The Bird Tapes Interview: Jim Gentile
He was out all night before his greatest game. The Orioles docked him five dollars whenever he got mad and broke a bat over his knee. “Diamond” Jim tells all in a searing vintage interview.
Driving away from Jim Gentile’s house in Edmond, Oklahoma, after our long interview for my book on Orioles history a quarter century ago, I thought, “Boy, he sure would have been fun to cover.”
Listening to the interview again all these years later, I still feel that way.
A slugging San Francisco native, he languished for seven years in the Dodgers’ minor-league system, blocked by Gil Hodges, before the Orioles acquired him in 1960. He made the most of his long-overdue chance, manning first base and the cleanup spot in the Orioles’ batting order for the next four years.
They weren’t four quiet years.
When he wasn’t blasting long home runs and posting power-hitting records that stood for years, he was breaking bats over his knee in anger or slipping into a bar near Memorial Stadium, against the club’s wishes, to nurse his frustrations. The Orioles loved his power but fretted about him enough to put a “good boy” clause in his contract, essentially paying him to behave.
“What can I say? I’m Italian and Irish, a lover and a fighter,” Gentile told me in our not-to-be-missed interview, available below to paid Bird Tapes subscribers.
He was 65 years old when he sat down with me in his living room that day in Oklahoma, made a pot of coffee for us to share and poured out the story of his life in baseball with honesty, humility and humor.
What a baseball life it was.
Gentile talked about being nicknamed “Diamond” by the legendary Roy Campanella on a trip to Japan with the Dodgers in 1956. He talked about belonging to a generation of tortured players who spent what would’ve been some of their peak years in the minors because there were still just 16 teams in the majors.
He talked about playing with Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax, against Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, and hitting against Warren Spahn.
And then he talked about his relatively short but unforgettable time in Baltimore, which ended when the Orioles traded him because, he said, “They wanted someone less volatile.”
Oh, yes, he would have been fun to cover.
On May 9, 1961, he hit a grand slam in the first inning of a game in Minnesota, then hit another grand slam in the second inning — a historic show of power. It was a peak moment for Oriole fans of that era, but when the subject came up in his living room that day in Oklahoma, Gentile paused and said, “I don’t know if I should tell you how it really happened,”
Let’s just say I’m glad he did. (Sorry, no spoilers.)
By the end of the 1961 season, he had 46 home runs and 141 RBIs, numbers made all the more incredible when you consider no one else on the team was hitting much and the fences at Memorial Stadium still hadn’t been moved in. It still ranks as one of the best individual seasons in Orioles history — his .646 slugging percentage is still the single-season franchise record.
Yet the club hassled him enough about his contract for the next season that he had to hold out to get what he wanted.
He never produced at that historic level again because, he told me, he lost patience and swung at everything, “You couldn’t walk me,” he said. Although he continued to hit decently for power, he realized his days in Baltimore were numbered when a younger guy from Florida named Boog Powell started hitting balls just as far.
Still alive today at 90 years old, he told me in 1999 that he probably should have spent his post-playing career in Baltimore, a city that remembered and supported him. It was a regret and there were others. “I look back and wonder, ‘Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut?’” he said.
He just couldn’t, that’s why. And that inclination is what makes his vintage interview among the best of the Bird Tapes collection.
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