AARP the Magazine August-September 2014
Somewhere, I’d read that Bob Newhart once played baseball at Dodger Stadium. I asked him about it, and he said, “Yep.” I could tell you the story, but it is, of course, better to let him do it…
“I’m originally from Chicago. A Cub fan. A long-suffering Chicago Cub fan.
So, it’s 1965. I’ve made my record (The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart), and I’m out in LA to play in the Celebrity Sportscasters Hardball Game at Dodger Stadium. In front of 35,000 people.
Now, that’s a dream that you never think is ever actually going to happen; that you’re gonna actually be in that stadium, dressed in Dodger Blue. My team’s manager was Chuck Connors. You remember him—he was on The Rifleman, but before that he was a first baseman for the Chicago Cubs.
Chuck didn’t know if I had any athletic ability or not, so he put me out in right field, figuring nobody’s ever going to hit the ball to right field. Now, I did play baseball before, and I played first base. But first basemen are usually tall, and, well, let’s face it, nobody ever called me “Stretch.”
So, there I am out in right field. In Dodger Stadium. Thirty-five thousand people. I’m in the Catbird Seat. This is…I just can’t believe what it feels like to be in right field in Dodger Stadium.
A couple of innings go by, and according to plan, nothing’s hit to me. Finally, a guy swings late, hits the ball off the end of the bat, and it tails off into right field. Now you know all baseball fields are sort of sloped, so when it rains the rain flows off. So this is kind of downhill, and I’ve got a pretty good bead on the ball. I see the ball and I dive, and I slide along the grass. The crowd’s going wild, the eyeballs of all 35,000 fans and of everybody on both teams are focused on me. On me! Out there in right field, sliding along the grass, with my gloved hand outstretched, like Willie Mays.
Now, the way this story is supposed to end is the ball plops into my glove, and I leap to my feet and throw a bullet to the cutoff man. And the Dodgers offer me a contract.
Well, the ball lands about 50 feet from where my slide ended. There I am in my now-dirty Dodger uniform, lying out there like a speed bump in right field. The guy’s hit an inside-the-park home run, of course, because I never got close to the ball. And now Chuck Connors is glowering at me. I could swear if he had his gun from The Rifleman he would’ve let me have it.
All of a sudden this dream of mine, it just ends. And there are 35,000 people laughing at me, and not really in a good way.
My family was there, but they never alluded to it. To this day.
The life lesson here, I guess, is this: ‘It’s harder to play right field than it looks.’
Bill Newcott At Large 