In keeping with the policy NPR seems to have about replaying its best bits during the week between Christmas and New Years, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, hosted by Peter Sagal, featured a few prominent guests from the “Not My Job” segment, including Sen. George McGovern, Leonard Nimoy, Garrison Keillor, Jimmy Carter of the singing group The Blind Boys of Alabama, and former baseball great Bill “Moose” Skowron.
Now Skowron (I had always thought his nickname came from his appearance and size, but it was because of his haircut that the appellation was given because of a resemblance to Benito Mussolini) was a good player — an eight time all-star with eight World Series appearances, a fact he took great pains to remind Sagal several times during the conversation.
"Ah yes, I remember it well."
Judging solely from that interview, Skowron, now 78, seems to be one of those old-timers who loves to compare the lack of “sand” in modern players, afraid to pitch inside, afraid to slide. He spoke of an episode in his career that reminded me of Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, The Lies, and Everything Else.
Every time I hear one of these gentlemen relating an anecdote about the good old days, I find I’ve become fairly cynical (damn you, Neyer!). So when Skowron talked about getting hit in the head after htting a home run against the Red Sox and talking it out on second baseman Gene Mauch with a career-ending hard slide, well, I just had to see if that was indeed the case.
"Whachu talkin' 'bout, Willis?"
Skowron’s tale goes like this:
After hitting the homer off of Ike Delock, the pitcher swore revenge, telling Ted Williams that he would hit Skowron right between the eyes in the next at bat, which he did (actually, it was the head Delock hit, but that’s close enough for jazz).
It must not have been a very hard pitch because Skowron was able to stay in the game. As he took first base, he prayed for his roommate Bob Cerv to hit a ground ball to the shortstop so Skowron could break up the double play.
“Gene Mauch was at second at the time,” Skowron told Sagal and his audience. “I broke his leg and he never played another game in the Major Leagues. I didn’t do it on purpose…, we were taught to break up double plays.”
So I went to Baseball Reference to see if I could verify the story.
According to the BR Home Run Long, Delock gave up 141 home runs in his 11-year career, but none of them were hit by Skowron. (Strike one.)
Mauch, who would go on to manage the Phillies, Expos, and Angels, did play his last major league game against the Yankees on Sept. 28, 1957, so one would expect this was the contest to which Skowron referred. He singled as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning, so he couldn’t have played the field. (Strike two. Ooh, I feel like Sherlock Holmes.)
The Yankees beat the Red Sox, 2-0. No home runs were hit that day. That’s okay, because Skowron wasn’t in the game at all; in fact, his last game of the year came on Sept. 13 (strike three and then some). He did hit six homers against the Sox in 1957; four came over a two-day stretch in April.
Skowron was hit by a pitch three times that season. One came in an April 28, 3-2 win over Boston, in which Mauch played second. Gil MacDougal followed the HBP with a strikeout and Billy Martin (not Cerv, who was on the Kansas City Athletics in 1957) grounded to short for the force at second. Perhaps Skowron went in hard, but is no indication of a violent injury; Mauch was lifted for a pinch hitter in the ninth and played another 50+ games before calling it quits at the end of the year.
So what did we learn by this exercise, other than the fact that I have way too much time on my hands? Was Skowron lying or is this just the way he remembers the incident? No one can say for sure, perhaps not even the Moose. Look, I’m considerably younger and according to my wife I completely mistold an anecdote from our honeymoon in Aruba that involved a goat skull, a scorpion, and hotel housekeeping. I wasn’t lying; that’s how I recalled the event. So you have to give Skowron the benefit of the doubt.
A few more links to interviews with/features on Rob Neyer, author of the eponymous Big Book of Baseball Legends.
, by Catchcart and Klein
* RK Review (and then some): Odd Man Out
3 03 2009A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit, by Matt McCarthy (Viking)
When I first read Odd Man Out, I thought it was the best book of its kind I had seen in many years. Too many “flavor of the month,” riding the high from a World Series win at best or a steroids accusation at worst, they seek to make hay while the sun shines.
McCarthy, now an intern at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan, wrote about his experiences coming out of Yale, signing with the Anaheim Angels, and trudging through the lowest rungs on the minor league ladder. Along the way, he introduces his teammates, which make the gang from Major League or Bull Durham look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In fact, McCarthy played for the Angels’ Provo affiliate, so Mormon humor and denigration is part of the story, as is racism, sexism, and a few other -isms too graphic to mention in a family blog.
While trying to prove himself as one of the boys, the author nevertheless writes a bit unfavorably about a few of his fellow players, portraying them as rednecks, misanthropes, and misogynists. But he tells it in an “insider’s” voice that’s entertaining and illuminating, a cross between Bouton’s Ball Four (for shock value)and the more recent Snake Jazz by Dave Balwdin (more intellectual and analytic).
All the more sad and shocking then to read an article published on the New York Times’ web site strongly suggesting that Matt McCarthy is the baseball answer to James Frye, the author who hoodwinked Oprah with A Million Little Pieces.
“Errors Cast Doubt on a Baseball Memoir,” states the article by Benjamin Hill and Alan Schwarz.
The article reports that several of his teammates were interviewed and all denied some of the more extreme claims, accusations, and portraits, McCarthy made about them. Hill and Schwartz also note that some of the statistics and game details he includes don’t correspond with actual events. Yet confronted with these issues, McCarthy responded that he stands by what he wrote, that his recollections are correct, and those of his teammates and coaches are not.
What is the reader to make of this? Is McCarthy correct, in the face of overwhelming evidence and contradictory information? Or do we go with the majority, which then readers his heretofore engaging book into just another sad story? It’s getting so that when it comes to the disappointment engendered by athletes who lie or at least aren’t entirely truthful, it is the fans who could write a book.
And what about the publisher’s responsibility? Do we buy the excuse that there isn’t enough time or money available to fact check everything an author puts in the manuscript? If that’s the case, how far can an author go with his claims?
I’m still waiting for proof of the old adage, “The truth will out.” Perhaps, but when? After the first 50,000 copies are sold? Or before the book makes it way to store shelves?
In the case of Odd Man Out, it would seem the answer is, unfortunately, clear. And what saddens and angers me most is that like the steroids situation and the news that 103 tested positive in 2003, it now becomes very difficult that what you see in a book such as this is really what you get.
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Tags: baseball memoirs, Matt McCarthy, Rob Neyer
Categories : "Ripped from today's headlines...", 2009 title, Author Profile / interview, Autobiography, Business of baseball, Commentary by Ron Kaplan, New title, memoirs