The Baseball Whisperer Read online

  He was called into the manager’s office. “You are thinking someone got hurt, and you will get sent somewhere, but then it’s like the movie Bull Durham, where the coach says, ‘This is the toughest part of the job,’ and says you are released.” The manager told Ryan that he hadn’t “graded out” at his position. “My question was, how could you grade me when you weren’t playing me? But I got no response. Then in two hours you have to be out of your hotel. You don’t really get a definitive answer why.”

  Ryan knew his father had handled being cut too, and then went on to build the A’s program, to not be defined by any perceived failure. He knew Rick had eventually bounced back too. In fact, having seen Rick go through being released, Ryan said, made it easier for him, even as he noted that baseball is “a dramatic sport” that “really does put a dagger in your heart a lot of times.”

  The Eberlys had their own way of handling the disappointment of not making it as a pro. “I guess we had something to fall back on and not miss the game,” Ryan said. “Some people when they are done playing, they don’t want anything to do with it. But it was Dad’s influence to want to give back to the game.”

  After the bus came to a halt, the flames were now more obvious and the heat was intense. On his way off the bus another player, John Fugazi, grabbed the fire extinguisher and did his best to put out the flames. “It looked like I had it, but all of a sudden it reared up,” said Fugazi, who had come to the A’s from California through a connection to Von Hayes. He told Ryan that the hand­held device was no match for a fire that was growing in intensity.

  Fugazi had been asleep when the tire blew, but he was fully awake now and watching his baseball gear go up in flames. “It was kind of surreal,” he said. “We were sitting there thinking this was just a flat tire . . . The bus driver stayed on the bus until the end. I thought he was going to go down with the ship.”

  The players stood by helplessly watching as their favorite gloves, bats, iPods, laptops, and phones were lost before their eyes. The ones who had taken their phones off the bus started calling parents to say that they were okay. “As we stood a short distance away down the highway, the fire began to take over the whole of the bus, and the once-proud Blue Goose sat ablaze against the lonely backdrop of the Missouri night’s sky,” Ghutzman said.

  He said it took what seemed like hours before the Faucett Volunteer Fire Department responded to the call, and by that time the bus and its contents were mostly charred rubble. Eventually, police and some local reporters came to the scene as well. When they arrived, the firefighters “began working to put out the fire immediately,” Ghutzman said. “When they finally got everything under control, we got the chance to go through some of the stuff in the cargo hold. Generally speaking, the fire destroyed everything. I remember pulling my melted catching gear from my bag. I was only able to salvage one of my mitts, but it was soaked and smelled like smoke. After it dried out a few weeks later, I actually caught a few games with it. It still had the smoky smell, and I referred to it as ‘Ole Smoky’ for the remainder of the year.”

  One of the players took a sixteen-second recording with his phone and later posted it on YouTube. A teammate can be heard saying that he can’t believe what he is seeing and at the same time plaintively noting that all of the team’s equipment is gone, every player’s favorite glove and bat, their cleats, the other gear. Gone. Ryan had the painful task of calling Merl and Pat to tell them about the fire. As parents of six children, they knew that no phone call at two in the morning is good news. “Their first response was, ‘Is everybody okay?’” Ryan said. “I said, ‘Yes, they are not in the greatest mood, but they are okay.’” That had been in no way assured given how fast the fire spread. “Everything happened so fast,” Ryan said. “We were on the side of the road for five minutes and in twenty minutes that bus was pretty much gone. That’s how fast it happened.”

  At first, Merl and Pat were in shock. Merl, who had just been diagnosed with cancer a second time, this time in his colon, was scheduled for major surgery in just four days. How could this all be happening at the same time? Then their stoic side prevailed. If everyone was okay, then that was all that was important. Personal effects could be replaced. Pat, as ever, started to think about how to keep the season going, how to organize the schedule, how to talk to the parents who might have concerns, what to tell the players.

  The team arranged for a Heartland motor coach to take the players back to Clarinda, where they arrived about 5:00 A.M. “We got back to Clarinda so late, and then said, ‘Now what?’” Fugazi said. “What the heck were we going to do?”

  Reese McCulley missed the drama. He had arrived in Clarinda to join the team the night of the fire and was long asleep by the time the drama was playing out an hour to the south. McCulley, who was from Oregon, had come to the A’s through his coach at Linfield College, Scott Brosius, a former major league star with the Yankees who’d had his own short stint with the A’s before he was drafted in 1987. Like so many former players, Brosius had stayed close with the Eberlys and routinely sent them players for summer ball. Brosius wanted McCulley to see how he could do against the higher-level competition that Clarinda offered.

  After he woke up, McCulley went to the A’s clubhouse at Municipal Stadium to find his teammates and coaches in a state of shock. “There was a lot of burned gear, and guys were airing it out. It smelled bad and people’s clothes were stiff and charred.” Merl tried to stay positive, telling the players to be patient, that they would work things out.

  The players had little idea what Merl was going through. He had surgery on June 6, just five days after the bus fire, and underwent follow-up chemotherapy and radiation that lasted until November. He pretty much shielded the players from his own troubles and focused on them and the field. He counseled Fugazi, who was homesick for his girlfriend, and got him to pay attention to baseball, telling him that the personal relationship, if it was real, would survive a couple months in Iowa. Players saw him as a kindly grandfather who could also have his stern moments if they didn’t play the game the right way.

  “Between the 1st and the 6th it would have been so easy to just pack it in and cancel the season, but that is where the true essence of the A’s program became evident,” Pat wrote. “A’s board of directors, auxiliary and house parents stepped up, as did the local Chamber of Commerce and our alumni. Before Merl had gone to Omaha for his surgery, we were assured there would be funds to replace the team’s shoes, gloves, etc., and that the season would go on as planned.”

  What happened next was another validation of what Merl and Pat had spent their lives trying to build. Pat said the recovery from the fire underscored for her the “three F’s” that were the foundation of the program—faith, family, and friends. The Clarinda Chamber of Commerce called her the next day to offer financial help. Members of the team’s board of directors, including Jay Moses, the owner of J’s restaurant, stepped up to drive immediately either to Omaha, Des Moines, or Kansas City, to buy replacement equipment. Each player gave the model of his bat and glove that had been lost. The local clothier put in a rush order on new uniform tops; fortunately, the A’s had kept some older uniforms back at Municipal Stadium.

  Parents of the players sent checks, and insurance money covered some of the loss. Jerry Laverty, an old scout who had worked for several major league teams, contacted his friend Mike Arbuckle, who was then working in the front office for the Philadelphia Phillies. Within days the Phillies sent the Clarinda A’s replacement equipment. “Jerry called me and told me what happened and asked us to help take care of as much as we could,” Arbuckle said. “It was just the right thing to do. I knew how much Merl and Pat had done to keep things going. This was devastating and out of their control, so we wanted to do what we could to help them.”

  Donations poured in from former players and their parents. Ozzie Smith and Von Hayes sent contributions. The son of one former player read about the fire and told his dad, who instantly reconnected wit
h the Eberlys and sent a sizable donation. “I knew Clarinda was a very caring and compassionate community,” Pat said. “But when you see all of this that came from the outside, you realize that you touched someone. It was verification that you weren’t just doing stuff because you were doing it, that it really meant something to other people.”

  Bill Clark, the old scout who became close friends with the Eberlys, also answered the call, sending catcher’s gear and twenty-five dozen baseballs. One former A’s player sent a check for $10,000, another sent $5,000. An account was established at the Page County Federal Savings Association to accept donations.

  The team laptop computer had been destroyed in the fire, and with it, the statistics up to that point. After the scorebook was eventually found, the stats were brought up to date, using pitcher Steve Szkotak’s computer. Donations continued to pour in, even from some of the Japanese tourists who were in Clarinda for the Glenn Miller Festival at the time of the fire. Merl’s fear that the team would have to borrow money to keep operations going proved unfounded.

  For the team, the fire ended up helping to unify them. “It loosens you up,” McCulley said. “After it happens, you laugh about it. There’s nothing you can do about it. And when you start laughing with your teammates and interacting, you get more comfortable and it just makes for a more enjoyable summer. Baseball becomes a different game, and everything started jelling and happening easier on the field.”

  Merl, even distracted by illness, inspired the players with stories about Ozzie Smith. “Just having Merl talk about that gave all of us hoping to have that professional career a glimmer of hope.” McCulley returned to Oregon a better pitcher, having played against the better players in Clarinda. “It was big because it gave me that opportunity. You faced that kind of competition, so it gives you confidence that going forward, this is possible. I can get these guys out. I think it played a huge role in my development. If I hadn’t gone to Clarinda and played baseball that summer, maybe there would be some doubt in my mind. I think all of us appreciate what the Eberlys did. It was not like they were making hundreds of thousands of dollars off the team. They were instilling values through the game of baseball.”

  But as his college career came to a close, McCulley wasn’t drafted by a major league team. He took a job as an intern for the Salem Volcanoes, the minor league team in Salem, Oregon, near his hometown of Keizer, Oregon, which at the time was managed by Tom Trebelhorn, who also had managed in the majors for the Cubs and Brewers. McCulley, whose job was to help with the operational side of things, had his eye on finding some kind of job in baseball.

  The Volcanoes were scheduled to play a preseason game just before the start of official league play. Trebelhorn didn’t want to burn one of his regular pitchers, and he knew that McCulley had pitched in college. So he did the unthinkable: he asked the intern to suit up. McCulley threw “very well,” and so Trebelhorn continued to have him work out with the team, throwing bullpen sessions on the side during the day while working games at night. The Giants then offered McCulley a contract, and he was sent to the Rookie League in Arizona. There he pitched only three and a third innings, giving up three earned runs while striking out eight. But he forever after had the credential of being a professional baseball player.

  In that summer of 2008, McCulley and his teammates had a winning season and made it to the NBC tournament in Wichita. Despite the fire, the team had missed only one game. The Clarinda A’s, which had given so many players their shot, was now getting a second chance in return. On June 23, the A’s hit the road again in a “new” bus, “Blue Goose V”—a 1994 Greyhound.

  14

  Heading Home

  MERL HAD SPENT his time as a baseball player practicing indifference to pain. He had seen plenty of blood in his life, from his fights in his youth, on his hunting trips, and throughout his years on the baseball diamond. He had endured nagging injuries and the aches that came more frequently as he hit his seventies. He just wasn’t one to complain.

  He also wasn’t one who liked to make visiting his doctor a habit. But in April 2007, he went in for a routine physical and came away with a diagnosis of prostate cancer. A man whose life in many ways had been defined by his physicality was now vulnerable. For treatment, he chose a hormone therapy over surgery for a simple reason: he didn’t want his condition to affect the A’s that summer. When the season ended, he had surgery, and his doctors pronounced him cured—another win for the man who lived for competition.

  Just a year later, though, in the spring of 2008, he began to have some troubling symptoms, and doctors discovered a large mass in his lower colon. He couldn’t postpone surgery this time. On June 1, just days before his operation, he had taken his son Ryan’s predawn phone call about the fire on the Blue Goose. There were so many things to think about as Merl tried to ready himself for major surgery at Clarkson Hospital in Omaha. He and Pat made the drive, anxious but resolved. Afterward, the doctors pronounced the operation a success, but told Merl he would need chemotherapy and radiation. Three weeks into the treatment, Merl told his oncologist that something “didn’t feel right,” but he was encouraged to continue to get the full twenty-eight days, and the doctors said he was doing well. So well, in fact, that they gave Merl approval to go on a pheasant-hunting trip in South Dakota with his sons and grandsons in October. Von Hayes joined them, along with a couple of other former players. Merl was able to walk with them in the morning, but rode with the guide in the afternoon.

  The treatments had been debilitating, causing far more pain that he had ever experienced. It got so bad that Pat felt the need to schedule an appointment with the family doctor, Bill Richardson. The day of the appointment she heard Merl moving about upstairs and told him to “hurry up” because it was almost time to leave. Merl said he didn’t feel like going. Pat said, “Merl James Eberly, either you are going with me or I am calling the ambulance.” Merl relented.

  Bill Richardson, whose efforts at a high school track meet Merl had mercilessly criticized decades before, was now helping to keep Merl, who had become a valued friend, alive. After examining him, he admitted Merl to the hospital and ordered intravenous fluids to reverse severe dehydration. The next day, November 11, 2008, Merl was taken by ambulance to Bergan Mercy Hospital in Omaha.

  He was getting worse and felt like his doctors weren’t listening to him. When Merl’s oncologist came to see him, Merl looked up, grabbed his jacket, pulled him down to the bed, and said, “From now on, please listen to older patients. They know what their bodies are telling them.” The doctor said he had no idea there was so much damage because Merl had appeared to be such a big, strong man.

  Pat could tell that Merl was also getting depressed, so she spoke to him as only she could. “I gave him a hug and told him, ‘I know you’re not feeling good, but you just have to suck it up and deal with it.’” Merl would later recount the story to friends and joke about what a “compassionate” wife he had.

  Early on the morning of November 19, Merl said he saw an angel at the foot of his bed and told Pat later that his first thought was, I’ve got to quit using this morphine pump so much. Still, he said, a feeling of calm had washed over him at that moment. Merl was raised to study the Bible and usually read it every day, though he was not a regular churchgoer.

  The next day was a flurry of medical procedures, and Merl was failing quickly. His surgeon came in at 9:00 A.M. and told Merl he would be operating on him that afternoon at 2:30. “If you could bring me back to this room, I would be eternally grateful,” Merl said. “If not, that’s all right too.”

  Merl made it through surgery, and he was able to go back to his home on Lincoln Street on December 5. “We really didn’t think he would make it, and I knew he felt the same way,” Pat said. “When we got home and he got upstairs to his own bed, he cried and cried, saying he never thought he would come back home.”

  By Christmas, Merl, though still weak, had recovered to the point that he could once again play Santa fo
r his younger grandchildren and great-grandchildren. More chemotherapy seemed to keep the cancer in check, and he was able to enjoy another A’s season in 2009. Each summer brought its own special joy, with the sounds and rhythms of the game and the chance to see old friends at the ballpark. For the first six months of 2010, Merl and Pat had reason to hope, and he was seen around town as the two of them busily prepared for another season. Then, in the middle of 2010, a second oncologist told Merl that his cancer had spread to his liver, on multiple spots—a most troubling sign.

  He had beaten back disease now for the better part of three years, but this was different. He was just so tired, though it raised his spirits when he heard from his former players or old friends. As word of his worsening condition spread, the calls to the old coach were increasing.

  Andrew Cashner, the pitcher from Texas sent to him by his college coach and former A’s player Jeff Livin, had become the polished pitcher Merl thought he could be. He had been signed by Merl’s beloved Chicago Cubs and was pitching at the time for the team’s Triple A affiliate in Des Moines. With Merl in decline, Ryan called Cashner to tell him of his condition. Cashner was soon in his car to drive the two hours to Clarinda. There he met up with Merl in the dugout at Municipal Stadium.

  When Cashner arrived in Clarinda in the summer of 2006, he had been more potential than real prospect. Tall and lean but obviously strong, he had a live arm and a confident manner on the mound. He had only started pitching in his senior year of high school and had thrown just twenty innings during his freshman season in college. He could throw ninety-five miles an hour, but didn’t always know where the ball was going. Livin thought a summer in Clarinda might be just the thing to refine Cashner’s obvious athletic gifts.