Ex-Big Leaguer Werber Has Many Stories to Choose From

Or, D) The time Werber broke his toe by kicking a water cooler?

The choice, clearly, should be A).

"I got kicked out of the Berwyn School," Werber said, "because I wrote a poem." He looks to the ceiling to summon the verses. " 'A great big eagle flew from the south/With old man Beebe in its mouth' -- that was the principal -- 'And when he saw he had a fool/He dropped him over the Berwyn School.' And old man Beebe wrote a letter to my father that said, 'I think your son needs schooling at somewhere other than the Berwyn School.' "

Story No. 2. Your choices:

A) The time in 1943 when Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith tried to coax Werber out of retirement with an offer of $50,000 -- at a time when Werber was making twice that (and about eight times his highest salary as a ballplayer) as a salesman at his father's insurance agency in College Park?

B) The time Ruth, after hitting a home run, chided Werber, the base runner at first, for sprinting around the bases, telling him, "Son, you don't have to run when the Babe hits one"?

C) The time during Werber's rookie season when Ford Frick, a sportswriter who would later become baseball commissioner, praised him in print for having the "coolness of a veteran"?

Or, D) The time, roughly four years ago, when Werber decided he could no longer tolerate watching baseball on television?

Hint: You're going to want to go with D).

"I think what turned me off," he said, "was seeing Johnny Damon in center field [for the Red Sox], with that full beard and the long hair down his back, and [Manny] Ramírez in left field with the dreadlocks. I wrote a letter to -- what's the commissioner's name? Yes, Bud Selig. I said the appearance of these ballplayers was abysmal, and something should be done about it. And Selig answered. His letters were always polite and well-written. But nothing came of it.

"Joe McCarthy was the manager of the Yankees in 1930. I didn't care for Joe McCarthy. He drank whiskey, and I didn't approve of that. But he demanded his ballplayers all dressed and acted like ballplayers. They all wore hats or caps on the road -- Ruth wore a cap -- and they all wore coats and ties and acted like gentlemen. And they were groomed nicely."

Story No. 3: The choices are -- A) The time he told a classmate at McKinley Tech during his junior year that he was going to marry the girl he just saw come out of a classroom that Werber himself was about to go into -- and how, several years later, he did?