Savoring the Extra Innings After 40

By Tom Callahan

For Pete Rose and Carl Yastrzemski, it is a very good year

Baseball is a boy's game. "If you ever lose the little boy in you," shudder the fat men and the bald men in the knickers and the beanies, "well. . ." Well, it's over, that's all. You can lose a step, even two. You can lose the hop on your fastball, though you may have to learn a knuckler. But if you ever grow up, you can't be a Lost Boy any more. Sorry, those are the rules of never-never land.

If Pete Rose ever grows up, we will all grow old, and if Carl Yastrzemski ever grows old, well... well, it's over, that's all. The summer has been improved by the improvement of Yastrzemski, a Yaz of yore again and almost 43. At 41, Rose is just Rose, which Gertrude Stein somehow knew before The Sporting News. In the recordbook, they stand first and second among active players in games played, at-bats, hits, singles, doubles, extra base hits, total bases and runs scored. Their teams, the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies, stand thicker than pine tar in taut pennant races as baseball resumes after last week's All-Star break. Though neither starred, Yastrzemski for the American League and Rose for the National were naturally in Montreal to confer, consult and otherwise hobnob with their fellow wizards. Since their base paths do not very often cross, it was a handy time to size them up and make a memory. In another country, in a National League city, the cheers were loudest and warmest for Yastrzemski. Every game, every play, is becoming precious.

How utterly different and amazingly alike can two men be? Though both are 5 ft. 11 in., Yaz is a lithe, athletic 181 Ibs., Rose a rippling, bulging 203. Their ways have been their own. The bigger man chops singles, the smaller one crashes home runs. While Yaz had to replace Ted Williams in Boston at 21, an impossible thing to do, Rose had to make it in his home town of Cincinnati, which ballplayers are almost never able to do. Both were nurtured and nudged by worshiped fathers who competed in organized sports into their 40s. In Bridgehampton, N.Y., between the potato-farming Yastrzemskis and the Skoniecznys on the maternal side, there were enough men and boys to field a Polish-American town baseball team that was something to sneeze at. Carl Sr. was the shortstop, Carl Jr. the second baseman. At 15, young Yaz experienced the unusual delight of joining his father in hitting back-to-back home runs. Now his own son Mike, 20, is a senior at Florida State and a major league prospect.

In Cincinnati, the first Pete Rose was as legendary as the second. Rose reflects: "When I was young, people would stop me on the street to tell me I could never be what my father was." The elder Rose was a banker and a semiprofessional football player at 42, very tough and singleminded. In order to persuade Pete's Little League manager to let the boy switch-hit, the father promised not to take Pete away on the family's summer vacations. "I never set foot out of Cincinnati," Rose says uncomplainingly, "until I went off to the minor leagues." Rather than allow summer school to intrude on a baseball season, Pete's father made him repeat the tenth grade. "My dad and I lived sports together. We were playing basketball together in 1970 the night before he had a heart attack and died."

Now there is a third Pete Rose, a carrot-topped little line-drive hitter. "I've never seen a twelve-year-old who can hit like Petey," says his father. "He called me from Cincinnati the other day to say he had been missing me and that his team had some easy games coming up. Couldn't he come to Philadelphia for a few days?

But I told him no, it wouldn't be fair to his teammates. I guess I'm my father in the next generation. The only way I'm different--and I'm not proud of it--is that I never saw my father drink, smoke or argue with my mother. Well, my boy never saw me drink or smoke." In 1980 Rose's 16-year marriage ended in divorce. This season, Yastrzemski's 22-year marriage has been teetering publicly. Sometimes the harder it is for a ballplayer away from the game, the easier it is for him on the field. "Watch him go now," Second Baseman Joe Morgan whispered to someone at the 1978 peak of Rose's gaudy domestic drama in Cincinnati. Pete proceeded to get a hit in 44 straight games.

He hit safely in 21 consecutive games this year, and when the ministreak ended, his two tumbling defensive plays in a 1-0 victory made even that night a time to rejoice. The flannel fabric of Rose's simple life only seems to have been painted by the numbers. "People ask me a question about a stat," the 16-time All-Star says, a little hurt, "and they always get mad when I know the answer. I don't play for records. But how hard is it to remember you had 170 hits your first year and 139 your second, which is only 309 your first two years, when you have had ten 200-hit years and are averaging 198 hits a season for 20 years? Base ball is a team game, but nine men who reach their individual goals make a nice team." His first goal of 1982 was simple and typical.

From the moment he heard the Phillies would be helping the Minnesota Twins christen their new ballpark this spring, Pete wanted the first baseball hit safely in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. It is rolling around in his dresser drawer now. "I might as well get them all," says Rose of the souvenir balls that have marked his trail like Hansel's breadcrumbs. "Soon I'll have made more outs than anybody, and I want that baseball too."

Meanwhile Yaz, a 17-time All-Star, does not seem to be able to recall any of his numbers or hold on to many of his trophies, except for the 3,000 hits and 400 home runs, of course. No other American Leaguer ever achieved that parlay. Only Henry Aaron, Willie Mays and Stan Musial of the National League, and Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz has kept just those two baseballs in 22 years. Yastrzemski's habit is to relay his trophies, like an ordinary cutoff man, to Presidents of the U.S. "I've presented one to every President since Kennedy," he says. "What should I do with awards and trophies? Touch them?"

His attitude about such things is described best by his run for a fourth batting title when he and Alex Johnson of the California Angels battled to the end in 1970. Yastrzemski finished his season in front with .3286, but the Angels had one game left to play. The next day several friends were at Yastrzemski's house when word came that Johnson had pulled ahead with a hit to .3289. Vanishing for a moment, Yaz reappeared with champagne. "Here's to next year," he said.

At New York's Shea Stadium a few nights ago, the Phillies were taking infield practice and chat tering brightly. From a 4-and-12 start ("It wasn't fun playing," Pete whispers, a little ashamed), the Phillies had found their way back to first place under new Manager Pat Corrales. In the drill, Pete played first base. Looking around, he had to laugh. Corrales and Coach Deron Johnson, who was wielding the fungo bat, are his old Cincinnati teammates; another coach, Dave Bristol, managed him there and in the minors; Mets Pitcher Pat Zachry, kibitzing near by, was a painfully lanky teen-age pitcher Rose remembers in one of those hand-me-down Reds uniforms that signify the minorest minor league. So, all around there is evidence that Pete is old. "But age is meaningless with me," he says. By some trick of time, he has skipped his true generation. His lined, leathery face is as supple as if treated daily with neat's-foot oil. As he goes into his crouch, grinning hideously, his gapped teeth look as if they were hammered into his head by a drunken cobbler. And his remarkable body, you might say, is more rounded all over than he is. "If you slid into bases head first for 20 years," he says to all of that, "you'd be ugly too."

It is not just Rose's appearance that seems old style but his manner. Rose with 3,793 hits is not merely chasing the snarling ghost of Ty Cobb (4,191 hits), he is Cobb. Delightfully coarse and direct, Pete "was asked by a New York Timesman if he knew much about Cobb. "I know everything about him but the size of his hat" was the quote that made the paper, though that was not what he said exactly. Rose does know almost every thing about Cobb--and about Babe Ruth. "First of all, Ruth al ways wore the same white robe with a red 'B.R.' on it ... I'll tell you another thing, he was no lush, like you hear, only beer, bathtubs full of beer.

Maybe it should seem sad that a man has no frame of reference other than baseball, or that any one could be so single faceted as to return home from playing a doubleheader only to sit up in the car all night listening to the one radio that gets the West Coast games.*

But rather than sad, Rose's obsession has always made some people mad. The thing is, Rose won't even walk when he gets a walk. At an All-Star Game several years ago, Aaron was berating Joe Morgan over what an infernal hot dog Rose was, and Morgan was shaking with laughter. "You sound like me before I played with him every day," Morgan said. "He plays the game that way because it's the only way he knows how to play it, probably the only way he can play it. He gives everything he has"--the laughter had left Morgan completely now--"and it makes you ashamed if you give less."

Because Yastrzemski moves with the practiced grace of a natural athlete, only teammates have known how much he has given during his entire career. "It did not come easy to me," says Yaz proudly, almost fiercely. "I ? haven't had the greatest ability in the world. I'm not a big, strong guy. But I've paid the price." His physical regimen in preparing for this season was begun in October, 2 when the taste of last year's .246 batting average was still bitter. Yet even last year he continued to drive in runs, particularly when they really counted. Always one for the great occasion, Yaz. And you still could not throw a fastball by him.

In contrast to Rose, who goes on playing every day in a league that goes on playing nine-man baseball, Yaz has for some time now had to read wistful references to how he used to play ball. Rose has not missed a game in four sea sons in a Phillies uniform and has sat out all of nine games since 1970. Rose's age has been a steady compliment, Yastrzemski's a creeping accusation. A Boston medical writer, after due research and consultations with eminent physicians, put Yaz down this year for .230, if he was lucky. He is hitting .298, playing no position.

Yaz abandoned seven Gold Gloves fielding awards out in left-field when he began moving over to first base seven or eight years ago, and now he is almost exclusively a designated hitter (a tenth man who only hits, an American League aberration). He is platooned with Rose's old comrade, 40-year-old Tony Perez, who takes the lefthanded pitchers, while Yaz gets the righthanders. "Pete is a hitting machine; Yaz is a hard-working hitter," says Perez, who collected his own 2,500th hit the other day. Yastrzemski's career batting average (.286) is the lowest of the 15 men who have made 3,000 hits. He had to grind harder and longer.

The faint whaps detectable in American League ballparks from time to time--they seem to be coming from under the stands--are soggy balls of adhesive tape being served up by clubhouse boys and batted flat against the tile walls by a semidiscarded old ballplayer working to keep his eye, even as the defensive halves of the innings go on without him. "Making a great play in the field always meant as much to me as a hit. I miss that," says Yaz, taking a deliberate drag from an omnipresent cigarette (he claims he never inhales). "I miss The Wall at Fenway [the 37-ft.-high leftfield monster]. I could play it in my sleep, and I do. Of course, they resurfaced it five or six years ago and ruined it. The rivets: they used to be fun. Decoying the runners into stopping at first base, when I knew that the ball was a double. I loved pretending it was a home run and then catching it for an out." Players know Yastrzemski as a joker and prankster but more noticeable than humor is intensity. It burns in his eyes.

Everyone sees how hard Rose has worked. He shows you the yellow buildup of calluses on his palms, and muses: "When a player reaches 35 or 36 and says, 'Hey, I better start taking care of myself,' it's too late." Besides Yaz, Rose and Perez, the only other over-40s enjoying extra innings are Pittsburgh's Pop, Willie Stargell, 41, and Pitchers Jim Kaat, 43, of St. Louis, Woodie Fryman, 42, of Montreal, Phil Niekro, 43, of Atlanta, and Gaylord Perry, 43, of Seattle. In the offseason, tennis fortifies Rose. Yaz, because of his chronically creaky back, is unable to run for exercise, so he pedals a bicycle in the winter and swings a leaded bat daily, relentlessly. Both say the physical part is the easy part. Rose's ex-teammate Johnny Bench, though only 34, has been complaining this season about his "mind wandering at the plate."According to Rose, "That's not age, that's being in last place. I don't know if I could play now for a team that wasn't in contention." Yastrzemski says, "It's easy for your mind to wan der, to come back to the dugout from the plate and think, 'Why did I swing at that pitch?' More than the physical part, the mental part kept me working out in the offseason. I wanted to stay with it mentally so that if it turned out I couldn't hit any more, at least I would know that I had given everything I had."

Before Yaz became venerable, back when he was vulnerable, everything he had was not always enough. "When you have been told at 20 that you will replace Ted Williams, nothing after that is pressure," he says jauntily, but his bony-nosed profile is drawn tight. Rose has been booed everywhere, except at home. It is worse at home. "They booed me," Yaz says softly of the Boston fans, "but they didn't really mean it."

As much as Yastrzemski's sparkling average and eleven home runs have meant to the Red Sox this year, the team's change of mood over the past two seasons must be attributed in the largest part to the Major, the tough tobacco-y Manager Ralph Houk. About the time that Mercenaries Fred Lynn, Carlton Fisk and Rick Burleson shipped out, Houk shipped on. "When everyone was saying we'd finish last a year ago," says Yaz, "Houk was saying, 'Let's show them.' " Boston lost the second half of the strike-torn season by l l/2 games. "In Yaz," says Houk, sitting cross-legged by himself in the dugout, "I see the same thing Al Kaline had in Detroit: an unbelievable love of the game. Yaz is an amazing man. Not fast, but he knows how to run the bases. Not big, but he learned how to pull the ball and hit home runs. Adjusting, always adjusting. When I told him Dave Stapleton was going to be my first baseman this year, and he and Tony would DH, he already had started to adjust before the conversation was over. What amazes me is his fast hands yet, his quick reactions still."

Adjusting, always adjusting. Walt Hriniak, a scholarly coach with a pink face, is only 39 and has been with the Red Sox just six years, but the inscription on the back of his wristwatch says, "To Walt: Thanks. I wouldn't have made 3,000-400 without you." By his own calculations, Yaz has made "9 million adjustments and changes" in his batting stance over the years in order to continue to be able to get around on the fastball (should anyone ever chance to throw him one). At the plate in recent seasons, he has been listing forward and holding on by his toenails. Hriniak talked him into a flatter swing this year. "Yaz is always looking for ways to get better," Hriniak says. "He has gotten the maximum ability out of himself. That's a true talent--not too many have it."

In baseball, as they say of most games, money is a way of keeping score. To Rose, it is just another stat. He is competitive in all things. "How come I'm not in the lineup?" he asks at Manhattan's Stage Delicatessen, looking up from a menu in despair that no sandwich is named for him. "Reggie Jackson ... Tom Seaver... Susan Anton. What kind of year has Susan Anton had?" It has never been the money. "I led the league in hits in 1965," Rose says, "and made $12,500." When Rose became a free agent after the 1978 season and accepted $810,000 from the Phillies, he says, "Ted Turner in Atlanta offered me $1 million a year for four years plus $100,000 a year from the day I retired to the day I died. Figure 30 years: that's $7 million. But the Braves weren't contenders then." Now he gets $1.5 million a year for, as he says, "doing nothing different than I did as a kid, only in a slightly better uniform with a few more people watching." He smiles and says, "Remember when I used to say I wanted to be the first $ 100,000 singles hitter? Well, there wasn't really a dollar figure on it. I just wanted to prove all that hustle and determination were worthwhile. Really, I just wanted to be respected."

Yastrzemski, too, says, "I never cared about being a superstar. I just wanted respect." He has also made a splendid living. His salary this year is said to be $500,000. Over the years, he could have made more. "The Red Sox have been a family-type thing to me, especially when

Mr. Yawkey was alive." With a touch of vinegar, people used to joke that the first rule for managing the Red Sox was to get along with Yastrzemski, Owner Tom Yawkey's prized possession. "He was the most fantastic and kindest individual I've ever known," Yaz says. "As much as Mr. Yawkey wanted to win, he also cared about you personally. He knew the game and loved it. No owners will ever be like that again. He was all baseball."

He must have been, because Rose, the memory collector, made sure to add a meeting with Yawkey to his list of bright recollections from the 1975 World Series, when the Reds beat the Red Sox in seven memorable games. You see, Rose is a sentimentalist. "More than any other, that series lifted baseball, showed people how great it could be," says Rose. And Yaz nods: "Without a doubt, it moved people." If 1975 is the point where Rose and Yaz intersect, they also come together at All-Star games, a mortifying subject to American Leaguers after 19 losses in the past 20 games. Though the National League has always been more progressive in matters of race, it seems too simple an explanation to say that the Nationals cornered all the Willies--Mays, McCovey and Stargell--not to mention most of the Robertos--Clemente and his brother Latins. There may be a factor that does not involve talent

Yankee Mickey Mantle tells of leaving home in Dallas for the 1967 All-Star Game in Anaheim, Calif., barely arriving in time to run for the batter's box and strike out. He jokes that he was back in Dallas to watch the end of the game on television, to see Perez win it for the National League with a home run in the 15th inning. Mantle starts the story mirthfully but finishes it regretfully. The American League had enough good players, just not enough Pete Roses, hunkered down cheering on the dugout steps even after they were out of the game.

"When I'm out of the game?" Rose mulled over the thought. "You know I never will be. Whatever I am, whatever I become, wherever I've been, wherever I go, it's because of baseball. Coach, scout, manager, broadcaster. I'll be something in the game." And when he looks back, what will be his main satisfactions? "That I was durable, that I was consistent. Oh, and when someone's chasing my records and they ask me to come to the ballpark, I'll be there." But the time is not near. "You know," Rose says, a little sad, "I'm starting to get letters from people now saying, 'Quit making a big deal of your age.' But that's the one thing you can't change: the day you were born."

During seven off-seasons-- as usual, the hard way-- Yastrzemski earned a business-administration degree at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. He has a long-term contract with Kahn's meat company and delivers presentations on various meat products to buyers who have shelf space. When Yaz is on the shelf, how will he take it? "The only time I've ever reflected about it was this year at the first Oldtimers Game ever at Fenway Park. I think twelve of the oldtimers were younger than I was. You don't have time to reflect, there's so much work to do, so much mental preparation. When the time comes, I'll still be with the Red Sox some way, maybe helping out in the Instructional League. But I won't go out on the road with a baseball team again. The fun is playing."

In his case, the end is now perceivable; it is real. "I've put so much into the game year-round for so many years," he says slowly. Even when you're eating. There's a conversation going on ... you don't even hear them talking . . . you're thinking of hitting.

You pay a price. At home too. No, no regrets. I always wanted to be a ballplayer. I know I've gotten everything out of me that I had. So the day I retire, it's going to be a good feeling." In a way, a relief.

Baseball is a boy's game. Yastrzemski's temples are frosty; Rose dyes his hair. There will be another season for both of them now. But what was that pretty phrase of Ted Williams'? "After 35, you're on a pass." If this is one of the last seasons for either of the Boys of Indian Summer, it is one of the best for both. And so what if Yaz struck out in the All-Star Game, and so what if it was on a fastball?

-- By Tom Callahan

*As any baseball fanatic knows, the best reception late at night is available only in an automobile.

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