Flying high with Seattle's Pilots
If Jim Bouton Were Commissioner
The Seattle Pilots, as Jim Bouton says, are baseball's version of Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village from the old musical that appears for one day every 100 years and then disappears back into the mists. Only instead of pretty lasses and young lads singing about how it's almost like being in love, the expansion Pilots offered one summer of old has-beens and young never-wills pounding Budweiser and showing Seattle fans how it was almost like being in the majors.
In the musical, the residents of Brigadoon must never leave or the village will cease to exist. It's similar for the men who played for the Pilots. They may have had careers elsewhere -- Tommy Davis won the 1962 and 1963 batting titles with the Dodgers and Mike Marshall won the 1974 Cy Young with Los Angeles -- but they can never really leave those scrambled egg-plastered Pilots uniforms, the plumbing-challenged confines of Sicks Stadium or the pages of "Ball Four."
"I think over time, there was a certain magic about this team [because] it only existed for one year," Bouton said over the weekend at the team's 40-year reunion. "The more time that went by, the more they became an isolated pocket from way back. Now it's been 40 years for this team, and that they existed only for that one year is part of the magic. It's like a storybook thing where the town comes alive."
Indeed. Bouton wrote about his time with Houston in "Ball Four" -- but does anyone ever talk about the 1969 Astros? No. The Astros lived to tell other, more interesting stories, some of which did not involve their amazing rainbow jerseys. The Pilots, however, were around only for that one season.
"In the work I've done, nobody has made any mention of the Astros," said Steve Cox, who is filming a documentary about the Pilots. "It's more than the interest that 'Ball Four' drums up on the Pilots. It's the uniqueness of the team. Baseball celebrates uniqueness, that's why it endures.
"If Bouton had written about the 1969 Angels, the book still would have been popular, but I don't know whether that Angels team would have been popular. That this team was here and gone is what makes the Pilots that much more interesting."
It's like another touchstone from 1969: Woodstock. The fleeting nature is what made the event special.
(By the way, during Woodstock, the Pilots lost the first four games of what would become a 10-game losing streak. They were that sort of team. The day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the Pilots lost both ends of a doubleheader, with the losses going to John Gelnar, whom Seattle acquired in spring training in exchange for Lou Piniella, who went on to become that season's rookie of the year.)
Dick Bates pitched in one game his entire big league career and gave up five runs in 1 2/3 innings. If he pitched for anyone else, no one would remember him. Because he pitched those 1 2/3 innings for the Pilots, more than 100 people paid $20 to hear his stories and get his autograph (and his old teammates') at the reunion over the weekend.
How powerful is the Pilots' allure? I saw two people at the reunion wearing a complete Pilots uniform, including pants and stirrup socks. One was 9 years old and the other was near 60. And I bet everyone staring at them was thinking the same thing, "Wow, I wonder if I could get one of those in my size?"
"I only went to three games. Think about it. Only three games. I was 9. Dad took us to a couple and we went to one on our own," Pilots fan Frank Pennylegion said. He paused, contemplating how a team he saw play three times could still mean so much to him four decades later. "It becomes a myth. One and done. We think it's bigger than it is. Those stories they tell. Were they really the funniest team of all time?"
Probably not. Although there are fewer punch lines in baseball that make me smile more than Pilots manager Joe Schultz's favorite two-word expression. If you don't know which one I mean, then you never read "Ball Four." And in that case, you need to order the book as soon as you finish this column.
And if you have read "Ball Four," you'll probably want to check out Cox's documentary, "The Seattle Pilots: Short Flight Into History," when it goes on sale sometime this fall. (To see a clip of the documentary, check out his Web site.)
The Pilots have an obvious connection for people in Seattle, but Cox says the fan base is nationwide. "The Internet forum I have has gotten responses from people in Michigan, Vermont, Alabama, all over. A guy in Chicago sent me a check for $20. He said, 'I know this won't solve your budget problems, but I want to see this get made.' People really are anxious to see this. 'Ball Four' talks a lot about the Pilots, but Jim got traded to the Astros and 'Ball Four' never says what happened to the team."
What happened to the Pilots is they moved to Milwaukee a few days before Opening Day 1970 (unsure of where the team would spend the 1970 season, the driver of the equipment bus was told to drive from spring training to Las Vegas and call for directions) and eventually wound up in a magical spot in fans' hearts. "Ball Four" ends with the classic line, "You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." The same arrangement holds true for the Pilots and their fans.
Former Pilot Greg Goossen, who went on to become actor Gene Hackman's regular stand-in, told the crowd at the reunion that he loved playing in Seattle and that he would gladly have played there his entire career. Tommy Davis, seated next to him, immediately responded, "You did."
Davis meant it as a joke -- Goossen's career didn't extend that much beyond the Pilots -- but given how Pilots fans regard that team's players, it also is pretty much true.
BOX SCORE LINE OF THE WEEK
Zack Greinke may not win the Cy Young award, but he is this award's first back-to-back winner. In his first start after striking out a team-record 15 batters, Zack Greinke pitched a one-hitter Sunday against the Mariners -- and it easily could have been a no-hitter. The one hit he allowed in the second inning was Kenji Johjima's soft fly that center fielder Mitch Maier got a bad jump on. Greinke's line:
9 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K
Greinke is 13-8 with a league-leading 2.32 ERA, is second in strikeouts (202) and second in innings (190 1/3), but the Royals are so bad they have a losing record in his 27 starts (13-14).
TELL YOUR STATISTICS TO SHUT UP
• September is here, but we're still five full weeks from the playoffs. Because Opening Day was almost a week later than normal, this year's postseason doesn't start until Oct. 7 (and not until Oct. 8 for two teams). That's not the latest start to a postseason -- even without any playoffs, the 1910 World Series, for instance, did not begin until Oct. 17 -- but it's late enough that 14 previous postseasons were finished on or by Oct. 7. The real issue, as I've complained about in the past, is that with all the extra off days in the postseason schedule, the World Series won't start until Oct. 28 and may not end until Nov. 5. If it does go seven games, it will beat the record for the latest date of a World Series -- the 2001 World Series, backed up due to 9/11, ended Nov. 4.
• Seattle third baseman Adrian Beltre returned to the lineup Tuesday for the first time since going on the disabled list when he was hit in the Galapagos Islands by a ground ball. The team played the "Nutcracker Suite" before his first at-bat.
• For those who enjoyed last week's Name That Curmudgeon, editor Dave Schoenfield has another great excerpt. Who said this?
"A few pills -- I take all kinds -- and the pain's gone," says [deleted] of the Detroit Tigers. [Deleted] also takes shots, or at least took a shot of cortisone and Xylocaine (anti-inflammatory and painkiller) in his throwing shoulder prior to the [deleted] game of the [deleted] World Series -- the only game he won in three tries. In the same Series, which at times seemed to be a matchup between Detroit and St. Louis druggists, Cardinal [deleted] was gobbling muscle-relaxing pills, trying chemically to keep his arm loose... ."We occasionally use Dexamyl and Dexedrine [amphetamines]. ... We also use barbiturates, Seconal, Tuinal, Nembutal. ... We also use some anti-depressants, Triavil, Tofranil, Valium. ... But I don't think the use of drugs is as prevalent in the Midwest as it is on the East and West coasts," said Dr. I. C. Middleman, who, until his death last September, was team surgeon for the St. Louis baseball Cardinals. Answer below.• Nice to see that a federal court ruled the government was out of line when it demanded the union hand over the list of player names who tested positive in 2003. Of course, it would have been nicer to have such a ruling before their privacy was invaded.
• Gotta love this quote from Milton Bradley about the controversy swirling around his comments about racial hate at Wrigley Field: "I'm here to play ball. I came here to win a championship. Ain't nothing I'd rather do. If I could do anything, one, I might cure the lupus my aunt has; two, another aunt got both legs cut off because of diabetes; I might give her legs back. But No. 3 on the list would be win a championship in this city so that people can have what they deserve. The good people. The bad people can jump on the bandwagon when the time comes. But everything in my heart is to win a championship here. And I ain't done yet."
Answer: That's from a Sports Illustrated story that ran in 1969. The pitcher quoted was Denny McLain and the reference was to the 1968 World Series. The Cardinals pitcher was Bob Gibson. Nah, guys in the good old days never took anything questionable in a desire to perform better.
Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
