A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Cooperstown

by Mickey McDermott, Howard Eisenberg

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623681531
Publisher:	Triumph Books
Publication date:	04/01/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Mickey McDermott, better known as "The Fenway Rifle" to many fans, pitched in the Major Leagues for 12 seasons, six of which were with the Boston Red Sox. At age 17 he threw a no-hitter against Albany in an Eastern League minor league game and, was just 19 in 1949 when he took the mound in his first Major League Baseball game. Scouts and baseball insiders likened him to a left-handed version of Bob Feller or Cy Young and were eager to see how many 20-win seasons he would post. McDermott's best season was in 1953 when he went 18-10 with a 3.01 ERA. To the dismay of Irish Red Sox fans, that season proved to be McDermott's last in Boston, where he'd sung at a local nightspot in the off-season, borrowing half of his superstar pal Eddie Fisher's act and had become a fan favorite (one sports page headline read: "McDermott Wins Fans, Outshines Ted"). Mickey was friends with everyone from Jack Kerouac to Joe DiMaggio (who signed a ball, 'Thanks for all those good pitches at Fenway') and Satchel Paige. McDermott played in Mexico City, Caracas and Havana, where his final Cuban League game was called on account of revolution after a coach and shortstop were felled by sudden stray bullets from Fidel Castro's attacking guerrilla army. After he retired, he moved to Arizona where he continued his hard-partying ways until 1991. That year he won $7 million in the Arizona state lottery. He immediately sobered up and at 74 is considered by any former player or coach who knew him to be the funniest big-leaguer alive. He still lives in Phoenix.

Howard Eisenberg has written five previous books (including The Recovery Book, which his co-author should definitely have read) as well as hundreds of national magazine articles, some award-winning. He has written a musical comedy, a children's CD, and scripts for both TV and radio. He lives in Manhattan where he enjoys reading books written by his wife, two daughters, and son.

Read an Excerpt

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cooperstown

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By Mickey McDermott, Howard Eisenberg

Triumph Books

Copyright © 2003 Mickey McDermott and Howard Eisenberg
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62368-153-1

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CHAPTER 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 reporter 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. The way I saw it high school was a convenient place to play baseball, not a place to learn. The first time I read a book cover to cover was in Durango 40 years later when I spent 60 days in the slammer for drunk driving, so my report cards featured almost as many Ds and Fs as my scorecards featured Ks. My principal, Sister Teresa, was not ecstatic about that, and, after repeated meetings in her office had not improved the quality of my scholarship, she announced that I could not play in the last game of the season for the league championship. Anyway, not 'til I passed my exams.

At the last minute she commuted my sentence. (Either she took pity on me or she was afraid she'd be crucified by an aroused student body.) I got to pitch, and I loved every moment of it — until the final play of the game.

It was the last inning of a scoreless game. Two men were out but there was a man — well, a boy — on third. The batter pulled a swinging bunt. I charged to the first-base line and fired the ball home. It was close, and maybe it's wishful thinking, but I'm sure I saw my catcher nail the runner sliding home. I was jubilant. Then I heard a roar from behind me. My old man's voice. He was umpiring, and, dammit, because his son was pitching, he was bending over backward so far that the back of his head must have been touching the ground.

"Safe!" he trumpeted.

"What!" I exclaimed, standing toe to toe with him. "He was out and you damn well know it!"

"I call them like I see them," he replied, stalking off.

I followed. I was furious. "Well, you're a ratbastardandablindsonovabitch," I shouted, and then I added a few other exquisitely descriptive terms.

Now it was his turn to be furious. He spun around and grabbed my shirt. I twisted away and ran like hell. He chased me all over the outfield. Unsuccessfully. I didn't go home that night. I didn't want to be pounded into 110 pounds of prime hamburger.

McCarran, the Red Sox scout, wasn't the only guy who looked me over. The Ferrara Trucking Company fielded a semipro team in a league on Staten Island where major money was wagered on games every Sunday morning. With a bottle of beer in his hand, my pop frequently needled me with, "You couldn't pitch in the Epworth Sunday School League." That's girls softball. But he knew better. Especially with the promise of a good payday on Staten Island.

Ferrara paid my father $50 in singles to rent my arm. For a really important game, $75. After the game, my father would generously peel a single off the wad for me and take the rest to the nearest bar. Or, instead of pounding his beat, he'd head to the firehouse piano and pound out his favorite, "Old Mamie Riley, how do you do today? I'm going far away. Come kiss your daddy before you go. Oh Mamie, Mamie Riley." I learned those lyrics by the time I was two and a half. I flunked recess, but I never forgot Mamie.

On one occasion, pitching for the truckers, I was gung ho to show those surly muscled men on the other team that a kid could face them down. What I didn't know was who I was facing. At 13 I could zip my fastball in at 87–89 mph, and I was used to being the winning pitcher. But not that day. One after another they came up, and one after another they hit me like I really did pitch for the Epworth Sunday League, feasting on my best fastball like lumberjacks at a barbecue. The harder I threw it, the harder they whaled it. I spent five innings ducking line drives and watching unidentified white flying objects soar beyond my outfielders' outstretched gloves.

After the game, I asked, "Who are those guys?" and found out why I was so bad and they were so good. In those not-so-good-old days, major league clubs paid their peons popcorn. Established sluggers like Heinie Majeski and up-and-comers like Bobby Thomson played under aliases for semipro teams every chance they got to pick up five Cs for a morning's work. I was their morning's work, and I was shell-shocked for a week. That afternoon, someone cracked a walnut and I ducked.

Many years later in Boston, Del Rice and I stopped to have a drink after the game. The bartender bent over the bar and murmured, "Mickey, the gentleman at the other end wants to buy you a round." Gentleman? He looked like a hood right out of an Edward G. Robinson double feature, but that didn't seem to be a good reason to refuse a free drink.

A few minutes later he edged up to me. "You wouldn't remember me," he said, "but you once cost me a bundle. Remember that day you pitched for Ferrara Trucking in Staten Island?"

"Remember? How can I forget it? They hit me like I was a dartboard in a saloon."

"They sure as hell did. Well, I had $20,000 bet on that game. I'm glad I didn't see you afterward. You'd have been floatin' down the Elizabeth River as full of holes as a truckload of doughnuts."

I must have looked nervous. He held up his hand and grinned. "It's OK, kid. Easy come, easy go. I never held it against you." A good thing, too. This was a wise guy with a memory as long as his rap sheet.

I went to my first baseball tryout camp that year. Camps were the local clubs' way of getting an early look at neighborhood talent, and you can bet my father made sure I was there when the Brooklyn Dodgers announced one for Newburgh, New York. My cousin Vinnie came, too. When I finished throwing, an old scout named Mule Haas who'd been a great ballplayer with the Philadelphia Athletics beckoned to me.

"How old are you, son?" he asked.

"Thirteen," I said.

"Your father Maurice McDermott?" I admitted he was the same. "Geez," he said, "I know your pop. He was a helluva ballplayer. Give me your address. I might call him." He said he'd like to sign me, but at my age it was illegal. He bought me a glass of milk and a ham sandwich instead.

Branch Rickey held another tryout camp in Brooklyn and nothing could keep me away. It was like taking a number in a crowded bakery but finally my number came up. Again the Dodgers considered the possibility of signing me, but one of their scouts objected. "The kid's too skinny," he said. "He's never gonna be big enough for the majors." My father the man mountain stepped forward. "Not gonna be big enough?" he demanded. "He's my son!" The scout withdrew his objection, dismissed the age problem, and offered an under-the-table signing bonus of $100.

"A hundred bucks?" my pop scoffed, exaggerating slightly. "We can make that much on a Sunday in Staten Island. No thanks. We'll wait. But you'll be sorry when he beats your pants off in the World Series."

In early 1944, my father's patience ran out. I was only 15, but he was thirsty. He bought a bottle of ink eradicator at the stationer's and sat down with my birth certificate. Suddenly I was 16. "It's for your own good," he told me. "I want you to get in a year of pro ball before all the ballplayers come back from the army. But you gotta eat more; 130 pounds isn't enough for a six-footer. Stop playing so damn much basketball and put some meat on your bones."

I opened the high school season that year like Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. (You've gotta be a senior citizen to know Jack. If you're 65 or less, you may not remember it — my second favorite radio show. The first was Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Boy, that Killer Kane was one slick villain.) I pitched a no-hitter, striking out 18 and winning the game with a home run. But it was my last game for St. Pat's. The good-news rumor about my old man signing me up with the Red Sox traveled too fast. Even if I hadn't started yet, I was a pro and, according to Catholic Conference rules, automatically suspended from playing against any of the Saints.

I could still play against lay high schools though, and I played semipro for the Garwood Question Marks (I'm not sure what the question was, but the answer was yes, they passed the hat and we got paid a few bucks) during June and July. Then in August the phone rang.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cooperstown by Mickey McDermott, Howard Eisenberg. Copyright © 2003 Mickey McDermott and Howard Eisenberg. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

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,