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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Johnstone still doing
what he does bestAS celebrity arrivals go, this one was perfect. No posse. No limo. Just a lone man ambling down the hill, duffle bag over his shoulder, wind whipping through his hair.
The man who locked Tommy Lasorda in a hotel room, who put a melted brownie in Steve Garvey's glove, the master of hotfoots and pranks and pies in the face watches as the golf cart sent to pick him up goes by. Without him.
"Hey!" Jay Johnstone says, right on cue, humor bone intact. "Hey! Hey! Hey!"
He still has the old touch.
Is there a few minutes for photos?
"Do I have to wear clothes?" he asks.
Jay Johnstone still has the gift.
He remains one of baseball's greatest flakes.
It's OK, you can say it. It's a wonderful word, when placed in the right context. And that context, of course, is "baseball."
It's a word with sunshine in it, in baseball. It's a word that makes you smile, in baseball.
Managers may reach for the aspirin bottle, but the rest of us merely shake our heads and laugh.
With love.
That's an elite fraternity, in baseball.
And if Jay Johnstone was not the great game's most famous flake he was at least the one who turned that hard-earned title into two best-selling books and three TV specials and a cameo role in the "strike two" scene in "The Naked Gun."
Johnstone always made everyone smile.
He's doing it today at Central Oahu Regional Park as the celebrity speaker, the headliner, the roving consultant-on-demand at the KIDS Hawaii World Series, a jumbo youth baseball and softball tournament featuring 86 teams of several ages from various countries.
The man who played 20 years in the big leagues, who has four World Series rings, who still holds the major league record for best postseason batting average (.778 in the 1976 National League Championship Series; he later hit .677 with the Dodgers in the 1981 World Series) is on call to any of those players at any time. Coaches, too.
He'll offer his counsel, his advice. His heart.
Which leaves us with one inescapable "feel-good" conclusion:
Look out, kids.
Former major leaguer Jay Johnstone pleaded "Let me out!" from within a dugout at Central Oahu Regional Park yesterday.
This is the guy whose own book titles labeled him as "Baseball's Craziest Player," "Over the Edge" and "Baseball's Favorite Lunatic."
And if he's got his arm around you, something's coming.
"My job," he says, proudly, "was to have fun and win."
Which included pranks. Hot mustard on unattended food and shaving cream on the bullpen phone. He once disguised himself as a groundskeeper and tended the field between innings.
"Crazy little things," he says, "that just make people laugh."
That's the best part. That's the thing. That's why we love the flakes, and always forgive. It's never malicious. Never mean.
A little innocent insanity never hurt anyone.
And besides, there's a lot of boredom in baseball, all those hours at the ballpark, and somebody's got to break it up.
"Of course," Johnstone says, "when I first broke into the big leagues my first big league roommate was Jimmy Piersall, so that might have something to do with it."
It was manager William Joseph Rigney who said, "It was an easy decision," matching up the old pro with the promising young gun. "I didn't want to screw up two rooms."
Piersall was the player who ran the bases backward when he hit his 100th home run, who apparently cheered for himself in the outfield and cleaned home plate with a squirt gun, who once actually had a nervous breakdown (but that was OK, because after he was released from the hospital he could trump all arguments by saying he was the only guy in the ballpark who had a certificate of sanity).
"Jimmy later got in trouble for referring to the players' wives on television as 'bimbos,' " Larry King once wrote, "but he was always his own man."
Johnstone still cracks himself up in telling the story of the melted brownie in Garvey's glove.
"Well, I put the chocolate on (Jerry) Reuss' pants, so he blamed Reuss and started beating the (bleep) out of Reuss," Johnstone says. "You know, I'm not stupid.
"I sidled up to Reuss and started wiping the chocolate off on his pants. So naturally (Garvey) started jumping on him and beating him on the chest."
But even Garvey couldn't stay mad, and today you can hire him to do motivational speeches through Johnstone's business.
Yes, his business. There's a reason baseball's locker room is called a clubhouse. There aren't as many laughs when you're all grown up.
One of baseball's greatest flakes is a little more staid these days.
A little.
"They're still little men," he tells the coaches of the players he'll be spending time with here these next few days. "They need to learn about winning and losing and making friends and stuff like that."
It's an informational, inspirational, heart-warming speech.
He's there for these kids. He's serious about this stuff.
He's asked about that photo session again.
"Well," he says. "If you've got a whipped cream pie ..."
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Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com
