Dateline: Cincinnati
Roger McDowell’s new book Hot Foot tells the inside story of the 1986 World Series Champions season and growing up as a baseball nerd in the Colerain area.
He tells how his father helped instill a work ethic and respect for committment that allowed his talents to take him to the highest level of competition in Major League Baseball.
The voice of the book is in the first person because he is telling a story a contradiction perhaps to a bit of wisdom learned which will be mentioned later.
The story told to Doug Feldmann, who is a professor at Northern Kentucky University, a former scout with the Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners. He is currently an official scorer for Major League Baseball.
In the book, McDowell, tells how he grew up with three siblings in a tiny apartment in Monfort Heights. Played football, basketball and baseball at White Oak Middle School and Colerain High School. He accepted a partial scholarship for baseball at Bowling Green State University that allowed him to further his education while improving skills that led him to the 1986 World Series against the Boston Red Sox.
He was a normal kid who worked at McDonald’s on North Bend Road.
McDowell tells how he and a friend used the truck of the shop teacher at Colerain to spread sawdust so the field would recover from rain, so they could play. He tells how they got the not-so-bright idea to spread gasoline and light it to “dry” the field.
He explains how he developed his bread and butter pitch the sinker in summer ball. How he developed life-long friendships at BGSU arriving after Orel Hershizer, who later became his teammate with the Los Angeles Dodgers. McDowell chronicles his time in the Mets farm system with Doc Gooden and Lenny Dykstra.
He arrived in the Major Leagues in 1985, making one of his two career starts against the Reds at Riverfront Stadium on May 4. He was determined to stay quiet and learn which let him earn the trust of manager Dave Johnson, veterans, Ray Knight, Gary Carter, Mookie Wilson and Keith Hernandez, a current Mets broadcaster, and one of his best friends to this day.
An excellent story teller, McDowell explains how he used practical jokes to lighten the pressure of a big league pennant race. He and Howard Johnson developed a method for giving unsuspecting teammates a hot foot, or putting on his uniform upside down.
McDowell deftly explains the transition of pro baseball from a kid’s game to a business.
He shows a general appreciation for the places he was able to visit by playing Major League Baseball the people he met and befriended along the way from baseball executives to the fun he had with the Bleacher Bums at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, the trainers, the clubhouse attendants and all the people behind the scenes, who see to the players wants and needs to free them to concentrate in competition.
McDowell discusses his appearance in the Seinfeld sitcom with Hernandez.
He explains how he became a pitching coach, or pitching instructor as he preferred it to be called, to give back the knowledge he accumulated along the way with the help of others.
He succeeded pitching guru, Leo Mazzone, to become the pitching coach under the late, great Bobby Cox with the Atlanta Braves.
As a personal note that I will write in another post, how although our paths only crossed a few times, how our journeys paralled.
Roger and I attended the same High School had the same baseball and football coach and have many mutual friends. I had classes at Colerain with his brother Jeff and his sister was two year behind me in school.
I lived in Toledo and Bowling Green at the same time he pitched for the Falcons.
I moved to Queens New York that had a view of Shea Stadium, three years before he arrived with the Mets and stayed until 1990.
I came back to Cincinnati and covered baseball at Reds home games for SportsTicker and later interviewed Roger as a player for the Dodgers and the pitching coach of the Braves.
In these last few paragraphs, I just violated a truism that Roger learned from Clint Hurdle as a young player. Joe Duran of the New York Times wrote an article early in Roger’s rookie year. Hurdle went to Roger. “There certainly was a lot of I’s in it,” Hurdle declared. “There is no “I” in team.
I, however, recommend this book to get a clear picture for those of us who had the desire but not the talent to play the game at the top level.
It is a baseball nerd’s delight. I was delighted to read it.
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