Free Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) by Jim Bouton

could run under the stands and look up at all kinds of beaver. And anytime anyone was getting a good shot, the word would go out “
Psst
! Section 27.” So to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner” an entire baseball club of clean-cut American boys would be looking up the skirt of some female.
    Beaver-shooting can get fairly scientific. I was still in the minor leagues when we discovered that if you stuck a small hand mirror under a hotel room door—especially in the older hotels, where there were large spaces between the door and the floor—you could see the whole room just by looking at the mirror. This was a two-man operation: one guy on his hands and knees looking at the mirror, the other at the end of the hall laying chicky, as they say. We usually sprinkled some change around on the floor so you’d have a reason being down on it if anybody caught you.
    Spot a good beaver and you could draw an instant crowd. One time in Ft. Lauderdale we spotted this babe getting out of her bathing suit. The louvered windows of her room weren’t properly shut and we could see right into the room. Pretty soon there were twenty-five of us jostling for position.
    Now, some people might look down on this sort of activity. But in baseball if you shoot a particularly good beaver you are a highly respected person, one might even say a folk hero of sorts. Indeed, if you are caught out late at night and tell the manager you’ve had a good run of beaver-shooting he’d probably let you off with a light fine.
    The roof of the Shoreham is important beaver-shooting country because of the way the hotel is shaped—a series of L-shaped wings that make the windows particularly vulnerable from certain spots on the roof. The Yankees would go up there in squads of 15 or so, often led by Mickey Mantle himself. You needed a lot of guys to do the spotting. Then someone would whistle from two or three wings away, “
Psst
! Hey! Beaver shot. Section D. Five o’clock.” And there’d be a mad scramble of guys climbing over skylights, tripping over each other and trying not to fall off the roof. One of the first big thrills I had with the Yankees was joining about half the club on the roof of the Shoreham at 2:30 in the morning. I remember saying to myself, “So this is the big leagues.”

MARCH
8
    Mesa
    Today Joe Schultz said, “Men, you got to remember to touch all the bases.” The occasion was a meeting after our glorious 19–4 victory in which one of the guys on the Cleveland club missed third base and was called out. So the lesson for today was “Touch those bases. Especially first.”
    A couple of things about spring training. Mike Ferraro, an infielder, was with the Yankees last spring. Bobby Cox got a big winter buildup and was supposed to have the third-base job there, but Ferraro had such a hot spring (sportswriters voted him the Yankees’ outstanding rookie; he hit .351, Cox hit .186) they had to start the season with him at third. They let him play eleven games and when he didn’t burn down any buildings they benched him and sent him to Syracuse. He feels that they never intended to use him at all but were embarrassed into it and were not unhappy when he didn’t do well.
    Then there was Duke Carmel. He was supposed to be the second coming of Joe DiMaggio, and they really gave him a good shot. But he didn’t hit in Ft. Lauderdale, and I remember Whitey Ford saying to him, “Well, Duke, it looks like you just can’t hit in southern Florida.” We made a trip to Tampa and he didn’t hit there either. “Well, Duke, it looks like you’re just not a Florida hitter,” Whitey Ford said. Then we played a few exhibition games in the South and Carmel didn’t get a hit. “Well, Duke,” Ford said, “it looks like you just can’t hit south of the Mason-Dixon line.” When the season started it turned out Duke couldn’t hit north of the Mason-Dixon line either, and finally he was sent down when he was about 0-for-57. If they