MY OWN LITTLE PIECE OF INSIDE BASEBALL

I spent a bit of the endless off-season reading Jim Bouton’s BALL FOUR for the first time. Don’t know why I’d never gotten to it before.

Bouton’s book was infamous in its day, and the author, still a major league pitcher at the time, found himself almost universally despised by other players, managers, owners, even a lot of fans. His crime was honesty. 

Whereas all previous baseball writing had stayed on the green and sunny side of the fence, Bouton dared to tell us that ballplayers were human. That they got drunk, that they were prejudiced, that they played ugly pranks, even that they competed at being peeping toms. Nowadays, while we like to think the best of our heroes, most of us understand that they’re only people. People blessed with superhuman physical talents, underdeveloped mental processes, and bloated bank accounts….hey, we still love you guys! Have a great season!!!     

        Anyway, this reading has reminded me of the one piece of behind-the-scenes baseballknowledge which I picked up my own-damn-self. And in honor of Jim Bouton, here it is.

This could have been 1980, 1981, or 1982. I was working at the Cincinnati Playhouse in…uhh…Cincinnati.  One day at the theater, I was in the office area for some reason, possibly negotiating for more green M&Ms in my dressing room. I was with someone, can’t remember if it was a fellow actor or someone on the staff, when we noticed a female staffer at her desk. We both saw that she looked different from her usual. Normally she was a modestly attractive--well, truthfully kind of mousey--young lady. She always dressed neatly but demurely and always seemed put together but sort of plain. Hair, makeup, clothing…just sort of beige. 

This day, though, she was done up fine. I don’t remember just what her ensemble was but it was clearly more colorful, more stylish, and much tighter than anything I’d ever seen on her. Her hair was sort of “blown-out”, leaving her looking like a brunette puffball. And she was heavily made-up. Major eyeshadow, bright red lips. She looked sort of attractive, sort of trampy. 

My companion whispered, “the Houston Astros are in town today.” I didn’t get it…

He explained that the young lady was the girlfriend of an Astros player, a guy who was a good player, maybe an occasional All-Star. He’d never get a sniff of the Hall of Fame, but he was a near-top-flight-ish player of his day. 

Oh, wait, I left something out. My friend didn’t say that our lady was “the girlfriend”, he said she was “the Cincinnati girlfriend” of the player. A player who, by the by, had a wife back in Houston.

This, of course, was a bit of a shock and started me thinking. If she was the “Cincinnati girlfriend”, did that mean that our sometime All-Star also had an “Atlanta girlfriend” and a “Pittsburgh girlfriend”? Did he have a “girlfriend” in every NL city which wasn’t Houston? That would be 11 girlfriends. Or maybe he limited himself to the NL West, which would mean only 5 girlfriends. Either way, a lot of ladies to keep track of. Did he keep a Rolodex which he studied on the plane to each city? I mean, you wouldn’t want to rendezvous with Esther and call her Phyllis, ‘cause that would be bad. Am I right, guys? Gimme five up top.

On the plus side, a national supply of girlfriends would have cut down on the time and effort of picking up a fresh barfly in every town. On the other hand, I wondered about wifey back in Houston. Did she know? Did she care? And was this standard behavior for all Major League players, or just the random well-organized philanderer?

That was the end of my view into regional Major League girlfriendancy. So I am happy to report that I never saw a day when our office ladies, the whole mob, were all gussied up at the same time and giggling “Hey, the Dodgers are in town!”.