The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

by Ben Lindbergh

  One thing Feh says to Sam is revealing: “The only person who can back me up and support me is Theo.” He never understood that Sam and I could have been the support. That we were making decisions, that we were vacuuming up information to make those decisions, and that we could have been his allies, with actual power that could have augmented his own. I remember a scene from the second game of the season, when Feh dropped his glasses in the dirt and then wiped them, without asking, on my sleeve. I had hoped in that moment that the gesture would symbolize a symbiotic relationship: Feh, on the field, getting dirty and doing the actual work, and Sam and me as sideline resources, helping him see clearly. And now I know what Feh was thinking: Hey, look, somebody’s sleeve.

  * * *

  “So we’ve had an issue here financially,” Theo tells Feh in Theo’s office, two hours and seven runs later and forty-five minutes after we all dogpiled (and yes, Feh did dogpile with us) and drank champagne from the bottle. “We need to unload payroll, you’re the most valuable guy.”

  “Sweet.”

  “You’re gonna go to Bridgeport. VanAsselberg wants you. They need an outfielder.”

  “No, I’m not going to Bridgeport.”

  “You’re not going to Bridgeport?”

  “No, I’m not going to Bridgeport. No chance. I get to choose where I can go. There’s no way I’m going to Bridgeport. That’s the worst place in the league, there’s no chance.”

  “I thought you’d appreciate the opportunity—”

  “I can get my own opportunities. Yeah. I’m outta here. I don’t even want to…”

  He picks up his check and walks out. We hear him walking farther down the hallway, and then Fehlandt gets the final word:

  “Hi-LAR-ious.”

  We’re happy to let him have it. After struggling to make small changes for half a season, we’re making the biggest change of all.

  * * *

  Feh’s firing removes the two obstacles preventing me from telling Taylor Eads, my still-unsigned crush from Spring Hill College, to come west: the manager’s resistance to change and the lack of room on the roster. Not only is there now room on the roster, there’s also room in the outfield, where Eads plays. For me, the prospect of Taylor taking Feh’s roster spot is deliciously sweet, although the perception that he’s filling Feh’s role on the roster will put extra pressure on him to perform.

  By this time, the other undrafted gems from the class of 2015 have given me more reason to trust Taylor’s ranking. Nick Sell homers in his first pro at-bat, makes the Pioneer League all-star team, and posts a .347/.401/.629 line at that level before earning a promotion to A ball, where he goes 5-for-5 with a homer in his third game. Collins Cuthrell carries an OPS over 1.000 into July; he’ll finish second on his team in homers, one bomb behind a twenty-five-year-old with affiliated experience. Eads was sandwiched between the two of them on our spreadsheet, but he’s still languishing on the proverbial waiver wire.

  Late on July 11—the night before the Stompers clinch the first-half title and Feh finds out he’s been traded—I send a cathartic text to Eads, which marks the first direct contact between us. “This is Ben Lindbergh from the Sonoma Stompers,” I type, my fingers stroking the keyboard as seductively as possible. “Could you give me a call when you get this?” The next morning, the response arrives. “Yes sir I’ll call you in about a hour or so after breakfast,” he says. Coach Sims wasn’t kidding when he called Taylor “the yes sir no sir type.”

  Each of us has imagined this moment for a month, but our actual conversation is quick. I say I’m sorry to have strung him along. In his sped-up drawl, he says he’s happy to have the opportunity. I say he’ll be starting as soon as he gets to Sonoma. He says he’ll look at flights. Not long after we express our mutual excitement and hang up, he texts again to say, “Just booked my flight sir and I’ll be in San Francisco at 11:30 tomorrow morning.” Another “sir”: This is what it would look like if Marcie texted Peppermint Patty. Most players ask if the Stompers pay for transportation, or confirm their flight details before they book to make sure someone will meet them at the airport. Money is tight for Taylor—his family is just getting back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina and his parents’ divorce, and he’s on scholarship at Spring Hill, where he’s struggled to buy his books—but he isn’t going to ask about specifics and give me a chance to change my mind. At this point, he’s probably willing to walk from SFO to Sonoma.

  The next day, Tim Livingston and I drive to San Francisco to pick him up. He’s a quarter of an inch under six feet but powerfully built, with Andrew Parker–sized forearms. He says the flight was smooth, although he has no frame of reference: This was his first time in an airplane, and it’s also his first time west of San Antonio. Like any tourist on an inaugural visit to the Bay Area, he leans forward to take pictures when we cross the Golden Gate Bridge and reflexively defends his hometown burgers when we stop for In-N-Out.

  Taylor hasn’t played since Spring Hill’s last game on April 21, which means he has to shake off almost two months of atrophy from virtual retirement. When the White Sox workout didn’t lead to an offer, he says, he “kinda just shut it down.” He dropped weight, thinking there was “no reason to be heavy anymore.” He worked construction and went a month without hitting, until Coach McCall told him to expect a text from me. Then he spent some time at a batting cage, a poor substitute for live pitching. He has three games to get his groove back before the second half starts and the wins and losses once again count toward the standings.

  My anticipation of Taylor’s debut is tempered by my embarrassment about being way off on Mark Hurley. The day after my email exchange with Feh about Eads, in which Feh predicted that Hurley was about to break out, Hurley hit a two-run homer—his first of the season—in a game against Vallejo that the Stompers won 8-7. I was in the dugout, and as Hurley crossed the plate I turned to make eye contact with Feh, prepared to take my medicine. He cackled and came over to give me a pound.

  By July 14, the day Taylor debuts in the six hole, Hurley is hitting cleanup. He’s earned it: A 3-for-6 showing in the previous game has raised his seasonal line to .315/.382/.438. And he’s about to embark on his hottest streak of the season. From July 16 to July 18, Hurley has the following sequence of twelve plate appearances:

  Single, hit by pitch, single, strikeout, reach on error, single, double, single, single, single, single, double

  That’s eleven of twelve trips to the plate without making an out, including eight in a row. For a few hours on the eighteenth, I think there may be a way to restore some of my pride by claiming partial credit for Hurley’s hot streak. Before the game, he asks to see video of Vallejo’s starter, and I joke that he doesn’t need the help, since he’s coming off a 5-for-5 night. “This is why,” he says, pointing to my laptop. Those three words justify all the hours of game logging and video editing: Our hottest hitter attributes his hotness to us! I show Hurley video of Admirals righty Scott Weinschenk, who Sam says is starting. But when I get to the game, I discover that southpaw Devon Ramirez is starting instead. (We would pay a small fortune for an accurate “probable starters” page for the Pacific Association.) Hurley goes 2-for-5 with a double anyway. Maybe my laptop is overrated. (Weinschenk starts the next day, and Hurley singles and doubles in two at-bats against him. I am taking credit for those.)

  With that two-hit game—one month to the day that I tried to tell Feh that Hurley was our weak point—Hurley reaches his high-water mark for the season, riding a fifteen-game hitting streak with nine multihit games in his last thirteen. His slash line stands at .350/.410/.497, good for a 174 wRC+, which makes him the third-best hitter in the Pacific Association on a per-plate-appearance basis.

  This is persuasive evidence that I’m stupid. After a sixth of the season, I wanted to bench the guy who’s been the best hitter on our team in the first half. I’ve spent weeks bemoaning Feh’s interference, but in this case, deferring to Feh saved me from making a major mistake. Lately, I’ve
been thinking of trading Feh as our Moneyball moment, a cousin to the scene in Michael Lewis’s book in which GM Billy Beane, irked by manager Art Howe’s insistence on starting the scout-certified prospect Carlos Peña instead of the undervalued on-base machine Scott Hatteberg in 2002, trades Peña to the Tigers so that Howe’s hands will be tied. (We did Billy one better: In our version, he would have traded Howe to the Tigers.) What Moneyball omits is that Peña hit almost as well as Hatteberg down the stretch in ’02, then outplayed him in each of Hatteberg’s three subsequent seasons in Oakland and eventually blossomed into an all-star, a Gold Glover, a home run king, and a two-time top-ten MVP finisher. Sometimes the scouts are right. Either I lacked the experience to see what Feh saw in Hurley or I was blinded by confirmation bias, duped by my preconceived notions into believing the small-sample stats.

  I’ve also overlooked some nonstatistical factors. Even before his debut, Taylor’s presence has become a clubhouse flash point. He’s more obviously “our guy” than the spreadsheet recruits who’ve been here since spring training, and there’s some grumbling about his signing that we didn’t foresee. Every veteran, it seems, knows someone they’d rather we’d signed than an unproven rookie from Louisiana with gaudy college stats. Matt Hibbert has a friend from Cal State Long Beach, Brennan Metzger, who was recently released from San Jose, the Giants’ high-A affiliate. Isaac Wenrich has a friend from San Diego who was released from the Indians’ high-A affiliate in 2012 and hasn’t played professionally since 2013. Both of them wonder why we signed an unknown when we could have brought in one of their buddies instead. I feel like a frustrated father, who, tormented by backtalk from his kids, loses his cool and declares, “This isn’t a democracy.”

  Outside the sports industry, it’s not the norm for employees to dictate hiring decisions: CEOs don’t distribute company-wide surveys when they want to replace a sales rep, and editors in chief don’t get the go-ahead from everyone on the masthead before bringing in a contributing writer. But “pro athlete” is different from most jobs, in that players see each other naked, cope with pressure from fans, and depend to a greater degree on complementary skills and communication styles (although that’s debatable in baseball, compared to more free-flowing sports). It makes sense to give players some say in vetoing potential problems like Will Price, particularly if the potential problem tries to pull every pitch. But the spreadsheet is impartial, whereas a player may care more about doing a favor for a friend (or gaining a good drinking buddy) than scouring the country for the best option available.

  One would think that our team would be more receptive to rookies, since we wouldn’t be where we are without them. In fact, they’re our defining feature. Halfway through the season, each club’s identity has crystallized in my mind. The San Rafael Pacifics, who have the most former members of higher-level leagues, are the oldest, biggest, and most balding. Led by Matt Kavanaugh, who’s never not rocking his wraparound Oakleys, they’re the better-equipped bullies from an ’80s ski comedy, baseball meets Better Off Dead. They live and breathe big league, from their fancy pullovers to their midgame celebrity autograph signings. The Pittsburg Diamonds are the most ragtag, the team with the worst website, the most typos on Facebook, and the latest-posted lineup cards; their best hitter, Scott David, wears three different numbers on the front of his jersey, back of his jersey, and batting helmet, and they shamelessly copy the Stompers’ Jose Canseco publicity stunt by signing Canseco themselves. The Admirals are aggressive, attempting to steal and bunt the most often. They’re also the team with the most off-brand MLB bloodlines: Their manager is Garry Templeton Jr., and their roster features the brothers of Brandon Phillips and Javier Baez (P. J. and Gadiel), and the son of Lloyd Moseby (Lydell). Naturally, they trade for Tyger Pederson, too. We’re the team with the Corduroy Crew, and our roster takes after our inexperience. Weighted by playing time, the Stompers have the league’s lowest average age and the highest percentage of players in their first professional season.

  Yet despite our rookies’ valuable contributions, the Stompers’ elders tend to focus on their flaws. It’s a mental block they almost can’t be blamed for, a condition neither Sam nor I can correct. As talented as our young players are, they inevitably make mistakes—by definition, the most damning kind, rookie mistakes. And whenever one of these errors occurs, a veteran is waiting with an “I told you so,” either spoken or strongly implied. It’s the latest skirmish in the longest-running battle in baseball, a Darwinian struggle for roster spots in which each rookie’s rise comes at an older player’s expense.

  Before he meets Taylor, Captain Morgan—who never misses a chance to badmouth the Stompers’ front office—asks Sam the question we’ve grappled with from the start: “If Eads is so good, why he is available to us?” While Sam and I ask (and attempt to answer) that question about all our recruits, Captain sees it as an argument ender. By that standard, we might as well cut our entire team. At this level, we have to take other leagues’ leavings and like it.

  We know it will take time to determine Taylor’s true talent level, but our lives will be easier if he impresses right away. Sadly, his mechanics are the wrong kind of eye-catching, which means he’s most convincing as a slugger when he’s standing still. “The showcases don’t really help me out too much,” he says, echoing what we heard from Sean Conroy. “I don’t have the blazing speed or the cannon of an arm, so I don’t stand out at those. I have to play the game.” We can testify to his unimpressive appearance. In BP, he doesn’t drive the ball or even look as if he could. His swing, with its one-handed release, is all upper body, with none of the separation that leads to torque and power. His warm-up hacks are worse: He starts his slowed-down practice swings at shoulder height, then angles them upward, as if he’s trying to meet a piñata or a ball being thrown by someone standing on Randy Johnson’s shoulders. His throws are equally inelegant: His windup has a hitch unlike any other I’ve seen, a weird wasted movement that robs his arm of momentum and makes my shoulder sore when I try to mimic it in a mirror. I’m hoping he’s the Stompers’ Millennium Falcon, an apparent piece of junk with concealed capabilities. He hit .538 somehow.

  “I felt like through college, I put everything in that I had to do to get a draft call, or get this call, and it paid off,” he says. “I’ve always needed one shot, and I feel like I’m gonna take advantage of it.” If he doesn’t, it’s our asses.

  Eads couldn’t have asked for a softer landing. In his first game, he faces the worst starter on the worst team in the league, Admirals lefty Nick Flory, who enters the game with a league-leading ten homers allowed, three more than anyone else. He acquits himself adequately at the plate, whiffing twice, walking twice, and scoring a run. No one expects his timing to be perfect, but his patience is as advertised. He sees twenty-one pitches, backing up Chris Long’s claim that he’d wear out opposing pitchers.

  Unfortunately, Eads’s offense is an afterthought, overshadowed by a few frantic seconds in right field. He has no trouble with his first fielding chance, a low liner right at him for the first out of the fifth, but three batters later, with two outs and a runner on first, his rust is exposed. He breaks in on a fly ball, then realizes that it’s caught in the wind. He backpedals furiously but drops the ball, looking incredibly uncoordinated. It’s a two-base error, and an Admirals run scores. Taylor seems completely out of his element. Watching the play, I want to slip out of the stadium; I can’t imagine how he feels. When he gets back to the dugout, head down, Sam tries to comfort him with some words about the wind, but he barely responds. “Oh, God, that was bad,” he tells us days later at lunch. “I don’t know if I ever really played a game where it was that windy. It doesn’t get windy like that back at home.”

  The next day, Eads goes 0-for-3, and his outfield issues recur, this time in left. In the second inning, Admirals third baseman Josh Wong sends a catchable ball toward Taylor. Shortstop Yuki Yasuda goes out, and tentatively, Taylor runs in, but the ball drops. He doesn’t get
a glove on it, so it’s scored a hit, but it’s an E-7 in the minds of everyone watching. “I’m not used to playing with these players, and I was playing deep, and on that one I figured the shortstop was going to get back,” he explains at lunch. In isolation, it’s an understandable screwup between a Japanese-speaker and a guy in his second game after a long layoff, the way the first mistake was an understandable screwup caused by a swirling wind. But two understandable screwups in quick succession start to look like a pattern, particularly when the skeptics are watching for weakness.

  The next afternoon, I get a text from Feh, whom I haven’t talked to in a week. “Way to not listen to a lifetime of baseball knowledge!” he says. “Nice decision with the Eads pickup! I heard he can’t even catch a fly ball!”

  Over the next two hours, he sends me literally twenty more texts, most of them variations on this theme. The digitized I-told-you-sos march down my screen, mocking my naïveté.

  “I’ve been planning a book on my career for years now and you have given me one of the best chapters ever! Hahahaha.”

  “When people want to sell their guys they are going to sell the shit out of them. Very rarely is what you hear actually what you get.”

  “The scouting report you gave me sounded way too good to be true.”

  “If those numbers were really that related to his ability he would have gotten a job somewhere else.”

  “Pitchers have a far greater chance of success than a position player because there is so much more to being a position player.”

  “When you see numbers like his and nothing came of it, then something is off.”