The Baseball Whisperer Page 13

  Muller was not the only one who felt that Merl had put so much into the community that he deserved anything he could get back from it. His bonds with his neighbors were so close that they were like family to him. Merl had gone to high school with her husband, Lloyd. When Lloyd was going through a serious surgery while Venita sat alone in the hospital waiting room, in walked Merl to be with her until the procedure was completed. “I said, ‘You didn’t have to do that. Not even my family came.’ And he said, ‘We are family.’”

  Merl was also the town’s number-one sports booster, attending the games and matches of the boys and girls in Clarinda, offering them support, whatever the sport, whatever the season. He would send Venita and Lloyd’s daughter Heidi articles about sports and encouraged her to pursue her passion for basketball and volleyball. She did just that, all the way to a college scholarship.

  All the while, he maintained relationships with former players, both those who had become stars and those who played their final game in college. When the A’s 1982 season ended, Ozzie Smith’s big games that year were really just starting. He had found new fame as the All-Star shortstop of the St. Louis Cardinals, but he did not forget the couple who helped him get there. When the Cardinals made it to the World Series in 1982, Smith made sure that he secured tickets for Merl and Pat Eberly and invited them to stay in his home.

  Merl and Pat drove to St. Louis, about six hours by car, arriving at Smith’s home in the area known as West County outside of the city. After a while, Smith began unpacking boxes of card tables he’d bought to make it easier to serve food for all of his guests. As he was unpacking one of the boxes, a large staple jammed into a finger of his throwing hand. The All-Star shortstop was about to play in one of the most important games of his life, and his finger was bleeding profusely. The freak injury not only might be enormously embarrassing to him, but also could cost the Cardinals dearly.

  Merl took a quick measure of the situation and asked Ozzie, “Do you have a lemon?” Ozzie wasn’t quite sure what his old coach was thinking, but replied yes, he did. They cut off the end of the lemon to expose the fleshy part, and then Merl told Ozzie to stick his bleeding finger into the sour fruit. Ozzie did. There was a sharp sting from the citrus, but he kept his finger in there overnight. The next day there was very little swelling in the finger, no bleeding, and no soreness. Merl was a folk doctor along with being a baseball whisperer.

  8

  No Bright Lights

  CHUCK KNOBLAUCH PACKED his bags in College Station, Texas. He had completed his freshman season at Texas A&M, where he’d validated his reputation as a player with major league potential, one who could hit for power and average along with being a great fielder. Well known in Texas, Knoblauch had been drafted out of high school, and his reputation was spreading. He carried himself with a confidence on the field that betrayed his youth. That first year at A&M, Knoblauch had played center field as he continued to recover from a broken leg. Now he was headed to Clarinda, Iowa, where he would get back to shortstop, his preferred position, and the one most scouts thought he could play in the majors.

  Andy Benes was coming from his sophomore year at the University of Evansville in Indiana; the six-foot-six pitcher was traveling to his summer home with his new wife, a first for the A’s. He was raw but talented, and finally starting to focus on baseball. One of his college teammates at the University of Evansville, Rob Maurer, a first baseman, was making the drive west as well.

  Scott Brosius was traveling from the west, from McMinnville, Oregon. He had played at an NAIA school, tiny Linfield College. Brosius was a blue-collar player who ran hard on every play and constantly worked on fundamentals, the kind of player Merl Eberly hoped for every summer. He also conveyed a sense of confidence and maturity that the others instantly noticed.

  Cal Eldred’s trip to Clarinda was comparatively short, just under five hours from the tiny Iowa town of Urbana, a place that celebrated things like “Sweet Corn Day.” His family had a hog and cattle farm there. Eldred was a six-foot-four pitcher who also had been drafted out of high school but chose college at the University of Iowa, where he had completed his freshman year. His coach, Duane Banks, knew that his young pitcher would be well cared for and well coached by his friend Merl Eberly.

  Then there was the hitter that everyone seemed to be talking about, Nikco Riesgo from California, a player who already seemed fully developed physically and stood out even among a collection of young stars. Riesgo, who had been a high school All-American, played at San Diego State and was named a freshman All-American by Baseball America. He was the player Merl thought had the best shot at the big leagues.

  Most of these players had not heard much about their teammates. This was 1987, in the pre-Internet era, when cell phones were rare. Reputations were earned in real time. In many ways, that was an advantage to Merl: the players knew little more about him than what their coaches had told them. He respected the players sent to him, but no matter who they were, they had to earn their playing time with the A’s and avoid running afoul of his rules, which were as clear in 1987 as they were the year the A’s began. “I remember him bringing a credit card to a game and checking our faces to see if we had shaved before the game,” Benes said. “I had really not had any coaches that were that meticulous about facial hair. I think he commanded that type of respect because he followed the same standards we were asked to. There was no double standard. He led by example. A few of the guys tried to boycott that rule, but eventually they realized it was follow the rule or hit the road. And our baseball careers were ahead of us.”

  Knoblauch, who stood only five-foot-eight, said Merl was physically intimidating to him. “He was a big man, with big old hands,” Knoblauch said. “He was just a sweetheart of a man, but he was a tough baseball coach. I respected him instantly.” Like Benes, Knoblauch knew Merl would neither brook dissent nor tolerate prima donnas. “He understood the nuances of baseball. He insisted you play the game hard. He wanted you to run every ball out, to hit behind the runner, to execute the hit-and-run. He didn’t stand for any nonsense on the field. There was an aura about him.”

  Benes was initially advised to leave his wife at home, because of all the time the team had to spend on the road and other demands of the game. That lasted all of ten days before Jennifer Benes came to join him. They had an apartment instead of staying with a host family. It was certainly true that Benes had little time away from baseball, and it wasn’t the easiest start for the newlyweds. He had a job in a furniture store during the day and was at Municipal Stadium or on the road for long stretches for the next three months.

  “I developed as a person, and that was a very demanding summer,” Benes said. “You worked all day and played ball at night. I matured as a young adult. I learned responsibility working at the furniture store, and I learned how to be accountable on the ball diamond. That is what Merl demanded. Being accountable for what you do is something that many do not want. I had a job to do at the furniture store, and I took great pride in that. I worked for a nice man, and that was his livelihood. I had responsibilities, and I wanted to make my boss proud. You get out of things what you put in. I took that mind-set into what I do on and off the field. I didn’t want to let down myself or anyone else.”

  How Benes arrived at Clarinda is a longer story. It begins with his college coach, Jim Brownlee, who earlier in his career coached at Illinois State. In 1974 he became the manager of the Galesburg, Illinois, team of the Central Illinois Collegiate League, a collection of college summer teams much like the A’s. Brownlee had heard about Merl and the A’s after Ozzie Smith played there. He later met Merl at the annual baseball coaches’ convention, and theirs became a decades-long friendship. At first Brownlee hesitated to send players to Merl for a simple reason: he didn’t think his guys were good enough. At the same time, he also knew how valuable a summer in Clarinda could be, so he kept searching for players he could send to Merl. Brownlee’s “philosophy” was that if you’re sent to Cl
arinda, “you are going to find out if you really want to play baseball. It was like the minor leagues. Bus rides. Every day using a wood bat and facing good pitching. Lots of guys would realize, ‘This is not the life for me.’ Merl was going to make them work. I am old school, he is old school.”

  Brownlee also liked the small-town quality of Clarinda. “You couldn’t get into too much trouble in Clarinda,” he said. “And having players live with people—I liked that. It was not only a baseball experience, it was a life experience.”

  For the six players arriving in Clarinda and the rest of the team that year, it was a time of testing. The Jayhawk League in 1987 was filled with future major league players, so every night they would be facing essentially a version of a college All-Star team. These six young men also dreamed of making it to the big leagues, and had that potential, but so did almost every player who came to Clarinda or played for one of the other teams in the league. An overwhelming number of them would find out that summer how shockingly small the odds were for stepping onto a major league field. “When you are playing every day like that, it’s not like college with one or two games during the week and three games on the weekend,” Knoblauch said. “We only had one or two days a week off. The more you play, the more reps you can get, the better you become. You were seeing different pitchers. It seemed like the summer leagues had a different style, harder throwers.”

  When Brownlee sent Benes to Clarinda, it was with some trepidation. At that point, “he wasn’t a top prospect, he was just okay,” Brownlee said. But Benes was a tremendous overall athlete. He had arrived at the University of Evansville as a quarterback recruit on the football team. As a freshman, he also played basketball and baseball, something almost unheard of at that level by the mid-1980s. He’d had an unremarkable freshman year, and during his sophomore year he’d had only an average fastball. Brownlee decided he should see what Benes’s potential was in Clarinda.

  That summer would be the first time in his athletic career that Benes had made baseball his sole focus. He started to throw harder as the summer wore on and to gain confidence. He threw more than he ever had before, almost seventy-seven innings over the summer. At the National Baseball Congress tournament that summer, his fastball hit ninety miles an hour for the first time, and professional scouts in the stands were impressed. One scout from the Phillies said they would be following him in the spring to gauge their interest in drafting him. Benes started to throw even harder.

  Once Benes had talked with the scout, he called Brownlee and said he was giving up the other sports to concentrate on baseball. Brownlee knew the football coach would be steamed, but he told Benes he had to call him. Benes did, and the football coach was in fact furious.

  The decision changed the course of Benes’s life. Starting after the summer in Clarinda, Benes played fall baseball and maintained a consistent throwing program for the first time. By the next spring with the University of Evansville, he was routinely throwing ninety miles an hour. At a college tournament in Wilmington, North Carolina, Benes was set to face Georgia Southern, and the stands were packed with about thirty scouts, including several cross-checkers—advanced scouts sent to verify initial promising reports. After Benes warmed up, his pitching coach turned to Brownlee and said, “You aren’t going to believe this. Benes is going to put on a show.” His first pitch was ninety-four miles an hour. “He had never thrown that hard,” Brownlee said. “He struck out twenty-one of twenty-seven with only eight breaking balls.”

  Benes, who had been a biology major, now knew he could make a living as a baseball player. Both he and his coach traced his rise to his summer in Clarinda. Life slowed down for him in the small town, and so did the game. He started to think of his life as a newly married man and the obligations that went with it. Without the distractions of college, he had time to think. At Merl’s direction, he took everything about the game more seriously, from how he warmed up before a game to the workouts he did between starts to help restore his body and build his strength. Like so many former catchers who became great coaches, Merl had an easy connection with pitchers.

  “Merl truly cared about his players, far more than just on the baseball field,” Benes said. “In some ways he was training us for life, through the vehicle of baseball. Most of the guys were done playing ball within several years of their time in Clarinda, but Merl was always concerned for the guys regardless of whether or not baseball was a career path post-Clarinda. He kept in touch with many of the players long after they finished playing. Merl treated players with respect and was demanding, but did so in a gentle way. He didn’t need to yell or scream to make his point.”

  Merl’s passion for baseball endeared him to coaches who shared it, like Banks, who also admired the enduring quality of the A’s program. “Getting a team going in a small town is difficult, but he did it right,” Banks said. “He was very proud of the fact that he was able to help kids. Everything he did, it seemed like it was for everyone else and never for himself. That’s what coaches do—put everybody in front of themselves. You would never know if he was having a bad day.” Getting a team started, Banks said, was one thing. It was keeping it going that was the real miracle in Clarinda. “I don’t know how in the world he did it. I think he had some mirrors.”

  Banks was highly confident when he sent Cal Eldred to Clarinda after his freshman year. Eldred was a small-town Iowan from a family of quite modest means, but he was also a kid who had a rocket arm and could play other positions on the field besides pitcher. Eldred was comfortable in Clarinda, not put off by it like the players coming from California or from big cities. He was relieved when he and Maurer were assigned Merl and Pat as host parents and they could make their new home in the basement on Lincoln Street. At that time, he felt that he often could relate to coaches even more than his teammates. The other players teased him about the challenges of staying with Merl, with all those rules. “I was like, got something to hide?” Eldred said. “The coach is going to find out what you are doing anyway living in a small town.”

  Merl also knew that Eldred really needed to work that summer to earn money. As the third of six children, Eldred said that the only way he was able to attend college was with a baseball scholarship. So Merl placed the farm kid at the local John Deere dealer, and the fit was natural. He was soon polishing combines, moving junk piles, cleaning up, and mowing. To Eldred, it was just like home.

  Among these players, Eldred was hardly a standout. He found himself sitting on the bench for the first time in his baseball career. Sometimes he served as a bullpen catcher for Benes. His break came when another team arrived with only eight players and he was asked to play first base to fill out their team. He smashed a line drive that broke the cheek of his own teammate. Only then did he start to get innings on the mound.

  For Eldred, though, baseball was only part of the journey. He also carefully watched Merl and Pat, how they interacted, how they rolled with adversity, how they laughed, and how they talked. He learned as much from living with his host parents as he did from playing ball at Municipal Stadium that summer.

  Benes also ate many dinners at the Eberly home on Lincoln Street. He saw how Merl and Pat always tried to have at least one family meal a day, often feeding not just their own family but a number of players as well. In their interactions, he saw the genuine affection the Eberlys had for each other. “It was warm and comfortable to be there, and Mrs. E was always so kind and loving to the boys on the team,” Benes said. “Dinnertime seemed special to me because the family gathered and it was a time to spend together. Meals there were wonderful, and the family was so tight-knit, they made each and every one of us feel as though we were part of their family. That is quite a feat when there are twenty to twenty-five new guys there each year.

  “Merl was certainly the patriarch and had a deep love for his wife and family. They meant the world to him, and his eyes lit up and he was genuinely joyful with Pat and the kids. There was great conversation at dinner, as this was b
efore the technology boom with smart phones and Internet. Just a different era and a refreshing one that my family tries to emulate, especially with all the distractions of life and technology and the fast pace of life.

  “That home on Lincoln Street was a place of solace and a place for guys to see what marriage and family was all about.”

  Eldred had a serious girlfriend at the time from back home. She was two years younger than him, and neither of them liked being away from each other. Merl knew of this relationship from Banks, and he talked with Eldred about it frequently. “Merl had little bits of wisdom,” Eldred said. “He would tell me, ‘You better let her know how much you are falling in love with the game.’ Then Mrs. E would always try to smooth it over. But I knew he saw ability in me that my college coach and high school coach did.” Even so, during that summer, he said, “I wasn’t good enough to be one of the main guys on the staff.”