This Ain't Brain Surgery: How to Win the Pennant Without Losing Your Mind - Softcover

Introduction

Well, I'll tell you, young fella, to be truthful and honest and frank about it, I'm eighty-three years old, which ain't bad. To be truthful and honest about it, the thing I'd like to be right now is an astronaut.

-- Casey Stengel

In September of 1996 I was suffering. I had spent a good part of the baseball season in the hospital. First it was surgery on a torn ligament in my right thumb; then it was pericarditis, an inflammation in the lining of the sac that contains the heart; then it was surgery again for a bone infection where the first surgery had been performed on my thumb. All told, I was in one ward or another for three weeks and under anesthesia four times. The last time, I left the hospital with a bottle of prednisone, a medicine so powerful that it changes your personality and makes you into a trencherman of mythic proportions. I came out of the hospital weighing 215 pounds and a month later tipped the scales at 240. What's worse, I was doing a lot of the eating in the middle of the night, interrupting my sleep. I was so hungry I couldn't make it through the night without a meal. By September, most of my health problems were under control. The only lingering reminder of my personal travails was the cast on my right hand that had forced me to keep my scorebook left-handed while broadcasting all year long. I couldn't wait for season's end, but I sure didn't want it to end in free fall.

Everyone with the Astros was suffering to some extent. The team had fallen out of the race and was in the midst of a nine-game losing streak that would give the Cardinals the Central Division title on a platter. It is so discouraging to tough it out for five months and over 125 ball games only to plummet like a stone thrown into a lake; but that's exactly what we did. I was determined to float down the Guadalupe River on an inner tube when the season ended, soaking my right hand in the cool water and enjoying a beer or two along the way, but first we had to finish the schedule and it was on the next to last road trip of the season that I uttered a line that has had a major impact on my life. It happened near the end of the losing streak, during a game with the Marlins. Florida didn't have a very good team that year but they were making us look like Little Leaguers.

We were way behind, maybe 9-2, in this particular game. Our cameras panned the dugout and it looked like a morgue. "You know what's wrong with this team, Brownie?" I asked my partner Bill Brown.

"Well, we're not hitting," he offered.

"No, it's not that," I said.

"Well then, what is it?"

"Not enough Hawaiian shirts," I said.

"Hawaiian shirts?"

"Yeah, Hawaiian shirts," I repeated. "Everyone in that dugout looks like someone in their family has died. You have to have some spirit to win games. This team looks dead. Did you ever see someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt that wasn't having a good time?"

"Well, no," he answered. "But where's yours?"

"I'll wear it tomorrow night," I said, not knowing how difficult it would be to find one, even in Miami.

The next day I canvassed the mall and came away with a shirt that had flowers on it -- not really a Hawaiian shirt, but close. I didn't tell our producer or director that I was going to wear it for fear they would insist on our normal coat and tie policy. We lost again, but the words had been spoken. We talked about Hawaiian shirts during that broadcast and the next two in Atlanta, and by the time we got back to Houston, it was general knowledge among our faithful fans.

I called my boogie-boarding brother, Rick, and asked him to send me a couple of shirts. One of them was decorated with vintage woodie station wagons from the 1940s, a popular surfer car when I was in high school. The woodies on this particular shirt had surfboards hanging out the back windows or mounted on top. I wore it to the ballpark, just for grins. About half an hour before the game, I had a devilish idea. I was working radio with play-by-play man Milo Hamilton that night and I was almost sure he didn't know that the term "woody" was current slang for an erection. When Milo was out of earshot, I told our engineer and several young interns to listen closely. "I'm going to get Milo," I said. "Just wait."

When Milo came back into the booth, I pointed to one of the woodies on the shirt and said, "Hey, Milo. You know what this is?"

"Uh, a station wagon," he ventured.

"No, this is a woodie, man. You should know that. It comes from your era. These things were the rage when I was in high school in California. They were surfer cars."

"I didn't know they called them that," he said.

We went on the air and after he got all the preliminary information out, and with plenty of time in the inning to talk, I asked, "Hey, Milo. How do you like my new Hawaiian shirt?"

"You mean the one with all the woodies on it?" He took the bait. I could imagine all the middle-aged and younger fans in our audience getting a mental image of a shirt full of hard-ons.

"Yeah," I said. "When you were a young man, did you ever have a woodie?" I hadn't planned that line. It just came out.

"Oh no," he said. "We were much too poor."

"Boy, that's really poor," I said, stifling laughter, and looking back behind me where the others in the booth were sitting. One intern bolted from the booth. I imagine he couldn't contain himself. The rest of them were giggling in silence.

The next day, word of the interchange swept through the Astrodome like a brushfire. It was especially funny because Milo is a proud man, to say the least. He is not the type of person who can admit a mistake, let alone laugh at himself. Thinking about him discussing erections on the air gave rise to convulsions of laughter as it spread from office to office throughout the building. It continued for several days and Milo never knew it. I wore the shirt and got him a few more times before the season was over.

Although we were mourning the loss of our playoff hopes, we were also obligated to finish the schedule, and in this type of situation humor helps. If the players could just share in our glee, they would be better off. But they showed no outward signs of shedding the burden of choking in the clutch.

Nobody was happier to see the season end than I was. I was in Austin the night we finished, staying with friends for a few days. The next evening, when I came in from floating on the river, there was a message to call my wife, Judy.

She told me that the president of the Astros, Tal Smith, had called and he wanted to see me in his office at ten o'clock the next morning and that it was urgent. I grudgingly drove back to Houston, wondering what could possibly be so important.

A computer-tone version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" announced my arrival as I walked through the glass doors of Tal Smith Enterprises. "Let's sit out here on the balcony where we can relax," Tal suggested. Seven stories below, shoppers perused the many offerings of the Galleria, as Tal came characteristically to the point. "If you had to trade Bell [Derek] or Kile [Darryl] to make budget, which one would it be?"

"Well, we all know you don't win without pitching," I replied. "But Bell is a star and he could get better. I guess I would have to let Kile go, even though I wouldn't want to." As it turned out, we did not part with either player, and Kile, not Bell, got better.

Our conversation continued along these lines. Before long, we had discussed just about every player on the team. "Sounds like you've got a pretty good grasp of where we are and where we need to go," Tal said. "Maybe you should manage the club."

"Well, I'll tell you," I said. "I've been trying to think of a way to get away from Milo, but that would be rather extreme."

Tal laughed so loud that shoppers way down below looked up to see what was happening. It was all in the spirit of kidding from my standpoint. He had another perspective.

"I've taken the liberty of ordering some sandwiches," he said. "We can have lunch here....