Johnny Roseboro: Catching Koufax and Drysdale

Born in Ashland, Ohio, in 1933, Johnny Roseboro was a catcher for the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles (1957-1970), then two years with the Twins and one with the Washington Senators.

He played in four World Series and three All-Star Games.

When we visited him in his hotel room while he was in Pittsburgh for an old-timers game on June 10, 1990, he was a roving minor league catching instructor for the Dodgers.

When I called him to request an interview, he was at first reluctant, but finally agreed.

At the appointed time, I knocked on his door with some apprehension.

The door opened. A stocky, six-foot man with an unwelcoming expression said, “How long will this take?” “As much time as you will give me,” I said.

Ninety minutes later I had learned about the art and science of catching, what it was like to catch Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, and the frustration of a black man trying to break into baseball management in the 1970s and ‘80s. – Norman L. Macht

Johnny Roseboro’s Early Career

I was signed in 1952 as a catcher by Dodgers scout Cliff Alexander, who happened to be Walter Alston’s brother-in-law.

They sent me to Sheboygan in the Class D Wisconsin State League.

I chipped a knuckle in my first game and after that I played outfield and some first base. I really preferred the outfield. I could hit and run and threw well.

My first manager was Joe Hauser. He taught me a lot about hitting to all fields and bunting. He showed us how to take infield practice and made it fun.

We put on a show. I still prefer to see infield taken that way today. He would hit shots and tell us, “If you can’t catch it in practice, you can’t catch it in a game.”  

I went to C ball, then the army for two years in Germany, then A ball for a month, mostly as an outfielder. I wasn’t a very good catcher, so they sent me down to Class B Cedar Rapids to learn catching.

What was the hardest thing to learn as a catcher?

I ask the same thing of the kids I teach now and I wonder why they don’t tell me what I consider the most difficult thing of all, and that is why you put the finger down that you do, what you want to accomplish when you call a pitch.

Mostly catchers try to fool hitters. They say, “I got a curveball over, let me try a fastball,’ or “I got a fastball over, he’s looking for a curve, let me put another fastball.”

After my first year it got to be a chess match back there.

If I wanted a ground ball to the right side of the infield, then my infield would play that way, we’d pitch that way, and most of the time we’d get what we wanted, unless we missed the spot. 

You are not trying to outfox the hitter.

Satchel Paige and Sal Maglie both taught me a basic philosophy of catching which I’ve carried over for years: the object of pitching is to take away the hitter’s power and make him hit the ball where you want him to hit it.

Catcher Johnny Roseboro’s baseball card

Strikeouts come after you have worked to a certain point. Take away the hitter’s power and you can beat him.

I was at Montreal in June 1957 when the Dodgers called me up to replace Gil Hodges, who was sick or hurt at the time, so I played my first three major league games at first base.

I didn’t have many big offensive days in my career. The biggest was a three-run home run off Whitey Ford in Game 1 of the 1963 World Series that gave Sandy Koufax a 5-2 win.

The move from Ebbets Field to the Los Angeles Coliseum was a dread for us left-hand hitters. The short porch was in left field, with a screen.

From left center to right was a pretty good drive in a taxicab. But the good thing about the Coliseum was that it taught us how to pitch.

We had to pitch away from the hitters’ power and get them to hit to the long part of the park. That did us well when we got to Dodgers Stadium. We had learned how to keep the ball from the middle away most of the time.

Do you go with a pitcher’s strength even if it’s the hitter’s strength, too?

If the pitcher is a fastball pitcher and the hitter a fastball hitter and the pitcher doesn’t know where the pitch is going, he’s in trouble.

When you talk about Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, and the hitter’s strength is fastball, there are very few hitters that can handle a fastball on the outside part of the plate.

Even a guy throwing 70 can throw a ball on the outside corner – the black – that’ll get most hitters out.

Drysdale and Koufax, who are throwing 90-plus on the black part of the plate and using the fastball to move them back off the plate when you get ahead, I defy somebody to get a hit.

It’s just not possible. Occasionally a Harmon Killebrew might hit one on the black out of the park in right field, but those guys are few and far between.

I told Ted Williams once, “If you were hitting against the Dodgers and hit .400, you would do it to left field and off your ass, ‘cause we would knock you down or make you hit the ball to left field, or better yet not even pitch to you, ‘cause the guy coming up behind you can’t be as good as you are.

We’d put you on first base and let you clog up the base paths.”

Koufax’s fastball tailed just a hair on the outside part of the plate. He didn’t throw any fastballs from the middle in unless he was moving them back off the plate or striking them out.

He wouldn’t knock you down, but he would come up under your chin. When you throw 94 miles an hour and you throw one up and in, God can’t hit it. 

Koufax had a great curve, better than Drysdale’s.

If we work our system right, by the time you get to two strikes you don’t know whether it’s going to be a fastball in or a fastball away or a big curve ball, so we’re sitting in the driver’s seat with three pitches we can throw.

I could put down any finger and get the best pitch from the best pitcher in either league.

I’ve read a lot of people getting credit for it, but nobody really knows why or how Koufax suddenly gained control.

One day he was shipped out to Montreal ‘cause he was so wild and the next thing you know he’s striking out everybody. 

With an 0-2 count Drysdale would come sidearm inside with a 96 mph and when the hitter saw me move my glove inside, his intestinal fortitude will not let the batter look outside.

So many a time Drysdale would just throw that ball on the outside corner – strike three.

Better than messing with a waste pitch and now It’s 1-2 and you come back and miss with a pitch and suddenly it’s 2-2. Now the hitter’s in the driver’s seat ‘cause you got to throw a strike or you are in deeper.

I didn’t talk behind the plate to distract the batter, but I might say something to fool them.

After I gave a sign for an outside fastball, I might move inside and say something so the batter hears my voice close to him and is looking for an inside pitch.

But the pitchers knew that no matter what I did, the outside target would be there by the time they got to their release point.

Or I’d move away from the batter so he’s looking outside after I’ve signed for an inside pitch.

In a possible double steal situation, I’d go out to the mound and discuss with the infielders the four or five options we had on how to play it.

If Koufax was pitching, he’d say, “I don’t care about the base runners. I have a better chance of getting the batter out than making one of those plays.” Drysdale would try to pick somebody off.

I loved the slider. It’s hard for a left-hand batter to hit it breaking in on his knees. For a right-hand batter it gives you two curves.

It’s easier to control than a curve and if you miss, it’s usually on the outside of the plate. A curve is more dangerous if you screw up in the strike zone or it hangs.

I tell kids you need two breaking balls.

You need the good yellow hammer that breaks down, but you can’t throw that curve when you’re behind cause the hitter is not going to swing at it.

Behind in the count, a good three-quarter curveball is ideal ‘cause he’s sitting on fastball or slider. On 0 and 2 you might want to go yellow hammer ‘cause he has to go at anything close.

It’s a mental game.

The pitcher is the most important man on the ball club.

The catcher’s job is to make him perform at his best and you don’t get that out of a pitcher by throwing the ball back at him 90 miles an hour and breaking his hand whenever he misses a pitch, or calling him a stupid son of a gun and all that.

You coddle a pitcher, very much so.

It’s a rapport like brother and sister, man and wife, and when you’re cooking, when you put down a sign his mind will be on the same track that yours is.

Say you have a right-hand batter up with men on first and third and one out.

We want to get a double play and I’m thinking fastball away to get the ground ball to second or short and I put it down and he’s thinking the same thing.

After a while with pitchers you get that kind of feeling where both of you are thinking alike. That’s what I call cooking.

I teach more philosophy than mechanics.

Catching is knowing how to take away the hitter’s power, knowing the pitcher, knowing the hitter’s personality, stance, likes with a bat – all these things determine what he’s trying to do when he gets to the plate.

If you make a game of looking at a guy’s stance, his bat, his ego, his personality, pretty soon you’ve got a profile of 450 guys.

When he comes to the plate, automatically you’ve got it in your head and know what he is capable of doing.

Todays Catchers

What makes me wince at today’s catching? Catching with one hand behind their back and with a first baseman’s glove.

They’re off balance with the top of their bodies leaning forward and that takes the ball out of the strike zone. They’re not in position to throw; they have to come up straight. 

Roy Campanella taught me years ago the face of the glove is like a Ping Pong paddle and you use that to stop the ball.

When the ball is low, the book says catch it fingers down.  With fingers up there’s a lot more passed balls. 

I used to think that LA manager Walt Alston was too sedate, too laid back. He put men in position to make decisions, then sat back and rode the boat.

He’d ask you, “What do you think we should do?” He’d leave a lot of decisions up to us.

Then I was traded to Minnesota. Billy Martin was volatile and unpredictable. He had the Durocher fire to win, but he wasn’t very good at handling players.

Angry a lot, jumped on your case a lot, got on pitchers. 

Playing for Ted Williams

My last year was with Washington. Ted Williams was a one-dimensional manager. Strictly interested in hitting. He let coaches deal with the rest.

He didn’t know much about other aspects of the game, but more about hitting than anybody. First time I talked to him, he told me, “I want you to start taking a swing at that fastball like you do in BP.

Any time you get the pitcher in a hole and you study him, you look for the heat and if you get it, I want you to jump off the ground swinging at it.” 

But on defense, he raised holy hell if we got behind in the count and had to throw a fastball and the batter got a hit.

When that happened, the pitcher and I would go back and tell Ted it was a slider. Then he wouldn’t get as angry. 

A lot of guys go up to bat with nothing on their minds, not looking anything. You need an idea of what you are going to do at bat.

Ted taught discipline.

Hank Aaron went to the plate one time looking for a changeup off Podres. Made out three times looking for the changeup he never got.

Fourth time up he got it with three on and hit a home run. Ted taught you how to think at bat.

I was 37 and he taught me more about hitting than any man I’ve ever seen.

And all it was, was anticipation and discipline. Look for what you want to hit until you get two strikes. If you don’t get it don’t swing at it. That can be taught to anybody.

He was the nicest man I ever met. I loved him.

Coaching for the Angels

In 1972 I was the bullpen coach for the Angels.

The next year I was the first base coach. Then we had a very funny situation. The third base coach was a little hesitant in giving signs and made some bad judgment calls.

So one day they told me they wanted to move him to first base coach.

I said, “That’s fine. What about me?”

“We want to move you back to the bullpen.”

That was going backwards. I said, “Wait, wait. If he cannot do his job at third base and you want to move him to first, why don’t I go to third?”

“Well, we want to bring someone else in for that.”

I got very pissed off, very vocal. They sent me back to the bullpen. Same old story: you can coach first base but you can’t coach third base or manage.

Dick Williams came in as manager in mid-season.

One day near the end of the season he told me he was going to take someone else on the road trip and I could stay back home.

I said, “You gotta be out of your mind.” I packed my bags, left the clubhouse, didn’t say I quit, nothing. I just left.

I started a public relations business with my wife. That’s still my fallback position. I went back to that not because I liked it.

I was there ten years, wrote a book in 1978 about my observations as a young man coming into baseball from Ohio and all the carousing and drinking and problems that athletes have.

When Al Campanis made his public relations mistake on TV a few years ago [Campanis said that “blacks may not have the necessities to be . . . a manager”], I thought the doors were going to swing open a little more than they had been in the past and I wanted to get back in immediately to see if I could go up the ladder and I’m still trying, but it’s been a few years now and if it goes to four or five I’ll get out.

I’m not going to stay in this little minor league position the Dodgers gave me in baseball.

I was out of baseball over ten years. That’s a long time to be frustrated.

There’s an instinct you have as a catcher: when a guy is going to steal, when they’re going to hit and run - all the little things that can happen.

You learn to anticipate and when you anticipate correctly, 90 percent of the time, you know you’re cooking.

So I immediately started analyzing baseball again and I found out you don’t lose it, it’s there, and as you get older you sort of fine tune it. I hadn’t lost it at all.

Some managers are just plain dumb, think they know everything about baseball. They may know how to play the infield or outfield, but I’ll be damned if they know how to pitch or catch.

They don’t know it; they’ve never done it. And only Campanella and God know it better than I do.

Given the importance of pitchers, is it surprising that the least represented among managers are pitchers?

I don’t know about that. I believe the least represented people among managers are black catchers.

Do you want to manage?

Like air. Like I need air. As a catcher you are almost managing anyway.

If certain other people can do it with high school educations or no education, then the only reason you are not doing it is the color of your skin.

I would not manage in the minor leagues. I am as capable as any manager out there. Many managers came right from the field and managed.

I don’t need minor league experience. That’s not ego; that’s fact. Offering me a minor league managing job is like – what’s the word – a pacifier. I was asked about it.

I don’t want to be a minor league manager for five years. I’m too old for that.

I have more experience and success at what I did than 90 percent of the managers in the major leagues and they go out and hire these guys that continually lose year after year and they keep putting them on the clock.

That irritates me, because they’re losers.

I have no expectations. We don’t know if baseball is ready for minority managers in certain cities. Wherever you do have a minority manager, somebody’s going to be racially pissed off.

You just go day by day and put a ribbon on how long you’re gonna play this game.

I’m away from home a lot.

I love baseball, but I’m not gonna spend my waning years traveling around trying to teach kids making four or five million a year how to play ball, and they get sent up without anybody asking if they can do the job until they find out they can’t.

A lot of people in baseball now are business majors, corporate people not into the talent side of it. You call the Dodgers office now, you get a computer. You don’t talk to people anymore.

I gotta get ready for the game tonight.