Living on the Black

by John Feinstein

  The Orioles finished that strike-shortened season 71–73, their first losing season since 1991.

  On a mediocre team, Mussina went 19–9, tying for the league lead in wins in a season that was eighteen games short of the normal 162. If the season hadn’t been shortened, he would have gotten at least three more starts, perhaps four, to try to win twenty games.

  The case can easily be made that the strike cost Mussina two twenty-win seasons. In 1994, the Orioles played 112 games — a little more than two-thirds of a normal season. Mussina was 16–5 when the strike hit, and the Orioles still had fifty games to play. If the season had been completed, Mussina would have started at least ten more games. Healthy — his ERA when the season ended was 3.06 — it is difficult to believe that he would not have won at least four more times. It is just as difficult to believe that with three or four more starts the next year that he would not have won at least once more.

  “Some things are out of your control,” he said. “I know people talk about the fact that I’ve never won twenty games in a season. I certainly can’t prove that I would have done it in ’94 or ’95, but the evidence is there that I had a pretty good chance. At the very least, you can say I pitched well enough to look like I would have gotten it done if the seasons hadn’t been cut short.”

  Mussina is matter-of-fact when he talks about the almosts in his career, but there is no doubt that they sting. He’s also completely honest about 1996 when he came within one inning of winning twenty games and didn’t.

  “That may have been the worst year of my career,” he said. “I just wasn’t very good. We had a good team and a very good hitting team, and I won a lot of games when I didn’t pitch well. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t disappointing when I didn’t get the twentieth; it just means I know there were a lot of years where I pitched better than I did in ’96.”

  The Orioles finally made it back to the playoffs in 1996 after a thirteen-year drought. Mussina’s ERA that season was 4.81, which was almost two runs higher than his ERA had been during the two strike-shortened seasons. Not until 2007 — his sixteenth full season in the big leagues — would his ERA be higher. But the Orioles scored a lot of runs for him in ’96. As a result, he went into his last start of the season on a Saturday afternoon in Toronto with a chance to win twenty games.

  The Orioles were a hot team; they had rallied in the second half of the season and needed one victory in the final two games to become the American League’s wild-card team. Mussina pitched one of his best games of the year that afternoon and left after eight innings with a 2–1 lead. Armando Benitez, who would go on to earn a reputation as one of the worst in-the-clutch closers in baseball history, came in to pitch the ninth.

  “Two batters,” Mussina said. “There wasn’t much suspense.”

  The second batter Benitez faced was Ed Sprague. He hit a long home run to tie the game at 2–2. The Orioles went on to win the game in extra innings to clinch the playoff spot, but Mussina’s chance to win twenty disappeared the minute Sprague’s home run cleared the fence. “I probably didn’t deserve to win twenty games that year,” he said. “And there have definitely been other years where I deserved it far more than that year. But I would be lying if I said it wasn’t disappointing when it happened. It was mitigated when we won the game and made the playoffs, because that was my first chance to pitch in postseason.”

  He didn’t pitch especially well in the postseason, although he wasn’t terrible by any means. In Game Three of the Division Series against the Cleveland Indians, he pitched six innings and gave up three earned runs in an outing the Orioles bullpen ended up losing after he left. In the American League Championship Series, the Yankees hit him hard. He gave up five runs in seven and two-thirds innings and was the losing pitcher in the third game of the series, which the Yankees went on to win four games to one.

  “Actually the way I pitched in postseason that year was about the way I pitched in the regular season,” he said. “I wasn’t awful, but I certainly wasn’t very good.”

  A year later, he was more like his old self. His ERA was 3.20, and his 15–8 record was a reflection of the fact that, even though this was the best Orioles team he would ever pitch for, the team just didn’t score many runs when he pitched. In May, Mussina retired the first twenty-five Cleveland Indians he faced on a Friday night in Baltimore before catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. lined a single to center field to break up his bid for a perfect game.

  Another almost.

  The playoffs were more of the same. Mussina probably never pitched better in his life than he did that October. The Orioles had won the American League East with a wire-to-wire performance, going 98–64. In the Division Series they faced the Seattle Mariners, and Mussina matched up twice with Randy Johnson — and beat him twice. Mussina pitched seven innings in each game and gave up a total of three runs, pitching the fourth game on three days’ rest. He struck out sixteen and walked only three. In short, he was dominant.

  The Orioles won the series 3–1 and moved on to face the Indians in the ALCS. Cleveland had beaten the Yankees in five games in the other Division Series, thanks to a late home run in the deciding game by Mussina’s old pal Sandy Alomar Jr. With the Yankees out of the way, everyone in Baltimore fully expected the Orioles to move on to the World Series.

  That it didn’t happen certainly couldn’t be blamed on Mussina. He was better against the Indians than he had been against the Mariners. In Game Three, he pitched six shutout innings only to see the Orioles lose the game in twelve innings. He again came back on three days’ rest to pitch the sixth game with the Orioles down 3–2. In what may have been the most dominant performance of his career, Mussina pitched eight shutout innings, striking out fifteen batters. Unfortunately, Indians starter Charles Nagy also pitched shutout ball, and the game went into extra innings, with both starters long gone. It ended in the eleventh inning when Tony Fernandez hit a home run off, surprise, Armando Benitez, and the Indians won 1–0 and advanced to the World Series.

  If nothing else, Mussina’s performance that October proves that it is unfair to criticize a pitcher for not having been on a World Championship team. In four starts, Mussina pitched twenty-nine innings and gave up four runs — an ERA of 1.24. He struck out forty-one and walked seven. Those are astounding numbers. But his team failed to win the ALCS games in which he pitched shutout ball and didn’t reach the World Series.

  “That’s the way baseball is,” Mussina said. “There’s only so much you can control. Sometimes, when you aren’t good, your team bails you out. Other times, when you’re good, it isn’t good enough. I’ve always taken the approach that if I go out and pitch six or seven innings and we lose three-two, I’m not going to say, ‘Hey, I pitched well enough to win.’ No, I didn’t. If I had pitched well enough to win, I would have given up one run instead of three, and we’d have won two-one. But if you go out and give up no runs, then you’ve done everything you can possibly do, and the rest is out of your hands. In ’97, I felt like I did everything I could possibly do. That hasn’t always been the case in my career, but that year I did honestly feel that way during those playoffs.”

  Mussina had signed a three-year contract extension with the Orioles earlier in the season, passing up the chance to try the free-agent market at the end of that year. Glavine had also re-signed before reaching free agency during 1997. His contract was guaranteed for $34 million — four years at $8 million a year, with a $2 million buyout if the Braves did not pick up the $10 million option for a fifth year. The two-year difference would be the subject of considerable discussion for the two men — even though they would never speak directly to one another about it.

  5

  Rich and Richer

  TOM GLAVINE’S LIFE HAD CHANGED considerably in the two years that had passed since his one-hit, Series-clinching gem in 1995. He had coauthored a book that winter, None but the Braves, with the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo, that, as athlete autobiographies go, was extremely honest — especially w
hen discussing the issues surrounding the strike of 1994–95.

  He also talked about how he had met Carri, how he had proposed to her, and how thrilled they had both been when Amber was born in January 1995, but he said little else in the book about his personal life. There was a reason for that: his marriage was falling apart.

  In June 1996, the story broke: Tom and Carri Glavine were filing for divorce. At that point, no one in Atlanta was a bigger star than Glavine. Going through the divorce was difficult for him for all the reasons that divorce is difficult, especially with an eighteen-month-old child involved. To have to go through it in public made it that much more painful.

  “I guess the only good thing was that Amber was too young to read the papers,” Glavine said, forcing a laugh. “I don’t think any of us ever gets married thinking we’re going to end up divorced. So, when it happens, it’s a shock to your system. When you see it in the papers, and you know people are talking about you and gossiping about you, it’s that much harder.

  “I was probably lucky, looking back, that it happened during the season. It meant I had an escape at the ballpark and on the field. I think if it had happened during the off-season it would have been that much tougher.”

  Glavine pitched well in 1996, and the Braves made it back to the World Series, only to blow a 2–0 lead and lose to the New York Yankees in six games. Glavine pitched well in Game Three, but was outpitched by his union buddy David Cone. He would have been the Game Seven pitcher but there was no Game Seven.

  His divorce was still pending the next spring when a friend of his told him that Christine St. Onge was in town. He wondered if Glavine wanted to get together with her.

  Glavine already knew St. Onge. They had first met in spring training in 1988. She had been living in Palm Beach and working for Home Depot in their computer division, and the two of them had been introduced at a party.

  “I had no idea who he was,” Chris said years later. “But I thought he was cute.”

  Glavine thought the same thing about Chris. They dated off and on for the next couple of years, even though she lived in Florida and he lived in Atlanta. The relationship tailed off when Glavine started dating Carri, and Chris began dating someone she worked with in Florida. Each got married in 1992. They became parents within three months of one another — Chris’s son Jonathan being born in October 1994.

  And then, in 1996, they both went through divorces. Each was on the rebound, but when they met again in the spring of 1997 they remembered liking one another, and a relationship began to bloom.

  “At first it was just good fun,” Chris said. “We were both still finalizing divorces, and it was comfortable. But after a while it started to get a little bit serious, and I kind of wanted to know where we stood — or at least how Tom thought we stood. I had not yet introduced him to Jonathan [who was not quite three], and I said to Tom one night in August, ‘You know, if we’re going to keep going forward with this, I think you should meet my son. But if all we’re doing is having a good time and there’s nothing more to it, I don’t want you to meet him. I don’t want you in his life one day, out of it the next. If I’m just the girl you call on Tuesdays and Fridays and that’s it, fine, just tell me. But if it’s more than that, you should meet Jonathan.’ ”

  Glavine said he understood. He said she was absolutely right to feel the way she did. And then he didn’t call for three months. “I guess I kind of freaked out a little,” he said. “The wound of the divorce was still kind of fresh; in fact I wasn’t legally divorced yet. I knew where Chris was coming from and that she wasn’t trying to pin me down. I guess I just wasn’t ready to deal with anything that involved moving forward in any kind of serious manner right at that moment.”

  Chris was still working for Home Depot — out of Atlanta rather than Florida at that point. Not hearing from Glavine was disappointing, but she figured the message was that the relationship had just been a lark for him. “It made me sad,” she said. “Because I really liked him a lot.”

  She was at work one morning just prior to Thanksgiving when someone told her that Tom Glavine was on the phone for her. The Braves’ season had ended in disappointment that October: after winning a sixth straight Division title they had been beaten in the National League Championship Series by the wild card Florida Marlins. Chris waited a moment or two and then picked up the phone.

  “Hi, Chris. It’s Tom.”

  “Tom who?” she said coolly. “Do I know you?”

  Glavine wasn’t stunned but still caught a little bit off guard. “I guess I deserve that,” he said.

  “You bet you do,” she answered.

  Glavine wanted to see her again. He was sorry about the lengthy gap between phone calls. That wasn’t good enough. “If you want to go out with me again, you have to make a list of the ten reasons I should say yes,” she told him.

  That night when Chris got home, there was a message on her answering machine. “I’ve come up with six so far,” Glavine said on the message.

  The list included things like “really good tickets to Braves games” but did not include the one reason Chris really wanted to hear. “There was,” she said smiling, “nothing romantic. I don’t think he could quite bring himself to do it.”

  Chris was torn. She knew she wanted to see Tom again, but a part of her was worried that she was just another jock date, the flavor of the month or week. Finally she decided to really put him to the test. “Why don’t you go with me to my office Christmas party,” she said. Tom agreed.

  “For someone like Tom, there can’t be anything worse than a party like that,” she said. “There was no way he was going to get thirty seconds of peace. Everyone in Atlanta knew Tom Glavine. It was going to be autographs and pictures and ‘What happened in the playoffs?’ all night long. I figured if he was willing to go through that, then maybe he really did like me.”

  Glavine went through it and never complained. He knew the drill. Having paid his penance, he began dating Chris seriously again. He met Jonathan. She met Amber. They were married the next fall.

  At the start of the 1997 season, Glavine began negotiating a new contract with the Braves. They had picked up his option for that year at $5 million, which was fine with him, even though he was probably underpaid given his status and the market for pitchers at the time. Braves president Stan Kasten told Glavine and Gregg Clifton, Glavine’s agent, that he wanted to sign Glavine to a long-term contract before the end of the season so he would not file for free agency.

  “They actually made me a very good offer,” Glavine said. “It was four years at $32 million with a club option for a fifth year at $10 million. I really thought I deserved a fifth year. Which led, of course, to one of my sessions with Stan.”

  Kasten and Glavine have what can only be described as a unique employer employee relationship. Kasten, who is now president of the Washington Nationals, was something of a boy wonder among sports executives. He had been named general manager of the Atlanta Hawks in 1979, making him, at twenty seven, the youngest general manager in NBA history. Five years later, Ted Turner — who owned both the Hawks and the Braves — asked him to take over the Braves too, and Kasten’s first important move was to hire Bobby Cox as general manager. By the time Glavine arrived in Atlanta, Kasten was president of both the Braves and the Hawks.

  Kasten quickly understood that Glavine wasn’t just a promising young pitcher; he was also bright and a clubhouse leader, albeit in a quiet way most of the time. Glavine liked the fact that Kasten was anything but buttoned-down, spent time with the players, and had a sharp sense of humor.

  But they also clashed. They sat across from one another during many tempestuous negotiation sessions during the 1994–95 strike, and they frequently argued with one another about union issues and other political issues. Kasten, the management hawk, the antiunion man, was a Democrat. Glavine, the union man, was a Republican.

  “Ask Tom to explain how that works,” Kasten liked to say. “One minute he’s Mr. Un
ion Guy, the next he’s voting for whomever is going to lower taxes for the rich.”

  “He makes a good point,” Glavine would reply.

  When Kasten and Glavine met in the spring of 1997 to discuss a possible fifth year in Glavine’s contract, Kasten was adamant. “Look, Tom, I’m going to get a lot of heat from other owners for giving you this contract,” Kasten said. “You’re going to be the highest paid pitcher in baseball. We just aren’t going to give anyone a guaranteed fifth year.”

  It was, as Glavine often says, “typical Stan.”

  “First, he lectures me on why I should be grateful when I think the money he’s paying me is good but not in any way out of line based on my performance,” he said. “Second, he knows I will never pitch a game as the highest paid pitcher in baseball. For one thing Greg [Maddux] is up at the end of that year, and he’s going to get more than me. Kevin Brown is up too, and, as a free agent, he’s going to get more too.”

  Glavine signed the contract. It was, he knew, good money. What rankled was when the Braves signed Maddux a month later — to a five year guaranteed contract. “He deserved it,” Glavine said. “But I sat and listened to Stan say, ‘No way will we give anyone five years guaranteed.’ A month later he gave Greg five years guaranteed.”

  Even so, Glavine was happy with the deal. It meant he would be in Atlanta until he was at least thirty five, perhaps thirty six if the fifth year kicked in. He felt he had held up his obligation to the union to get as much money as possible — he was the highest paid pitcher in the game, at least in theory, when it was announced — and he didn’t have to leave Atlanta or even shop himself on the free agent market. Having been one of the leaders of the strike in 1994 and 1995, Glavine did not want to take a “hometown discount” to stay in Atlanta. Kasten understood that and made him an offer he felt comfortable taking.