Calico Joe

The Mets won the second game of the series that Saturday, and did so without having to fight for it. Two pitchers were ejected for throwing at batters, and both teams were itching for another brawl. But with so many players suspended, the issue of winning games became more important than winning beanball wars.

Baseball waited for Joe to wake up, to snap out of it, put some ice on his wounds, return to the stadium, and continue to dazzle and set records, but as of Sunday morning he was still in a coma.

The Mets won Sunday, and on Monday night completed a four-game sweep. The Cubs had roared into New York with a ten-game lead, and they limped out of town reeling and already feeling the pressure of another late-season collapse. They had won twenty-eight of the thirty-eight games in which Joe had played, but they were obviously a different team without him.

On August 30, Warren Tracey started at Shea against the Pirates. He gave up a single to the leadoff hitter, then walked the next two. With the bases loaded, he hit Willie Stargell in the ribs. It was not intentional, but nonetheless Stargell didn’t appreciate being hit, especially by a pitcher who was by then the most notorious headhunter in the game. He said something to my father as he slowly walked to first base, and for a moment things were tense. The umpires, on high alert, jumped in and prevented trouble. His next pitch was a fastball down the middle, and Richie Hebner hit it four hundred feet for a grand slam. By the time Yogi could get him out of the game, the Pirates were up 7–0 with no outs.

Four days later, on September 3, Labor Day, my father walked to the mound at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and was met with a thunderous round of boos and hisses. He lasted two innings, walked four, struck out none, hit no one, gave up five runs, and was rapidly pitching himself out of the rotation. The New York sportswriters were howling for his replacement.

With Joe Castle still unconscious in a New York hospital, Warren Tracey was hated everywhere he went. His name was toxic. His pitching was a disaster. His teammates were winning, but they were also tired of the distractions he brought to the game. It was obvious he wasn’t worth the trouble he was causing.

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After his first two or three wives, Warren began marrying for money instead of looks and lust. One of his later ones, Florence, died from heatstroke and left him with a nice home and some cash in the bank. He isn’t rich, but comfortable enough to avoid work and spend his days at the club playing gin rummy and golf and drinking. When he was about fifty-five, roughly ten years ago, his then wife, Karen, I believe, convinced him to sober up and stop smoking. To his credit, he did, though the damage to his body had been done. Poor Karen. She soon realized he was far more agreeable on the sauce than off. They divorced, and, never solo for long, he took up with Agnes, the current wife.

They live in one of those typical Florida gated communities, with rows of low-slung modern houses tucked along fairways and ponds and around putting greens. Everyone is over sixty and drives a golf cart.

On the subject of golf. As soon as his baseball career ended, Warren plunged headlong into what he hoped would be a new career on the tour. He hooked up with a pro somewhere near Sarasota and played and practiced for hours every day. He was thirty-five and the odds were against him, but he felt as though he had nothing to lose. He qualified for the Citrus Circuit, a low-budget south Florida tour, sort of like Class B minor-league baseball. He won his second tournament and got his name in the fine print of the Miami Herald. Someone saw it. That someone told others, and a rough plan came together. At the next tournament, just as Warren was about to hit his first tee shot, a pack of Cubs diehards began jeering and cursing him. He stepped away, exchanged words, and waited for an official to intervene. Such tournaments, though, are not heavily secured or supervised, and the hooligans refused to go away. When his first tee shot landed in a small lake, the Cubs fans cheered and howled. They followed him from hole to hole on the front nine, and he fell to pieces.

The concentration of a golfer is fragile—witness the strict rules regarding fan behavior at a PGA event. Warren, though, was far from the PGA, and the Citrus Circuit could do little to control what few fans showed up. They stalked Warren Tracey, and wherever he played, they waited in ambush. In one tournament, he birdied the first three holes, in silence, then was verbally assaulted by several large, belligerent young men as he approached the tee box on number four. His scores continued to rise, along with his blood pressure, and when he shot an 88 in the second round of his fifth tournament, he quit.