by Howie Mooney
May 23, 1962, was one of the greatest days in the life of one Joseph Anthony Pepitone. Many people just remember him as Joe. But on that wonderful spring day in ’62, Joe Pepitone hammered two home runs in the nine-run eighth inning of a 13-7 New York Yankees’ victory over the Kansas City Athletics in The House That Ruth Built in the Bronx.
Pepitone was a 21-year-old rookie with the Yankees in 1962. The young man from Brooklyn, who defied all his friends who were Dodger fans, had always cheered for their hated rivals, the Bronx Bombers. Now he was living his dream playing in a lineup with guys like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Elston Howard and so many more of the great Yankees.
On that afternoon in New York, Kansas City jumped into an early lead with a pair of runs in the top of the first and another in the second inning. The Yanks answered with a run of their own in their half of the second. In the bottom of the third, there were two out and the bases were full of Yankees when A’s pitcher Dan Pfister walked Roger Maris to bring New York to within a run at 3-2.
In the top of the fifth, Manny Jimenez hammered a ball into the right field bleachers driving home his pitcher Pfister and first baseman Norm Siebern to extend the Kansas City advantage to 6-2. That was Yanks’ righthander Ralph Terry’s final inning of work. After Pfister retired New York in order in the bottom of the inning, Jim Bouton was out to face the bottom third of the A’s’ order in the sixth. He got them out 1-2-3. Pfister was cruising, as well, as he got Roger Maris, Johnny Blanchard and Elston Howard on a pair of strikeouts and a ground ball.
But Bouton hit a bump in the seventh as he walked the first man of the inning, Dick Howser. Jerry Lumpe laid a bunt down to sacrifice Howser over to second. A Siebern single brought Howser home. The teams went into the stretch with Kansas City leading the mighty Bombers 7-2 and their pitcher looking dominant. Pfister would face the 7-8-9 hitters in the Yankee lineup in the bottom of the seventh.
After Bill Skowron earned a base on balls, rookie Phil Linz put his harmonica down and pounded a Pfister delivery over the left field wall to make it a 7-4 ball game. It was his first major league hit. Linz was only in the game because third baseman Clete Boyer had been hit on the wrist by a Pfister pitch in the third and had to leave the game. Yankees’ reliever Tex Clevenger put the Kansas City boys down quickly in the eighth and sent his own team up with a faint hope in this late May contest.
The lead-off man in the inning was the first-year man, Pepitone. He had lined out to Siebern, fouled out to Ed Charles at third and grounded out to Siebern in the fifth. Wally Moses, one of the Yankees’ coaches, went up to Pepitone and told him he was swinging too hard. He reminded the rookie that the ball can go out of Yankee Stadium easily enough so just be sure to make good contact.
The left-handed hitting Pepitone must have listened to Moses because he deposited a pitch from the now-tiring Pfister into the right field seats to lead off the Yankees’ eighth. That ended the afternoon for the Athletics’ righty. Diego Segui came in to relieve him. He promptly walked Roger Maris and Johnny Blanchard. Ellie Howard then singled, scoring Maris. It had quickly become ugly for Kansas City.
Segui was now out. Former Yankee pitcher Bob Grim was in. He walked Yogi Berra. Berra was taken out and Jack Reed pinch ran for him. That brought Phil Linz back to the plate. He singled and brought Blanchard and Howard home. Reed moved up to second and the Yankees had a lead. It was slim, at 8-7, but it was their first lead of the game. Grim had a big problem in finding the plate and he walked Bob Cerv. Then he gave up an infield single to Bobby Richardson that plated another run and left the bases loaded. Also, there was still nobody out for the Yanks.
By the time Tom Tresh strode to the plate, there was a new Athletics’ pitcher on the mound. That was the hard-throwing right-hander John Wyatt. Wyatt induced Tresh to hit a fly ball to the left fielder George Alusik. That brought Linz home and the Yankees were now up by a field goal at 10-7. There were still a couple of Yankees on base. Billy Gardner went in to pinch run for Cerv and was on second. Richardson was at first. Joe Pepitone was coming to the plate for the second time in the inning.
In spring training, the Yankee veterans had been telling Pepitone about the ‘short porch’ in right field at Yankee Stadium. The youngster wasn’t sure he’d ever be around to see it. Against Wyatt though, the Yanks’ rookie found that mythical location for his second home run of the game and the inning! The Athletics had led the game 7-4 at the start of the frame. After Pepitone’s second blast, the Yankees were now up 13-7.
That would be the final score. When it was over, a look at the box score showed that each of Pepitone and Linz had driven in four runs. There’s a Bible verse that reads ‘…and a child shall lead them…’ In the Yankees’ case, it was the two rookies. And both would achieve notoriety over the course of their careers, for different reasons.
But first, looking at his night, with two homers in the same inning, Joe Pepitone was told that the last Yankee to perform such a feat had been the immortal Joe DiMaggio. The rookie reportedly just smiled widely and blurted out, “Gee! Me with DiMaggio!” After the game that night, Joe Pepitone went to his Brooklyn home and had dinner with his family. Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News wrote that there was an extra pizza made to celebrate the 21-year-old’s special day!
Pepitone, his family and everyone who watched his great performance that day probably weren’t thinking about it, but they were probably feeling like this was a million miles away from one of the worst days of his young life. But, in reality, it was just 38 months before this magical afternoon at Yankee Stadium that Pepitone had been taken out of Manual Training High School in Brooklyn on a stretcher and fighting for his young life, among other things.
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The story of Joe Pepitone is a complicated one and one that is horrifying in its reality. This poor man grew up with an abusive father who beat the crap out of his son, seemingly as often as he possibly could. The abuse was both physical and mental and would leave Joe a permanently damaged human being. The story of that chapter of his life is both awful and compelling. Pepitone recounted a lot of that misery in his 1975 book, ‘Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud’.
Ignazio William (Willie) Pepitone was the toughest guy in Park Slope, Brooklyn. There was an Italian American boxer at the time named ‘Willie Pep’. Joe Pepitone said his father was “bigger and a helluva lot tougher” than the boxer. He also described him as “the toughest guy” in “a very tough neighbourhood”. His toughness didn’t just manifest itself on the streets of Park Slope though.
It permeated the Pepitone household. Wrote Joe in his book, “He had a furious temper and when he wasn’t spoiling the s**t out of me, he was beating the s**t out of me.” He further wrote, “He never pulled his punches, left me black and blue and bloody, particularly as I got older.” Joe had a younger brother and if the younger Pepitone had been in a fight, Willie would attack Joe for not protecting him. Willie would “beat the hell out of me with his fists, bloody my nose, leave bruises all over my face.”
God forbid Joe should ever be late getting home. “Willie would punch the s**t out of me.” There was one time when Joe was at a roller rink with his friends, and they all got into a brawl with another group of guys. When Willie found out, he punched Joe in the back of the head so hard that Joe’s face went through the glass in a washing machine.
And every time Willie would batter Joe, he would almost immediately feel remorse and express his contrition. “Usually, right after he’d beaten me, my father would cool down and apologize to me, saying he was sorry, that he didn’t mean to hit me so hard. Almost every time he’d beat me, he’d come back minutes later to apologize. Finally, I told him, ‘Dad, don’t apologize to me. Just stop beating me, or at least, make sure I deserve it.’ But he couldn’t control that temper. It would just explode!”
One of the worst instances took place after Joe had secured a spot on a semi-pro baseball team. Joe was still in high school. Willie would go to the games and make a scene every time he went to watch. He would be fighting people in the seats. He’d make his way down to the field and fight down there. His angry actions were making it difficult for Joe to focus on the games. His own game was regressing.
Scouts who were at the games and saw Willie felt that he was hurting Joe’s chances at a future in baseball. Joe had an advisor who spoke to Willie and asked him to stay home and not attend his son’s games. Willie took that suggestion as an insult and told the man that Joe would never play ball again.
When Joe heard this, he responded angrily. He told Willie, “I hate you!” Hearing that, Willie grabbed a heavy glass ashtray and fired it at Joe. Joe managed to avoid getting hit by the object, but it smashed the glass in the china cabinet beside him and glass flew everywhere. Joe’s face was full of jagged shards. Pieces of glass were even in his eye. Blood was running down his face.
Joe wrote in his book, “My father let out a cry like a dog that had been run over. I felt him hug me, lift me up, sobbing, his body shaking, and felt him carry me down the stairs to the street. He gently eased me into the car, then raced to the hospital, his hand clamped on the horn, never stopping once.”
After they had arrived at the hospital, doctors had to force Joe’s eye open, and they managed to extract all the glass from in there. Thankfully, there was no lasting damage. Physically, anyway. “My father never hit me again, though, after this incident. I think the glass in my eyes scared him so much that he finally forced himself to stop punching me.”
He may have stopped physically abusing his son, but the mental and emotional battering only intensified. Whenever he got angry at Joe, instead of using his fists on his son’s face, he’d punch holes in walls and windows. He would scream disgusting things at Joe. Finally, Joe told his father, “I’d rather you hit me, get it over with!” Emotionally and mentally, Joe was just a broken human being. After the years of abuse, Joe was left “to feel incompetent even though I knew damn well I wasn’t. It wobbled my head, affected my play.”
In March of 1958, Joe was starting his final season of high school ball. He was 17 years old. He and some of his friends were in their Business Machines class at Manual Training High School in Brooklyn, when another friend, George O’Dell, approached to show everyone the gun he said he had found.
In 2018, Pepitone described what happened in that classroom in early March of 1958 for a piece on school shootings in New York magazine. “It was my senior year of high school. I had thirteen Major League Baseball clubs after me. A group of kids were talking, and one jumped out and put a gun in my stomach. I said, ‘This gun’s loaded.’ He said, ‘Ya.” He cocked it. It went right off.”
Joe continued. “I didn’t feel it. It went under my heart, came out my back, and shattered the blackboard. He ran out of class. I could see a hole in my sweater with powder stains. I felt a pinch in my back. I put my thumb back there, and when I pulled it out, I had blood all around my thumb. I must have gone into shock, because I fell to my knees. And it’s funny, at first, I said, ‘Oh, there goes my career.’
Joe went in and out of consciousness after that. According to a story in the Manhattan Mercury, there was a ‘youth squad’ detective in the school at the time. He apprehended O’Dell right away and took him to a station house. O’Dell told a story initially that he had found the gun. Then, a priest was brought in and got him to tell the truth. He apparently told the clergyman that one of his friends had the pistol at an earlier time.
O’Dell and seven other youths were arrested and charged. Besides the charges that all the assailants received, O’Dell and one of the other seven, Vincent Leone, were charged with felonious assault. The gun had originally been purchased in 1957 by Michael Levins, a semi-pro baseball player, while he was in Albany, Georgia. Levins brought the gun back to New York and sold it to Leone. While Leone was being booked, police said that he punched a detective in the face and groin. He was then “subdued by other officers.”
Pepitone was taken out of the school on a stretcher. He was quoted in the story as telling police, “Don’t be hard on George. He didn’t mean to do anything.” When he arrived at the hospital, he was examined by a doctor who told the young man, “…a fraction of an inch either way, you would have been dead.”
As Joe had been brought into hospital, his father was coming in as well. He had suffered a serious heart attack. So, there were Pepitones, Sr. and Jr., both being treated at the same time. When both were discharged, they ended up convalescing at home together. And, as had become their custom, Willie immediately began arguing with Joe and screaming at his wife, Angelina or, as everyone knew her, Ann.
Joe had finally had enough. “I got angry, absolutely furious, and I said, ‘Mom, I wish he’d die. I really wish he’d die!’” The next night, Willie suffered a stroke. He died then and there. He was 39. Joe was hit with a wave of guilt and self-recrimination. “Then I went crazy, completely lost control of myself in my guilt over what I’d said the day before. I wanted to hurt myself, to pay myself back for those words about my father.”
Joe went into a severe depression. He lost so much sleep that he began taking sleeping pills and he still could not sleep. He wouldn’t leave his house. He couldn’t handle returning to school. His mother enlisted his friends to try to get him to go outside. And those thirteen major league teams that were interested in having him play for them had dwindled down to three. Eventually, he signed with the New York Yankees.
But he could never shake the guilt he felt about his father’s death and that cloud followed him throughout his journey through the minor leagues. He began to engage in what would become a lifelong spree of self-destructive behaviour. Whatever money he made, he spent. He spent money he didn’t have as well. He racked up debts and lived way beyond what he could afford.
He became addicted to alcohol and trying to find the love he never got at home. Every night, he would try to numb his mind with substances and sex. In his book, he talked about interminable nights of meaningless sex, often with more than one woman per night. He would jump into bed with any woman who would have him. He did it while he was single. He did it while he was married, and he wasn’t even smart enough to try to conceal it from his wives.
“It wasn’t fun, it was wacky” Joe wrote in his book. “I think I was simply trying to escape, through sex, the pain that was crouching deep inside my head; the guilt that went back to my father’s death. Each conquest pushed aside for another night the memories I couldn’t bear to think about. Of course, all the time, I was accumulating more guilt over the treatment of my family, and while it was small, insignificant, in relation to those feelings about Willie, my self-destructive performance took its toll.”
Over time, each of his three wives would kick him out of their lives and he would abandon his kids. He would hang out at all-night clubs that would be owned by and frequented by mobsters. And his status as an Italian American baseball star only helped him to be embraced by his compadres. He threw himself into a world of unending sex and booze to attempt to quiet the endless torment in his own head.
But when all this extracurricular stuff began to affect his play on the field, he was alienating everyone else around him. His teammates, managers, friends and family all eventually began tiring of his act and turning their backs on him. His debts were piling up and mobsters, to whom he owed money, began to come to the stadium to try to embarrass him into paying to them what he had owed.
“I was running so hard, even my conscience couldn’t keep up to me. Here I was running, but on my own, with no one to f*** over except myself.” In his first three full seasons, from 1963 to 1965, he had been an All-Star. By 1968, he was 27 and was a shell of his former baseball-loving self. He played fewer games than he had in any season so far except for his rookie year. His play had really started to regress in 1967 though.
When he would go out to the bars and clubs, the fans who once loved him were now jeering him. In Detroit, he was arrested for going back at one of the boobirds and almost caving in the guy’s skull. The behaviour he hated in his father was now manifesting itself in his own actions. By the end of 1969, he had been traded to Houston.
He lasted a little more than a half a season with the Astros. He hated life there and demanded to be traded to either the Chicago Cubs or the Mets. He ended up at Wrigley and he enjoyed the game again for the first time in years. He met another woman and opened up his own bar. He played with the Cubs into the 1973 season, when he started to hit a bad skid at the plate.
This coincided with his being in court after being sued by wife-number-two for delinquent alimony payments. As became usual for Joe, when the going got tough, he ran away. He told Cubs’ management that he wanted to leave the game. Not long after that, he was imploring the same management people to allow him to return to the team.
By then, his bar was being looked into by police who were doing a drug investigation. His customers fled in droves, and he had to shut down. His off-field activities were irritating this team the way they did the Yankees before. He found himself being traded to the Atlanta Braves. After exactly a month in Atlanta – and after playing just three games – his major league career was over. He tried to play in Japan, but that didn’t end well either.
He did try to get things righted in his life and in October of 1980, he was hired by the Yankees as a minor league hitting coach. On June 4, 1982, he had made it back to the big leagues when he was promoted to the Yankees. But by the end of August, the team moved him “to the front office” because of “personal problems” and he was replaced by outfielder Lou Piniella who was still playing at the time.
In March of 1985, police stopped a car that Pepitone was driving in Brooklyn when he ran a red light. He and his two passengers were arrested. In the car were nine ounces of cocaine, a quantity of quaaludes, a free-basing kit, a gun and more than $6,000 in cash. He ended up spending four months at Rikers Island in 1988 for two drug convictions.
In 1992, he was arrested after a fight with a man who called him “a has-been”. In October of 1995, he was involved in a single-car accident in the Queens-Midtown tunnel. When police found him, he was walking in the tunnel, mumbling to himself. His face was bloodied, and he was visibly disoriented. He was arrested after he refused to take a sobriety test. In court, he was asked if he was staying away from alcohol. He answered, “I don’t drink that much.”
He had five children with three wives and each of his marriages ended in divorce.
On March 23, 2023, approximately 65 years and a week after he had been shot in that classroom in Brooklyn and the subsequent death of his father, Joe passed away in Kansas City, Missouri after succumbing to a heart attack. He was 82. His long self-torment and self-torture were over.
In his book, he tried to figure out why he almost forced himself to suffer the way he did. He talked about the fact that almost every night, his sleep was riddled with “gory, grisly, violent, vicious” nightmares. He understood where his demons emanated from, but he still had questions that he couldn’t answer.
“I don’t understand why I extended the bulls**t for so long, why I had to put myself through so much grief for so many years without making some changes. I guess I was too screwed up to change, so I kept turning the screw deeper and deeper.”
He ended up living a life that was ruined by abuse and no wish to clean himself up, even after he recognized that he had so many massive problems.
It’s just so, so sad.
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Howie’s latest book MORE Crazy Days & Wild Nights, eleven new stories of outlandish and wild events that occurred in sports over the last fifty years,is available on Amazon. It’s the follow-up to his first book of 2023, Crazy Days & Wild Nights! If you love sports and sports history, you need these books!
And watch for Howie’s latest book, The Consequences of Chance, to come out November 1 on Amazon!
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