This Ain't Brain Surgery : How to Win the Pennant Without Losing Your Mind

by Larry Dierker

• ISBN13: 9780743204002
• ISBN10: 074320400X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-07-01
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

Plenty of people were surprised when Larry Dierker was named the manager of the Houston Astros at the end of the 1996 season, but perhaps no one was more surprised than Larry Dierker. Despite his status as a fourteen-year ace starter in the big leagues

Author Biography

Larry Dierker has spent nearly his entire adult life with the Houston Astros in one capacity or another. He made his major league debut on his eighteenth birthday in 1964, striking out Willie Mays in his first inning of work, and is still the franchise leader in starts, complete games, innings pitched, and shutouts. From 1979 until his appointment as manager, Dierker was the club's primary color analyst on radio and television, and for several years wrote a column that appeared in the Houston Chronicle. As manager of the Astros he led Houston to four division titles in five seasons. An avid connoisseur of cigars and Hawaiian shirtwear, he lives in Houston with his wife, Judy.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Spring Training	p. 15
Opening Day	p. 51
Pitching	p. 75
Managing	p. 107
Broadcasting	p. 143
Umpires	p. 163
Scouts	p. 187
Farm System	p. 205
Trades	p. 219
Cheating	p. 231
La Vida	p. 243
The Big Seize	p. 267
Epilogue: Out of It	p. 273
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction Well, I'll tell you, young fella, to be truthful and honest and frank about it, I'm eighty-three years old, which ain't bad. To be truthful and honest about it, the thing I'd like to be right now is an astronaut. -- Casey Stengel In September of 1996 I was suffering. I had spent a good part of the baseball season in the hospital. First it was surgery on a torn ligament in my right thumb; then it was pericarditis, an inflammation in the lining of the sac that contains the heart; then it was surgery again for a bone infection where the first surgery had been performed on my thumb. All told, I was in one ward or another for three weeks and under anesthesia four times. The last time, I left the hospital with a bottle of prednisone, a medicine so powerful that it changes your personality and makes you into a trencherman of mythic proportions. I came out of the hospital weighing 215 pounds and a month later tipped the scales at 240. What's worse, I was doing a lot of the eating in the middle of the night, interrupting my sleep. I was so hungry I couldn't make it through the night without a meal. By September, most of my health problems were under control. The only lingering reminder of my personal travails was the cast on my right hand that had forced me to keep my scorebook left-handed while broadcasting all year long. I couldn't wait for season's end, but I sure didn't want it to end in free fall.Everyone with the Astros was suffering to some extent. The team had fallen out of the race and was in the midst of a nine-game losing streak that would give the Cardinals the Central Division title on a platter. It is so discouraging to tough it out for five months and over 125 ball games only to plummet like a stone thrown into a lake; but that's exactly what we did. I was determined to float down the Guadalupe River on an inner tube when the season ended, soaking my right hand in the cool water and enjoying a beer or two along the way, but first we had to finish the schedule and it was on the next to last road trip of the season that I uttered a line that has had a major impact on my life. It happened near the end of the losing streak, during a game with the Marlins. Florida didn't have a very good team that year but they were making us look like Little Leaguers.We were way behind, maybe 9-2, in this particular game. Our cameras panned the dugout and it looked like a morgue. "You know what's wrong with this team, Brownie?" I asked my partner Bill Brown."Well, we're not hitting," he offered."No, it's not that," I said."Well then, what is it?""Not enough Hawaiian shirts," I said."Hawaiian shirts?""Yeah, Hawaiian shirts," I repeated. "Everyone in that dugout looks like someone in their family has died. You have to have some spirit to win games. This team looks dead. Did you ever see someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt that wasn't having a good time?""Well, no," he answered. "But where's yours?""I'll wear it tomorrow night," I said, not knowing how difficult it would be to find one, even in Miami.The next day I canvassed the mall and came away with a shirt that had flowers on it -- not really a Hawaiian shirt, but close. I didn't tell our producer or director that I was going to wear it for fear they would insist on our normal coat and tie policy. We lost again, but the words had been spoken. We talked about Hawaiian shirts during that broadcast and the next two in Atlanta, and by the time we got back to Houston, it was general knowledge among our faithful fans.I called my boogie-boarding brother, Rick, and asked him to send me a couple of shirts. One of them was decorated with vintage woodie station wagons from the 1940s, a popular surfer car when I was in high school. The woodies on this particular shirt had surfboards hanging out the back windows or mounted on top. I wore it to the ballpark, just for grins. About half an hour before the g