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Player Rep. There were also contract disputes with the Cincinnati front office. Among Johnny's goals is to become the first catcher to make $100,000, and he decided his time had come after he was named Most Valuable Player in 1970. General Manager Bob Howsam grumbled: "Pete Rose is the only $100,000 ballplayer on this club right now, and that's the way it's going to stay." Johnny finally settled for somewhere in the neighborhood of $85,000. Another sore spot with the front office was Johnny's extracurricular activities. Bench the athlete is fitfully possessed by the singer manque, and debuted Las Vegas after the 1970 season. He also toured Viet Nam with Bob Hope and devoted a good deal of time to his financial enterprises: an auto dealership, a bowling alley (which failed to work out) and a Cincinnati outfit called Professionals Inc., which handles athlete endorsements.
Sobered by the relative disaster of the 1971 season, Bench has toned down a bit in the past year. Furthermore, many of his problems were the inevitable byproducts of instant celebrity; however he may have occasionally abraded their sensibilities, he has always been a popular figure in the clubhouse. This year, in fact, he was elected the Reds' player representative in recognition of the great effort he put into the players' strike.
But Johnny's parents remain his most ardent fans (a pulse beat ahead of the pretty girls he squires around). To keep his family within easy range of the ballpark, he has moved them to the comfortable Cincinnati suburb of Evendale, where they manage a motel. If anyone is more laudatory than the Benches about Johnny, however, it is the Reds' Pitcher Wayne Granger. Says he: "I think Johnny is more valuable to the Cincinnati team than anyone was to any other team in the history of baseball—and that includes Babe Ruth." Johnny, though he may have mellowed a bit, probably agrees. He remains Bench the Confident, Bench the Imperturbable, the supreme believer in his own worth. As he once put it: "There are too many false things in the world, and I don't want to be part of them. If you say what you think, you're called cocky or conceited. But if you have an object in life, you shouldn't be afraid to stand up and say it. I want to be the greatest catcher ever to play the game."