They`ve talked about this Don Zimmer oddity for years, in the same hushed tones that people reserve for church, lunatics and big money.
”He has a plate in his head, you know.”
Then they nod, the movement rife with the implied symbolism of an Ingmar Bergman film.
Egads! No telling what a man might do with a steel plate pressing against his brain. Isn`t that how Frankenstein got his start?
But as with other baseball stories, it`s more embellishment than reality. Still, in a sport that demands that its characters be larger than life, many a hero falls short.
”I don`t have a plate in my head,” Zimmer admitted recently in his manager`s office at Wrigley Field during a conversation in which he recounted his storied career in the major leagues-a lifetime that has brought him to a job with the Cubs he considers the most demanding position of any big-time manager.
”What I have in my head are buttons, which are like tapered corkscrews in a bottle. Three of them on one side, one on the other side.”
Buttons? That doesn`t sound as menacing as a steel plate, which was supposed to be holding his mind together since that time in 1953, when a pitch hammered his head and nearly finished his pro baseball career before it began in the Brooklyn Dodgers` system.
So another legend bites the dust.
”It`s easier to agree with people when they say it`s a plate,” Zimmer said. ”So I do. Otherwise, it`s a long story.”
It`s amazing that even some of Zimmer`s friends haven`t heard the long version of that story. Don Drysdale, for instance. To hear Drysdale talk about Zimmer shows that the former Dodger pitcher wasn`t the pitiless, relentless hurler he is said to have been.
They say Drysdale would have thrown high and hard inside on his mother if that`s what it took and let her worry about getting out of the way. But Drysdale said whenever he faced Zimmer, after the two parted as teammates on the Dodgers, he purposely stayed away from coming inside on him.
”Because, you know, he has a plate in his head,” Drysdale said.
Well, not really, but it`s the thought that counts.
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It`s a long story, Zimmer said. But actually the beanball that fractured his skull, led to a blood clot, left him unconscious for 12 days, and required two operations and five spinal taps is a short, neat illustration of Zimmer`s character.
Less than a year after being hit, he was brought to the majors for the first of the 12 consecutive seasons he played there. What an improbable turnaround.
The beaning occurred in July 1953 in Columbus, Ohio, when Zimmer was playing shortstop with St. Paul and leading the American Association with 23 home runs. He expected to be called up to the Dodgers before the year was out. He was on the verge of making it.
”I remember falling to the ground (after being hit) and seeing my manager looking over me,” he said. ”I rubbed my head and asked him, `Am I bleeding?` He said, `No.`
”That`s the last thing I remember until I raised up my head and looked over to my right and saw my father, my mother and my wife. Three of each of them. I had triple vision.
”I went to say something, and nothing came out. I lost my speech for six weeks. I thought it was the next morning after I`d been hit, but my wife finally told me I`d woken up on the 13th day after it happened.”
He left the hospital a month later, weighing 124 pounds.
”I weighed 168 when I went in. I didn`t always look the way I do now,”
he said with a glance down at his Santa Claus shape.
But some things never change. Zimmer was the same dogged battler then that he is today. He refused to believe he`d never play again, refused to think he`d never face up to that screaming fastball as it bore down on him.
”The Dodgers came into Cincinnati while I was in the hospital, and Mr.
(Walter) O`Malley and Buzzie Bavasi came to Columbus to see me,” Zimmer said of the team`s owner and general manager. ”Buzzie didn`t want me to play again. He said, `Forget baseball. We`ll have a job for you.`
”Well, hell`s fires, I`m 21 years old. Quitting is the furthest thing from my mind. It`s nice they`re telling me that, but I didn`t want to give up that easy.”
Zimmer was ready to try it again in the spring of 1954. After spring training, the Dodgers sent him back to St. Paul so he could find out if he was too afraid in the batter`s box to continue.
”I started hitting home runs right off the bat, and they started knocking me down,” he said. ”When that didn`t bother me, I knew I was home free. By June I had 17 homers for St. Paul and I was called to Brooklyn.”
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Two years later, Zimmer would be hit again, this time under his left eye, fracturing a cheekbone and almost detaching the retina in his eye. He was blindfolded for six weeks, and once more, although he stayed in the majors, it was a frustrating climb back for him.
But while his baseball daddy, Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese, and other teammates raved about Zimmer`s guts and courage to reporters, Zimmer didn`t see it that way then. He still doesn`t.
”Reese and Drysdale would say I was the toughest s.o.b. in America because I`d still go out there and stand over the plate after being hit twice,” Zimmer said. ”They`d say I had more guts than anyone they ever knew. ”I never felt that way. I just always felt I was luckier than the next guy. I knew some guys who got hit in the head who were tougher than me, if you`re talking about fistfights, but they couldn`t go back to the plate anymore.
”I was just fortunate. I wasn`t tougher than anyone else. Standing over the plate was just my style. I never knew any other way to bat.”
Drysdale remembered what Zimmer would tell him and other pitchers if they wanted to come inside with a pitch to him.
”He`d say, `If you`re going to hit me, kill me, put me out of my misery. Don`t let me squirm out there,` ” Drysdale said. ”I wouldn`t dare come inside on him, though.
”Me and Lew Burdette used to talk about it. He wouldn`t pitch him there, either. Zim would sort of freeze at the plate. I wasn`t taking any chances.” And although Zimmer was only a backup to Reese, Drysdale noted that he possessed one of the strongest arms he has ever seen.
”As good as Shawon Dunston`s,” Drysdale said. ”Maybe better.”
Strong enough that Dodgers catching great Roy Campanella remembers using Zimmer as his pitcher in home-run derbies. ”I`d split my winnings with him,” Campanella said of some of those contests. ”Don was strong as a little bull. That`s why we called him `Popeye.` He kept the bench alive.”
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Baseball has been Don Zimmer`s life since he was a boy growing up in Cincinnati. He would play briefly for Casey Stengel on the original Mets in 1962 and be enchanted by the man. He`d play for the Cubs under their revolving coaches form of management in 1961 and be appalled by the absurdities, getting himself dumped in the expansion pool when he popped off about the issue on a WGN pregame broadcast.
But when his playing days were over, after the good and bad, he was intent on being a lifer in baseball.
”His life is his wife and family, baseball and the racetrack,” Cubs coach Jimmy Piersall said.
By 1972, only seven years after his retirement as a player, Zimmer got his first chance to manage. But it was with a San Diego club that wasn`t ready for prime time, and he was soon fired.
A second chance wasn`t long in coming and this time it was in a baseball mecca: Boston.
The Red Sox won big under Zimmer, but not big enough. They won 97 games in 1977, 99 in 1978 and 91 in 1979. ”But we never won a championship,”
Zimmer said. He was dumped in 1980.
Former Cubs pitcher Bill Campbell was with Zimmer during the Boston years, and he recalls how hard it was for Zimmer to adjust to the changing attitudes of some young players.
”Don`s from the old school, and he couldn`t see giving the young guys a lot of leeway,” Campbell said. ”The young players then, Bill Lee and that group, had different attitudes than the old players had.
”But I think Zimmer could be just coming into his own now as a manager. He may have learned how to adjust better than he did in Boston.”
Piersall thinks he has.
”He has compassion for the younger players, and that`s why he`s been good with this year`s Cubs team,” he said. ”He turned to me once on the bench during a game and said, `Remember when we made that mistake?` I wouldn`t have the patience he has with young people. He`s ideal for this team.”
Looking back to the Boston years, Campbell said he thought Zimmer was criticized too much.
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”I always thought the Boston fans were unfair in being so critical of him,” Campbell said. ”Boston fans can get radical at times.”
Zimmer agreed, believing most people believe the rumors that he was pushed out with the help of critical newspaper stories.
”Not true,” he said. ”The beat guys liked me, and I liked them. It was the radio talk shows that got me. They turned the Boston fans against me. If I went to Boston today, 28,000 fans would still boo me. But they wouldn`t mean it. It`s like a ritual with them.
”I remember in 1981, when I went back to Boston as the manager of Texas. My players couldn`t wait for me to walk out to home plate with the lineup card. They knew the crowd would be booing me.
”But as they were, I took off my hat and turned all the way around, waving it at them, and those boos turned to cheers. It might surprise you, but my seven years in Boston as coach and then manager might have been my seven best years in baseball.”
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Picked for last by many, the Cubs have been as high as third in the National League East and are one of the surprises of 1988.
So far, the marriage between General Manager Jim Frey and Zimmer is all roses. From boyhood buddies and high school teammates in baseball to a major- league partnership is a long road, and not as predestined as you might think. ”It bothered me so much that people thought the only reason Frey would offer me the managing job was because we were friends, that I considered not accepting it because of that,” said Zimmer, who coached for Frey when he managed the Cubs.
”As Jim says, he has friends just as close to him as me, some closer,”
Zimmer said. ”After we graduated high school, I didn`t even see him for 16 years. How close was that?
”People thought I was lying when I told them Frey hadn`t contacted me about the job. That bothered me. I waited to see if Frey would call.”
When the offer finally came, Zimmer put all his worries aside and asked Frey when he wanted him there. He never once asked about contract terms before the press conference at which he was introduced as the Cubs manager.
”I didn`t know if it was a one-year deal for $20 a month, or what,” he said. ”I trusted Jim Frey to give me what was fair. I didn`t have an agent to negotiate a contract for me. We wrapped it up in one sitting.
”There were three reasons I took the job. The Cub fans, they`re the best. The ballpark, it`s something special. And Jim Frey.”
Zimmer`s father, who died in the late 1970s, really liked Frey. They were both baseball men, from the time Frey was a youngster, and the two would lose themselves in discussions of this team, that play.
”My dad was quite a shortstop on Cincinnati amateur and softball teams,” Zimmer said. ”I played with guys my dad`s age on a softball team, and I`m not talking about some nice pickup team. To these guys, softball was a serious business. Some of these guys could have played in the majors, but they had to work for a living, not make $110 a month in pro ball.
”Well, I thought I`d play shortstop for their team. But, no, my dad said: `You get over to second base. I`m the shortstop here.`
”My father had his own business at 18, a fruit and vegetable wholesale place. He was the most generous guy I`ve known. He came from a poor family, and we weren`t rich, but my father always wanted the best for me.
”When it came time to get a glove, I didn`t get a 10-cent one. I had the best glove his money could buy. I was lucky, I learned baseball from my father and his friends. When I made a mistake, they let me know it.”
– – –
You can`t be a friend of Don Zimmer`s for long and not hear about the horse track. He loves to go, and he loves to bet. But he hates to talk about it in public because he thinks some people put him down for his avocation.
Don Zimmer believes in being an honest man. He could have hid the fact earlier this month that he made a mistake in visiting Calvin Schiraldi on the mound during a game against the Dodgers. It was the second trip that inning, the pitching coach having made the first, and Zimmer had to lift Schiraldi when he didn`t want to.
”I forgot about the first trip,” Zimmer said. ”I blew it. Nobody would have known it, though, not even my coaches, but the first thing I did when I got back to the bench was go up and down the dugout and tell everybody I made a mistake. I said I was sorry, but I`d screwed up.”
Zimmer wishes he could always be as honest with the fans and the media.
”Sometimes, in baseball, you`d like to tell the truth, but can`t,” he said.
But from Brooklyn to Chicago, Zimmer has been known as a standup guy. And standup guys usually win in the end. Cub fans could stand that.