Moe Drabowsky and Dick Drott were 21 and 22 years old, respectively, in 1957. The right-handed rookies, a.k.a. the Gold Dust Twins or the Dandy Ds, worked together to win 28 games that season for the Cubs. Each struck out 170 batters. They were two of the few bright spots for the Cubs at that time. Unfortunately for Drott, he hurt his arm in ’58 and was never the same. Drabowsky left the Cubs after the 1960 season, gratefully missing the college of coaches experience, and went on to total 54 saves for five different teams. But Drabowsky was more than a pitcher. He was a prankster.

I came up at the tail end of ’56, right out of college, and back then you couldn’t sign until your class graduated from college or you became 21 years old. So, at 21, I was a junior in college and then I signed with the Cubs at the end of July. I came to the big leagues and I spent six weeks here, then I told them I wanted to go back to college and complete my senior year. I didn’t want to lose any college time. I left the ballclub early to go back to school. They said that was fine. Nowadays, guys get pampered with clubhouse suites.

After going to classes a couple weeks, the Cubs were coming into New York to play the Giants in the Polo Grounds, and I told my buddies I was pitching Tuesday. In the third inning, I was gone. The guys hadn’t arrived at the ballpark yet and I was gone.

Dick Drott came up the next year. We were the “Dandy Ds.” We both threw effectively. I won 13 for a last-place club. We got a lot of notoriety. We both tied for second place in strikeouts in the National League.

We used to have our traveling secretary up in the scoreboard stealing signs. Don Beebe was his name. You’ve got all the little squares in the scoreboard and he’d be sitting way back in the squares. If he put his foot in the right-hand corner, that meant fastball. The hitter would just look up toward the pitcher and look past him at the scoreboard and see the squares, and if he sees a foot, he’s ready to jump on a fastball. We might score nine runs or so and then lose 12–9, 13–10.

We didn’t know we weren’t a good team because we had Ernie Banks on the team. He was the supreme optimist. Let’s play two, let’s play two. Then we’d lose 8–2, then the next day, “Good day for baseball. Let’s play two.” We thought, what’s wrong with this nut? Let’s see, Ernie Banks might have been making $80,000 a year. I was making $6,000 a year, so if the situation were reversed, I might think the same.

When you’re young and innocent—innocent from a baseball standpoint—you don’t realize what it means to pitch at Wrigley Field with the wind blowing out. You come to the ballpark and check the flags—that’s the first thing you do. When you’re young, you want to be a starter. You don’t like life in the bullpen. We thought bullpenners were second-rate citizens.

I always had a penchant for getting on the phone. In Milwaukee County Stadium, you can get an outside line in the bullpen. I was a stockbroker in the off-season, and I’d get an outside line and talk to some broker friends of mine. I was getting stock quotes one day. Poor Glen Hobbie. Here come Eddie Matthews, Hank Aaron, Frank Thomas. They’re trying to get somebody to warm up in the bullpen. I’m sure the manager figured he must have gotten the wrong number. He kept getting “beep, beep, beep” on the phone. Then a couple guys get up in front of the dugout steps waving towels like semaphore signals. I was probably responsible for Hobbie’s earned run average being higher than it should have been.

In Wrigley, if you hit a ground ball past third base fair, then it sometimes rolled to the gutter along the brick wall. One of the interesting things we did was right at the bullpen bench. We’d always drop our gloves in that gutter [when the opposition was at bat] so if a ball came in there, the ball would stop right where the gloves are so the outfielder could retrieve the ball. So, when we’re hitting, we take the gloves out. One day, Tony Taylor hits a ball past third and the ball goes into the gutter and it scoots down there and goes all the way down the left field line. We’re showing Orlando Cepeda where the ball is and we’re watching Tony Taylor round the bases. Tony got an inside-the-park ground ball home run.

In San Francisco, when I was with the Cubs, Charlie Grimm was the manager and we had a 5–2 lead in the eighth. Seth Morehead was pitching against the Giants. Top of the eighth and we’re hitting, and I’m kind of in the manager’s doghouse—I’m not pitching too well. I go down to the left field bullpen to keep loose and stay in shape. In the bullpen, you throw toward the home plate area, just like at Wrigley Field. I had just released a pitch and I see this ball coming toward me, so I backhand this ball. I’d just let a pitch go and I fielded it. Well, it was a ball hit past third base and it had gone into foul territory. Frank Thomas hit it, it’s a sure double, maybe a triple, but because I fielded the ball the umpires have a big conference and they don’t know what to do. They decide to rule it a single. Don Zimmer comes up and gets a base hit. It would’ve scored Frank Thomas from second. We don’t score a run. We have a 5–2 lead, and the Giants come up and two guys get on, and Willie McCovey comes up and he hits one nine miles; it’s a three-run homer and now it’s 5–5. Fortunately, we won the game in 10 innings, 6–5. If we’d lost that game I’d have felt badly enough. Charlie Grimm said if we had lost that game, my bags would’ve been packed that night.

One other play comes to mind. Stan Musial was the hitter. This was the most unusual play I’ve seen in major league baseball. The count goes to three balls, two strikes. Bob Anderson is the pitcher. There’s a fastball in on the hands. Musial doesn’t swing, but I hear a sound, like a tick. There’s a sound and the ball goes back to the screen. So Musial takes off for first base. Sammy Taylor is the catcher and he thinks it’s a foul ball, so he puts his hand back behind his shoulder and the umpire sees that and pops him another ball. Musial sees the ball back near the screen and he takes off for second. Nobody’s covering at second and Taylor sees Musial running, so he throws the ball he got from the umpire and the ball goes out into center field. Musial goes on to third. Alvin Dark comes in from third and he goes back to the screen to retrieve the ball. Well, Pat Peiper, the public address announcer, had gone over to pick up the ball and put it in the ball bag. So, Dark goes to the ball bag and pulls out a ball and throws it to Banks who’s covering at third. And all of a sudden—boom—Banks tags Musial at third. Well, the umpires had a long conference with that one, 10 or 15 minutes. Finally, they called Musial out because that ball that was in center field was the ball that was in play.

We had no clue. I’m not sure if the ball was put in the ball bag. Somebody said they saw Pat Peiper do that. The umpires were looking at the play out in fair territory. It was a crazy, crazy play.