The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

by Ben Lindbergh

  The only thing Parker does better against right-handers is get hit by the ball, which he sometimes tries to do intentionally by placing his meaty arm in the path of the pitch. All of his prodigious power, built by squats and bench presses and protein shakes and four dumps a day, manifests against southpaws. Barrera, the Pacifics’ closer, is ready, or about to be, and he’s held righties to a .163/.179/.163 line. Barrera vs. Parker would be the worst matchup imaginable for the Stompers, yet Kavanaugh stays put. The closer is the closer because he’s the closer, and closers don’t come into the game in the eighth. I revise my earlier statement: This is the worst managerial move ever made.

  Lovejoy starts Parker with a fastball inside at 84, and Parker checks his swing but can’t prevent himself from fouling it off. Then he swings through a fastball on the outside corner, a vicious hack, and the Pacifics are one strike away from escaping with a 3-2 lead. But for some reason, our bench senses something big.

  “Everybody was like, ‘0–2, he’s gonna fucking ambush one,’” Sam tells me later.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “No idea,” he says.

  Aside from the auspicious matchup, there’s no reason to be optimistic about this pitch. Parker has a slightly below-average swing rate on 0–2, so it’s not as if he’s known for trying to do damage when he’s down in the count. Worse, he hasn’t gotten a hit all season after starting a plate appearance 0–2: He’s 0-for-22, with two walks and a hit-by-pitch. Expecting Parker to get a hit here is the opposite of playing the percentages. Then again, so is using a lefty specialist to face a lefty-killer.

  Parker crouches in his open stance, bat bouncing on his shoulder. Lovejoy whips his arm around, and the ball is on its way, headed not for Gingras’s glove, which is well off the outside corner, but for the plate and the fat part of Parker’s bat. (Pitchers, remember, routinely miss their spots.) There’s the freeze-frame moment before Parker starts his swing …

  And then there’s pandemonium, hot team and cold team combining to cause a storm. It’s a high, arcing shot to left-center. Parker, who despite his bulk has by far the fastest home run trot in the league, drops his bat and starts sprinting. With two outs, the runners are off on contact, Moch from second and Hurley from first. Williams and Pace converge in the outfield just as Moch rounds third and Hurley rounds second, running with the short strides and tucked-in arms that the players say make him look like a velociraptor. Williams pulls up, and Pace, still reaching up with his glove, slides feet-first just before he hits the wall, rebounding off its base to fall flat on his back. The infield umpire signals home run as he jogs toward the play: It’s a three-run homer, and a 5-3 Stompers lead. Tim is screaming so loud that no font size could do his decibel level justice.

  Moch is leaping, skipping, and raising his hands as he heads home with high, dainty steps. He stomps on home plate with both feet. Hurley hits the plate seconds later and slaps Moch’s butt. The rest of the team, including Sam, spills onto the field, and Moch hugs Parker and hops a few feet at his side, as if the two are in a tandem sack race. I hug Jessie. I hug our scouts. I sprint back down to the dugout. Whatever chemical cocktail my brain releases feels too good to be legal, producing a blinding, slow-motion moment of nonsexual ecstasy. At least I think it’s nonsexual. It’s pretty hard to tell.

  The euphoria lasts about six seconds, though it seems longer. An instant later, everything changes. At Pace’s urging, the ump reverses his call: He’s now calling Parker’s hit a ground rule double.

  It feels like the moment when you wake from a wonderful dream, and you fight to stay inside of it but can’t stop it from slipping away. Already, Parker is heading to first to give his elbow guard to Tommy before he goes back to second base, and Hurley is returning to third. Then the team clears the field and it’s back to baseball, a tie game instead of one in which we have a two-run lead. Two minutes ago, a tie game would have made me elated. Now I’m numb and wondering why this had to be the one windless night in San Rafael history, and why we hadn’t won enough to get the game to Sonoma, where a drive like Parker’s would have cleared the wall without any confusion.

  I have a dirty secret to confess: I didn’t think it was a homer. I thought I’d seen it bounce inside the fence, although I couldn’t tell where it went after that, and when everyone celebrated and the ump said it was gone, I was happy to defer. Tim, who was watching from his radio table on the first-base side, says he’ll take it to his grave that the ball bounced off the concrete on the other side of the wall. To a man, the Stompers swear it was gone. It hopped, they insist, and balls don’t hop like that on the soft warning track in San Rafael. Theo makes the convincing case that Pace didn’t catch it, and because Pace catches everything playable, it had to be out of play. Months later, Theo asks Pace about the play. Pace says he slid, and the ball hit the ground three inches from his glove and bounced over the wall. He was mad at himself for missing it. “Definitely on the warning track,” he says. “I don’t slide if it’s not in play.”

  On August 13, we lost a game in San Rafael that ended on a similarly perplexing play. We were down by two, with two outs and Isaac on first, and Hurley lifted a fly to right that Bekakis tried to catch. He dove, tumbled, and had his back to the field for a few seconds, but the umpire never ran out: He just waited for Bekakis to raise his glove with the ball inside, quite possibly after picking it up and putting it in there himself. He was probably telling the truth, and Pace probably is also, both because he has no real reason not to and because with Williams as a witness, and the way teammates talk (to each other at first, and eventually to their opponents), a cover-up would be a difficult secret to keep. Sam still thinks it was gone. But we don’t know, and we’ll never know, because the only source we have is someone else’s word. It’s odd not to know, a throwback to an earlier era: Major League Baseball has been using video replay to review boundary calls since 2008, and TV broadcasts have done so for decades. But in the Pacific Association, there’s no replay ump to appeal to, and on our zoomed-out, behind-home-plate video the fielders and the ball are too blurry to tell. Even those CSI guys couldn’t enhance the image enough to prove it was a double beyond a reasonable doubt.

  When the game resumes, Kristian Gayday pinch-hits for Rubino, and Kavanaugh finally takes out Lovejoy and brings in in Barrera, who gets Kristian to pop out to shallow left to end the inning. On his way back to the dugout, Hurley steps on the plate for the second time in the inning. Like the last time he touched it, the scoreboard stays the same.

  * * *

  Sean is back out for the bottom of the eighth, which he starts by hitting Jake Taylor. “Stoops should get up for Gingras,” I say, and Sam says it’s a good idea. He tells Tommy, and Tommy tells Yoshi, and on the other end of our human bullpen phone Stoops starts throwing. But Sean bears down, getting Williams and Tucker to strike out swinging with identical sliders. Time is called, and everyone meets on the mound. Stoops is close to ready, but Yoshi leaves Sean in to face the lefty-hitting catcher. After two fouls, Gingras sends a weak grounder to second, and Yuki flips to Moch for the last out of the inning. Sean pumps his fist, a show of emotion he reserves for Super Smash Bros. and fireman games against San Rafael.

  Leading off the ninth, Eddie works the count to 3-1, then unloads on an 85 mph meatball from Barrera. It’s going, going, and not gone, because there’s still no wind to propel it a few feet farther, and it falls into Pace’s glove right in front of the wall in right-center. Yuki also flies out to Pace, and Keith grounds to short.

  It’s now the bottom of the ninth, and the game is still tied. Sean has thrown 51 pitches, but he’s a starter in disguise, and his season high out of the bullpen is 74. The bottom of the order is due up, Bekakis and Kiriakos, so he comes back out for inning four.

  He starts Bekakis with a strike, then just misses off the outside corner with a slider. He releases the 1-1 pitch too late and it also goes wide, and then he tries an over-the-top curveball that ends up in the dirt. The 3-1 pitch is right
down the middle, with Bekakis taking all the way, but the 3-2 changeup bends too far inside. The Pacifics’ leadoff man is on. Kiriakos drops down a predictable sac bunt, advancing Bekakis to second. Sam motions the outfielders in.

  This would be the time to use Stoops, with the left-handed Pace up and Sean facing hitters for the second time. It’s not a no-brainer—definitely not a Polanco/Lovejoy/Barrera debacle—but maybe, if we could forget how hard we fought to get Sean into this role, and how he finished off the Pacifics in two relief appearances just like this one, and how we’ve seen him hold hitters to a .170/.211/.283 line with runners in scoring position this season, we would see more clearly that replacing him is the right move. Yoshi doesn’t pull him, and we don’t protest, because leaving Sean in has always worked before. This time, though, he misses outside, misses outside again, misses low, and throws an intentional fourth ball, bringing Gonzalez to the plate. Now Yoshi walks to the mound, and Sam and I, standing side by side, are chanting under our breath, “leave him in, leave him in.” Gonzalez is 3-for-6 against Sean on the season, with two walks, but we believe the big-sample stats that say Sean is great against righties. The double play is in order, and getting grounders is Sean’s specialty. Yoshi leaves him in, and Sam and I exhale.

  With the speedy Bekakis leading from second, Sean delivers to Gonzalez, who waits in his closed, pigeon-toed stance. During a game in early July, as the Stompers tattooed Pacifics starter Wander Beras, Feh said, “Too many sliders, too early. Only Conroy can do that.” Normally, Conroy can, but this first-pitch slider is down the middle, too high and too flat. Tim Livingston narrates the end of the Stompers’ season. “And the first pitch—swing and a lined shot, left-center field, a base hit,” he says. “Coming in to score will be Bekakis, and the San Rafael Pacifics are the champions of the Pacific Association.” Sean doesn’t see the ball fall. He glances back to gauge where it will land, starts to back up home, and realizes there’s no need. He trudges off the field, with the sprinting, celebrating Pacifics collapsing in a happy pile behind him.

  “You were lethal,” Sam tells Sean in the clubhouse moments later. “You can get away with fifty mistakes, or you can lose on one. And we got away with none.”

  “If there are two things I would have done differently,” Sean says, “it’s the 2-1 curveball to the leadoff guy [Bekakis], and staying in after I walked him. The last pitch was a mistake, but it’s not a regret, because I threw it hard.”

  When I walk across the grass to retrieve our tripod—still standing in the stagnant air—I pause for one last look at the field through the chain-link in the outfield. For the first time, I notice a dead spider sitting in the center of its web, which is attached to the top of the fence. It’s been there for some time, a husk that looks deceptively like a living thing. I empathize.

  * * *

  “Hey,” Moch says in the downcast clubhouse after the game. “Fuck it. Keep our heads up. Let’s not hang our heads too long.” It’s been about four minutes since the season ended in agonizing fashion, so some amount of head-hanging seems acceptable to us. Sam and Theo don’t take his words to heart.

  SAM: Well that was a stupid idea.

  THEO: Playing a baseball game?

  SAM: Coming and trying to run a baseball team.

  THEO: Yeah. Bad idea.

  SAM: Let’s not do that again.

  THEO: Better to be lucky than not very good.

  SAM: Better to be Kavanaugh than us.

  THEO: You see how fucking dumb this is? Coming down to something like that.

  SAM: Yup. A lot of dumb things.

  THEO: All of the things are dumb.

  “Fucking Pacifics,” Sam says to Andrew Parker. “Did it have to be the Pacifics? Pittsburg couldn’t have gotten hot?”

  “Are they the Yankees?” says Parker, with Moneyball on his mind. “And are we the A’s? Is that how this turned out?”

  “Yeah,” Sam says. “Three aces, couldn’t get it done.”

  Mac, the clubhouse attendant, gives a profane speech with three false endings, each almost-conclusion followed by another torrent of swear words. “We all fuckin’ did a lot of shit this year,” he says. “You guys gave me the fuckin’ best summer of my fuckin’ life.” Even in defeat, the Stompers evidently exude a powerful appeal: In the midst of the Pacifics’ celebrations, Zack Pace, who just helped beat us, asks Theo if he can manage the Stompers in 2016.

  Gradually, the players drift toward their rides. I watch their receding backs for the last time this year—in some cases, very likely the last time ever.

  During the drive to Sonoma in Tommy’s truck, Parker breaks the silence. “I thought I did something special for a second,” he says.

  Two days later, Sam sends me three responses to my pregame email, the one in which I’d sent the Stompers’ hitters links to my videos of the Pacifics’ pitchers.

  “Almost nobody watched these,” he says, citing the single-digit views. “Hate our team.”

  One minute later: “At least two or three clicks on each is me, at least one on each is Theo, and about eight or ten of Polanco’s are me. Hate.”

  Seconds later: “Also, are you really going to make a highlight video for Moch?”

  * * *

  I had the hero’s ending in mind by the time Parker passed second. Plucky sabermetric upstarts build a baseball team full of rookies and rejects. Trust a short righty who didn’t get drafted, and a D3 sidearmer who tops out in the mid-80s, because we judge them by their actions, not their appearances. Defeat the favorites, and their 6-foot-4 veteran with affiliated experience, because although they were bigger, they weren’t as smart. Goliath got complacent, leaving his starter in too long and bringing his closer in too late, while we pulled our starter early, having spent the whole season grooming a fireman for this moment.

  That story would’ve worked, but it’s not the one we got. We have to wear this one. And we did some things well in our last stand, particularly being patient against Polanco, who walked seven Stompers. We also did some things poorly: bad base running and defensive decisions. Yoshi, playing to type, blames the mistakes on our reliance on rookies, who are known to be terrible in big games. The irony is that Hurley lost his rookie status as soon as Bekakis scored. With his first pro season officially over, he’s been elevated to veteran, which means he’s no longer liable to make mental mistakes. If only he’d known two hours ago whatever it is he knows now.

  Sam and I lost our rookie status at the same time. Unlike Hurley’s, our baseball careers might be over. But if we were to continue, we could point to our prior experience. And as much as we’ve mocked baseball’s bias against rookies, we would be better, just by virtue of having been there before. We would still make mistakes, but fewer that were driven by bad process, the front-office equivalent of throwing the ball to the wrong base. The next time, we’d know not to hire someone with whom we wouldn’t work well. We’d know not to rely only on our powers of persuasion to the total exclusion of our power to put our foot down. We’d know that our spreadsheets are probably more predictive for pitchers than for position players. We haven’t lost our belief that data can help people build better baseball teams. We’ve just gained a greater appreciation for how hard it can be to collect and communicate.

  It’s not easy to motivate in an industry that’s older than all of us. But once we’d survived our first stumbles, the game got slower. In time, maybe we would get meaner, more aggressive, quicker to cut bait. “That may be the lesson I learned (or hope I learned) from this year,” Theo tells me months after our last loss. “I really wish I could go back in time to release Walker. Probably never even let him make the team.” None of us wanted Walker, but we didn’t have the words to say why, or the faith in ourselves to insist, or the heart to tell him.

  Even with all of our too-late starts and too-long leashes, we might have won a title had the wind cooperated, or had there been a bump on the warning track where Parker’s ball (probably) touched down, or had someone gott
en a glove on it but failed to hold on. Instead, we lost a one-run game in a one-game series, the ultimate unpredictive event. And Matt Kavanaugh, who made the craziest of all managerial moves—worse than any of the clunkers that cost me sleep this season—took his team to a title. I wish I could say he didn’t deserve it, but the Pacifics completed a heck of a comeback. Somebody should write a book about it.

  EPILOGUE

  San Carlos, California

  December 15, 2015

  Dear Theo,

  If I had to name my five favorite moments from this summer, the list would end up about seventy deep. Definitely one of those seventy, and maybe one of the true top five, would be when, two nights after the season ended, you offered me the Stompers’ 2016 managerial job. I was drowning in melancholy up to that point, not just because we had lost—not, actually, at all because we had lost; I have never in my life felt happier than in those six seconds when we thought Parker had homered, and to experience those six seconds, to know the highest emotion one can feel in baseball, is strangely satisfying enough—but because it was over, “it” the season and “It” the whole thing. Like an idiot, I had been looking forward to It being over. I had been fantasizing about finally replacing my dusty, sole-holed dugout shoes, about finally washing all the dust off myself and seeing what my daughter looked like these days. And then It ended Monday night, and I drove home Tuesday morning, and about thirty-five miles out of town, when I was descending toward the bridge, I felt the longing for It to keep being. Your offer felt like a lifeline.

  I also thought you were joking, or at least nuts, until we talked deep into that night with Parker and Gonzo and Tommy and Sean and they told me, yeah, of course they’d play on a team I was managing. Ben and I went into this season with the assumption that, as non-ex-player statheads, we might never have a place in the dugout. These guys I respected most were telling me that we had broken through. That I could contribute to this sport at a different level than I’d ever dreamed of.