Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  Before every three-game series, the Secret Weapon creates three basic sets of videos. For the Cubs series, he first compiled recent performances of Cubs hitters for Duncan and bullpen coach Marty Mason to dissect and then disseminate to the pitching staff before Game 1. Blair chooses only a handful of at-bats per hitter, because Duncan and Mason don't need more than that to make their findings. Another compilation features the Cubs starting triumvirate against both the Cardinals and other recent opponents. The third features pitchers with styles similar to this series' Cards' starters who have done well against the Cubs. Certainly, the Cardinals hurlers can look at videos of their own performances. But the theory behind this compilation is that it helps pitchers enormously to see other examples of success besides their own.

  With game time about three hours away, more players file in to Blair's Lair. They sit on gray-backed swivel chairs, staring at a row of four Panasonic monitors on a black Formica table. They prop their feet up and thumb little remote controls to push the tapes back and forth. They settle in comfortably before the TVs: potato chips and beer the only things missing. Some stay for only a few minutes. Some like to linger. Pujols, in a swivel chair at the end, is a lingerer. So is Mike Matheny.

  Matheny typically lingers so much in Blair's Lair before a game that he often takes on the same bleary-eyed look as Blair himself: a head too full with video snippets. He is inordinately hard on himself—too hard, in La Russa's judgment—beating himself up for failure when teammates will tell you that he is as diligent and rock-solid as any player in the game today. When you see him in the video room, it's clear that he is simply watching too much of the stuff: a digital overdose. Even he admits that he watches too much of the stuff, until you consider that Matheny's job—catcher—is the most demanding in all of sports and maybe the worst. It's the equivalent of going both ways in football, because of the offensive demands of it and, in the eyes of La Russa, actually more important defensive demands of it. La Russa places a high premium on what a catcher does behind the plate: not only blocking it and preventing pitches from going wild but also the very style with which a catcher calls a game, the ability to be creative within the context of knowing what his pitcher is capable of and what opposing hitters are incapable of. It's an act of tremendous balance and feel and intelligence, so much more than simply throwing down fingers behind the plate and hoping for the best.

  By these exacting standards, Matheny is as conscientious as any catcher La Russa has ever had. His contribution behind the plate is so valuable that La Russa couldn't care less if he hit .000. But Matheny cares profoundly about his defense and his offense. So he screens more video than any other player. He watches it from both perspectives, fretting over what pitchers are likely to throw at him, fretting over what opposing hitters are hoping to see. You can feel his burden, click, rewinding, then playing a snippet of video again, click, rewinding, then playing the snippet again, click, rewinding, then playing the snippet again until all the swivel-backed chairs are empty except his.

  ***

  The players trot out of Blair's Lair around 4:15 P.M. They leave the clubhouse and work their way through the tunnel that leads to the dugout and the field beyond. The tunnel is carpeted with artificial turf so splotched and stained it looks like the product of a kindergarten painting class. They pass an ancient floor fan that vainly tries to cut the St. Louis heat so thick that even the Mississippi wilts. For men who among them make over $80 million a year, it's an incongruously low-rent backdrop. Around the corner and down another hundred feet, they come to the back end of the dugout. Inside the tunnel by the dugout entrance, several rows of cubbyholes resembling old-fashioned mail slots hold batting helmets. A bat rack underneath has also been divided into cubbyholes so nobody gets confused and picks up a bat that isn't his. It's all once again hierarchical; the bench players and the on-the-cusp players leave their equipment here, and the regulars put their tools in compartments located in the dugout itself.

  They hit the field for batting practice, wearing bright red warm-up jerseys: cherries baking in the sun. Stephenson goes first because he's tonight's starting pitcher. He gets five minutes. Then he slips back into the clubhouse for the pitching meeting with Duncan, perhaps the most important element of Game 1, although the game itself hasn't even begun.

  3. "I'm Gonna Kill You!"

  I

  DAVE DUNCAN IS the kind of man who in the storm at sea would simply lash himself to the mast; he'd wait out the hurricane by reading the paper, hold the putter steady in the tornado. His nothing-gets-to-me look is the same in the dugout whether the Cardinals are up 5–0 in the top of the ninth with the bases empty or 1–0 in the top of the ninth with the bases loaded. La Russa wears tension like a catcher wears a face mask, but Duncan wears nothing on his lean Texas-flat features except that deadpan. It makes him a source of reassurance to pitchers and La Russa alike: the coach who won't crack.

  In twenty years together in the claustrophobic hothouse of the dugout, Duncan and La Russa have never once argued; they have yet to share a bad vibe, except when La Russa gives some stock complaint about ineffective pitching during a game and Duncan studies him and says, "Here we go again." The two men know each other as well as any two men possibly can, honoring the boundaries of each other's baseball knowledge and the equally vast continents of their silences. La Russa gets through to Duncan whenever it's necessary. But there is something eternally inscrutable about Duncan—a safe that can't be cracked—hours spent before his computer with a pinch of Skoal in his cheek as ample companionship. Words emerge from his mouth like reluctant bubbles that barely ping the surface. You can sit in the same room with him for sizable stretches and he'll utter nothing beyond, "How's it going?" The only reason he'll divulge this much is that someone has said, "Hey, Dunc," and courtesy dictates saying something back. When he does expound into a sentence or two in his slivery voice, it's never for pleasure, which is maybe why one of his prize pupils, Todd Stottlemyre, refers to him as "The Deacon" and calls his words "biblical."

  In addition to the two decades Duncan and La Russa have shared in the dugout, their history goes back another twenty years before that when they were teenagers coming up in the Kansas City A's organization. They first played together in the winter instructional league in Bradenton in 1964, then in the minors over the next three years. Most of the players on those teams were still "kids," as La Russa put it, still "trying to figure it all out." But Duncan was different, with a steadiness and maturity even in his late teens and early twenties. Advancing through the A's system as a catcher, making it to the major-league team in 1968, he also displayed another quality: bullwhip bluntness, regardless of the repercussions.

  In the 1972 World Series, Duncan caught Game 7 for the A's against the Cincinnati Reds, not the least bit nervous even though this was his first start. In the bottom of the ninth, baseball's top reliever, Rollie Fingers, got two outs to bring up the Reds' Pete Rose in a last-chance gasp with the score 3–2. When A's manager Dick Williams headed for the mound, Duncan knew his intent: to replace Fingers with starter Vida Blue and turn the switch-hitting Rose around from the left side to the right. Duncan thought that it was a bad idea, putting Blue into a situation he wasn't used to, taking Fingers out of a situation that he conquered better than any other reliever in baseball at the time. He more than thought it was a bad idea: Joined by A's captain Sal Bando on the mound, he told Williams that it was a bad idea, even though he was a twenty-seven-year-old catcher and Williams was a forty-three-year-old manager with 793 games of experience. Williams did what Duncan suggested: He left Fingers in, then watched along with the rest of America as Rose hit a shot toward the outfield wall in left center. Now Duncan got nervous, proof of the existence of blood in his veins. But Joe Rudi snagged the ball to save Duncan and the series.

  After the season, the irresistible force of A's outfielder Reggie Jackson went against the immoveable object of A's owner Charley Finley in a salary dispute. Duncan publicly sided with Jack
son, which led to a predictable reaction, equal parts cheap and cantankerous, from Finley: He traded Duncan from the world champion A's to the arctic outpost of the Cleveland Indians.

  Duncan became the bullpen coach for the Indians after his playing days were over. In 1982, he moved to the Seattle Mariners as the pitching coach with Rene Lachemann as the manager, taking a weak and watery staff and turning it around to finish second in the American League in strikeouts and saves. He thought he deserved a $5,000 raise for his efforts, but the Mariners' owner thought otherwise, so Duncan quit and joined up with La Russa on the White Sox.

  Over the years, La Russa has found that a lot of hitting and pitching coaches are ineffective because they refuse to put themselves on the line. They don't want to tell a player what to do, in case it backfires. So they deal in open-ended aphorisms or dish out moral support, a steady stream of claps and "C'mon, baby" from the dugout. But that's not Duncan: the brevity of a news bulletin, maybe, but never reticent. He has the laser eye for mechanical flaws and where to make adjustments. He has given performance makeovers to dozens of pitchers over the years by adding a pitch to the repertoire or modifying one. Just as important, he bases his ideas not on ethereal wisdom but on hard data that he continually examines: breaking down video of opposing hitters, analyzing by computer to further ferret out the best pitch to throw in the best situation, and compiling his own legendary pitching charts.

  La Russa cedes little territory to his coaches. He takes their input, but he shoulders the decisions. The one exception is Duncan; if La Russa approaches anyone during a game, it's almost invariably him. He knows of Duncan's penchant for solitude, to work out problems on his own. But he will never confuse his deadpan for inaction. When Duncan caught for the A's, his nickname was the Quiet Assassin, and it still rings true today. When pressed for proof, La Russa gets a little Cheshire cat smile on his lips, clearly recalling one of his most beautiful baseball moments ever: George Bell of the Toronto Blue Jays charging one of Duncan's pitchers, and Duncan leaping out of the dugout and chasing him around the field, screaming, "I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU!!!!"

  Duncan's attitude toward his pitchers is fatherly: He protects them against attack, and he holds himself responsible for their improvement. He gives his starters detailed plans for dealing with every opposing batter in the starting lineup. He teaches his pitchers to think differently on the mound; he'll lessen the burden of a bases-loaded-and-one-out situation by going to the mound and pointing out to the pitcher that he's one pitch away from getting out of the inning with a double-play ball. He specializes in rescuing pitchers at precarious points in their careers, pitchers who are on the skids and have bounced around too much or have lost too much confidence or have broken up with a pitch they need to woo back. He did it with Dennis Eckersley, whom nobody wanted in 1987 when the A's plucked him from the Cubs after a season in which he'd gone 6 and 11 with a 4.57 ERA. He did it with Mike Moore, who went 19 and 11 with Oakland in 1989 after two seasons with Seattle, when he'd been an aggregate 18 and 34. He did it with Stottlemyre, a .500 Blue Jays pitcher who went 14 and 7 in his first season with Oakland. He did it with Kent Bottenfield, who had gone from one mediocre season to another before he won eighteen with the Cardinals in 1999, equaling his total number of major-league wins until that point. He did it with Darryl Kile after a disastrous season in Colorado, where he'd gone 8 and 13 with a 6.61 ERA. La Russa told Kile to "place his career in Duncan's hands," and Kile did so, building a record of 20 and 9 the next year.

  Most notably, he did it with Dave Stewart, out of baseball altogether in 1986, when the A's picked him up as little more than a curiosity. Stewart had played around with a forkball for a little bit during his career, but in Texas and Philadelphia, he had been discouraged from using it amid the widespread belief that throwing a forkball could hurt your arm. But Duncan encouraged him to rediscover it, convinced that Stewart needed a change in style. Duncan understood that the pitch had to be executed properly, and he showed Stewart how to throw it with the right motion, retaining a loose wrist. Duncan got him to stop making mistakes that caused it to go up. It didn't take long before Stewart was throwing a filthy little forkball. It became his second-best pitch after his fastball, pushing the slider to third, and suddenly Stewart was a different pitcher. He finished the year 9 and 5. Over the next four years, from 1987 to 1991, Stewart won twenty games or more each season. His forkball was a hitter's temptress, slow and sweet before the bottom went to hell.

  II

  TONIGHT, DUNCAN'S TRYING to do it with Garrett Stephenson. Stephenson has tools. Because he's a major leaguer, he has tools, and his one breakout season, in 2000, shows what he can do with them:

  W L ERA G GS IP H HR BB SO

  16 9 4.49 32 31 200.1 209 31 63 123

  This season, going into tonight's game, the numbers are different:

  W L ERA G GS IP H HR BB SO

  7 12 4.41 27 25 159.1 148 26 57 83

  Obviously, they reflect a losing record, but they also reflect Stephenson's schism: He has given up fewer hits than innings pitched, an increasing rarity among starting pitchers. At this point in the season, he has an even better ERA than he had in 2000. It means that he has pitched at certain moments with effectiveness this year. But the numbers also reflect that he has given up twenty-six home runs, a horrific number. Which means that there are times when he ends up challenging hitters with that fastball that simply doesn't pose enough of a challenge, particularly when he throws it high.

  He lacks one of those Bugs Bunny sliders that stops at home plate, catches some bennies for a split second, and then exits in a vapor. He doesn't have one of those wicked Mariano Rivera cutters that against lefties should be declared a WMD. As a result, he has the problem shared by many starting pitchers: a macho refusal to accept that pitching is not only about speed. Speed is considered God in baseball. Speed sells in baseball. Virtually every scoreboard now has a little square section showing the velocity of each pitch. Fans ooh and ah, nudge each other in the ribs the faster a pitch gets. But it's a false God, in La Russa's eyes, a fastball in the high eighties with movement and location far preferable to a flat fastball in the nineties. Speed alone can kill, at least kill a pitcher's performance. To offset this obsession, La Russa once ordered the speed section of the scoreboard juiced up a few miles per hour because he could tell that his pitcher was paying as much attention to it as the fans were.

  To make the best use of his tools tonight, Stephenson has to mix location and mix speeds. He needs to use his lumbering fastball almost as a flirtation, to get the Cubs hitters looking for it, craving it, only to confound them with his off-speed curve and changeup on the edges of the plate. It's a mental art as much as it is a physical one, every pitch a product of conscious deliberation: What am I going to throw and where am I going to put it? It's exhausting to have to concentrate this much, far easier simply to get up on that mound and wing it. And sometimes, Stephenson likes to do just that: be a macho man, dare opponents to hit his fastball. Which they often do.

  Using a little portable DVD player, Duncan has spent several hours reviewing the disc of Cubs' hitters that Chad Blair made for him. He has seen the Cubs nine times already this season, but Duncan is looking for the slightest little slice that may be new, ways they may be covering the plate better or adjusting to inside pitches better or handling curves in the strike zone better. He's also patrolling for new weaknesses that might have developed in making those very improvements, every tiny patch creating another tiny hole. He also has a red binder in front of him. This particular one is marked "Cubs," but he has one for every team in the league. He stores them in a red steel case that goes on the road with him. It looks a little bit like a vault on wheels, maybe because the knowledge it holds is priceless.

  The binders contain his charts, a packet for every opposing player, a remarkable Rorschach in which he has tracked every pitch each batter has been thrown by his pitchers and what that batter did with it. Using a system of grids, three
up and three across dividing the hitting zone into nine sections, he has made small notations that record the type and location of every pitch. The charts also track any trends that have emerged in particular situations—where a Cardinals pitcher has given up first-pitch hits and where he has gotten first-pitch outs, where he has given up hits with two strikes, and where he has gotten outs with two strikes. Duncan is looking for patterns, a cluster of notations together in a certain spot, almost like tiny cracks in a frozen lake, to detect spots that a given hitter is getting to.

  He sees those clusters with the Cubs hitters. They tell stories, much like La Russa's matchups tell stories. In the quiet of the clubhouse, he is trying to make Stephenson heed the morals of what they say, the same as he does with every starting pitcher and catcher two hours before the start of every game.

  The meeting takes place in the room that Duncan uses when he is in the clubhouse. It's next to La Russa's office, with a common doorway in between, affording the two men easy access to each other, although each stays in his own sphere. The room is small and Spartan: a bookcase filled mostly with the current media guides of opposing teams, a rudimentary copier, several utilitarian desks of beige metal favored by police stations and mental asylums. Its only function is the microscopic grist of baseball, the captivating and strange science of pinpointing pitches, anything else an unwelcome distraction.

  Duncan respects his pitchers and knows that they have their own set views on how hitters should be handled. He appreciates that they have earned their opinions the hard way, out there on the mound, the most isolated spot in sports, even when things are going well. He also has his own back story, the handling of six Cy Young pitchers between his playing days as a catcher and his years as a pitching coach—Catfish Hunter and Blue and Jim Palmer on the playing side and La Marr Hoyt, Bob Welch, and Eckersley on the pitching side.