Pat Jordan - Tom Seaver and Me

For Tom, who is my idol, as, of course, I am his.

T om Seaver and I were friends for forty-five years. Not the best of friends. Not intimate friends Our wives going shopping together into Manhattan. Tom and I staying behind at his farmhouse in Greenwich, watching a baseball game on TV in his family room. Our wives returning late in the afternoon, laughing gaily, swinging their shopping bags from Saks and Bloomingdales in the kitchen where Tom and I are preparing dinner. Tom and I looking at them, their bags, then each other, rolling our eyes, Tom saying, This is gonna cost us, big time.

We didnt have the Seavers over for dinner, nor did they have the Jordans over for dinner. We didnt take vacations together like close couples do. A winter week in the Bahamas. Nancy and Susie sunbathing on the beach, matching, beautiful, tanned blondes. Tom and I watching them from a tiki bar in the sand, looking at each other, smiling at our good fortune, then drinking our beers, smoking our cigars, talking baseball, pitching mostly. At sunset, after showers, all of us meeting for drinks at the resorts bar, and then a late-night dinner at a table by the pool under the stars like diamonds on black velvet, the moonlight slashes of white on the black ocean. The four of us, talking, laughing, friends.

Susie and Nancy never met. It was only Tom and I who were friends. When he was pitching for the New York Mets and the Cincinnati Reds in the 70s and 80s, we would talk on the phone maybe once a month. He was famous then. The most celebrated athlete in the country. Everyone wanted his time. I didnt want to bother him. But sometimes I couldnt control myself. Id be sitting on the edge of my sofa in the living room, leaning toward the TV, watching him pitch a night game on television. Hed throw a pitch, Id moan, For crissakes, Tom! I had to repress my urge to call him after the game in his hotel room in St. Louis, or LA, or Frisco. It was a struggle. But I would wait until the next morning before I called him.

Tom, its me.

What do you want?

I saw you pitch last night.

And?

Youre hanging your curveball.

Tell me something I dont know.

Youre not dropping your left shoulder and elevating your right shoulder on the curve.

Really? You think so?

Absolutely.

What the fuck do you know?

I know how to throw a fucking curveball is what I know.

When we became old men, in our late sixties, I called him less frequently, a few times a year. Wed talk about our quiet lives now, our dogs, our pleasure in cooking, but never baseball. That parts over, Tom said. He lived with Nancy and his dogs in seclusion on a mountaintop in the picturesque Napa Valley wine country, where he had a small vineyard. He woke every morning at 4:00 a.m. to prune his vines. I lived in seclusion with Susie and our dogs in a tiny town in northwestern South Carolina. A world away from Fort Lauderdale Beach, where wed lived for almost thirty years. I described it to my Fort Lauderdale friends as a little bit old, a little bit worn, a little bit out of the way. Perfect. When they visited us, I drove them around the town square over the lumpy, two-hundred-year-old brick street, past the decaying two-story brick buildings, the Confederate soldier statue on the center green, the horse fountain, the churches at all four corners, and then, in a blink, we were out of town, and as far as the eye could see nothing but rolling farmland. My friends shook their heads in disbelief and said, Jesus! This is East Bumfuck nowhere. I shrugged, told them, Yeah, well, its not Fort Liquordale, but itll do.

Like Tom, I woke at 4:00 a.m. to work. I wrote every day at my desk.

One late afternoon, Napa Valley time, I called Tom to ask him for a favor.

Tom, its me.

What do you want?

Are you busy?

Im working. Im putting my babies to sleep for the night.

You have more kids?

My grapes.

Your grapes?

Theyre my babies.

Jesus, Tom. You gotta get a life.

You mean like yours ? You still spending your days in an empty room? Staring at a blank piece of paper in a typewriter? He laughed. You call that a life?

Its a blank screen. I write on a computer now.

Same thing.

You talk to grapes, for crissakes.

I told you, theyre my babies.

Do they talk back?

Of course.

What do they say?

This morning they warned me a pain in the ass would call. Be warned! they said. Now what do you want?

I need a favor.

Again? The last and only other favor Id asked of Tom was in the late 80s. Susie and I were broke in Fort Lauderdale, after Id given my ex-wife the house, the car, and a huge alimony in the divorce. We lived in a 450-square-foot apartment on a canal. We could barely pay the $500-a-month rent. We cut out coupons from the Sunday newspaper supplements so we could buy cans of Blue Bird tuna for 9 cents. If we were flush, we went to bars on the Intracoastal and ordered beers. Then we ate their happy-hour buffet for our dinner. Chicken wings. Chow mein. BBQ ribs. Burritos. Carrots and celery stalks with blue cheese dressing. We left two dollars for the beers and a dollar tip. When our rusted, old Alfa Romeo was totaled outside our apartment at 3:00 a.m. by a drunk driver, we pedaled around town on a beach cruiser bike. We stole a T-bone steak from Winn-Dixie. Susie sat on the handlebars of our beach cruiser, clutching the steak to her chest, kicking her legs, while I pedaled furiously back to our apartment.

Finally, I called an editor friend at People magazine, then I called Tom. I told him People wanted me to write a story about him and Nancy approaching retirement. He said, People ? With photos? Me and Nancy in a hot tub sipping champagne? No fucking way. I said, No hot tub. I guarantee it. Silence. I waited. Finally, I said, I need the money. Tom said, When do you want to do it?

Now, almost twenty years later, I needed another favor. So I told him a story. My daughter hadnt spoken to me in twenty years because of the divorce from her mother, my first wife. Thats how kids see it when their parents divorce. The Divorce. As if its the only one. To them it is, the only one that matters.

So now my grandson Ive never met is asking about me, I told Tom. Hes eight and he loves baseball. He wants to know about his grandfather who was a baseball player once. My daughter dropped me a note to tell me this.