A SAD SAGA
Surprising that hard-living Pepitone made it to age 82
SURPRISED TO read, this week, that Joe Pepitone had made it to 82. In the sundown seasons of the Yankees, Joe Pepitone was among the last who could hit, field and make some noise. He was a vestigial Yankee, like Mel Stottlemyre, Roy White, Gene Michael and Jake Gibbs.
And then, one day in 1988, my sportswriting career in gear, I read that the NYPD had busted Pepitone and two other wise guys for transporting a load of cash, cocaine, quaaludes and guns.
Geez. Joe Pepitone. No. 25. Character. Crazy hairpiece. Right field power.
Soon I got a tip that NBC Sports’ new journalism weekend show anchored by Gayle Gardner planed to interview Pepitone, who would spend the next four months in Rikers Island. I asked her producer if I could hitch a ride, steal some quotes and a peek.
To mix with the Rikers’ population was not a shock to the central system. I knew not to expect the Von Trapp Family Singers.
But the “Friends & Family” bus that delivered us to its gates with a trip — a collection of the lost, extra lost and much too late schlepping long-shot children, mostly obese and toothless grandmothers. Still among the most depressing moving sights in my head.
The Public Information Officer placed Pepitone and I in the corner of a caged light-bulb gym decorated to appear as a prison gym. No championships banners on the walls, a rusted water fountain that last quenched the thirsts of cons reconstructed in black and white American Movie Classics.
Pepitone, under dark eyebrows didn’t seem particularly pleased to greet me on my mission to learn, then publicize what the hell happened to him. But he soon melted to plead his case: he was another innocent man in jail.
Pepitone, who I’d never met, was PR slick in that he’d done his House Work — he called me “Mush.” Even as a young reporter I knew such to be a con. Several months earlier I’d read Jim Valvano as a glad-handing phony when in our first meeting he called me “Mush.”
“Mush” was for second cordial meetings, then for life.
Pepitone didn’t detail even a moment from his bust but made it clear that he was framed by persons unknown and unnamed, another innocent man in jail. And that’s all. I was left to my dubious take: “Yankee Legend Joe Pepitone: Another Innocent Man In Rikers.”
A week later I received a message from Pepitone’s wife, his third as I recall. I winced as I unfolded it. I essentially had written in The Post that her innocent husband, the man she awaits, was full of it.
The note read something close to, “Thanks for writing the truth. His friends never tell him the truth.”
A few years later, I was in “Elaine’s,” the renowned Uptown bar/restaurant/hangout people entered when it was time to go home.
The first table was a round one Elaine reserved for newly inducted celebs. On this late night morning, Pepitone held court at that table. What a crew, Hollywood central casting — black shirts, white ties, glittering cuff links and men who shot quick, dirty looks. Now I was two-for-two. “Hey, Mush, come here. I wanna ask you something.
“Why does your newspaper keep writing that [bleep] about me?”
Pepitone recently had again been arrested, this time for an upstate hassle that included a gun.
“Why, Joe?” I stalled by repeating his question. “Well it’s the same reason we wrote about all your home runs. You were news, Joe; you made news.”
He seemed satisfied, even pleased by my response. And his reaction was mimicked by his rough table buddies.
I was invited to sit for a drink during which Pepitone “swear to God, Mush,” that he’s clean, that George Steinbrenner had invited him to rejoin the Yankees as an instructor, no more drugs and guns, some smaller talk, some laughs.
One more pop to be polite and it was time for me to go. I excused myself and headed for the men’s room.
As I stood at one of the side-by-side don’t-look-down urinal, Pepitone entered. Along the top of one he flicked from a clear vile two lines of presumed coke. “Here, have one” he said.
That’s why this week I was surprised to read Pepitone made it to 82.