Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  He has impressive local lineage, a heralded three-sport St. Louis high school athlete who set school records in 1991 for the highest batting average (.557) and for the most goals scored in hockey (twenty-nine). His first year with the Cardinals in 2001 was the first time he had ever been on the bench in his athletic life. During the following season and this one as well, he has made a deliberate attempt not to think about baseball except when he has to—when he's taking batting practice or loosening up in the cage in the fourth or fifth because he may go in at some point or on those rare occasions when he's in the game from the beginning. Otherwise, he would only dwell on not starting. "If I go there and think about it all the time, I'll drive myself crazy," he confesses. And now that he is getting a chance to play regularly, he does wonder whether his moment has arrived. "Maybe this is my time now, for all I know," he muses.

  La Russa would like nothing better than for now to be Robinson's time, although one sweet hit is still a single. It's not stealing home in the bottom of the ninth. It's not a bases-clearing double. It's pretty much what you should expect from Robinson under the circumstances that he is not an everyday player.

  Because it should be Drew in there, the pivotal series in the pivotal point in the season with first place at stake and the possibility of one of those momentum surges that pushes you through September and into the shadowy, sublime October light when playoff games are waged. It is the reason to play baseball—getting to that moment where, as Dusty Baker put it just before tonight's game, the "leaves turn to brown and somebody wears the crown."

  History is here. Finely aged rivalry is here. Tension is here. Competition is here. Everything you want in baseball is here, everything you can still hope for in this era of narrowing expectations. Except for Drew, the parable of the modern-day athlete.

  II

  DREW ROCKS FIREBALLERS like Prior and Wood. He rocks anybody who thinks he can throw fire by him. Like he did earlier this season when he hit a 514-foot dinger, the longest home run ever recorded at Busch by a left-handed hitter, blocked in its flight by the scoreboard or it would have gone even farther. He's pressure-proof, like the home run he hit in the eighth inning off Curt Schilling's forkball in the deciding fifth game of the 2001 playoffs to tie the game at 1–1. It's why the Cardinals spent $7 million on Drew as a first-round pick in the 1998 draft. It's why, when they got their first look at him in the uniform—saw the speed, the fluid left-handed stroke, the way the ball just launched off the bat—they thought Mickey Mantle, as dangerous, maybe, as thinking Sandy Koufax when they saw Rick Ankiel.

  But his talent was that big, and La Russa wonders whether perhaps it still is that big, submerged within that remote exterior like other great players have been remote, wearing a Cardinals uniform but never really a part of the team, alone in the clubhouse most of the time, shunning membership in any of the cliques, saying little in his southern accent as thick as an Irish brogue, shuffling to the cage during batting practice like a tired old man, taking his cuts in silence and then shuffling away in silence. And then he does something prodigious and spectacular and beautiful because his swing is so beautiful, tight and compact and as effortless as walking. But La Russa has resigned himself to wondering whether he'll ever get to it, whatever that it is at this point. And as much as he believes that there is nothing he can do—that he can't create fire—part of him knows that his very job as a manager is to create fire, whatever its temperament. And it pulls at him that his best wasn't good enough.

  Like others, La Russa's early hopes for him were maybe too heady; there's no surer doom for anyone than great expectations. In the history of intercollegiate baseball, it was difficult to find someone with more of a can't-miss pedigree. In his junior year at Florida State in 1997, Drew recorded the first 30–30 season in NCAA Division One history, with thirty-one homers and thirty-two steals, but that was just a small part of the almost supernatural epic told by his statistics:

  The irresistible comparisons came out—that here, after all those years and all that sifting in the dust of some diamond for gold—was a true find, a natural stroke as pure as Musial and Mantle and Aaron and Mays. The references put him under a cloud from the very beginning, the notion that he was bound for the Hall of Fame before he'd had a single big-league at-bat.

  As such, he was the unsuperstar. Other players talked about him, much of it disparaging, much of it along the lines of Who the hell does this kid think he is? and Who cares how many homers he hit at Florida State? He won few admirers when the Phillies made him the first-draft pick and he scoffed at their record-setting offer: $2.6 million signing bonus and $6 million overall for a five-year contract. Through his agent, he said that he was thinking more in terms of a $5 million signing bonus and $11 million overall. Drew ultimately refused to sign with the Phillies, an act that drew headlines and condemnation around the country. Fairly or unfairly, he was portrayed over and over as selfish, the personification of everything wrong with the modern young athlete. He played for the St. Paul Saints in the Independent League and re-entered the draft in 1998. The Cardinals made him the fifth pick overall and signed him to a four-year deal worth $7 million guaranteed and as much as $9 million, including various bonuses and incentives. The signing was announced with much fanfare and ballyhoo, particularly because the Cardinals had done what the Phillies could not. In the euphoria of it, only one question remained: How good was he?

  He came up to the Cardinals in September 1998 after a mere forty-five games in the minors at Arkansas and Memphis. In his first eight games, he batted .350, with three homers, seven RBIs, and a .900 slugging percentage. La Russa said that he hadn't seen a better first week in the majors since 1985, when Jose Canseco had played against his White Sox. "Let's take it easy," La Russa also cautioned at the time. "He doesn't need more notoriety. He needs less." Even that first week, as good as it was, contained the tiny hint of something to watch for when he was scratched from the lineup in one game because of back stiffness. It became a leitmotif of his career, the rhythm of his performance continually broken by injury.

  His first full season in the majors, 1999, was not the stuff of immortality but the stuff of a mortal player still trying to get a handle on the potential humiliations of a big-league curve. He hit .242, with thirteen home runs and nineteen steals. He played in only 104 games, spending six weeks on the sidelines because of an injury to his quadriceps.

  The next two seasons—2000 and 2001—were improvements. He hit .295 in 2000, with eighteen home runs. In 2001, he rose to .323, with twenty-seven home runs. But he still made frequent trips to the disabled list. His average number of at-bats in both those seasons was less than four hundred, and in 2002 he slipped badly:

  There were also more injuries, this time a tendon in his knee. He had surgery in the off-season to repair it, meaning that he would start this current season on the disabled list. Injuries are part of baseball; there's no way to avoid them. But something else about Drew began to concern La Russa, something trickier and more elusive than a damaged knee or a strained quadriceps.

  Increasingly, La Russa wondered whether Drew's underlying ailment, like it was for so many young players coming into sudden millions, was an absence of sustained passion that had no medical remedy. Did he simply lack the will to play in a way that would fulfill all those auguries? La Russa urged him to not be satisfied with what he had done, that there was so much more he could do if he committed himself to doing it. La Russa knew that Drew was making $3.6 million this season and told him that he could probably pull in double that in future seasons if he put some added heat into his game, went into it with the same kind of relentlessness that Albert Pujols did on every at-bat. He even offered to put Drew into the same batting practice grouping as Pujols from the very first day of spring training in the further hope that the great Pujols would rub off on him. He told Drew that he could make the kind of money in baseball that could guarantee a lifetime of security. But as he spoke, it dawned on him that for a small-town boy f
rom Georgia who still lived where he had grown up, $3.6 million a year was already ample bounty. He told Drew that it was a waste for him to simply go along like this when he could be so much more. They'd had these talks more than once, but La Russa knew that he had never gotten through to him, except when he threatened to bench him if he didn't choke up with two strikes to better defend himself against striking out.

  During spring training this year, when Drew couldn't play because of his knee rehabilitation, he left the dugout in the middle of a contest against the Expos to head back to the clubhouse. La Russa had no problem with the regulars doing that once they were done playing for the day. It was a little bit of the special treatment that a regular got, the extra care and stroking. But Drew wasn't a regular at this point. It upset La Russa, because if Drew couldn't play, the least he could do was watch, see what a pitcher was up to, put it in the back pocket somewhere for the regular season. Williams was in the dugout even though he wasn't pitching. So was Matt Morris. And even when Drew had been physically there, his whole body language suggested to La Russa, Why am I here? His head lolled back and he seemed to be looking at everything he could except for the game on the field. La Russa's feeling was, You're in the big leagues. Watch and learn.

  The next morning, La Russa called Drew into his office in the Jupiter compound. "If you come, you stay the full nine, that's the deal," he scolded, and then he fined him $250. Drew left the office, looking like most players do when they leave the manager's office, the look of a pained little boy suddenly unsure how much he really likes his mother because of all these rules she makes you follow. But because the fine came out of his meal money check, it didn't even dent his $3.6 million salary. And even if it had, it would amount to approximately .00015 percent of his compensation. To La Russa, the issue wasn't money. It was the message he was sending, maybe an ultimatum, about what he expected of Drew and what Drew should expect of himself.

  Drew returned to the lineup toward the end of April. He struggled, as any player will struggle coming back from knee surgery. Against the Expos in early May, with first place on the line and the score 3–1 Cards in the bottom of the eighth, La Russa tried a delayed double steal with Drew on third, Jim Edmonds on first, and Rolen at the plate. It was a daring play—on the surface, managerial aggressiveness without common sense—but the Expos' third baseman, Fernando Tatis, was playing so deep, almost on the outfield grass, that La Russa saw an opening and went for it. With Tatis too far off the bag to pick him off, Drew could take an unusually long lead off third. He should have broken for home with fury once it became apparent that the catcher's throw was going straight to second, where Edmonds was heading, instead of being cut off by the pitcher. But Drew took a short lead off third, despite Jose Oquendo's urgings, and then got a lousy jump off the throw. He was caught in a rundown, and instead of scrambling for his life to avoid it, he simply surrendered.

  God damn, J.D.! The words coursed through La Russa in the dugout, but he said nothing to Drew as he sheepishly returned with his head ducked down. The play was as blown and ugly as it gets, and now La Russa would have to explain to Rolen why he'd put more faith in a misplaced fielder than in Rolen's dependable bat.

  Later that night, La Russa had dinner at Dominic's in suburban St. Louis with one of the Cardinals owners. Despite winning the game 3–1, he was brooding about Drew, wondering once more whether there was some way to get to him, let that talent pour out in terrific torrents. He pulled out an index card and began to write down possible things to say to him, all of which he realized he had said already. He put the card back in his breast pocket after several minutes. The conversation turned to how many players La Russa had managed who have had that rare combination of talent and fiery heart, refused to settle for good as long as there was the horizon of greatness. La Russa approached it methodically, combing carefully through each of the three teams he had managed. He deliberated carefully because it was an interesting question that required an interesting answer. It was easy to think of players who had one or the other. Most players who had hit the big leagues had one or the other. But both was rare, very rare. As he gave out a name, it got written down on a list.

  Seventeen. That's what it came out to when he was finished. He looked at the names to make sure he hadn't missed anyone. Seventeen. In twenty-four years of managing, seventeen players who had willed themselves to put it all together. It was a small number—depressing, really—reflective of how many ballplayers are content to coast along on the basis of the talent they have when they could do so much more. As La Russa looked at the makeshift list, he wondered how many more there could have been had he done a better job of managing, had he figured out a way to punch through. The conversation circled back to Drew, and the nagging question arose in La Russa's mind once again: Was it J.D.'s fault that he wasn't playing to his level, or was it the fault of the manager he played for?

  In the weeks since, Drew has shown glimmers of the magic that set apart those seventeen. He continued to play according to his own mercurial rhythm, such flashes of brilliance you still knew that it was all going to pour out one day; other moments when he was slowed down or stopped completely by injury. Which meant that four months down the road in the three-game series against the Cubs, he would not play at all, replaced by a player who would never match fire with fire on a fastball but who was consumed by the burning desperation to play each and every day.

  III

  WITH ROBINSON on first after that slapped single into left, Hart comes up to bat, and one of baseball's most controversial plays becomes a possibility: hit-and-run. Some managers loath it because the swing that puts the ball in play usually costs a precious out and the dividend—moving the man on first to second—often doesn't materialize. Other managers embrace the hit-and-run because they believe that it's worth giving up an out to put a runner in scoring position and stay out of the double play. Plus, if it's executed properly and the ball finds a hole, the play has created a run-scoring opportunity, maybe even a crooked number because of the hit-and-run's unique momentum.

  When La Russa was a novice manager with the White Sox, he spent a great deal of time at the Bard's Room. It was the kind of place that doesn't exist in baseball anymore, a seedy, stinky hole in the wall, where baseball men congregated to drink and smoke and debate the game's intricacies into the small hours. La Russa showed up just about every night, finding the back-and-forth dialogue tantamount to "getting your Ph.D. in baseball." So did luminaries from the White Sox front office, such as general manager Rollie Hemond and Paul Richards. So did Billy Martin and Sparky Anderson, skippers who would attend when their teams were in town, as well as some of the game's greatest scouts. Presiding over all of it was the one-in-a-millennium Bill Veeck, with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  Veeck made it a point of his life to never view himself, or anyone else, with too much pomp and circumstance. He titled his memoir Veeck as in Wreck, and he brought a similar mindset to baseball, which he saw above all as entertainment. In gauging his life in baseball, inevitable disputes arise as to which of his promotions was the most inspired. It may have been the one in 1951, when, as owner of the St. Louis Browns, he sent 3'7" Eddie Gaedel to the plate for his only major-league appearance. His uniform bore the number ⅛ and he drew a walk, even though the catcher, trying to frame the proper strike zone, dropped to his knees. Or it could have been the one later that season when he sat the Browns' manager in a rocking chair next to the dugout and invited the fans to manage by consensus. Browns' coaches showed placards suggesting various options—bunt, hit-and-run, pinch-hit—and the spectators delivered their verdict by holding up cards showing either yes or no. Or maybe the one in which he had six midgets race from the outfield to home plate in Cleveland, with Bob Hope as the emcee. Less successful, however, was the infamous Disco Demolition Night right before La Russa's arrival.

  But not all of Veeck's stunts were designed to work laughs. He hated the stuffy sanctimony of the game, but he als
o revered the game. It was Veeck who planted the ivy on the outfield wall of Wrigley. It was Veeck who first put the names of players on the back of their uniforms. It was Veeck who invented the exploding scoreboard, and it was also Veeck who in 1947, half a century before it would become reality, first suggested interleague play.

  The White Sox were his last hurrah, the hiring of La Russa one of his final acts. The sheer surprise of it was typical of him, for La Russa was far too young—only thirty-four—and unproven by anyone's standards except Veeck's. But bringing him in was no stunt; Veeck could see that La Russa more than loved the game—he thirsted for it, studied it voraciously, couldn't get enough of it. Veeck also liked the fact that La Russa was studying law in the off-season. Before hiring him, Veeck made him promise that he would pass the bar and get his license.

  An important part of La Russa's baseball indoctrination was the Bard's Room, where Veeck purposely pitted him against dyed-inthe-wool baseball men to see how he handled himself, how he struck the balance between deference to the elders and defending his convictions. He loved to see arguing, and one of the best ways to achieve that was simply to mention the phrase hit-and-run. Before you knew it, Richards and La Russa would be debating with each other, La Russa thinking it worthy in certain circumstances, his mentor thinking it worthless in all circumstances. Richards saw it in much the same way that Woody Hayes at Ohio State viewed the forward pass: Three things could happen, and two of them were bad. In the middle would be Veeck, adding saucy comments just to keep the debate going—it's smart, it's stupid, it can work, it can't work —his only break from stoking the fire when he flicked his cigarette ash into a little hole he had built into his wooden leg.