Symbol of Simpler Day : Spahn Gives Word Brave New Value

The road out of Hartshorne follows the potholes and wanders in the shadows of aspen. The snow along the way to the Diamond Star Ranch is melting now, and in the first flush of a false spring, the hard, dead earth has turned spongy underfoot, as though to promise that the cold nights will soon be gone and that in the sunshine of summer days anything is possible.

But the owner of the Diamond Star could never be patient in February. In this season between the seasons, in this dark void that for 23 years preceded spring training in Florida, and thus the rebirth of life itself, Warren Spahn, the ageless miracle maker of the Boston and Milwaukee Braves, heard two voices: One, deep and fearful, whispered, “No athlete can go on forever.” The other--the one that spoke the loudest--said, “Strive to excel and you cannot be defeated.”

Played Until Age 44

Spahn played baseball until he was 44--enjoying some of his finest successes after the age of 40--and for most of his career he was to pitching what Michelangelo was to painting.

He wrote the record book for left-handers, won every award there was to win, was voted into the Hall of Fame and became to many a symbol of a simpler day, when ballplayers gave loyalty to a single team for their entire careers, got high on victories instead of cocaine and considered themselves fortunate to get a $1,500 raise after an outstanding season.

“They talk about pressure today, but whatever happened to the word ‘challenge’--the intensity to excel?” Spahn asked, shifting his blue Jeep into first, its wheels spinning over hillside rocks, as he moved across the Diamond Star to check his herd of 250 heifers.

‘Gotten Too Lazy’

“It’s that desire to be greater than the other guy that makes a person worth his salt, whether he’s a petroleum engineer or a ballplayer or what, and I’m not sure the kids today have it like the old guard did. I’m not one of those guys who says everything was best in the old days. If there’s a better way to do it, I want to learn it, but still, I’m just not sure the kids now have the same dedication we did. We’ve gotten too lazy as a nation, too spoiled.

“That saying--it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game--well, that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. You show me a good loser and I’ll show you someone who’s a loser, period, someone who didn’t try hard enough. (Pitcher Lew) Burdette and I roomed together for 14 years and we were always challenging each other--anything you can do, I can do better, we’d say. It wasn’t professional jealousy; it was just saying, ‘Hey, pal, get off your butt. Try harder. Be better.’ ”

Spahn turned the Jeep south, along the ridge line that tracks the Kiamichi Mountains. He is 65 now and last headed to spring training with his wife, LoRene, 22 years ago.

When he bought the Diamond Star in 1948--the year the Braves won the National League pennant--it was only 50 acres. Now it sprawls across 2,800 acres, accumulated parcel by parcel. During the off-seasons of many winters, he built and patched fences, bulldozed the scrub to make hayfields and pastureland, dug the ponds to provide water for his cattle. By the time February arrived each year, his spirit ached for the uncomplicated delights of a season in the sun.

“Usually, you had your contract signed by now,” said Spahn, who as the winningest left-hander in history earned a top salary of $87,500--hardly more than meal money for today’s players, whose average pay is $412,520 a year.

‘Wouldn’t Even Offer’

‘I’d sit there across the desk from John Quinn (the Braves’ general manager), after winning 22, 23 games the year before, and he wouldn’t even offer more money. I’d say, ‘John, what do I have to do to get a raise?’ And he’d say, ‘You’re paid to win 20.’

“He’d write down a figure on a piece of paper and push it across the desk to me. I’d scratch it out, write in a new figure and push it back. It would get so we didn’t even have anything to argue about. John was always the gentleman, but was he ever stingy, and he usually had the last word. Of course, I later found out he was earning $15,000, so I can understand why he didn’t want to give it away.”

What would Spahn be worth at today’s market prices? He smiles and rolls his eyes. “Everyone asks me that,” he says. “But how can you look back? Hell, I’d just like to be 21 again and have all my hair.

‘I Was Hungry’

“I’ll tell you something, though, I’ve thought about many times. Thurman Munson (the New York Yankees catcher) was killed piloting his own plane. And if he hadn’t had all that money, he couldn’t have afforded the plane, could he? So maybe there was a blessing in disguise in what we were making. I mean, I played till I was 44 because I was hungry. The desire was still there. Can you be hungry like that when you’re a millionaire and your future’s guaranteed?”

Spahn reached inside his gray sweater that bore the emblem of Bally’s casino in Atlantic City and took out another low-tar cigarette. His concessions to age have been few--reading glasses, extra pounds on his midriff, a bald head--and his eyes still have the twinkle of a man kept young playing a youth’s game.

He laughs easily and often, remembers a few pitches he wishes he had back to throw over again, particularly a home run ball to Elston Howard in the 1957 World Series, and talks, if pressed, about what happens when the body will no longer obey the mind and spring training becomes a season of the past.

‘Must Be Like’ Divorce

“There’s a feeling of emptiness at first, as though you don’t exist anymore,” he said. “You think no one gives a damn about you. I was never divorced, but it must be like that. You just have to go out and build a new life for yourself. Some athletes can never handle it, and that leaves them bitter. Well, I decided I was going to be productive until I die. I know I’d be lost if I ever retired and was out of the mainstream.”

Fan letters still trickle into the ranch, two decades after he threw his last major league fastball, at the rate of five or six a day. He is in demand across the country as a speaker, does promotional work for the Equitable Assurance Co., AT&T; and Borden, plays in old-timers’ baseball games, participates in the Dodgers’ Fantasy Camp for non-professionals only good enough to dream, helps the commissioner of baseball on various youth projects, makes appearances in sporting events, plays in celebrity golf tournaments and earns $2,000 to sign autographs and talk baseball for a few hours at shows where baseball cards are traded by their collectors.

Earns More Now

So Spahn, a widower for nine years, is on the move constantly, earning more money now than he ever did during his playing days and staying at the ranch for only a few days at a stretch.

Back at his comfortable three-bedroom ranch house--a big place for a man to rattle around in alone--he went into the office to call his son, Greg, in Tulsa to try to arrange a golf game. Told that the course at the Indian Springs Country Club was still covered with snow, he said: “The hell with it. Let’s play anyway.”

Greg, 38, an honors graduate of the University of Oklahoma, was Spahn’s only child, and the two of them have remained exceptionally close friends and are partners in Spahn’s business affairs.

There is the ranch, which is incorporated and includes an oil well generating $500 a month. There are other oil investments too, three rental houses in Florida, and Spahn Enterprises, a company whose roots lie in Spahn’s fame and America’s nostalgia for yesteryear’s heroes.

‘I Can Do It Better’

Spahn, who was always more comfortable making money than spending it, works at a metal desk and has a telephone answering machine that he never turns on. He has no secretary, no agent, no staff. “I figure, why hand it over to someone else if I can do it better myself,” he says.

The walls and shelves of the office are covered with trophies, plaques, pictures and mementos of his achievements during Milwaukee’s golden age of baseball. Sometimes Spahn--the son of a wallpaper salesman who earned $27 a week, holder of a battlefield commission earned in the battle for the Remagen Bridge and winner of 363 major league victories--looks up from his desk, almost surprised, and asks himself: “Hey, did I really do all that? “

“I still see a lot of the people from the old Milwaukee days as I travel around,” Spahn said. “But more and more I go back to Milwaukee or Boston and ask people, ‘Where’s so-and-so?’ and I find out they’ve died. A lot of guys I played with are gone. Del Rice is dead, of course. Bob Trowbridge’s gone. Sid’s gone. You remember Bob Elliot? He’s gone too. I always thought those guys should have lived forever.”

Solitude of Ranch

It was late now, nearly midnight, and Spahn was at the bar the Miller Brewing Co. of Milwaukee had built for him in his living room, drinking a beer with a friend.

Yesterday’s newspapers--USA Today and the Tulsa World, deposited each morning with the fan mail in his mailbox a mile down the road--were on the table nearby. He talked about the solitude of the Diamond Star and nights so crisply clear that each star seemed within reach, and he talked about the fun he was having traveling the country with a message that discipline and hard work and yes, even suffering does indeed produce winners.

“I guess the secret is making the most of wherever you’re at in life,” he said. “Some people look in the mirror and they’re unhappy. What do I see? Well, I see someone with gray hair who’s growing old, and you know what? It makes me feel good, sort of content. I like where I’ve been and where I’m at. Baseball and the military did that for me. They gave me everything.”