Jeff Huson (Transcript)

Robby Incmikoski: All right, here we go. Interview number 103. Jeff Huson, my man. Huey, I just want to ask you about Camden Yards. That place has been open since 1992 and it is still one of the most beautiful ballparks in all of baseball. It seems like it's timeless and will last that way forever. How did you like playing there?

Jeff Huson: Oh, it was amazing. I had gone to Memorial Stadium as a visitor, and that was just a big league ballpark. But when you go over to Camden Yards, the way they incorporated the warehouse, just the way they tucked it in, made it seem like this old school ballpark with all the new amenities and new fields. Everything about it was just so glorious every time you walked in there.

The great thing too was every night we were playing in front of 40,000 plus fans clad in their orange and black. I've got goosebumps right now just thinking about playing there and what it meant. It was so much fun to walk into that stadium each and every night.

Robby Incmikoski: How did you guys as a home team view the aesthetics - just how beautiful it was, how new it was, and what it meant to baseball?

Jeff Huson: I think the aesthetics of it were special because this was one of the first of that new wave of stadiums. A lot of the ballparks after Camden Yards were modeled after it. To be able to take just a regular ballpark that you used to build, or even some of the multi-dimensional ones in Pittsburgh, Philly, and St. Louis where you could use it for football - this was just truly a baseball stadium, a baseball field. Each and every day it was like, "Okay, this is our home. This is what we get to come to every day." The players, I will say, didn't take it for granted. We understood how nice this was, even compared to some of the other ones that had just been built.

Robby Incmikoski: How does that place hold up in your opinion, even when you go there as a visiting broadcaster?

Jeff Huson: Timeless. It's timeless because it takes you back a little bit with all the brick and everything, the way they put the stands in and the out-of-town scoreboard. But you could build that today, and you'd go, "Man, look how nice this is." It's this new wave kind of ballpark, but at the same time, it has the feel of a place that in 20 years we're still talking about.

Robby Incmikoski: Janet Marie Smith helped design that. How much credit does she get for having that oversight back in the late 80s, early 90s, when she took on that project with Larry Lucchino, who hired her?

Jeff Huson: The vision to think about that - the vision of saying, "Okay, we've got this warehouse out here. How do we make this look like it's part of the stadium? Let's put a street in between, a little walkway in between." Who does that? Only a person that is as talented as she is, someone who can see this vision that maybe other people can't see.

Robby Incmikoski: Let's get into it. What do you remember from September 6, 1995? It was the number one story in sports. What do you remember about that night?

Jeff Huson: Well, I've got to go back just a little bit, because it was something we had started talking about around the All-Star break. We were plotting the day when this was going to happen, if there were no rainouts. This was the only thing everyone talked about.

I've got a funny story. Back then you couldn't really go on the internet. You just had to look at the newspapers to see who was pitching and do the matchups. At the time, I was platooning with Jeff Manto. Mickey [Tettleton] hit right-handed, and I hit left-handed. The Angels had four starters in the rotation that were left-handed, and there was only one righty - Shawn Boskie.

About five or six days before September 6, Mickey and I are sitting around the table in the locker room, going through who's pitching and when. We finally realized that Shawn Boskie was going to be pitching that night, a right-hander, so I knew I was going to get the start. Jeff Manto suddenly gets up and yells, "You mother******!" And I started laughing. Everybody in the locker room thinks we're getting in this fight, but the fight was over who was going to start that night. He was so mad at me that I was getting this start, and I was laughing back at him because I was like, "Yeah, I get this start!"

When the day finally came, it was like all the feelings of Christmas and everything else wrapped into one, because you knew you were going to be a part of a special moment. But what was weird, as we start to walk into the locker room mid-afternoon, we get stopped by the Secret Service. They pat us down and make sure we don't have anything because President Clinton was coming to the game. That's the first time I'd ever had something like that happen, where we couldn't even walk into our locker room. They'd already taken animals around our locker room. They confiscated three or four knives that Randy Myers had in his locker because he was a big hunter, and Randy wasn't happy about that.

After that we're allowed to go into the clubhouse. Everybody knows what this moment's like. Sometime after batting practice, President Clinton comes in, and we all end up standing by our lockers. It's almost like you can't move. He walks around to each and every one of us, shakes our hands, takes a picture with us, and then you just wait until he leaves before you can do anything. You can't move - you literally just stand at your locker. After he was gone, then we were able to go out and start to soak it all in.

So the game starts. Cal and I used to have this thing where one of us would be the wide receiver, the other would be the defensive back, and Rafael Palmeiro would throw a pass to us. We did this in the first inning, which is what we always did, because Cal liked to make a game of everything. It wasn't just the game of baseball - everything was a game or competition. So he throws this pass, and I actually have a picture up in my office making a play.

After that half inning, I go back in and somebody says, "Dude, what are you doing?" I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "What happens if you step on Cal and he gets hurt and he can't finish through five innings?" I was like, "Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that." So next inning, Cal runs out there and I don't chase him, and Raffy throws him the ball. Cal says, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm not going to get you hurt tonight." He just kind of looks at me and gives me this smile, like, "Okay, I get it tonight, but after this..."

Robby Incmikoski: The only night you didn't play the little football game.

Jeff Huson: I played it the first inning, and then that was it. I just remember I caught a pop-up in the first inning, and I'm underneath it. You have a lot of thoughts go through your head as a player, but that night, I just distinctly remember telling myself, "Do not drop this ball. There's like 50 million people watching you right now." There could have been more - I don't know - that's the number that came into my head as this fly ball is going into my glove.

Every baseball that night had the number 8 on it, and the stitching was in black and orange with the logo on it. After every play, you'd throw it in the dugout, because they were trying to make sure every guy got a ball. So I'd run onto the field, grab the ball that the umpire was throwing out there, I'd roll it back into the dugout, and the guys could fight over it in there. I got a couple baseballs from that night.

I remember after he hit the home run, I'm thinking, "Disney makes a lot of great movies, but even they would be like, 'No, we can't make this. There's no way that this guy, after all he's done, would hit a home run. Nobody's going to believe it.'" So we're not going to make a movie of this, because it was so surreal to see him - and he wasn't feeling well either. He had a fever or whatever. Cal played through a lot of stuff. He wasn't feeling well that night, but you didn't know until after the game.

So he hits a home run. The cool thing was, once it got to five innings and it was an official game, the game stops, and we're all in the dugout and the place goes silent just for a second, because everybody's like, "Whoa, what's happening?" And then it hit everybody like, "Oh my God, this is a moment in time that we're a part of."

My mom and dad were there, my in-laws were there, my wife, my kids. Even leaving to the ballpark that day, they were like, "I can't wait to be there tonight because it's going to be so much fun." The crowd's going wild. They put it up on the big screen.

Finally, Bobby Bonilla said, "Listen, bud," and kind of pushed Cal out there. He said, "You need to go take a victory lap, otherwise this game is never going to start back up again." We had guys with the old video recorders in the dugout recording this moment. There's guys that had tears coming down their face. I was choked up. I was like, "Man, I've been a part of a lot of cool moments, but to see this and look over and Billy [Ripken], who I had played with, is there with his mom and dad." I looked over and saw Billy, and I could see the pride on his face. I was thinking about ties with my own brother. That's when I teared up. I was just like, "This is so cool."

Then he starts taking the victory lap, high-fiving fans, jumping up where fans can barely reach over the railing. Watching this go on, it's never a case of, "Well, when's this game going to start again? How long is this going to go on?" It was like, "Let's watch this. Let's do this. And if the game starts back up again, okay, but if not, I'm fine with that too."

He runs around, but then the other touching moment was when he goes by the Angels dugout, and all the guys come out and they are giving Cal a high five or slapping his hand too, because they knew the moment in time. They knew this history and that it would never, ever be matched again. I thought the respect that as players we have for each other - it's always there, you respect your opponent, but this was a different level of respect. When I saw that again, I was like, "Not only what Cal is doing now, but what he's meant to the game, and how he has taken something that nobody thought was possible and did it."

Robby Incmikoski: Huey, there's no way. Just look at the numbers and look at how baseball's played these days. There is no chance anybody gets remotely close to that. How do you even reconcile the fact that somebody played 2,131 let alone 2,632 games in a row?

Jeff Huson: Exactly. This is never going to happen again. I think there were five guys last year that played 162 games, and we make a big deal of that - rightfully so. But to go 2,131 - you can't even fathom it. There's a lot of numbers in sports, especially in baseball - 500 wins and all this other stuff. But it's a case where nobody will even come close to it again.

Robby Incmikoski: It's not even close. Think about this - have you ever done the math? If you play 162 games every year, do you know how many seasons it would take to get to 2,632?

Jeff Huson: I'm assuming like 15-16?

Robby Incmikoski: 16 and a quarter. Could you imagine somebody playing 16 and a quarter straight seasons without missing one game? One game! You could twist an ankle, you can feel sore, you can be sick. Think of ways people miss a game - like a busted fingernail, for crying out loud, or a blister. Anything could happen. Your wife has a baby.

Jeff Huson: Exactly. You have a child.

Robby Incmikoski: For you - you had a good career, and obviously you've had a wonderful impact on the game of baseball as a player, broadcaster, and representative - to be a part of that moment, how does that resonate with you 30 years later?

Jeff Huson: I'm still in awe of all I was able to do in the game or still do. I've had so many memorable experiences. I played in two of Nolan Ryan's no-hitters - his sixth and seventh. I played in his 300th win. I played the night Cal broke Lou Gehrig's record. Literally, dude, I'm the Forrest Gump of baseball. If you look at it, it's like, "Oh, I just showed up, and here I am."

Whenever I walk into my office, I'm going to send you like three pictures that I have in my office, it takes me back to my youth. It takes me back to why I love this game so much, and why it's in my DNA, because it has brought me so much joy. The joy outweighs some of the heartbreak and sorrow that you have in this game. People would literally pay millions of dollars to be able to do what I've done, and I'm fortunate enough to be one of the 23,000 players that have ever played in the big leagues.

Robby Incmikoski: You can't even fill half a stadium with everyone who's played in the big leagues. That's how special it is. I've come to realize, doing research and looking at some of the players we've talked to for this book, just how hard it is to carve out a long career in the game of baseball.

But for you to not only do that - I'm talking about your time as a player in the game - you spent 12 years. And I don't say this in a mocking way, because I've spoken to backup catchers about how hard it is to be a backup catcher, right? You were kind of a guy that played all around. It takes a lot of buy-in from you to know your role. You're one of the greatest baseball players in the history of the world, Huey, because point-zero-zero-two percent of youth baseball players even play one pitch in the big leagues. So here you are playing 12 years.

How did you view it? If I've gotta carve out a career as a backup, I'm gonna carve out a career as a backup. There's a lot of worse things to do in life than to spend 12 years playing major league baseball. So to carve out the career you did, yet be a part of those moments - what does 60-year-old Jeff Hewson say about that, not 23, 24, 26-year-old Jeff Hewson, who was a big leaguer?

Jeff Huson: I'm proud of myself, because there were a couple times I was like, "Man, I can't do this anymore. I can't go make another team." It happened once in '99. I had eight years in the big leagues, and I told my wife the first day of spring training, "I'm coming home," and she goes, "No, you're not. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. The kids and I are fine."

The next day this guy I was going to battle with quit. Then about two weeks later, Gary DiSarcina breaks his arm. I make the club, and I played two more years in the big leagues. So I got my 10 years and nine days of service time, which only about six or seven percent of players ever get over 10 years' worth of service time.

When I look at it now as a 60-plus year old, I'm so proud of myself, because there were guys that had way more talent than me, Robby, but they did not have the drive and desire that I had. You weren't gonna beat me, you weren't gonna outwork me. That's the model I took, and that's what I'm most proud of.

Robby Incmikoski: That's amazing to hear. So you did get your 10 years of service time. You said it was DiSarcina who broke his arm?

Jeff Huson: Yeah, he was walking out of the cage and they're hitting fungos. On the follow-through on the fungo, they broke his arm. So I made the team that year. Then I had a really good year, so some clubs wanted me, and I was able to play for the Cubs my last year. That was my mom and dad's favorite team, and I got to play for Don Baylor. That was my favorite team growing up.

Here's a cool story, Robby: I got my first big league hit in Three Rivers Stadium, and we closed out Three Rivers Stadium in 2000.

Robby Incmikoski: John Vander Wal hit the last homer.

Jeff Huson: Yes, and I got a base hit in the last game, the Sunday game in like October 3 or something like that, in Three Rivers Stadium. I thought, "This is a sign. I got my first big league hit and my last big league hit in Three Rivers Stadium. It's time." So after the game, I sat in the dugout by myself, shed some tears and said, "This is it." I retired after that year, after playing 15 years of professional baseball, and I said, "This has been a hell of a run."

Robby Incmikoski: That's unbelievable. So does the city of Pittsburgh mean a little something to you?

Jeff Huson: Yes, I love Pittsburgh. I try to go back there every year when I'm broadcasting, because I just think about it. I go to the spot where it's marked, where Three Rivers Stadium was.

Robby Incmikoski: They just did the plaques, ma'am, just last week. So you have something new to see if you come this year.

Jeff Huson: Everybody likes to have a storybook ending. Everybody likes to think, "Okay, I want to do this," or "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if this athlete could do that and then retire." Well, I got to do that. That's amazing. I got to do that at the stadium where I got my first big league hit, and then my last big league hit bookended it. I can walk away, I can take off the uniform and go, "I did it."

Robby Incmikoski: That is incredible. I'm sending you this link. This just happened last week or week and a half ago. You check it when you get off, and you'll see that dedication. So you've got something new to see.

Just to go back for a second, if you don't mind, how do you describe Cal as a teammate?

Jeff Huson: One of a kind in the fact that he was a stickler for detail. There's a schedule in baseball - you stretch at 3:15, group one hits at 3:25, group two at 3:35, and so on. In spring training, he gave us all Iron Man watches, and we're like, "What's he doing?" Well, he didn't want anybody to be late to whatever group they were in.

If you look back at pictures during spring training, everybody's wearing Iron Man watches for that reason, because he did not want you to be late. That's where the Iron Man thing came from. But also, if this is the scheduled time, this is the scheduled time. There's no "I'm going to come out 30 seconds later." Everybody was always out together doing the same thing.

Robby Incmikoski: These pictures are amazing. So that was Cal taking his lap the night he set the record?

Jeff Huson: Yes, that's Bobby Bonilla behind Cal.

Robby Incmikoski: Let me look at it again. I'm just curious. That's amazing. Can you see the autograph at the bottom?

Jeff Huson: It says, "Huey, get out of the way."

Robby Incmikoski: Is that what it says?

Jeff Huson: And then the other one with the 2131, because I got the sports page from the next day. He wrote, "Huey, now more than ever, I needed you to catch those balls to your left."

Robby Incmikoski: Oh my God, that's priceless. Can I - do we have your permission to use those?

Jeff Huson: Yes, yes.

Robby Incmikoski: Oh my god, that's amazing. I'm gonna put this picture in the book. That is incredible, Huey. This is amazing.

You mentioned his competitiveness. We always hear about how much he loved to play basketball. From your experience, what drove him to do it?

Jeff Huson: To me, it was always a case where he just wanted to play. There was never, "Oh man, I just don't feel like it today." I never once heard those words ever uttered from him.

There's a story from when we were in Minnesota, back in the old Metrodome. From the field level, you had to go up many flights of stairs to get to the locker room. He always made a game of it, like, "How many steps can I take to get up these?" So he would start out on the field and run as fast as he could and see how many steps it would take. I think his number was eight steps to go up. That kind of tells you how long this uphill walk was to the clubhouse.

Robby Incmikoski: This is unbelievable. These stories are incredible. What's it like even telling these stories right now?

Jeff Huson: A lot of times you don't think about them. When people ask me, I'm like, "Oh yeah, this happened and that happened." It is fun for me to relive them, because they're just not at the forefront of your mind. You don't think about them. You think about your everyday life. Then when you're able to go back and think, "Wow, that was a pretty special moment, obviously a special player," even when I've seen him recently, it's just like anybody that's been a teammate or a great friend - you fall back to what it was 25-30 years ago.

Robby Incmikoski: I have 8 million questions, but we're running low on time. For a baseball fan that loves the game, that enjoys the game, that wanted to play professionally but couldn't - you lived a dream that millions of people wish they could do. Would you agree with that statement?

Jeff Huson: Oh yes. The interesting thing about it is I always knew, or I always had hoped, as every kid does, that I would be a professional athlete. But coming out of high school, I wasn't recruited at all. I was going to just go to school at the University of Arizona. I lived in Sedona, which is about a four-hour drive away.

I was getting ready to drive down to the U of A, and my dad gives me the check so I could pay for school. The last thing he says to me, he goes, "I don't want you to look back in 5, 10, 15 years and wish you would have tried to play ball."

I was like, "Okay, cool, Dad, thanks." I ended up going down there, and I'm on the steps of the admission office, getting ready to walk up, and I hear my dad's voice. I was like, "I can't do this. I can't do this." I walked back to my car, check in hand, drove the four hours back to Sedona, looked at my dad, gave him the check, and said, "I'm going to go try to play baseball."

I ended up walking on at a junior college down in Arizona and made the club, and then the rest is history after that. It was just my dad telling me, "Don't have any regrets. I think you're better than what everybody else thinks," and he's the one that had the confidence in me.

Robby Incmikoski: Your dad still around?

Jeff Huson: No, he passed in 2002. But he got to see me play. He got to live the dream with me, and he's the reason why I was a big leaguer.

Robby Incmikoski: That's great, man. We hear so many great stories like that.

Last thing - you had mentioned a moment ago, and I would like for you to expand on this. You referred to yourself as the Forrest Gump of baseball. Can you elaborate on that, please?

Jeff Huson: Well, it's actually a phrase that my brother-in-law gave me. Obviously everybody knows the Forrest Gump story - he just shows up at all these events and there's Forrest.

I got traded to the Texas Rangers from Montreal, and Nolan Ryan's a teammate. I play in his sixth no-hitter out in Oakland. Rickey Henderson hits me a chopper with one out in the ninth inning. I throw him out at first. Ruben Sierra catches Willie Randolph's fly in right field, and that completes the no-hitter.

We're jumping around. The seventh no-hitter was against Toronto when they were just rolling. They had that great team, and he just mowed them down with like 16 strikeouts. I was part of that. And then the 300th win was in Milwaukee, when they had Robin Yount and those guys. So that was basically the early 90s, and then I signed with Baltimore and I show up in this event with Cal.

How many guys can say they were able to do all of that? I think maybe the only other guy would be Rafael Palmeiro that played in two of the no-hitters, his 300th win, and then was with Cal.

Robby Incmikoski: And that game, the no-hitter against Oakland - was that in Oakland?

Jeff Huson: That was in Oakland. He had just come off the IL, and his son, Reese, was rubbing his back in the dugout. The game got going along and finally, about the fifth inning, he just took it to another level.

Robby Incmikoski: What the hell is that like to be part of not one but two Nolan Ryan no-hitters?

Jeff Huson: If you think about it, he had seven different catchers in his no-hitters, so to be able to play in two of them was kind of magical.

Robby Incmikoski: What was that place like that day in the Coliseum? Do you remember?

Jeff Huson: It was okay because it wasn't full. The one in Texas started out maybe half to three-quarters full, but by the end of the game - I don't know if people were listening on the radio and decided to come to the game - but at the end of the game, it was completely packed. That one was electric.

Robby Incmikoski: So that Rickey Henderson ground ball was the second-to-last out of the ninth?

Jeff Huson: Yeah, he hit me a check swing. Nolan threw him a curve ball, check swing to me. I come charging in, I got it. As soon as I let it go, I knew I had him. I ended up by the pitcher's mound, obviously, because it was a slow roller. They throw the ball around and it comes to me. I'm right by Nolan, and I toss it to him, and he goes, "Nice play, Huey." And I'm like, "Oh God, don't give me another one."

Robby Incmikoski: I was gonna say, what the hell is that like when you're playing? I asked John Vukovich, who was in Armando Galarraga's game - remember the almost perfect game? Johnny Vukovich was in that game, and I asked him what it's like playing defense in a perfect game. What the hell is it like playing defense in the ninth inning of a Nolan Ryan no-hitter?

Jeff Huson: Just like that - after I made that play, because now it's 26 outs, as I was trotting back, I'm thinking, "Please don't let him hit me another one. I just made a great play. Let somebody else be involved." Then, like I said, Willie Randolph hit a shallow fly ball in foul territory to Ruben Sierra, and he caught it.

But the seventh no-hitter, after the second inning, Steve Buechele, who was playing third base - Boo from Pittsburgh - Boo and I run off the field, we look at each other and we're like, "It's over, these guys don't stand a chance tonight." And this is a big league team. If you go look at their lineup from Toronto - I think this is '91 - but anyway, they had studs, and he was just blowing them away. They had no shot. There was like one catch by Gary Pettis - it was kind of a little line drive, but he caught it about mid-thigh.

Robby Incmikoski: So that would have been - was the no-hit game in Toronto? Was that game in Toronto?

Jeff Huson: That game was in Texas.

Robby Incmikoski: That's crazy. I need a story for Toronto too. That's why I was asking that as well. Dude, this is wild, Huey. All right, man, I'm gonna let you roll.