Play Ball!

Today, 28 of 30 Major League baseball teams will play in 14 Opening Day games.  And thirty of the best pitchers across the majors will take the mound, including 22 All-Stars, 4 pitchers who will be debuting for new clubs and 1 who will become the fastest top overall pick to take the mound in a season opener

Vis-à-vis the above, I thought I might visit the lighter side of life and relate a story told to me by none other than one of the all-time Yankee greats, Mickey Mantle.  In 1986, I attended the NY Yankees Mickey Mantle / Whitey Ford fantasy camp in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, courtesy of the Home Insurance Company one of the carriers I represented during my business career.  And even though I grew up a Chicago White Sox fan, playing ball with the likes of Mantle, Ford, Moose Skowron & Hank Bauer, was a thrill of a lifetime.

I had never played baseball on a manicured professional ballfield, and I will tell you it was glorious – it was like playing ball on a putting green.  But the best part of the week was listening to the stories the “old timers” would tell.  I think it was during our third day “in camp” that the fantasy campers and some of the old time Yankees were gathered in the club house “after practice” when Mickey related a story about Billy Martin.  For non-baseball fans or those too young to know, Billy Martin had one of the most colorful and dramatic careers in baseball history, both as a player and a manager.  Martin was a World Series champion in 1951, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1957 as a player with the Yankees and again 20-years later 1977 as their manager.  Billy Martin wasn’t a Hall of Fame-caliber player by stats alone, but he was known for being a clutch hitter and a fierce & fiery competitor who would do almost anything to win.

Mantle began the story by telling us how Martin had received a new hunting rifle for his birthday and wanted to try it out.  So, Mickey and a couple of the other Yankees who were also hunters decided to play a little joke on Billy and took him deer hunting to a ranch down in Texas where Mantle was good friends with the rancher.

Mantle told Billy, “It’s kind of rural down there plus we’re gonna have to get up around 4:00 in the morning because it takes a while to drive down mostly on back roads.”   Billy replied, “I don’t care I want to go deer hunting, you know, with my new rifle.”  So, we all drove down to my friend’s ranch and when we arrived, I said to Billy and the guys, “You guys wait in the car, and I’ll go knock on the door and let the rancher know we’re here and not to be alarmed at the gunshots he’s gonna hear.

So, Billy and the guys stayed in the car, and I went up to the house and knocked on the door.   About a minute later my friend the rancher came to the door and said, “Good to see you Mick, what are you doing down here?”  I said, “Well I got Billy Martin and two of our friends out in the car with me, and we want to play a joke on Billy, so I want you to know I’m going to fire off a round or two out back and out of sight of the car.”  My rancher friend gave me a knowing but questioning look because he knew something was up, and said, “OK” with a wary smile.

I walked back to the car and said to the guys, “Damn it, the rancher said no, that he changed his mind and didn’t want us hunting on his property even though he told me we could when I called him last week.” The other two guys pretended to be upset, so I yelled to Billy, “Give me my rifle Billy, I’m gonna fix that old bastard,” acting really good and mad.  Billy said, “What are you planning to do Mick?” I replied, “We drove 4 hours to get down here to go deer hunting and this guy said we can’t go hunting, so I’m gonna shoot his mule that I saw out back behind the barn.”   Billy goes, “Oh my God Mick you can’t do that,” and he’s trying to keep me from grabbing my rifle saying, “You know we’ll get thrown jail, and we’ll get in trouble and everything.”  I repeated, “Give me the rifle Billy!”  Meanwhile, our friends in the back seat are trying to keep from cracking up.

I finally pulled my rifle from Billy and went running toward the barn and when I was out of sight of the car, I fired off two quick shots Bam! Bam! and began running back towards the car.  But as I turned toward the long driveway, I noticed that Billy wasn’t in the car.  Suddenly I hear Bam! Bam! Bam! off in the distance, so I turned around and I see Billy running towards me holding his rifle up in the air with this crazy look on his face, so I shouted, “Billy what are you doing?” and Billy shouts back, “I just got three of his cows!”

Quote of the day:  “There’s no crying in baseball!” — Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own