Spitballin’ 200: The Finale

What? What are they saying? Oh, he wants me to get out of here? Right. Clete Boyer? I didn’t play with Clete Boyer. No, Clete Boyer’s not dead. –Phil Rizzuto wrapping up his Hall of Fame speech, 1994.

Sometimes when the end is nigh, the right words are hard to come by. After 200 installments, the time has come for Spitballin’ to go to that great bullpen in the sky. This series has always been about bringing fans baseball stories directly from the players themselves, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t conclude this adventure without a proper sendoff.

Spitballin’ started as an idea just after the launch of BallNine. I was driving across the country in the late spring of 2020, taking the scenic route, and somewhere in Wyoming I texted BallNine founder and Editor-In-Chief Chris Vitali with a bright idea.

I proposed interviewing former Major Leaguers and having them tell their own baseball story. I wanted to know how they fell in love with the game as kids, what it was like when they finally achieved their dream of being a Major Leaguer, what their reflections were looking back on their careers and interesting stories in between.

I figured I could get a handful of responses and it could be a fun thing to revisit every so often. The idea was to have it as a recurring segment called The Spitball Series and it would run whenever I could corral someone of interest. Instead, Chris proposed just calling it Spitballin’ and running it every single Friday. Not knowing how or where I’d find players to interview or if I could even find one player to agree to this, I said it was a great idea and I’d get right to work.

On June 5, 2020, the first Spitballin’ ran and my guest was Al Ferrara, the old Dodgers outfielder, who also was an actor on Gilligan’s Island and Batman. We had an incredible conversation about being teammates with Sandy Koufax, meeting Jackie Robinson and being the first and last strikeout in a string of 10 straight punchouts by Tom Seaver in a game in 1970.

It was such an energizing conversation that I was convinced we could do this every week, so I reached out to some more players. Only one of them replied and agreed to an interview, only to flake when I called at the scheduled time. I quickly learned that if I wanted to line up 10 people to interview, I better contact at least 50 of them. Altogether, I probably reached out to over 1,000 former players and other folks in the baseball world.

Some of the first players to agree to interviews were Brad Komminsk, Jeff Frye, Todd Stottlemyre and Jim Morris. I talked with Komminsk about many things, including losing his former teammate Claudell Washington, who had passed away the day before. I enjoyed talking with Stottlemyre about his own career – as well as his dad’s – and it was pretty cool to find out that Jim “The Rookie” Morris was as wonderful a guy as the movie based on his life made him out to be. With Frye, we talked about his burgeoning #Shegone movement and it’s great to see him still battling the stupidity in baseball four years later.

After the Stottlemyre article, I received some great advice from Hall of Fame writer and fellow BallNine scribe Kevin Kernan about streamlining the players’ responses and significantly cutting down my own commentary.

When someone of Kernan’s stature offers you advice, you damn well better take it. Not everybody who has been that successful in their field is willing to help others do the same, so consider yourself lucky when an experienced person offers good advice. I was raised on the idea that we learn from previous generations and am better off in so many ways because of that.

With a newly streamlined format, I was ecstatic to get in touch with Jim Sundberg for an interview. He was the first player I watched during my formative years as a baseball fan that I talked with and was the first guy I interviewed who had legit hardware. We’re talking nine Gold Gloves, All-Star Game appearances, MVP votes and a World Series ring. I wanted to do a good job and when he emailed me back after the interview was published telling me it was one of the best articles that had been written about his career, it really meant a lot.

The interview just before Sundberg had a sadder ending unfortunately. It was with Reds legend Tom Browning, who was fantastic with an incredible sense of humor. We had a great talk about his perfect game, the 1990 season and what it was like being inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame the same year as Tom Seaver. We even had a laugh talking about that time he snuck out of Wrigley Field in the middle of a game, in full uniform, to go sit on the rooftop seats across the street from the stadium. The photo of him sitting on the railing of one of the buildings waving his cap with a sly smile on his face is such a classic.

Less than a year and a half later, Browning passed away unexpectedly. It gave me perspective that these interviews may be the last some of these guys do about their careers, so I had better do them justice if that was the case. That was sadly reinforced again this year with David McCarty. We talked about how excited he was about the upcoming 20^th anniversary reunion of the 2004 Red Sox. McCarty attended that celebration and shockingly passed away ten days later, nearly six months to the day his Spitballin’ interview ran.

Through all of this, I still always considered myself a fan rather than a writer. I was able to interview Ed Hearn, Barry Lyons and Doug Sisk off of my all-time favorite team, the 1986 Mets and Art Shamsky and Jim Gosger from the franchise’s only other World Series winner in 1969. It was so awesome to interview Steve Dillon, who captured Mets fans’ hearts when he pitched in the 2022 Old Timers Game at the age of 79 and The Stork, George Theodore as well. It also meant a lot to interview Glendon Rusch on the 20^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and tell him how much the 2001 Mets meant to families like mine who lost loved ones in the attacks.

Sticking with my Mets, I loved interviewing Jay Hook, the man who recorded the first win in franchise history. Hook’s manager was Casey Stengel and his pitching coach was Red Ruffing! Another fellow who I talked with recently with a place in Mets history was George Altman. Altman was the starting right fielder in the Mets first game at Shea Stadium in 1964. The first home run ever hit in the ballpark where I sat so many times was struck by Willie Stargell and went right over Altman’s head. Altman was also the only former Negro League player I interviewed. He played for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1955 and was managed by Buck O’Neil. I had goosebumps asking Altman, now 91, what it was like being a teenager in the segregated South watching Jackie Robinson break the color barrier.

Speaking of Robinson, anytime I had the chance to ask someone what it was like playing with or against him, I made sure to do so. One exchange really stood out to me was with Bob Kelly, who is now 96 years old. He held Robinson to a .147 average in 28 plate appearances, but remembered an off-field incident with Robinson when I brought up his name. Kelly had come up through the Cubs system and found out he was traded to the Reds after a game in Ebbets Field against the Dodgers. A dejected Kelly, nearly in tears, packed his belongings and headed out of the Cubs clubhouse for the last time when he encountered Robinson, who noticed he was down.

Kelly said that Robinson asked him what was wrong and he told him he had just gotten traded. Kelly said Robinson, “backed me up against the wall and took time to talk to me, a white guy who was the opposition. He took time to give me confidence and get me out of my slump. He offered me encouragement and success.” It’s not lost on me how special it was to hear a story of Robinson’s class and graciousness directly from a person who experienced it. The number of people who can tell those first-hand stories is dwindling fast.

My favorite part of the Kelly interview though was that it was set up through my cousin, Ken Constantino, and he got to sit in on the discussion and ask some questions himself. Bringing people along for the ride has been one of the most rewarding aspects of this whole endeavor.

Perhaps the best example of this was when I was able to feature Wes Parker, one of the best fielding first basemen of all-time. A Gold Glove winner each of the last six seasons of his career, Parker was the childhood hero of my friend, Craig Moropoulos. I was able to have Craig in on the call to listen to stories and ask questions. One of the questions he asked was about Parker throwing the infield ball to Jim Gilliam in the dugout after warmups each inning and hitting him perfectly each time. It was such a specific, minute detail that pretty much nobody would notice. As he was asking the question, I was thinking there was no way Parker would remember that 50 years later. Sure enough, Parker remembered, gave a great explanation and was so impressed Craig remembered too. Baseball is awesome.

Questions from my friends often spurred fantastic insights, like the time my pal Pop Roberto told me to ask Doug DeCinces how he was able to hit peak Ron Guidry so well. DeCinces laughed and said he was about to tell me something that he hadn’t told anyone until very recently: Graig Nettles was tipping Gator’s pitches based on his movements in the field and DeCinces picked up on it. DeCinces didn’t even tell his own teammates because he didn’t want word to spread and get back to the Yankees.

Whenever I interviewed someone from the Padres, I made sure to send the articles to the biggest Padres fan I know, Jack Corley. Knowing that his daughter Ashton’s favorite player was Eric Owens, I spent years trying to track him down and finally succeeded. The burning questions I wanted to ask had nothing to do with his career; it was about a promotion the Padres had where they gave away an Eric Owens “dirty” t-shirt with infield dirt screened onto the traditional shirsey as a tribute to his all-out style of play. She was at that game and still talks about the shirt to this day. Owens laughed and of course had a great story about that game. It’s those kind of things that I thought really brought Spitballin’ to life.

One thing I didn’t anticipate when starting this journey was how many people I would keep in touch with after doing their interviews. It’s been really fantastic to continue to discuss baseball, and other topics with guys like Will Ohman, Glendon Rusch, Bill Pulsipher, Mark Dewey, Mike Heath, Bob Lacey, Fred Claire, Robin Fuson, Jeff Frye, Jim Morris, Randy Johnson, Brandon Puffer, Dennis Powell, Bob File, Aaron Small, Luis Lopez and many others. One huge highlight came a few months after I interviewed former Yankees and Brewers pitcher Wayne Franklin when he and I were able to team up to do a virtual presentation through the United States National Archives!

I also enjoyed tracking down players who I or my friends had personal connections with and there were a few players who fell into that category. It was also really neat to recently interview Choo Freeman, who played minor league ball in the Rockies organization with my lifelong friend, Mike Mundy.

Mundy and I were on the same pitching staff at Belleville (NJ) High School in the early 1990s and although Mundy went on to great success at Rutgers and in the minors with the Rockies, only one person who graduated from our high school made the Major Leagues: Jack Cullen. He pitched for the Yankees in the 1960s. Cullen grew up around the corner from where my family still lives and grew up playing on the same ballfields I played on as a kid. It was really neat to interview Cullen, someone whose name I always heard growing up. Another Spitballin’ installment featured former Red Sox catcher Creighton Gubanich, who was also born in Belleville, but moved to Pennsylvania as a kid. As far as I can tell, the only living person connected to my hometown who I wasn’t able to find was journeyman pitcher Paul Mirabella, who was born in Belleville and played ball at Parsippany (NJ) High School.

Incredibly, Cullen also stated that there was another Major Leaguer, a legend of sorts, who he played Little League with in Belleville named Cotton Nash. Nash is one of just 13 people to have played in Major League Baseball and the NBA. His number 44 is retired in basketball at the University of Kentucky and when he graduated there in 1964, he was the school‘s all-time leading scorer. Nash only lived in Belleville briefly, but played Little League baseball with Cullen, a fact that neither I, nor anyone else in town I talked to knew. In April of 2023, I was in touch with Nash’s son about possibly interviewing him but was told that he was battling some health issues and to reach back out in a few months to see if he was feeling better. However, six weeks after that email, Nash sadly passed away. He’s one guy I have regrets about not reaching out to sooner.

The mention of Cotton Nash brings up another critical part of the Spitballin’ library: the pre-1980 MLB players who still remain without pension. I became aware of this group of players through writer Doug Gladstone and his book, A Bitter Cup of Coffee. The story is too complex to get into here, but if you talk to just one of these former players, their hurt is evident. They’re generally not looking for a huge MLB pension payday; they just want the respect from the MLB Player’s Association to be included in a type of pension system similar to what MLB has done for other groups who didn’t qualify into the existing pension system.

Asking myself that question about Spitballin’, one word comes to mind for me: astonishment. I’m astonished that I was able to pick up a phone and ask Rocky freaking Colavito what it was like to hit four home runs in a game.

I talked with players in this group of approximately 500 like Tom Bruno, Mike Hedlund, Steve Whitaker, Mac Scarce, Gary Neibauer, Don DeMola and Cullen. They talk of laying the groundwork for the current players to receive the salaries they do and not being respected enough to be compensated by the MLBPA. They are asking for less money than Major League Baseball spends on sunflower seeds annually, and that’s not hyperbole. To have a conversation with any of these folks and hear the hurt in their voices and the feelings of exclusion from a sport that they love is heartbreaking. Maybe that’s the reason nobody from the MLBPA or MLB will talk to them and their families. I’ve been proud to advocate for them here, even if it angers some folks.

Speaking of labor relations, you can’t mention the topic in baseball circles without saying the name Curt Flood. Flood passed away in 1997, but I had the absolute honor to interview Curt Flood Jr. about his father’s impact and baseball life. That was one of many interviews with family members which often found me shaking my head in amazement when they were done. That list includes Billy Martin Jr., Josh Gibson’s great grandson Sean Gibson, Babe Dahlgren’s grandson Matt Dahlgren, Bill Veeck’s son Mike Veeck and Ernie Banks’ son Joey Banks, who works in Hollywood and played baseball players in movies like Brewster’s Millions and The Naked Gun! Vernon Wells Sr. was also an interesting interview. He not only raised a future Big Leaguer, but also is a renowned artist who painted the designs on many Upper Deck baseball, football and hockey cards when the company first started. What a privilege to hear and share the family stories of such baseball icons.

With last call for Spitballin’ upon us, I’d like to end this installment the way I ended most of the interviews I did here over the past four years. I usually asked folks what thoughts come to mind when they reflect on what they have accomplished in baseball.

Asking myself that question about Spitballin’, one word comes to mind for me: astonishment. I’m astonished that I was able to pick up a phone and ask Rocky freaking Colavito what it was like to hit four home runs in a game. Astonished that I asked Luis Tiant what it was like leaving his parents in Cuba to pursue baseball in the United States with the idea that he likely might not ever see them again, only to be reunited decades later. Astonished that I was able to ask Larry Miggins his memories of playing against Jackie Robinson in his first professional game as a minor leaguer in Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium, a place my mother and her family attended frequently as they lived a few blocks away.

I’ve been able to ask people what it was like to pitch to Ted Williams, hit off Sandy Koufax, be managed by Rogers Hornsby, share a field with an aging Tris Speaker and stand in the company of Babe Ruth!

Speaking of Ruth, I got to talk to Bob Kelly about his pitching coach from the 1950s, Charlie Root, and whether he discussed allegedly giving up Babe Ruth’s called shot. He said he did ask him and Root swore Ruth didn’t call his shot.

It’s astonishing to me that I was able to ask Al Worthington what his view of The Catch was like in the 1954 World Series, even more impactful now that Willie Mays has just passed. I enjoyed the back and forth answers I got from Mike LaValliere and Sid Bream about Bream’s mad dash for home in 1992. LaValliere still believes Bream’s foot bounced up over home plate and that he should have been out. I got a huge kick asking about the odd curiosities about players’ careers and lives too. Things like Kurt Bevacqua’s Bubble Gum Blowing Championship, Les Norman being a contestant on Wheel of Fortune, Chris Sabo’s goggles, Eric Soderholm’s poetry or Don Schwall’s college basketball days playing against Wilt Chamberlain.

I found it rewarding offering players a platform to discuss the role that religious faith had in their lives and careers as well; a subject I feel like many writers try to avoid these days. I thank Mark Dewey, Chris Hammond, Bernie Carbo, Barry Lyons, Ron Blomberg, Art Shamsky, Aaron Small and Ryan Lavarnway among many others in that regard.

When somebody asks me what Spitballin’ was, that’s a complex answer. It’s Fred Lynn and Rico Petrocelli talking about the 1975 World Series, Marty Cordova discussing being on Saturday Night Live and Dale Scott prepping George W. Bush for his first pitch during the 2001 World Series. It’s Matt Kata talking about playing Nolan Ryan in Facing Nolan and Scott Pose talking about his role in For the Love of the Game. It’s David Howard talking about what it was like to call his dad to tell him he made the Majors and then asking his dad, former MLB pitcher Bruce Howard, what it was like getting that call. It’s Fred Claire telling me the story of how he came up with the phrase “Dodger Blue” and so many other incredible tales from his time with the Dodgers. It’s Jim Kern’s craziness, Heath Bell’s sprint in from the bullpen and Phil Bradley beating Joe Montana during his days playing quarterback at Mizzou.

Most of all, Spitballin’ was about the readers and fans who enjoyed hearing from people from many corners of the baseball world. I often said that it has been like going up into my attic and talking to my baseball cards and they’re talking back to me—and I’m not even on LSD. So thank you to everyone who took the time to talk baseball with me or read the interviews. I was able to interview players who played in every decade from the 1940s through the 2020s; that’s an incredible amount of ground to cover. This entire 200-installment Spitballin’ run came out to over 600,000 words total. That’s a shit ton of baseball talk and I never got tired of it. We have featured managers, umpires, scouts, broadcasters, family members and coaches and it’s been incredible hearing about the sport from so many different perspectives. When I interviewed Mike Easler, he talked about the impact Willie Stargell had on him and how important it was to pass on what he learned in baseball to others. I hope I was able to pass these stories on to baseball fans of all generations and I thank Chris Vitali and BallNine for providing such a great platform to do so.