The Short Season

Spring in Sarasota, 1975. Twelve years since I had taken a contract to camp on the shores of Tampa Bay. Property of the Cincinnati Reds, I had sweated under the west Bay sun at AI Lopez Field, named for the then manager of the White Sox who had had his own pitchers doing 50 laps a day across the way at south Bay's Payne Park. Señor Lopez would, within 60 days, trade one of his pitchers for me, inadvertently foredooming my career. Later that year, the White Sox management declared that I would never go to a spring-training camp at Sarasota (continued on page 102)Short Season(continued from page 97) if I insisted on writing about baseball while employed as a pitcher. It was in the contract! The silliest of prohibitions. I could have raced thoroughbred horses, operated a saloon or written advertising copy for a living. That is: I could have gambled, pushed booze or lied a lot for profit. But publish for laughs an insider's notes on game playing? That was an invitation to a black-listing.

What ego-pleasing irony, then, to be back in the Florida sunshine, cruising in a rented LeMans down the west Bay's Gulf Boulevard, headed for the White Sox spring-training camp, where, as a freelancer on assignment, I would catch their pitch about the coming season and put it down.

Driving the Sunshine Skyway triggered heartburn memories of a bus trip to Payne Park with the Reds, who were scheduled for an exhibition game with the American League champion White Sox (they win a pennant every 40 years; you could look it up). I was at a physical peak then, 31 and flat-bellied and strong-armed, but there was the prospect of pitching that day. And so the mound fright, the worries over making the right pitches, making points with the manager and his coaches--making the team!--caused acid to rise while the bus wheels rolled.

Tooling down the North Tamiami Trail, I chewed a WinGel and missed the turnoff to Highway 301 that would have taken me right to the Sarasota Motor Hotel. "Winter home of the White Sox." I would be late, something I'd always avoided when pitching for those Sox in '63, because Lopez fined tardiness at the rate of ten dollars a minute. Don Gut-teridge, a Lopez coach destined to inherit Al's job when the señor developed a stomach ulcer, would stand at the clubhouse door, grinning obscenely at panting players who plunged through just on time, beating the fine-tuned Gutteridge Timex.

Buck Peden, the 1975 White Sox PR man, was upset though powerless to punish me for blowing our four-o'clock appointment. Buck Peden! A tidy little man, no match in stature for that catcher of the same name who called the signals in the only no-hitter I ever pitched as a professional (Fayetteville vs. Rock Hill, 1948). I asked this Buck for a pressbook, stat sheets, room numbers of selected Sox players and directions to Arthur Allyn Field, where the club would work out until the Chunichi Dragons appeared for a Friday-afternoon exhibition game at Payne Park.

"You ought to do something on Nyls Nyman," said Buck. "He's the only pheenom we have in camp this spring."

Well, now, bad news, indeed! The White Sox had finished a game but pragmatic fourth in the Western Division of the American League. Snobbish fans claimed that those Sox were not in the same aesthetic league with the champion Oakland A's. What's more, the Sox had, during the off-season, lost two true superstars, Dick Allen and Ron Santo, who had retired, taking away their power to hit homers and to draw customers.

How now in the new year could the Sox sell their pennant chances without a marching phalanx of phenoms in the flesh and under contract? For management, that's what spring training is all about--selling illusions to the folks back home.

Nyls Nyman the lone phenom? At least he had some credentials. Minorleague player of the year in '74. Season' send sensation with the Sox. In five games, Nyls had batted .643, scored five runs, batted in four and stolen a base. Then, he was drilled in the arm by a hard-throwing left-hander, was removed to the hospital and was through for the year, a bruised but wiser phenom.

•

My motel room was sandwiched between those of Buck Peden and Johnny Sain, the Sox pitching coach. Five phone calls convinced me that players and coaches alike had taken off for the day, to beach, golf course, movies, anywhere but the Sarasota Motor Hotel. Later, I was to learn that four of the five I wanted to reach were in a four-hour class devoted to Jose Silva's Mind Control Program. What's more, they were paying their own way through the course! Such unprofessional player behavior led me to ponder baseball's new breed. Since it was past five o'clock, I went off to have a martini. First of the season, '75.

Dusk had already dropped a shroud on the deserted ten-story building that had been called the Sarasota Terrace Hotel when most players in spring training were white and all others were housed elsewhere. When Sox blacks were refused lodging in Sarasota in 1961, Sox owners bought the Terrace, built a motel behind it and sold their costly mausoleum cheap to the county, which promptly closed it.

A White Sox white elephant, it towered over the two-storied motel lodges surrounding a rectangular courtyard that was half parking lot, half "recreation area." A thick hedge, bounded by palm and sea grape trees, separated automobiles from two shuffleboard courts and a tiny swimming pool shaped like a garbanzo bean and filled to the brim with several gallons of fresh water. Baseball players, for no sound medical reason, are discouraged from swimming during spring training. There was no chance of any Sox player tiring or drowning in the Sarasota Motor Hotel pool.

In the parking lot, a rookie outfielder named Kilpatrick had rolled his Riviera into the space beside my LeMans. On the Buick's front bumper was an extra license plate emblazoned with the owner's first name. In six-inch-high letters. Cleo. A pretty name. No doubt a left-hander's name. But what kind of name is that for a phee-nom? The young Sox pitchers had solid jock-type names: Rich. Bart. Skip. Butch. Bugs. But backing them up was a potential line-up of Hugh, Lamar, Cleo and Nyls.

Nuts.

At Walt's seafood house, the martinis went down well with oyster stew and stuffed shrimp. Burping appreciatively, I gleaned data from Buck's pressbook, a score card full of such wondrous achievements by Sox players in '74 that one had to wonder how the club could have finished nine games out of first. More amused than informed by Peden's prose, I returned to the hotel and spotted Chuck Tanner in the parking lot. His greeting effusive, his heartiness unrestrained, Tanner was gray at the temples but little changed since we'd last been in camp together.

Seventeen years before, Tanner and I had played on the same Chicago team (the Cubs). An outfielder of limited skills, Chuck was a man of infinite bonhomie. Had his prowess at the plate equaled his conversational charm, Tanner would have been a .300 hitter in the National League, just as he had been in the minors (Southern Association, 1951-1954).

What Tanner had lacked in star talent he made up in attentiveness, curiosity and enthusiasm. His managers liked that. Chuck's arm and legs and instincts were no more than competent, but he had good eyes and good ears and a good line. Good coach material, as they say in the biggies. Maybe too nice a guy to be a manager.

"Things have changed a lot, ol' buddy," said Tanner when I asked him what's new in the training-camp biz. "Not like the old days in Arizona, when you and Moose Moryn and Lee Walls used to stand around in the outfield waiting for the neons to turn on in Phoenix. Wait and see. We start working out at ten. Want to have breakfast at the Waffle Shop about seven?"

Baseball at sunrise! An unhealthy prospect. Might ruin my day. Tanner had been quoted as having been so eager to start this spring training that he had dreamed about baseball the night before the Sox pitchers reported to camp. His pitching staff was not the kind that pleasant dreams are made on, but Tanner's unnatural optimism admits of no nightmares. He greets each dawn with a grin.

I missed Tanner at the Waffle Shop. Watched Sox outfielder Carlos May, dressed in a faded-blue-jean leisure suit, wolf down four scrambled and a side of sausage. Chipped my left incisor on a (continued on page 209)Short Season(continued from page 102) shell lurking in a pecan waffle. Lost my way to Arthur Allyn Field. Reminded myself that a bad start simply makes the adrenaline flow in an old pro. Reached the clubhouse door at the stroke of ten, stopped at the first locker on the left, said hello to Johnny Sain.

Sain is the best pitching coach in baseball, a crusader with a simple credo: The mechanics of pitching can be taught to anyone who can throw a baseball 55 feet.

In a highly conformist profession, Sain is a genius and therefore a maverick. He has refused to coach for a manager he didn't like (Yogi Berra of the Yankees). He resigned rather than work for an owner he didn't respect (Calvin Griffith of the Twins). Yet Sain can have any job he wants off his track record (champion staffs at New York, Minnesota and Detroit) and because his pitchers speak of him with rare affection. In a sport where "coaches" are more tolerated than admired by players, Sain has received public testimonials from pitchers Jim Bouton, Dennis McLain and Jim Kaat, all of them mavericks in their own right but all of them stars under Sain.

Hawking a stream of tobacco juice into a paper cup he was carrying, Sain explained what I should have known back when I could have used it.

"I can teach the mechanics and give you ideas and help you learn from experience. But pitching is control and control is subconscious. You can't think about what you're doing and do it the way it should be done. When you're pitching right, it looks instinctive, but it's the result of all these things you've learned and selected for yourself and discarded the crap that isn't for you. If I tell a pitcher to go out there and use a certain pitch in a certain situation, hell, it's his ass if it doesn't work. So he has to believe it will work. I can't make him do what he should do."

The most useful thing Sain does for pitchers is to teach them spin mechanics. It is the spin on the ball as it enters the plane of the strike zone that makes it so difficult to hit solidly. Putting the proper spin on the ball so that it sinks, sails, slides, hops or drops is what the mechanics of pitching is all about. In 1947, Sain invented a simple inexpensive gadget to help pitchers learn the principles of proper spin. Recently, he devised a control target (a three-inch-thick cement block in a pressed form of two-by-fours weighing 300 pounds, with the strike zone painted on its surface) at which anyone can throw a properly spinning ball and learn to pitch.

"There ought to be one in every camp. Hell, in every playground. Teach a boy how to spin the ball and let him practice. Baseball needs something like this. It's tougher now more than it ever was to pitch in the big leagues. I've talked to the commissioner's office, to everybody I can think of about this. Maybe it's too simple. Nobody listens to me but pitchers."

Big John! Where were you when I needed you?

The two-hour workout had started; the first intrasquad game of the spring would follow. I strolled through the clubhouse sniffing familiar smells.

A hundred lockers. Twice what the spring-training roster called for. Less than what would be needed when the minor leaguers reported in a month. Each of the occupied lockers had extra uniforms that were provided by the club, extra shoes and gloves that were free from Adidas and Rawlings, an assortment of personal belongings. No fan mail. But on the top shelf of most lockers was a hair drier.

A hair drier!

Ty Cobb would have cursed. Rogers Hornsby would have raged. Christy Mathewson would have let his hair grow long. (Pitchers have always been a progressive breed.)

The sound of calisthenics drifted into the trainer's room. Charley Saad, quartering oranges for the midday break, grinned and agreed that not much had changed in his line of work.

"So what does a trainer need, hah? Good ears to listen to their troubles. Good sense so he can tell 'em what they want to hear. Good hands so he can give 'em a little flesh. That's what they want. That's what they need. Just like anybody else."

A chunky man, quick on his feet, Saad has the soulful eyes and clutching gestures of a Lebanese merchant. Give him an opening and he'd sell you the sheet off the rubbing table. He swept a hand along the wall counter, pointing out his supplies for the camp.

"Two gallons of half-and-half baby oil and Sloan's Liniment to get 'em loose, thirty-six pounds of Atomic Balm to get 'em warm. Twelve tubes of Capsolin to get 'em hot. Ascriptin with Maalox for hangovers. Geritol, wheat germ, vitamin C. Whatever they want. Can it hurt? They're grownups. Bill Melton thinks vitamin-B 12 shots help his sciatica. That's OK. If Bill thinks it's good for him, I'll give him one."

Fingering my bicep, Saad leaned over to whisper: "Y' know the thing that worries 'em all? They say to me, 'Charley, will this end up in cancer?' Y' know? Tendonitis. Chipped bone. Pulled muscle. Ankle sprain. Whatever. They worry they're gonna get cancer from some hurt.

"Y' know what you never do? Never, never tell a guy the medical name of the thing that hurts him. God, he's right into the anatomy book looking it up. Saying it wrong. Worrying over it. Driving himself nuts."

Sox players call Saad Uncle Charley. Like most big-league-baseball trainers he is more psychologist than physical therapist.

"Hey, a monkey can tape. Put a bell on the spool. One turn, rrring! Two turns, rrring! The monkey slaps the guy on the ass and sends him out to play!"

Buck Peden's pressbook didn't even list Uncle Charley's name. Which indicates how little the front office knows about what goes on in the clubhouse. The trainer is usually the first man to know whether or not a player is able--or willing--to play on any given day.

"Hey, big 'un," said Saad, handing me an orange slice to suck, "why don't you check out their heads? We got a lotta good bodies down here this spring. But what kind of heads we got?"

Sain worried about hands that could spin a ball properly. Saad worried about heads. Sox management worried collectively about an arm that might or might not work to their satisfaction.

Roger Nelson, an off-season acquisition from Cincinnati, had a history of arm troubles. What Nelson didn't know was that the Sox had promised a young pitcher to the Reds if Roger made the team in the spring. Was his 32-year-old pitching-savvy head worth a 20-year-old's hard-throwing arm?

"The Sox make you feel like a human being. They talk to you like you're a person."

Sure, Rog. They tell you all the facts you need to know.

"When I was healthy on the mound, I never caught my lunch, never got belted out of the ball park. But my whole career has been bad luck. I've tore up my shoulder muscles, front and back. Tore up my elbow. Had operations. Used all kinds of stuff to keep down the pain."

Nelson sipped Gatorade from the iced tub filled with the team's two-and-a-half-gallon daily ration. Tall, dark-haired, "Spider" Nelson had had a big season in 1972 at Kansas City, where he was equally famous for Tacos à la Nelson, a gustatory delight published in Royals Recipes, the K.C. team's cookbook. Since then, Spider had had two poor years in a row and was obsessed with doubt, an affliction at least as bad as a sore arm to the Sox. John Sain, a disciple of W. Clement Stone, preached Positive Mental Attitude to all his staff. To Sain, self-pity ruins more pitchers than the hanging curve ball.

I wished Nelson luck, made a date for dinner with Jim Kaat, a pitcher with no doubts whatsoever, and walked out to diamond number one to watch the intrasquad game. Spring-training games are rarely memorable, their statistics meaningless. In the spring, it's truly not whether the players win or lose but how they play the game that counts. And which bigwig sees them.

In the bright sun, a scattering of fans watched for free. A pair of braless teenagers measured the pitches and pitchers, the clouts and the clouters. (Wonder if groupies take spring training. Or need it.) Bill Melton hit a grand-slam homer late in the game. Hit it off Roger Nelson. In the tiny manager's room, half filled with team equipment, Chuck Tanner said everybody looked good, everybody was hustling just fine and the Sox would be better than ever in '75.

"Have a couple of martinis for me tonight," he said to me.

"No martinis tonight, Chuck. Having dinner with Kaat."

"Have a couple, anyway. He'll watch."

"Drinking is not a spectator sport," I reminded him.

Jim Kaat may be the only pitcher in baseball history who has won over 200 games but doesn't smoke, doesn't drink and doesn't screw around on or off the mound. A leader in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a successful investor, "Kitty" Kaat considers pitching satisfactory only if he wins a complete game and finishes it in 90 minutes or less. Tall, blond, well-built, he has the arrogance of a dedicated evangelist, a hard-nosed competitor and a smart businessman. Some people like him, anyway.

We ate Italian, at a local shopping center's only restaurant. Kaat drove his van, an Econoline with the floor boards, inner walls and ceiling covered in green-and-white shag carpeting. There were color-coordinated curtains. The horn was half a baseball. The tape deck played, not music, but a golf lesson recorded by Jim Flick, a teaching pro from Florida.

"Took up golf a couple of years ago. Want to play to a two by the time I'm through pitching. I listen to the lessons whenever I'm driving the van. Having a goal gets me going in the morning, you see."

We had ordered lasagna, talked about pitching coaches (twice Kaat had won over 20 games in a season, both times under Sain) and switched the conversation over coffee (milk for Kitty) to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

"At Minnesota, the Twins had the largest number of nonsmoking teetotalers in the game. We got it together and it spread around. Some managers might be afraid we're trying to separate the good guys from the bad guys, but that's not how it works. For instance, I'd go from locker to locker on Saturday and let everybody know what room we'd have for the Sunday chapel. Everybody's welcome. The F.C.A. doesn't shy away from junkies and drunks and shack-up artists. Last season, every man on the team dropped in at least once."

Some of my fondest Sunday-morning memories are of gentle hangovers that followed Saturday-night victory celebrations. Poor Kitty. He'd never have one.

"I'll tell you," Kaat unexpectedly confessed. "I once had a beer and I puked all over a cigar back behind my family's home in Michigan. But in a strict Christian home, smoking and drinking were the kind of habits that were taboo. I never really got into them and didn't have to give 'em up."

Kaat was 36. At that age, the average athlete regrets even occasional debauching and begins to doubt the purity of his bodily essences. Did Jim Kaat feel any anxiety about spring training?

"No. I've never worried about my job in the spring. Always had one or so I thought. You take Roger Nelson now. If I ever get into his position, I'll probably hang 'em up and go to coaching. For Nelson, six weeks of spring training is a whole season. Either he makes it or he's out on his can."

I marveled at Kaat, his equanimity, his self-confidence. In profile, his nose was like carved stone, down which he'd slide an ice-blue glance. But I had more empathy with Nelson, whose insecurity was frightening and debilitating but normal. Besides, the Spider wore glasses. I like that in a pitcher.

Dawn came up with thunder and rain and the certainty in my mind that Chuck Tanner would forgo breakfast, sleep in and dream about World Series rings. In the baseball biz, they are the ultimate status symbols. (Mine is forever falling off my finger at cocktail parties.) In the Sox clubhouse, a couple of young pitchers stood in front of the wall-length mirror, blow-drying their hair into a manageable shape on which to fit the White Sox red-billed caps. I asked Jack Kucek to step outside and tell me some stories. Belying his dark locks, Kucek was the "fair-haired boy of the spring camp." The pitcher's version of phee-nom fair-haired boys of past Sox camps included Rich "The Goose" Gossage and Bill "Bugs" Moran. Kucek had no distinctive nickname. Some people called him "Flakey," but that is a general sobriquet applied to any nonconformist in the game.

"I'm a weird case," Kucek blushingly admitted. "I understand my own mind. Nobody else does."

Kucek was a hot-shot college pitcher who jumped from Miami University (Ohio) to the majors in one season. Nothing unique and mostly due to Tanner and Sain's passion for seeing strong-armed kids in action. Young Jack won a game for Tanner in '74. He also demonstrated a splendid imagination and a knack for getting ink from the press.

"My Uncle Zeddo's helping me," Kucek would say. "Zeddo had a wooden leg and he died when I was eight. But he is with me on the mound whenever I'm pitching. He was there when I signed my contract. Tanner was smoking this big cigar, turning on the charm, and I was digging it a little but couldn't make up my mind. Zeddo said that if Tanner shifted his cigar from one hand to the other in the next ten minutes, then I should grab the pen. Chuck did, and I did, and pretty soon I'm humming in the bigs."

During the intrasquad game, I'd seen Kucek warm up on the side lines. It made this old pitcher's arm hurt just watching and listening to the kid's hummer. I wondered if he had any novel theories about getting in shape, because he still had some baby fat on his belly.

"I read," he said, "where a half hour of sex is worth an hour of jogging."

And, with splendid timing and a charming leer, he added: "I'm getting two hours' running every night."

The kid's future was so bright it brought tears to my eyes.

"You know," he said, "how guys leave girls mementos of the occasion? A tip, a present, an autograph? I write 'em a poem when I split. Right off the top of my head. Surprising how they never seem to forget me."

He was a natural for the Jose Silva Mind Control Program that many of the young Sox players were attending. Asked by Rich Herro, the program director, to put himself into a Beta state of consciousness (a sort of self-hypnotic spell), Kucek responded with wild will.

"Drove myself right through Beta and down to Delta. Rich couldn't get me out with the password. Had to bang me on the head about thirty times."

Did Kucek think the program would do him any good, make him a better pitcher?

"I'm twenty-one," he retorted. "Nothing's farfetched to me."

Psychological conditioning is not new to big-league baseball. Autosuggestion, or "psyching up," is common; hypnotism has been tried by many players and by one whole team (the St. Louis Browns); Caribbean-born players have been known to summon a voodoo doctor (brujo) to cast out the spirit (obeah) disturbing their professional performance; psychoanalysis was tried by the Chicago Cubs on a batter (Bob Ramazzotti) who, once beaned, was inordinately afraid of a pitched ball. (The doctor declared his patient perfectly normal and sent him back to the dugout.)

In the spring of '75, the Silva Mind Control Program had already had 400,000 graduates. They included one big-league pitcher, Bart Johnson of the Chicago White Sox. Handsome, articulate and hyperactive, Johnson was a bull-pen star at 21, a pitching flop at 22, a dropout from the game at 23. In 1974, rejuvenated by his Silva course, Bart made such an impressive comeback that Chuck Tanner figured him to be a regular starter, a potential staff leader and, at 25, the key to future championships.

"I used to get by just blowing smoke," Johnson said when I asked him to comment on his whirligig career. "Come in from the bull pen and just throw fast balls. Had a curve but lost it. For two years, I kept looking for it instead of listening to Sain."

We stood just outside the clubhouse. Johnson literally talked in circles, walking around me, chatting and gesticulating, answering one question in the northwest quadrant of his orbit, illustrating a point by swinging a phantom seven iron at an imaginary golf ball, pondering another query in the opposite sector of his interview circuit, delivering his reply as if he were delivering a pitch, complete with follow-through.

"Pitching is really more fun than throwing. It's like I'm carving out a piece of action sculpture on the mound. I program myself to throw strikes, it's that simple. I've got good stuff, so I just put it in the right place and it works. I can do the programing the night before, go over the hitters and how I'll pitch to 'em the next day."

Johnson says the idea of "programing" a game is perfectly natural.

"It sounds like you're making a robot out of yourself, programing your computer--your brain--to pitch. But that's really what every pitcher does, anyway, without thinking about it."

Unlike his conversational style, Johnson's pitching form is right out of the Spalding Baseball Guide, smooth and effortless, with little wasted motion. The mind conditioning of the Silva program gave Johnson the needed self-control to harness his talent.

"I used to blow my cool at umpires. Didn't do me any good, couldn't change their call no matter what, right? Now, I know they don't miss a call, because they're fixing the game or because they've got a hard-on for me personally. But I'd yell at 'em, anyway, 'til I was told it would cost me two hundred and fifty bucks if I did it. Well, I'm not paying any fine for an umpire's mistakes, right? So I'd stop yelling. Out loud. But I'm still telling in my mind, see. So I've lost my head, my concentration, my control. It's all gone. Today, I just accept it and forget about it. Wind up and pitch."

Johnson's nervous energy and too-much-too-soon success led to other ego problems and a roisterer's reputation.

"I'm married since I was seventeen," he said, raising an eyebrow. "So I might figure to have missed some of life, right? But I didn't. Right? But I've cut down on that because I really learned to like being responsible. To my kids. To my wife. Hey, I used to have an argument at home, go to the park and I couldn't even pitch! Now, I just block out the fight. Get on the mound. Let 'er rip. Easy."

Rich Herro sells the mind-control course with the claim that it helped him take seven strokes off his golf score. Bart Johnson went off to see if he could get his down to scratch. Another intrasquad game was on tap, but pitchers sure of their jobs seldom stick around in spring training to watch the Nelsons and Morans and Kuceks fight for theirs.

But if Johnson and Kaat were off playing golf (on separate courses--different strokes for different folks) and Wilbur Wood the knuckle-baller was in a boat fishing and not even thinking about the Chunichi Dragons who would be waving at his butterfly pitches within 48 hours, there were 20 other pitchers and six catchers and 11 infielders and ten outfielders to play the game or watch from the bench just in front of stands halffilled with spectators, most of them connected in some way with the club. Up and down the right-field foul line they'd tramped, from clubhouse to diamond and back.

Harvey Wineberg: the player's agent who got outfielder Ken Henderson a $90,000 contract, down from Chicago to sit in the sun and watch his man play ball. "Don't call us an agent," said Harvey. "We're a full-service representative who helps 'em get a contract, lays out a budget, cuts down on their taxes, advises them on investments and keeps 'em out of financial trouble. None of our players has ever bought a house without seeing us first. Most agents are percentage guys. They take their money and run. We want an ongoing relationship, on a mutual ninety-day cancellation agreement. If we don't like the way they're living or they don't like our way of doing things, we split. No hard feelings. They don't owe us a dime."

Don Unferth: the pale-faced Pale Hose traveling secretary, working so hard that he had no time to tan. "We haven't lost a day to rain in two weeks," said Unferth. "So I guess the players are earning their money. Know what they get in spring training nowadays? Nineteen-fifty a day meal money. Sixty-nine-fifty a week for incidentals. If they live out, don't stay at the hotel, they get ten-forty extra per day and twelve-fifty a week as an additional supplement. Marvin Miller's done some job on fringe benefits since he's been head of your organization."

(Let's hear it for Marvin Miller!)

Roland Hemond: the White Sox general manager, a harried little hustler trying to sell a run-down organization to a quondam fandom that traditionally supported losers and did not believe it would get, or deserved, any better. "We're all into P.M.A. Clement Stone sends us literature and we distribute it in the clubhouse. We urge our people into psychocybernetics. We're high on the mind-control program. I had to arrange baby sitters for two of our guys the other night. Heck, I was gonna baby-sit myself, if I couldn't find one."

Harry Caray: ruddy, raucous, ribald, the onetime "voice of the St. Louis Cardinals," whose success as the White Sox broadcaster had had a critical influence on the Tanner-Hemond management team. He was trailed by a retinue of paunchy middle-aged men who looked as if they had tried to follow Caray day and night, a challenge even for young men. I asked Caray if I could buy him a drink and he said no.

"We'll have a drink, but no broken-down old relief pitcher is going to pick up my tab. Come out to the beach tomorrow and we'll lift a couple to old times."

In the clubhouse later, puffing on an end-of-the-workout cigar, Tanner fed the press some well-chosen words. Tanner has an inexhaustible supply of hope that offends cynical sportswriters. None would buy the message painted on a clubhouse sign: A championship--why not? The sign hung over a door that opened on a blank brick wall.

"Breakfast at seven, big Jim?" Tanner asked me. Again.

Well, why not? I could program my brain to fool my body into thinking it should be ready to go at dawn.

At Walt's, I chewed on a gin-soaked lemon twist. Scratched the first peeling skin of the spring off my nose. One more day till the exhibition season. Thirty-two games till the regular season began. One hundred and sixty-two scheduled games till the start of the league play-offs. No reason so far to think that the Sox, in their 75th season, would get to play almost 200 games and earn those World Series rings.

Too many questions unanswered: Melton's back? May's legs? Nelson's arm? Wood's knuckles? Was Nyls Nyman a true phee-nom? (Was Jack Kucek?) Was Johnson's comeback a one-year wonder? Were there tangible benefits to be had from P.M.A. and Silva Mind Control? Could Harry Caray talk enough Sox fans into buying tickets to see Chuck Tanner's new-style club so that Roland Hemond could meet the payroll all year long?

At seven A.M., the hotel courtyard was dark and silent, the palm fronds fibrillating, the shuffleboard court damp with dew. But Chuck Tanner was all sunny smiles, already turned on by the day's prospects.

"Every spring I expect to win the pennant. Every day I expect to win the game. Call me an incurable optimist, if you like, but that's the way I am."

At the diner, Tanner put his arm around the proprietor's shoulders, chucked the waitress' chin, glad-handed two bleary-eyed customers, waking the place up and cheering the people on to work.

"I'm a salesman. That's what I do best. Getting a chance to be a manager meant one thing to me. I got a chance to sell some young guys on how to get to heaven. 'Cause that's what the big leagues are. Heaven. Took me eight years to make it and I wasn't disappointed. And if I see a kid wants it bad enough, I'm gonna bust my ass to help him make it."

We ate eggs and sausage and grits. Lots of grits.

"My first job. Davenport, Iowa. I tell my kids, 'Listen, goddamnit, everyone of you is goin' to the big leagues if I have to bust your asses to do it. But we're gonna do it my way.' This is 1963, see. So I tell 'em, 'Go, get a crewcut. No wearing sweat socks off the field. No goddamn T-shirts on the street!' One kid has this hair drier in his hand. I grab it. Throw it at the wall. Yell at him, 'Go see a barber.' A kid named Sollami comes up wearing Bermuda shorts. I yell, 'Go get some pants on. You can't go to the big leagues in goddamn Bermudas.' Jesus, I was a hard-ass. But we looked like winners and we were winners and a couple of 'em really did make it."

Tanner smiled his top sergeant's smile, let it relax to a softer grin.

"But then I got a triple-A job in 1970 and I had to change my attitude. Hell, I had the raggediest bunch of guys, the misfits, the drunks, guys coming down from the big leagues, playing out the string. Bo Belinsky, Dennis Bennett. That kind of guy. What a crew. They'd ask me, 'What are the rules? Curfew? Things like that.' I'd say, 'The rules are whatever I say they are.' And I had different rules for everybody. If some guy on the way down wants to drink a case of beer every day? OK. Some 19-year-old kid, though, I'm all over his ass, 'cause he's going up, not coming down. I'd say, 'I don't give a damn what you do till that game starts, but between those white lines we're gonna have us some fun. And the only way to do that is to win. Losing ain't no fun.'

"Well, hell, we blew that league apart."

That winter, Tanner and Roland Hemond took over the White Sox.

"When Roland and I came up here, this club didn't have shit. No farm system. A team that just lost 106 games. Guys that couldn't play. Guys that didn't want to play. We had to make trades, make plans, start building, start getting the message to the fans. I'm out making appearances everywhere.

"One night, I'm in Appleton, Wisconsin, snow up to my ass. The next night, I'm in Harvey, Illinois, a hell of a long drive. And what kind of a reception do I get? I walk into Rube's Sportsmans Club. Bar-restaurant type of place. It's jammed. Guys drinking, cussing, arguing, stuffing themselves with kapusta and kielbasa and all that good Polish food. I ask Rube where's the meeting. He says, 'This is it. This is the business end of the meeting. Sit down and eat. We'll call you when we're ready.'

"So, they're drinking more booze, eating more food, cussing and yelling louder than ever. Finally they call me up and I start walking by the tables. And some guy yells, 'How the hell can you trade Aparicio?' And a guy yells, 'What's your next stupid move?' And another guy screams, 'Manager, my ass!' So I'm thinking, What the fuck's going on here? I'm standing up there and a guy yells, 'We're Cub fans. The Sox are shit!'

"Well, hell, I start yelling right back at them. 'You don't have to listen to me. Go on, get your asses on out. I came sixty miles just to talk to you dummies and that's what I'm gonna do.'

"An hour and a half we're screaming at each other. They love it. I love it. At the end, some guy raises his mug and says, 'Next year, White Sox Park.' And they have been coming ever since. By the busloads."

By 1972, the White Sox were making money and Tanner was major-league manager of the year. The fans loved him, because he talked their language. The press liked him, because he gave them something worth while to write about. The players respected him for crediting them for his success and because they knew that his image of Mr. Good Guy was only partially accurate.

"I've chewed ass. I've fined guys. I've banged heads on the clubhouse wall. But I do it in private. I don't make a big thing over it. And I forget it the next day. Off the field, anybody who knocks any of my players is gonna have to deal with me. I may have ripped a guy off in private, but nobody is going to rip him off in public, because it's not just him that's hurt by the press and radio and TV. It's his family that gets hurt and that's not fair. Hell, I know I'm gonna forget about what's said in twenty-four hours. But readers and listeners and viewers remember that shit forever.

"I'm a family man. I'm a family manager. We don't have dissension on the White Sox. We have family problems. Just like any fan does. Hell, we have divorces, bankruptcy, hangovers, accidents, disease. Ballplayers are human, just like fans. Some players don't like others. They cut each other up. And what I do is get 'em to talk to me, so I can straighten everything out. Some groups of players are easier to handle than others. My first two years in the majors were easier than the next two."

For Tanner, triumph and trouble were tied up in the same package, the talented and temperamental Dick "Richie" Allen. In 1972, Allen was the best player in baseball, the key to Chuck Tanner's best record as a major-league manager. In the following two years, Allen was the highest paid but least disciplined player in the game, a man who alienated some Sox fans and who wrecked Tanner's cando-nothing-wrong reputation. Awed by Allen's talent. Tanner could not control the man's temperament. Eventually, Tanner took responsibility for Allen's failures, the club's disappointing record in '74 and the necessary shake-up in personnel for the new season.

"Dick Allen is an artistic genius," Tanner insisted, grinding his cigar butt in my grits. "It was my pleasure to be his manager. Now, we go from here."

Tanner deserved kudos for graciousness. Or at least a fresh supply of cigars. What kind?

"I smoke Churchills when they're free. And White Owls when I'm buying."

I bought him one and we went off to the ball park.

Roger Nelson pitched batting practice, gritting his teeth but throwing loosely. Jack Kucek, his arm strong from pitching winter ball in Puerto Rico, humped up on a couple of hitters, grinning as they swung, missed and groaned. Ken Henderson hit 90-grand line drives. Buddy Bradford clouted cheaper but longer flies into the trees. Carlos May ran and ran, as if his thickly muscled legs never ever had hurt.

Red-faced from the hot afternoon sun, I drove to Lido Beach to see Harry Caray in his natural habitat. Caray is unique among broadcasters, his own man, a fan's fan. He admits that his mouth sometimes has a mind of its own. The Sandcastle's poolside cabana bar was cool, the nearly topless waitress was accommodating and Harry was soon holding court, handing down opinions:

On the Necessity of Spring Training: "Spring training is bullshit. Two weeks is all the players need to get ready. It's the fans that need spring training. You gotta get 'em interested. Wake 'em up. Let 'em know that their season is coming, the good times are gonna roll."

On Chuck Tanner, Manager: "Tanner is a great salesman. He could sell anything. Personable, enthusiastic, full of bullshit. And he was a hell of a young major-league manager. One of the best I've ever seen. And I said so. Then he sold his soul to Richie Allen. Which made him a bad manager. And I said so. Chuck will admit privately he was wrong about Allen. But he's afflicted with that old Nixon syndrome--loyalty above integrity."

On His Overly Publicized Feud with Tanner: "Chuck wants to be the big man in town. But, you know, I told him, 'Chuck, there's no way you're going to be as popular in Chicago as I am. No way! You can win 162 games and I'll be cheering all the time. But in the end, there will be a million people who will remember Harry Caray talking about the team.'"

On Silva Mind Control for Ballplayers: "Hey, the less a ballplayer uses his brain, the better he's gonna be. A bigleague ballplayer is a natural, or he should be. If he hasn't got the natural talent, he shouldn't be out there."

On the '75 White Sox: "I wish I knew what Tanner and Hemond are trying to do. They might have a team on opening day with only one black in the line-up! The team could be pretty good. But it could be pretty bad. So bad, the price will drop and Hemond and his bunch will jump in and buy the team cheap! Pretty wild speculation, isn't it? Well, if I was good at predictions, I wouldn't be working for a living."

On the Necessities of Life: "Booze, broads and bullshit. If you got all that, what else do you need? I only wish I'd known I was gonna live this long. I'd have taken better care of myself."

I drank to that. Picked up the tab. Paid it. Harry didn't fight too hard. But what the hell, I'm bigger than he is.

The Chunichi Dragons came to play at Payne Park on March seventh. As the 1974 major-league champions of Japan, the Dragons won a spring-training trip to Bradenton, Florida. To a man, they were enthusiastic about playing on grass. Grass infield. Grass outfield. Firm, green natural turf. In Japan, the ball-park surfaces are more dirt than sod. Legendary gardeners as they are, the Japanese don't waste much grass on playgrounds.

Politely, most American pros agree that playing on grass is good. It's traditional and it's easier on the feet than plastic carpeting. Still, grass infields can be lumpy and bumpy, full of tricky bounces and bad hops that lead to errors. In truth, many shortstops lie about the advantages of grass.

In the right-field stands behind the White Sox bull pen, I feasted my eyes on the grass of Payne Park and watched the game with the Number One White Sox Fan of the Spring, Rube Walczak, proprietor of the Sportsmans Club in Harvey. Rube's qualifications as a fan are indisputable. He buys $2700 worth of tickets for box 77 at White Sox Park every season. He flies a dozen or more fans to Sarasota every spring to check out the club. He sponsors six busloads of fans who make the trip from Harvey to Sox home games. His station wagon bears a license plate: WS 14 (Bill Melton's uniform number).

He takes his role as fan seriously: "In September of '72, I'm visiting the old country. Mszana Dolna, fifty kilometers outside Kraków. Couldn't get any word on what's happening. I know we're only five games out and I should be back here helping. Finally get to Rome, check the American paper, and we're dead. Oakland's got it sewed up. It's all my fault."

Too often, a fan can't help much. Chunichi whipped Chicago 1-0. It was a dull game. One memorable moment. In the fifth inning, a Japanese batter sliced a hard line drive into the stands. Hit a woman in the face. Splat!

Watch it, Rube! Being a fan can be dangerous to your health.

•

It was some weeks later when I caught up with the White Sox. Drove up from Indian Shores to Clearwater to watch them play the Phillies. For all intents and purposes, spring training was over. The euphoria and optimism of the first weeks had dissipated. All the managers who had announced that all the players in camp had a chance to make the team were now revising their expectations and settling on a roster to open the season. The Sox had taken 50 men to camp. They would keep 25. Most of them had been with the losers of '74.

Spring training can be like that. Disappointing to the management. Disillusioning to the fans. Dismaying to players. Trauma was about to hit.

Roger Nelson had pitched well. Had given up two earned runs in 16 innings. Had announced on March 17 that he was ready for opening day. He never made it. The Sox released him.

Jack Kucek had thrown hard but wildly, was inconsistent and wondered aloud if he'd like pitching in Denver, the 1975 Sox's AAA farm team. Kucek made the final cut of the spring but was, indeed, in Denver by May.

Bart Johnson hurt his back on March 14. He didn't pitch again for three months.

Wilbur Wood's knuckle ball was unhittable in the spring, but he lost ten of his first 12 decisions during the season.

Nyls Nyman was almost phenomenal in Florida, but he was out of the regular line-up by mid-May.

Even in Clearwater's Jack Russell Stadium, back on that hot late-March day, there were signs of anxiety in the Sox's key men. Chuck Tanner and Harry Caray had, in their own estimation, saved the franchise for Chicago. But in this spring of '75, they had some troubled reservations for the future.

"Spring training," said Tanner, "is too short. There's not enough time for teaching all the mechanics. Not enough time for the players to absorb all we can give them. Not enough time for experiments. The mind-control people say that it's possible for a man to consistently do the best he's ever been able to do. Wouldn't that be something? If we could get just one guy this year to do that...."

"I'm getting married again," said Harry Caray. He'd tried it twice. The second divorce is said to have cost him half a million.

A photographer asked Tanner and Caray to pose together. I left them smiling at each other and went off to find John Sain and talk about pitching. He wanted to talk hitting.

"You know the expression, 'You show me your ass and I'll show you mine'? That's basically what it's all about. Nothing starts until the pitcher lifts his front leg to deliver the ball. Then the batter lifts his front leg to step into the pitch. Everybody goes from there."

Depend on Sain to get down to basics. "You show me your ass and I'll show you mine," eh, John?

I showed him mine and went back to the beach.

For most big-league teams the false hopes of spring are dimmed by June and dead by October. Only one team can be best, 23 end up losers. Occasionally, a mediocre team will win a championship--if most players live up to their potential, some players have a phenomenal season and the better team or teams collapse. For the '75 White Sox, there was no such luck. They were a mediocre team in Sarasota. They looked worse during the summer. They were inept by autumn. Injuries decimated John Sain's pitching staff; Jim Kaat won 20 games, but Wilbur Wood lost 20, and both were put up for sale. Harvey Wineberg's highpriced clients. Melton and Henderson, flopped on the field and were offered for trade. Carlos May looked tired by July, Jack Kucek never came back from the minor leagues and, though new faces came and went at White Sox Park, there were no phenoms, not even Nyls Nyman. Especially Nyls Nyman.

Chuck Tanner lost most of his charisma and some of his optimism. Harry Caray lost faith in the team, was more bitter than sarcastic in his reporting and was eventually fired by Sox owner John Allyn. The team was never a contender, the fans lost interest and Allyn ran out of money.

At season's end, an incredible denouement loomed; the Sox were for sale and the likely buyers planned to move the franchise to Seattle. That's a hell of a long way from Rube's Sportsmans Club. Was there no one to save the Sox for the great South Side of Chicago? Were there no monied men to buy the Sox and preserve a tradition three quarters of a century old?

Oh, hell yes, sports fans. This is America, land of business opportunity, home of the freebooter's enterprise system. And isn't that Bill Veeck coming? OI' peglegged Bill, the fun-loving pirate from the Maryland shores? The guy who wrote The Hustler's Handbook, or "How to Make a Buck Out of Baseball"? The same Bill Veeck who, in 1959, brought the American League championship to Chicago?

Bill Veeck! Baseball fans had learned to love him because he made fun for them. Baseball owners hated him because he made fun of them. But then who understood better than Bill Veeck that in the business of baseball, the name of the game is gamesmanship?

Writing about that '59 pennant year, Veeck said that they won the pennant too soon. Ideally, he claimed, you should build over a four-year period, go from sixth to fourth to second to first. That's the way to build attendance. It's strictly an engineering problem.

Four more years, eh, Bill?

Now, that's a springtime promise a fan can live with.