Rage - Peter Golenbock

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      The boxing program was in the evening. We had to box three three-minute rounds. I was a heavyweight. Tony was a light heavyweight. As soon as we put on the trunks and the boxing gloves for the first time, they split us up.

      The boxer I was scheduled to fight came from Europe. He was about five foot ten, 225 pounds, and he looked out of shape. I had seen him around the PX before. He didn’t seem very imposing. I figured that for three rounds I’d shuffle around and jab him.

      My opponent turned out to be the heavyweight champion of the army.

      I covered up the best I could.

      I didn’t realize until afterward that when I covered up my face, he hit on my biceps hard, and pretty soon I couldn’t hold my arms up to protect my face. So by the end of each round he was just beating the shit out of my face. Oh God. My face was like a piece of hamburger.

      After the second round I told Tony, “If I make it through this fight, I’m going to kill you.” That fucker hit me more times than I could count. I had dozens of bumps and bruises on my arms where he kept pounding them. He hit me on my side and he hit me on the side of my head, and after he was done with me I had cauliflower ears the size of the largest piece of cabbage you’ve ever seen in your life. For three rounds he battered the living shit out of me.

      I kept thinking, Ring the bell. Oh, please ring the bell.

      And that was the last time I listened to one of Tony’s crazy schemes.

      My company commander was an American Indian with a chip on his shoulder. He hadn’t gone through West Point, but had come up through the school of hard knocks. He wanted to prove he was tough.

      Our company went on bivouac again. On the last day, everyone got up at six o’clock in the morning. At eight o’clock in the morning, trucks arrived to take the men back to their barracks. But our company commander had other ideas.

      “My company will run home,” he said.

      The barracks were twenty miles away. He told me, “You’re in charge, and I expect everyone to make it.”

      We were a National Guard unit. We had lots of snotty-nosed lawyers. These weren’t the type of guys you wanted to bivouac with, never mind go to war with. Halfway home, several of the men informed me that they wouldn’t be able to go the distance.

      “We have to make it,” I told them.

      “I can’t walk,” one guy whined.

      “If I have to beat the living shit out of you, or have another guy drag you along, you’re going to make it,” I told him.

      “Yeah, let’s see you make me,” one of the other men said to me.

      That really pissed me off, and I hit him alongside his head with the butt of my rifle. The man rolled down a small embankment, and I faced the rest of the men and snarled, “Next.”

      The man had a concussion, and two other men helped him make it the rest of the way home. One of his buddies carried his gun. Another carried his equipment.

      We started at nine o’clock in the morning and arrived at our barracks at six o’clock at night. It was brutal, but we got everyone back. We covered roughly twenty-five miles in nine hours.

      My four months of National Guard training ended just in time for me to go to spring training. In fact, I had exactly one day to report for the first day of spring training at the New York Mets’ camp in St. Petersburg.

      By 1966 the Mets had shed their most notable flakes and characters, including Choo Choo Coleman and Marv Throneberry. But that year they did feature first baseman Dick Stuart, a power hitter who played first base as poorly as, or even worse than, Throneberry had. Stuart’s nickname was Dr. Strangeglove, and the irony was that Stuart’s lousy attitude had been the reason I hadn’t signed with the Red Sox, and here he was playing with us.

      We had a weigh-in, and I was waiting in line behind Dick. We had to strip down and get on the scale, and when trainer Gus Mauch saw how much Stuart weighed, he slapped him on the rump and said, “Holy shit, look at the size of that ass.”

      Stuart stepped down and said, “Gus, it may be big, but wait until you see this ass tie into a fastball.”

      In one of the intersquad games, a pop-up was hit down the first base line, and Dick circled under it like only he could. He put his glove up, but caught the ball in his bare hand. You talk about a guy who was made for the role of designated hitter—the rule adopted by the American League in 1973 that let one batter in the lineup do nothing but bat.

      Unfortunately for Stuart, the DH wouldn’t be instituted for another six years.

      On opening day of spring training, the Mets faced Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals. The Mets scored five runs off Gibson in the three innings he pitched.

      I was sitting on the bench next to outfielder Al Luplow during the game.

      “I hope I’m not speaking out of turn,” I said to Al, “but Gibson doesn’t look too impressive to me.” I didn’t realize it, but the veteran Gibson was working on a particular aspect of his mechanics and wasn’t caring too much about the results.

      Luplow, also a veteran, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I don’t know how long you’re going to be here, kid, but if you stay here long enough and you catch him at the end of spring training, you’ll see quite a difference.”

      Three weeks later, on a Friday night, when the Mets faced Gibson again, he gave up one hit and struck out twelve in seven innings. What happened in three weeks? I thought. Jeepers. Wow!

      Toward the end of spring training, the Mets sent me down to Double-A Williamsport, Pennsylvania, managed by former Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Bill Virdon. After the Mets released Wes Westrum, they should have picked Bill to be Westrum’s replacement. In Bill, they would have had a terrific manager. Bill was a strict disciplinarian and he worked players very hard. He was no-nonsense. He was a guy you could talk to—he wasn’t aloof—but you had to befriend him. He wasn’t a players’ manager in the sense of him befriending you. You had to go seek him out.

      Bill worked the pitchers hard. I’d start on the right field line, run out to center field with the baseball, and throw it to him; then I’d run to left-center field and he’d toss it back. If I loafed, he’d throw the ball way over my head and I had to run as hard as I could to catch it. With Bill, there was no jogging. One time Bill sharply criticized me, and I commented that he should ease up on me because I had been pitching so well.

      “My job,” Bill replied, “is to get every ounce of potential out of you, and that’s what I intend to do. It’s nothing personal, Bill. You seem to react better when someone’s on your ass than when someone is more lenient. Unless things change, this is the way I’m going to treat you.”

      After four months in the Army Reserve, I reported to Williamsport in the best shape of my life. My weight was down to 185, and I was in top shape. I had my stuff, and I had the pleasure of throwing to catcher Lloyd Flodin, who was great at handling pitchers.

      Lloyd had great hands; he caught everything, and we had great communication.

      During one game Lloyd wanted me to throw a sidearm curveball. We didn’t have a signal for it, so Lloyd dropped his fingers down to the dirt, and in the dirt he made a half circle that started at the side of the plate and curved back toward the middle of the plate. He nodded at me, and I instinctively knew what he wanted. I threw a sidearm curve for strike three. Lloyd laughed for most of the rest of the inning when the two of us returned to the dugout.

      “That has to be a baseball first with that signal,” Flodin said to me. “I’m dumb enough not to run out to the mound to talk to you about it. I’m drawing the sign in the dirt, you pick it up, and you throw a strike!”

      Lloyd was terrific. Unfortunately,

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