Lee Trevino, a Joker but No Joke

Lee Trevino ad-libbed the funniest line I ever heard in golf. Where he did it and when are legend although I never have seen this reported anywhere, anytime. Thousands heard what he said, and now you will find out.

I was among the thousands.

The date was Sunday, June 20, 1971. This was the fourth but not “final” day of the U-S Open at what Sports Illustrated golf writer Dan Jenkins called “marvelous old Merion”, just outside Philadelphia. This was the famed course with the wicker baskets that Merion calls flagsticks. This was the course where Ben Hogan hit that one-iron on the 18th hole in 1950, and where, 20 years before that, Bobby Jones won to capture his famous Grand Slam, and, as an amateur, too.

Before the 1971 tournament, Lee observed: “There are 16 birdie holes here. But…there are 18 bogey holes. I’ll eat all the cactus around El Paso if anybody breaks 280.”

Nobody did. There is still plenty of cactus around El Paso. Both Trevino and Jack Nicklaus finished at exactly 280, which meant they had to face each other in an 18-hole playoff the next day, Monday. But that’s for later.

What about the ad-lib by Lee Trevino?

To get to the full measure of its verbal explosion, you have to recall what came before on that great Sunday. For one thing, the leader at the start of the day was a 21-year-old amateur, Jim Simons. He led Jack Nicklaus by two strokes at the start of the day.

Jack was two shots ahead of Lee. But Lee said that morning he thought he would win, just as he had won the U-S Open three years before at Oak Hill (Rochester, NY). “I’m playing fantastic”, said Trevino. “I’ve been playing super ever since Nicklaus told me in February that he hoped I never found out how good I really was. For the best player in the world to tell me that just filled me up with confidence, and I’ve almost won every tournament I’ve been in the last six weeks. I know I can win this thing.”

Nicklaus and Simons were the last pairing of the day, Trevino just ahead of them. As much as I liked Jack Nicklaus, something told me to keep my eyes on Lee.

Simons did what 21-year-old amateurs are supposed to do in a major: He quickly made two bogeys to draw everybody close. Nicklaus tied Simons when he sank a curling downhill 30-footer at the fourth hole.

But the next hole, Nicklaus double-bogeyed, hitting his tee shot into a creek.

Some say Trevino’s golf that day was the best he ever played. All he did, said Dan Jenkins, was split the center of the narrow fairways and rivet his irons close to the wicker baskets. When he birdied the 12th hole, he tied for the lead. He nearly made a deuce there “with more backspin on his approach shot than you can get in car wheels on a sandy road” (Jenkins).

When Trevino reached the 14th green, still tied with Nicklaus, he found himself with probably a 45-foot putt. I had a perfect spot in the gallary from which I could see the “break” (the hill) between Lee’s ball and the cup.

If there had been a pin to drop in the Merion rough as Trevino looked over the putt, I think you would have heard it, the gallery was that quiet, and respectful. Lee took a long time walking back and forth. Finally, he crouched behind the ball to check the line to the hole one last time. All eyes were focused on him; all mouths were shut.

In a slow, confidential but audible voice heard by everybody, he said: “I’d sure like to make you, honey!”

The gallery exploded. Surely the laughter could be heard in the group behind where Jack was playing with Simons, who, by the way, stayed competitive until his double-bogey on the last hole.

I recall that 14th green as though it was just today thinking THERE IS NO WAY HE CAN COMPOSE HIMSELF NOW AND SINK THAT PUTT. It was somewhat of a task for him to wait for the gallery to return to quiet.

The putt started up on that hill to his right and snaked downward into the hole. Birdie, and a one-shot lead.

The roar was louder than the laughter of the minute before.

For me, the rest was “anticlimactic”. Even the snake the next day. The rubber one, not a Trevino putt.

Because this is a Trevino story, I would be remiss not to add, here, for the record the additional Lee humor that day, and the next.

Some would say that Trevino choked on the 18th hole with that one-shot lead Sunday. Hardly. He was laughing on the 18th tee, teasing his caddie for forgetting to give him a club. “You choking already?” Lee asked him. The crowd roared. Grinning, Lee added: “You wanna give me something to fan this with?” The crowd roared again.

Lee hit a drive with a bit too much fade (that’s a slice for an amateur). His three-wood to the green was a bit too much club. His chip back from 70 feet was excellent, but stopped seven feet past. Had he made the seven-foot par putt, he would have won that day. But he had to back away from the ball when he became momentarily nettled, unlike his composure at the 14th green. As he was addressing his crucial putt, a kid fell off his perch near the clubhouse, breaking Lee’s concentration. Lee refused to blame anybody but himself. Surely, an hour before, on that 14th green, he proved to thousands he can crack a double-entendre and sink a putt in the same two minutes.

Missing the putt for a bogey, Lee still had his 280, the score he said nobody would beat.

Jack Nicklaus soon finished with the same score, and the Monday playoff (18 holes) was on.

I had to work the next day so I missed the playoff.

Dan Jenkins said the tension around the first tee on Monday was unbelievable. Nicklaus was sitting under a tree, his head down in apparent concentration when Trevino came out on the tee, smacking gum, rubbing his hands together, pacing, waving to the crowd. He reached into a side pocket of his golf bag, pulled out a three-foot-long toy snake and held it up. The crowd shrieked as Lee laughed and tossed it at a scrambling Nicklaus.

Said Jenkins: “Big Jack broke up laughing. So did the crowd. So did the world.”

Lee finished at 68 to Nicklaus’ 71. He was U-S Open champion for a second time.

He said: “I’m a lucky dog. You gotta be lucky to beat Jack Nicklaus because he is the greatest golfer who ever held a club.”

And in conclusion, you wanna know more about those times….back there in 1971? For winning, Trevino won $30,000; Nicklaus got second place money of $15,000. Somebody named Arnold Palmer won $1,500 and not many attaboys for the way he criticized Jack’s alleged slow play. They became best friends years later.

And one of Lee’s many “quotes” kept him in the limelight for decades after: “You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work.”

My Pal Dizzy Dean

Jerome Herman Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He is there because of his pitching, but also because of his career. They didn’t call him Dizzy for nothing.

He preceded Yogi Berra in being a public figure (i.e., baseball star) in part for his sayings. And for what people said about him.

St. Louis Cardinals teammate Pepper Martin once said: “When ol’ Diz was out there pitching, it was more than just another ball game. It was a regular three-ring circus and everybody was wide awake and enjoying being alive.”

Others get some credit for this remark, but I heard it first from Dizzy: “It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.”

In one Cardinals game, he told the fielders to sit down on the field, he was going to strike out the side. He did. He was the last National League pitcher to win 30 games in one season.

You will note that this article began with Dizzy’s several names. Some say his legal name was Jerome Herman Dean, others said Jay Hanna Dean. One story about Diz’s legal name is that he gave conflicting information to three different sportswriters in quick succession. A teammate asked him about it and he replied: “I wanted to give each of them fellas an exclusive story.”

Ol’ Diz once said: “It puzzles me how they know what corners are good for filling stations. Just how did they know gas and oil was under there?”

If you have some time on your hands, Google DIZZY DEAN QUOTES for laughs similar to those that ensued when Yogi said things like: “Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore. It’s too crowded.”

This is a story about Dizzy Dean after his last days on the baseball diamond. But before I get to my friend (this is a stretch, of course, as you will see), let’s review some of the things that earned him entry into Cooperstown.

He was born January 16, 1910, in Lucas, Arkansas. He was just 64 when he died (July 17,1974, in Reno, Nevada). When he died, I was 40 and really felt I had lost a good friend. Actually, I hardly knew him. I knew him mostly as thousands did. But that’s for later.

He pitched for the Cardinals (1930-1937), the Chicago Cubs (1938-1941) and briefly for the St. Louis Browns (1947). I saw that game. I was 13 years old. But again, I am getting ahead of myself.

Dizzy was best known for leading the 1934 “Gashouse Gang” Cardinals to win the World Series in seven games over the Detroit Tigers. He had a 30-7 record, a 2.66 ERA in the regular season. His brother, Paul (they called him “Daffy”; that’s a fact), also pitched for the Cardinals. They both won two World Series games that year. Dizzy won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award that year, and he was runner-up in the voting the next two years.

While pitching for the National League in the 1937 All-Star game, he faced Earl Averill of the American League Cleveland Indians. Averill hit a line drive back at the mound, hitting Dizzy on the foot. Told that his big toe was fractured, he replied: “Fractured, hell!! The damn thing’s broken!”

It was said he came back to pitching too soon from the injury, which caused him to change his pitching motion to avoid landing so hard on his sore left big toe. As a result, the story went, he hurt his arm and he lost his fast ball. By the next year, when he was with the Cubs, his arm was just about shot, but he kept at it for three more years. That year, 1938, he pitched well enough to help the Cubs win the pennant and he pitched gamely in the second World Series game before losing to the Yankees in what became known as “Ol’ Diz’s Last Stand”.

It was said that between ages 23 and 27, Dizzy was the best pitcher in baseball. By 28, he was just another pitcher, and at 31, it was all over. Except for that time in 1947 when I saw him pitch for real.

My Dad worked for Western Union and occasionally he would be assigned to Sportsmans Park for the baseball game. Using his telegrapher’s “bug”, he would transmit baseball results to other cities, and receive them for local consumption. Sometimes he would take me along, and I would be able to walk the bridge into the press box where my Dad worked along with sportswriters, the official scorer, and so forth, and Dizzy Dean and Johnny O’Hara in the radio booth.

Need I tell you? There was no security. I could walk all through the pressbox, including the radio booth. I was 10 years old. The year was 1944, and both the Cardinals and the Browns were in first place, and ultimately played each other in the World Series that year. It was a heady time for me, of course.

One night, I was standing behind Johnny and Dizzy, listening to them. Occasionally, they would look back at me, smile but not shooosh me away.

From my vantage point, I could not see all of the field, and a batter lofted a high fly to right field. It looked like it was going over the Mississippi River. I could not help myself. I was a kid. I started hollering WOWWWWWWWW!

The right fielder caught the ball.

Johnny was doing the play-by-play. He turned around and so did Dizzy. They said nothing. I have thanked them quietly ever since. I got into no trouble that I know of, and I never told my Dad. And I guess that was the start of my radio career, as that was the first word I ever said on the radio.

It was quite a while before I had the courage to return to that position in the pressbox.

And actually, it was because of my familiarity with my new-found friends in the pressbox that I had the courage to go to the radio booth one Sunday afternoon after a thunderstorm had caused a rain delay. This day, the Browns were scheduled to play a double-header, and before the first game, they had a “Long Ball Hitting Contest”, involving star players from both the Browns and the Detroit Tigers. I remember Chet Laabs was one of the Brownies’ stars and pitcher Dizzy Trout was one of the Tigers hitters.

The first game was interrupted early. While I had been sitting in the grandstand behind third base, when the rain stopped play, I went up to the pressbox, worldly as I was, of course, at age 10. And, of course, already fascinated with radio work, I headed for the radio booth.

Johnny O’Hara and Dizzy were just sitting there with the radio engineer, not on the air. Their broadcast had been returned to the studio during the rain delay. I think Johnny and Dizzy wanted to remind me about hollering about a high fly to right, but they didn’t bring it up. They started talking with me as though I was an adult.

Dizzy started really talking about the long-ball hitting contest. He asked me if I had seen it. I had. He asked me who I thought should have won. I think I said Chet Laabs. I remember, however, vividly what Dizzy came back with: “Dizzy Trout hit the HARDEST home run. That line drive would have gone through a mule!” I agreed. Dizzy wasn’t through. “He’s a pitcher, you know!!!” I said yes, I know he is a pitcher. Dizzy always told his radio audience what a great hitter he was.

The story is not finished. I had no place to go, doncha know, so I stayed right there as we waited out the rain delay. But the rain never stopped. Eventually, the umpires called off both games. And here came the bad part. The stadium announcer said all fans could get refunds at the streetside ticket windows WITH THEIR STUB for today’s admission.

I reached in my pocket to find my ticket stub. I pulled out four stubs. Obviously, I wore the same pants to several games, and never threw my stubs away. My mother always had clean clothes for me, but most likely I wore and wore the same pants to ballgames.

I held the stubs in my hand to show Dizzy. I asked: “How can I tell which stub is for today?”

As you know, they didn’t call him Dizzy for no reason. He replied, to his 10-year-old friend, “Turn all of ‘em in. You’ll get alot more money! They won’t be able to tell.”

It sounded good to me. I went downstairs to the ticket windows, and stood among the throng in front of the windows. There were no lines; it was just fight-your-way-up-there.

When I finally made it to the window, I turned in the four stubs. The woman ticketseller took my four stubs, and for the next two or three minutes, panic was starting to set in. She showed the stubs to another ticketseller, and then came back to the window, and in a tone similar to a school teacher, she asked, no, she demanded to know: WHERE DID YOU GET THESE?

As God is my witness, I broke into tears and replied rather frantically: DIZZY DEAN TOLD ME I COULD TURN THEM IN!

DIZZY DEAN TOLD YOU!!! she hollered as all fans within earshot roared with laughter.

I realized it was too farfetched a story to continue. So I just kept crying. She actually identified the one good ticket for the day, and gave me a refund. God Bless Her for not having me arrested for fraud. I know she never believed my answer. Nor did the nearby fans. Sneaky kid. Got caught.

Actually, Dizzy was pretty famous as a baseball broadcaster. He first started with the Cardinals and Browns in 1941 right after his playing days were over. In those days, the broadcasters did not travel with the teams but Ol’ Diz had a good deal for the season, as, when one team left town, the other team came home. Dizzy was both funny and colorful, partly for butchering the English language, much to the chagrin of St. Louis English teachers.

When Al “Zeke” Zarilla tripled, he described how Zarilla “slud into third”. When the English teachers complained, Dizzy simply enjoyed more opportunities to say “slud”.

An English teacher once wrote to him that he shouldn’t use the word “ain’t” on the air, as it was a bad example to children. He responded to the teacher on the air, not so elegantly: “A lotta folks who ain’t sayin’ ‘ain’t’ ain’t eatin’. So Teach you learn ‘em English, and I’ll learn ‘em baseball.”

Dizzy advanced to join Pee Wee Reese on the CBS-TV Game of the Week each Saturday, which he did from 1955 to 1965.

And yes, I enjoyed actually seeing Dizzy Dean pitch in an official baseball game. His last, so to speak. It was September 28, 1947. He was 37 years old.

By this time, Dizzy was well-known for his broadcasting. The story has been that he had been doing the St. Louis Browns’ games, enduring several poor pitching performances in a row, and he got so frustrated, he blurted out on the air: “Doggone it, I can pitch better than nine out of the ten guys on the staff!!!” The wives of the Browns pitchers complained, and team management, needing to sell tickets any way they could, took him up on his offer and had him pitch the last game of the season.

I thought Sportsman Park would be filled and got there soon after the gates opened. Sad to say, it was far from a sellout. But Dizzy did not disappoint. He pitched four innings, allowed no runs and got a single in his only at-bat. Rounding first base, he pulled his hamstring, ending his experiment.

Returning to the broadcast booth later on, he told his radio audience: “I said I can pitch better than nine of the ten guys on the staff, and I can. But I’m done. Talkings my game now. I’m just glad that muscle I pulled wasn’t in my throat.”

So that’s my story about my pal Diz. Now don’t forget to Google QUOTES BY DIZZY DEAN. Here are two that clearly identify him:

“I won 28 games in 1935 and I couldn’t believe my eyes when the Cards sent me a new contract with a cut in salary. Mr. Rickey said I deserved a cut because I didn’t win 30 games.”

And….. “Anybody whosoever had the privilege of seeing me play knows I am the greatest pitcher in the world.”

Kevin is Missing

Last evening, Monday, August 24, 2009, my great grandson Kevin Pierron walked out the back door of my house and vanished. The terrible ordeal was over 3 1/2 hours later, and Kevin was safe. But, as I say, it was terrible, one of those situations you sometimes hear about, but of course hope never happen to you.

Kevin is five years old. I am happy to say that today he attended his first school day, his first of three days of orientation for kindergarten. It was all quite refreshing. In that short period, Kevin actively took part in answering questions about a story all the kids listened to. He was eager and happy to be there, having awakened 45 minutes ahead of the house alarm.

But last evening was not the least bit refreshing.

I was on the way home from the office at 5:15 p.m., made a stop at a pharmacy to pick up two medications, and arrived home at 5:45 p.m.

Kevin had heard my ring of the phone to put the phone on Call Forwarding from the office, so he knew his Pop Pop would be home in a few minutes. He already had been with Grandma (actually, Mom Mom is Great Grandma) to get KFC grilled chicken. He said with some emphasis that he was really hungry.

But at 5:45 p.m., he was outside somewhere. Grandma had twice looked for him in the back yard. No Kevin. However, he often had climbed the cyclone fence to meet up with other hombres of his age or maybe a little older. He almost always was no more than two houses away in the back.

It was puzzling this time because Kevin usually came home at the right time on his own, or others with dinner plans of their own had more or less sent him home.

Kevin’s Uncle, Tom, walked out of the house during this period to go to a band practice. He sometimes has taken Kevin with him, but not this time.

Shortly after 6:15 p.m., with no Kevin yet, I made a couple of searches in the back. I could see nobody in the back yards nor out on the next street over.

As it grew darker, surely he would know to come home, especially since he is so hungry.

But still no Kevin. I got into my car and drove around to the other street, and for the next 20 minutes or so, knocked on doors. I was struck with the hesitancy of people nowadays to open their doors. Maybe it was the time of day; it was just an hour before dark.

After driving up and down several side streets and finding Kevin’s Grandmother (not Mom Mom) visiting a friend two blocks away and telling her Kevin was missing, I returned home for maybe the fifth time and phoned 911.

By this time, two men whom I had contacted in the house visits were joining me in the search in their cars.

A policeman drove up about 7:30 p.m.

He asked for the scenario and soon started a search of the house. He was joined by other policemen, who were thorough in their room by room search. “Sometimes we find kids sleeping under a bed,” said one.

A police sergeant arrived to ask some more questions. The first officer on the scene had taken down most of the vital information, and we had provided him with two photos of Kevin. The sergeant was the friendliest of the contingent; that is, he seemed to be calming and compassionate.

As more police cars were parked outside, the search was expanded to include two playgrounds nearly one mile away and a small park less than one-half mile away.

Police wanted to know where Kevin’s Mother and Father were. Both share custody of Kevin. His Daddy was at work; his mother presumably at home in her apartment three miles away. I do not know whether they actually contacted her, but their questions indicated they were planning to.

For a policeman in such situations, every character in the caper is a suspect. Of course, that’s as it should be.

Later, detectives appeared to ask more questions.

In the meantime, I had finally been able to reach my son, Uncle Tom, to ask him to come home, and I also contacted my daughter-in-law, who was with her husband and their two children having a late dinner out.

Police were driving around the neighborhood from street to street. They were, of course, looking for a little boy. However, their activity attracted attention and that pretty much cracked the case.

Kevin had left our back yard and almost immediately went to a house another half-block away, on a side street that runs into Pearson. The adults there said they saw the police cars driving back and forth, but it did not dawn on them that they might be looking for the little boy who had come to their house.

He had brazenly knocked on their door because he knew a little boy lived there and Kevin wanted to know if he could come in and play. As it turned out, there were three children there so Kevin had new playmates suddenly.

A boy who lived in the house directly in back of us had been Kevin’s constant buddy for more than a year, but he had moved to Georgia in early July, and Kevin really missed having fun with his friend. What we know now is that Kevin spent a number of days looking for a replacement friend or two.

Last evening, he must have been happy as can be with three new friends. They were playing computer games. Kevin, like his Daddy, and his Grandfather, is a computer expert.

I don’t know exactly how Kevin’s presence in the house was revealed. But I was sitting in the living room with the nice police sergeant on a cell phone. He suddenly blurted out: “I think we found him!” I am not very good at controlling my emotions in crises, and I bawled. Sorry. But I didn’t know what “found” meant yet!!

In a minute, Kevin came in the back door, escorted, I think, by the first policeman to have arrived on the scene.

The word got around quickly to the searching policemen, and in a minute, the living room had about eight policemen all trying to listen to Kevin.

In the first place, Kevin seemed somewhat annoyed that they considered him “lost”. “I wasn’t lost.” Kevin protested. Several in his audience replied almost in unison: “But WE DIDN’T KNOW WHERE YOU WERE!!”

They asked him what phone numbers he knew, and although Kevin normally can recite several family phone numbers, he now was speechless as he seemed to start realizing this all was a pretty big deal. Finally, he remembered my office phone number, which seemed to satisfy the policemen.

One policeman, he might have been a Captain, said several neighbors on Pearson had told them Kevin was rather infamous for knocking on their door and asking for candy or kids to play with. This was not a good thing, the policeman concluded.

Obviously, this is something a five-year-old needs guidance on.

He wanted his supper, though three hours late. The grilled chicken was re-heated, but the once-hungry Kevin didn’t eat much.

Today, ironically, during kindergarten orientation, Kevin again met one of the boys he played with last night. The boy’s Mother, who was attending the orientation, told him he is welcome to come and play again, but only if his grandmother is with him to demonstrate that she knows where he is.