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BO BELINSKY One of Baseball's Most Loveable Flakes  |
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Hollywood starlets mourn;
The immortal 'Bo' is gone
of TheColumnists.com
Bo Belinsky made it to 64. How the hell did that happen?
I wrote Bo’s biography entitled Bo: Pitching and Wooing
(Dial Press) in 1973. He spent a week in my house telling me
the raunchiest stories of his sex life, his drinking, his drug
use, his aversion to sleep and his pursuit of life.
When he left my wife looked at the bed he slept in and said,
“We have to boil the sheets.”
Belinsky won 28 games in the big leagues for the Los Angeles
Angels, Phillies, Astros, Pirates and Reds from 1962-1970.
Only one game counted. He pitched a no-hitter on May 2, 1962
against the Baltimore Orioles. It was the first California big
league no-hitter, before Sandy Koufax did it, before Nolan Ryan,
before Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry or Bill Singer.
It made him an instant celebrity sensation in star-starved Hollywood
and environs. Walter Winchell adopted him as a pet. Show business
lovelies lined up at his doorstep. Sportswriters fawned over
him. Manager Bill Rigney was charmed by him. Teammate Dean Chance
ran with him, created baseball’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid before Newman and Redford ever heard of them.
Belinsky had a screwball and was a screwball. He could throw
hard as a youngster and once teamed with a guy named Steve Dalkowski
in the minor leagues, reputed to be the hardest thrower in baseball
history with fastballs registered over 110 miles an hour, faster
than Bob Feller, Walter Johnson, Koufax and Ryan. Only trouble
with Dalkowski is the fact that he couldn’t throw strikes.
Belinsky was born in Manhattan of a Polish Catholic father and
a Russian Jewish mother. He claimed he was a Catholic when he
got into baseball so he could avoid any anti-Semitic harassment.
“What kind of a Catholic?” his mother Anna said to
me. “He was circumcised wasn’t he?"
Belinsky came by his flakiness naturally. He was a comic as a
kid and entertained his parents and younger sister, Lorraine,
with funny faces, pranks and wordy jokes.
He was signed by the Orioles and immediately broke curfew.
“The idea wasn’t to stay in bed,” Belinsky told
me with a wry smile, “the idea was to get into bed.”
He was drafted by the new Angels in 1961, pitched that 1962 no-hitter
and became legendary for his off-field activities far more often
than on-field pitching. His lineup of girl friends included Mamie
Van Doren, Tina Louise, Ann-Margret, Juliet Prowse and Connie
Stevens. He married Playboy Playmate Jo Collins and paper heiress
Janie Weyerhaeuser.
Van Doren made our press conference in Los Angeles when the book
came out wearing a white dress two sizes too small, white shoes,
a rose in her bleached blond hair and a sly smile. Her limousine
pulled up outside the press conference restaurant site about
an hour late.
She always wanted to be the next Marilyn Monroe. She could be
as late as the late Marilyn Monroe.
Belinsky knew she would show up.
“She enjoys publicity almost as much as I do,” said
Belinsky.
I spent a week with him in his Malibu apartment while we were
working on the book. He never awoke before noon, dined on cigarettes
and beer, called a half a dozen girls on the phone before dusk,
promising each of them he would see them that night and showed
no signs of positive income. He cashed in his baseball pension
before he was 40 and accepted handouts from old pals.
He looked great sprawled out on a living room couch, the television
blaring, a beautiful girl at his side, drugs on his table top,
booze in his glass and no plans for the next hour, day or week
of his life.
When the book took off he was booked on "The Today Show,"
a guarantee that it was headed for the best seller list. I was
thrilled. Bo was casual. Hell, he had been introduced to everyone
in Hollywood by Winchell.
I told the publisher’s PR man to stay with him until he
got on the plane from Los Angeles to New York. The guy did just
that. When the plane landed, no Belinsky. "Today" was
so angry with me and the publisher we were banned for years.
“Bo, what happened to you?” I asked him by phone the
next day.
“Well,” he said, “as I walked to the gate, I saw
this doll on the line right in front of me and, well, you wanna
talk to her now. Here she is.”
The last lines of our book explained Belinsky.
“No regrets,’ said Bo. “Absolutely none. I
wouldn’t do a thing differently. I couldn’t if I wanted
to. I’ve got to be me. I don’t feel sorry for myself.
I’ve been in the sun. I feel sorry for the guys on my team,
any team, the guys anywhere and everywhere who never heard the
music.”
Bo Belinsky threw back his head and laughed. He was the portrait
of a happy man. What is a man, anyway, if he isn’t the sum
total of his memories?
Goodbye, Bo, you charmer you. I’ll miss you like the devil.
So will a world of dolls.
©2001 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel.