He might have become a well-known pitching coach because he had accumulated so much knowledge over 20 seasons, eight of them in the majors, two with Washington. But as he explained, he got all he needed out of baseball, the pure joy of playing. If he never made big money, he earned respect for persevering despite setbacks and for the way he led his life.
He battled back mostly on guile after injuring his left elbow trying to break off a fast curveball early in his career. The elbow hurt, "deep down in here," he said, "an ache, and it got worse and worse, not better, and that's where I had to learn how to pitch."
Grzenda's son, Joe Jr., suggests the final ball used in a Senators game should be used for the ceremonial first pitch.
(John Mcdonnell -- The Washington Post)
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He was sent all the way down to Victoria, Tex., where from his deepest obscurity he began to heal and struggled to make progress. He labored through four seasons before the arm felt right. He never had it easy in baseball. But he learned a lot.
Much later, Billy Martin, who had managed Grzenda in 1969 in Minnesota, told a pitching prospect being farmed to Syracuse, "When you get there, go see Grzenda and listen to him."
Ted Williams also liked Grzenda, for being the quiet but heady veteran who could help the struggling Senators. On the day Grzenda qualified for a pension from baseball, Williams surprisingly knew about it. He ambled over to Grzenda's locker near a back corner of RFK's home clubhouse, and, in his typically booming voice, said, "Well, how do you feel today?"
Grzenda, with his requisite time in, suddenly felt relaxed. By his account, he had been "uptight, very uptight" for years, chain-smoking -- "I used to light up a cigarette in the dugout and get out on the mound and try to get back before it burned out" -- and worrying that any pitch he made in the majors might be his last. Ron Menchine, the Senators' radio broadcaster, remembered a remark by Grzenda, who had ridden countless buses in the minors: "If I ever get my [time] in, I'm going to buy a bus just to burn it."
Grzenda had "slept on the rack, slept on the floor" of those buses, often arriving at 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning somewhere that seemed in an unshakable grogginess like nowhere, all part of an odyssey that could outline the continent.
He finally "made it" with the Senators.
In a typically desperate situation on the 1970 club, Williams asked Grzenda if he would start a game in Boston -- the manager had no fresh pitchers. Eagerly, Grzenda accepted. It was the first of only three starts he would make in the major leagues. But it was a beauty. Unassumingly, he remembered: "I don't know what it was. I wasn't throwing with much velocity. I think those right-handed batters were overanxious with that wall so close." He went 8 1/3 innings, holding the Red Sox to one hit until the ninth, three hits and two earned runs overall. He gained the victory and an appreciative slap on the back from Williams. "I felt like I won the World Series," Grzenda said.
In 1971, Williams relied on him with even greater confidence. "It wasn't a winning club, but I got to pitch more," he said. "I could make something more of myself, which I did. I had the opportunity, and I think Ted Williams had a lot to do with it because he liked the older ballplayer."
Williams called Grzenda "Mr. America" because he was a good-living guy who always had his family with him during his career. "It was a good life," Ruth Grzenda said, and she meant every one of those American summers, wherever they spent them. After one Senators home game, the manager happened to be walking alongside Grzenda as he was meeting up with his wife and children. Williams, as if he were personally delivering him, boomed to the family: "Well, here he is, here's 'Mr. America.' "
"He was a laid-back, quiet guy, always did his job. Always very friendly," said Jim Hannan, Grzenda's teammate in 1970. "Back in those days, there were two groups of guys: the guys who always partied and those who didn't. He was a non-partier, a family man."
All these years later, the Grzenda family was gathered again talking about baseball in Washington, this time in the house on the remote narrow street in the shadow of a wooded hill just 12 miles from where Grzenda grew up, the son of a coal miner and later a truck driver. There was Ruth, whom Grzenda met on his first of five stints in Birmingham; and the two grown children, their spouses, three grandchildren in all. As well as anyone, the adults among them realized how long it has been since baseball was played at RFK. But no matter the passage of time, Ted Williams -- Teddy Ballgame -- remained vivid in their minds.
Williams had let Grzenda bring Joe Jr. into the clubhouse before almost every home game. The boy had a small Senators uniform and even went out on the field with the players before games. "Frank Howard's taking batting practice and I'm at shortstop," Joe Jr. recalled, "and he started lacing them and I thought, I'm going to get hurt. I went back out to the outfield." Williams even showed the boy the best way to throw a curveball, the kind that occasionally had bothered him as a hitter who wanted merely to be "the greatest who ever lived." No doubt, '71 was the dream season for the Grzendas, father and son.
