Carpe Brewski

Having a spot of beer before bed, I happened to recall a joke I heard back when I was afraid Reagan was going to draft me and send me to wherever.

Back before baseball had relief pitching, you pitched the game. All nine innings or more if it went into extras. There was no such thing as a 'starter' and a 'reliever,' they were all just pitchers and if they started it, they finished it or the team forfeited.

This is also before two other big influences on sports: major sponsorship deals and Prohibition (which still lurks in the hearts of MADD who is panic-struck that while I intend to go to bed right after this, I could theoretically take my car keys and go driving around in my truck, maybe even stop off at a bar for a quick one to boost my blood alcohol level). But the Ballantine's endorsement was a big deal, of sorts, at the time. He was one of the few players to endorse a product for compensation, and it was also the last time the product manufacturer got off so lightly: all Ballantine's had to do was keep Milt in free beer.

Anyway, results counted, as they do now. Which is why baseball only cracked down on steroids when they had to explain why their leading home run hitters were also competing in the Mr. Universe competition. And Milt Famey, he could fucking pitch. Back then, no AL, so if you pitched, you also took a turn at bat if you played pro ball anywhere. Milt Famey might have achieved a sort of Babe Ruth status if he had been better at bat. His career average at the plate was only 142, but his pitching was art.

He pitched no-hitters, perfect games even, and always in the dugout was his cooler of Ballantine's. He drank beer like they were going to ban it (which they unsuccessfully tried a few years after his retirement, so it wasn't entirely irrational on his part). He drank beer with his breakfast, drank beer in the locker room, drank it in the dugout between innings and his deplorable at-bats. Ballantine's made a lot of hay out of the fact that he pitched so well after drinking their beer. They neglected to boast about how he it as if he couldn't decide which ball to swing at (he always saw three).

But he'd get on the mound and he was a god. Never threw around a hitter, always shot to strike them out and usually could. Who was going to tell him to quit the beer when he was winning games?

All good things come to an end though, and one day, Milt Famey lost it. He kept walking guys. He hit two batters in a row with pitches, and this is from the strike-out king, a guy who typically got a ball called outside the strike zone only when the batter was willing to bribe the plate umpire. And since there was no rule allowing a reliever, his team had to sit on the bench and watch him do it until the fielders managed to catch a few pop flies and get them a brief at-bat.

He walked run after run in that sad day, the last day Milt Famey would ever pitch.

One pitch was so wild it went over the backstop and into the stands, beaning an otherwise intelligent boy who might have been a surgeon or inventor, but was consigned by a spectator's injury to four terms in the U.S. Senate.

They didn't have lights back then. Okay, Edison had invented it, but they didn't have stadiums with lights. Night games? Forget it.

So while Famey's team was loath to forfeit. But, the sun was setting on them with a 47 point deficit and Milt Famey drinking even more Ballantine's, thinking that it might improve his pitch (it couldn't worsen it). The game was called in favor of the visiting team.

The few fans who had remained trickled out, and a couple of players from the visiting team were walking past the home dugout and the stench of Milt's empties overwhelmed them. Imagine a beer can pyramid but with the cans crushed (those old steel cans took some effort to crush), and jumbled in a pile by Milt's place on the bench.

Stale, empty beer cans assaulted their noses and made them stop and look at the mess. The wreck of beer cans, Milt's cleats literally hung up on a peg above them, his glove abandoned on the bench.

And one of the visiting players says to the other, 'Well, I guess that's the beer that made Milt Famey walk us.'