BIG TED KLUSZEWSKI SHOWS ME HIS KNUCKLEBALL

1961

     Scouts from the newest expansion team in the big leagues, the LA Angels, asked me to work out with them at Wrigley Field during their first series with the fabled New York Yankees. I got to the field early, and dressed beside Ted Kluszewski and Steve Bilko, two immense firstbasemen, possibly the strongest in all of baseball, who platooned against right and left-handed pitching. Both men were late in their careers and weighed around 250 pounds of solid muscle and nodded at me in a kindly manner as I slipped my 160 pounds into an Angel uniform. As a child, I had baseball cards of both behemoths. Kluszewski was one of the great power/high average hitters of his generation, a borderline Hall of Famer with a perfectly level pendulum swing, while Bilko languished though still popping prodigious tape-measure home runs.

      I hit early batting practice against their pitching coach, Marv Grissom. I was over anxious, trying to hit balls out, kept pulling low line drives foul, hitting the fence twice. Grissom gestured for me to calm down and then threw me pitches that dove or rose, grinning as he tied me up in knots. I hit the fence twice more at 340 feet and then went out to shortstop as the Angels hit BP and began flagging down their wicked shots, wanting to impress whoever might be watching me.

     Kluszewski, wrapped in an olive-green nylon sweat jacket, glove in his back pocket, walked out and stood by me as I pretended I was in a big league game. Somebody hit a hard groundball his way and he skipped out of the way, grinning at me.

     “Pretty dangerous out here, kid—a guy could get hurt.”

     I found my voice. “I figure I got to stop the hard ones if I’m gonna be any good, Mr. Kluszewski.”

     “Klu,” he said. “They call me Klu.” He watched me. “You got a good pair of hands, kid, and you swing level.” Then” “I got a helluva a knuckleball. Maybe some day they’ll let me pitch.” Then he wandered out into leftfield, where a cluster of pitchers kibitzed with outfielders, snuck up on Art Fowler, enfolded him in a headlock, talked casually to the group, then dragged Fowler by his neck into centerfield to discuss something with diminutive outfielders Albie Pierson and Lee Thomas, and then continued into right field, where he released Fowler and resumed conversations with other Angels.

     When starting shortstop Joe Koppe joined me at short, I moved over, and the first ball hit to him took a crazy hop and broke his nose. Blood spurted and he hustled into the training room. When we finished BP and I ran to the dugout, Angel manager Bill Rigney asked me if I wanted to take infield at 7:45 while they set Koppe’s nose. Of course I did! He grinned at me. The Angels retired to the clubhouse while the Yankees took the field and I remained in the dugout to watch them hit BP, their power hitters like Skowron, Maris, Berra, Howard and John Blanchard popping flyball homerun after flyball homerun into the stands or over the leftfield fence. When Mantle came up, there was an electric buzz around the cage as sportswriters closed in and Yankees joked with Mantle after he missed the first pitch. He grinned and then, left-handed, launched a ball that left his bat with a different sound than the others and cleared the right-field scoreboard like a golf tee shot. Nobody else had even reached the towering scoreboard wall; his blast had gone a hundred feet farther than the rest. His show of power was otherworldly.

     Sitting on the front step of the dugout, I snuck glances at move star Angie Dickenson, who sat in the adjoining box seat and occasionally met my sneaky glances with knowing grins. The Yankees left the field. I returned to the clubhouse while the ground crew dragged the infield and re-entered the dugout and ran onto the field to take infield in front of a full house. Kluszewski was at first. I fired the first ball over his head and nearly hit somebody in a box seat and he told me to calm down. From then on I was snappy and accurate, except on the 3-6-3 doubleplay, when Klu had me lurching awkwardly trying to corral his knuckleball and remain slick on the return throw. He gave me the knuckler on every throw and kept a straight face, and when we ran off the field he slapped me on the ass with his glove. Rigney nodded at me, very affirmative.

      I showered and joined Angus and a couple team mates and their parents high up in the stands, including Angus’s Mom and Dad. I asked Angus if he’d watched the Angels take infield.

     “Of course I did. Watched everything. Some arms out there, ey?”

     “That was me at short—all alone.”

     “Yer bloody full of it.”

     “Joe Koppe broke his nose. That was me, Big A, throwin’ to Big Klu, my buddy. How’d I look?”

     “Tell yah the truth, yah looked as good as any of ‘em.”

     Angus’s Mom chimed in” “He looked slick as the pros.”

     I nudged Angus. “Angie Dickenson’s sitting in a box seat next to the dugout, and she gave me the eye.”

     (Next Sunday Installment: “Meeting Ted Williams.”