Living on the Black

by John Feinstein

  All of which set the stage for Sunday afternoon, April 22. It was Smoltz versus Glavine again, a rematch of that frigid Saturday in Atlanta two weeks earlier — only this time the temperature was seventy degrees when Glavine walked to the mound, there was a light breeze and no humidity, and Shea Stadium sparkled as much as a forty-three-year-old dowager stadium can sparkle.

  The Mets were 11–5; the Braves 11–6. Glavine was 3–1; Smoltz 2–1. It was about as perfect a day for baseball as you could possibly hope to see.

  Glavine threw his warm-up pitches, Kelly Johnson stepped into the batter’s box, and the crowd settled in. Glavine threw a fastball that caught a little more of the plate than he planned, and Johnson jumped all over it. The ball disappeared over the right-field fence before many in the crowd even knew Glavine had thrown the first pitch.

  “He had struck out four times the day before,” Glavine said later. “He’s a guy who will generally take strike one anyway. I’m thinking he isn’t going to come out flailing after a four strikeout day. But I gave him a pitch that was too good not to swing at. Bad mistake.

  “It’s sort of like stepping into what you think is a hot shower, and it’s ice cold. You kind of jump back and go, ‘What was that?’ It’s a shock. You have to take a deep breath and say, ‘Okay, that’s not exactly ideal, but that’s all they get.’ ”

  Glavine did just that. In fact, he retired the next eight batters he faced before Johnson got a two-out single in the third. Glavine gave up another single to Edgar Renteria but then got his ex-teammate Chipper Jones to strike out looking. He was settled in.

  The problem was it appeared possible that one run might be all Smoltz would need. He retired the first six Mets before Shawn Green singled, leading off the third, and Jose Valentin reached on a Chipper Jones error. That brought Glavine up in a bunting situation. Smoltz threw two fastballs at 96, and Glavine fouled both off, which really annoyed Glavine. On 0–2 he got the bunt down, but Smoltz pounced on it and got the force play on Green, another of the Mets’ slow-footed base runners, at third.

  He was even more upset a moment later when Reyes hit a ground ball that would have scored a run had he moved the runners up. Instead, Glavine was forced out at second, and Paul Lo Duca grounded out to end the threat.

  Smoltz finally cracked a little in the fifth when Green hit his first pitch of the inning into the Mets bullpen to tie the game at 1–1. The Mets threatened for more when Reyes singled and Lo Duca doubled, but bad luck and good pitching kept them from taking the lead. The bad luck came when Lo Duca’s shot in the right-center-field gap bounced over the wall for a ground rule double. If the ball hadn’t gone over the fence, Reyes could have scored running backward. Instead, he had to stop at third. Smoltz then struck out Carlos Beltran looking, bringing back some not-so-fond memories of Beltran’s final at bat of 2006.

  Glavine walked to the mound to start the sixth, frustrated. “In a game like that you figure you’re only going to get so many chances,” he said. “Smoltzie was really dealing the first four innings, so I was thinking the fifth might have been our best shot to get him. You see a ball bounce over the fence the way Paulie’s did, and you kind of flinch and start to wonder, ‘Is this going to be one of those days?’ ”

  Glavine was wondering that even more in the sixth. The inning began innocently enough: Glavine struck out Renteria, and then Beltran ran down Chipper Jones’s line drive on the warning track. But Andruw Jones singled to left on a ball that just got past David Wright at third base. Brian McCann then slammed Glavine’s first pitch into the right-field corner, and Green had to make an excellent play in the corner to hold Jones at third.

  Up came Jeff Francoeur and out to the mound came Rick Peterson. When Peterson comes to the mound it is for one of six reasons:

  • To counsel the pitcher on something he might be doing wrong: overthrowing, something in his mechanics, or pitch selection.

  • To give the pitcher a rest: “Sometimes you just need to catch your breath,” Glavine said. “Rick will come out and say, ‘I’m just here to give you a few seconds to relax.’ ”

  • To ask the pitcher if he still thinks he can get people out or if he’s tired. Unlike some pitchers who think admitting to being tired is a weakness, Glavine is always honest. “If I’m gassed, I say so,” he said. “What’s good about that is that Rick knows I won’t lie to him, so if I say I’m okay, he usually believes me. Sometimes he’ll tell me I’m wrong but not usually.”

  • To stall so the bullpen can get ready when a pitcher runs into sudden trouble. Although the Braves’ threat had been sudden, and Glavine had thrown ninety-one pitches, that’s not what this visit was about.

  • To simply stand on the mound and wait for the umpire to come out to break up the meeting so Peterson can tell him he’s doing a lousy job of calling balls and strikes. Technically, arguing balls and strikes means automatic ejection, but Peterson will chance it on occasion. In eight years as a major league pitching coach, he has been ejected twice. “Sometimes he’ll come out and stand there with his arms folded and just say, ‘Hang on a minute; I’m not here to see you,’ ” Glavine said. “Then the umpire comes out, and he’ll let him have it.”

  One of Peterson’s tricks is not to look at the umpire when he’s letting him have it. In fact, more often than not, he will direct his comments to Glavine: “I’ll say something like, ‘You just keep throwing the ball where you’re throwing it, Tommy. Those are good pitches. This guy is too good an umpire to keep missing pitches the way he’s been missing them.’ ”

  • To discuss specific strategy on the next hitter.

  That last item was Peterson’s purpose as he jogged to the mound with Francoeur approaching the plate. Those who watch Peterson regularly know instantly when he has come out to talk strategy because he won’t put his arm on the pitcher’s shoulder, which is what he does when he has come out to soothe or counsel or stall. The question was whether to pitch to Francoeur or walk him intentionally and pitch to Matt Diaz with the bases loaded.

  It was not a righty-lefty question since both are right-handed hitters. It was more about who Glavine felt more comfortable pitching to at that moment. Francoeur has more power, but Diaz is a better hitter for average. Glavine’s control had been excellent all day, but pitchers do occasionally tighten up a little with the bases loaded and get behind in the count, forcing them to groove a pitch to keep from walking in a run. Beyond that, Glavine remembered the home run Diaz had hit against him in Atlanta fifteen days earlier. He opted for Francoeur.

  “Francoeur is a free swinger, which means he might get a hit off a good pitch, or you might get him out on a bad one,” Glavine said. “My thought was to pitch to him and not give him anything especially good to hit. If he walked, fine, then I’d deal with Diaz.”

  Francoeur didn’t walk. Glavine threw him two changeups, hoping he would bite on one, but he took both, the second for a strike. He then worked outside with two fastballs. On the second, Francoeur leaned across the plate and hit it right up the middle into center field, scoring both runners. The Braves were up 3–1.

  Glavine was angry with himself. “I didn’t second-guess pitching to him,” he said. “And it wasn’t a bad pitch. But it was a little too good, especially in those circumstances, against a hitter who will go get a pitch, which is what he did. I’m standing there thinking we should be up in this game at least two-one and now we’re down three-one, and it’s probably my last inning. I was pissed.”

  He calmed down long enough to pick Francoeur off to end the inning but still walked into the dugout steaming. The last thing a pitcher wants to do after his team has either gotten him even or put him ahead is give runs right back, especially with two outs. Glavine had violated two cardinal rules of pitching on a day when he thought his opponent might not give up any more runs.

  That, however, proved not to be true.

  The Mets quickly loaded the bases with one out on singles by Delgado and Alou and a walk to Green. At that point
Bobby Cox, convinced that plate umpire Paul Emmel was squeezing Smoltz, got into a heated argument with Emmel. More often than not, Cox gets ejected for arguing balls and strikes, almost always in defense of his pitcher. He got, as the saying goes, “his money’s worth” with Emmel before leaving, still gesturing angrily just in case Emmel was not completely certain that he was unhappy.

  As soon as Cox was gone, Jose Valentin ripped a single to left to make it 3–2, Alou’s lack of speed forcing him to stop at third. The good news for Glavine was his team was rallying. The bad news was that, with the bases loaded, Willie Randolph sent Julio Franco up to pinch-hit for him. Glavine understood. Smoltz was on the ropes, and Randolph had to go for the knockout. Still, he had only thrown ninety-five pitches and had hoped to go one more inning.

  “I hadn’t seen the seventh inning yet,” he said. “I felt like I had plenty left. But there was no choice in that situation.”

  Franco flied out to short right field, failing to advance the runners. But Reyes made up for that, hitting a line drive into the right-field corner. All three runners scored. Reyes was jumping up and down on third base clapping his hands, and the Mets led 5–3. Shea Stadium rocked with noise. A moment later Lo Duca singled to left to make it 6–3, and, remarkably, Smoltz was gone. No one was more shocked than Glavine.

  “To me, Smoltzie seemed locked in, which is why I was so upset when I gave up the two runs in the top of the inning,” he said. “I thought at that point my job was to try to keep it at one-one and hope we could get to their bullpen — that it was that kind of game. But baseball is completely unpredictable that way. There were a couple pitches John wanted that he didn’t get, and then Hosey [Reyes] just crushed that pitch. If you think about it, that was about the fifth or sixth time in two games we needed a big two-out hit, and he was the first one to get it.”

  Smoltz conceded later that he probably let Emmel’s strike zone get to him a little bit. “That’s not an excuse,” he said. “In fact, that’s on me. As a pitcher you have to overcome that stuff. Especially when you’re as experienced as I am. You can’t sulk. You have to get outs.”

  That’s easier said than done. Both Glavine and Mussina agree that as they’ve gotten older, they have become more short-tempered with umpires, particularly when they don’t get a key pitch that they think is a strike. “It’s about margin of error,” Mussina said. “When I was younger, if I threw a two-and-two pitch that I thought was strike three, I felt fairly confident I could come back and get the guy on the next pitch. Now, I’m not as certain. I haven’t got as many really good pitches in me per game as I used to have. And, when the next pitch becomes a hit, which it seems to a lot nowadays, I really get angry.”

  Both Glavine and Mussina have reputations among umpires as “pros.” They don’t argue often, and when they are upset they don’t show it in a way that “shows up” the umpire. Major league umpires are obsessed with not being “shown up.” If a catcher argues balls and strikes without turning around, he is likely to get away with it. If he turns around or takes off his mask, he’s probably gone. If a pitcher walks off the mound shouting at an umpire, he’s probably going to be in trouble. If he says something walking off the mound at the end of an inning without pointing a finger or being obvious, the umpire will frequently let it go. Especially if he knows the pitcher was right.

  “Sometimes I’ll come in the dugout, and Paulie [Lo Duca] will say to me, ‘The ump said he missed that one,’ referring to a pitch I was upset about,” Glavine said. “Once I hear that, I’m not going to give the guy a hard time about that pitch. It’s over. Umpires make mistakes; so do pitchers.” He smiled. “Of course we pay a higher price for our mistakes. But if someone says, ‘I got that one wrong,’ they aren’t going to have any trouble with me.”

  Mussina is the same way. Like Glavine, if he walks down off the mound to say something to an umpire, that means he is really angry. “I worked the plate for him probably forty or fifty times,” said Rich Garcia, a retired umpire who now works evaluating umpire performances. “He was always a pro. In fact, if he walked up behind me right now and started talking I would have no idea who it was because I’m not really sure I ever heard his voice. Occasionally you could see in his body language that he didn’t like a call — and when he got upset it was probably because you missed one — but I don’t ever remember him actually saying anything.”

  Or, as one current umpire put it: “If Tom Glavine or Mike Mussina gives you a hard time, you probably deserve it.”

  Whether Emmel deserved a hard time from Smoltz or Cox was hard to say, but Smoltz was clearly affected by his strike zone. “I had great control that day,” he said. “Check the numbers.”

  The numbers bear him out: ninety-eight pitches, seventy-one strikes. By comparison, Glavine, who didn’t walk anyone, threw fifty-nine strikes in ninety-five pitches.

  If Glavine had been home watching the game, he undoubtedly would have empathized with his pal. But he wasn’t in a very empathetic mood in the bottom of the sixth. “My only disappointment was that we didn’t get to him for four or five more,” he said.

  Glavine was smiling as he walked up the runway to the clubhouse after Beltran popped up to end the Mets’ sixth. At that moment, he thought he had stolen a win. “When you get pinch-hit for because you’re behind, you know the odds of getting a win that day aren’t great,” he said. “If you win two or three of those a year, you’ve been very lucky. After we scored the five and got Smoltzie out, I thought maybe I had stolen one. You tell yourself ‘Don’t count the win yet,’ but mentally, with a three-run lead and the bullpen pitching well, I think I was counting the win.”

  While Glavine headed for the training room to put ice on his arm, Ambiorix Burgos took over. Burgos had been picked up in what would turn out to be a disastrous off-season trade with the Kansas City Royals (Brian Bannister, the pitcher traded for Burgos, ended up being an effective starter, while Burgos found himself back in the minor leagues). He got the first two outs in the seventh but then gave up a pinch-hit double to Scott Thorman. Randolph decided to go lefty-lefty at that point and brought Scott Schoeneweis in to face Kelly Johnson, who had already homered and singled off of Glavine in a lefty-lefty matchup.

  Schoeneweis promptly walked Johnson, bringing Edgar Renteria to the plate with the tying run. Glavine wasn’t thinking in those terms as he sat on the training table staring at a TV set. “I was thinking, ‘Let’s get this guy and not let Chipper or Andruw come up with men on base,’ ” he said.

  He got his wish — sort of. Renteria launched a 1–1 pitch over the left-field fence to clear the bases, tie the score, and ensure that Glavine couldn’t be the winning pitcher. Icing his arm, Glavine felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach. A moment later, he got a text message from his wife, Chris, who frequently sends messages when he has come out of a game. It was succinct. “DAMMIT,” it said.

  A few minutes later, Schoeneweis came into the clubhouse looking sick. A Duke graduate who had beaten cancer while in college and gone on to a solid major league career, Schoeneweis had been signed by the Mets during the off-season to give them another left-handed arm in the bullpen. He and Glavine had become friends quickly. Both liked to play golf, and both had interests that tended to range beyond box scores.

  “Tom, I’m so sorry,” he said, seeing Glavine.

  “Hey, Scott, no worries,” Glavine said, trying to sound casual. “It happens. We’ll get ’em the next time.”

  At that moment Schoeneweis wasn’t thinking about the next time. Like all the Mets relievers, he felt extra pressure whenever he came into a Glavine game with a lead.

  “Anytime you come into a game, you want to pitch well,” Schoeneweis said. “But any of us would be lying if we said we weren’t aware of what Tom is trying to do. Any time he has a lead, you want to be sure you don’t blow it for him because that’s an opportunity gone. When Renteria went deep, I just felt sick to my stomach. What makes it harder is knowing who Tom is. I knew he would
never give me a hard time about it, that, in fact, he’d try to boost my spirits about it. That’s Tom. He’s just the kind of teammate you don’t ever want to let down, but especially not when he’s so close.”

  It’s worth noting that Schoeneweis never mentioned the number three hundred. It had almost become code in the Mets clubhouse not to specifically talk about three hundred wins. Glavine had simply stopped saying it. He would talk about “the goal I’m trying to reach” or “where I’m trying to get to” or “what it is I’m hoping to get done here.” But he never said he was trying to win three hundred games. The relief pitchers had picked up on that. It had become “The Number That Must Not Be Named.”

  “We all feel this every time Tom pitches,” said Billy Wagner, the closer, who lockered next to Glavine and drove with him to the ballpark most days. “Look, it’s entirely possible he may be the last guy to do this. We all want to be a part of it; we all want to help him get it done. But with that comes extra pressure. I know if he can’t pitch a complete game, there’s nothing in the world I want more than to have that ball in the ninth inning when he gets to that doorstep. But if I somehow blow it…” He shook his head. “Don’t even want to think about it.”

  Schoeneweis had no choice but to think about it that day. Glavine was fully aware of the pressure the relievers were feeling. His three closest friends on the team were the three guys most likely to be put in a position to either fail or succeed with his three hundredth win on the line: Schoeneweis, Wagner, and Aaron Heilman, who had become the team’s set-up man.

  “What you really don’t want to do is sit around and talk about it,” Glavine said. “But it does become the elephant in the room. We all know it’s there. In theory, if I pitch well, getting ten wins should not be a problem. But you don’t want it to linger. You don’t want it hanging over the team’s head. You want to get it done and then focus on the pennant race and nothing else. But I think we all know it isn’t a subject that’s going to go away. When you think you’ve got one and then you lose it, everyone feels it. Not just me — everyone. I know that, I understand it, and I also know that, realistically, there’s nothing I can do or say except pitch well and win seven more games.”