Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  III

  LA RUSSA KNEW that over the years, he had gained a reputation for being vengeful when perhaps vengeance wasn't necessary. He was also known as something of a headhunter himself, but La Russa says that he has never told a pitcher to throw at a hitter simply because he was too dangerous at the plate and needed to be quieted down. "If a guy is hitting good against us, I have never told a pitcher to go out and drill him. I have said, 'Pitch the guy tough, pitch the guy different.' If a pitcher does something on his own, I will take him out. I will not hesitate. You can pitch a hitter inside. You can try to open up the plate on him, get him to speed up the bat. But you do not drill him."

  In July 1995, the A's played the Blue Jays at the Coliseum in Oakland. In the second inning, Mark McGwire, batting for the A's, got to a tough slider away and blasted a home run. The next day, David Cone, pitching for the Blue Jays, hit McGwire in the head, and McGwire had to go to the hospital with a possible concussion. Cone pitched into the eighth inning without giving up a walk, bringing La Russa to what he considered an obvious conclusion—other than beaning McGwire, Cone had exhibited no control problems whatsoever. He was furious, convinced that McGwire had been hit, in the head, as retribution for his home run the night before.

  Taking the Hammurabi Code into his own hands, La Russa ordered Mike Harkey to hit the Blue Jays' Joe Carter. Harkey did so, literally bending over backward to obey the rule laid down in spring training. He hit Carter in the buttocks, an act of fleshy mercy compared to what La Russa believed Cone had done. But Carter didn't like it. He pointed to La Russa glowering in the dugout and yelled at him.

  "You caused all this!"

  Which brought La Russa steaming out toward Carter.

  "We have a guy in the hospital with a concussion, and you're whining about a bee sting! "

  Will Clark was more matter-of-fact than Carter when he got hit in retaliation for a pitcher again drilling McGwire. Clark had once signed a bat for the animal rescue foundation La Russa had formed so it could be auctioned off to raise money, and he sent a message back afterward:

  "Tell the manager, no more autographs."

  In older days, verbal histrionics rarely intruded on the quiet cause-and-effect of a pitcher punishing a hitter for some perceived slight. Pitchers like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale laid down a clear-cut rule: In the fight for the Gaza Strip of the plate, middle away belonged to them, and middle in belonged to the hitter. As long as you didn't venture over into the pitcher's territory, you were okay. But if you did, you were going to get banged, and you had no one but yourself to blame. Naivete, rookie eagerness, ignorance of the rule—none of it could excuse you from your fate.

  Umpires, on the directive of major-league baseball, have become far more vigilant about keeping the game from devolving into a dogfight. When a hitter gets drilled, umpires are more inclined to warn both teams that any retaliation will get the offending pitcher and his manager ejected. But no amount of vigilance can erase the Hammurabian compulsion toward justice.

  Early this season in Colorado, the pitcher on the mound for the Rockies, Dan Miceli, threw one at Edmonds's legs in the twelfth, forcing him to dance out of the way. La Russa wasn't quite sure how it was intended. Pitchers have to throw inside at Coors Field more than at any other major-league stadium because the ball carries so far in the mile-high air. If you don't, hitters simply whack it like a tee ball. Which is pretty much what Edmonds had been doing all night, 4 for 6 with a homer, two doubles, and five RBIs.

  In the second game of the series, Nelson Cruz's first pitch to Edmonds was up and in; he went down to dodge it. The second pitch hit him in the shoulder. Now La Russa had an answer to the question he had been agonizing over the night before.

  He waited for the right time and the right batter to make what he considered the right move, in this case, a message. In the third inning, Cards pitcher Brett Tomko threw behind Todd Helton, the Rockies' best hitter—a shot across his bow that responded to Cruz's assault, while keeping Tomko in the game. Home plate umpire Mike DiMuro promptly put the warning into both benches. But La Russa wasn't so sure it was over.

  "This guy Cruz thinks he's John Wayne," he told DiMuro. "He's gonna take another shot." And in the top of the seventh, he hit Tino Martinez. Cruz and Clint Hurdle, the Rockies' manager, were immediately ejected. But their ouster did little to soothe La Russa, still furious over what he saw as the original gutlessness of hitting Edmonds in the first inning because his bat had been so hot the night before.

  The Rockies' bench coach was Jamie Quirk. In the early 1990s, Quirk had played for La Russa. He later went into coaching, and La Russa had recommended him as a manager. He considered Quirk a friend. But he also felt that Quirk had crossed a line, that he had played a role in what had happened, or at least could have done more to prevent Edmonds from getting drilled in the first place. He had Quirk's cell phone number and he left a message after the game. "You don't take cheap shots," he told him. "Just because Edmonds is swinging good, you just don't go out and drill him."

  After the next-day's game, La Russa was heading to the team bus when he saw Quirk in the hallway that leads to the Coors Field parking lot. By now, La Russa had had twenty-four hours to ponder what had happened. He'd learned the hard way not to confront someone too soon after he had done something during a game that upset La Russa. One night in 1996, after the Cardinals had dropped a close game to the Braves, he zeroed in on John Mabry as a symbol of the loss because he played first and had been laughing at something with Fred McGriff after McGriff had gotten on base. Immediately after the game, La Russa went off on Mabry, accused him of not caring enough—too busy chatting with McGriff—to give the game the competitive focus it demanded. As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he had made a mistake—looking for someone to kick after a tough loss and finding the wrong target in Mabry, who was a competitor. La Russa apologized the next day, but their relationship had been affected. Mabry began to mistrust his manager; his performance suffered. He ended up going elsewhere, and La Russa believes that his impromptu outburst caused Mabry's decline with the Cardinals.* As a result, La Russa began to enforce a twenty-four-hour gag order on himself: He would keep his mouth shut for a full day to assess how much of his anger might be legitimate and how much might be caused by the fresh pain of losing. If he still felt agitated, the twenty-four-hour rule also gave him time to figure out something constructive to say.

  With a full day of distance from the current skirmish, La Russa could do something like that with Quirk here. They were friends. He had recommended Quirk for jobs. Quirk had played for him. Seeing Quirk in the hallway, he had the opportunity to chalk up what had happened to the passion that sometimes overtakes the game. Instead, still disappointed, he looked right through him as if he weren't there.

  Less than two weeks later, the Cards were playing the Diamondbacks at Busch. It was a pitcher's duel between Tomko and Miguel Batista, scoreless into the fifth when Arizona scratched out a run on doubles by Craig Counsell and David Dellucci. In the bottom of the fifth, Tino Martinez led off for the Cardinals. Batista threw him a ball. Then he hit him in the right shoulder blade, and then he stared at him after he hit him, rubbing it in: Take that, you son-of-a-bitch.

  Before the game, La Russa had felt the fluttering in his stomach over the prospect of facing Batista and what could occur. He was in that category of pitcher who had gained a reputation for plunking batters. But La Russa didn't anticipate it happening, not with the score 1–0. Now that it had, a shot near Martinez's head, the fluttering rose into the dread of how to respond. It was the stare-down that led La Russa to believe that he had acted on his own, that there might have been bad blood between Martinez and Batista left over from the 2001 World Series between the Diamondbacks and the Yankees. So now the gut-wrenching question arose again: What do you do about it? La Russa took up his inner Godot dialogue:

  We've gotten hit a lot.

  It's not coincidental that we lead the league in hitting and getting
hit by pitches.

  We don't see Arizona again until the end of the year.

  Tino has been hit four times this season, and the first three times, I didn't do squat.

  We have to send the right message.

  La Russa scanned the Diamondback lineup and immediately found the appropriate subject for retaliation against, given the situation. It was Luis Gonzalez, who had hit fifty-seven home runs two seasons earlier in 2001 and had so nobly gutted it out against Mariano Rivera's rapier cutter in the ninth inning of the seventh game with two outs, blooping it into center like a falling Easter egg to win the World Series for the Diamondbacks. On the basis of talent alone, Gonzalez was the obvious candidate. But the choice was complicated by personal entanglements.

  Gonzalez, Martinez, and La Russa were all from Tampa. They had all gone to the same high school, Jefferson High, in Tampa. And Gonzalez was one of the classiest guys in the league, doing frequent charity work in the off-season because it meant something to him and not because some agent told him that he should do it for his image. One of those charity events had been a special appearance of behalf of La Russa's foundation.

  There were strategic complications too. Once La Russa decided that he had to do something and that Gonzalez was the guy he had to do something to, the score was 1–0 Arizona in the eighth. Given where Gonzalez fell in the order, he might not get another at-bat, and justice might be denied.

  So when the Diamondbacks' Junior Spivey singled and stole second with two outs, it was, oddly, a blessing for La Russa, the opening he needed. The count had run to 1 and 2 on the batter at the plate, Chad Moeller, when Spivey stole. Suddenly, La Russa gave the sign to intentionally walk Moeller. With first base open, it appeared as if he had simply decided to pitch around Moeller. But that was just the cover: Moeller's free ride to first had nothing to do with thinking that the next batter would be an easier out.

  He didn't want Moeller to end the eighth inning with an out, because that might put Gonzalez out of reach in the ninth, as he would be batting fourth. So he put Moeller on even though the count had run to 1 and 2. He took a chance on runners on first and second in a 1–0 nail biter, just to make sure that Gonzalez would definitely come up in the ninth.

  The score was still 1–0 going into the top of the ninth when La Russa brought in Jeff Fassero. He told the reliever that he hoped he could get the first two batters out. And then he told him to do what is standard in a situation such as this—throw a breaking ball away so it looks like he's having a little control problem, then hit Gonzalez in the ribs with the next pitch. Fassero executed it perfectly. Gonzalez got hit. Fassero and La Russa were both ejected, and the Cards ended up losing 1–0.

  La Russa knew that he had possibly affected the game's outcome for the sake of retaliation. He also realized that his friendship with Gonzalez might suffer. That bothered him immensely because Gonzalez, in a game so littered with go-through-the-motion fakes, was the real thing both professionally and personally. After the game, he left him a message on his cell phone, just like he had done with Quirk, trying to explain his reasoning:

  "You can think what you want, but you check with anybody who has played with me. We don't hit someone just because they're hitting good against us."

  He still didn't like what he had done. He sifted through the layers of his decision deep into the night and through the off day on Monday before the team chartered out to Atlanta. He knew that if he didn't protect his players, didn't stand up for them, the respect they gave him—a porous bond to begin with in the distracted world of the modern athlete—would crumble away. Richards had once told him that sometimes, you have to be willing to lose a game to win more later. And this, La Russa concluded, had been one of those times.

  La Russa isn't sure that Wood intentionally pitches up into the danger zone as much as he doesn't quite know where the ball will land when he throws inside. Wood himself insists that his victims have been plunked by innocent curve balls that simply got away from him. But Wood's role models are Ryan and Clemens, pitchers without qualms about drilling batters. La Russa also believes that Wood is susceptible to the media frenzy that occurs over the prospect of beanball wars, stories that only encourage young power pitchers to take the bait and feel compelled to strut their machismo. Because Wood is normally so aggressive—trying to reach the mid- and upper nineties with his fastball—he tends to hurry and fall out of his delivery, which causes the ball to sail even more than usual into uncharted territory. But to La Russa, that's not much of an excuse when the result is a batter getting hit. It's still a dangerous headball, which is why La Russa is also so adamant that the baseball commissioner's office give out automatic suspensions in all but obviously accidental circumstances. If major-league baseball is not proactive, he is convinced, more and more players will get seriously injured. "The key," he explains, "is whether or not a club is trying to pitch inside just for effect. That's okay if they have command. But if they're pitching without command and guys keep getting hit, then at some point, they should quit doing it. We're not gonna be targets."

  8. Light My Fire

  I

  IT QUICKLY becomes clear that Kerry Wood and Woody Williams are waging the pitchers' duel La Russa anticipated tonight. Each stays within the sphere of his respective strengths and style: Wood flailing about like a restless child; Williams so economical he's almost invisible.

  In the top of the first, Williams dispatches the Cubs with fourteen pitches, unfazed by a double that Ramon Martinez, batting in the two-hole, strokes into the right-field gap. Wood follows with a style whose only constants are unpredictability and success. His fastballs fly so high that the Cubs' catcher, Damian Miller, reaches for them as though he's scurrying up a stepladder. His breaking balls fall off the plate because he finishes his delivery in such haste. Then he uncorks a rat-a-tat of nasty stuff in and around the zone, striking out Bo Hart and Scott Rolen. He seems all confusion on the mound: Hey, it's not my fault the ball won't tell me where it's going. But it's misleading. La Russa can already tell that they're facing Effectively Wild Wood tonight—hitters at the mercy of his orchestrated whimsy.

  Through three innings, Williams is achieving the same end by the opposite means. He's thrown only thirty-nine pitches, including a five-pitch second inning. By the bottom of the third, when Kerry Robinson comes to bat for the Cardinals with one out and nobody on, Wood's flailing has already produced four strikeouts. Robinson's in the lineup by default because of the injury to J.D. Drew, and it looks like that way when Wood sends him a nasty slider, and he responds by weakly swinging through it. Wood comes next with a fastball outside and away on the black. The pitch is more difficult to handle than the first one, that lethal combination of high-heat velocity and location you see sometimes on the Autobahn. But Robinson stays with it and slaps a single past third base, going the opposite way with it. In the dugout, La Russa has a lovely thought about Robinson: That was a great piece of hitting.

  It proves to him what Robinson can do if he sets aside his sulkiness about not playing every day and accepts his place in the puzzle, not some tiny piece, but of ample size because of what a strong bench can do for a team beyond trying to capitalize on occasional playing time. It is a difficult role, and La Russa readily concedes the difficulty. But the spirit of bench players is as essential to the chemistry of a team as the spirit of a star player. You have a star player who treats his colleagues like inferiors; that's an essential edge your team has lost. You have a bench player who sulks; that's a valuable edge lost as well. Which is why La Russa wishes that Robinson would follow the lead of Eddie Perez and Miguel Cairo, bench players who not only do the obvious—make the most of their playing opportunities—but also act as assistant coaches for the very reason that they can soak up the game. They can often figure out an opposing pitcher's pitch beforehand because of the way he holds the ball in the glove. They can offer subtle advice to infielders who are getting into the habit of laying back on the ball instead of charging, or sweetly sc
old fellow hitters who are getting pull-happy and flying open at the plate.

  Certainly Robinson's approach to the game has improved since an episode several weeks ago against the Phillies when he was pinch-hitting and took a pitch pretty much down the pipe for a strike instead of swinging, then ultimately struck out. La Russa likes his hitters to be aggressive on the first good strike they get in an RBI situation. Especially pinch hitters, because they often get only one good strike in the entire at-bat. La Russa and his coaches inculcate this philosophy into players from the earliest stages of spring training, and Robinson's failure to apply it irked the manager. After the game, he summoned Robinson into the visiting manager's office in the penal colony of Veterans Stadium to discuss why he wasn't following such a basic precept.

  "As a general run-producing philosophy," he reminded Robinson, "you have to be aggressive and ready to swing at the first good strike. It's true for most hitters. Especially true for pinch hitters."

  "No, no. I don't challenge that philosophy," said Robinson.

  "Well, that's good because it's been developed by watching too many guys produce."

  Case closed. Meeting over. Since then, Robinson seems to have given the basics more of the respect they deserve.

  To Robinson, this hit against Wood is further proof that he should be playing every day, that with a little faith, he can be another Juan Pierre. He knows he's no slugger, but he has speed; he can steal and stretch doubles into triples. And he believes that he can handle the bat better when he plays every day, because he admits that it's difficult for him to get into any kind of rhythm coming off the bench, a cold can of soup barely heated up. On a visceral level, coming off the bench profoundly contradicts his self-image. "This is my third year in the big leagues, and I don't want to just be labeled as a bench guy without even having an opportunity to start at the big-league level," he says.