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August 23,
1991 Television THE UNNATURAL BEFORE CHEERS, SAM MALONE PLAYED PRO BASEBALL. HOW BAD WAS HE?
Remember Sam Malone, the Boston Red Sox pitcher who once switched arms
in mid- inning, thereby becoming the first big leaguer to relieve himself
on the mound? Well, as everyone knows, they've made his post-baseball life
into a popular TV show called Cheers, though the series, starring Ted
Danson, hardly ever mentions Malone's sporting days. That's a shame.
Malone wasn't a bad ballplayer-he just wasn't a very good one. Twelve
years after he quit baseball, it's still unclear if he was nicknamed
Mayday because he got the Red Sox out of jams or into them.
Malone's career began in Medford, Mass., where he learned to
switch-pitch on a sandlot team sponsored by the local rescue squad. "I'd
skip practice to cut people out of cars they were trapped in, go into
burning buildings, crazy stuff like that," he says. At Medford Vocational
High, Malone did all his saving on the baseball team: He was the ace of
the Wildebeests' bullpen. In his senior year, the Red Sox gave him a
tryout. His fellow rescuers came along, and it's a good thing: Sam beaned
a batter, beaned a scout, and beaned a hot dog vendor standing 10 rows
behind the home dugout.
The Red Sox didn't offer him a contract, but they did pluck him out of
the Cape Cod League a few years later. Malone signed for $400 a month to
play A- league ball in Winter Haven, Fla., and spent the next seven years
connecting the dots on a map of the bush leagues.
When Malone arrived at Fenway in 1974, the Sox starters were losing
their attention spans so fast they couldn't read Dick and Jane, let alone
pitch six or seven innings. Relievers were making more cameos than Jack
Nicholson at the NBA play-offs. Though he played regularly, Malone's
vaunted "Slider of Death" often expired in mid-flight: Legendary sluggers
Boog Powell and Harmon Killebrew both launched it into the ionosphere. And
the Yankees' Dutch Kincaid homered whenever he came up against Sam-a total
of 27 times. It was then that Malone started brooding in joints like the
bar called Cheers.
Malone had his best campaign in 1975, the year the Red Sox nearly
dismantled the Reds in the World Series. Malone won one game right-handed
and saved another throwing lefty. But in the Series finale, he was on the
mound for more than an hour without ever loosing a pitch. Malone faced
Pete Rose, a switch-hitter. When Rose dug in at the left side of the
plate, Malone decided to throw southpaw. Rose called time out and moved to
the right side. Malone called time and set righty. Left, left. Right,
right. The standoff seemed to go on forever. If Malone hadn't finally
collapsed from dizziness, the Series might now be in its 15th year.
By '77, both of Malone's arms had gone south. The only switching he did
was from Budweiser to Wild Turkey. He blew saves, his paycheck, his
career. All over Boston, kids stuck Sam Malone cards in their bike spokes:
The streets buzzed with the sound of wimp, wimp, wimp.
The end came with a whimper at Tiger Stadium in 1979. "I didn't have a
drink the entire day," Malone recalls. "I knew it might be my last chance
to prove myself." But when the coach told him to warm up, Malone balked.
"My arm hurts," he said. After that, Mayday's life really hit the skids.
Boozing and brawling, he lived a life of noisy desperation until he
rehabilitated himself by taking a job at Cheers.
The one aberration in Malone's pathetic career came against the Yankees
on a hot August day at Fenway. "The top of the ninth," he recalls. "We're
up by a run. The bases are loaded, two outs, and Thurman Munson's at the
plate. I throw Munson a left-handed forkball. Strike one! I throw him a
right-handed slider. Strike two! I throw him a left-handed change-up.
Strike three! We win the game!"
Alas, if you look at the box score, you find that Malone didn't strike
Munson out. In fact, he didn't get anyone out: He balked in the winning
run. As old-time sports editors used to say when confronted with facts
that conflicted with the legend, print the legend.
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