Four consecutive homers — and benched
Art Shamsky reflects on that record, Pete Rose, managing in Israel, and the game today
Art Shamsky is coming to Bookends in Ridgewood. And he’s bringing his World Series ring with him.
Shamsky, a southpaw, platooned in the outfield and at first base for Mets manager Gil Hodges’ 1969 Mets. He’ll be in Ridgewood at noon on March 30, promoting his new book (with Matthew Silverman) about that magical season. It’s called “Mets Stories I Only Tell My Friends.”
“I never have a prepared speech,” Shamsky said in a telephone interview. “I know the people will want to know how the book came about. I’ll take questions. Usually, they also want to know if Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame.”
Rose, who died last year, was ruled permanently ineligible to enter the hall because he gambled on games as both a player and a manager. For the record, Shamsky says that just based on his stats over the years, he should be allowed in, although admittedly his view may be slightly colored by his personal relationship with Rose. “We were the best of friends,” he said. “We started our careers together and we went back a long way.”
No, Rose shouldn’t have gambled, but even people still against his enshrinement “wished everybody today played the game the way he did,” Shamsky said. “With hustle.”
While the book centers on 1969, it is chockablock with amusing anecdotes about Shamsky’s entire career. The Cincinnati Reds signed him in 1959, when he was just 17 years old, and he wasn’t called up to the show until 1965.
Even though he’d hit 21 home runs in 1966 — the second highest total on the team — Reds GM Bob Howsam refused to raise his salary above the $8,500 he’d earned the year before. But as the negotiations broke up, Howsam said the team had a gift for him to honor the birth of Shamsky’s second daughter. He handed Art an envelope that contained — wait for it — a $25 U.S. Savings Bond that cost the Reds $18.75.
For the record, the minimum salary back then was $7,000. Today it is $740,000. Art is a little envious of current players’ enormous salary gains but says he wouldn’t exchange the experience of participating in and winning the World Series for any amount of money.
Shamsky grew up in St. Louis in a largely secular family. He attended Hebrew school and was a bar mitzvah, reluctantly. “My thoughts were always out there playing ball with my friends.”
That’s what made it all so strange that in the midst of the pivotal championship season, with the Mets clawing back from a 10-game deficit to get into the race, Shamsky took off for Yom Kippur.
“I’d never done that before, and I never did it after,” he said. “There are some things you do in life that you just can’t explain. I don’t know what possessed me. We were in the middle of an unbelievable pennant race at the time, we were in Pittsburgh and had a doubleheader that day, and I had reservations about doing it.
“I had a conversation with Gil. I told him, ‘I’m in a little bit of turmoil. I’m thinking about taking off.’ He said, ‘You do what you think is best, and I’ll cover for you.’
“Somebody was watching over me and the team, because we won both games. I would really have been in dismay if we lost.”
What follows is a slightly edited version of our conversation.
Curt Schleier: Looking back, what has changed since you played about that year, baseball in general, and managing an Israel baseball team?
Art Shamsky: It was a different world back then. It was much harder to get to the big leagues. There were fewer teams. When I signed originally with the Reds, there were only 16 teams. When I got to the big leagues, there were 20. There’s what, 30 now? So it is much easier to make it into the big leagues than when I first came up.
But that made a lot of the guys in that situation better players because they had to spend years in the minors crafting their skills. It made me a better player…
The game itself was different when I played. Yes, there were home runs, but you found other ways to win. Small ball was big. You helped move runners on base. There was base stealing. There was bunting. There wasn’t changing starting pitchers after three or four innings. It’s still a wonderful game, but it’s not the game I grew up with.
CS: You are the only player to hit a home run in four consecutive at bats. Yet the manager sat you in the next game. Wasn’t that a bit strange?
AS: I wasn’t in the starting lineup for whatever reason. I’m not usually the guy who’ll confront a manager. I’m very low key. I probably should have been more vocal at times. But on this particular day, a Monday night in Los Angeles, I asked [Reds manager] Dave Bristol why I wasn’t in the starting lineup.
“I said to him, ‘Dave, I hit four home runs in a row.’ And he said, ‘Well, we’re looking for more power.’ I’m thinking what kind of answer is that? You want more power from a guy who just hit four home runs in a row? Then I decided this would be the last time I talked to a manager about playing.
CS: You actually managed an Israeli baseball team. What was that like?
AS: I was asked early in 2007 if I was interested, and my first reaction was no. I’d never been there, and I heard a lot about the problems. Also, I knew it was not a big sport in Israel. They’d talked to me a couple of times. One of the owners of the startup asked me to lunch — this might have been the third time I saw him — and the more he talked about it, the more I thought what a great experience it might be.
It sounded pretty simple. It was seven-inning games, with a designated hitter. Little did I know that they didn’t have any decent fields. They had three fields, two of which were basically unplayable. They brought in players from all over the world. Each team had two or three Israeli players. They were pretty good athletes, but basically didn’t know the nuances of the game. You have to learn as a kid growing up what to do with the ball, where to throw it. Things of that nature.
CS: What was the experience like?
AS: For me, it was great. I’ve been back and done clinics. And even though the league lasted only one year and the players weren’t very good, I really enjoyed having the lineup card in my hand. I also believe that those of us who were there for the startup league were part of the beginning of Israel’s determination to develop the game and become a player in international baseball. In the last four or five years they’ve done really well in the World Baseball Classic and the Olympics. I do believe it’s because of us who started that league in 2007.
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