Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  He wants to hear from Stephenson on how he wants to handle the Cubs hitters. "Okay, Garrett," Duncan says, and Stephenson starts in with the lead-off hitter, Kenny Lofton. He talks about mixing it up and using both sides of the plate, then quickly repeats the part about using both sides of the plate. "Can I make a suggestion?" interrupts Duncan. Based on his charting, he has made the analysis that most of Lofton's hits off Stephenson have come on "sloppy breaking balls" that were either up or over the plate, whereas most of the outs he has gotten have been on changeups down in the zone after fastballs. From this moment on, with that voice even softer and lower to the ground than La Russa's, Duncan takes over the meeting.

  He points out a general truth: Almost all the Cubs hitters tonight are aggressive. They have a tendency to seize on pitches early in the count, so more than normal attention has to be paid not to put the ball over the plate. Which means, as another general truth, that Stephenson must establish the inside on hitters. Going inside has two purposes. The first is that it marks Stephenson's turf, making the Cubs "inside conscious" to prevent them from effortlessly reaching to the outside for pitches. The second is that it will intimidate them by playing on the understandable fear all hitters have of getting jammed.

  If he doesn't establish the inside on Lofton in the lead-off spot, Duncan predicts, "he'll just hang out over the plate." Stephenson must do it with Sammy Sosa in the third hole for much the same reason, because it's the only way of rearranging Sosa's focus so he's not totally locked on getting something up over the plate. He needs to do it with Moises Alou, because Duncan's charts on Alou show a first-pitch jackpot against Cardinals pitching—first-pitch slider for a home run, first-pitch middle-high fastball for a home run, first-pitch high-away fastball for a home run, first-pitch sinker high middle for a home run. And he needs to do it most of all with Randall Simon, the greatest of Stephenson's three ex-Pirate nemeses.

  "This guy kicks my ass on off-speed," says Stephenson in a gust of frustration. "He hits every off-speed I've thrown. " It doesn't matter whether Simon gets three good inside fastballs in a row, Stephenson notes. Presumably, the steady stream of those fastballs and their location should speed up Simon's bat enough, make him expect the fastball enough, so that when Stephenson comes with something slower, Simon's timing should be completely off. But he still gets to it.

  Duncan, based on his charts and Blair's DVD, has another explanation for what ails Stephenson: location. It's not what he's throwing or what sequence he's throwing it in as much as it is where he's throwing it.

  "Garrett, let me make this real simple for you," says Duncan, using the past history of his charts as potential prologue. "Hit: high-and-away fastball. Put in play: high away. Struck him out: low and in. High and away: base hit. High and away: base hit." The point is obvious.

  "Everything that he has hit against you has been up."

  So Duncan's first lesson for Stephenson is not to give Simon anything up, even on the outside, because video analysis has shown that Simon has an ability to get to these pitches, especially if he doesn't think he has to worry about the inside.

  "First time up," Duncan advises, "I would pound this guy [inside] with every pitch."

  On it goes like this for about ten minutes, Duncan providing Stephenson with a concise MapQuest on how to get past each Cubs hitter. Stephenson listens intently; he wants to do well. But Duncan has had such meetings with Stephenson before, when he seemed to be listening. La Russa has had some as well. And then...

  It came to a head in July, after Stephenson gave up a home run and double to the Dodgers' Hideo Nomo—a pitcher, for God's sake—out of what Duncan termed sheer "carelessness": You can't simply roll it out there even if it is the pitcher. Stephenson was demoted from the starting rotation and sent to the bullpen. He was indignant, blaming poor run support and lousy defense for his misfortune.

  La Russa was indignant at Stephenson's indignation. In a closed-door meeting, he adopted the increasingly frequent role of psychiatrist, telling Stephenson that the only way he could be an effective major-league pitcher—get back to the groove of 2000—would be to concentrate better and stop blaming everyone around him for his problems. La Russa complimented his fearlessness, his conviction that "whoever the guy is, you can pitch to him." He liked that Stephenson had the guts to keep hitters inside conscious, as many pitchers don't like to throw inside, for the very reason that they may hit someone. But, La Russa pointed out, Stephenson had started challenging people at the wrong time with that fastball of his, which never rose above the high eighties. Like Brian Giles of the Pirates, whom Stephenson treated as if he hadn't hit a single dinger this season, when he'd hit thirteen of them and was the ultimate aggressive fastball hitter. Then there was Stephenson's general failure to respect the bottom third of an opponent's order, feeding them too many fastballs on the plate, giving these guys an undeserved feast. He had been careless all season long about keeping the ball down, and La Russa advised him rather strenuously to stop worrying about defense and run support and to pay attention to the only thing he could control: his pitching.

  The result was a 3–1 win against the Braves in early August; Stephenson kept the ball down and went all the way into the eighth. Five days later, he gave up only one earned run in eight innings against the Pirates. Based on those recent performances, it's likely that he can keep the ball down. He can use his fastball to set up the curve and change, hit those edges. He can go inside. Duncan still believes in him—tells him as much—as the meeting nears an end.

  "If you concentrate and really just get locked in out there, you'll pitch good against these guys. If you get careless—that's what they are—they're mistake hitters. And we need a game, so get your game face on and be ready to stick it in their ass."

  As Stephenson heads out the door, Duncan leaves him with one final thought: He reminds him that the most successful pitchers are not mistake free—because every pitcher makes mistakes—but are those who don't fall apart after they do make one.

  "And hey, don't get frustrated out there if something doesn't go right. Don't lose your concentration and make a couple of bad pitches before you get it back."

  III

  THE PLAYERS finish up batting practice around 5:45 P.M. and travel back through the tunnel to the clubhouse. As a matter of league rule, the clubhouse is now closed to outsiders, so none of the players find themselves hopelessly outnumbered by the wolf pack of print and television and radio reporters who were there before batting practice. Back in the clubhouse, they immediately pump up the sound system, and they continue to loiter, loose and carefree. But the music soon gives way to two meetings. The first is for the relievers, in Duncan's office. It's run by Marty Mason, in an Alabama treble of such perfect down-home pitch, you long for the Confederacy even if you're from the North. The information is largely the same as what Duncan went over with Stephenson but with a slightly different emphasis. Relievers, unlike starters, almost never face a batter more than once, so they are much more inclined to go with their strength rather than try to whittle away at a hitter's weakness. La Russa is there, his chair straddling the open door that connects his office to Duncan's. He says little, except when it comes to Aramis Ramirez in the sixth hole and the terrible price you might pay for giving him a breaking ball in the strike zone: "He'll launch it."

  The meeting is followed quickly by a gathering of the hitters in La Russa's office. Hitting coach Mitchell Page goes through the Cubs pitchers, beginning with Mark Prior. "First thing you gotta do, boys, lay off the high fastball," he offers, admittedly easier said than done. The meeting has more of a war room feel as hitters trade their own intelligence back and forth. The consensus on Prior's fastball, as Orlando Palmeiro puts it, is that it's "sneaky," exploding in on you at the last moment. The hitters also trade tidbits about the Cubs relievers. How Joe Borowski, the closer, isn't above a back-door slider; how the lefty set-up man, Mike Remlinger, has no fear when it comes to his changeup and will throw it in any situation t
o any hitter, righty or lefty. La Russa speaks only at the end, urging his hitters to work up the pitch count on Prior, so Dusty Baker is pushed earlier than he would like to where La Russa wants him: the tender meat of the Cubs' bullpen.

  "It's the end of August. I don't think Baker is going to let Prior throw a bunch of pitches like he would at the end of September. Make him work for every out he gets."

  The players trickle out of La Russa's office after the meeting. There's now about a half hour left until the start of Game 1. The music ignites again, "Shake Your Tailfeathers" from the soundtrack of Bad Boys II spewing fury and testosterone. Jeff Fassero sits in front of his locker, reading the paper. Tino Martinez, so struggling at the plate in the shadow of his former Yankee self that it's become a perpetual cloak, adjusts his uniform pants. Scott Rolen emerges from the shower, then goes to the indoor cage for one final run-through. Jim Edmonds, typical of his Hollywood roam in center field, dons a series of bright red wristbands like strips of neon. From the two television consoles that hang from the ceiling of the locker area, video loops show Prior's most recent outing against the Cardinals in early July. Bo Hart watches raptly, so hungry for improvement, joined by Eddie Perez, who gets there just in time to see the three-run bomb he banged off Prior in the second. "That was so much fun!" he says, then trots off with a beatific smile.

  With twelve minutes to game time, after most of the players and coaches have already left for the dugout, La Russa puts on his uniform shirt and pants and begins his ritual. He closes his closet door. He neatens up his desk, moving wayward papers into right angles. He gathers up the information that he has carefully inscribed on the fronts and backs of several scorecards: the matchups as well as an additional reference guide to the Cubs hitters and how they should be pitched, in little two- or three-word capsules. He folds and creases them so they make that perfect fit in his back pocket. He adjusts his cap. He turns off the lights. And then he strides out toward the dugout and Game 1.

  4. The Peeker

  KENNY LOFTON leads off for the Cubs. He is what he is: a sneaky pest with good speed and a veteran hitter's instinct for survival. No shame in simply staying with the ball and slapping it to the opposite field for itsy-bitsy singles if that's the best a pitch can offer. A single gold chain nestles neatly under the collar of his gray uniform. "CHICAGO" wraps across his shirt in bright and muscular red. His hands, swathed in white gloves, heft a black bat. He gently taps it on the plate as if it's a divining rod in search of water—plentiful abundance around that plate if he can just find it.

  Cheers go up from the thousands of Chicago fans who have made the pilgrimage for the three-game series and taken over downtown St. Louis like Cossacks in Cubbie Blue, overrunning hotels and restaurants with their meaty fists and happy beer bellies and this-is-our-year swagger. Unlike his teammate Sammy Sosa, who enters the batter's box with a puffed-up presence so grand he might as well be the pope, Lofton draws no particular attention to himself when he settles in. It's more a glum matter-of-factness, a business, the business of batting—hey, been there, done that —with just the slightest oregano of arrogance, the implication that he knows he has Garrett Stephenson's number and has no reason to get all herky-jerky and hyperventilated.

  The first pitch is a fastball on the far side of the plate. It's a smart pitch: not too fat, not too fine. It carries the outside corner for a strike as Lofton looks it in with curiosity, as if a car of make and model he's not sure he has seen before has just sped by him. Dave Duncan has to be smiling inwardly, because it abides by his belief in the power of the first-pitch strike. Of all the pitches in a given at-bat, it is by far the most important, and Duncan has more than merely sentiment on his side. In addition to his binders full of pitching charts, he does his copious computer analyses, inputting every pitch a Cardinal throws to see what kind of predictors emerge beyond hunch and gut instinct. He's looking for trend lines, just like mutual fund managers look for reliable indicators of a stock's performance. Based on that analysis, the value of a first-pitch strike is so overwhelming he calls it "almost goofy." During spring training, Duncan trotted out his theory of the value of strike 1 for pitchers. To make the point, he was equipped with statistics for several past Cardinals seasons in which he had tracked each opposing batter faced, roughly 6,100 per year. His analysis showed that in 2002, for example, Cardinals hurlers threw first-pitch strikes 59 percent of the time. Of that number, 17 percent were put in play, with the actual yield of hits equivalent to a batting average of .059.

  The first pitch also ignites the game's smallest subplot and one of its more intricate ones—what La Russa is fond of calling "the war" of each at-bat. As Duncan's stats demonstrate, who draws blood first forms a remarkable barometer of who will win this little war: a pitcher who goes 1 and 0 now peering at a plate with a smaller-than-ever margin of error because he doesn't want to fall even further behind, and a hitter who goes 1 and 0 getting pumped because nibbling has just been curtailed. Like everything else in baseball, the barometer isn't foolproof. There are exceptions that define greatness, pitchers such as Greg Maddux and Curt Schilling, who still have the confidence to work the wisps of the plate even when the count is 1 and 0, and hitters such as Pujols, who even when they fall behind 0 and 1, refuse to chase in the face of a strike zone suddenly widened by the pitcher's advantage.

  Duncan has come to conclude that many pitchers pitch backward, try to be too fine on that first throw—aim for something perfect on the elusive black of the plate—because they think that they have some room to maneuver with a virginal count. But once they get behind, they have no choice but to come with something too fat over the plate. In Duncan's experience, the exact opposite approach is the most effective: Don't be too fine. Instead, use a portion of the plate to get that first strike. If the hitter puts it into play, so be it. If he doesn't, the pitcher still has an enormous advantage: Now he can nibble at the black without pinpoint precision, as hitters, made nervous by their 0 and 1 deficit, are far more inclined to go after pitches that aren't strikes.

  Baseball is a game primarily of firsts in terms of who wins and who loses: getting the first strike in an at-bat, getting the first out of an inning, scoring the game's first run to gain momentum and tempo. Like Duncan, La Russa believes fervently in the importance of firsts, but the game's first first doesn't comfort him. He's nervous, anxious for a zero here because the worst thing you can give a pitcher the caliber of Mark Prior is an early lead, the aura of intimidation that surrounds him to begin with now a full galaxy. So he's obsessively watching Stephenson to see whether he's doing what he needs to do, not being some heavy-metal rocker out there with an instrument that's strictly acoustic.

  In the dugout, La Russa stations himself near the entrance to the tunnel, so far to the left that he sometimes spills over into the concrete square reserved for the cameras that televise games locally on Fox SportsNet. He is standing alone, with a hand on the railing of the steps that lead up to the field. Some managers like company during a game. They like to chat back and forth, if nothing else to deflect the anxiety onto someone who at least can provide a little companionship. Joe Torre of the Yankees has had his Pagliacci, Don Zimmer, for years. Bobby Cox of the Braves has pitching coach Lee Mazzone, their jowls working in unison. But except for the occasional whisper to Duncan, La Russa refuses such relief. Instead, he occupies a self-imposed foxhole, big enough for only one, in which he alone must fend off all present and future crises. Even after one pitch, his face is clenched and closed off.

  With the count 0 and 1 to Lofton, he's not inspecting only Stephenson for signs of which persona is on the mound tonight. He's also eying Lofton, the pesty part of Lofton, the shameless part of Lofton that would steal first if it were legal. Lofton isn't above trying a bunt to third base. Both Duncan and Marty Mason discovered the trend of it when they broke down the Secret Weapon's DVD, so La Russa is making sure that Rolen is sufficiently guarding against it at third. La Russa also knows that Lofton, like most hitters, is
a creature of irresistibility, who can be brought down through his chase hole—the spot he thinks he can get to but can't. La Russa hopes that Stephenson will recall Duncan's advice to go above the strike zone for Lofton's chase hole—the high fastball. When the next pitch is a fastball in, La Russa is encouraged even though it's a ball. It's still a smart place to spot a pitch, particularly effective against hitters such as Lofton, who has a tendency to make a big fuss when the ball is inside. He makes no bones about the indignity, glaring at the pitcher, beseeching the umpire with a look—Did you see what they just did to me? —his histrionics guaranteeing only that he's going to see even more pitches inside than usual for the very reason he makes such a show.

  Stephenson throws another fastball, this time down and away. La Russa thinks that the location is good, really good, another smart pitch: three in a row, if you're keeping score at home. Lofton simply slaps at it, stays with it just enough to hit an easy two-hopper to short.

  La Russa does say repeatedly that baseball is a cruel game. Much of that has to do with decisions you make as a manager that seem like no-brainers and still devolve into disasters. But the ball itself is sometimes cruel, not simply a benign layering of twine and rubber and leather but a little organism with a perverse love of turmoil: Where can I go to create the most disruption? Who needs to be tested right away?

  Edgar Renteria usually plays shortstop. He was a Gold Glover last year and will probably get another one this year, so this would be a routine play for him. But two days before, after a grinding 3–0 win against the Phillies in which he made several wonderful defensive plays, he hobbled into the clubhouse. It was suddenly cleared of all outsiders, even reporters on tight deadlines—an unheard-of step. In the dignity of privacy, Rolen and Edmonds each wrapped an arm around their teammate and helped him out of the shower; wrenching back spasms prevented him from walking by himself. By now he has partially recovered, but he's still unavailable.