BAT BOYS: They’re the Summer Squires

It’s a glamorous job, being a bat boy. What boy hasn’t wanted to be one? The pay is modest, but the perks are sensational. A bat boy can be on a first-name basis with an idol. He wears the same uniform as the players. He knows clubhouse secrets.

A bat boy may do the laundry, take out the trash, shine shoes and run little errands. He’ll scoot out toward home plate to pick up the bat after a player has hit. He keeps track of things like the pine tar rag, the weighted bat, the resin bag.

But what other of life’s menial tasks offer such prestige? Bat boys get to take a road trip now and then with the team. A bat boy gets to kneel near the on-deck circle. A bat boy joins in with a congratulatory handshake for a player who has hit a home run. Bat boys sometimes sit front and center in official team photographs. Bat boys can be the envy of their neighborhood.

To be a bat boy, one often has to work his way up. Say, from ball boy. Or bat boy in the visitors’ clubhouse. Being bat boy for the visitors means sometimes having to pretend you’re sorry, or happy, depending on the situation, because a bat boy’s heart is usually with the home team.

An advantage in trying to become a bat boy is who you know -- for example, Pete Rose Jr. But another plus is where you live. The closer to the stadium, the better. Providing your transportation, like with your own two feet, is a help. Teams are inundated with inquiries from would-be bat boys. “We try to use all neighborhood kids,” said Jimmy Tyler, Orioles’ clubhouse man who is in charge of bat boys. He was once a neighborhood kid and bat boy himself.

These days, a boy can make about $20 a day, plus occasional tips, but bat boys value more than anything their association with the players. Bat boy jobs don’t come open that often; a team will be happy to have a good boy stay on for several seasons. A few even go on to play major league ball -- Steve Garvey, Johnny Pesky, Ken Reitz. Some become teachers, lawyers. No matter what, they never forget the sweetest days of their boyhood world.

A Boy Who Didn’t Give Up

Jay Mazzone was no ordinary bat boy. His hands were so severly burned in an accident when he was 2 years old that they had to be amputated. He did his job as Orioles’ bat boy with what he called his hooks.

Mazzone was bat boy in Baltimore from 1967 through 1972. Frank Robinson played there then. The two were good friends.

Several players didn’t know how to treat Mazzone when he first appeared in the Orioles’ clubhouse.

“Frank Robinson broke the ice,” Mazzone said recently. He is 35, still living near Baltimore. “Frank was running his ‘kangaroo court’ and he was calling a vote among the players, whether to fine somebody or not. It was either thumbs up or thumbs down. After the vote he said, ‘Jay, you’re fined for not voting.’ Everybody laughed. After that, I was treated just like everybody else.”

Somebody even made a big cardboard hand with a thumb, said Mazzone, so he could take part in future votes. He had been included in a baseball team’s clubhouse high jinks.

One thing he remembers about the bat boy’s job itself was never having interfered with a play while retrieving a bat. That’s the mark of a good bat boy.

“I’ve always been kind of sure of myself,” he said. “I’ve always liked a challenge, to see what I can do and what I can’t do.”

The Orioles liked his attitude. He had played on a Little League team, a feat in itself. In 1965, his team made an apperance at Memorial Stadium. There, he decided he wanted to be a bat boy -- “It’s every kid’s dream.” He wrote the Orioles. They hired him for the next season and, as teams often do with new bat boys, assigned him to the visitors’ clubhouse. In 1967, he was promoted to the Orioles’ clubhouse. He was good, and he stuck.

As bat boy, he received his share of publicity. Good Housekeeping magazine profiled him as “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Give Up.”

Some of his memories: being bat boy for the American League all-star team in 1966, meeting Hubert Humphrey, receiving a letter from Richard Nixon. At 19, he retired.

He started at $4 a day, he recalled, and when he left seven years later he was making $5 a day.

“It’s kind of an unwritten rule,” he said, “that when you graduate from high school, that’s it. You can’t make much money being a bat boy, and after high school it’s time to get a real job. Besides, you wouldn’t want to be older than some of the prospects coming up.”

Today, Mazzone operates heavy construction equipment. He is married, with two daughters and a son. Sometimes he takes Jay Jr., 9, to see the Orioles.

“If we get there early enough,” he said, “we’ll walk down to the fence and talk to some of the players. Recently, I introduced him to Elrod Hendricks.”

A Bat Boy Who Played

It happened in 1952 in the Georgia State League. Statesboro took a 13-0 lead over Fitzgerald. Fans began shouting, “Put in the bat boy! Put in the bat boy!”

Not a bad idea, thought the Fitzgerald player-manager, Charlie Ridgeway, a native of Takoma Park, Md., and a pre-World War II four-sport star who played eight years in the minor leagues.

“I asked the umpire what would happen if I put him in,” said Ridgeway, now part owner, president and sports director of a radio station in Fitzgerald. “He said he didn’t know, except that we would probably have to forfeit if we won. I said, heck, let’s put him in.”

Ridgeway turned and shouted, “Joe, go hit.”

Joe Reliford, the 12-year-old bat boy, was stunned.

“His eyes got as big as saucers,” said Ridgeway.

It was the top of the eighth inning. “I think the pitcher let up a little bit on him,” said Ridgeway. “But he was a good athlete as well as a good kid. He used to bat with us before games and shag balls whenever we wanted.”

The bat boy made contact, hitting a grounder to third. He was thrown out at first.

Then, the manager sent him in to play right field. In the bottom of the inning, a Statesboro player needing a hit to extend a 21-game hitting streak came to the plate.

“He was a right-handed hitter and he intentionally hit the ball to right because the kid was out there,” said Ridgeway.

It was a sinking line drive toward the foul line, a tough chance for anybody. Reliford went for it and, sticking his glove out at the last moment, made a great catch. The Statesboro fans stood and applauded.

Reliford thus became the first black to play in the Georgia State League. But history hadn’t been on Ridgeway’s mind -- he just wanted to give the youngster a thrill in what was a lost game.

For his actions, Ridgeway said he was fined $50, suspended five days and fired as manager.

A Bat Boy Ejected

A bat boy must have allegiance to his team, but even that is superseded by an umpire’s order.

During a 1984 game in the Pacific Coast League, one Sam Morris, 14-year-old bat boy for the Portland Beavers, was ejected by an umpire.

The boy needed a lot of consolation and received it from the Beavers’ manager, Lee Elia. When Morris reached the Beavers’ clubhouse, Elia said he told him “not to worry about it, that it happens to everybody in baseball sooner or later.”

Elia was in the clubhouse because he, too, had been ejected. As Elia was leaving the field, he threw a folding metal chair into right field. The bat boy was ejected when he refused an order from the first base umpire to remove the chair from the field.

The boy didn’t really know what to do because several Beavers’ players told him to stay put. So he told the umpire he couldn’t get the chair.

“I thought I’d seen everything in my 26 years in baseball,” said Elia, “until that poor kid came into the locker room and said, ‘Skip, I’ve been tossed out, too.’ ” (Actually, a few bat boys have been ejected over the years).

The only good thing about the incident for the bat boy was that he did not receive the usual fine from the league.

“How do you fine a bat boy?” said league president William Cutler.

Bat Boys in Art and Film

The bat boy in baseball paintings is the little innocent who makes his heroes look ever larger. “The Dugout,” a 1948 Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell, featuring a dejected collection of Chicago Cubs, has a bat boy.

In film, the bat boy is usually depicted as a squire to a knight. In “The Natural,” Roy Hobbs-Robert Redford says to the attentive bat boy, “Go pick me out a winner, Bobby,” after Hobbs breaks his bat. Bobby gets to say a word: “Okay.” Then he chooses a “Savoy Special.” As flashbulbs pop, Bobby hands over the bat, and he and Roy exhange knowing glances. The Hollywood ending is not far behind.

In “Bull Durham,” however, Kevin Costner turns the bat boy’s world upside down. The boy urges hero Crash Davis, played by Costner, to get a hit. Crash responds in startling fashion: “Shut up.” The outburst reportedly reduced the boy almost to tears off camera. He only knew his line and not what Costner would say.

Bat Boys’ Roll Call

Frank Mason. One of the early bat boys, Mason got a job with Pittsburgh in 1891 and became a friend of Connie Mack, then a player. Mason grew up to be an International League umpire.

Andy Mood. As a Cincinnati bat boy in 1973, he made a flying tackle of a spectator who had run onto the field and eluded police. He received a $50 bonus.

Alfred Kunitz. Native of the Ukraine, Kunitz was New York Yankees’ bat boy in Babe Ruth’s time. At the age of 14 in 1919, Kunitz was watching a Yankees’ game at the Polo Grounds and made off with Home Run Baker’s glove. Conscience-stricken, he returned it and was given a job as “general field assistant.” Two weeks later, he was promoted to bat boy and remained in the job until 1924.

Walter Gershoff. He’s the Yankee bat boy who disclosed in February 1977 that the team did not give its bat boys a share of its 1976 World Series money.

Kenny Bush. He had one of the longest tenures as a bat boy. He lasted until he was 33. With service as bat boy dating to the Philadelphia Phillies’ pennant-winning “Whiz Kids” team of 1950, Bush was elevated in 1969 to Phillies’ assistant clubhouse and equipment manager. Now he’s clubhouse manager.

Rev. Thomas Blumquist. The now-retired minister was bat boy of the 1920 Brooklyn Dodgers. He made it to Cooperstown -- as a resident, and he delivered the invocation at the 1986 induction ceremonies.

Kenneth J. Sullivan. Received an extensive obituary in The Sporting News that began: “Kenneth J. Sullivan, Cardinals bat boy from 1925 to 1933, died ... “

Eddie Cervantez. Chicago White Sox bat boy killed in Vietnam, 1968.

Jim Hendrick. A Detroit Tigers’ bat boy who later sang professionally with Mickey Lolich.

Paul Wick. He told his story in his book, “Batboy of the Braves.”

Mark Mann. This 9-year-old grandson of former Houston Astros’ owner Roy Hofheinz was fined $2 in 1973 by then Astros’ manager Leo Durocher for leaving two baseballs in the Astros’ dugout. “But I don’t have $2, Mr. Durocher,” the boy said, to which Durocher supposedly replied, “Get it from your grandfather.” The boy did, but when he took the money to Durocher the manager, all heart, reportedly put his arm around the youngster and said, “Son, after thinking over the situation, I’m convinced the players were at fault for leaving the baseballs in the dugout, not you. Therefore, I’m rescinding the fine and you’re still my No. 1 bat boy.”