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Pee Wee |
 Don Zimmer in action |
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Friendship still plays a role
in Zimmer's colorful career
of TheColumnists.com
HIS FACE is as round as
Wilson, the volleyball Tom Hanks communicated with in "Cast
Away." When he was managing the Red Sox, pitcher Bill Lee
called him a gerbil. His Dodger teammates nicknamed him Popeye.
He was sitting in a race track barber shop chair once when a
drunk staggered in and called him ugly. "You ain't no Clark
Gable, yourself," responded Don Zimmer.
Zimmer, the bench coach of the defending World Champion New York
Yankees, told a lot of stories about himself and others in his
autobiography, "Zim: A Baseball Life" with sportswriter
Bill Madden (Total Sports Publishing) but there is one message
clearly written inside the 286 pages of this book.
It is about friendship.
Zimmer has been in professional baseball 52 years, survived two
severe beanings, played for the only Brooklyn Dodger team to
win a World Championship in 1955, was an Original Met in 1962
and was traded to Cincinnati, his home town, with an .077 average.
"I had to trade him while he was hot," Mets manager
Casey Stengel explained after the trade.
He was the manager of the Boston Red Sox in the playoff game
of 1978 when the Curse of the Bambino reached its penultimate
with the famed Bucky Dent homer. Zimmer was not responsible for
the ultimate manifestation of the Babe's revenge, the 1986 World
Series Mookie Wilson squibber that raced through Bill Buckner's
separated legs.
While Zimmer brags about never cashing a check outside of baseball
(he refuses to take Social Security while still in uniform) and
personifies the joy of the game as a lifeline, the friendships
he has made in more than half a century really ring true.
As a kid growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s, I wanted to be
Pee Wee Reese. Everybody did. So did Don Zimmer. He became Reese's
understudy in Brooklyn in 1954, actually started at shortstop
in the record-breaking 1955 season while Reese was injured and
was key to the seven game Series victory by Johnny Podres by
leaving the game.
Manager Walt Alston moved Jim Gilliam to second base, put Zimmer
on the bench and sent Sandy Amoros to left field. Amoros made
a game saving catch on a Yogi Berra drive.
Baseball relationships can be strange. Players are friends and
competitors at the same time. In Zimmer's playing days it was
for the $20,000 first string job. In Zimmer's coaching days now
it is for the $20,000,000 job.
Reese was the shortstop nobody could replace in Brooklyn and
later in Los Angeles and Zimmer was among the never-will-bes.
Still, a warmth, closeness and chemistry developed between these
two men that would last uninterrupted until Reese's death in
1999.
"He treated me like a son when I first came up to the Dodgers,"
Zimmer writes of Reese. "But the truth was, we were like
brothers. It was a devastating loss."
Baseball friendships are often not what they seem. Babe Ruth
and Lou Gehrig cared little for each other, even less after a
drunken Ruth made a pitch at Gehrig's wife, Eleanor Twitchell.
Look closely at the famous 1939 photo when Gehrig is retiring
after being hit with amiotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou never
knew it would be called his disease) and notice only one guy,
Ruth, seems animated.
Mickey Mantle was too shy to address teammate Joe DiMaggio in
1951. DiMaggio never offered his conversation or a meal. Mantle,
a warmer person, helped Roger Maris through the rigors of the
1961 home run season, accurately portrayed in Billy Crystal's
HBO film, "61*"
Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich were two Yankee pitching pals
when they shared a barbecue at my house in 1972. After a beer
or seven, they made arrangements for a wife swapping with Peterson
eventually marrying the former Suzanne Kekich and Kekich spending
some lusty weeks with Marilyn Peterson before that ended in frustration.
The friendship didn't make it past that season.
No one could ever replace Reese in Zimmer's date book. Joe Torre,
the Yankee manager, has come pretty close. They played against
each other and managed against each other a bit before Torre
called in 1995 and asked Zimmer to be his Yankee bench coach.
They lean on each other. They listen to each other. Hell, they
love each other. Zimmer isn't afraid to admit it.
I remember asking Mickey Mantle in 1969 what he missed most about
not playing anymore. I expected talk of huge home runs and roaring
crowds.
"Sitting in the clubhouse and shooting the bull with the
guys," he said.
Don't look for an early Zimmer retirement. At the age of 70,
this friendship thing with Torre has him locked to the Yankee
dugout for a while.
©2001 by Maury Allen. The
Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column
was first posted May 20, 2001.
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