by Bret Boone
That should be your plan against great pitching: do a little something rather than nothing. Find a way to get on base. Facing Clemens, Schilling, Pedro, Maddux, and other all-time greats, I looked for a knock and a walk. A single and a base on balls. Get a knock and a walk and you’re helping your team. You’re also 1-for-3 on the day. It’s the ohfers (0-for-3, 0-for-4) that kill you.
My ohfers started piling up in 1996. I turned twenty-seven that year and batted .233 with 12 homers and a career-high 100 strikeouts. Pitchers had developed a strategy against me. It boiled down to three words. Smoke him inside. It’s the oldest approach in the book—fastballs on the inside corner.
Getting smoked inside can be tough on a right-handed batter with a closed stance. (“Closed” means that a line connecting my feet points toward the second baseman or pitcher. With an open stance, the line’s more toward third base.) If I adjusted by standing farther from the plate or stepping in the bucket—striding toward third base—they’d drop one over the outside corner where I couldn’t reach it. The way to adjust is to speed up your hands. Catch the ball as it reaches the front of the plate. That way you can extend your arms and sting the ball.
But my hands got slower. I tried moving back in the batter’s box, tried a lighter bat, tried an extra pregame coffee for a jolt of caffeine. Nothing worked. I was losing my swing, turning into the one thing I never dreamed I could be.
An easy out.
The summer of ’97 should have been a highlight thanks to another family moment. In June the Reds promoted a skinny punk of a backup infielder, Aaron Boone, from Triple-A to the majors. My little brother Arnie arrived without the fanfare that came with my promotion. And wasn’t so little anymore. At six foot two, the same height as Dad, he was four inches taller than his big bro. I was thrilled to see him. Aaron was quieter than I was, more of a listener than a talker, with a “Gee whiz, I’m in the big leagues” look in his eyes. Dad was managing the Kansas City Royals by then, leaving two Boones in Cincinnati, and me with my ohfers and my worries, which I kept to myself. Aaron saw me struggling at the plate, but I moved with the same old swagger. On road trips to Los Angeles and San Diego we’d rent a car and drive to Orange County. The rest of the Reds slept in a four-star hotel while we bunked at home with Mom.
The tough part was going back to work. After my lousy ’96 season I’d looked forward to turning my career around. Instead I got worse. In September 1997 my average fell to .218, the worst of any everyday second baseman in the majors. That shit makes you see a different guy in the mirror. Was the game tougher than I was? Would I be out of the majors before I turned thirty?
I never let Aaron see how miserable I was. He was just getting his feet wet in the majors. I’d sneak out of the dugout between at-bats and walk through the dark, cavernous spaces under the stands, crying. There was nobody around to hear me say, “I’m screwed. I lost my swing.”
Bret Boone, shitty second baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, would finish the season with a batting average of .223. There were pitchers who hit better.
I hid my frustration, but kept hearing Dad’s voice. I knew what he’d say. Grit your teeth. Fight back. If you make an out, take a hit away from the other guys.
I’d been taking extra grounders, adding muscle memory one ball at a time. Going into September I’d made only 2 errors in more than 500 chances. I worked hard on every play, reading hitters’ reactions to Reds pitchers’ deliveries, “cheating” to my left or right by leaning that way, going for balls that gave me a greater chance of making an error because I’d barely reach the ball and be falling sideways trying to throw it. All to take a hit from the other guys.
I was trying to prove myself—not to Dad, not to Aaron, not to the manager or the fans or the TV announcers. I wanted to prove to me that I’d never give up.
And you know what? I finished the 1997 season with that shitty .223 batting average and a fielding percentage of .997. That was historic—2 errors in 607 chances, an all-time record for second basemen.
Which isn’t to say I was perfect. Near perfect between the lines, maybe, but not as heroic as Ted Williams. You’ll remember that Williams played a doubleheader the last day of the 1941 season and went 6-for-8 to finish with a batting average over .400. In ’97, with a fielding percentage of .996705, I sat out the last game of the season. Here’s my reasoning: our team was out of the race, so why risk kicking one and losing an all-time record? It wasn’t the ballsiest move of my life, but I’m not apologizing.
Houston’s Craig Biggio made 25 errors that year to my 2. Yet he won his fourth straight Gold Glove as the National League’s best-fielding second baseman. The next spring, when we played the Astros, Biggio told me, “Bret, you should have won. You had a better year in the field.” A year later the league’s managers and coaches voted for me instead. That trophy might be my favorite. The first of my four Gold Gloves proved how hard I’d worked to help the team one way or another.
But I still couldn’t buy a hit.
Finally I phoned Dad. “My swing’s gone,” I said. “What’s wrong with me?”
He’d been watching me on TV. He said, “You stink, but we can fix it.”
Kansas City fired Dad that summer. His Royals had finished second in the AL Central in 1995, his first season as a major-league manager. They’d fallen to fifth and last the following year and were running last again when they dumped him in July of ’97. Dad would never make excuses, so I’ll explain for him. Those Royals teams of his would have finished last if you gave them four outs an inning. They proved it by playing worse under his replacement, Tony Muser. Getting fired had to hurt, but you won’t be shocked to hear that Dad took it like a man. When people asked what happened in Kansas City, he gave them that level gaze of his and said there were three sure things in a manager’s life: death, taxes, and getting your ass fired.
It was a tough stretch for the Boones. Matt scuffled his first year in pro ball, batting .204 for the Tigers’ rookie-league club in Florida. Aaron, coming off his rookie season with the Reds, rode the bench in Cincinnati. He also had a medical condition no one outside the family knew about, a heart problem that first came up when he was at USC. Doctors said he could play, but at some point Aaron would probably need open-heart surgery.
My problems were trivial next to that. In four seasons with the Reds I’d averaged 12 home runs and 60 RBIs. Those numbers were about what they expected when they traded for me, but they sounded puny to me—way too similar to my plink-hitting dad’s numbers. I’d just become a dad myself—Suzi gave birth to our first child, Savannah, that year—but aside from some sleep deprivation during home stands, parenthood had no connection to my slump. Suzi did the work on the home front with an assist from Mom, who’d fly to Florida (or Mars) if she could rustle up our dinner or change a diaper.
Mom’s commute got three thousand miles shorter that off-season. We moved back to Orange County so she could help Suzi while Dad helped me save my career.
Growing up, I never asked for his advice, and, later on, he and I were nothing alike at the plate. I swung for the fences. He tried to put the ball in play. I trained myself to be a Gold Glove fielder, but above all I was a hitter. Dad was the opposite, an elite fielder and game-caller who chipped in enough base hits to contribute now and then. Yet as time passed, I began to appreciate his eye. Like a lot of players who fight for their place in the big leagues, he’d always paid close attention to every aspect of the game. He had to, because other guys had more natural ability. In that way, he was like a lot of managers who rise from the ranks of no-name players. What do Sparky Anderson, Bruce Bochy, Bobby Cox, Whitey Herzog, Tony La Russa, Tommy Lasorda, and Mike Matheny have in common? They were marginal big leaguers who became tremendous managers. Because they learned to outsmart guys they couldn’t outplay.
In my ballsy, self-assured, totally naïve youth, I didn’t need my banjo-hitting father’s help. But, as I said before, the older you get, the smarter your dad gets. By 1997 I was learning to li
sten. Dad would leave a phone message: “You’re pulling off the ball.” Or “Your stride’s too long.” He became my hitting guru. I’d fly him to Atlanta or Pittsburgh to watch me in the batting cage. We got closer than ever before, but it wasn’t enough to bail out my season. I’d get two hits the next night, then go 0-for-15. So he staged an intervention.
The Reds’ season ended in Montreal on September 28, 1997. Aaron went 4-for-5 with a double and three RBIs, his best game of the year, while I finished with an embarrassing 7 homers in more than 500 trips to the plate to go with my average of .223.
Ordinarily I took three months off at the end of a season, trading my baseball gear for golf clubs and decompressing until New Year’s Day, when I’d head for the batting cage to prep for spring training two months later. But this was no ordinary off-season. On Wednesday, October 1, in the middle of the ’97 playoffs, I met Dad at a friend’s batting cage in Anaheim. Dad never hit much, but he could teach you to hit. Over the next five months we worked seven days a week to make me a different sort of hitter. Starting with my stance.
“It hasn’t been working. They keep beating you inside,” he said. My closed stance made me vulnerable to inside fastballs. So we moved my front foot away from the plate. Now I could extend my arms and get the fat of the bat on that pitch. I could cover the outside corner by keeping my hands back a split second longer. If the ball was inside I could trigger the big swing; if not, I could shoot it to right field or up the middle.
Sound simple? It wasn’t. After five years in the big leagues, it felt bizarre to open my stance to the point where I was practically facing the pitcher. Established major leaguers almost never try something so drastic. At the same time, I saw one benefit right away. Opening my stance brought my right eye into play. Right-handed hitters like me rely on the left eye, which is closer to the pitcher. Lucky for me, my left eye is better than my right. But once I got my own face out of the way, I saw the ball better than ever. It was the difference between watching a crummy old TV and a crisp HD image.
We weren’t finished. “Your grip’s all wrong,” Dad said.
So I changed the way I’d held a baseball bat since I was a year old knocking Wiffle balls over the house with Gramps. I switched from a conventional grip, with my right wrist cocked to the right-hand side of the bat, to what players call a wrapped grip. I moved my right hand counterclockwise, toward the top of the bat. It felt doubly bizarre, like trying to grip the bat with my feet. “It works for Griffey,” Dad said. The wrapped grip would keep me from swinging at the inside fastballs I was used to looking for, but that was the idea: to be less of a fastball hitter and more of an anyball hitter. Along with my new stance it would help me spray the ball to all fields. Instead of trying to yank everything over the left-field fence, I’d be able to hit the ball out to right-center and right field.
If it worked.
Two hundred swings a day, seven days a week, six thousand swings a month later, the bat felt almost comfortable. Dangerous, even. By the time I reported to spring training, I was ready.
Did you ever have a day when everything went right? Breakfast tastes perfect. The weather clears up the moment you step outside. Traffic parts for you all the way to work, where the boss calls you into his office to give you a raise. You drive home to a loving family, your favorite dinner, and a night of passion with your soul mate, who happens to look like a supermodel.
That’s how the ’98 season felt. With my new stance and new grip, I started hitting on the first day of spring training and never stopped. That summer I made my first All-Star team. That was another distinction for the Boones. I was the eleventh All-Star in baseball history whose father had been one, too. (How many can you name? Sandy Alomar Jr. and Roberto Alomar, Moises Alou, Buddy Bell, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Hegan, Todd Hundley, Vance Law…and Bob Boone.) But how many also had an All-Star grandfather? Just me.
After a two-homer night in August, I smoked down the stretch to finish with a team-leading 24 homers and 95 RBIs. My .266/.324/.458 slash line didn’t match Gramps’s in 1955, when he led the American League in RBIs (.284/.346/.476), but my 1998 was the second-best offensive year in Boone history. As Gramps himself liked to point out, he made 19 errors in 1955, more than twice as many as my nine in 1998, so maybe my year was the family’s best. I’d never say it put me up there with Bonds, Biggio, Tony Gwynn, Chipper Jones, and Larry Walker, but I was in their league, one of the best players in the National League.
So I felt a little proud of myself. At age twenty-nine I’d done the hardest thing in the world, changed the way I swung a bat. I’d grown as a player and as a man, and grown to love the game more than ever. I was looking forward to more All-Star seasons in Cincinnati, playing with Larkin and Aaron.
That winter, Reds executives gathered in Cincinnati. It was the week before Christmas. General Manager Jim Bowden wanted to talk trade with his brain trust, manager Jack McKeon and the club’s top scouts and advisors. The Reds needed pitching.
“First things first,” Bowden said. “John Schuerholz made us an offer.” Schuerholz, the Atlanta GM, was offering a potential ace. Denny Neagle had gone 20-5 to lead a Braves staff featuring Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine in 1997. He’d won 16 games in ’98. But he wouldn’t come cheap. “The Braves want a bat.”
Bowden went around the table, asking the others what they thought. Finally he got to an advisor he counted on. My dad.
“They want Bret Boone,” Bowden said. “Bob, what do you think?”
“Yes,” Dad answered. “I’d make the deal.”
Traded again. Bowden phoned me with the news. He said he never wanted to send me away, but Neagle was a frontline starter. Even Dad agreed.
I said, “Jim, I get it. It’s the business of baseball.” In fact I was almost flattered to be traded for a 20-game winner. So Bowden and I were okay, but he still had some fences to mend. He had to explain the deal to the press and fans in Cincinnati—a “budding star” like me for a starting pitcher they needed. Even worse, he had to deal with Mom. As Bowden said years later, “Bret understood, and Bob understood, but Sue Boone wouldn’t talk to me for a while after I made that trade.”
I was starting to feel well traveled. That’s a term for a guy who gets traded a lot. At least it’s preferable to “journeyman.” A journeyman is an aging, marginal guy who hangs on for years by hooking on with different teams, which is better in turn than the lowest of the well-traveled low, a cancer in the clubhouse. That’s a jerk who does a Mr. Hyde on your team’s chemistry. I’ve known some of those in my time. Me, I was more of a sunbeam in the clubhouse.
Not that Atlanta needed help in that area. The Braves went from win to win with the sort of cool professionalism that reminded me of my dad. They were the class of the National League, winners of six of the last seven NL East titles. When I arrived they were in the middle of a run of eleven straight first-place finishes, and fourteen of fifteen from 1991 through 2005. The Braves had a star-studded clubhouse: Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, and that famous rotation of number one starters. With stars and studs like that, they didn’t need me coming on too strong, so I dialed down what one reporter called my vaunted charisma. I was a cog and wanted to be a good one. The papers said the Braves had dealt Neagle for “Bret Boone, the second baseman they coveted.” As General Manager Schuerholz saw it, “We needed a second baseman and wanted an excellent one. Bret gives us more offense and stellar defense at second base.”
Much as I missed Barry Larkin, I got a good thing going with my new double-play partner. Walt Weiss was a former Rookie of the Year. Silky smooth at shortstop, Walt was one of those light-hitting thinkers who’ll outsmart you if they can. He’s now the Colorado Rockies’ manager. We never had the mind-meld I enjoyed with Larkin, but his footwork and positioning on defense were comparable to Barry’s, and we didn’t have to make a lot of circus catches to keep our team in the game. When you’re playing behind Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine, and Kevin Millwood, an 18-game winner that year, your
job gets simpler. You have to make the routine plays—all of them—or Maddux will give you a look that makes you want to retire on the spot. You should also hit enough to help the team, which I did, with a boost from a side benefit of playing for the Braves: I never had to face Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine, and Millwood.
It was also a pleasure to see Chipper Jones at work. The guy showed up at the park at two in the afternoon for a night game—not to take grounders or hit in the cage but because the stadium was his world. He’d play cards for hours in the clubhouse. He was smart about the demands of the long season, too. In the second half of the season, he didn’t even bother taking batting practice. Didn’t need it. His swing was dialed in, so why should he wear his body down? A few of our teammates grumbled about that—“special treatment,” they called it. “We have to take BP, why doesn’t he?” I told them there was one good reason. “Because he’s The Man. That guy’s carrying us all on his back. Let him do what he wants.” (You still hear fans and even players say a manager should treat all players the same, but that’s a crock. The manager’s job is to get the most out of each employee. If that means challenging one guy and babying another, so be it. Back in Cincinnati, Davey Johnson used to yell at me and coddle Reggie Sanders. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I do now. Johnson knew that some men respond to a kick in the butt, while others need a pat on the back. The best managers aren’t consistent, they’re flexible.)
Batting second in front of Chipper, I socked 20 home runs and drove in 63 to offset a lackluster average of .252. My numbers paled beside his .319, 45 homers, and 110 RBIs, but then Chipper was the league’s near-unanimous MVP. I scored 102 runs, second on the club to his 116, while we won 103 games and beat the Astros and Mets in the playoffs to face the Yankees in the 1999 World Series.