Stottlemyre’s Grand Slam

Mario rolled his light blue shirtsleeves to the elbows and slid the cue between his left thumb and index finger. The impact scattered the triangle across the green felt. A man with a silver beard looked at him, his hands buried in his back pockets. He hadn’t seen Mario so thoughtful and distant before. He knew what baseball meant to Mario, but this wasn’t like him. He picked up the purple chalk and painted the tip of the cue.

“It’s okay. I know what Mel Stottlemyre meant to you. But why do you have to stop talking?”

Any time they had a discussion, Mario stretched the navy blue suspenders until he almost tore them off the pants. His mute trumpet’s voice, as if in the middle of the most silent jazz, slid over the table’s varnished wood and disappeared among sighs. Stottlemyre was the first pitcher of those everlasting Yankees he had seen. Called up in the middle of 1964, and then hurling three games in the World Series. Between reflections and liquor sips, Mario looked to the radio on the oak shelf on the other side of the room.

Luis pulled his beard as he crept around the table. He didn’t understand why Mario kept looking at the radio. It hadn’t worked since the early ’70s.

He had studied Stottlemyre’s career from before he’d joined the Yankees. Those three games in the 1964 World Series, those three matches before the surging star Bob Gibson, had made Mario reread all of his father’s baseball books and magazines that October. He even went to the library. That’s when he knew.

In 1962, with the Greensboro Yankees, Class B, Carolina League, Stottlemyre had only 92 walks in 241 innings. Those were respectable numbers for someone in just his second season in professional baseball. Then in 1964, with the Richmond Virginians, International League, Triple-A, he had a 13-3 record, 10 complete games, and six shutouts. Now he allowed only 32 walks in 152 innings. What happened in Greensboro hadn’t been a fluke. Mario had always been impressed by the pitchers who didn’t depend on strikeouts, and this Stottlemyre had great command of the strike zone.

While the cue ball collided with the four, Luis realized he had been wrong in his first impression about Stottlemyre. He thought that the pitcher was going to be another one who would disappear in two or three seasons, in the middle of the dismantling of the Yankees.

“I knew Stottlemyre was going to be a great pitcher, since they called him up in the middle of the 1964 season.” Mario raised his voice a little and swatted the cigarette smoke away with his hands as he leaned on the table looking for the best angle.

His temples pulsed. He could see the path at his parents’ house, at the bottom of the garden. That Thursday, October 8, he had arrived from school and eaten his lunch so fast his mother scolded him. Before two o’clock in the afternoon, he had placed his transistor radio between the lemon tree and the house’s border wall. Then he listened to the voices of Buck Canel and Felo Ramírez, very clear, as if they were next to him.

No matter that Gibson started by walking shortstop Phil Linz. He recovered in a second and whiffed Bobby Richardson, Roger Maris, and Mickey Mantle. Stottlemyre struck out Curt Flood, forced Lou Brock to hit a grounder to the mound, and struck out Bill White. That was Game Two of the World Series. The Cardinals had won the first one, in which the Yankees’ lefty star, Whitey Ford, injured his arm; he couldn’t pitch again in the Series. So Yogi Berra put all his confidence and hope in Stottlemyre to replace Ford.

Though he was losing 1-0 until the fourth inning, the Yankees offense supported him from that frame on, and Stottlemyre ended up winning the game, 8-3. A complete game, seven hits, two walks, five strikeouts.

Mario sighed deeply while remembering Game Five of that Series. He always said if Richardson had executed properly in the fifth inning, the Cardinals probably wouldn’t have scored any runs on Stottlemyre, and the Yankees would have gotten a walk-off win on Tom Tresh’s homer in the bottom of the ninth.

Luis smiled and put the cue on the floor. He said, “You can’t be so passionate.” In that bottom of the ninth, Mantle had gotten on base because of Dick Groat’s error, which seemed to have affected Gibson. The Cardinals ended up scoring three runs in the bottom of the 10th inning on a Tim McCarver homer to get the victory.

“I understand you don’t want to recall Game Seven. Okay, Stottlemyre pitched on just two days of rest, but Gibson also went to the mound with the same rest, and besides, he’d pitched 10 innings.” Luis patted Mario’s shoulder twice and told him to stop looking at the radio on the shelf.

In that Game Seven, the Cardinals scored three runs off of Stottlemyre in the fourth inning and three more off of Al Downing in the fifth. Although the Yankees scored three runs in the sixth and two in the ninth, the Cards and Gibson won the Series.

Mario took the white cue ball from the table and stretched his middle index fingers on it. The he remembered how Ford had become Stottlemyre’s mentor until he retired. What Stottlemyre learned from Ford, he practiced many years afterward, working as an instructor and pitching coach.

Most of all, he applied it when working with Dwight Gooden, whom Stottlemyre counseled from Gooden’s beginning with the Mets and who he taught how to behave in the spotlight and rely on pitches besides his powerful fastball. Then, as Gooden’s career was in its final stages, Stottlemyre was once again valuable when they met on the Yankees. There, the coach was instrumental in Gooden’s no-hitter in May of 1996. He was only two outs from the gem when he walked two batters and threw a wild pitch to Jay Buhner.

Stottlemyre went to the mound and told him, “I’m not going to take you out from the game, Doc. I’m just here to give you a break. This game is yours, Doc. Yours unless you tell me you can’t go anymore.” Afterwards, Gooden said. “There’s something in his demeanor, he’s so sincere, so confident, that he made you tell him the truth.” Those words were echoed by David Cone when he said that Stottlemyre knew how the pitchers wanted to be treated. And by Mariano Rivera. “He’s always with you when you have hard times.”

He kept showing what he had learned from Ford in the late 1960s and the early ’70s. On April 12, 1969, he hurled a one-hitter (a Jim Northrup double in the fifth inning, after retiring 14 batters in a row) to beat the champion Detroit Tigers, 4-0, with Denny McLain on the mound. If not for Horace Clarke and Bobby Murcer’s errors in the seventh and ninth innings, respectively, Stottlemyre would have been just one step from perfection.

This time, Mario rounded the table energetically as he looked for the next ball. What Luis remembered the most from Stottlemyre was the a Yogi Berra story he once told.

Linz, the team’s regular shortstop, was learning to play the harmonica. He sat on the back of the bus trying to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Almost immediately, Berra hollered from the front of the bus that he should stop it. Linz asked what Berra had said, and Mantle, who liked to be an instigator and have some fun, said to Linz, “He said play it louder.”

When Linz kept playing the harmonica, Berra came storming to the back of the bus. He had fire in his eyes. Everybody was shocked; nobody had seen Berra lose his temper. He told Linz he was going to shove the harmonica up his ass if he kept playing, plus a few other things. Linz tossed the harmonica toward Berra, who slapped it out of the air and whacked it off Joe Pepitone’s knee. Berra and Linz went back and forth a little before Frank Crosetti jumped up and started screaming at all of the players for acting like they’d won the pennant or something.

The whole thing was pretty ugly, but according to Stottlemyre, it helped spark the ball club. Players had never seen that side of Berra, and maybe they needed to. He had been their teammate the year before, and that’s a tough transition. Berra took the team to the World Series and then was fired.

The navy blue suspenders glowed on the light blue shirt. Mario prepared for another shot. One of the games he remembered the most from Stottlemyre happened on August 24, 1971, at the Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland. He had a pitching duel with Vida Blue and got the win, 1-0. Only Bert Campaneris, Rick Monday and Dave Duncan recorded hits. He allowed three walks and retired the first 11 batters in order. That Oakland team won the West division that year.

Then, on August 26, 1973, at the same ballpark, Stottlemyre shone again, this time against Ken Holtzman. After the first out in the bottom of the eighth inning, Joe Rudi hit a single to center field, and Ray Fosse executed a sacrifice bunt. Vic Davalillo pinch hit for Dick Green and plated Rudi from second base with another single to center field. Those were the only two hits Stottlemyre allowed, but he lost the game, 1-0. Between the sixth and ninth innings, he retired 12 batters in order. Maybe the only stains on his work were the four walks he allowed. Those were the Dick Williams A’s.

In an attempt to distract Mario from the radio on the shelf, Luis bounced the cue on the linoleum floor. He would always remember what the Yankees did to Stottlemyre when they had his shoulder treated with radiation at the end of the 1960s to reduce the risk of developing calcifications. A particular radiologist told him to stop the treatment because it could lead to health consequences. Stottlemyre listened, even though the Yankees’ medical staff told him the radiation wouldn’t affect him. His son Jason died of leukemia in 1981, which led Stottlemyre to quit as roving pitching coach for the Seattle Mariners. 20 years later, Stottlemyre began to suffer from the multiple myeloma; the memory of the radiation treatment hung in the air near Mario.

Mario’s gaze bounced among the few balls remaining on the table. His thoughts turned to the slights endured over a long career. The way he went out from the Yankees in May of 1975, after injuring his shoulder in June of 1974. Gabe Paul, the general manager, told him to rest until May 1, when the team would make a decision about him. When Paul realized that if he kept Stottlemyre on the roster after March 31, the Yankees would have to pay him $30,000 in severance, Stottlemyre was cut at the end of spring training. Stottlemyre got angry, most of all with George Steinbrenner, because he thought the owner had influenced that decision. All of his pitching gems defending for Yankees jersey had no value at that moment.

Luis opened his right hand. Mario had left his cue on the table and didn’t care about the advice to calm down; he didn’t want to settle. His voice took that acute tone of a muted trumpet. Stottlemyre endured another ugly episode when he resigned his job as the Yankees’ pitching coach in 2005, worn down by Steinbrenner’s constant interference. Again his great work with Gooden, Cone, David Wells, Andy Pettitte, and Roger Clemens, while winning four World Series titles, wasn’t valued properly. Although afterwards the Yankees management awarded him with a plaque in Monument Park in 2015, he didn’t deserve those bitter episodes.

Mario thought about the words he had read in the days following Stottlemyre’s passing. He lingered over those of Roy White, a former teammate, “I think Mel’s been very underrated. He was really a dominant pitcher for the Yankees until he got hurt. He broke more bats than anybody … He was a big-game pitcher. He was a lot like Catfish Hunter, personality wise, in that he was always the same. After a game, you couldn’t tell whether he won or lost. He was one of those guys who wouldn’t go into a shell after he lost a game, get mad, and not talk to the press, or anything like that. He was the same guy all the time. But when you talk about great Yankee pitchers, he’s usually never mentioned. People have kind of forgotten about him, but this guy was really tough.”

As he ordered the balls to play another game of pool, Luis swallowed several times. Stottlemyre had three seasons of 20 or more victories with those mediocre Yankees teams at the end of the 1960s (20-9 in 1965, 21-12 in 1968 and 20-14 in 1969), and in all of those seasons, his ERA was below 3.00 and his walks per innings pitched ratio was below 0.32. Stottlemyre is just one of three pitchers in Yankees history who has thrown 40 or more shutouts. The other two: Red Ruffing (40) and Ford (45). The Yankees had four 20-game winners during the 1960s: Ralph Terry (23-12 in 1962), Jim Bouton (21-7 in 1963), Ford (25-4 in 1961 and 24-7 in 1963) and Stottlemyre.

Since Mario remained hypnotized before the radio, Luis insisted on knowing the reason for that behavior. Mario started to whistle.

“My Dad had a radio like that, and one day, he changed the radio over to the Yankees game. I got irritated because it was playing ‘Downtown,’ which was a hit that year, and a song I enjoyed. The Yankees were winning 2-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning. Dad began to raise the radio volume as the Yankees loaded the bases before Bill Monbouquette. When the batter was announced, the radio speaker sounded like a drum. The Red Sox drew in their defense all over the diamond. They waited for a squeeze bunt. But Stottlemyre hit a line drive to deep left-center field. Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Gosger ran behind the ball, but it kept rolling to the most remote spaces of Yankee Stadium. How could a pitcher run fast enough to get an inside-the-park home run?”

References and Resources

• Richard Goldstein, The New York Times, January 14, 2019,”Mel Stottlemyre, Yankees Ace During Lean Years, Dies at 77”
• Associated Press, January 14, 2019, “Former ace, longtime pitching coach Stottlemyre dies at 77”
• Robert W. Cohen, The 50 Greatest Players in New York Yankees History, ‘#29. Mel Stottlemyre’, Scarecrow Press
• Bill Madden, New York Daily News, January, 14, 2019, “Mel Stottlemyre, New York baseball legend, dead at 77”
• John Harper, New York Daily News, September 23rd, 2015, “Mel Stottlemyre remembers Yogi Berra’s harmonica incident with Phil Linz.”
• Baseball-Reference.com
• Retrosheet
• baseball-almanac.com
• Sport’s Lifer, “Mel Stottlemyre’s inside-the-park grand slam “
• Harold Friend, Bleacher Report, “Mel Stottlemyre’s Trendy Game”