Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  Rolen is a superb athlete, the ingredients still there of someone who was good enough back in Jasper High School to be offered basketball scholarships from the University of Georgia and Oklahoma State. He looks too big to play third base the way he does, an outside linebacker in a baseball uniform. Yet he's quick down the line with his backhand scoops, and nobody ever in baseball, at least nobody La Russa has ever seen, comes in better on the ball barehanded with that big right hand of his, followed by such a punishing throw it's a wonder that Martinez at first doesn't end up head over heels in the stands. The one thing he's not, however, is lightning fast. But a base runner's skill has to do only in part with speed, in La Russa's mind. The more essential ingredient is how well you maximize your opportunities relative to your speed, which is why Rickey Henderson was a great base stealer—where wheels matter—but not a great base runner. When he wasn't stealing a base, he tended to relax, as many great base stealers do: no joy in the mundane and certainly no Benjamins. La Russa could only watch helplessly as Henderson took a few halfhearted steps off first and kind of plopped there. Much slower players got from first to third more often than Henderson did, the ultimate example the bottom of the ninth in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series when Henderson, then playing for the Blue Jays, somehow failed to get from first to third on a dumpy single by Paul Molitor hit slow enough so that there was ample room to run. He made it only to second, and were it not for the epic three-run homer against the Phillies by Joe Carter—a batter later to win the World Series—Henderson's lackadaisical attitude could have well made him the goat.

  But Rolen took a good primary lead off first. Then he extended it into a secondary lead, pushing out more and more, all the while zeroed in on what was happening at the plate, ready to explode off the bat. And he was agile enough to keep his stride even while evading the ground ball. Brains and focus propelled him to third.

  With Renteria up, Baker continues to stick with Farnsworth. The pitcher responds to the vote of confidence by throwing a wild pitch that makes Rolen's base running more than simply an instructional video. Because he's on third, he easily trots home, the system of pulleys and levers rewarding him for his quiet savvy: 3–2 Cardinals.

  Farnsworth is a wreck at this point. He walks Renteria to put runners on first and second, and suddenly, improbably, the Cardinals are in the land of the crooked number on the basis of three singles, two of which were of the seeing-eye-dog variety, two walks and a wild pitch. They are scoring because they are lucky, and they are lucky because they are scoring. There are still no outs. Now La Russa and Baker are going mad with moves, like men frantically emptying a suitcase, racing to find the one item that actually fits.

  La Russa's move: He brings in Miguel Cairo to pinch-run for Martinez at second, having already decided that he's going to have the next batter, Mike Matheny, bunt here. So he wants a quicker runner at second, as it's slightly easier for a team on defense to make a force play to third on a bunt. For a split second, he toys with a hit-and-run but then rejects it, as the speed of Farnsworth's fastball, in the mid-nineties, would make it more difficult than usual to get something on the ground. So he sticks with the bunt, which Matheny successfully executes to move the runners to second and third.

  Baker's move: With the pitcher due up and knowing that he isn't going to hit, Baker hails another cab. He hooks Farnsworth in favor of the lefty Mike Remlinger, the fourth pitcher he has used this inning.

  La Russa's move: He anticipates Baker's move to bring in Remlinger. But he still counters with Orlando Palmeiro to pinch-hit, even though he's a lefty, because he knows from his cheat sheets that Remlinger is one of those inverse pitchers who gets out righties better than lefties. Because of this slight advantage, he thinks that it gives Palmeiro, a good contact hitter, a decent chance of getting something on the ground and moving another run home. Also, he figures that if he had gone to the righty Eddie Perez off the bench, Baker would have pitched around him, with first base open, to set up for a force at home or a double play. This way, Palmeiro at least has the chance of getting something to hit. But Remlinger is all over the place. He walks Palmeiro. The bases are once again loaded.

  Baker's move: He hails yet another cab. He benches Remlinger and brings in Joe Borowski, his ninth-inning closer, even though it's the bottom of the eighth with one out. It's the fifth pitcher he has used in the half-inning, a National League record.

  La Russa's move: He sends Perez to the plate to pinch-hit for Robinson at the top of the order as he's gritty in the clutch with nine home runs and thirty-three RBIs in only 219 at-bats. With the bases loaded, Baker doesn't have the luxury of pitching around him. Perez has a swing as free as his laugh, capable of driving one into the seats. It would be a marvelous result, but La Russa's decision to use Perez here, lifting the number one hitter in the lineup, even though he's a lefty and Borowski a righty, goes far beyond home-run hope. Perez may be a free swinger, but he's also a smart one, who spends requisite time before each game studying prospective relievers; he knows what Borowski likes to throw and can recognize his pitches off the delivery. Borowski's main pitch to a right-handed batter is his slider, and it's more of an out-and-over-the plate slider. It matches Perez's own hitting strength, making him in La Russa's evaluation more likely to have a productive at-bat than Robinson.

  Perez hits a puny little ground ball. It should be an easy double play to get the Cubs out of the inning, down by only one run. But Martinez at second base bobbles it, the pressure of the moment tapping him on the shoulder just as he fields the ball to ask him whether everything is okay. He recovers the ball. He does that much as the volume at Busch tops 100 decibels, fans going delirious in the best chapter yet in this thriller. He manages to make the play to first. He does that much. But Cairo comes home. The Cards lead 4–2.

  III

  LA RUSSA still looks all steel from the foxhole in the top of the ninth, no change in the glare. But it's a front. His head throbs with what feels like a migraine. His throat is so dry, he can't swallow. His stomach is flipping so much, he feels he's going to vomit, only he knows he can't, because of the dryness in his throat. He is inevitably thinking to himself, Why am I doing this for a living? just as he also knows that if he somehow gets the third out here in the top of the ninth, he will inevitably think to himself, What a great way to make a living! He occasionally turns back to look at the lineup sheet posted on the wall. He's also dipping his head down after every batter to keep score in his little runic scribblings. But it's more force of habit than anything else, because the game has basically left his hands. It would be easier emotionally if the score were more crooked in the Cards' favor, but La Russa is still where he wants to be, the journey of his managing in Game 2 of three getting him to the right crescendo.

  It's why his favorite player on any team is always the closer, if he's a real-deal closer and not some knock-off closer, the only player piece of the puzzle who can guarantee a win if he does what he is paid to do. He believes that he has the real deal in Jason Isringhausen. He was hurt at the beginning of the season, a situation that La Russa knew would make almost every game a psychological circus. The Cardinals hit the burrito out of the ball, but their record in one-run games was abysmal: 2 and 14 in one-run games through the end of May.

  One of the few philosophical disagreements between him and Dave Duncan is the greater premium he places on the bullpen; Duncan believes that the starters matter more. In La Russa's opinion, Duncan can do enough things with a starter—get him to see the rewards of mixing speed and location, offer him up a new pitch to make hitters uncomfortable—to keep him going for six innings. You can elevate a starter. But it's his view that a reliever, whether he's setting up or closing, must have an effective out pitch. And that's difficult to teach—a rare instance in which preparation and hard work can't improve much on innate baseball talent.

  Since Isringhausen's return in June, there is every indication that his stuff has returned with him, hard cutter—his out pitch—backed
up by a good hook:

  With the score 4–2 here, Izzy has some insulation. The Cubs are slotted to send up Ramirez and Gonzalez and Miller, and La Russa's cheat sheets show that the matchups are good, but not great, because of Gonzalez and that home run:

  RAMIREZ 0-3-0

  GONZALEZ 1-3-1

  MILLER 0-1-0

  Baker has carte blanche now. He can use his bench to drive the matchups however he wants, as La Russa isn't going to budge off Izzy. No situational relief here by countering a lefty hitter with a lefty pitcher. For eight innings, La Russa has slowed the game down by staying ahead of it, but now the game has caught up.

  La Russa knows what Izzy has been thinking as he was warming up: We've just gone eight innings in this hugely meaningful game, and we've had this great comeback, and it's all on me to get three outs. He knows that not just anybody can do that, has that combination of guts and attitude and stuff. La Russa himself is thinking about the single thing that separates the highest-caliber closers from the next level: Keep the ball out of the middle.

  It's also why he gave his little conspiratorial laugh in spring training when he heard of the Red Sox plan, based on analysis by statistical guru and team consultant Bill James, to have rotating closers instead of one designated pitcher. James, in part because of what he felt was the inflated statistic of the save (you get one even with a three-run lead), believed that it wasn't always necessary to bring in a classic closer to pitch the ninth. La Russa repected James, but based on managing nearly 4,000 games, was convinced James was wrong. La Russa was also right: the Red Sox ultimately dumped the idea when it became clear that closer-by-committee was no-closer-by-committee.

  Of all the ways to lose in baseball, none is more painful to La Russa than failing to hold on to a close lead going into the ninth. If it happens enough, it creates a cycle of frustration and discouragement that can unravel a season. Hitters, aware that the only way to win is to score unrealistic bunches of runs to neuter the ninth, can't shoulder the burden after a while.

  Izzy has the face for what he does: impish, suggesting good times, with a softness about the chin and cheekbones, a certain buoyancy to it without the weight of self-reflection and overanaly-sis. He also has the requisite balls. He loves working the ninth. It has become his domain when he is healthy, although staying in one piece has been an issue with Izzy since birth. Some of his ailments have been downright scary, well beyond the typical arm sufferings. But his medical history also implies a sure-fire way of identifying future relievers, based on a childhood propensity to almost get themselves killed in small towns. The lefty setup reliever Steve Kline also exhibited such pathology when his brothers, in the name of what passed for science in the central Pennsylvania town he grew up in, tried to electrocute him.

  Izzy's wounds were more of the self-inflicted variety. As a child growing up in Brighton in southern Illinois, he enjoyed jumping off the roof of the family's two-story house to see what the chances were of flying (not good). On a long car ride to Virginia when he was twelve, he occupied himself with counting up his scars and got pretty close to 115. During his career in the big leagues, he has undergone surgeries on his elbow and shoulder. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and he once fell off a third-floor balcony in spring training, cracking his sternum and several toes.

  He began his career as a starter and had nice success with it, a 9-2 season for the Mets in 1995. But recurring shoulder and elbow problems made him a natural candidate for the bullpen. Izzy remembers the first time he ever came in in the ninth. It was against the Yankees in 1999, when he was with Oakland; he had never pitched in the stadium before. He didn't feel fear. He felt total fear, as he put it, the way the façade, like one of those Tim Burton sets in Batman, just seemed to go straight up for miles and miles to the lip of the moon. He finished the game that night and notched a save. "I succeeded, and the first rush came about," he said, even better than jumping off the roof of his house and seeing whether he could fly; on this night, he really could fly. The next year, he took the mound in a similar situation, with a one-run lead in the bottom of the ninth, and gave up back-to-back homers to Bernie Williams and David Justice—just about the same as jumping off the roof and landing with a thud. It was then that Izzy learned the other crucial component of being a closer, besides keeping the ball out of the middle: "A short memory."

  Izzy takes a little journey off the mound after his warm-ups. He removes his red cap to wipe the heat off his brow, draws in a breath. He gives a little whisper to Rolen and returns to the top of the mound. He's casually chewing gum as if to say, It's no big deal coming into the game like this to either preserve it or destroy it, be a well-paid hero for very little work or a complete asshole.

  He comes in with a hard cutter against the lead-off batter, Ramirez. It's similar in style to the one that Mariano Rivera throws, bearing in on you with ninety-plus velocity so that the only thing you can do is use your bat as a weapon of meager defense. Ramirez hits it meekly foul, readjusts his blue batting gloves, and settles back in to the plate. Izzy counters next with a nice curve low and away. Ramirez hits it to the right side, one hop, two hops, three hops, four hops, each hop smaller and thinner than the previous. Hart at second has to come in for it, a nasty little nubber. He's almost on the infield grass when he gets to it, then has to make the throw in a fast and fluid motion across his body. It's hit softly enough for Ramirez to have a chance even though he's a lumberer. It all depends on the throw.

  La Russa watches Hart from his corner. Baker watches from his corner, leaning forward slightly, peering through the green-padded bars on the top and bottom of the dugout. He has a slightly shocked look, unable to cleanse his mind of the surreal ugliness of the bottom of the eighth when a 2–0 lead became a 4–2 deficit on the basis of three puny singles rolling into the outfield like little winks, three walks, a wild pitch, and a bobbled grounder. Izzy no longer faces the plate, because he's watching Hart too.

  Ramirez is out by several steps. One away.

  Izzy steps off the mound to get a new ball from the home plate umpire. He works it in, rubbing his palms and fingers over it to add his own imprint. He takes off his glove to touch the peak of his cap. He flexes his shoulders. Then back to work with Gonzalez up. La Russa has the right fielder, the so-called off outfielder because Gonzalez is right-handed, shade in two or three steps from his usual depth. With the tying run on deck, he's trying to take away what he thinks is the most probable hit, a line drive or bloop single the opposite way. Like the infield-in options, shading outfielders has a dizzying set of variables, so much so that La Russa often puts his outfielders in almost continuous motion in the late innings. If the hitter is right-handed and gains the count in his favor, La Russa will immediately shade the outfield to guard against the likely tendency of the hitter to pull the ball. If the count goes even or to the pitcher's advantage, La Russa will then immediately shade the outfield to straighten up within the same at-bat. He also takes into account the minute knowledge of hitters gained through scouting and video and Duncan's pitching charts, as there are some who, even in classic pull counts of 1–0 and 2–0, still simply try to cover the plate and put the ball in play.

  Izzy knows that he has a great defense behind him with three Gold Glovers in Renteria and Rolen and Edmonds. So the thing he's fixated on, the only thing besides the muscle memory of throwing hard and hitting different halves of the plate, is not giving up a home run. He didn't do that once in sixty games last season, and he's given up only one this season. Keep the ball out of the middle.

  He works Gonzalez over with cutters, none of them center-cut over the plate. Gonzalez swings through the first, resists the second because it's outside, then breaks his bat fouling off a hellacious one down to make the count 1 and 2. A piece of it splinters toward first base. He goes to get a new bat from the batboy, and La Russa is thinking finishing curve ball here. Izzy's stuff is too good not to try overpowering Gonzalez with it. He's got a big hook, so throw the big hook. But
instead, he flips a do-somebody-a-favor curve.

  Gonzalez loops a single to left center. The Cubbies are alive.

  With a man on first and one out, Baker sends Troy O'Leary to pinch-hit in the eighth spot for Miller. La Russa switches to a no-doubles defense in which all three outfielders play deep. Izzy goes with his cutter against O'Leary on the first pitch. It's inside for 1 and 0.

  It's never the best way to start, but beyond simply the count is another exposure. With the first baseman positioned deep to provide more range, Gonzalez isn't even being held. La Russa is obviously aware of that, just as he's aware that Izzy normally doesn't have a quick move to the plate and is easy to run on. Gonzalez could be running early as a result to take away the possibility of the double play; it's an almost sure steal. But Baker doesn't make the move, at least not now.

  Izzy comes with a fastball on the next pitch to even the count. Gonzalez still stays put at first. Izzy throws a cutter inside. O'Leary has to dance out of the way a little bit, but Gonzalez still stays put. He throws another cutter. It comes in low. O'Leary chops at it.

  It bounces in front of the plate, takes another bounce toward the left side. Izzy stabs at it, but it's simply a reflex action; the ball is way over his head. It comes in to Renteria several steps from second base. It's fitting justice, given the ball's well-established pleasure and penchant for perversity: In Game 1, it immediately sidled up to Cairo, playing in place of Renteria because of his ailing back, and Cairo threw wide for an error. Now in Game 2, it has fixated on Renteria in a potential game-ending double-play situation to see just how that ailing back is really feeling. He sidesteps toward the bag at second, the footwork smooth and gliding except for a little baby step at the end to make sure he touches the base. He keeps his motion going as he throws to first. Double play.