Living on the Black

by John Feinstein

  The 1969 season was also an expansion year in baseball: the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres joined the National League, and the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots joined the American League. For the first time ever, the leagues were split into divisions — six teams in each — and there was a round of playoffs prior to the World Series, the so-called League Championship Series.

  It was a whole new beginning for baseball as it celebrated its hundredth season.

  But the biggest story in the game that year was the New York Mets. The Mets had been an expansion team in 1962, created to take the place of the Dodgers and Giants, who had fled New York for Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Mets were historically bad, going 40–120 their first year and losing more than one hundred games in each of their first four seasons, before finally breaking through in 1966 with a 66–95 record.

  But in 1968, the Mets hired Gil Hodges as manager. They also started piecing together a remarkable young pitching staff, anchored by future Hall of Famer and three hundred–game winner Tom Seaver. By 1969 they had a rotation that included Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, Nolan Ryan, and Jim McAndrew. Koosman was the elder statesman of the group at twenty-six. Wary of the fact that the youngsters were throwing off the lower mound and not wanting to risk their arms, pitching coach Rube Walker decided to put them on a five-day rotation, giving them each four days’ rest between starts. When Ryan had to leave the team for a few weeks in August for military reserve duty (not at all uncommon for ballplayers in those days), Walker plugged veteran Don Cardwell into the rotation rather than trying to pitch any of the young pitchers on short rest.

  The Mets went from 73–89 in 1968 to 100–62 in 1969 and caught the Chicago Cubs in early September en route to winning the first National League East title. They then swept the Atlanta Braves in the League Championship Series and stunned the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in five games in the World Series.

  Two pitchers on that staff are in the Hall of Fame — Seaver and Ryan, who became a star after the Mets foolishly traded him to the California Angels in 1971. Koosman pitched for more than twenty years. Among the youngsters, only Gentry and McAndrew did not become great pitchers.

  Sports is like anything else: people copy success. Walker’s model, the five-man rotation, soon became the norm in baseball. These days, no team would even consider a four-man rotation for any extended period of time.

  Glavine and Mussina have each pitched on three days’ rest a handful of times in their careers. It is so unusual that each time it has happened it has been noted in the bios provided in their teams’ media guides. Glavine actually did it twice in 2003, which in this day and age is almost historic.

  Joe Torre, who came up to the majors as a catcher, can still remember Lew Burdette starting for the Braves on three and then two days’ rest in the 1957 World Series, a team his older brother Frank Torre played on.

  “We’ve conditioned pitchers — and all players really — differently. Guys don’t go to the mound thinking about a complete game anymore; they go out thinking they want to get to the seventh inning. The silliest stat in baseball history may be the ‘quality start.’ You pitch six innings and give up three runs and that’s considered a quality start. If you do that over an entire year, that’s an ERA of 4.50. When I played, if you had an ERA of 4.50 you got sent down. Now, you’ve had quality starts.

  “It’s not just pitchers, though; it’s every position. Now we’ve got coaches who position the infielders and the outfielders on every play. What does that do? It ensures the players aren’t thinking on their own out there. You’ve got exceptions — Jeter’s certainly one — but most guys are constantly looking into the dugout for someone to tell them what to do. What’s the thing guys do worst? Run the bases. Why? Because they can’t look into the dugout for instructions. Sure, they can look at a coach, but for the most part you’re on your own and you have to react instantly.

  “What’s changed the most by far, though, is the pitching. I think Bob Gibson had thirty complete games or something like that [actually twenty-eight in thirty-four starts] in 1968. What’s the stat on Cy Young? He won five hundred eleven games, and four sixty-nine were complete games. Okay, that’s a long time ago, but even in the ’70s and ’80s you basically had one guy in the bullpen you depended on. Guys like [Goose] Gossage and [Bruce] Sutter and [Sparky] Lyle routinely pitched two and three innings to get a save. Now you’ve got a seventh-inning guy, a set-up guy, and a closer. Your starter gives you six good innings, he’s done his job.

  “I remember when Roger [Clemens] got his three hundredth win a few years ago. We knew, he knew that when he got it, he was going to be sitting in the dugout watching Mariano [Rivera] close it for him. The same will be true of Glavine this year, unless something crazy happens. His job — almost every starter’s job — is to get to the seventh inning. Period.”

  The story that backs Torre up better than any other dates to 1985 when Seaver was trying to win his three hundredth game in Yankee Stadium, pitching for the Chicago White Sox. It was a hot August day, and Seaver carried a 4–1 lead into the eighth inning. With two out, Seaver put men on second and third. Dave Winfield, then very much in his prime, walked to the plate.

  Carlton Fisk, another Hall of Famer, was catching. He called time and trotted to the mound to talk to Seaver.

  “How you feeling?” he asked Seaver, who was forty.

  “Gassed,” Seaver said. “I think I’m done.”

  “That’s really too bad, Tom,” Fisk said. “Because you’re about to win your three hundredth game, and there’s no f —— way you’re coming out of this game.”

  Seaver took a deep breath, struck out Winfield, and retired the side in the ninth. In all, he threw 146 pitches that day. Twenty-two years later, it probably would have taken four relievers to get the last four outs.

  A couple of statistics reveal how pitchers’ expectations have changed. Early in 2007, Johan Santana, the Minnesota Twins’ two-time Cy Young Award winner, pitched the sixth complete game of his big league career. One of the people calling the game from the TV booth that night was Bert Blyleven, who pitched from 1970 to 1992 for a number of teams and won 287 games. In 685 starts, Blyleven pitched 242 complete games, sixty of them shutouts!

  Compare that to Glavine, who began 2007 with fifty-five complete games and twenty-four shutouts in 635 career starts, and Mussina who had pitched fifty-seven complete games and had twenty-three shutouts in 475 starts. It wasn’t that Blyleven was a better pitcher than Glavine or Mussina — his career ERA of 3.31 was only slighter lower than Glavine’s 3.46 and Mussina’s 3.63. He simply pitched in a different time, even though he had only retired in 1992.

  “I’m sure if we went to the mound thinking we had to pitch complete games, there would be a lot more of them,” Mussina said. “Realistically, you know when you get close to a hundred pitches they’re going to have the bullpen up. There are some nights where I’ll have thrown sixty pitches the first three innings. At that point all I’m really trying to do is hang in there through six to give the team and the bullpen a chance. The days when they’ll let a guy stay out there for a hundred fifty pitches or until his arm falls off are long gone.”

  These days a manager usually goes to the mound only to make a pitching change. When a pitcher needs a pep talk or a chance to catch his breath, it is usually the pitching coach who comes out.

  “Sometimes when Gator [Ron Guidry] comes out, all he says is, ‘Let’s just take a break here for a second; I’m here to give you a little time,’ ” Mussina said. “Other times he’ll have a specific suggestion about tactics or maybe he’ll see something I’m doing wrong. Most of the time he’s just out there to give me a break when he thinks I need it.”

  Torre almost always comes to the mound to make a change, but on occasion he will come out to ask a pitcher if he thinks he can get a batter out or to look him in the eye and ask him if he’s okay.

  “I’ve had to learn when I’m going out to ask a question
to make sure I trot to the mound,” he said. “When I was first managing the Mets, I went out one day to ask Jerry Koosman if he thought he could get one more batter out. I got to the mound and he handed me the ball. Well, that kind of answered my question, but I think as soon as he saw me come out, he took himself out of the game mentally because he thought I was coming to get him. Now, the guys know if I trot out there, I’m going to ask them a question.”

  Managers usually have a system or a code they use with their catchers to get their opinion without directly asking them what they think. The last thing a catcher wants to do is tell a manager that his pitcher needs to come out, especially since most pitchers don’t want to come out.

  “The only guy I would ever let talk me out of taking him out was David Cone,” Torre said. “He was such a tough guy, especially in a tough situation. I remember in ’98 we were playing Cleveland in the playoffs, and we had a big lead, but he had the bases loaded. [Jim] Thome was coming up, so I went out there and he said to me, ‘Skip, I’ll get this guy.’ I believed him, so I left him in and he got him on a pop-up. Next guy hit a grand slam. Fortunately, we still won the game, but I told David later I should have been more specific. He told me he’d get Thome, but I never asked him about the next guy.”

  Torre will always look at Jorge Posada as he walks to the mound to get an idea of what he’s thinking. “If he doesn’t say anything, I’m figuring he thinks the guy is done,” he said. “If he says something like, ‘We’re okay; we’ll get this guy,’ that means he thinks the guy has something left. After I hear that, then I’ll look the pitcher right in the eye to see what I get back. Then, I make my decision.”

  On occasion, Torre will change his mind before he gets to the mound. Pitching in Detroit in May 2006, Mussina carried a shutout into the ninth inning but lost it with two outs because of an error. Figuring the shutout was over and with Mussina’s pitch count right at one hundred, Torre took a couple of steps out of the dugout to bring someone in to get the last out with the Yankees leading 6–1.

  “I heard Moose shouting at me the minute I got out of the dugout: ‘What’re you doing? Go back! Let me finish this!’ I turned around and went back. If it had been two-one, it might have been different, but at six-one I understood.”

  That was Mussina’s only complete game of the season. A few years prior to that, Mussina had given up six doubles in an inning during a game in Texas. When Torre came out to the mound to get him, Mussina looked at him and said, “What took you so long?”

  Torre had no plans to go to the mound in Orlando in spring 2007. Mussina was scheduled to throw forty-five pitches, which everyone hoped would take him through three innings. His second start was similar to his first: it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t brilliant.

  Mussina gave up another home run, this one to Jeff Francoeur (a free swinger who Glavine also had a lot of trouble with), and threw a lot of breaking pitches, most of them curve balls. His pitch count was close to perfect: after struggling in the first inning when he gave up a run and needed twenty pitches, he only needed twelve pitches in the second inning and eleven in the third, meaning he finished the day at two under par on his pitch count. His control was excellent — thirty-two strikes in forty-three pitches — and he was on his way back up I-4 by three o’clock.

  The best part of his postgame session with the media was when someone asked him his favorite spring-training question: “Are you where you want to be right now?” Mussina smiled and gave his favorite spring-training answer: “I’m in Florida pitching for the New York Yankees. I’m exactly where I want to be.”

  11

  Getting Serious

  AT NO POINT IN SPRING TRAINING does a pitcher worry about wins and losses. But there does come a time when he wants to feel as if he can throw close to one hundred pitches if necessary and that his stuff and his control are rounding into shape.

  “You really start to pay attention about your third start,” Tom Glavine said. “Most years you’re going to start no more than six times, so when you start to push toward mid-March you realize Opening Day is only a couple weeks away. You need to see progress from that point on. If you don’t, that’s when you start to worry.”

  Glavine’s third start of the spring came on March 11 against the Florida Marlins. He had pitched well again in his second start, against the Houston Astros, but had come in four over par, in part because he had some trouble with his control. Nothing major, especially early in the spring, but with only three starts left after the game against the Marlins, there was an air of things getting just a little more serious prior to the game.

  “It’s not like a real game; heck, I don’t even know who they’ll bring with them right now,” he said, sitting in a half-empty clubhouse a couple of hours before game time. “I would think they’d bring [Miguel] Cabrera; I hope they’ll bring him, but you never know. I’ll certainly take a look during BP to see if he’s here.”

  Cabrera was the Marlins’ best hitter, and Glavine liked the idea of testing himself in his third start. The plan was for him to pitch four innings or throw sixty pitches. If he came in under par after four innings, he would finish up in the bullpen.

  The clubhouse was relatively empty because the Mets were playing two games, sending a split squad to Lakeland to play the Tigers. Teams will do this about a half-dozen times during spring training to try to get more players into games, and, just as important, to give as many pitchers as possible the innings they need. Glavine was pitching at home in part because he had seniority and, given a choice, would not make the three-hour drive to Lakeland, and because the game he was pitching would be on TV in New York on a Sunday afternoon and the Mets wanted to put their best foot forward. Aaron Sele, trying to make the team as a nonroster player, was pitching the other game.

  Although Tradition Field is located in an area dominated by strip malls and fast-food joints and is no more than a mile from the parking lot known as I-95, it is a pleasant ballpark with a little more than seven thousand seats and picnic seating on a hill beyond the right-field fence for people who are more interested in the sun than the ballgame.

  When Glavine trotted to the mound at 1:09, he was given a warm round of applause. The days when Mets fans did not truly consider him one of their own were long gone.

  Like most pitchers, Glavine’s warm-up routine before every inning is identical. He will throw three fastballs, two cutters, two changeups, and a fastball aimed at the outside corner for a right-handed hitter. It hasn’t always been exactly like that — Glavine only started throwing a cutter two years earlier — but it is always that way now.

  Glavine looked just as impressive starting out against the Marlins as he had against the Cardinals and Astros. He had to battle Hanley Ramirez, the Marlins’ young, rising-star shortstop, but finally got him to pop to Jose Reyes at short on a 3–2 pitch. Glavine thought he had Ramirez struck out on a 2–2 pitch, but umpire Jerry Meals didn’t give him the corner. Ramirez fouled one fastball off on 3–2 before popping out.

  That brought up Aaron Boone, who had made a nice comeback after the knee injury that had ended his career in New York. Boone had played in Cleveland in 2005 and 2006 and then signed with the Marlins as a utility infielder for 2007. He was now thirty-four, but with his long brown hair looked several years younger. Boone flied to right on an 84-mile-an-hour fastball. That brought up Cabrera, who had made the trip.

  “My first real challenge of the spring,” Glavine said. “Not because I hadn’t faced good hitters the first two times I pitched, but by now the hitters have played seven or eight games and are starting to get in a groove.”

  Cabrera’s a free swinger, and he didn’t waste time trying to work a count on Glavine. Glavine’s first pitch was a fastball, and Cabrera hit it sharply right at third baseman David Wright. The Marlins were gone on eleven pitches. At that point in spring training, Glavine had pitched six innings and hadn’t given up a run.

  That finally changed in the second inning. After Glavine had gotten
the first two outs, right fielder Jeremy Hermida doubled, and second baseman Jason Wood singled to put the Marlins up 1–0. Glavine could live with that. He hadn’t expected to go the entire spring without giving up a run.

  The third inning, however, was a good deal more frustrating. The two teams had agreed to play the game using the designated hitter since the Mets were a little bit shorthanded because they were playing with a split squad. This will tell you how informal spring training can be. The two managers just decided before the game to use the DH, informed the umpires, and that was it; the DH was in play in a National League game in a National League park.

  “Disappointing,” Glavine said. “Would have been my first at bat of the spring.”

  So, instead of facing pitcher Sergio Mitre to start the third, Glavine faced shortstop Zach Sorenson, who singled. Two pitches later, with Sorenson going, Ramirez hit a ground ball to second baseman Jose Valentin. Distracted by Sorenson, Valentin booted the ball, putting men on first and second. Glavine threw strike one to Boone and then let an inside fastball get away, plunking him in the ribs.

  Now, the bases were loaded, and Glavine was angry. “There is nothing more pointless in baseball than getting annoyed with a guy for booting a ball,” he said. “He didn’t do it on purpose. I will only get upset if someone isn’t playing hard. Hosy just made a mistake, and then I compounded it with a really bad pitch.”

  Up came Cabrera. Bases loaded and a hitter who annually drives in well over a hundred runs at the plate. Glavine won the battle. Or seemed to. After Cabrera had hammered a 2–1 pitch deep but foul, Glavine got him to hit a little pop-up behind second base. Valentin went back and for a split second seemed to have redeemed himself for his error with a running, over-the-shoulder catch — only the ball hit the bottom of his glove, and he dropped it. The official scorer correctly ruled it a single since it would have been a superb play. Everyone moved up a base, and the Marlins led 2–0.