The Script

A new adventure

After I had decided to attend SMU, my high school baseball Coach Dale Meier sent a letter to SMU’s Coach Bob Finley to introduce me, summarize my statistics from my senior year, let him know I was coming and that I would try out and hopefully become a successful walk-on for the baseball team. Neither Dale Meier nor I ever heard back from Coach Finley. I was on my own, I guess. Just to set the record straight, regarding the coed sunbathers I encountered while visiting the campus when I went with Dad to pick up my sister Beth in the spring of 1972; these same sun-glistened coeds that were laying out in bikinis on bright colorful towels in the golden sunshine, on “MacElvaney Beach”, a grassy hillside behind the freshman girls dorm (MacElvaney Hall), which was located a short distance across a parking lot from Armstrong Field, where SMU baseball played their home games: these sunbathing coeds were not the primary reason I chose SMU.

“His future is ahead of him”. Curt Gowdy, legendary TV sports announcer, once said these profound words, about a young athlete. No, really…. he did…on TV; words that I have not forgotten. My future was indeed ahead of me. I felt ready for anything, yet somehow unprepared for everything. I was truly winging it, just as I hoped that everyone else was.

In the early spring, the SMU Baseball tryouts lasted about a week. I found out later that I had made the team primarily on the strength of throwing one decent side session in the bullpen. The rest of the time that week, I spent on my own shagging fly balls in the outfield and engaging in small talk with the other hopefuls. When the wind was right, the very pleasant aroma of Mrs. Baird’s Bread factory permeated the field. The company bakery was located within sight of the field, across Mockingbird Lane from the campus. There was an odd absence of structure to the tryouts. No conditioning, except that which a few did on their own. Finley spent most of his time chatting up the veterans around the dugout as they prepared to hit, chewing tobacco, and he said little or nothing to me during this first week.

I do remember infielder Gene “Snake” Hanson sidling up to me at some point, and asking: “What do you think about everything so far?”

“I’m not sure what to think.” The tryouts had seemed a little bewildering to me at that point.

“Don’t worry. It usually takes a while for rookies to learn the Finley System.”

“Finley System?”

With an amused twinkle in his eye and a sly grin, Snake confided, “You’ll learn soon enough. Let me put it this way: whatever you think you know about baseball right now, you should probably try to forget.”

It turned out to be good advice. The Finley System would remain an enigma to me and others, even after playing baseball for the man for four years. It is not easy to articulate. This explanation will have to suffice:

1) Players have to show up on time and play hard. “Gear up and get after ‘em!”
2) There will be very little use of strategy. We would have all the basic signs, but they will not be used very often. “Come on now, let’s go!” and this gem: “I only ask you to do what I ask you to do!”
3) Conditioning will be your responsibility. “Dammit Johnson, your eyes look like two pee-holes in the snow!”
4) Worship the long ball…well, because home runs are fun.
5) As a pitcher, you will be constantly hounded to throw strikes. “Ho-ly cats, Tino!”
6) Pitching to contact is for pussies. “Hot Dammit Johnson, throw hard! Rare (rear?) back and get this guy!”
7) Insulting and arguing with umpires is OK. It shows you have fire in your belly, which Finley liked. As in, “Come on, Ernie, that’s horseshit! You’re brutal, Blue! If you had another eye you’d be a cyclops!!”

Finally, the Finley System required you to have fun playing the game of baseball without taking yourself too seriously. Once, after giving up a walk, I heard these words from a teammate: “That’s OK, Rookie. If you were any good, you’d be at Texas!”  [I admit it took me a while to live up to this last essential point; my sister Beth often reminds me that I quite literally growled at her one time when she told me “good game” after a loss.]

After the cuts were made, the entire team was herded into a room adjacent to the locker room for our “physicals” that were performed by Doc “Quack” Morgan, the official physician of the Mustang Athletic Department. After he listened to our heartbeats and took our blood pressures, we were asked to drop our gym shorts. One by one, he grabbed each of us in turn by the scrotum and we were asked to “turn our heads and cough”. A tad humiliating, but we all passed, and the roster was set.

The 1973 Mustangs

This SMU team had three battle-tested seniors that were projected to be our primary starting pitchers; that is, our conference series starters. Terry Moore, Art Widen and John Glasgow were all workhorse-type pitchers that were going to be counted on to start and to go deep into games. Our staff had been thinned by the fact that sophomore John “Whale” Park, our best pitcher, developed some pretty serious shoulder issues that might have stemmed from his time the previous year playing quarterback for the freshman football Mustangs. His early efforts to come back did not go well and his pain persisted. He was a gamer, and while at SMU he tried to pitch through a lot of his pain before he eventually gave up and became a DH, and a pretty good one at that. He eventually had surgery, but shoulder surgery in those days was iffy at best. The only other full-time pitcher on the team was Bill Jones, a soft throwing submarining right hander. Picture former Pittsburgh Pirate relief pitcher Kent Tekulve without glasses, (and without his Major League stuff), and you have Jonesy. Our left-handed center fielder Roy Burroughs was kind of an insurance policy, and could pitch in an emergency. As I am writing these names down from my memory, I suddenly realize the lack of pitching depth had to be a major concern for Coach Finley in the spring of 1973.

In addition to our three senior starting pitchers, our everyday lineup was full of veterans. Our seniors were: Jon “Stroke” Astroth, our best hitter, in right field; Sam Cangelosi, the team’s captain was solid at second base; Roy Burroughs, diminutive but talented center fielder, and good-fielding-light-hitting John “Matty” Matetich at third base. Two juniors in the lineup were Mike “Maj” Mayes, at catcher and hard-hitting left fielder Jim Moffett. The sophomore class was also well represented with the aforementioned Whale, power hitting first baseman Ron “Hubie” Ridlehuber, and the slick fielding shortstop Gene “Snake” Hanson. If we could stay injury free, hit like we were capable, and our pitching staff did well, we were going to be very competitive in the SWC. And, similarly, if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass on the ground every time he jumped.

Early on in my freshman season, I had relieved in a couple of games, and had done enough to turn a head or two, including Coach Finley’s. Against St. Edwards University, I pitched two scoreless innings in relief, and also sprinted home with the winning run in the eighth inning, having gotten on base on an error. I had another nice two-inning scoreless stint in a 4-3 loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks (not in the SWC yet in baseball). In a couple of other games, I warmed up so often in the bullpen that I felt like I had actually pitched an entire game there.

The Baylor Bears

The Baylor Bears came to town for an early season series, our first conference clash of the year. The weather had warmed nicely, and the team was upbeat and anxious. Art Widen, in the series opener was very sharp, pitching a tight two-hit 3-1 victory in the first game of the doubleheader. Hitting stars were Cangelosi and Moffett with two hits each.

Terry Moore was tapped to start the second game. Alas, Terry got off to a very poor start in the game, mainly due to wildness and some shoddy fielding. The Bears were patient. I was tapped to warm up in the first inning as Terry struggled throwing strikes. The Bears scored five unearned runs in the opening frame. I was warmed up and ready to come in, and when we finally came to bat, I sat down. We didn’t score, and as Terry went out for his second inning, I was told to “stay loose” by Coach Finley. Backup catcher and fellow walk-on Dennis Ford and I went back out to the bullpen, as Terry’s control problems continued. I remember thinking that this may be another one of those games in which I might wear my arm out in the bullpen. I started tossing softly to Dennis, remembering my instructions to stay loose. As Terry walked a guy to load the bases with nobody out, an exasperated Coach Finley whirled around in time to see one of my soft tosses. “Hot dammit, Johnson, throw hard!!!” My next warm-up pitch of course was as hard as I could possibly throw and nearly took Dennis’ head off. Things were not going well, and they would get worse before they got better.

I entered the game with the bases loaded and two out in the second inning. It was still  5-0 Baylor, and I just felt uneasy; disjointed and awkward. Going into a mop-up role this early? This had the potential to be very ugly. Situations like this tend to snowball or spiral downward. A team that gets this far behind early in the game usually loses energy and purpose–already thinking about the next game. Defense usually suffers in games like this. Well, I wasn’t going to let that happen to me in my first conference game!

For a brief moment, I had one of those oddly thrilling feelings in the pit of my stomach. A dry Texas breeze was blowing out of the west. How could the sky really be bigger here in Texas? But somehow it was. What the hell am I doing here, and how in the world did I get here? I looked down at my well-worn but perfect glove, my Wilson A2000 “closed model” and noticed the sweat stains imbedded in the leather from pitching on hot summer days in seasons past. OK, I remember now. I took a deep breath, wound up deliberately like I had done thousands of times, and threw my first pitch, a pretty zippy fastball. Kaboom! Bases clearing double to the fence. Ugh. Welcome to the Southwest Conference, Rookie.  Now it is 8-0. An ugly game got uglier with one pitch.

Hmm. My mind began to wander. This is kind of a lost cause, isn’t it? I wonder what’s going on with my buds back at the Beta House? I wonder what they are serving at MacElvaney cafeteria tonight? Man, look at those empty stands. Nobody comes to these games, do they? And now I am beginning to see why.

What happened next was an absurd turn-around. It was a blurry, jumbled, and relentless succession of good things for the Mustangs. I only remember some of the details because I kept the newspaper clippings from both Dallas papers. For the remainder of the game, the Baylor Bears got one more hit, and one more run. My pitching line score showed that I was successful in spite of myself. In 7 and 1/3 innings, I gave up one run, two hits, had four strikeouts and I walked six. Not an amazing performance, but effective. I was just wild enough, I guess. Our bats came alive late in the game. Hubie had a two-run dinger to get the comeback started. Moffett added a three-run blast. I had two solid hits myself, a double and a triple. My triple was off the fence in left center and knocked in the go-ahead run. Stroke finished the scoring by hitting a baseball over the right field fence, all the way to the track into nearby Ownby Stadium for a mammoth home run. We ended up winning 14-9.

My ‘near home run’ was an out-of-body experience; I replay it in my mind sometimes and the memory is akin to watching it through the lens of a hand-held camera. The hit itself had almost no vibration or resistance to my bat, very similar to squaring up a fuzz-ball right on the sweet spot of a cork-ball bat.

Anyway, I walked on air for the next 24 hours. We won two out of three, and were tied for first place in the SWC, albeit after the first weekend of conference play.  I felt like I was living my life in some corny script from a movie you might see on late night TV.  Were the stars aligned?  I don’t know about those things.  I do know baseball, and some of you do also…. and on any given day, extraordinary things can happen.

Epilogue:

Finley came up to me in practice the next week and said these words: “You’re starting against ‘Whatcomesoutofachinaman’s Ass’”.
“What?”
“Rice.”
“Oh, okay.”

Against Rice I pitched a complete game and lost 4-0 in the first game of the series. Not bad, but not great. The next day after that (against Rice also) I was minding my own business, sitting on top of the dugout chatting with some teammates in the final game of the series. We had the tying run on second in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, and all of a sudden, Finley, from the coaching box at third base growls, “Johnson, grab a bat!” Huh?! What did he just say?! Apparently, Finley wants me to hit for Matetich. Play is stopped while I try to look like I know what I am doing getting loose in the on-deck circle. OK, here we go. ‘In the wink of a young girl’s eye’, the magic had evaporated. I fouled off two sneaky fastballs and took a futile swing and miss at a slider off the plate to end the game. Good morning, good afternoon and goodnight. Dammit. Back down to Earth, Rookie. I would never be asked to pinch hit again.

Top row:  Gerald Spivey, Terry Moore, John Park, John Glasgow, Ron Ridlehuber, Jon Astroth, Mike Mayes, Coach Bob Finley.

Middle row:  Rick Goodman, Jim Moffett, Art Widen, Randy Johnson, Bill Jones, Jeff Gabriel, John Matetich.

Bottom row:  Gene Hanson, Dennis Ford, Steve Proffitt, Sam Cangelosi, Roy Burroughs.

That is me in the exact center of this picture. At many times in my life, I’ve been reminded of the classic lyric line from rocker Bob Seger: “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then”. This is one of those times.