One on One

by John Feinstein

  There was even one rumor that started inside the Yankee organization that had Girardi going home to Chicago to manage the Cubs and the Yankees coming on bended knee to Torre saying, “All is forgiven, come home.”

  None of that happened. On October 3, Torre won his 2,236th game as a manager—a 3–1 win in Dodger Stadium over the Arizona Diamondbacks—and headed to Hawaii as he had been promising to do for so many years. Four months later he was back in baseball: Selig named him executive vice president of MLB and put him in charge of umpires and discipline. A lifer, in the end, is a lifer.

  In the back of my mind, I had always thought Torre would be a great book subject. But he’d done his book—with Verducci—so I settled for his involvement as the manager of the Yankees in Living on the Black.

  The first time we talked that season was on a windy, almost cold Saturday morning in Tampa, a few hours before Mussina’s first start of the exhibition season. We were sitting alone in the Yankee dugout when my cell phone rang. It was my son, Danny, who I had been trying to reach all morning. I had the phone on vibrate but had it sitting on the dugout bench next to my tape recorder.

  “I think you’ve got a call,” Torre said.

  I looked at the number. Torre read the look on my face. “Take it,” he said. “It’s one of your kids, right?”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. I talked to Danny for a couple of moments, found out what he was up to, and hung up.

  “I just like to check in when I’m away for a while,” I said as I hung up.

  Torre has four children in all. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. Then he smiled. “I’m old enough now that I can pick up in mid-anecdote if I’m interrupted.”

  Now that is a reporter’s dream. Joe Torre was always exactly that.

  SO WAS BOBBY COX.

  He had been a career minor leaguer until he’d managed to scrape out those two years with the Yankees—when the Yankees were lousy—in 1968 and 1969. He had hit .225 for his career with a total of nine home runs and 58 runs batted in. Contrast that with Torre: seventeen big league seasons, .297 batting average, 252 home runs—many as a catcher—and 1,185 RBIs.

  At the end of my first session with Cox during spring training in 1992, he said to me, “It’s too bad you aren’t going to be around more, I actually enjoyed that.” Even though my book was about a season in baseball, the Braves became one of my focus teams. They were good and they had a clubhouse full of personalities—from Cox to Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Charlie Leibrandt (a truly bright and thoughtful guy) to Terry Pendleton, and David Justice (not a good guy but a smart one) to Deion Sanders.

  Sanders was playing two sports at the time, playing for both the Braves and the Atlanta Falcons. He was about as gifted an athlete as anyone alive, but was known as much for his mouth and his showboating as for his ability. When I started the project Sanders wasn’t on my wish list of people I wanted to talk to. In fact, one of the best interviews I did early on was with Carlton Fisk, whose career was winding down in Chicago. Fisk had been involved in an incident at Yankee Stadium with Sanders a couple of years earlier when Sanders was playing for the Yankees.

  When Sanders didn’t run out a roller in front of the plate, Fisk yelled at him, chasing him down the first base line to do so. He was offended because he didn’t think Sanders was showing respect for the game. “I could feel the ghosts of Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle,” he said to me. “I just thought it was wrong, and I told him that.”

  Sanders later implied that Fisk’s comments were racial, which was silly. Fisk probably would have yelled at his own brother in that situation. He was one of the more passionate people I’ve met.

  But as I spent time with the Braves, I kept hearing from guys I had come to respect—Cox, Glavine, Smoltz, Pendleton—that there was a lot more to Sanders than bluster and blinding speed. They encouraged me to talk to him, to get to know him. “If you don’t talk to him,” Pendleton said, “you’ll be missing out.”

  Pendleton was the Braves’ unquestioned leader. I had come to trust what he told me implicitly. So I decided to take a shot at talking to Sanders. Of course, by that point Sanders wasn’t speaking to the media. Or at least the Atlanta media. I don’t remember what the dispute was over. I knew if I just walked up to him in the clubhouse and introduced myself I was going to get nowhere. So I went to Cox for advice.

  “Talk to Acree,” he said. “I don’t want to do it because I’m the manager and he might think I’m trying to give him an order even if I say I’m not. If Bill tells him to do it, he’ll do it.”

  Bill Acree is one of those people in sports whose name almost never appears in print anywhere but who is as important to his team as just about any great player can be. He had been with the Braves since his days as a teenage clubhouse kid in the mid-1960s, and at that point was the only man in the sport who was both his team’s traveling secretary and clubhouse manager. Either job was difficult by itself. Acree did both and made it look easy. He was also Cox’s number one confidant.

  I had first met him during the winter meetings. A longtime friend of mine, Terry Hanson, had told me I should meet him. Hanson had once worked for Ted Turner and had gotten to know Acree then. “He’s one of those guys who knows everyone and everything,” Hanson said. “Plus, he’s a good guy.”

  Hanson was right on the money. Acree had quickly become a friend and someone who was always willing to help me whenever he could. Now I went to him about Sanders.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Bill said. “I don’t think it will be a problem.”

  The next day I was in Cincinnati for a Reds-Dodgers series. Bill called. “When are you seeing us next?” he asked.

  The answer was in New York in a couple of weeks. “Deion will talk to you then,” he said. “Just remind him you’re the guy I told him about.”

  I did exactly that. Deion and I sat in the visiting clubhouse at Shea Stadium for a couple of hours while he proved to me that his teammates had been right. He was smart, he was funny, and he was honest. When I asked him how close he had come to getting his degree from Florida State, he laughed. “Not close,” he said. “Hard to get a degree if you aren’t going to class very often. I wasn’t there to get a degree.”

  He did say one thing to me that I couldn’t resist repeating to people. When I asked him about his continuing boycott of the Atlanta media, he said, “They had a privilege, they abused the privilege, they lost the privilege.”

  Okay, so he did have an ego.

  Because I have a big mouth, that line circulated in the baseball media. During the playoffs, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Terrence Moore was writing a Sanders column. By then, Deion had become even more controversial because he had made plans to fly from game four of the National League Championship Series in Pittsburgh on Saturday night to Tampa Bay to play for the Falcons on Sunday afternoon, and then fly back to Pittsburgh for game five on Sunday night.

  Most saw this as a publicity stunt, including Sanders’s teammates, who were disappointed that he would do something like this when they were trying to get to the World Series. Moore called me about the “privilege” line. I probably should have asked him not to use it if only because one should save good lines for one’s own writing. But I’ve never been good at saying no to other reporters because I know how I feel when I see my colleagues blow people off. So I repeated the line. He wrote it.

  If the Sanders baseball/football/baseball weekend was a publicity stunt, it worked. Among other things, he was being trailed by a Pat O’Brien–led CBS crew that was chronicling his journey. The Braves won game four, thanks in large part to John Smoltz’s heroics at the plate. I was standing with several other people talking to Smoltz when I saw Sanders coming in my direction with the camera crew, O’Brien and several bright lights right behind him. Off to the side, I noticed David Justice pointing at me.

  “Him, right?” Sanders said, pointing a finger in my direction.

  “Yeah, him,” Justice said.

&nb
sp; Apparently I hadn’t made too much of an impression on Deion during our midseason talk because he wasn’t exactly sure who I was. Now, aided by Justice, who was looking at me with a smirk on his face, he came right at me—the lights and the camera in my face.

  “I went out of my way to talk to you and you told that guy [Moore] what I said and made me look bad. What the hell is that about?” he shouted. “I gave you all that time and that’s what I get in return?”

  I looked at the cameras and the lights.

  “Deion, you want to talk, that’s fine, but I’m not doing it on camera,” I said. “We’ll go off alone and talk.”

  “We’ll talk right here, right now.”

  Of course by now the entire clubhouse had stopped and I knew everyone was looking at Deion, at me, and at the rolling cameras. A reporter’s worst nightmare. It had happened to me one other time in a baseball clubhouse, during the 1979 World Series. I had been the Post’s sidebar guy and had gone to the Orioles clubhouse to write about Jim Palmer. Even though he had pitched well, the Pirates had won game six, 2–1, Willie Stargell hitting the home run off Palmer that decided the ball game. It was close to midnight, but no one really wanted to approach Palmer when he walked to his locker. I had been hoping someone who knew him would get him started talking. When no one went near him, knowing I had to file in about forty-five minutes, I walked over.

  “Jim, John Feinstein from the Washington Post,” I said, putting out my hand.

  “What do you want?” he said, glaring at me.

  In those situations you always start with the easiest possible question. You do not begin by saying, “So what kind of pitch did Stargell hit?” I went for a complete softball. Since he had pitched well, I said, “How did you feel out there tonight?”

  The answer I was looking for was something like, “I felt good, I thought I had good command, I just made the one mistake to Stargell and it cost me.”

  That, I hoped, would get him started. It was not the answer I got.

  “How do I feel? How do I feel? Did you really just ask me how I feel?” Palmer screamed. “I just lost game six of the World Series and you come in here and ask me how I feel?”

  I was trying to tell him that was not what I had asked him, but he wasn’t listening. Everyone else in the clubhouse had stopped and was staring at Palmer and the moron who had asked him how he felt after losing game six of the World Series.

  “My God, how do people like this get in here?” Palmer said before stalking off to the training room, leaving me standing there looking for a deep hole I could climb into.

  “Don’t worry,” said Doug DeCinces, then the Orioles third baseman, who never was a big Palmer fan because of Palmer’s tendency to glare at him when he made an error. “I heard what you asked him.”

  I appreciated that. I still wanted to find a hole to climb into. Years later, after Palmer retired and became a (very good) broadcaster for the Orioles, he and I became friendly, in large part because Palmer loves to talk about golf. My guess is he has no memory of that night in 1979. I do.

  Now, thirteen years later in Pittsburgh, I was once again trapped with an entire clubhouse staring at me. If I didn’t answer Deion’s question with the cameras rolling, I’d look like a scared weasel. And yet, I really didn’t want to be part of the Deion Sanders Over America Weekend Tour brought to you by Pat O’Brien and CBS Sports.

  “You said it, Deion,” I finally answered. “If you think you looked bad, I’m not the one who said it.”

  “Man, you quoted me out of context,” he said. (Unlike a lot of athletes, Deion knew what context was.)

  “No, I didn’t. I explained the entire thing to Terry.”

  He was backing off a little bit by now. His voice softened.

  “Let’s go talk for a minute,” he said, pointing toward a corner of the clubhouse. He turned to the camera people and said, “Give us a minute.”

  We walked off. “People are killing me with this,” he said.

  I knew—I’d known it when I first repeated the line to Moore—that I had been wrong. I would use the line in the book but it would be in context. With one thousand words and other points to make, it was tougher for Terry to put it in context.

  “You know what, Deion, I’m really sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth. I should have just saved the line for the book.”

  Deion put out his hand. “Don’t sweat it, man,” he said. “I can handle it.”

  The little on-camera discussion didn’t make O’Brien’s piece. As luck would have it, twelve years later when I was doing a book on the Baltimore Ravens, Sanders made a late-career comeback and joined the team. When he showed up for the Ravens’ last exhibition game, Corey Fuller, one of the Ravens defensive backs, introduced us.

  “John and I know each other,” Deion said.

  “Atlanta ’92,” I said.

  He smiled. There was no one I enjoyed working with more that season in Baltimore than Deion Sanders.

  ON SEPTEMBER 25, 2010, Bobby Cox won his 2,500th game as a Major League manager. It was in Washington, a Saturday afternoon game against the Nationals on a surprisingly hot, humid day for the first week of fall. Having managed in Atlanta for so many years, Cox hardly noticed the heat.

  He did notice the win. The Braves were hanging on for dear life to the National League wild card, and Cox badly wanted to make the postseason one more time before hanging up his uniform. After making it to the postseason for fourteen straight seasons from 1991 to 2005 (again, no postseason in 1994), the Braves hadn’t been back. Cox wanted his last game, whenever it came, to be in the postseason. The Braves had led the National League East for a large chunk of the season, but had been overtaken by the onrushing Philadelphia Phillies in September. Now they were locked in a battle with the San Francisco Giants and the San Diego Padres for the wild card. One of the western teams would get in as the winner in the National League West. The other would be the Braves’ opposition for the wild card.

  An afternoon game on the road on a non-travel day is rare in baseball. Most afternoon games are played on the last day of a series—getaway day—and teams head straight for the airport after the last out. In September, when the weather is cooler (normally), teams are more apt to schedule Saturday afternoon games. This being one of those days, Bill Acree had put together a postgame dinner at a Ruth’s Chris restaurant not far from the Braves’ hotel for Cox and several friends, one of them being pitching coach Roger McDowell.

  Since I had told Cox I wanted to spend some time with him before the end of the season, I was invited along. “If necessary, Bobby will just tell everyone to shut up so you guys can talk and everyone will shut up,” Acree said.

  It didn’t prove to be necessary. Cox was in a good mood, in part because of the win that afternoon, in part because he was enjoying the race for the postseason, but also because he had made peace with his retirement.

  “I’ve had all season to kind of ease into it and, for me, that was the right way to do it,” he said. “I got to go to all the places I really like, see the people I like one more time. People have been really nice. I mean, who ever thought I’d get cheered in New York?”

  Even Mets fans, who Cox had tormented for so many years, had cheered Cox warmly after his final game there. Everywhere he’d gone there had been standing ovations, people showing their respect for his remarkable record. “I’m glad they’re having the ceremony in Atlanta on Saturday,” he said, talking about the day planned in his honor for the last weekend of the regular season. “I think it would be too much for me if they did it on Sunday—especially if the game means something.”

  He took a sip of the red wine he had ordered for the table. “I’m hoping I mess everything up by delaying my last game for a little while.”

  It seemed apparent to me that even though he was at peace with the end of his managing career, Cox wasn’t completely comfortable with it.

  “No, it’s time,” he said. “I’m going to be seventy. I want to
get good at golf, I really do. I’ll still be at spring training; I’ll still see the guys. I’m not going to be someone who just disappears. I like baseball too much to do that. I’ve really enjoyed this year. We’ve had injuries [notably to Chipper Jones] and we’ve hung in there with a lot of young guys. I’m really proud of this group regardless of how this turns out.”

  The conversation turned to memorable moments. Cox, who had always had a curiosity about people that is rare among those in sports, asked me if I had one baseball memory that stood out.

  “Well, the whole ’69 season,” I said.

  “That’s right, I forgot,” he said. “You’re a New York kid.”

  “True. In fact, Roger”—I gestured at McDowell—“was involved in one of my all-time favorite games.”

  “Game six in Houston?” McDowell said.

  I nodded. Cox laughed. “I forgot you were in that game,” he said. “All I remember is [Jesse] Orosco hanging on for dear life at the end.”

  “Roger pitched five shutout innings in that game,” I said.

  Cox was genuinely amazed. “Seriously, Roger? I didn’t remember that. How many hits did you give up?”

  “One,” McDowell said.

  Cox raised his glass again. “Well here’s to you for that. Nice going.”

  McDowell then told a story about his appearance years earlier on an episode of Seinfeld. Keith Hernandez, his Mets teammate, had guest starred in a two-part episode in which Jerry and Elaine had “fought” for his attention.

  In real life, Seinfeld is such a huge Mets fan that he was mentioned as a potential investor when the Wilpon family fell into financial disarray in the winter of 2011 because of their involvement with Bernie Madoff.

  McDowell had appeared on the show in a cameo role as the “second spitter,” in a scenario in which Kramer and Newman had accused Hernandez of spitting on them after a game. Acting in the role of Oliver Stone, Jerry had theorized that, based on the angle of the saliva that had winged Newman and Kramer (yes, both of them), there had to be a second spitter. It turned out to be McDowell, hiding in the bushes.