‘I Didn’t Think Baseball Players Were Real People’: An Interview with Richie Scheinblum

This interview was conducted as part of the oral-history project of Jewish Major Leaguers, Inc.

Editor’s note: Richie Scheinblum’s recollection of some of the factual details of his career is approximate and not necessarily precise. In a few instances, we interpolated a bracketed correction of, for example, an individual’s name, but for the most part we trust that readers will appreciate that this is an oral history, not an encyclopedia article.

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RICHIE SCHEINBLUM grew up in a poor section of the Bronx, moved to New Jersey as a youngster, and overcame more odds of making it to the major leagues than did most.

Just a year before baseball instituted the free-agent draft in 1965, Scheinblum signed a professional contract with the Cleveland Indians, earned his first service in the major leagues as a 22-year-old, and eventually played eight seasons with six different organizations-Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators, Kansas City Royals, Cincinnati Reds, California Angels, and St. Louis Cardinals-plus two years in Japan.

A notoriously poor hitter in the spring when it was cold, Scheinblum hit well later in the season. A classic example was 1973, when he began the year in Cincinnati and hit .222 in 29 games before being traded to California, where he batted .328, including .371 after the All-Star break and .419 in September.

In 1972, Scheinblum was leading the American League in hitting for almost half the season and was voted to the American League All-Star team along with outfielder teammates Lou Piniella and Amos Otis—one of the few times three outfielders from the same team have been so honored.

Overall, Scheinblum hit .263 in parts of eight major-league seasons. Playing for the Hiroshima Carp in 1975 and 1976, he hit .281 and .307.

In the minor leagues, Scheinblum made a name for himself as a great contact hitter, hitting as high as .388 one season for the Denver Bears (affiliated with the Washington Senators at that time) of the American Association.

Today Scheinblum lives in Palm Harbor, Florida, just west of Tampa, the first stop north of Clearwater on Florida’s Gulf Coast. He has operated as an independent contractor for logo companies for fourteen years, ordering shirts and souvenirs with company emblems for clients coast to coast.

He was interviewed Saturday evening, March 26, 2005, at his home.

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I grew up in the south Bronx in Fort Apache. I was a foster child until I was seven. From ages one and a half until seven, my mom was sick in the hospital. My dad took a regular day job and worked for my uncle as a CPA and went to Pace College at night. It took him thirty-one years to become a CPA.

He put my brother and I in different foster homes and every Sunday would pick us up at whatever houses we were living in and we’d go to the hospital. She was in the French Hospital, and I found out later that’s where Babe Ruth was, and where he died.

When I went to the hospital to visit my mother, I’ve got to guess Babe Ruth was there, too. I have that link to Babe Ruth. My mom died when I was seven, in 1949. Babe Ruth died in 1948.

I’m not sure what my mother had. We were just told a couple years ago by my uncle, during an appendectomy, the doctor left something in there. That infected and ultimately killed her. Every once in a while they’d let her out and my dad would get us together and we’d spend a little time together. It wasn’t that often.

I was told this by my relatives. My mother was born in Russia, in the Ukraine, in a little town called Verinyon. My grandmother had six or seven sisters. One of the sisters was Moe Berg’s mother. Another sister was Abe Saperstein’ s mother, and his brother was Pinhas Sapir, who became one of the first finance ministers of Israel. That was Saperstein’s brother. And a third sister was the mother to Allen Ginsberg, the weirdest guy in Jewish history. Of course, I knew none of them, but these are my grandmother’s sisters. I have a picture of my grandmother and there is a bit of a chart.

My mother’s name was Lee. She wasn’t a model, but she could have been. She was once named Miss New York City. My father was Fred. I was told my mother was such a character. In the ’20s and ’30s she smoked. She flew in airplanes. She rode horses. She did things that women didn’t normally do.

No, I didn’t have a bar mitzvah. One day, I’m going to. When I lived with my uncle between the ages of five and seven, there was a shul at the end of the street. My brother and I were there every day, sitting in the front row. And my grandmother, I think, spoke strictly Yiddish. I just know a couple of words. I always went to the High Holy Day services—Yom Kippur, of course I go to Yizkor services, and I’m a good Jew, other than getting some of the formalities. One day, I’m going to get it done.

My uncle’s was one of the homes I lived in. It was a kosher house we lived in. And my brother and I were always at the shul at the end of the street in the morning. I don’t know what we did there. But I know we always sat in the front row.

My brother’s name is Bob. He lives in Texas and was a fighter pilot for the Marines, and his son has served tours of duty in Iraq. He flies F18s and took his wife’s place recently. She was the one who was deployed. She’s a fighter pilot for the navy. But they have two young kids, so David volunteered to go instead. My brother retired as a colonel in the Marines. He’s two to three years older than me—way older than me.

Interesting guy, though. He is extremely intelligent. He was a federal attorney for a bunch of years. Graduated second in his law class at Arizona and became a federal attorney. He never got flying out of his blood, so he was a captain for Western Airlines, and, when they went under, he was a captain for Delta for, oh, 25 years, and retired a couple years ago. Now he flies a G2 corporate jet.

Bob always included me with his friends. I have to give him a lot of credit. He helped me. When you look back, you sometimes forget those things.

I was seven and my brother was 10 and my dad remarried and we moved to Englewood, New Jersey. Before that, the only place we lived together as brothers was at my uncle’s house. It was right across the street from Crotona Park. Hank Greenberg was from my neighborhood. I didn’t know. We didn’t have TV. I don’t think we were allowed to listen to the radio very much.

We had one game, and that didn’t belong to us—Monopoly. I think my aunt’s brother lived in the house also. And her father, he always had the payas on, and he’d walk to the table and we were playing a game. And he’d knock it off and I guess sit and daven. He didn’t like us.

I got interested in baseball playing across the street in a little side park. It was a little fenced-off area right next to Crotona Park. And we were there every day. Rocky Colavito told me he used to play there. He’s from the same neighborhood. Rod Carew told me he played on that field.

No, I didn’t think I would play in the major leagues. Growing up, until I was eight, nine, ten years old, I didn’t think baseball players were real people. I didn’t know how to put two and two together. I didn’t see them on TV. We didn’t read newspapers when I was seven, eight, nine years old. We listened to the radio for games when we were allowed. I didn’t put together that people on the radio were real people.

Dick Schaap explained this to me. If you look back, Mickey Mantle wasn’t just a baseball player. He was the first TV star in the United States—full-blown TV star. When most people thought about getting their first black-and-white TV in 1950, ’51, all of a sudden there’s the biggest sports hero in the country, Mickey Mantle. He was the idol of every man, woman, little girl, little boy. They watched the World Series with Mickey Mantle. You know, the clean-cut-everything. I couldn’t believe he could be a real person.

I did go to camp, Camp Keeyumah in northeastern Pennsylvania. Tony Kornheiser, the writer and radio and television personality, was one of the kids in my bunk. A lot of famous young kids were up there. Peggy Lipton was on the girls’ side. Also in my bunk was Aaron [Mark?] Shimmel—he was a manager of a lot of musical people such as John Denver and Wham with George Michael. Then he became CEO of Laface Records.

As poor as my family was growing up in the Bronx, this [athletics] was one of those things where you get dirty, and they [other family members] weren’t that pleased with me doing it, knowing it may have been my only chance to stick with my smarts. I was a smart kid, and I was still failing, nothing special. But baseball was my way out of a predicament.

The first big-league game I ever played in was the first big-league game I ever went to. I never went when I lived in the Bronx. We lived in the slum areas of the Bronx. So that’s why I couldn’t put two and two together.

Someone said Yankees pitcher Joe Page lived in Englewood after we moved there. And I thought I saw him walk into the drugstore. I couldn’t tell you what Joe Page looked like now. I knew everyone’s name. I knew all their statistics, probably of all the teams. And suddenly, my baseball cards were coming to life.

I wanted nothing to do with the Dodgers. Growing up, my uncle was a Giants fan. And he was the first one in my family to have a TV. When we’d go to his house, it was a special occasion. We would always watch the New York Giants. And the reason I liked the Yankees is I’d always fool around hitting right-handed and left-handed, and a lot of switch-hitters, in my day, they became switch-hitters so they could hit ground balls and run to first. It gave them another second. A lot of them weren’t pure switch-hitters. I started doing it from the first day I started playing.

I’m a natural righty, but all my statistics were much better left-handed. When we moved to New Jersey, a couple of kids and I would play lefty baseball. You’d have to hit left-handed. You’d have a pitcher, a batter, a first baseman, and an outfielder, so you couldn’t use the whole field. Some of the kids hit right-handed if it felt natural.

In high school I wanted to play major-league baseball, but I didn’t think it was a feasible thought.

I don’t know how to explain this. It’s like watching a cartoon. While you’re in the midst of watching a cartoon, even though it might be incredible, everything seems real in there, because you’ve now watched the movie. But at the end of the movie, it’s just cartoons. It’s a dream. It’s a fantasy. And I just—I don’t know. I was always told I was good. But I was always the smallest one on my team.

I went to C. W. Post. I had all these conditional athletic scholastic scholarships at the end of my junior year in high school. Then I took my college boards. I got a 705 in math, 725 in advanced math, and 374 in English. And it was all from the reading. My vocabulary was fine. I remember when I took the test, I read it and I answered the multiple-choice questions, and I answered them and got them all right, and when they rang the bell there were 17 more to go. So I wound up with a 374, barely literate.

And I took them once more and basically had the same scores. I lost all my conditional scholarships, to Columbia, to Colby College. They all told me I’d never pass freshman English. So basically, I didn’t go to class my senior year in high school. I’d walk into class and sneak out with my best friend and we’d go play pool or something. So I went from 24th in my class I think to 75th. And I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to find a baseball contract.

In high-school baseball, I was always the smallest, and I always did well. And I had a couple of small bonus offers from the Yankees and Mets. I remember Houston offered me something, and a few other teams. But my dad said, “You’re not playing. You’re going to college.”

So he enrolled me at C. W. Post—and, in those days, I think all you had to do was fog a mirror and you got in. But I graduated. I got a year of my master’s in, in business.

My dad used to give me five dollars a month in college. After a couple months, he said, ‘Tm sorry.” He couldn’t come up with the five dollars. So I got small jobs in between all the sports I was in and going to school. I got a job at the post office. I got another one raking leaves for neighbors. And I played three sports. I was the first 10-letter man at C. W. Post.

And I was inducted with the first group of six people in the Post sports Hall of Fame in June [2005]. I played track and basketball as well as baseball.

I started all four years in basketball. I was the only walk-on. Everybody else was a scholarship player. I started on the freshman team and they moved four of our freshmen to start on the varsity. That was very cool. Our coach was George Kaftan, who was a great player at Holy Cross and then with Boston, the Knicks, and Baltimore. He was captain of Holy Cross when Cousy was there.

The assistant coach (who I’ve remained friends with—he was the freshman coach, it was his first year coaching) is now the assistant coach with the Atlanta Hawks—Herbie Brown. His brother Larry and I were counselors at camp, and he and I—well, we had three guards actually. I was the swingman because I was the rebounder. So Larry and Mike Brandeis was the other player and Herbie coached us. We went undefeated for two years. Our final game, we beat the Knicks’ rookie team. So I played guard with Larry Brown for two years. He was very cool. He has turned out to be one of the great coaches ever—and a great basketball player, too.

I signed a pro contract out of college.

This was before the draft. I had these offers to come to different stadiums and try out. The first one was Pittsburgh. So my father, my college coach, and I took a train to Pittsburgh. Joe E. [Joe L.] Brown Jr. was the general manager. I had a great workout in a gigantic park. It was Forbes Field. And the part I will never forget—I had never met a [professional] baseball player before. I went into a locker room—they put me in the boiler room of the visiting team.

I came in, and I noticed a couple of Dodgers players were watching me work out. So I walked into the boiler room, and two players walked in—Tommy Davis and Frank Howard. I will never forget how kind they were. And they said nice things.

The offer that Joe E. Brown gave me seemed great. He said I had a great workout, and this is what they offered me. And it was more money than I had ever heard of. It was double what my father was making eight thousand dollars. And my college coach says, No, if you don’t come up with more, then we’re going to be on our way. I couldn’t swallow.

So we took the train to Cleveland. Actually, there’s a story written about this incident with Hoot Evers, who had the workout. He said, “You did great.” He offered me $12,000. I jumped across the table. I grabbed his pen and signed it before my coach could say anything.

I only went to Pittsburgh and Cleveland to see about a contract, but there were other places I was going to go after that. My coach is one of my great friends and he was inducted into the C. W. Post Hall of Fame too. The first time I saw him after I signed, he was doing the draft for the Indianapolis Colts, and he’s the one who picked Edgerrin James over Ricky Williams in the draft—Dom Anile. He played with Tommy Davis in high school.

He was my baseball coach and also the football coach. He told me not to sign. I think at the time my dad was making right around $4,000 a year, or $5,000, and we lived in a decent home in Englewood, but we had five kids and we never really had spendable money.

I was on my way. I told my dad, “You and I never have to work another day in our lives.” I’d never heard of that much money.

I can’t blame anybody for the money they’re making now. I wish I got it. For the couple good years I had in baseball, I could be making three to four million now. I hit .300 three times. That’s decent money now. And when I played, not that many hit .300.

I played on teams and in leagues where they never had a Jewish player. I had one great story: My first roommate in my first year. When I got to the team, there were three guys living in a house. They asked me to come in with them. Now there were four of us. One of them was Harold “Gomer” Hodge, who ended up being a pinch-hitter with Cleveland later in his career.

He was from North Carolina. After we were there for about a week, he asked if he could touch me. And I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “I just want to see what you feel like.” And he touched me on the shoulder. He said, “I noticed in the shower, you weren’t completely covered in hair. And you didn’t have horns or a tail.” I said, “Gomer, what are you talking about?”

He got on the phone that night and called his mother and father. They lived in the hills of North Carolina. And he said that he met a Jewish person and that I didn’t have a body completely covered in hair and I didn’t have horns and I didn’t have a tail. I just thought that was very funny.

We wrote to each other for several years. Thankfully, he made the big leagues for a short time. And he was a decent pinch-hitter. No knock against Gomer. But it’s what people are led to believe. I was also the first Jew to play in Japan. Moe Berg went as a visitor. But I played in Hiroshima, which is a little different.

My playing weight was a lie. I weighed 160, and I was only 5’10.” I started growing like after I got out of baseball. Now, I’m 6’1″ maybe. I just grew late. I started going to spring training at 185. At the end of spring training, I weighed 160. So that was really my playing weight. I had a little tiny waist and I had big shoulders. I had a 30-inch waist. Now, my legs are 30 inches.

Cleveland sent me to Burlington, North Carolina. I was so excited playing there. It was B ball then. The minor leagues were a whole different story than they are now. I got sent to C ball the next year. I got called up, and Birdie Tebbetts said I was too young. I got up like twice in two months.

I never hit over .200 in any April I played. I grew up in cold weather. I just couldn’t function in cold weather. At the time, I just had trouble hitting in cold weather. I remember one spring training, in 1969, I won the triple crown in spring training—batting, RBIs, and home runs. And I started in right field for the Indians. I hit third. And Opening Day was in Detroit. It was the year after Denny McLain won 31 games. I saw him in the first inning. He didn’t strike me out, but I was overmatched. It looked like he was throwing nothing. I was 0 for 4.

Then I faced Mickey Lolich. I had never faced him. I went 0 for 3. It was like 5 degrees out. And the third night we were home and played Boston in a 16-inning game. I was 0 for 7 against Dick Ellsworth, and then Al Dark, my manager, traded for Hawk Harrelson, and I wound up on the bench the rest of the year.

Harrelson was a great player—nothing against that. But my chance ended. I broke the major-league record for the worst start in major-league history. It was 0 for 14 in those first three games, and then I’d spot start for awhile, and pinch-hit, and I didn’t get my first hit—I was 1 for 36. And during that time, I had three strikeouts. 0 for 35. Cleveland Stadium was gargantuan. It was the Grand Canyon, and I had a lot of warning track power.

And I remember Dark called me in his office and he said, “You’re the most snakebit player.” I wound up second in the American League in pinch-hits that year with 16. I still wound up hitting like .190 [.186]. The same thing happened in Washington later in my career. I had a really bad start. I think I hit .146 before they sent me out. As soon as I got rid of April and the cold weather, I could hit.

Whenever I played every day, I always hit .300. The only exception was in Pawtucket. I hit .263 and finished fifth in the league in hitting.

I grew up in cold weather, but we never played baseball in cold weather. I never ice-skated. I just didn’t like the cold weather. I played basketball, always indoors.

I remember somebody in Cleveland, I think it was ’67, he said, “If you ever make it big, the Jewish community will come and support you.” I said, “I need the support now.” Those were really some down years of my life, after I got to the big leagues and saw what other people could do, and people told me I would never make it in the big leagues because I swung up.

At one time Trader Frank Lane—he was very nice to me, straightforward—he took me to lunch one time in Denver. He said, “Richie, I’ve spent a lot of years in baseball. I take you as the greatest minor-league hitter that ever lived, but I know you can’t hit in the big leagues because you swing up.”

But to my face he told me I was the greatest minor league hitter he had ever seen, and maybe in history, but, “I don’t think you can hit big league pitching because you swing up.” I said thanks. If they would only give me a chance.

I hit .388 in Denver. That was the lowest I hit. I was over .400 the whole year. And the next year, 41 pitchers in that league went to the big leagues. I think the whole Oklahoma City staff went to the big leagues. They had James Rodney Richard, I think both Forsch brothers, Pedro Borbon, Tom Griffin. Scipio Spinks was better than all of them. Cedeno was on that team, Mayberry. Cleveland had Dick Tidrow, Mike Paul. Vida Blue was in the league.

I’m just trying to remember names off the top of my head—a lot of great pitchers. And everybody said, Well, you played in Denver and it was a big home-run park. I had 26 home runs that year and 5 of them were at home. The rest of them were on the road.

I went to Denver after I was sent down from Washington. My manager there was Ted Williams. My brother was a friend of Charlie Duke, one of the astronauts who drove a space sled on the moon. He was in awe of him. I felt the same way about Ted Williams.

I listened to everything he said. When I went to Denver, I won the Ted Williams Award for hitting.

I knew I could hit and I begged them: “Please give me a chance. Don’t play me in April. Start me in May.” And nobody would do it. The one who did it was Bob Lemon, in Kansas City, but before he started me I got six pinch-hits in a row. I was leading the major leagues in hitting 4, almost 5 months—in the warm weather.

As soon as it got cold—and I got hurt, too—I told him, “Well let me play. I want to win the batting title.” I didn’t want to sit. I was getting thrown out from left field. Two nights in a row I hit a line drive off my ankle. We didn’t have an ankle shield. Inside slider and I smoke it, off my ankle. So they took me off on a stretcher after they put on that ice stuff.

Lem said, “How you feeling, meat?” I said I want to play. The first pitch, Blue Moon Odom, threw me the exact same pitch. I hit it in the same spot, and I thought I was going to die. My ankle was this big. I was getting thrown out from left field, right field. I dropped 20 something points the last two weeks.

And Carew, who turned out to be one of my really close friends, he wound up winning again. I used to go to his house and say, “You know, that’s my bat you got hanging on the wall.” When we were tied at .328, we were the only two in the American League hitting .300. Then three, four guys passed me. I think I wound up fifth. I don’t think it would have mattered. I wanted to do what Ted Williams did. I wanted to win the batting crown not sitting.

Carew was one of our two to three closest friends when I was married. They spent Thanksgiving with us. We went to dinner all the time, went to Vegas. And Bert Blyleven was a big friend.

Pitchers weren’t always your friends in those days. The first time I faced Larry Sherry, he knocked me down four pitches in a row. It was in the Coast League and I was hitting well at the time. He was a mean pitcher. He was one of those pitchers who would knock you on your ass in a minute. Stan Williams, Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, and Larry Sherry—all four of them would knock you down and come halfway to home plate see if there was anything you wanted to say.

I’m proud to say all four of them have knocked me down. There were plenty of other ones, but those four come to mind. They were also four you don’t want to charge the mound on.

Once April was gone, I’d hit much higher. And it made no difference, majors or minors. Now, I may have been looked at differently.

I hit my first home run in the majors the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon—on July 20, 1969. Years before, a reporter told pitcher Gaylord Perry he might be the worst hitter he had ever seen. He told Perry there was no chance he’d ever hit a home run. And Gaylord said, “They’re going to have to put a man on the moon before I hit a home run.”

He hit one that day, too. It was his first and only home run. What did he have, 25 years in the big leagues? What a prediction. Nostradamus.

I didn’t like Gaylord. Actually, there were very few pitchers I did like, until you get out and you meet him. He’s one of the nicest guys. He’s so down to earth. Very nice. I spent a whole day at a golf tournament with him.

There were some things written about me that I was a flash in the pan for one year. That isn’t true. I was a good hitter. My fielding was a different story. When I first came up, my arm was extremely strong. Rocky Colavito told me my arm was stronger than his, except I never hit the cutoff man. I was like a wild pitcher. I had a funny way of throwing. I wrapped my arm around my back and flung it.

A lot of my errors were throwing errors, more so than fielding errors. Then it got to the point your reputation was there.

But I always could hit, although there were certain pitchers I couldn’t hit. Hoyt Wilhelm-if someone gave me a Prince tennis racket, I couldn’t hit him. I think in one spring training I was 0 for 13 against him and I didn’t get a foul ball. In 1972, my first time facing Wilbur Wood, I got a single and then went 0 for 31 the rest of the year. I couldn’t hit knuckleballs. I couldn’t hit a good changeup. I couldn’t hit a really good curveball. I could hit a hanging curve ball. I didn’t mind sliders that much, ’cause I liked the ball inside on me anyway. A Blyleven curveball was unhittable.

When I was with the Indians, Al Rosen’s kids used to play in my locker. What a treat that was. He was a great guy.

I’m a good Jew. I’m 100 percent Jewish. I don’t fit a lot of the cliches about being Jewish. People who think we’re cheap are wrong. If you look throughout this country, Jews are the most giving, the most philanthropic. Yet we’re known as being cheap. And maybe that was the case a hundred years ago.

I think our people are looked on falsely. We’re not the devil. We’re good people who help neighborhoods. We help countries.

Mike Epstein was my roommate with two teams. There’s a little bit of kinship there with other Jewish players.

I know when I was in Japan, playing for Hiroshima, they had never had a Jew playing there. And, of course, they didn’t understand the religion, even though books have been written where some historians think they may be the lost tribe of Israel.

I played in Japan two years. St. Louis had traded me to the Dodgers. I went to them and said, “I can’t play for the Dodgers.” I hated the Dodgers growing up. Isn’t it funny how something sticks to you? I’d been offered a nice contract to play in Japan. I said, “Would you mind giving me my release so I can go to Japan?” And they gave it to me. The only reason I was traded over to St. Louis was for the pennant drive. And I could say I hit .333 there, but it was 2 for 6.

Anyway, Hiroshima had come in last place something like 29 out of 30 years that they had the league. The other year, they came in fourth. The first year I got there, Gail Hopkins and I were the first two foreigners to play at Hiroshima. And we did well in the Central Division. It was just unheard of.

Forgetting that the bomb was dropped there, they have always been considered the black-sheep town of Japan. And, in essence, they may be the nicest people on earth. They’re just farmers. And the reason we dropped the bomb there is there was a naval-building base on Hiroshima.

Anyway, I had to sit out Yom Kippur and they didn’t understand. The team was doing well, and I was one of the star players and I had a big year.

I said, “I’m sorry,” and without too much explanation I said I just can’t play. I stayed in my hotel room—I mean my apartment—and I hear a knock at my door. This is before the game is coming on. And I opened the door and there are a good forty to fifty reporters. And they completely filled up my place and they started firing questions at me through the interpreters.

I basically said this is my one day of the year I have my one-on-one with God. I atone for my sins, and I just added a little bit about what the day means. The next day in the paper there’s a cartoon of me, and, like every other cartoon of me, it’s a fifty-pound nose and a little body attached to it, and the picture showed me kneeling in front of the TV in my uniform, with my hands together and the game is on. That was their interpretation of Yom Kippur.

That was the only time I had to sit out for Yom Kippur. I was never in the World Series [in the United States]. If it had come, I would have sat it out. I felt an allegiance. Kids were watching. When I was home, I went to services, mostly Yom Kippur services, the closing ceremony, and Yizkor.

After I was traded to the Angels, we moved from the East Coast to the West Coast, and that’s where I stayed.

I was told something I didn’t know. I’m the first major-league player to hit .300 on four continents. That isn’t entirely true, but I hit .300 in North America, I hit .300 in Asia, and I hit .300 in South America a couple of times-and .300 in Central America, which really isn’t a continent. I was also told I’m the only Jewish switch hitter to hit .300. And I was the seventh overall in major-league baseball in the modern era, the seventh switch-hitter to hit .300. That’s pretty cool.

The trivia question is, Who are the other six? One of them you would never guess in a million years. Frankie Frisch, and Pete Rose, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Smith, Ted Simmons, and Red Schoendienst. A few more have done it since then.

After playing two years in Japan, I didn’t retire. I came home and severed my Achilles tendon playing basketball, and I guess in those days you don’t come back from that injury. I was five, six months in one of those March of Dimes metal casts. I was done.

I was married for 24 years. My wife was a Catholic. I didn’t give my son a bar mitzvah. If I had done that, I think my mother-in-law would have had a heart attack. My wife was born in Portugal, and they were strict Catholics, and I had to teach her religion. I don’t know if it was just them or other people, but they just didn’t understand their own religion. They don’t understand the history of what their beliefs are. My wife would go to church and just sit there.

I’d ask her questions because I’d read up on other religions also, especially my own. I raised my son with stories of the Bible I told him. I told him the difference between right and wrong. His name is Monte. I asked him always to ask questions. I never hit my son. I never raised my voice to him. We always discussed everything.

He had no religious training, other than what I taught. He was basically taught at home—his whole education, because we were in Japan a couple of years and we spent winters playing winter ball.

I think he went to preschool. Then he didn’t enter school until the fifth or sixth grade, and, he was so far advanced from all the other kids, we maybe wrongly agreed to put him into high school, with juniors and seniors in high school, when he should have been in the fifth grade. Wherever we went, my wife would read to him and play math games with him. He knew his times tables at a year and a half, which is extraordinary. He is a brilliant kid.

My son has a photographic memory. He lives in Southern California.

We made math a game. That’s one of the faults of education today. They make school a drudge.

The only time he got anything but an A was in physics, and I went to school—not to say I was one of those doting parents trying to get them to correct a grade. Twice a week four kids went to their teacher to get tutored. He had the highest grade in the class—97. The teacher showed it to us, and the four kids he was tutoring, they all got As. The principal was our friend at the school.

I just wanted to know. I wanted an explanation for this. And the teacher said, “Well, I heard Monte was a troublemaker.” I said, “Monte’s never been in trouble in his life.” The kid who said he was a troublemaker ended up being the valedictorian.

My wife and I opened up a jewelry store in Anaheim and we actually sold to a lot of baseball players. I lived there until my divorce. I moved out into the San Fernando Valley and experienced that big earthquake in Northridge. I’ve been through some stuff in my life. My son was at PGA qualifying school in Fort Ord when the earthquake hit during the 1989 World Series. Carney Lansford left him tickets for that game, and he would have gone right across that bridge. He was on the green at Fort Ord when the earthquake hit. He jumped in his car. He was averaging 130, 140 miles an hour going home.

I moved into LA for a little while and I moved to Georgia, but it was too cold in Georgia. I had some friends there. I had a couple of operations. From playing on the artificial fields, our joints are shot. That’s what players talk about when we get together. I’d say 90 percent of the players have had hips or knees replaced. You don’t have to play on it long to jam your joints down.

Usually, the town I’m in, somebody will invite me over for Passover dinner.

In high school, being Jewish was just another word. The words meant nothing. Now, there’s such a thin eggshell mind, I don’t think it’s quite as good. They’re only words.

I’m a Jew. I’m a good Jew. While I was playing baseball, I was a baseball player. Why am I being pointed out as a Jewish baseball player? I’m the first Jew to play here, I’m the first Jew to play there. Why spend your whole day thinking about prejudice when there are so many other things?

Anyone who makes the minor leagues, you’re probably one of the best two, three players in your state.

All those years, Mays was the best player I had ever seen. Taking into account Mantle, who had those bad legs. Then the guy who may have been one of the greatest players ever, but no one will ever know about it—Bo Jackson.

I sat with George Brett and we talked about Bo. He said he had the strongest arm, ever, in baseball. He is the fastest player, ever, in baseball. George showed me where Bo hit a ball in batting practice in Kansas City. He showed me where it left the stadium and hit there fourths of the way up the light pole. He said all he needed was two more years of facing these pitchers and he’s not going to strike out 160 times a year.

Bo was a great outfielder too. He had his hip replaced and he actually came back and played too. I’ve had both hips replaced.

Blyleven—he’s one of the great pitchers ever. He pulled too many tricks on reporters. He was a great prankster. I think Carew is one of the great underrated players.

Mays was at the end of his career, and so was Mantle, when I played. I saw Jr. Griffey play two, three times and I said, “My God, the game isn’t this easy.” His father is one of the nicest people I’ve met. Now, whether Bonds is on steroids or not, you pretty much have to say he’s the best ever.

The only way I can judge how good an athlete is they’re so much better than when I played. They’re better conditioned, they’re better trained. Their fundamentals aren’t as strong, because most of the players in my time had to spend four to five years in the minors learning. But other than that, these guys are superhuman. Forget the drugs and everything else.

The other part is, the only way to relate—how did that player do during his time against his peers? I don’t think anyone in history so much dominated his sport as Ruth did. Jimmy Reese told me a great story. People forget Ruth was not just a home-run hitter, he was a great hitter. And, like Bonds today, he’s doing this against pitchers who weren’t pitching to him.

My only chance today is there are double the teams when I played. I would have had a better chance to hit .300 today. I was a contact hitter with some power. I was in big ballparks. I didn’t strike out that often. At least a third of my outs were to the warning track. Cleveland was gigantic. Washington was a big park. Anaheim, at night, you couldn’t hit it out. During the day, maybe.

Now, could I hit that split-fingered fastball? I don’t know. There isn’t a man alive who could throw a fastball by me. I innovated the sledgehammer. I read I wasn’t a prospect, Class A only, pull hitter. When I read that, I went out and bought an 8-pound sledgehammer and I swung it every day. I started taking it into on-deck circles with me. My eyesight and everything else was good. If I got the pitch I wanted, I hit a sinking line drive into right field or left field. I liked having a runner on first base. That gave me the hole between first and second.

I think I was a similar hitter to Joe Morgan in that, in all his years, he had Pete Rose on first and he was really good at moving him to third.

Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame? Yes. I really, really liked Pete. Whether he made the mistake or not, he has paid for it. He is such a proud man, whether he did it or not, there are a lot of kids around the country that idolized him. And, if today he had that handle on him, I’d pick him as one of my first couple of players to be on my team.

I don’t know if steroids were there in my day. If I knew they would kill me, I wouldn’t have touched them. If I knew they were legal, and I could take them and they were going to enhance my ability, I would have taken them.

In the case of McGwire, what he was taking at the time was legal. I was taking cortisone shots. I played with two torn rotator cuffs. If they destroy these records, they’ re going to kill baseball. I think it’s still the greatest sport. You’re competing against hundred-year-old statistics. Whether Ty Cobb did it when the baseball glove was the size of your hand or Babe Ruth did it with a 42-ounce bat, whatever the case, baseball is a statistic sport built around team play. If they wipe these records out, it would be the same thing as the Roger Maris asterisk. He hit 61 home runs.

I watch a game to watch a guy. My team affiliation, I will always root for the Angels, because of [late owner] Gene Autry. I’m a homer. Right now I root for Tampa Bay. When I lived in Atlanta, I rooted for Atlanta.

Jewish ballplayers I root for always. Gabe Kapler is playing in Japan. I wish I could have sat with him and told him what to expect. I don’t like going into locker rooms. Older players aren’t welcome, unless you’re a Hall of Famer.

Today I sell things with logos on them. I have catalogues from all the companies and put logos on shirts and bags and things. I’ve been doing it for fourteen years.

I go to a lot of old-timers’ events. We sit around and talk about injuries. Ninety-nine and nine-tenths of those who played in my era really were nice people. Most of us are hobbling a little bit, though. We played on all those turf fields.

I guess I could have made it better when I played, but most of the guys you play against are all-state in two to three sports, and some of them are the best in their state.

Lots of players today come out of college. It’s the new minor league. I went to college, but not many of those I played with did. My timing was a bit off, but I think I could have played in the era behind me and the era ahead of me. I had fun. I would have done it again.