Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 27, 1994 TAG: 9408180029
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO AP AL LOPEZ CAUGHT
SOURCE: STEVEN WINE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: TAMPA, FLA. LENGTH: Long
Al Lopez sits by a window in his waterfront home, happy to share a view of the bay and a flood of memories.
The 85-year-old Hall of Famer recalls the light bulbs that turned him on to baseball. He remembers catching Walter Johnson, advising Lou Gehrig and getting thrown out of a game at Al Lopez Field.
He is best known for managing two teams to their most recent American League pennants - the Cleveland Indians in 1954 and the Chicago White Sox in 1959. But those were only the crowning achievements in a career that began more than 60 years ago.
Lopez reached the major leagues to stay in 1930, played for 18 years, then managed from 1951 to 1969. In the off-season, he always returned to Tampa, where he was born in 1908.
``They've treated me real nice here,'' Lopez says. ``They've given me parades, they've given me banquets, they named a ballpark after me. Now they tore the ballpark down, so they named a park after me and put up a statue.
``I say, `Why are you doing this? I was just doing something I liked.'''
When Lopez was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1977, it was as a manager. But he also set a major-league record by catching 1,918 games. Foul tips left his right hand looking like he took a hammer to it.
Crooked fingers aside, he enjoys good health and appears to be at least 10 years younger than he is. He plays golf four times a week, sometimes shoots his age and enjoys watching the Atlanta Braves, Chicago White Sox and Florida Marlins on TV. And like most former ballplayers, Lopez has a wealth of stories.
Bright lights
Baseball first caught the future catcher's fancy in 1920.
Brooklyn was playing Cleveland in the World Series, and the first radio broadcast in the sport still was a year away. Young Al and his friends monitored the games outside Tampa's newspaper offices, where a large board with light bulbs and a diagram of a diamond rested atop a platform.
``They got the game by ticker tape,'' Lopez says. ``When the pitcher had the ball, they'd light that bulb up. When the pitcher delivered the ball, they'd turn the bulb out, and if the catcher caught it, they'd turn on the catcher's bulb and put up strike one or ball one.''
With each base hit, a bell rang out. There was a red bulb for every runner, a white bulb for every fielder.
``It was beautiful to watch,'' Lopez says. ``That's when I got interested in baseball.''
Catching on
He caught Bob Feller, Dizzy Dean and Dazzy Vance. But when asked about hard-throwing pitchers, Lopez mentions Walter Johnson first.
Johnson, a charter member of the Hall of Fame, won 417 games and possessed a legendary fastball. During spring training in 1925, he was nearing the end of his career with the Washington Senators when they hired 15-year-old Lopez to catch batting practice.
``Johnson was very easy to catch,'' Lopez says. ``He had great control. He wasn't firing like he used to, but he was still very fast and had very good control. All you had to do was hold your mitt around the strike zone, and it'd be right there.''
The Senators paid Lopez $45 a week.
``I'd have done it for nothing,'' he says.
Call to glory
Lopez was catching for the Brooklyn Dodgers when Babe Ruth hit the home run that silenced baseball's champion hog-caller.
That title belonged to Pea Ridge Day, a mediocre pitcher from Pea Ridge, Ark., who delighted sportswriters with his hog call: ``Yip yip yeeee!'' One day in 1931, he took the mound in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees.
``The fans had been reading about him being a champion hog caller, so they all started calling, `Yip yip yeeee!''' Lopez says.
``He strikes out the first hitter, puts his ball and glove down and lets out this call. He strikes out the next batter and does it again. Ruth was standing on deck, and he got a big kick out of it. He's laughing at this guy.
``Then he has Ruth with two strikes. It gets real quiet. The fans are hoping he'll strike out Ruth so he can yell again. On the third pitch, Ruth hits one a mile over the right-center field fence.
``Pea Ridge never did his hog call again.''
You're out of here
It's difficult to imagine Lopez making umpires mad when you meet this affable octogenarian. But he was ejected more times than he can remember.
``As a manager, you're going to argue,'' he says, ``because you think you're right.''
Even on the first day of spring training.
Lopez was managing the White Sox one year when they opened their exhibition schedule at Tampa's Al Lopez Field. In the first inning, according to Lopez, umpire John Stevens blew a call.
``I hollered, `John, are you going to start out the year like that? First play we have and you miss it. Are we going to have to put up with you all spring?'
``He said, `One more word out of you and you're gone.' I said, `You can't throw me out of this ballpark. This is my ballpark - Al Lopez Field.' He said, `Get out of here.'
``He threw me out of my own ballpark.''
A sad sight
Lou Gehrig was in a terrible slump during the spring of 1939 when he stepped to the plate.
``He said to me, `Al, you've caught behind me many a time. What do you think I'm doing wrong?''' Lopez says. ``He couldn't hit the ball out of the infield. I said, `Lou, it seems to me you have no snap in your swing.'
``He said, `That's how I feel. It's like I'm pushing the bat.'''
A few weeks later, Gehrig took himself out of the lineup, ending his record streak of 2,130 consecutive games. He was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the disease that would kill him.
by CNB