Word: beers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During spring training, Commissioner Peter Ueberroth quietly tried to talk to Martin about his drinking. But alcohol and baseball have always had a charmed association. Beer is practically a synonym for the sport. Hockey scrapes Drunken Driver Pelle Lindbergh off the highway, while basketball and football shake their heads at Chris Mullin and Tommy Kramer. But baseball literally cheers for hangovers. In Mel Allen's day at the Yankee mike, home runs were "Ballantine blasts." Now the St. Louis Cardinals do their rallying to the Budweiser jingle played incessantly on the Busch Stadium organ...
...father of a beer belch that could knock down every drop of loose water in the locker-room shower was, of course, Babe Ruth. "When the Babe left the train for the ball park," relates Pete Rose, as if Rose were not only alive then but could still smell the yeast, "he would remind the porter to have the bathtub full of beer by the time he returned." Rose got the story straight from Waite Hoyt, the late pitcher and alcoholic, who along with Third Baseman Joe Dugan was a pallbearer at Ruth's funeral in August...
...Newcombe, the old Brooklyn pitcher, estimates, "On the championship team of '55, I guess the Dodgers had seven or eight abusive drinkers, including me. In society, we don't take alcohol too seriously. In sports, we laugh at it. It's all one big Lite-beer commercial." He's an alcohol counselor now, and the counselors have a pretty good pitching rotation. "I never really knew what it was like to pitch a sober inning," says Ryne Duren, the Yankee reliever of the early '60s. "When I was with the Yankees in the mid-'70s," says Sudden Sam McDowell, "they...
...fired as Baltimore manager, Cal Ripken Sr. pleaded guilty to drunken driving, a familiar Oriole road that Earl Weaver had swerved down before him. A manager is scarcely a manager if his nose has never required batteries. Tommy Lasorda, who for insurance reasons has removed the beer keg from his Dodger Stadium office, tells some funny stories about the huge consumers he has managed -- not including the ones who had to take time to dry out, like the young pitcher Bob Welch. Interestingly, Newcombe had approved of Lasorda's office tap. "It kept the players from grabbing six packs...
...victory party slowly came to an end around 1 a.m., one support staff member, laughing and singing with a beer in her hand, walked away, saying, "I'm not drunk really. I'm just tired...