Living on the Black

by John Feinstein

  “Every once in a while you pitch a game where you feel like you can’t do anything wrong,” Mussina said. “It’s as if you’re on autopilot. Everything you do turns out right: You hang a pitch, the guy fouls it off. You throw one down the middle, he takes it. They swing at your best pitches. You feel like you can throw the ball through the eye of a needle if someone asks you to. It’s almost like an out-of-body experience. Once we put up the touchdown in the second, I was out there thinking, ‘Now look at me go.’

  “You have a game like that once, maybe twice a year. I call it pitching mindlessly. You don’t have to think about anything. You look up and it’s the sixth or seventh inning. You feel as if you could go out there and pitch an inning left-handed, and they’d hit three ground balls right at people.”

  He smiled and folded his arms. “Problem is, it’s a double-edged sword. Like I said, once, maybe twice a year you can go out there in a mindless state and everything will go right. But that’s not the way you normally pitch. The way you normally pitch, you need to be focused and aware of what you’re doing on every pitch. Often, after you have a mindless game, the next one isn’t very good.

  “It’s a little bit like pitching on autopilot, and then someone turns off the autopilot and there’s no one in the cockpit. You do that, you’re going down.”

  Mussina wasn’t really thinking in those terms in Cleveland. He pitched into the eighth inning, coming out with two men out after a pair of doubles by the Indians narrowed the gap to 10–2. Torre, thinking long-term, figured eighty-nine pitches was enough.

  “I guess the difference between now and when I was younger is when I had a mindless game in those years, I would flirt with a no-hitter or pitch a shutout. Now it means I might get to the eighth or ninth inning.”

  He certainly wasn’t complaining. He was 8–7 on the year, the first time he had been over .500. He had started the season feeling confident he would win at least eleven games and get to 250 for his career. In mid-July that had seemed like a pipe dream. Now, sitting on 247 with, he figured, nine starts left, 250 appeared to be close to a lock.

  “Two fifty isn’t three hundred by any stretch,” he said. “But it isn’t a bad number.”

  GLAVINE NO LONGER needed to worry about numbers. He no longer needed to talk about what he was trying to do or where he was trying to get to or the goal he was trying to reach. He could just say, “It feels great to be one of twenty-three pitchers in history with three hundred or more wins.”

  He was still floating when he took the mound to face the Marlins in the second game of the weekend series. As he trotted from the dugout to throw his eight warm-up pitches, many in the crowd of 50,773 began to stand and clap. By the time PA announcer Alex Anthony had finished introducing the Mets defense, concluding with “and on the mound, Tom Glavine,” everyone in the place was on their feet.

  “I had expected something,” Glavine said. “It was my first time back home since Chicago, and I thought that I’d get a nice hand when they introduced me. But I never imagined it would be like that.”

  As the cheers grew louder, Glavine tried to go about the business of throwing his warm-up pitches. Finally, he knew that just wouldn’t work. He stopped, backed off the rubber, took off his cap, and acknowledged the cheers, which only grew louder.

  “It really was neat,” he said. “Because it was spontaneous. It wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t part of a ceremony or anything like that. Given the rocky start I’d gotten off to in New York, it really meant a lot to me.”

  Glavine had to settle his emotions before Hanley Ramirez stepped in to lead off the game. He immediately gave up a leadoff single to Ramirez but then retired the Marlins without any further damage in the first. “That was kind of nice,” he said. “I wouldn’t have felt too good if I’d gotten an ovation like that and then given up a four-spot or something.”

  For five innings, he didn’t give up anything. David Wright hit a two-run home run in the fourth for a 2–0 lead, and it looked like Glavine would roll to win number 301 without much resistance.

  “It’s hard to describe how good I felt that night,” he said. “From the minute I got to the mound, even putting the ovation aside, I felt completely different than any game I had pitched in years. It was as if there was no pressure. Obviously, it was still important because we were in a pennant race, but I wasn’t pitching not to screw up. When I got the lead, I didn’t start thinking, ‘Okay, this is an opportunity to get another win closer; don’t blow it.’ I think I’d been doing stuff like that without even knowing it. Now, I was just out there pitching, enjoying it, having fun. It felt almost the way I used to feel in high school. I was completely relaxed. It was actually fun again.”

  He gave up a run in the sixth, but Wright answered with another home run in the bottom of the inning, and Glavine took a 3–1 lead into the seventh. Cody Ross led off with a single, and Glavine got pinch hitter Todd Linden to fly to left. That was the moment when Randolph, aware of the fact that Glavine had thrown 104 pitches on a hot night, decided to go to the bullpen. And in came Guillermo Mota as everyone shuddered.

  Unfortunately, the result was almost exactly the same as in Milwaukee and Chicago. Ramirez singled to put runners on first and third. Mota then struck out Alejandro De Aza, but Ramirez stole second on strike three. That left Randolph with a decision: pitch to the dangerous Miguel Cabrera or walk Cabrera intentionally to load the bases and pitch to Josh Willingham.

  The sensible move was to avoid pitching to Cabrera at all costs. But loading the bases, especially for a pitcher who isn’t pitching with much confidence, can be tricky.

  “You always pitch a little differently with the bases loaded,” Glavine said. “You’re a little more concerned about falling behind because unless you have a big lead you don’t want to walk in a run. It’s just a different feeling psychologically when you have a base open. You’re less likely to give in to a hitter if you fall behind. Most of the time, if I’m given the option, I would rather not intentionally walk someone to load the bases. But I could certainly understand Willie not wanting to pitch to Cabrera.”

  Mota quickly got behind Willingham 2–0, as the crowd, which had gotten in the habit of booing him whenever anything went wrong (much the way the Yankee crowd did whenever Kyle Farnsworth got into trouble), began to boo. Down 2–0, not wanting to walk in a run with a two-run lead, Mota made sure his next pitch was over the plate.

  It was — a fastball right down Broadway — and Willingham crushed it over the left-field fence for a grand slam. Glavine would not get win number 301 in spite of another good performance. The Marlins now led 5–3, and Randolph had to go get Mota as the boos reached a crescendo.

  “I guess I was thankful that I was at three hundred and not trying to get there anymore because that would have really hurt,” Glavine said. “As it was, it was disappointing that we ended up losing the game, but I came away feeling good because I pitched well after all the distractions of the week. I felt as if I was starting to get on the roll I really hadn’t been on all season.”

  The team was most definitely not on a roll. The loss was their fourth in five games since Glavine’s three hundredth and cut their lead over the Braves to two and a half games. It did not, however, dampen the celebration the next day when the Mets honored Glavine.

  Team Glavine was back — the logistics made easier by the fact that the Billerica group could drive and a lot of the family could stay at the house. The Mets brought Tom Seaver in to be master of ceremonies. Almost always when the Mets honor someone, Seaver comes to town. He had been their first great player, the heart and soul of the Miracle Mets of 1969, and had been the first player whose bust in the Hall of Fame wore a Mets cap.

  There was no escaping the irony that Seaver had won his three hundredth game in a White Sox uniform and Glavine had won his three hundredth in a Mets uniform. Glavine would go into the Hall of Fame as a Brave when his time came, but he was now the first pitcher to win his three hundredth game as a Met.<
br />
  Glavine had talked to the media so much in the previous week that there really wasn’t much left for anyone to ask him. It didn’t matter: Seaver was going to do most of the talking anyway. “To win three hundred games, like Tom has done, you have to be an artist, not just a pitcher,” Seaver said, clearly talking about himself at least as much as Glavine. “I think what’s important, though, is the way Tom has conducted himself throughout his career, not just on the mound but off it.”

  That was the theme for the day. Glavine wasn’t thrilled about all the hoopla, even though he understood it. “I like to be the center of attention when I’m on the mound and have the ball in my hands,” he said. “Stuff like this is a little embarrassing.”

  He sat and listened while one speaker after another went on about him, and he was presented with various awards by friends and teammates and, for some reason, former New York Rangers hockey player Rod Gilbert, and he watched a videotape the Mets had put together of other great athletes congratulating him. He got a chuckle when Wayne Gretzky appeared, wondering if he might have made something of himself had he pursued hockey. The only glitch came when Seaver forgot it was time to introduce Glavine and went to sit down. Someone nudged him, and he ran back to the podium and said, “I almost forgot. Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Glavine.”

  Not the most dramatic introduction, but Glavine didn’t mind. The only surprising moment in his thank-you speech came when Glavine went out of his way to talk about how important it was to him that he had conducted himself the way he had during his career. It was very un-Glavine-like for Glavine to pat himself on the back publicly in any way.

  “I just thought it was the right forum to make the point that you can be successful as a professional athlete and not be a jerk,” he said. “There’s so much focus on the guys that screw up and a tendency to forget that there are guys who perform well and conduct themselves well too. I wanted to make the point that you can do both.”

  Glavine also noticed that all the Marlins were in their dugout, watching from the top step, as he spoke. He was touched by that. He knew his teammates would be out there; he wasn’t so sure about the opponents. “I thought that was cool,” he said. “It was a sign of respect.”

  As the ceremony broke up, Glavine made a point of walking in the direction of the Florida dugout to say thanks. He had no idea how the Marlins would repay him for his courtesy.

  26

  Crash

  THERE WERE NOW just seven weeks left in a season that had started six months earlier, when pitchers and catchers reported to spring training. The weather was hot, and everyone was a little bit tired. Teams no longer in contention had to push themselves to come to the ballpark every day and give their best. For everyone, stamina was a factor. Which is why the latter days of August are known as “the dog days.” You are dog tired, but there is still a long way to go to get to the finish line.

  Mussina’s victory in Cleveland was the middle game of an impressive three-game sweep. It boosted the Yankees’ record to 66–51, putting them in a tie with Seattle for the wild-card lead and, remarkably, only four games behind the Red Sox, who were suddenly hearing people in New England whisper the dreaded words “Nineteen seventy-eight.” That had been the year the Yankees had come from fourteen and a half games back in July to catch and pass the Red Sox, before beating them in the famous/infamous playoff game (depending on your point of view) in which Bucky Dent hit the famous/infamous three-run homer off of Mike Torrez.

  Sweeney Murdy, the sharp young reporter who covers the Yankees for WFAN, was standing in the middle of the Yankees clubhouse in New York on the afternoon of August 13, a few hours before the team began a three-game series with the Orioles, when Mike Mussina sidled over to him. Mussina likes Murdy because Murdy’s sense of humor is similar to his (sarcastic) and because he almost never asks questions like “Are you where you want to be?” In fact, he makes fun of those who do.

  “Hey, Sweeney,” Mussina said. “What’s our record right now?”

  Murdy always knows the Yankees’ record. “You’re sixty-six and fifty-one, Moose,” he said, wondering if Mussina had somehow lost track.

  “Really?” Mussina said. “What are the Mets?”

  As it happened, Murdy knew that too, and when the question came out of Mussina’s mouth Murdy knew he was being set up. “They’re sixty-five and fifty-two,” he answered.

  “Really?” Mussina said, wide-eyed. “How’s that possible?”

  With that, he walked back to his locker, a satisfied smile on his face.

  It was nothing personal, but Mussina, like a lot of those who had been around the Yankees for a while, was more than pleased that the Yankees’ record was now better than that of the Mets.

  “It seemed like in May and June, whenever I turned on the radio all I heard was how New York was now a Mets town,” Mussina said. “We were yesterday’s news; we were done. We needed to fire our manager, our general manager, and most of our players. The Mets were the team. They had been in the playoffs, what, one year in a row? We’d been in twelve, right? They last won a World Series when — 1986?

  “I just couldn’t believe that early in the season people were just writing us off. I know some people get sick of us being in the playoffs every year, but when you’re in the middle of it you take pride in it. So, when we did go past them, even though in the grand scheme of things it meant nothing, I just wanted to make sure people noticed.”

  The Yankees had not made any major trades at the July 31 trade deadline, resisting the urge to trade prospects for a relief pitcher like Eric Gagne or an added bat for the lineup. Instead, they were now inserting some of those prospects into the lineup and the pitching rotation and the bullpen.

  Philip Hughes had finally come off the disabled list on August 3, mercifully allowing the team to take Kei Igawa out of the rotation. Jeff Karstens, who had been on the DL all season, was recalled from minor league rehab early in August, and Mike Myers was designated for assignment. But the key addition was Joba Chamberlain, a twenty-one-year-old right-hander who had started the season playing Class-A ball in Tampa but had been so good that he had been moved up to Triple-A by July. He had been a starter, but the Yankees needed someone to pitch the eighth inning since everyone who had been tried in that slot had failed. So they began using him in relief in early July, noting his 98-mile-per-hour fastball and his control.

  On August 7, Chamberlain was called up, pitched two shutout innings in a 9–2 victory over the Blue Jays, and quickly began acquiring folk hero status in New York. Every time he walked to the mound in Yankee Stadium, the crowd started screaming.

  As luck would have it, Chamberlain’s arrival coincided with Mariano Rivera’s annual slump. Every year, sometime in July or August, Rivera would go through a stretch where he struggled. Usually it was from overwork, but that wasn’t the case this year. He was just having a hard time getting people out.

  Rivera had been hit hard in the finale in Cleveland, even though he had held on to save the game for Andy Pettitte. The next night, he blew a save against the Orioles and was bailed out only because the Yankees scored a run in the bottom of the ninth to win the game 7–6. Two days later, he came into a tie game in the tenth inning and was shelled for three runs and the loss, as the Yankees again lost two of three to the Orioles.

  Watching Rivera pitch, Mussina thought he saw something different in the way he was setting up to deliver. Mussina watches pitchers carefully, especially those on the Yankees, on the four days in between starts that he isn’t pitching. Sometimes he learns something by watching; other times he may see something that he thinks needs to be brought to the pitcher’s attention.

  “Pitching is what I do, so it’s only natural for me to study other pitchers,” he said. “But I also think at this point in my career, I might be able to help out at times. Usually it’s with younger guys: maybe they’re tipping a pitch; maybe they’re off balance for some reason or opening up. Maybe they don’t know what to do when they get a sc
uffed ball.”

  Older pitchers like Glavine and Mussina are constantly amazed when they see young pitchers get a ball back after a grounder to an infielder and throw it in to the umpire asking for a new ball because it has been scuffed by the infield dirt.

  “Boggles my mind when I see that,” Mussina said. “You treat a scuffed ball like gold and hang on to it for as long as you can.”

  If a pitcher scuffs a ball himself, he is subject to ejection, fine, and suspension. But if the ball gets scuffed in the course of play and no one asks for it to be taken out of play, it can become a weapon. “You have to put it up against your third and fourth fingers instead of your second and third,” Mussina said. “You throw it and twist your hand outward. The scuff makes the ball dive an extra three or four inches to the outside. A hitter should notice the difference right away, but you might get a quick out with it or, if you’re lucky and no one notices, a couple.”

  Early in the season, Glavine had picked up a ball with a scuff on it outside the Mets dugout just before batting practice one morning. He noticed rookies Mike Pelfrey and Joe Smith standing on the top step of the dugout and walked over to them, ball in hand.

  “What do you do with this ball?” he demanded, handing the ball to Pelfrey.

  “Get rid of it?” Pelfrey answered.

  Glavine shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. You hold on to it for dear life.” He then spent several minutes showing Pelfrey the proper grip and motion. “Work on it,” he said. “It’ll make you a better pitcher.”

  “What about me?” Smith said.