The Big Apple Left a Sour Taste in Whitson’s Mouth

New York is a great city for folks who consider blaring horns and screeching brakes to be a symphony, graffiti to be fine art, garbage to be a collectible and rudeness to be a social grace.

To understand New York, take a ride on the subway. Prepare to battle for enough room to get a grip on the overhead rail, and don’t bother with a shoe shine. What’s more, the subway may be the most scenic way to see this city.

Into this teeming metropolis with its nasal snarl entered one Eddie Lee Whitson. This would be Eddie Lee from Tain-us-see. Erwin, Tain-us-see, to be exact.

Whitson came to The Big Apple to play the game of baseball, thinking baseball was baseball and life would be nice. After all, he had this five-year contract worth $4.5 million.

Money, however, cannot buy happiness, especially not in New York City.

Manhattan became Devil’s Island and Whitson became Papillon, nervously looking for a raft to freedom. He would pace and fret, all the while watching warily over his shoulder.

In such a situation, Whitson could be excused if he had dreams of sunshine and palm trees and beaches and smiling faces.

He could be excused if he had dreams about San Diego.

In Whitson’s case, he did not really have to dream. He had memories of San Diego, for this was where baseball brought him for the 1983 and 1984 seasons. He had memories, and he had scrapbooks. That 1984 season was a very good year.

Eddie Lee Whitson won 14 games that year for the Padres and pitched them to a 7-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series. That was a very big win because the Padres had lost the first two games of the best-of-five series.

That was to be Whitson’s last victory as a Padre until Wednesday night, because he had to first endure that semi-self-imposed exile to New York.

What happened after that 1984 season was that the Padres fell deeply in love, but forgot the most basic tenet of romantic etiquette. You dance with your date, not someone else’s.

Whitson and the Padres had gotten to that postseason prom together, but the Padres forgot about poor Eddie Lee. They went out and wooed the guy who went to that very same prom with the Chicago Cubs. They threw bouquets at Rick Sutcliffe.

By the time the Padres realized they had loved and lost, Whitson was gone. He had signed with the New York Yankees, thinking that baseball was baseball.

As it turned out, both the Padres and Whitson were losers in this deal.

The Padres suffered because they no longer had Eddie Lee and Eddie Lee suffered because he had New York.

“My biggest problem,” he said, “was that I just didn’t fit in. I wasn’t used to the New York manic. Everything was moving a little bit too fast. I like things laid back.”

After all, this was a country guy from the Appalachian foothills of southern Tennessee.

“Erwin’s very small,” Whitson said. “Only six red lights in the whole town.”

No subway in Erwin, and maybe no sewers. The closest thing to a skyscraper may be an oak tree in the grade school playground. Erwin is the same as so many small southern towns, which means it is very different from New York.

But nothing, anywhere, is like New York--and New Yorkers.

Those folks who endure so much on a day-to-day basis just to survive obviously needed an outlet for frustration. They found one in Whitson.

This multimillion-dollar man had the audacity to be just that. A man. A human being, subject to human frailties. He did not pitch that well when he joined the Yankees. Human beings go through such downward cycles, but New Yorkers have only a cursory understanding of human beings.

The populace got after Eddie Lee, booing him and threatening him and his family. The trip from the clubhouse to his car became as precarious as tiptoeing through a mine field inhabited by Dobermans.

I asked Whitson if he had to wear a disguise when he went to the grocery store or out to dinner, and he chuckled a sardonic chuckle.

“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t go no place but the ballpark and back to my apartment.”

When Eddie Lee and the Yankees left town on trips, Whitson packed his family on a plane and sent them out of town as well.

This was no way to live.

An unlikely hero was to enter this scenario. George Steinbrenner, so often the villain, realized that Eddie Lee Whitson just had to get out of New York.

“Mr. Steinbrenner has his own ways about him,” Whitson said, “but he was a heckuva guy with me. He gave me the clauses to get me out.”

Whitson’s contract had escape clauses. He could choose where he went. The Yankees asked him about going to Seattle, and he said no. And they asked him about going to Chicago for Tom Seaver, and he said no.

And then they asked him about San Diego.

He said yes.

In fact, he probably said, “Whoopeeee!” They may have heard him all the way in Tain-us-see, his voice echoing through the Appalachian foothills. This was better ‘n catching a 16-pound catfish.

Ed Whitson made it all the way back with that victory over Cincinnati Wednesday night, walking off the mound to a standing ovation. By George, it was nice.

“That,” Eddie Lee said, “was a warm feeling. I haven’t experienced that since . . . I left here. It’s great to be back.”