Down to the Last Pitch

by Tim Wendel

  Baseball, though, often proves to be the cruelest of sports. On the same day Dalkowski was measured for his big-league uniform, he pitched against the New York Yankees in a spring training game. Things began smoothly enough. As his teammates marveled, Dalkowski struck out Roger Maris on three pitches. But when Dalkowski threw a slider to New York’s Phil Linz, he felt something pop in his elbow. Despite the pain, he tried to stay on the mound. Yet a pitch to the next batter, the Yankees’ Bobby Richardson, flew to the screen, and Dalkowski had to come out of the game. Ironically, if Dalkowski had been injured a decade or so later, after Tommy John successfully underwent ligament replacement surgery at the hand of Dr. Frank Jobe, his career probably could have been saved. As it was, however, the Orioles broke camp and headed north for the start of the regular season without Dalkowski. Instead, he started the season in Rochester and couldn’t win a game. From there he was sent back to Elmira, where Weaver was still managing at the time. But not even the skipper who would one day be inducted into the Hall of Fame could save the career of one of his favorite players ever. Dalkowski threw forty-one innings, winning just two games. His legendary fastball was gone.

  As Dalkowski soon disappeared from baseball, relievers such as Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter, Lee Smith and Rich “Goose” Gossage began to dominate in the late innings. Called firemen or stoppers, they often pitched two innings or more and filled in as the ballclub required. A season after saving a league-high twenty-six games for the White Sox in 1974, for example, Gossage started twenty-nine games and threw 224 innings.

  Saves didn’t become an official statistic until 1969, and those who performed this duty became known as closers because they finished or closed out the game from whatever point they went in. Specialized late-inning relief work and how closers could be deployed was relatively new to the game in 1991. This phase was redefined beginning in 1987 by Oakland Athletics manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan, and its beneficiary was a very reluctant Dennis Eckersley.

  In the late 1980s the Athletics were a pennant contender. Their attack was keyed by Rickey Henderson, José Canseco, Dave Henderson, and newcomer Mark McGwire. The top of the rotation had Dave Stewart and Curt Young, and that was where Eckersley figured he would be. After all, he had won at least twelve games in seven of his first eight seasons in the majors. He had pitched a no-hitter for Cleveland in 1977 and reached the twenty-victory plateau the following season. First and foremost, Eckersley saw himself as a starting pitcher.

  That changed when Jay Howell, the A’s primary reliever, developed arm problems. Howell had arrived in Oakland as part of the three-way trade that landed Kevin Tapani in New York. In a separate deal with the Chicago Cubs, Eckersley came home to the Bay Area. He was battling alcoholism at the time and wasn’t looking for any major changes in his professional life. Yet La Russa and Duncan told Eckersley that he would be in the bullpen and pitch no more than an inning at a time. In other words, the entire relief corps, mixing and matching left-handed and right-handed pitchers depending who was at bat for the opposing team (something La Russa loved to do), a conga line of hurlers, would lead up to Eckersley, who would nail down the final outs.

  “Eck always throws strikes,” Duncan explained to Sports Illustrated, “and he has the heart of a giant. His natural response is to challenge a crisis head-on. That’s what makes him such a great reliever. And it’s not tough on his arm if he’s used right. Think of it this way: Aren’t you less likely to break down running two miles every day than 10 miles every fifth day?”

  Despite Duncan’s logic, the move upset Eckersley. I was covering the A’s at the time, and the right-hander spoke about how disappointed he was. In his first season as a closer Eckersley saved sixteen games. “I sure wasn’t happy about it,” he said. “I thought it was a demotion, and I hoped it would only be a part-time assignment. When I first came up, the bullpen was pretty much where they put the guys who couldn’t start.”

  But anyone could see that Eckersley was truly suited to his new role. Even when he lost a game he was able to turn the page better than any player I’ve ever covered. Along the way he came up with different nicknames for pitches like “cheese,” “hair” and “cookie.” He’s often credited with coming up with the term “walk-off,” as in a walk-off home run. Or a similar term he coined, “bridge job,” meaning the losing pitcher wanted to jump off the nearest bridge after giving up the winning hit. I remember when Eckersley first mentioned bridge job one night after a rough outing, how he was tempted to jump off the Bay Bridge on the way home. That’s when several of us in the media horde, hanging on his every word, offered to drive him home. That’s how good a quote he was.

  The 1987 season proved to be just the beginning for Eckersley in his new role as a closer. The following season he saved forty-five games, one fewer than Dave Righetti’s major-league record at the time, and he saved all four games of the American League Championship Series against Boston before the Dodgers’ Kirk Gibson hit a game-winning home run off Eckersley in the opener of the 1988 World Series. Talk about a bridge job.

  The reluctant closer would go on to save 390 games and, in 1990, put together a season for the ages when he struck out seventy-three and walked only four batters in seventy-three and a third innings while compiling a 0.61 ERA. By the time 1991 rolled around, every team was looking to trade for or develop their own version of Dennis Eckersley.

  In 1987 the same season Eckersley arrived in Oakland, Minnesota landed Jeff Reardon in a trade with Montreal. A fine closer in his own right, Reardon saved 162 games between 1979 and 1986. After helping the Twins win the 1987 championship, Reardon eventually signed with Boston, so the Twins were again looking for a new closer.

  Before the 1990 season manager Tom Kelly called right-hander Rick Aguilera at home and told him he would be replacing Reardon as the team’s closer. After hanging up, Aguilera wondered whether he had the necessary makeup to do the high-pressure job. After coming over in the Frank Viola trade, Aguilera had pitched in only eleven games for Minnesota, all as a starter. Yet with a quality split-finger fastball that he mixed with an above-average fastball and effective slider, Aguilera soon proved up to task, giving Minnesota its own version of the one-inning, shutdown closer. He saved thirty-two games in 1990 and forty-two the following season, when the Twins returned to the World Series against the Braves.

  An all-league shortstop and third baseman in high school in southern California, Aguilera tried his hand at pitching only after his American Legion team ran out of hurlers. His versatility sometimes worked against him when he was with the Mets, as the team wasn’t sure whether he should start or come out of the bullpen. Even after Aguilera stabilized the Twins’ bullpen, Kelly still wondered what would have been if he had kept the promising right-hander in the rotation. “I called Aggie and said, ‘You’ve got to be our stopper’,” he remembered. “He said, ‘Whatever you want.’ But I hated to do that. It just broke my heart to move him out of the rotation after he’d finally gotten the knack of changing speeds.”

  Despite the second-guessing, Aguilera settled into his new role arguably as well as Eckersley had in Oakland. “It’s easy to say you like something when things are going well for you,” Aguilera told the (New York) Daily News in 1990 soon after the move was announced. “But I’m used like Jeff Reardon was, only in save situations.”

  On this night, in the first real nail-biter of the 1991 World Series, Aguilera knew he had to be at his best. He began by striking out Atlanta’s Sid Bream. But when Brian Hunter singled sharply to center field, the Twins’ closer briefly appeared more tired than his manager had let on in his pregame press conference. That’s when Aguilera found something extra, striking out Braves catcher Greg Olson and then doing the same to Tommy Gregg, who was pinch-hitting for Mark Lemke.

  “Off the field Aggie’s a shy, almost unassuming guy,” catcher Brian Harper later explained. “But put him on the mound, game on the line, and he becomes so locked in, all serious and sure of hi
mself. There was no better closer in the game at that time.”

  In closing things out, Aguilera became the first reliever to save Games One and Two of the Fall Classic since Goose Gossage had accomplished the feat in 1981. With the 3–2 victory, the Twins appeared to have a firm hold on the World Series as the Fall Classic prepared to shift to Atlanta and the Deep South for the first time in baseball history.

  Despite the heart-breaking loss, Braves manager Bobby Cox believed his team simply needed some home cooking. “If they’re going to win it,” he said after the Twins’ Game Two victory, “they’ll have to come back here to do it.”

  ———

  Game Three

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1991

  AT ATLANTA-FULTON COUNTY STADIUM

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  The Braves had trailed throughout the 1991 season and rallied to win. So as the series shifted to Atlanta, the first time the South had ever hosted the Fall Classic, the attitude was, “Why not do it again?”

  After all, the Braves had been nine and a half games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West at the All-Star Break and somehow battled back to clinch the division. Atlanta began that run by winning nine of eleven contests after the All-Star Game at Toronto’s SkyDome, quickly making a race of it. Coming down the stretch of the regular season, with the Braves and Dodgers never separated by more than two and a half games, Atlanta went on an eight-game winning streak. In going a remarkable 55–28 in the second half, Atlanta won ninety-four games and broke the two-million mark in attendance. To the disbelief of many fans in “Hotlanta,” the team grew up to be champions right before their eyes.

  On September 11 the Braves’ young pitching staff combined to no-hit the San Diego Padres, with Kent Mercker, Mark Wohlers, and Alejandro Peña doing the job. As the season went on, the starting rotation soon became recognized as one of the best in the game. Left-hander Tom Glavine led the way for much of the regular season, with John Smoltz coming on in the second half and Steve Avery starring in the postseason showdown against the Pittsburgh Pirates when the Braves again rallied, this time after trailing three games to two. In a series in which the teams combined for five shutouts, Atlanta blanked the Pirates in the final two games.

  “That series, that season—we did the job,” said reliever Mike Stanton. “We made the pitches we needed to make.”

  After the Braves eliminated the Pittsburgh Pirates to capture the National League pennant, David Justice said, “No one picked us to be in this position that we’re in, and that’s what makes it so sweet. Because coming into spring training, everyone picked us to basically be second to last, just ahead of Houston. But we knew what kind of team we had, and we knew it would depend how well we played together throughout the year and how much confidence we gained with each victory. We did it all.”

  In Game Three the Braves spotted the Twins another early lead; this time 1–0 in the first inning. Atlanta’s adventures in the outfield continued as Twins leadoff hitter Dan Gladden lofted Avery’s third pitch to right-center field. Justice and Ron Gant converged on what should have been an easy out, only to have the ball fall between them for a triple. Gladden came around home on Chuck Knoblauch’s sacrifice fly. Justice had made his second fielding miscue of the series, ironically both coming on balls hit by Gladden.

  Before the game Twins manager Tom Kelly told the media that the ballclub that usually wins the big games is the one that makes the routine plays, not the exceptional ones. As Game Three unfolded, he was about to be proven correct once again.

  After the first-inning hiccup Avery settled down, delivering the kind of pitches that had made him the Most Valuable Player in the NLCS against Pittsburgh. He had the best fastball of any pitcher on either team, and his off-speed stuff was nearly as good as Kevin Tapani’s or Tom Glavine’s. Born in Trenton, Michigan, just south of Detroit, Avery turned down a scholarship to Stanford to sign professionally with the Braves. From 1985 through 1988 the Braves took a pitcher with their first-round pick in the amateur draft as they built up their staff. Bobby Cox declared the left-hander “a can’t-miss guy” from the first time he saw Avery pitch for John F. Kennedy High School in 1988. That spring Atlanta made him their first-round selection, and Avery followed Tommy Greene, Kent Mercker, and Derek Lilliquist into the Braves’ minor leagues. From the beginning, though, Avery exhibited a maturity and command of his pitches that belied his age and even those drafted in the years before him. “His concentration level is so great and his stuff is so great,” Cox once told Rob Rains, my colleague at Baseball Weekly. “He’s got three pitches, a fastball, curve, and changeup, and all are above-average.”

  Cox expected Avery to reach the majors in 1993. He beat those expectations by three years, and even though he struggled with a 3–11 record with Atlanta in 1990, many saw that he was in the majors to stay. Avery said he made it to the big leagues so quickly in large part because of the advice of his father, Ken, who once pitched in the Tigers’ organization. For Detroit fans the 1991 postseason had to be painful to watch. Not only did Avery have strong Tigers ties, but right-hander John Smoltz now rounded out the Braves’ rotation. He also grew up a Tigers fan and came to Atlanta in a deal that sent veteran hurler Doyle Alexander to Detroit. Tigers manager Sparky Anderson called the 1987 trade the worst of his tenure in the Motor City.

  Smoltz’s moment in this 1991 World Series would come soon enough, but tonight many expected Avery to take charge. Only twenty-one, Avery twice shut down the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NLCS. In sixteen overall innings he had struck out seventeen and allowed just nine hits in a pair of 1–0 shutouts. His performance already drew comparison with such postseason phenoms as Babe Ruth (thirteen consecutive shutout innings in 1916) and Jim Palmer (a World Series shutout at the age of twenty). “Makes you wonder why we even showed up,” Kelly grumbled before the game after being reminded one too many times about Avery’s impressive record so far in the postseason.

  Once Avery retired the Twins in order in the top of the second inning, the Braves promptly tied it at 1–1. With two outs, catcher Greg Olson walked and Mark Lemke singled. After that, shortstop Rafael Belliard came through with a hit to left field to bring Olson around.

  Although Avery was expected to get stronger as the game went on, building off his success earlier in the postseason, the Twins were unsure what to expect from their starting pitcher, Scott Erickson. During the regular season the right-hander became the first pitcher since Bob Grim in 1954 to win twenty games in his first calendar year in the major leagues. (In Erickson’s case this was June 1990 to June 1991.) The young hurler had also taken Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black” motif to another level by wearing black spikes, with any white covered with shoe polish as well as black stirrups pulled down low so no white sock was showing, and using a black glove instead of the customary brown one. Erickson denied he was superstitious (“It’s just a style I prefer,” he said).

  “It’s not his stirrups, shoes, or glove,” said catcher Junior Ortiz. “It’s his arm. I haven’t seen a pitcher with his kind of nasty movement, and I’ve caught Dwight Gooden, Doug Drabek, and Tom Seaver.”

  Teammate Kevin Tapani came to call Erickson’s starts “another day of death” for the opposing teams. Nicknamed “Rockhead” when he first made the team because he didn’t say much of anything to anybody, Erickson soon demonstrated a wry sense of humor and a flair for the practical jokes. He once froze Ron Gardenhire’s underwear and framed a teammate to take the blame. “He’s like a snake in the grass,” the third-base coach grumbled.

  Intensely private away from the clubhouse, Erickson often stayed up until three in the morning after his starts, watching movies. Rocky, Predator, and First Blood were favorites, and he claimed to have seen Top Gun at least one hundred times. When more than one thousand fans turned up at a Twin Cities appearance for his autograph, he mumbled that they needed to get a life. Still, Erickson was proud of winning twenty games by the age of twenty-three. He would have started the Al
l-Star Game for the American League if he hadn’t been sidelined with a sore arm. Instead, teammate Jack Morris got the honors. “When I look at what else I have to worry about, there really isn’t anything,” the young hurler said.

  Erickson regularly pitched to backup catcher Junior Ortiz, who was as easygoing as the pitcher was intense and cryptic. Always good for grins and giggles, Ortiz once brought his young son, who was named after him, into the Twins’ clubhouse and introduced him as “Junior Junior.” Even though Ortiz played only about one game a week, he did hit over .400 for a stretch in 1990, prompting the nickname “Ted Ortiz” in honor of Ted Williams, the last man to hit better than .400 in the major leagues.

  By the postseason, though, Erickson’s struggles weren’t a laughing matter. Despite having Ortiz behind the plate, his arsenal of pitches was markedly slower. Since a stint on the disabled list in late June, he had struggled—something the Braves were well aware of.

  In the bottom of the fourth inning Justice gained a measure of redemption for his earlier fielding error as he homered to right field. Erickson barely got out of the inning without any further damage, leaving Sid Bream stranded at third base. An inning later Erickson got into trouble again. With one out, Lonnie Smith hit a home run to left field. Terry Pendleton followed by working a walk, advancing to second base on an Erickson wild pitch. When Knoblauch made an error on Justice’s hot grounder, the day was over for baseball’s Man in Black. His line for the day would be four and two-thirds innings, three earned runs, and two home runs given up.

  ———

  The ballclubs in Atlanta and the Twin Cities had come from somewhere else. The Senators vacated Washington in 1961, becoming the Minnesota Twins, and the Braves’ pair of moves bookended baseball’s first major wave of franchise relocation.