A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Cooperstown

By Mickey McDermott and Howard Eisenberg

When Mickey McDermott came up with the Red Sox at 19, the buzz was that his 100-mph fastball could make his the greatest southpaw ever. But McDermott took his eye off the ball to have a ball. His focus became booze, broads and baseball (in that order) before he struck it rich in 1991 by winning $7 million in the Arizona State Lottery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triumph Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9781623681531

Book preview

Contents

Author’s Confession and Absolution

Dedication

Foreword by Mickey McDermott

Acknowledgments

Coauthor’s Introduction

1. Growing Up Lefty

2. Scranton

3. Ups and Downs

4. Second Chances

5. Boston

6. The Wintry Summer of ’49

7. Having a Wonderful Life

8. The Singing Fool

9. Washington

10. New York

11. Kansas City

12. Detroit

13. Miami

14. Havana and Caracas

15. Mexico City

16. Little Rock

17. St. Louis Blues

18. Kansas City Redux, Hawaii, Salt Lake

19. Life After Baseball

20. A Cast of Characters

21. My Pal Theodore

22. Night Games

23. Hitting the Jackpot

24. No Regrets (Almost)

Photo Gallery

Author’s Confession and Absolution

Look, if you’re a serious baseball fan (and I hope you are), you’re gonna find mistakes in this book. Nobody’s perfect. Especially me. So maybe it was a pelican, not an osprey, that dropped the herring on Ellis Kinder’s head and knocked him out of the box at Fenway Park. (And you remember because you’re a binoculars-carrying bird-watcher, and you were there.) Or maybe Ted Williams’ monster Minneapolis home run didn’t break a plate-glass window in a bank across the street. Actually it was a drugstore. (And you know because it was your drugstore.) Stuff like that.

But hey, I’m 74 years old, and a lot of this happened a long time ago. So don’t expect a refund if I misspelled Billy Hoeft. And don’t write me long letters saying I got the color of Red Rolfe’s hair wrong. Do me a favor. Just sit back and enjoy the stories. All I wanna hear from you is that you loved the book.

—Mickey McDermott

Dedication

To my old man, a great ballplayer, who wanted me to be a major league pitcher but ended up with a major delinquent.

To my mom (my old man’s boss), with thanks for loving me in spite of everything, and for all the wisdom I wish I’d listened harder to—and would have except for the wax in my ears.

To my wife, Stevie, with thanks for taking such good care of an old has-been who happens to love her.

To my dear friend and brother Billy, whose quiet good humor and courage have inspired so many people, especially me. When they amputated his diabetic leg and foot last year, he laughed it off. Well, he said, they cut me down to 5’2, but it’s OK. My legs never worked too good anyway."

To my four wonderful daughters: Michelle, Bobbie, Sissy, and Gail. When they call I don’t say hello, I say, How much? But I love them anyway.

To my one and only (so far) grandson, Daniel, whose inspiring words when I hit the roof of the car I’ll never forget: Good trick, Grandpa! Do it again! (Confused? See page 251.)

In memory of my dear friend Willie D. Fitzgerald and the crazy things we did together—escapades so wild I left them out of the book. I mean, who would believe anybody could be that nuts?

—Mickey McDermott

To Arlene, my Wonder Woman, with eternal love and grateful appreciation. After our dinner at the Waldorf (during which Mickey McDermott didn’t eat much but told story after wonderfully funny story about his life in and after baseball), you said in the cab, Wouldn’t Mickey’s life make a great book? My answer was, You bet. And I’d love to write it. Thanks to you, I have.

To Heidi, Sandee, and Evan, who dedicated their books to us. Keep writing. There’s nothing we’d rather read.

And to their mates, Erik, Tim, and Freda, and at the foot of the family tree, Emma, Rachel, Wyatt, Ethan, Liz, and Sara Xing—because nine adds up to a baseball team, and because you’re such great children and grandchildren I can’t possibly leave you out.

—Howard Eisenberg

Foreword by Mickey McDermott

Why Nolan Ryan’s Rookie Baseball Card Sells for $600 and You Can Buy Me for 15 Bucks

It’s the third inning and I’m already up to my nostrils in quicksand. I’m down 3–0. Rizzuto has just singled and he’s on first. Joe DiMaggio is at the plate for the second time, and a few pitches from now I could be outta here.

First time up, Joe fouls off a half-dozen pitches to the right, so I know that in his first game after two months out with heel-bone spurs his bat isn’t back up to speed yet. Even so, he manages to punch one off the hands over Junior Stephens’ head for a single.

I fall behind 2–0. Tebbetts, Doerr, and Dropo trot to the mound to calm me down. You can handle him, they assure me. Just be careful. I’m like a bull in heat. Just gimme the f’g ball! I explode. He’s as good as out. They shake their heads and walk back to their positions.

I give him the heater. DiMaggio swings late and pops it up in foul territory to Billy Goodman. I’m jubilant, but I celebrate too soon. The ball hits the heel of Goodman’s glove, bounces out, and I have to do it all over again.

You can’t throw Joe two fastballs in a row. I know that. And I know what my teammate Mel Parnell, who got Joe out better than anyone I know, would do: change speeds. At Louisville, Parnell was only a very good pitcher until he got lucky one afternoon. A line drive through the box broke a finger, and we didn’t have a team doctor, so it stayed swollen. Poor guy. All of a sudden, he was throwing a natural slider and he became an ace. (At least that’s what Parnell told me and the rest of the league. For Mel’s true confession, see page 206.)

I have a change-up, but challenging a hitter is more fun. A couple of seasons later, Gus Niarhos would become my regular catcher. He refused to let me shake off his signs, forced me to change speeds, and I won 18 games. But that was still in the future; now if DiMaggio is gonna beat me, he’ll have to hit my best pitch.

I rear back and do exactly what Joltin’ Joe knows I’m gonna do. Prove in front of tens of thousands of standing screaming citizens that my arm can beat his bat. Prove that with men on bases and the game on the line, I am God in red socks tossing greased lightning bolts. Prove that I can dominate one of the two smartest hitters in baseball (gotta put my pal Ted first) with a fastball that will make him look like a busher.

I take a deep breath and fire the ball toward the plate as hard as it has ever been thrown. DiMaggio’s cocked bat meets it head on. I don’t even have to look. A bullet over the wall and it’s 5–0.

Damn. I settle down and we get some runs back, but we lose it 5–4. Three months later I was replaying the season in my head as I cleaned out my locker. I suddenly realized that if I’d used my brains instead of my balls pitching to Joe that day, we could have won that game 4–3. And finished the season in the World Series a game ahead of the Yanks instead of a game behind them. Once more, Pighead McDermott, boy wonder and natural athlete, had proved that raw talent is a great thing to be born with, but that without discipline and common sense, it’s not worth the genes it’s imprinted on. My left arm was a God-given gift. He left it to me to take it from there.

I didn’t understand that then, and it would be too late when I finally did. But if I ever get reincarnated as a Little League pitcher, I’ll listen to guys with more experience than I have at getting batters out. And I’ll have a work ethic like Horatio Alger.

I’ll work at my craft between games like the Warren Spahns and Sandy Koufaxes of the game instead of thinking that all God’s Gift to Baseball has to do is show up every fifth day and throw 125 fastballs.

My reincarnation as a pitcher is doubtful. I’m more likely to come back as a Mexican gardener. Or his donkey. So at age 74, maybe it’s time to sit down, tune in to whatever brain cells I’ve got left, and figure out where I got lost on the road to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Hey, maybe what I’ve got to say will help a couple of kids find their way into it.

—Mickey McDermott

Acknowledgments

Also Known as Payback

You can’t write a memoir (the fancy word publishers give books like these because it fits better on the cover than autobiography) without leaning on friends to refresh your aging memory. So my thanks, and many of them, to my Uncle Eddie (whose finger I break in Chapter 1). To my ex-wives, Babs and Linda, and my deceased wife, Betty—their courage, pain, and suffering while married to me entitles them to a Congressional Medal of Honor and burial in Arlington Cemetery.

To baseball buddies Walt Dropo, Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio, Mel Parnell, Jimmy Piersall, Whitey Ford, Warren Spahn, Harmon Killebrew, pitcher/banker Tom Seaver, and Art Richman; they remembered things I’d hoped they’d forgotten. To pals Tino Barzie, Paul Gleason, Dick Dombro, and Michael Dante, who missed a lot of sleep because I kept saying, Aw, come on, just one more!

To literary representative (that sounds better than agent) Bob Markel. And, of course, to the folks at Triumph Books, who put this soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture (well, you never know) book together, and are gonna make me richer and more famous: namely, publisher Mitch Rogatz and editorial director Tom Bast (who put their reputations in grave danger by taking on this project), managing editor Blythe Hurley (who is making sure I spell her name right), as well as Phil Springstead, Scott Rowan, and Fred Walski (who are gonna sell and promote the hell out of these pages).

To sports artist James Fiorentino, who made that sensationally handsome poster of me—thanks for persuading Robert Redford to pose for it, James. To ex-pitcher Rudy Riska, also of Heisman Trophy fame, who, come to think of it, definitely deserves a McDermott Trophy for Nice Guys Who Finish Last. To David S. Neft, lead editor of The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball (St. Martin’s–Griffin), for helping us get our statistical act together. To trading card authority Beckett.com, which supplied the latest humiliating price quote on my rookie card versus Nolan Ryan’s. To superdoc Richard Commatucci, who has a pill in his pocket for every known disease, but sometimes reaches in the wrong pocket. To ex–New Jersey Deputy Director of Police Bernie Sweeney, a good friend who built a guest room for me at his home in Atlantic Highlands.

Did I leave anyone out? Oh, yes. To actor Jim Carrey, who doesn’t know it yet, but he’s gonna play me in the major motion picture I, perhaps over optimistically, mentioned earlier. Of course, I’ll have to teach him how to drink and throw wild pitches.

Anyone else? Well, don’t feel bad. I’m saving you for the memoir of my next life.

Coauthor’s Introduction

Mickey Who?

The phenom, like fresh topsoil, happens every spring on South Florida and Arizona practice fields. One phenom in twenty lives up to his press notices. Mickey McDermott (lifetime stats: 69 wins, 69 losses, 14 saves, 3.91 ERA, nine DWIs) was among the unlucky nineteen.

So why did I spend a year writing a book with and about a dimly remembered, 74-year-old Hall of Fame might-have-been instead of, let’s say, the Man with the Iron Arm, Nolan 7-No-Hit Ryan? It’s a fair question. Here’s part of why.

When he was 17, Mickey became the only pitcher to hurl two no- hitters in the Double A Eastern League. (He pitched a third but lost it 1–0 on a wild pitch. Or, he prefers to believe, on a passed ball.)

When he was 18, Mickey dazzled American Association fans by striking out 20 batters in a single game.

When Mickey was 19, Al Hirshberg wrote in Sport Magazine after Mickey’s rookie season in the majors with the Red Sox, McDermott has the most conservative observers comparing him with Grove, Gomez, and Feller. And Boston veteran Birdie Tebbetts, whose palm stung from catching him, did not disagree. This kid, he declared, could be the greatest left-hander of his generation.

So what? you may say. That was 50 years ago, and McDermott came nowhere near living up to all that purple praise.

So this. The Mickey McDermott story is a baseball Tin Cup. Like Kevin Costner, that film’s stubborn golf bum hero, Mickey is a one-of-a-kind character at whom fate (if not Rene Russo) has both smiled and jeered. At film’s end, Costner is en route to redemption. Mickey, for reasons he doesn’t quite understand, could be said to be already there.

This book is far more than an anthology of dramatic and laugh-out-loud baseball stories about guys McDermott played with and against: Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Hank Greenberg, Satchel Paige, Stan Musial, Ralph Kiner, Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Harmon Killebrew, Don Larsen.

It’s more than about how a host of managers tried (but inevitably failed) to make Mickey the consistent 20-game winner everybody thought he should be: Joe McCarthy, Lou Boudreau, Casey Stengel, Joe Cronin, Bucky Harris, and Charlie Dressen among them.

It’s about the glory days of the late forties and fifties when, for the ballplayers anyway, baseball was more about fun than about big business. It’s about a guy with a rifle for an arm who coulda and shoulda entered the Cooperstown Hall of Fame but, having too much fun with women, whiskey, and song (yep, he even starred in a nightclub act), never got past its hallway.

A guy who, when his life seemed to be over (he got by on his baseball pension and timely loans from pals like Ted Williams and Tino Barzie and avoided homelessness by flopping on buddies’ couches), had the suddenly sobering experience of winning the Arizona lottery. Somebody up there likes me, Mickey says, but I’m damned if I can figure out why.

There’s a message here not only for Little Leaguers but for their parents in pursuit of fame and fortune in show business or any other business: losers squander their gifts. Winners get to be winners by keeping their eye on the ball. In other words, talent don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that work ethic. Happy-go-lucky Mickey, as popular among fellow ballplayers as free beer and as off-the-wall as a two-base hit, took his eye off the ball to have a ball. And the phenom fizzled.

So, Mickey who? This is who, say four Hall of Famers and a sportswriter turned New York Yankees executive.

Ted Williams, Boston Red Sox, Hall of Fame

At a baseball dinner, I introduce Mickey to George Bush. Mr. President, I say, I’d like you to meet Mickey McDermott. Mickey shoves out his big paw and says, Hey, George, for chrissake, how the hell are you?

The president looks stunned. I’m an ex-marine, taught to show maximum respect for my commander in chief. I bury my head in my hands and think, Oh, brother, I should have known better.

Mickey sees my reaction. For chrissakes, Theodore, what’s your problem? George is a lefty like me. And he was a first baseman at Yale. With that, the president grins, puts up his hand, and gives Mickey a high five.

Whitey Ford, New York Yankees, Hall of Fame

Mickey and I pitched together on the Yankees in ’56. But I heard about him long before that in my rookie year, 1950. I didn’t have half his natural ability, so I particularly remember the spring training buzz about this 21-year-old in his third year with the Red Sox who could be the next Bob Feller. Mickey threw hard, pitched some good baseball, and had a world of talent. But he had too good of a time challenging hitters with heat to work on improving his change-up.

A few years ago, my phone woke me up at 5:00 a.m. and I figured it had to be one of two Mickeys: Mantle or McDermott. My wife, who is less trusting, wondered if it was a woman. Listen for yourself, I said, handing her the phone. You can tell it’s McDermott. He’s so drunk he thinks he won $7 million in the Arizona lottery.

Drunk or sober (and sober is what he’s been for 10 years or more), Mickey’s got more friends than any baseball veteran I know. He’s a million laughs, and he’d give you his last 10-spot. Last time he called, it was to tell me he was thinking of buying a Las Vegas roller-hockey team. With Mickey you never know.

Warren Spahn, Milwaukee Braves, Hall of Fame

The two greatest athletes I ever saw play baseball were Ted Williams and Mickey McDermott. Mickey was tall and rangy with a great fastball and a wicked curve. But he was as devastating a hitter as Williams, so when he wasn’t pitching, he hit a lot of pinch-hit home runs. I always thought that silly son-of-a-pup could have been a great outfielder or first baseman and wondered why he didn’t pursue position playing so he could be out there every day. If I’d had his talent, that would have been my choice.

Harmon Killebrew, Minnesota Twins, Hall of Fame

There’s only one Mickey McDermott. I played back of him on the Senators for a couple of seasons, and I can’t think of any ballplayer anywhere I’d put in his category.

He could get away with being Out All Night McDermott even with tough managers like Bucky Harris and Charlie Dressen because he had a great talent, a great arm, and—one of the things a lot of people don’t know—he was a great athlete and natural hitter. A lot of people thought when he came up to the Red Sox that he had as good a swing as Ted. There was only one Ted, but I truly believe Mickey could have been an All-Star outfielder.

For that matter, he might have been a singing star. Mickey was a darned good singer. Like a lot of other things, he didn’t work very hard at it. If he had, he could have been anything.

Art Richman, longtime sportswriter and New York Yankees executive

In almost 60 years in and around baseball, I’ve met a lot of characters, but none loopier—or more fun to be around—than Mickey McDermott. Mickey was capable of pitching a no-hitter or clouting a homer anytime. Ask him why that great left arm of his didn’t give him a half-dozen 20-game seasons and a place in the Hall of Fame, and I can tell you what he’d say: It was injured. I bent it in a cocktail lounge.

1. Growing Up Lefty

He’s Not Bob Feller. He’s Just a Kid.

There were six kids in the McDermott family and we were always hungry. Breakfast was a couple of slices of Wonder Bread painted with canned evaporated milk and sugar—a formula Benjamin Moore may have borrowed from Mom for his first house paint. I helped fill the holes in our stomachs with pocketfuls of doughnuts borrowed from the bakery downstairs. Mrs. Gillespie wasn’t blind. I think she just looked the other way.

But, hey, I’m not complaining. A sugar high is better than no high at all. And we were better off than most because my old man—back in the days when big and Irish was the job description—was a big Irish cop. And during the Great Depression of the thirties, that was the kind of steady paycheck that men selling apples and pencils on street corners envied.

It wasn’t the job Maurice McDermott Sr. wanted. What he wanted was to use his powerful 220-pound 6’5" frame for blasting major league home runs like his and everybody’s idol, the Babe. He was well on his way, playing first base at Hartford in the Eastern League, when a young upstart named Lou Gehrig came along and took his job away. They sent my old man down to Oneonta, and the way he got over his disappointment was by drowning it in tidal waves of beer. And then, because he couldn’t feed his family on a bush-league pittance, he went home to make his police force job full time year-round.

It’s a shame. Years later, Eddie Sawyer, who played with him then and later managed the Whiz Kid Phillies of 1950, gave me the full father appreciation course at a reunion in Scranton. Let me tell you something, Mac, he said, your dad was a great ballplayer. He could play first base. He could pitch. And he could hit the ball 90 miles. He could have been another Gehrig. Sawyer picked the wrong name out of his baseball cap. There was only one Gehrig, and he could hit the ball 100 miles. Which I guess is how come he took the first-base mitt away from my old man at Hartford.

Well, if he couldn’t do it, one of his three sons had damn well better. It wasn’t gonna be Jimmy, who was buried in a kid-sized casket at age seven. Penicillin, the new miracle drug that was supposed to cure his pneumonia, closed his throat in an allergic reaction and killed him instead. And when Billy was born with twisted legs, my father had to dump his dream on me—which was no problem because I’d been tuned in to exactly the same dream since I was old enough to throw a golf ball. But what happened to two of his sons . . . in a way, it destroyed him.

About that golf ball. My old man wasn’t about to let any grass grow under my armpit, and at the age of three my hand was too small to hold a baseball, so he used the next best round thing. Out in the backyard we went, and my pitching class began with a golf ball. I turned out to be pretty good at breaking cellar windows. One day when he went to the john I broke six of them with pinpoint three-year-old accuracy before he could get out and stop me. But that was OK. A pane of glass cost only 22 cents, putty was practically free, my Uncle Eddie supplied the labor for nothing, and, hey, it was an investment.

My hands grew and so did I. In my ninth summer, baseball with my Polish buddies began at 7:00 a.m. One day I reported at game time in two-thirds of my father’s old Hartford uniform. I’d found it hanging in the closet, took a scissors to it, and cut the sleeves and pant legs down to my size. Approximately. Geez, it don’t fit ya worth a damn! was the unanimous decision, but I knew they were just jealous. My father wasn’t jealous. He was furious, and my backside paid for it. My mother sewed it back together so the seams hardly showed. I got even years later. I pitched a two-hitter against his old team, Hartford.

We played on an empty lot, part of what the Sisters guardedly called St. Francis House but which we casually identified as (brace yourself—I’m going un-PC) the St. Francis Funny Farm.

Our families didn’t see us again until, it being too dark to see the baseball, we were at risk for cerebral hemorrhages. Eddie Stelmach was one of us and a pretty darned good infielder. A few years later a New York Giants scout signed him. Unfortunately, he never got to first base.

First base was my father’s old position, so, gangling as I was, with long arms that reached halfway to second, it’s where I started and expected to stay. But at St. Mary’s Grammar School when I was 12, coach John Shannon noticed that I tossed the ball across the diamond with curves as impressive as Rita Hayworth’s, so he switched me to the mound.

OK, one year later on a Saturday morning there’s this skinny 13-year-old kid sitting on the front porch of a beat-up frame house in Elizabeth, New Jersey. His old man says, Go get your glove and ball.

What for?

I got something in mind. Your Uncle Eddie’s comin’ down from Poughkeepsie. Show him your fastball. He’s got connections.

Uncle Eddie pulls up in his green Chevy. He gives the kid a grizzly bear hug and slips on a fielder’s glove.

Eddie, the father says, I think you better put on a catcher’s mitt.

Eddie grins. Whattya talkin’ about? He’s not Bob Feller. He’s just a kid.

He turns to me, lifts his glove, and says, OK, kid, loosen up. We throw catch for a bit and then he says, Alright, let ’er rip. I do.

The ball explodes in my uncle’s glove. He lets out a howl like a wolf with pancreatitis, yanks off the glove, and waves his fingers limply in the air. Holy Jesus! he exclaims.

What’s the matter, Eddie? Can’t you take it? He’s just a kid, my father laughs. I can take it, Uncle Eddie groans, but my thumb can’t. I think the kid broke it.

I guess stories like that are what brought Bill McCarran, a Boston Red Sox scout, around. That and the fact that besides breaking thumbs I was breaking records—averaging 20 strikeouts a game in the parochial school league for St. Patrick’s High.

One afternoon, pitching for St. Patty’s against St. John’s Academy, I struck out 27 batters. Not half bad, but what makes it better is it was a Catholic Conference regulation game: only seven innings, not nine. (Geez, where was Robert Believe It or Not Ripley when I needed him?)

Here’s how it happened. At 4’2" my catcher was such a small crouching target that pitching to him was like throwing at a mole with a helmet on. I’d whip in a fastball, the batter would swing and miss the third strike, the ball would get by my midget teammate, and the batter would beat his throw to first base by half a mile. Well, the out didn’t count but we counted the K, so by the time I got the side out I had collected 27 of them.

McCarran had been on my case ever since someone—probably my pop—tipped him off that fielders could do their homework in the outfield when I pitched. He laughed his butt off when I had to strike out six more than the maximum that day. But he laughed even harder—so did everybody else—the next time he was in the stands. Along about the sixth inning, a fastball got away from me and instead of whistling over the plate whistled behind the batter’s ear.

It wasn’t the first one, and a priest, the St. John’s coach, had seen enough. He leaped up from the bench and ran onto the field. Taking up a defensive position between me and the batter, he raised his arms heavenward. God has called my little boys, he shouted angrily. I cannot allow you to kill them!

After the game, he must have complained to the bishop that I was the biggest threat to the Church since the Saracens because, despite appeals from the priests at St. Patrick’s, who loved to win ballgames as much as converts, my pitching arm was excommunicated. No more wild pitches—or Ks—in the Catholic Conference. For a couple of games anyway.

Wildness didn’t bother McCarran. Scouts figure—years later, as a scout for the Oakland A’s, I figured the same way—if a kid can throw hard, we’ll teach him the rest. But nobody had to teach me how to throw a curve. Does the Lord work in mysterious ways? My big sweeping curve came naturally, a gift from the very same God who called those little boys to the priesthood. (My wandering fastball? I guess He just made sure it missed them.)

McCarran showed up again a few weeks later for a big game with Garfield High. After six innings with me pitching a 13-K one-hitter, he got up to leave. What’s your hurry? my father asked. Got another game to go to, he replied. Lucky for me. In the seventh, I lost my touch and Garfield knocked my brains out. They scored seven big runs.

The last game of the season, I wanted to knock my old man’s brains out.