The Baseball Whisperer Read online

  Merl did see Eldred’s potential, but he wanted the pitcher to know the price he would have to pay if he wanted to pursue professional baseball, including the possible effect on his family. He conveyed to the younger man just how hard the work ahead of him was, not to scare him but to prepare him. It was the kind of conversation that Merl always wished someone had had with him when he made his own journey through professional baseball. In those days, though, personal considerations were considered quite secondary. “He knew what being a small-town kid from Iowa was like,” Eldred said. “We talked . . . he said, ‘Look, there are long bus rides, you don’t make much money.’ We talked about family, about how you have to figure that out. You have to decide what is more important, getting married and having a family and being around them all the time or being a professional baseball player and all the time that requires. He wasn’t trying to persuade me to go one way or the other. He had been down that road himself. He had watched his sons. He had watched guys like Ozzie Smith and Von Hayes.”

  Merl told Eldred that, for him, family came first. That meant that he loved them first, and so his other major decisions always flowed from how he could nurture and provide for his family. “So by his actions and by his words, that’s what he would tell us,” Eldred said. “He would come out and say that. He didn’t tell me I had to do that, but it was pretty obvious that if I had to make a choice, he would want me to choose my family over something selfish. And if you were going to choose a career in baseball and do all the things you need to do, you better make sure [your wife] knows that because she is going to have to buy in.”

  Merl saw a lot of himself in Eldred. After the White Sox released him, he could have tried to latch onto another team. Instead, he chose to build his life and family in Clarinda with Pat. Baseball continued to dominate his life, just not in the way he had originally envisioned. Their marriage had endured because they had a partnership both on and off the field. For Eldred and his girlfriend, who would later become his wife, the summer in Clarinda helped them begin to establish the kind of trust they would need to make a baseball marriage survive. “I learned a lot from Merl and Pat about what a baseball family was going to look like,” Eldred said.

  Merl was always quick to acknowledge Pat’s powerful role in the program. “Don’t give me any credit for Clarinda A’s baseball,” he told the Omaha World-Herald. “If anybody is important to the A’s program, it’s Pat.” He was being interviewed as he sat behind his desk at the Herald-Journal, having coached in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the night before—a six-and-a-half-hour drive away.

  Merl had a natural affinity for Eldred, but he didn’t have the same kind of personal connection with another of his players that summer, the one who seemed like a sure thing. Knoblauch had a Texas swagger, at least among his teammates, even as he was quiet and shy with his host parent. When you saw Knoblauch’s skills, Eldred said, it gave you a hint of what it might really take to make it to the big leagues. There was good, and then there was Knoblauch.

  While still in college, Eldred would get a taste of Knoblauch’s talent on the receiving end. The Iowa Hawkeyes were playing Texas A&M, and Knoblauch had become an All-American. Banks told his pitcher that he thought Knoblauch was going to bunt, and he advised him to keep the pitch up so that Knoblauch would be more likely to pop up. Eldred followed his coach’s instruction and threw a high fastball to his former summer teammate. Knoblauch had no intention of bunting and instead hit a three-run homer. “I said to Cal, ‘What do I know?’” Banks said sheepishly.

  Brosius was in Clarinda for only a short time—just five games—because he was selected in the twentieth round of the draft that year by the Oakland A’s, with whom he signed on June 9. Even with so brief an association, though, Brosius saw what was special about Clarinda and the team that Merl had built. As he rose in his own baseball career he stayed connected to the Eberlys. Later he would send his own players for summer baseball in the cornfields.

  When the season started, Merl was most excited about Riesgo, who was returning for another season from San Diego State. At the time, Ozzie Smith, Buddy Black, Von Hayes, Darrell Miller, and Mark Williamson were the only Clarinda A’s in major league baseball. “There will be others,” Merl told the World-Herald. “We think our next major leaguer will be Nikco Riesgo.” He had good reason for that confidence. That summer Riesgo batted .354 with 14 doubles, 15 home runs, and 54 RBIs.

  Merl had two other players he could count on that year: his oldest son, Rick, who could still swing the bat, and his middle son, Ryan, a player with professional promise of his own who had begun his career with the A’s as the team’s batboy in the 1970s. Rick hit .294 in the nineteen games he played and drove in seventeen runs, almost one per game. Ryan was starting to do a self-assessment, comparing himself to Knoblauch, among others. He knew he had a lot of work to do.

  The team went 43-23 in 1987 and finished in the first division of the Jayhawk League, advancing to the fifth round of the National Baseball Congress championship. Merl had no way of knowing that this team would produce major league players, and in the moment that wasn’t really his concern. The longer he coached the A’s the more he was convinced that baseball was so much more than a game. For a few months in the summer, he had these young men, and he hoped to provide them with something that would long outlast their playing days.

  “I think success is in this instance being able to give young men the opportunity to experience all of the elements,” Ozzie Smith said. “Having to work during the day, play baseball at night, there is a growing that goes on in a little town like this that I am not sure you get anywhere else. And it prepares you not only for where you live but for life. The values in a place like this are values that stay with you for the rest of your life.”

  By this time, Merl was well established in the baseball world, with connections from the college ranks to the pros. At the NBC tournament in Wichita, he was treated like an honored guest and held court with coaches, scouts, and players. Coaches from top colleges would send him strong players, knowing that they would be in a positive environment, guided by a real baseball pro and given the opportunity to develop even more.

  At that time, the A’s were part of the Jayhawk League, whose teams were drawn from cities in the nation’s breadbasket. Among the coaches in the league, only Merl did not accept any pay. “If I got paid, it would put too much pressure on,” he said in an interview with the Omaha World-Herald. “And this is my hometown. I think it’s good for the community and this is a contribution toward that. When I used to call players they would say, ‘Clarinda, Iowa? Where is Clarinda, Iowa? Where is that?’ Now I think a lot of people know where Clarinda is.”

  At the same time, 1987 in some ways marked the peak of the team, at least in terms of producing major league baseball players. The game was changing, and Merl’s old-school ways were not necessarily what players were looking for. This was the go-go, “greed is good” 1980s, and players were finding this middle-of-the-country hamlet and its stern taskmaster less appealing. In addition, scouts were shifting their attention to Cape Cod, with its vacation-like appeal, not to mention the fact that all the Cape Cod League teams played on fields no more than an hour’s drive away from each other. The A’s traveled hours on the Kansas Turnpike, and the Blue Goose broke down so often that players said they were on a first-name basis with local mechanics.

  Butch Ghutzman, at the time the coach at the University of Houston, and a friend of the Eberlys for more than three decades, acknowledged that Clarinda “couldn’t draw like the Cape Cod League.” More and more as the years went by, he said, college players “were wined and dined. They had other options.” Yet Ghutzman continued to send players to Clarinda, including Knoblauch, along with his three sons, to test their love of the game. “In order to know if you love this game, you have got to play in that kind of situation to appreciate what you have,” he said. “You have to love the sweat, learn to clean your clothes, take care of your shoes, practice, play bas
eball with no fans. They don’t have the bright lights and all that.”

  The 1980s were also a time of economic difficulty in Iowa as the state made the transition to an economy less dependent on agriculture. For many rural areas the financial struggles were unrelenting, and that made contributions to the A’s all the more difficult to come by. Businesses were either contracting or being taken over by larger corporations. The neighbor-to-neighbor transactions that Merl had used for years to solicit money had become more difficult to complete. Merl even tried to persuade people in Clarinda that the players were helping to stimulate the local economy with their spending. “They will bring with them and spend a lot more money than they earn here and this should and will be a welcome boost to our sluggish economy,” he told them. “Surveys through the years reflect players purchasing items such as clothing, gas, food, newspaper subscriptions, shoes and equipment to mention a few and so do the fans, friends and relatives that follow them here throughout the summer.”

  He made it clear that while all the local donations were appreciated, it was the more sizable contributions from former players that allowed him to have a budget to be competitive; such enduring ties to Clarinda showed the mutuality of the relationship. “A lot of young men who have gone through the program are now sharing in the expense of keeping it going, showing that it meant something to them when they were here even though they no longer play and surely folks in our community [are] much better off because they did and still do care,” Merl said.

  Even though the A’s had been around for nearly two decades as a college team, Merl kept reminding the people of Clarinda to watch out for the players on an emotional level as well. “Keep in mind that the first couple of weeks are tough for these youngsters who are a long way from home and without friends,” he noted. A player new to Clarinda “sees only new faces and another big athletic challenge in his step toward his goals. In several cases the young man has not been home since Christmas break.” He conceded that the players “may seem different to us and they probably are. They are from all walks of life and from different parts of the country. They have come to Clarinda to be part of one team and that in itself is a tough challenge.”

  The constant financial pressure was one of many challenges Merl faced. He could count on getting money from Hayes, Gans, Black, and, of course, Smith, who that year hit his career-best .303 and kidded his old coach for labeling him “all field, no hit.” But people in the town were strapped, barely able to sustain their own businesses. A simmering tension began to be felt. But Merl wasn’t afraid to confront it. “This past summer was a tough one for A’s workers and hopes of some people helping out are voiced,” he wrote in his column “Sports Shorts by ME.” “It takes a lot of time and work when just a few have to carry the load. We feel the program is good for the whole community and would like a few more people to step forward and lend a hand. Anyone wishing to help out in any way will be welcomed as part of the program. Contact Eberly.”

  Merl didn’t mind being the underdog. And he knew he wasn’t going to change his ways or lower his standards or coddle some superstar. He had his sense of right and wrong, and that was that. He was teaching more than baseball.

  “He welcomed players into his home and treated us as if we were family,” Benes said. “Just his actions made people feel welcome. He had a genuineness that you just felt when you were around him. Merl taught us how to play the game with respect. How to conduct ourselves on the field. How to deal with umpires and the opponent. He demanded that we respect the great game of baseball and maxed out our effort when it was our turn to play.

  “Merl was a father figure for so many young men,” Benes observed. “He cared enough about us to teach us. He did this by his words and more so by his actions. Words can be cheap if actions don’t match. Merl was a man of integrity. He did what he said he’d do. He taught us how to play the game and develop as ballplayers and young men, but did so in a kind way. A way that showed us he cared. He spent a lot of time with us and got to know us and what made us tick. Then he could relate to us in a way we could understand. And he did it with dignity and class.”

  Six players on the A’s 1987 roster would go on to play in the majors. Only one Cape Cod League team from that year could make the same boast. Knoblauch was drafted two years later in the first round by the Minnesota Twins and was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1991. He would be named an All-Star four times in his twelve-year career playing for the Twins, the New York Yankees, and the Kansas City Royals. Knoblauch’s Clarinda credential helped him when he first went to a big league spring training and both Ozzie Smith and Von Hayes talked to him about Merl and the A’s. Smith helped ease Knoblauch’s transition to the majors by talking to him about how to play the infield.

  In the 1992 All-Star Game, Knoblauch and Smith were on opposing teams, Knoblauch playing for the American League, Smith for the National League. Knoblauch took a picture of the scoreboard with his picture showing, and his parents were there to share the moment. When he scorched a ground ball up the middle, he was certain that he had recorded his first All-Star hit. “Then Ozzie lays out” to get the ground ball and “throws me out,” Knoblauch said. “Typical.”

  The year after his summer in Clarinda, Benes was the Collegiate Pitcher of the Year and a member of the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic team. He was also the first pick in the major league draft and went on to record 155 wins, with 2,000 strikeouts, including 10 in his professional debut. He had left the University of Evansville after his junior year but would finally earn his college degree in 2011 from St. Louis University.

  Cal Eldred was taken as the seventeenth pick in the first round of the 1989 draft, seven spots ahead of Knoblauch, the player he thought had it all. Eldred pitched in the majors for fourteen years, for the Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago White Sox, and St. Louis Cardinals. He returned to his native Iowa once he retired from baseball.

  Brosius went on to star for the Yankees as well, earning the Most Valuable Player Award in the 1998 World Series.

  Rob Maurer played a year of major league baseball before returning to Evansville. His roadblock to the majors—during an era when an organization controlled a player’s rights for six years—was that he was playing behind an even better first baseman, Rafael Palmeiro.

  Nikco Riesgo, the player who stood above the rest that summer in Clarinda, also made it to the major leagues, playing for the Montreal Expos. A career that seemed to have so much promise produced one hit in the big leagues, a line drive up the middle off Frank Viola.

  The success of these players would become a source of affirmation for Merl, who was starting to feel a cross-pressure in his own life as never before. His town and his world were changing at the same time. A new owner of the Clarinda Herald-Journal was consolidating operations, which invariably meant that there would be less local news in the only local newspaper. As part of an effort to cut costs, management decided that the paper no longer needed two advertising salespeople. So they turned to the man who had walked Clarinda’s streets for thirty years, wingtip shoes shined, clipboard in hand, the one who had leveraged friendships into sales, and told him, coldly, that he was being let go.

  Merl was stunned. He wasn’t sure how many more years he wanted to work, but he knew that for a number of reasons he was not ready to retire, particularly not involuntarily. He fumed with resentment. This was not the Clarinda he had known, but with out-of-town owners, he knew there was really no one to fight for his job. This was an impersonal corporate decision. His job had fallen victim to the sweeping trend toward consolidation in the media business, often at the cost of coverage of local communities. The local stores on the town square had always been a point of pride in the community; so were the ads they placed in the Herald-Journal—a binding force in the community for generations—and the donations they made to the team.

  Merl was seeing that when the owner of a business was no longer a neighbor, loyalties were lost as well. He had a small ownership stake
in the paper, so he did receive a modest payout, but hardly enough money to retire on. He and Pat bought a small motel in town and tried to make ends meet by running it. His team was being threatened, and so was his ability to take care of his family, as he had counseled Benes to do. Merl liked to be in control, and now he clearly was not.

  9

  Opportunity

  JAMEY CARROLL WAS just the kind of player Merl loved to coach. Not because he was big or powerful, not because of a can’t-miss arm, exceptional power, or amazing speed. Merl liked Jamey Carroll because he really had none of those tools but no one ever outworked him. As a young college player, Carroll was listed as only five-foot-eight and about 160 pounds, so he did not stand out anywhere among the top prospects who played at major college baseball programs or produced eye-popping numbers at showcase camps. You had to watch him closely to see the nuance and subtlety of his play, even the way he ran off and on the field, to appreciate him.

  For as long as he had played or coached or preached about baseball, Merl had insisted that players needed to honor the game and its traditions. No player ever earned the right to do less than his best. “Ninety feet!” he would yell. “Don’t be a pansy!” “Hobby Dobby!” There was simply a right way to do things. Some players would roll their eyes—behind Merl’s back—but to Carroll, Merl’s words resonated. Carroll quickly came to realize that Merl was there every summer by choice—putting in all those hours, taking all those swings of the fungo bat, throwing all those pitches at batting practice, riding all those miles on the highways and county roads. Merl taught him an enduring lesson: Nobody will ever do the work for you. You have to own your work ethic.

  Carroll was from Newburgh, Indiana, just east of Evansville, along the Ohio River. He was the middle of three boys in his family. They were all athletes and played whatever sport the season demanded—baseball, football, or basketball, the last being akin to religion in the state. Carroll really liked all these sports but over time gravitated to baseball. He kept a poster of a local hero, Don Mattingly, the New York Yankees star, on his bedroom wall. His older brother started to specialize in football and eventually earned a college scholarship. Carroll thought he might be able to do the same in baseball, and getting a scholarship would ease the financial hardship on his parents.