Being in the desert with the baseball Buckeyes will bring back memories to everyone who ever wore red and gray…but especially those who played for the venerable coach, Marty Karow, the only Buckeye coach to ever win the College World Series title.
Now just days away, I cannot pack for the trip to Arizona to cover the opening of the NCAA baseball season next week without it rekindling some old memories.
For you see 53 years ago, give or take, I was one of those freshmen on the Ohio State baseball team…like Zach Brown, Mason Eckelman, and Nolan Farley, currently, learning how to exist at the next higher level of baseball.
I can’t observe it now – hear the crack of the bat and the enthusiastic banter among teammates – without remembering then and considering…just how different it’s become.
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Travel, for instance. Back then we took a university bus from Columbus to Coral Gables, Florida to play for a week against Miami of Florida, Miami Dade, and usually one other northern school. That trip, straight through, was a killer…about 18 hours with a couple of stops to eat at Denny’s, and when you got off in Miami you could barely walk. It was not unusual to get your brains beat out by the Florida schools, because it took two days for your body to recover; and of course, the Florida teams were weeks, and weeks, and weeks ahead of us in preparation.
Our coach then was a guy named Marty Karow, about which a thousand stories circulate amongst those who played for him during his quarter century as coach. He came from Texas A&M in 1951, the same year that Woody Hayes arrived, and retired in 1975. Equipment manager John Bozick once told me during my freshman year, “Stay away from the ‘old man’, Kid. That’s my advice, and you’ll thank me for it.”
Marty Karow, as he appeared as a Buckeye infielder in 1926. He was also an All-American fullback in football.
Marty was in his 70s at the time, had survived one serious heart attack, and frankly spent a lot of his time in Florida playing golf with friends at Doral Country Club, while assistant coach Dick Finn ran things. But when Marty was around we all stepped lively, because, well…Marty was around!
His personality was a not-so-delicate balance between charming and Attila the Hun. He was iron-fisted, humorless, hopelessly stuck in the year 1966 (the year the Buckeyes won the NCAA title behind pitcher Steve Arlin), and believed that anyone – everyone – could pitch like Arlin if they just willed themselves to do it. Arlin was known for his ability to pitch every day, and Marty believed if you pitched as much as Arlin did…you could do it, too. And he literally threw the arms off a lot of young pitchers who took him at his word.
He was not exactly slick with people, nor did he try. We once had an early spring game in Deland, Florida, and when we arrived on the bus there were a bunch of Ohio State fans to greet us, dressed in scarlet and gray. As Marty stepped off the bus, this very sweet lady walked up to him and introduced herself as a member of the local alumni club.
“Coach Karow, you’re sure a sight for sore eyes…to see Buckeyes down here in Florida,” she said.
Karow, without hesitating, looked at her and said, “Ma’am, we’ve been on the bus for two days. We had nothing to do with your eyes being sore.”
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We usually struggled on those trips, just days removed from snow and French Field House, and his favorite post-game speech usually centered around a lack of focus. And of course in Florida there were girls everywhere – spring break – and Marty despised the distraction of interaction.
“You guys gotta’ get your mind off that other stuff,” he would start out. “You pitchers…hell, all of you got good stuff. All you gotta’ do is throw the ball across the plate, preferably with a little something on it. Bingo, bango, bongo…and we’re outta’ there.”
Of course, none of us had ever heard the term “that other stuff”, and one of courageous, curious freshmen, Jim Chellis, asked Karow what he meant.
“You know what I mean,” Marty said with a shrug. “Dorm room darlings.”
It didn’t happen on the spring trip, but in my first Big Ten appearance against Minnesota I pitched in relief up in Minneapolis on a cold, windy day, trying to preserve a 5-4 lead in the bottom of the sixth inning. We had lost the first game of the double-header to the Gophers, 15-1, with Dave Winfield on the mound, and Karow was desperately trying to get out of there with a split. With a double-header the next day in Iowa City, there were just two available pitchers left on the bench.
With runners on first and second, and one out, Karow handed me the ball and said, “Throw your best curveball and get us a double play.”
And I did, miraculously, on the second pitch. Only, our shortstop mishandled the ball, and had to settle for a force at second. I looked in the dugout where Karow was vigorously signalling for another curve. Everyone in Hennepin County knew it was coming.
So I threw it, and the hitter got way out in front and hit it high and far down the left field line…but foul. But it was close enough to being fair that the gusting wind blew it back and into the foul pole for a home run. Lead gone, momentum gone, and Karow was on his way to mound. When he got there he demanded the ball for the next pitcher already halfway to the mound. I apologized for hanging the curve.
Columnist Sonny Fulks writes Buckeye and Big Ten baseball for Press Pros Magazine.com.
“You’re sorry?” Karow roared. “&%^# that. I’m sorry I brought you.”
On the trip to Iowa City that night I thought about what Bozick had said. “Kid, stay away from the ‘old man’.”
Except the next day we ran into a hot Iowa team, got beat in the first game of two, and then fell behind 6-0 in the second inning of the second. Finn sent me to the bullpen to warm up. I entered the game in the top of the third.
This time it was different. I pitched three scoreless innings before being taken out, but we still lost. And afterwards, as we walked across the outfield to shower and dress in the football stadium, Karow came up and put his arm around me.
“Now, wasn’t that better?” he said, smiling like he had just won the trifecta at Beulah Park. “And didn’t I tell you? Throw the ball across the plate with a little something on it? Bingo, bango, bongo…and we’re outta’ here.”
Nobody knows, or remembers, except the guys on that team. We stopped for dinner at Denny’s and Marty would walk from table to table, checking on how much each player spent on his meal. If you played well, you could have a steak. If you went 0 for 4, you got grilled cheese.
Trust it. Times have changed.
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