By A.J. Hayes
They haven’t been teammates since Jimmy Carter’s swansong year in the White House, but when John “The Count” Montefusco and Ed “Ho-Ho” Halicki got together this past weekend and saucily ribbed each other like a couple of high schoolers - one might have suspected the tart-tongued former Giants pitchers were still Candlestick Park locker mates.
“So when we got on the plane I flushed Ed’s socks down the toilet!” - John Montefusco, on one of his Giants days pranks
Though they haven’t spent much time together since 1980, Halicki and Montefusco have a world in common.
Each former pitcher was born in New Jersey in 1950. They were both signed by Giants scout Buddy Kerr in 1972 and made their major league debuts with San Francisco two seasons later in 1974. Each was a classic clubhouse prankster.
And each ace threw no-hitters for the Giants. Halicki, fired his, a 6-0 win over the New York Mets at Candlestick Park on August 24, 1975. The Count, earned his no-no, a 9-0 domination of the Braves in Atlanta on September 29, 1976.
No Giant has pitched a no-hitter since Montefusco’s bicentennial year masterpiece.
In between bites of mini-pizzas, pigs- in- blankets and other hors d’oeuvres and reacquainting themselves with former teammates such as Jim Barr, Mike Sadek, Tom Griffin and Elias Sosa - Ho-Ho and the Count told us what it was to be a Giant in the 1970s.
Montefusco, on hiding Halicki’s socks in St. Louis:
Ed had just beat St. Louis on the road in 1977 and we were headed to the airport to fly back to San Francisco. Ed had a date that night back in the city and boy, was he dressed to kill. He was hot and all sweaty and was the last one to come out of the locker room and he’s yelling ‘I can’t find my socks!’ He’s looking all around and going, ‘someone took my fucking socks!’ – so he ended up putting on these bright orange sanitaries (baseball socks) that we started wearing as part of the uniform that season – so he’s all dressed to kill, but he’s got on these orange socks… well he gets on the bus and the guys start screaming at him ‘cause he was late getting on the bus and Bill Madlock is sitting there laughing at him.
Ed goes up to Madlock and screams “you better give me back my fucking socks!”
But he didn’t have ‘em, I did in my jacket pocket, but I’m afraid to give ‘em back to him, because he was so angry. So when we got on the plane I flushed Ed’s socks down the toilet!
He didn’t find out until the next spring training that I had taken them. I told Charlie Williams that I was the guy who took ‘em and he went right to Halicki. He was still pissed off!
Halicki on pranking Montefusco:
In 1975, Montefusco was popping off as usual – because he has such a big mouth – saying he was gonna strike out Johnny Bench four times in Cincinnati. Well his first time up Bench crushes this mammoth home run that crashes off the façade in left field and the Reds knock the Count out of the game in the third inning. All we could do was laugh. When we got back to San Francisco, a couple of the guys – Chris Speier and Chris Arnold – had gotten a hold of some Reds stationary and wrote an official looking letter that said ‘ due to the damage to the stadium caused by Bench’s homer, Montefusco owed the Reds $243. John just flew off the handle like only he can and started screaming and yelling – he thought the letter was real – and then all of a sudden he yells in all seriousness – and I fell off my chair - ‘why the fuck are they billing me… Bench hit it!’
Halicki, on Montefusco’s big league debut in ’74 at Dodger Stadium in which the Count earned the win with nine innings of shutout relief and also hit a home run:
“Right before he came up to hit our pitching coach Don McMahon asked me if John could hit and I said, ‘nah he’s a terrible hitter.’ One pitch later boom he hits a home run. . I’ll I could do was put my hat over my eyes and shake my head. McMahon never listened to me again.
Montefusco on what he enjoyed most about his time in San Francisco:
The fans, I really enjoyed the fans, they came out to watch me pitch. I tried to put a show on for them and it seemed to work good for both sides… we were not drawing well back in 1975, and its not fun coming to your home park and there’s only 5,000 people there and you go on the road and the parks are packed. It felt like we lost some thing when no one was there so I did everything I could to get the people to come out and they did. In 1978 we drew almost two million people
Halicki on the no-hitters:
In 1975, we played the Red Sox at the Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown, New York and we had a layover in Utica, and John and I were sitting at a table with Art Eckman and Al Michaels. At the time we had a good rotation with Pete Falcone and Jim Barr and Mike Caldwell and someone said of every one on the staff who do you think can throw a no-hitter? Every one was in agreement that it would be Falcone. So one month later I threw a no-hitter and one year later John threw his.
Count on his no-hitter:
It would have killed me if I didn’t get one, Halicki had one. It would have driven me nuts... I didn’t know I was gonna throw a no-hitter I didn’t even know I was gonna pitch that day, I was sick. The only reason I went out there was to give Willie Montanez, who we traded for Darrell Evans that season, a chance to get a hit off me. I had made a bet with him that he wouldn’t get a hit off me all year and he was 0-for-7 and this was his last change to get a hit. So I went out there trying to stop him and ended up stopping the whole team.
On today’s pitchers:
Montefusco: The pitch count is bull. I think they’re just babying these guys 100 pitches is nothing to these guys. They have 100 by the sixth inning. They’re afraid to throw the ball over the plate. They’re afraid to challenge people, every hitter has a 3-2 count. We went right at them. Now they change pitchers five-six times a game.
Halicki: I had a game in college in which I threw 228 pitches over 14 innings. If they’re throwing good leave ’em in. If I got to the seventh inning and I was usually pitching pretty good I wanted to finish – and usually did. I can understand if it’s a close ball game and they pinch hit for you , but to just take me out because I’ve thrown a certain number of pitches – I would have gotten very upset. I always felt I was better than anyone they could bring in, with all do respect to the relievers that we had. I had a game where I lost 1-0 in the 11th inning… Richie Allen was up and hit a ground ball through Ed Goodson’s legs at third. I would have never lasted into that 11th inning now a days.
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Comments (1)
I've got some San Francisco Seals cards and Oakland Oaks cards we got in Bread Wrappers around 1950... are they worth anything. Cookie Lavagetto on one of the cards... use to go to Cal FB games with my dad, Pappy Waldorf was the coach... as a kid I liked the bear, think his name was Oskie.
Posted by Bob | July 31, 2008 04:41 PM