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-five miles an hour, but I had an easy motion, and batters told me it seemed the ball went much faster. When a pitcher throws a ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastball to the hitter, the hitter has to decide in 44/100ths of a second whether it’s a ball or a strike, whether he should swing or “take” the pitch, or whether to hit the dirt.

At age twenty I drove to spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida, certain that I was going to make the big leagues. I had the same feeling of invincibility that I found from taking the laughing gas at the dentist and drinking the wine in church. As I drove my Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible down I-95 from wintry Connecticut to balmy Florida, I was just north of Jacksonville when the disc jockey on the radio said that he was about to play a song by the Rolling Stones called “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” He said, “It has been banned by the FCC.” The Rolling Stones were in sympathy with the devil; the Vietnam War was raging; it was the winter of ’67.

In 1967 I had every reason to be optimistic about my future. The year before I had pitched for Double-A Williamsport, and I had a nine-win-and-two-loss record with a 1.97 earned run average. I had been named Pitcher of the Year in the Eastern League. I was promoted to Triple-A Jacksonville, and even though I hadn’t pitched very well there, I was sure I’d make it to the majors.

I was cocky, though I never saw it as cockiness. I felt I was self-confident. Everyone else said I was cocky. I wondered why the Mets had bothered to send me to the minors at all. I had some trouble getting my breaking ball over, but in my mind I felt I had big-league talent and should have already started my professional career with the big boys.

I wasn’t the only phenom on the Mets’ roster. The Mets had a number of excellent young pitching prospects in the minor leagues, including Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman. Scouts swore I was just as talented as they were, if not more so. In fact, in the Mets’ 1967 yearbook, “Billy the Kid” Denehy got more press than the fair-haired Tom Seaver, the all-American college star from California who was certain to make the jump from Triple-A ball to the Mets.

I arrived at the spring training complex in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the afternoon, bounded into the clubhouse, and said hello to those coaches and players I already knew. The manager of the Mets was stone-faced Wes Westrum, a former New York Giants catcher. Wes had replaced the legendary Casey Stengel after Casey broke his hip falling off a barstool and got too old to manage.

I found my locker, and I was getting into my uniform when the Mets’ general manager, Johnny Murphy, came by. I was stoked that Mr. Murphy, once a great Yankee pitcher, thought enough of me to pay me a visit. I took it as an omen.

“You arrived a half hour ago,” he said, “and since you arrived everyone has been talking about you. You probably don’t have a clue as to why.” He was right.

“It’s those fucking sideburns of yours,” Murphy said. I was sporting mutton-chop sideburns. I had let them grow over the winter, and now they had reached almost to my jaw.

“If you want to be in uniform tomorrow,” said Murphy, “you need to go directly to the shower room and cut them way back.” I didn’t have a problem with that.

When spring training began, Westrum let me know that I was only there for a look-see. He had set his rotation, and I wasn’t in it, and so at first it didn’t appear I’d pitch much, but fate has a way of rearranging things. Fat Jack Fisher was supposed to pitch a game against the Cincinnati Reds, but the morning before the game was to start, Jack got a phone call that his young daughter had been injured in a fall. When I arrived at the ballpark that day, Wes informed me I was going to start.

I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. I didn’t even know most of the players on the Reds.

Who are these hitters? I wondered. I warmed up and went out to the mound.

I certainly knew the first batter, Pete Rose, who ended his career with 4,256 hits to break Ty Cobb’s all-time record. Pete Rose didn’t faze me. I threw Pete three straight fastballs for three straight strikes, and Charlie Hustle, as Rose was called back then, returned to the bench.

It seemed so easy. I stood on the mound, and would think I was Superman. To this day I can still imagine those fastballs I threw past Pete Rose. Strike one, strike two, strike three. Have a seat.

Holy shit! I thought to myself. I just threw three fastballs past Pete Rose. Wow! This is easy.

Before my three innings were over, I had struck out six of the nine Reds batters I faced, and we’re talking about some great hitters: Tony Pérez, Vada Pinson, Lee May, Leo Cárdenas, Tommy Helms, and Pete Rose.

Westrum, who didn’t talk much to his players, came up to me after the game and said, “That was impressive. Let’s see if you can do it again.” I gave up exactly one run in the twenty innings I pitched during spring training. I led all Mets pitchers in strikeouts and ERA, and that included all of the Mets starters and the rookies Seaver and Koosman.

There was a game against the Kansas City A’s (before the Athletics moved to Oakland) in which Tom and I split the pitching duties. Tom pitched the first five innings. I pitched the final four. We held Kansas City to five hits and won the game 8–1.

When I read the papers the next day, Westrum was quoted by Dick Young, the influential but not easily impressed New York Daily News reporter, as saying that both Tom and I had made the team.

I kept the clipping. I have memorized it. Young compared our pitching styles and our strengths. Young commented that when the regular season started, either Tom or I could well be the fourth starter in the Mets’ rotation behind Jack Fisher, Bob Shaw, and Don Cardwell. Shit, I thought to myself when I read that, Tom and I have better stuff than any of those other guys.

As I mentioned in the Introduction, as proof of how highly we were regarded, Topps, at that time the only baseball card company, issued a card with my mug and Tom’s side by side. At the top of the card, which was number 581, it read: 1967 Rookie Stars.

We were both supposed to have long and brilliant careers. Tom won 311 games over a twenty-year career. My brilliant career would last exactly two months. But for those two months, I was everything my hometown press clippings predicted I would be.

In my first start as a Met, I struck out eight Phillies to set a Mets record that stood until 2012. I had a blazing fastball and a wicked curve, but the Mets had a pathetic-hitting team, and I lost three close games. Then in May I took the mound against pitching great Juan Marichal and the San Francisco Giants. A teammate handed me a “black beauty” to give me an adrenaline boost. I had never had a “black beauty” before, but I took it because I trusted him.

With my body bursting with adrenaline, I pitched three shutout innings, and then in the fourth I threw a pitch that changed the entire course of my life. If I had known what was going to happen, I would have taken the pitch back. But life doesn’t work that way. One day you’re headed for greatness, and the next day you’re falling into a deep chasm with no end in sight and nothing to break your fall. I threw Willie Mays a hard slider, and it felt like someone stuck a knife in my shoulder. My days of excellence were over pretty much before they began. I would hang on to my professional career for parts of four more sorry seasons, and in my final season in Detroit I assumed the reviled role of designated headhunter for Billy Martin.

As I said, Tom Seaver, the other guy on my rookie card, won 311 games with an ERA of 2.86, pitching himself into the Hall of Fame. I, on the other hand, finished my career with a one-and-ten record and a 4.70 ERA.

And yet, compared to Tom Seaver, my life was far more entertaining and interesting. Tom was a real good guy. Seaver, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, now has the complementary silver fork, silver knife, and Silver Cloud. He has triumphed in everything he has done.

Tom was the perfect addition to King Arthur’s court; he was Sir Lancelot. I, on the other hand, was Robin Hood, a fun-loving, practical-joking scoundrel with unlimited potential and a deep-seated mean streak.

With my career over in my mid-twenties, I had to figure out how I would live the rest of my life, and that hasn’t been easy. I suffer from the disease of addiction. I have a wicked temper, and I was born with a self-destructive streak, which would ensure that my life after baseball followed the arc of my baseball career, with promising beginnings followed by crushing disappointments and failures. In each attempt to do well, I would come tantalizingly close to a roaring success, only to find myself empty-handed. My hot temper and insistence on never settling for less than being the best would contribute greatly to those failures. I weep to look back on it. Many have no idea how hard it is for me to stand before the world and share any of this.

Then, five years ago, at age sixty, I began to lose my eyesight, and now, because of the steroids I took as a player, I am blind. I realize that throughout my whole life I never had a Plan B, which means a rewarding career outside of baseball. I’ve had to struggle to gain similar satisfaction and still make the good money I was accustomed to making in baseball.

I was a dreamer. And time after time I figured that if I could come up with some grandiose idea, some magical plan, I could provide my family with all the trappings of success for a person no longer in major league baseball. I felt driven and under tremendous pressure to succeed, in part because my ex-wife’s mother thought I was a loser. I suffered great agony having never been able to prove her wrong. The more I pursued those dreams, the more I chased the illusion, the deeper I got into drug abuse, and the more I separated myself from my morals and my ability to be a good husband and father.

When my two daughters played softball, I did not coach them, preferring instead to stand behind the center field fence and smoke joints with a couple of the other parents. To this day, my younger daughter still holds some resentment toward me because I didn’t teach her the sports that I excelled in when I was in high school.

In June of 1992 I flew to Connecticut on vacation and watched my daughters play high school softball, but I didn’t play catch with them. I didn’t participate in their warm-ups. I stood behind the center field fence, smoked my pot, and watched the games. The next day, I was leaving to fly back to Florida and took both girls to breakfast. I asked them whether there was something we didn’t do this time that we could do the next time we got together.

Kristin said, “Not really.” She always kept her real feelings inside. Heather said, “Yeah, play catch, Dad.”

That was June 15, 1992, and on the plane back to Florida I vowed that I would never have another drink or drug. I have been in recovery since that day.

But before I talk about my recovery, let me share some of my history. The root of my anger and my trouble with women began with the nuns in Catholic school. These sex-starved sadists never should have been allowed around children. I thought they were a menace to society.

Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.