Page 199 - 1975 BoSox

192 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
International League regular season. He gladly at- tended a reunion in Pawtucket in recent years and told writer Joe Kuras how much things had changed from the old chicken-wire cages they used as lockers back then. But, he added, “I was always one who came early to the ballpark. I used to help them on the eld. I used to come and work out. I just loved being around the ballpark. It was my life. I loved it.”
e next couple of years, 1978 and 1979, Andy played for Joe Morgan in Pawtucket, never playing full-time and never truly outstanding (.263 with 14 RBIs in 1978, but declining to .152 and 10 RBIs in 1979). In 1978, oddly, he switched positions in the battery and threw from the mound during one game — just for an inning, in which he gave up three hits and two earned runs. In 2005 he didn’t have a distinct memory of the oc- casion—though he did recall pitching a no-hitter back in Little League.
Merchant had it in mind to become a bullpen coach after his playing days were over and felt he’d been in line for a position along those lines, serving as “sort of a player-coach.”But things went awry and it didn’t work out that way. Despite the depth the Sox had in catching, Merchant was a left-handed-hitting catcher and those were rare so the Sox were reluctant to let him go. “I never was in the trade picture, I guess you might say.” e way it all ended, though, was a bit bizarre. In 1980 Merchant received a letter inviting him to spring training, to report to the minor-league camp. “I didn’t show up and I didn’t plan on coming back, but then I had a phone call. Sam Bowen called me up [from the big-league camp]. He said, ‘Your uniform’s in your locker. Everybody’s wondering where you’re at.’ I said, ‘I didn’t get a letter, I didn’t hear from Boston or anybody.’ I didn’t know I was supposed to report back to the big-league team that particular year.” So he called up Red Sox executive Ed Kenney. “He wanted to know if I could catch the next ight out to report to spring training. I said I’d be glad to. I done missed about a week. And I said, `Well, would y’all pay me for that week if I come?’ And you’re not going to believe this, but the connection on the phone, we faded out. We lost connection.” It wasn’t as though
Kenney hung up on Merchant. “No, it went fuzzy and we lost connection. I didn’t call him back and he didn’t call me back and that’s the way my career ended right there.”
Merchant took up working for Alabama Power as a line-clearing specialist. He noted further, “I never have to this day got a release from Boston.” When the interviewer suggested that perhaps he should report for duty, even though it was more than a quarter- century later, Merchant said that some people had told him, “You ought to sue them for retroactive. You never got your release.”
Andy Merchant worked 20 years for Alabama Power and took his retirement in the year 2000. As of 2005, he was working as a caregiver, helping take care of a man in his neighborhood who was wheelchair-bound with rheumatoid arthritis.
“ e type people that were ahead of me, I feel like I never got the opportunity to show what I could do. You get called up from Triple-A, and you sit around. You lose your timing, you lose everything sitting on the bench. Just warming up pitchers in the bullpen, you can’t perform in front of 30,000 people who expect you to perform well. In ’75, I got right into a game, which was all right. In ’76, it felt like I just sat around a lot more. It is hard. It’s very di cult to perform where you’re sitting around like that.”
Merchant expressed pleasure in receiving alumni mail- ings from the Red Sox, and kept them informed of his changes in work, even though the team he began to root for in retirement was the Atlanta Braves. He was clear, though, that he harbored no animosity at all toward the Red Sox. “I got overlooked a little bit. It’s part of life. I enjoyed a cup of co ee and then went on about my way. I came along at the wrong time, evidently, but that’s all right. I enjoyed it while I was there, I really did. I don’t have no complaints or gripes about it. It was really special in my life.”
Sources
Interviews with Andy Merchant were conducted by Bill Nowlin on October 12, 2001, and August 10 and September 24, 2005. All