The King of Pranks : From Belching Contests to Finding New Uses for Jell-O, Padre Pitcher Larry Andersen Rules

Nolan Ryan has pitched seven no-hitters in his career, but his fondest memory in baseball is of hearing Larry Andersen belch the entire national anthem.

Dennis Eckersley may be the finest relief pitcher in baseball, but there was no better time in his life than when he and Andersen were roommates--in the back of a pickup truck.

Rene Lachemann has been to three World Series as third base coach of the Oakland Athletics but claims his most vivid memory in baseball is of Jell-O in the toilet of his hotel room, a prank Andersen was involved in.

Tommy Sandt has been part of consecutive National League East Division titles with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but his outstanding memory is of wearing plastic gloves during Thanksgiving dinner at Andersen’s house.

You’d think a pitcher who has spent 21 years in professional baseball--he is beginning his second with the San Diego Padres--would want to be recognized for something other than his bizarre behavior.

“There are so many things in my career I’m proud of,” Andersen said. “It’s really hard to keep track of them. But if you’re talking just with the Padres, it’s easy. Everyone knows my greatest moment.

“That afternoon in Los Angeles (last April 14). Come on, who can forget?”

You mean the Padres’ 5-3 victory over the Dodgers, when you didn’t even throw a pitch?

Andersen: “Forget the game, I’m talking about afterward.”

Oh, yeah.

On that day, actor John Goodman, who plays the slovenly husband in “Roseanne,” was in the Padre clubhouse after the game.

“I just did what I thought was appropriate in a situation like that,” Andersen said. “I challenged him to a belching contest.”

Goodman swigged some beer and cut loose. Andersen smiled, took a gulp, and unloaded a sound that had people ducking for cover, reverberating through the clubhouse.

Goodman bowed in tribute and walked, head down, out of the clubhouse.

“You know, he was my first roommate in baseball, and we spent so many times together,” Eckersley said. “But the thing I remember most about him is that he could burp for 15 minutes. I mean it.”

Say hello to Larry Eugene Andersen, the clown prince of baseball.

He has made 21 stops in his 21-year professional career. He’s 38, only two months shy of 39.

Yet instead of being a surly veteran who has seen it all, Andersen behaves as if he’s a teen-ager spending his last day in baseball.

He’s the master of the prank, his mind constantly active to find ways to sabotage the unsuspected.

“Every team should have someone like him,” Ed Whitson said. “But if you have two, you’re asking for a whole heap of trouble.”

Andersen is one of the few remaining characters in the game. And if he hasn’t seen it all, he sure has heard about it.

“The game has changed so much,” Andersen said. “It’s all about money now. Guys don’t have fun like they used to because the attention is on money. . . .

“The only thing that hasn’t changed is everyone’s feelings toward the Dodgers. It must be in everyone’s contract: If you don’t get signed by the Dodgers, you have to go your whole career hating them.

“That’s why I believe that if you can’t enjoy what you’re doing and be happy in this game, it’s time to get out.”

Andersen especially wants to have fun this season. He doesn’t know how much longer he can pitch. He has a ruptured and herniated disk in his neck.

Doctors have recommended surgery, but they have also told him that surgery will end his baseball career. Maybe the pain will prevent him from pitching, anyway, but at least he wants to give it one last shot.

“I’m just having too much fun,” he said.

Andersen, who never made more than $80,000 until his 16th year in baseball, didn’t make the big leagues for good until 1983, after being sold by the Seattle Mariners.

“That kind of woke me up, because the Mariners were the worst team on the planet,” he said. “I mean, if I couldn’t make their team, whose team could I make? They weren’t even a good triple-A team.”

Andersen’s value began to emerge with the Phillies, and after he and Dave Stewart were released in 1986, he caught on with the Houston Astros and became one of the top setup men in baseball. No one was nastier against right-handed hitters.

He would have stayed forever in Houston, but the Astros began unloading big salaries and potential free agents and he was traded to the Boston Red Sox for Jeff Bagwell. Four months later, he signed as a free agent with the Padres.

“The guy’s like Felix the cat,” Lachemann said. “He’s got nine lives. Never in my wildest imagination did I think he’d still be pitching.”

Perhaps that is why there have been suspicions raised that Andersen has something up his sleeve besides practical jokes. A little Vaseline, perhaps? Pine tar? Sandpaper?

“I know people think I cheat,” Andersen said. “I was with the Houston Astros all those years, so it’s only natural. I think it’s guilt by association.”

Andersen isn’t saying that he never has scuffed a ball. Or that he never has fooled with a little Vaseline. But in a game?

“Come on, I don’t have the guts,” he said, “I couldn’t do what those guys do.”

Andersen breaks into an expansive grin, then shrugs. It may be hard to believe, he says, but he figures that at least one-fourth of today’s pitchers cheat in some way.

It’s all part of baseball, he says, and the best times of his life have been in baseball, and that’s why he can’t understand why not everyone is having as much fun as he is.

But he doesn’t limit his fun to baseball. There are other things. Like the holidays. Why, he wonders, do people have to act so proper at the dinner table at the family get-togethers? Why can’t they do as he and his wife, Trish, did when they hosted a dinner party for 27 on Thanksgiving weekend?

They cooked mounds of spaghetti, piled it onto the plates, sat down at fancy tables, said their blessings, and began to eat.

Only one thing was missing. Silverware. And what were these brown paper sacks doing in front of each place-setting?

“You’d never guess what was inside,” Tommy Sandt said.

“A bib, chocolate mint, napkin and plastic gloves,” he said. “We had to eat spaghetti with plastic gloves.”

Baseball is the most fun for Andersen, though, and has been for a long time. He was in only his second professional season, in Reno, when he volunteered for the part-time job as the team’s clubhouse attendant. He’s believed to be the first player-clubbie in baseball history.

“The only trouble was that it affected my concentration,” he said. “I’d be standing on the mound with two outs and the bases loaded, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Did I get the jocks out of the dryer?’ ”

He and Eckersley met in Reno, and became roommates. They shared an apartment for the season, but their lease expired at the end of August and they still had a few games in September. They couldn’t afford a hotel room, so they ended up sleeping for the final week in the back of the pickup.

And once, because of the low pay there--$200 every two weeks--Eckersley and his wife quit speaking, temporarily, to Andersen.

“One day we go to cash our checks, get our $200 apiece, and stop in a casino,” Andersen said. “Eck says, ‘Here’s all my money. Whatever you do, don’t give me anymore.’ He took $20 and went to the tables.

“He’s back in five minutes and says, ‘I lost my money, give me another $20. I said, ‘No, I can’t. You made me promise.’

“We went back and forth for 10 minutes. He was getting so mad I thought we were going to fight. Finally, I just said, ‘OK, here’s another $20.’

“He’s back again in five minutes, and we have to go through it all over again. He ends up losing $180. He had one $20 bill when he left. I said, ‘That a way, babe, you really showed me some discipline.’

“The next day, his wife, Denise, won’t even speak to me. She and Eck are teed off because I gave him his money. I said, ‘Something’s wrong with this picture here.’ ”

It took 10 years for Andersen to crack the big leagues for an entire season. He took his act with him.

“I was still doing the same stuff,” he said. “Only when you’re in the big leagues, people tend to notice more.”

He introduced the conehead to major league baseball, walking through airports and shaking hands with astonished bystanders.

He pulled the fake dollar bill stunts in airplane aisles. Called in fake names over the intercom system. Came tumbling down luggage carousels.

“You couldn’t do that stuff in the minors,” he said. “It’s just doesn’t have the same effect on Greyhounds.”

Once, though, Andersen’s zany humor saved the day for Mike Schmidt.

Schmidt, the longtime third baseman of the Phillies, had made a colossal public relations blunder by ripping Philadelphia fans while the club was in Montreal. He thought it would never get back to Philadelphia. Instead, it resulted in blaring headlines in the papers, and by the time the Phillies arrived back in town, lynch mobs were forming.

“I brought a wig and sunglasses into the clubhouse our first day back in town,” Andersen said. “I said, ‘Schmitty, there are going to be snipers in the stands. They’re going to execute you. Schmitty, it’s your only chance.’

“Well, Schmitty comes onto the field for infield, and they gave him a standing ovation. It was the first time in 15 years that he let his guard down, the first time he showed the fans he was a real person.

“I know it sounds weird, since he had such a great career and everything, but I feel sorry for him. He’s a perfect example of a guy who never had fun. He couldn’t do it. He felt so much pressure of living up to fans’ expectations of hitting a homer every at-bat.

“He’s a Hall of Famer, and he never looked like he enjoyed the game.”

Andersen is famous around the league for more than his goofiness, though. Ask the clubhouse attendants and they will tell you few tip better than Andersen. Bob Doty, the Padres’ visiting clubhouse attendant, says he was near tears when the Padres signed Andersen simply because of the lost revenue.

As Lachemann can attest, though, few come close to Andersen in the prank department. And Lachemann should know. He was victimized by “Mr. Jell-O.”

It happened in 1982, when Lachemann was managing the Seattle Mariners, and the team was in Chicago. Lachemann went to Rush Street after the game, leaving Andersen, Richie Zisk and Joe Simpson all the time they needed.

They got a key to his suite, and began stashing every item they could find in the bathroom. Furniture. The bed. Light bulbs. Paintings. Even the digital alarm clock.

When Lachemann came into his room, a bit tipsy as he recalls, he flicked on the light switch. No light. He tried to feel for his bed. It was gone.

He finally found everything in the bathroom, including a toilet full of lime Jell-O, and went berserk. He called Zisk. He called Tom Paciorek. They couldn’t hear a word he was saying, though, because the mouthpiece from his phone was missing. Lachemann finally went to sleep on the floor.

He spent the entire season trying to find the culprits. And in every city the team went, Jell-O boxes were left in his suite. Once, the coaching staff joined him in his room, opened a couple of cans of beer--and found them full of Jell-O.

Andersen contends that there will never be another prank like it. Nothing could ever top “Mr. Jell-O.” Or could it?

“You know, I met the cousin of ‘the Kissing Bandit’ last year,” Andersen said. “She told me I could set someone up. Well, who better to set up than Bruce (Hurst, a devout Mormon)? So I’m going to have ‘the Kissing Bandit’ come to one of our games this year, and go get Bruce. It’ll be something, won’t it?

“The only trouble is that, with my luck, Bruce would be throwing a no-hitter. And when she came out to kiss him, he’d be all flustered and ruin his concentration.”

Andersen paused momentarily, smiled and said:

“Ah, what the hell.

“It’s only a game.”