A tribute to the Cleveland Indian who was too intense and self-critical to play the game
By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/10/24/the-ballad-of-tony-horton/Two franchises steeped in calamity since their last known World Series triumphs. The Cubs and the Indians have had more
than their share of horrific management, horrific fortune, and even horrific death.
Ken Hubbs, the Cubs’ 1962 National League Rookie of the Year second baseman, was killed in spring 1964 in a private plane
crash. The sick irony is that Hubbs took up flying in order to conquer his fear of it.
Steve Olin and Tim Crews, on whom the Indians were counting to solidify their bullpen, were killed in a Jose Fernandez-like
boating crash during spring training 1993. (In the same accident, veteran starting pitcher Bob Ojeda—formerly a World Series
hero with the 1986 Mets—suffered a severed scalp, eventually crediting his survival to slouching on the boat when it crashed
into an unlit dock.)
No calamity equals death. Unless you count the sad case of the man whom Cleveland Plain-Dealer writer (and author of
The
Curse of Rocky Colavito) Terry Pluto called the most tragic Indian.
Tony Horton was a big, ruggedly handsome, slugging first baseman who came up in the Red Sox system and looked to be their
first baseman of the future until the early 1967 season, with George Scott challenging for the position, manager Dick Williams
liking both men’s potential but Horton’s in particular, and the Red Sox in need of veteran pitching help.
Horton in Boston seemed contented enough; ill-fated outfielder Tony Conigliaro would remember many a pleasant evening’s
revelry they spent with the young ladies. Over Williams’s apparent objection, however, the Red Sox traded the 23-year-old
Horton to the Indians in June 1967 for righthanded pitcher Gary Bell.
Bell would help pitch the Red Sox to that year’s surprise American League pennant. (He’d also become something of a running
mate to Jim Bouton in the year of Ball Four, in Seattle.) Horton, who hadn’t wanted to leave the Red Sox but who’d begin with
promise enough in Cleveland, would become a mess.
Horton would lead the Indians in home runs (14) and runs batted in (59) in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher. In 1969, he also
led the team in bombs (27) and steaks (93). Yet all the indicators were present that this was not exactly a composed young
man.
He could never let himself enjoy his successes and flogged himself mercilessly over any failures. In a May 1970 game in
which he smashed three home runs, Horton after the game berated himself as a blockhead because he’d made an out in his
final plate appearance of the day.
Toward the end of June 1970, Horton swung futilely at two of Yankee pitcher Steve Hamilton’s eephus pitches, fouling the
second one for an out,
and was so frustrated he threw his bat and helmet airborne, then dropped to his hands and knees
crawling back to the dugout. Everyone thought he was kidding around.
Except Rich Rollins, the longtime Twins infielder who’d come to the Indians as a player-coach in 1970. “That was a very scary
sign,” Rollins said. “It was obvious Tony needed help. At that point probably the only person he was listening to was his
father.” Others would suggest in due course that Horton was smothered by family pressures even more than baseball
pressures.
Sam McDowell, who became an Indians legend with a Koufax-like fastball, but who dealt with his own demons including
alcohol, had a harrowing conversation with the haunted first baseman on 28 August 1970. Horton reached out to McDowell
asking routine baseball questions before blurting out to McDowell, “What do you think of me as a person?”
Taken aback, McDowell nevertheless gave it to Horton straight. “Tony, I don’t consider you a friend,” McDowell replied.
“You’re a teammate and I respect you for that, but I really don’t like you that much . . . It’s not personal. I just don’t
understand you. I really don’t understand anything about you.”
McDowell remembered Horton having tears in his eyes as he said, “Sam, I appreciate that. You’re the only one who’s
been straight with me.” When McDowell went out to warm up before the day’s game, Horton disappeared.
Only later did it emerge that Horton tried to commit suicide and, having failed, returned to his native Santa Monica to
be hospitalised. And, told by his doctors the only way he’d have anything close to a normal life to live was to leave
baseball behind entirely. He reportedly went to work first in the stock market, then in telecommunications, then in
banking.
“[H]is breakdown was due to the pressure of never living up to his father’s expectations,” said Bill Madden—author of
a sympathetic article about Horton in 1997—to the Society for American Baseball Research.
“After the suicide attempt, I’m told doctors and psychiatric people told him he had to sever all ties to baseball and that
part of his life. That’s why his old teammates and managers never heard from him again and why he has become a bit
of a recluse,” Madden continued. “I thought it was rather strange that Tony was still living with his father at the time
of my article.”
“Tony was a perfectionist in a negative sense,” said McDowell, who left baseball, conquered his alcohol demons, and
became a sports psychologist, to Pluto for
The Curse of Rocky Colavito. Pluto and others have observed Horton’s over-
intensity and over-perfection may have alienated him from teammates who might have befriended him.
“Because of his low self-esteem, he was continually trying to prove he was a failure by setting unrealistic goals, such as
perfection . . .,” McDowell continued. “He had set himself up to fail no matter how well he played.”
There is a haunting photograph included with Pluto’s book. It shows Horton crossing the plate after hitting a home run,
taking a handshake from Indians infielder Max Alvis, who came up with promise himself but was sapped by a bout with
spinal meningitis in 1964. Alvis looks like a parent desperate to comfort a troubled child. Horton looks like he’d be more
comfortable in the electric chair.
“I never think about playing baseball again,” Horton said in the only known interview he gave after leaving the Indians,
in 1973. “I have an entirely new life, and baseball is not a part of it . . . I started my life over, and baseball is not a part
of it.”
As late as 2006, SABR writers Mark Kanter and Mark Armour, presenting a paper on Horton to one of the group’s
conventions in Seattle, were accosted by a man identifying himself as a friend of Horton. The friend talked to Horton
after that SABR event. Horton still had no wish to revisit his painful baseball past.
But in 2009, a video appeared on YouTube. It remains there.
It shows Tony Horton, in a green sweatshirt emblazoned
with “IRELAND,” blue denim shorts, and white sneakers, teaching small children at a barbeque a few things about
playing baseball.
Allowing the children to make the simple mistakes for which he once flogged himself mentally as a major leaguer.
Enjoying them doing things right with a big smile creasing his face. Kneeling behind a small boy to help the boy improve
his awkward swing. Letting them be themselves, as he never allowed his young major league self to be.
At peace with himself. And, maybe, the game.
