I’m packing up my books to move 1,000 miles (this is part of a year-long process) and I’m trying to be ruthless with my baseball collection—I’m determined not to move several hundred baseball books that are either falling-apart paperbacks, or idiotic autobiographies I hated reading the first time, or reference books that cover MLB up through 1991, etc. but sometimes I look at one of them before pitching it in the reject pile and realize that I do have a good source for tracers here. Today it was Ken Harrelson’s 1969 autobiography "HAWK", which was filled with highly detailed accounts of games that, most likely, were highly fictional in nature. Harrelson has always struck me as a loudmouthed braggart, prevaricator, and general BS artist, so I decided to test my bias and see how well he remembered his own career. (Mind you, he was writing this book while his career was still in progress.)

At random, I opened up to page 118, where he was describing the very end of his rookie season, and in the process making his first MLB manager, Eddie Lopat, seem like an ineffective moron every chance he got. Here’s Hawk’s rendering of one of the final plays of the season:

Lopat, deciding to give the regulars a break started a makeshift lineup and the Indians just kicked our brains out. With our pitcher scheduled up in the eighth, Eddie looked up and down the bench for a pinch-hitter. Jerry Lumpe, Norm Siebern, and I were sitting together, trying to make ourselves as small as possible because we wanted no part of Mudcat on a day like that.

When Eddie spotted us, he said, "Lumpe, get a bat."

"Not me," Jerry said, "I ain’t getting a bat. Mudcat’s throwing a little too hard for me today."

"Siebern, you get up there and hit," Lopat said.

"No, thanks," Norm said, "There’s about fifteen minutes left to this season and I want to come out of it alive."

Eddie turned to me and said, "All right, Hawk, you get a bat."

"Ed, you got the wrong boy," I said. "All I can see is Mudcat’s teeth, and I ain’t about to walk up to that plate."

The plate umpire was yelling for a hitter, and Lopat was going crazy looking for one. He finally went back to Lumpe and said, "Jerry, please hit, will you?"

"Well," Lumpe said, "I’ll go up there but I won’t guarantee to hit."

He got a bat, went to the plate, took three strikes and came back.

The true part is that Lumpe pinch-hit against Mudcat Grant in the final game of the 1963 season and he struck out.

That’s about it: "the Indians just kicked our brains out." Uh, no. Each team scored one earned run on six hits in the game, the Indians pulling ahead for good on an unearned run in the fifth inning. The final score was 2-1. When Lumpe batted, he represented the go-ahead run.

"With our pitcher scheduled up in the eighth,"—again, no. The A’s pitcher, John Wyatt, didn’t bat in the eighth inning, nor was anyone pinch-hit for in the 8^th. Lumpe’s pinch-hit strikeout took place in the ninth.

"Siebern, you get up there and hit," Lopat said.

"No, thanks," Norm said, "There’s about fifteen minutes left to this season and I want to come out of it alive." Yet again, no. It’s very colorful dialogue that Harrelson attributes to Siebern, but if Lopat had asked him to bat, he probably would have said something far more colorful, because he’d already pinch-hit (against Grant) in the seventh inning.

Eddie turned to me and said, "All right, Hawk, you get a bat."

"Ed, you got the wrong boy," I said. "All I can see is Mudcat’s teeth, and I ain’t about to walk up to that plate."

This is perhaps the craziest part of Harrelson’s recollection, in that Harrelson, too, was ineligible to pinch-hit for anyone, having been inserted in the five-hole of the starting lineup and having already struck out three times in the game.

No, I change my mind—the craziest part of this story is that, instead of Lumpe being asked to bat for the pitcher in the eighth, he was asked to bat for (wait for it) Harrelson in the ninth.

In other words, just about every detail in this story, aside from Lumpe striking out against Grant as a pinchhitter, is not only wrong but not even possible under the circumstances. The picture of Lopat as a clueless dolt begging his bench to do their jobs, and failing miserably at persuading big-league batters to pinch-hit, is belied by Harrelson’s imaginary dialogue of those batters, including himself, standing up to the clueless dolt and telling him off bravely. This mis-telling speaks sort of loudly to the other stories Harrelson tells of Lopat’s ineptness, and of his tales in general.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KC1/KC1196309290.shtml

He doesn’t seem to have gotten along with his managers in general, but he always tells it from a victim’s perspective when he seems, looking at the hard cold facts, to have a problem with any sort of authority. Gil Hodges, one of my personal favorites, was a very authoritative manager, and I always felt that he laid his ex-Marine boss-man managerial style a little thicker than he actually needed to, but Harrelson seems to have challenged Hodges’ style from the first day he was traded to Hodges’ Senators: on page 154, he tells about his first conversation with his new manager:

I had stolen nine bases in nine tries and had more steals than anybody on the Washington club. Alvin [Dark] had let me run on my own.

"Do you let any of the guys run on their own here?" I asked Hodges.

"No," he said. "Nobody but [Fred] Valentine. I’ll give you the signal when I want you to go."

"I was nine for nine over in Kansas City," I said. "I can steal a base for you."

"I’ll decide when you’ll steal a base."

"I might help the ball club," I said. "I usually can tell when a pitcher will throw a breaking ball or an off-speed pitch, and those are the kind I can steal on."

Hodges glared at me and said, "I told you I’ll give the sign when I want you to steal."

That was the end of the interview. And all during the time I played for him, Hodges didn’t once give me the steal sign.

The true part: Harrelson had stolen nine bases for the 1966 KC A’s. The BS part: he had been thrown out twice so far that season. The fundamentally BS part is that Harrelson was no kind of basestealer. Before the 1966 season, he had attempted 19 steals in MLB and had succeeded 10 times; after the 1966 season, he was 30 for 48. That means that, outside of the 1966 season, Harrelson stole 40 MLB bases successfully while being thrown out 27 times, an under-60% success rate. He did have a good year stealing bases in 1966, going 9/11 with KC and 4/5 with Hodges’ Senators, for an 81% stolen base rate. In his two partial seasons playing for Hodges, he stole 5 bases in 6 tries (this despite not once being given the steal sign) so maybe Hodges knew how to pick spots better than Harrelson (or did Harrelson just disobey Hodges no-steal order six times? You’d think Kenny would have shared some of the conversations he had with Hodges afterwards.)  The main point, however, being that the entire conversation beyond Hodges’ "No" is just Harrelson challenging Hodges’ managerial authority, and then being pissed off that Hodges didn’t take kindly to his new player undermining that authority.

Oh, yeah, he hadn’t stolen more bases than Fred Valentine as of June 23^rd, either.

But since this is Ken Harrelson’s 78^th birthday, I’ll give it a rest right here.

I suppose it’s all to the good that I’m not taking these hundreds of books with me. I can only tread water in this sea of bullshit for so long. But if anyone wants any of these books—lots of old Baseball Digests, the 19—Baseball Handbook, Green and Red books from the 20^th century,  all sorts of memoirs and autobiographies, drop me a line at stevengoldleaf@gmail.com and I’ll be glad to mail you all you want. I’m kind of sick of running tracers at this point.