Gator

by Ron Guidry

  So Yogi sauntered out, naked, to bring a bottle of champagne to his wife, Carmen. She just looked at Bonnie afterward and said, “Yep, that’s Yogi.” Naked as a jaybird.

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  Coaching, I learned, was a never-ending job. Mentally, it is much more taxing than playing. The only free time you’ve got is when you’re home sleeping. There was a supermarket around the corner from where I lived in Manhattan where I could get a bite to eat, some coffee, and the paper. Other than that, I’d have to ask my son Brandon, who was living with us in the city, where anything was. As a player I had never lived in the city. And it’s not like I had any time to explore. I was always doing something coaching-related. I’d drive to Yankee Stadium, get there by noon, and wouldn’t leave for another twelve hours. That gets you back home after midnight, just in time to repeat the same thing the next day. It took a lot of organization, because before a game you’re working with pitchers and going over things with Joe. After the game, you’re assessing what happened in that night’s game to get the reports ready for the following day.

  I had two strengths as a pitching coach. The first was that as a pitcher, I always had a keen sense of the proper mechanics. People always told me that if you were to choose a soundtrack for my delivery, you’d choose ballet music. I always liked that. I didn’t look like I was working hard, but everything had to be in perfect sync in order for a guy like me to throw as hard as I did. Take a guy like Goose. He threw in the upper nineties, but he was six foot three and weighed upward of two hundred pounds. He looked like he was throwing the ball hard. Same for Nolan Ryan. For me to throw ninety-five miles per hour, at just 150 pounds, my delivery had to be smooth and waste no motion, to generate as much power as my body would allow.

  In an era that has turned the game into spray charts and spreadsheets, the ballet has gotten lost. Oftentimes the numbers are just descriptive. They tell you how someone has played or performed on the field, and in greater depth than they ever did in my day. But sometimes to really understand why a pitcher is throwing well, or poorly, you need a keen eye for what he’s doing physically. When I was playing, that was a skill we honed every day. I’d watch everybody, throwing for and against us, to study their mechanics. Now it seems like people watch the mechanics of the game less and miss picking up some of the nuances along the way.

  Knowing the mechanics helped me as a pitching coach because I felt the most important thing was having a mental image of each pitcher and what he should look like. There’s no such thing as perfect mechanics. No two of the best pitchers of all time wound up and threw the ball exactly alike. There are better practices than others, for sure, but what’s most important is consistency. When things aren’t working, it’s usually because those mechanics are slipping and changing from pitch to pitch.

  So the key was keeping a close eye on guys to let them know if something was off. For some guys, like Mariano Rivera, that might never be the case. He could throw four straight balls and then fire twenty straight strikes. Other guys, like Mike Mussina, were so good because they had a strong internal sense of when their mechanics were askew. Within one or two pitches, Mike could feel something was off and fix it. You see guys like Mussina who do that, and it’s no wonder they had such incredible careers. Same goes for Roger Clemens, who at forty-four years of age pitched for us in the second half of 2007. He was one of the greatest pitchers ever, but what made him so inspiring to work with was that he was still obsessed over the little things, always trying to get better. “Gator, watch for this and make sure I do that,” he’d tell me. To me, that was a sign of respect; even at his age, and with his illustrious career, he valued my insights.

  The other thing I tried to do as a pitching coach was to learn the personalities of my pitchers. In many cases, figuring things out on the mound doesn’t take a genius. The best advice I ever got from a pitching coach was from Art Fowler. When I first became a starter in 1977 he told me something amazingly simple: “If you can’t throw strikes, you can’t throw in the big leagues.” That’s it. It was so simple it was stupid. “What kind of pitching coach is this?” I said to myself. But then I sat down and thought about it. And it encapsulated everything I needed to know. Batters would never swing at my balls if I couldn’t get them to swing and miss at my strikes. I could worry about throwing it this way or that way, on the corners and at their knees, but you can’t beat yourself up out there. Other pitching coaches tried to give me more complicated advice that was never going to help me. I told them the best spot for them was in the corner; I’d figure things out on my own.

  I’d study each of the pitchers to learn what worked best with him. Some responded better to going over film so they could see their delivery from several different angles. You compare what they’re doing in the moment with what their form looked like when they were throwing their best. Others you could tweak right there on the mound in the middle of an inning. Some needed to go over stuff during bullpen sessions between starts. Some, like Randy Johnson, were best served by letting them deal with things by themselves.

  I also had to learn what kind of attitude the pitchers responded to. I never had to chew anybody out while I was a pitching coach, but some of the guys needed a different tone or approach. I could be stern, joking, philosophical—whatever they needed. Chien-Ming Wang, who had back-to-back nineteen-win seasons for us in ’06 and ’07, just needed to lighten up on the mound. So I could mess around with him. Same with Jaret Wright, who was so intense and would get so mad at himself, I had to struggle to keep him loose. I’d go out there, rub my mustache, and say, “So you’ve decided to make this damn game interesting, huh.”

  During moments like that I could hear a little bit of Thurman in myself, what I learned from him. He’d say things exactly like that to everybody on staff. If I helped my pitchers a fraction as much as Thurman helped me, I think I did my job.

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  In the years since that stint as pitching coach, I’ve come back to spring training every year and done the same thing: helped out, hung out, and observed. That annual trip to Florida is something I still look forward to—putting on the uniform, sitting in a clubhouse, and being near the game that gave so much to me. Some of the faces are still familiar. More seems to change every year. But it’s such a darn interesting time in baseball—both specifically for the Yankees and across the entire league. A number of things have become completely different, both strategically and in the game’s fundamentals.

  The style of the game, from the way it’s taught to the way it’s managed and played, has completely changed over these last few decades. I don’t care to lecture and say if it’s better or worse. But the simple fact is that it’s different. Let’s start with the pitching. The starters today are nothing like they were in past eras. I don’t mean that in terms of talent. Some of these guys are out of this world. But think about this: In 1978 I threw sixteen complete games. And another fifteen in ’79. Then in ’83 I threw twenty-one. Now, not a single pitcher in the last five years has reached even ten in a season. These days, some of the very best pitchers in the game go an entire season without pitching a game from beginning to end.

  The reasons for this could fill a book. There’s more science out there about pitch counts and not burning out a guy’s arm. (Although it seems more and more pitchers need surgery anyway.) The main thing I want to get into, from my perspective as a player and a coach, is how this has stemmed from the increased specialization of players.

  When I first got to the major leagues, and even the few years before that, is when the closer started to be a real specialized guy. Sparky was that guy for us. Then Goose. Oakland had Rollie Fingers. Mike Marshall won the Cy Young for the Dodgers in ’74. But there wasn’t really a setup guy. We had ten to eleven pitchers on the staff. Five starters, then five or six guys in the pen. One guy in there was deemed the closer. The rest were guys who couldn’t start, s
o they were in the bullpen too.

  Compare that with what they have today. There’s the closer; a setup guy who pitches the eighth inning; a setup guy who sets up the setup guy and pitches the seventh. There’s a long man; another short man; a guy who only gets out lefties. Managers can mix and match more effectively with those relievers than they ever could. When I was pitching, managers never had that luxury because, in general, the starters were so much better than the relievers. Heck, if I were pitching in today’s game, I might only end up going six innings on most nights. Though, knowing me, I wouldn’t be so happy with the manager if he came out to me that early asking for the ball.

  You can see this specialization make its way down from the majors to baseball at all ages. When I went to college, you were a starter or you pitched in the bullpen because you couldn’t crack it. Today in high school you might have a closer and a fully stocked bullpen. Even in Little League. Because people aren’t stupid. They see what’s out there, how the game is changing, and what’s valued. It’s something the Yankees have prioritized in recent years, building deep bullpens with the likes of Aroldis Chapman and Dellin Betances.

  The other big emphasis in the game these days ties well into the modern Yankees team too. More guys are trying to hit the ball out of the park than ever before. Most of the best batters I faced had a measured approach to hitting that they took pride in. They would take one big swing early in the at-bat to hit it out. If that didn’t work, their approach changed. They’d try to get a hit up the middle or to the opposite field. Or they’d try to hit the ball behind a runner.

  Now these guys take three swings for the fences. I’m not faulting anybody or even saying it’s a problem. But it has noticeably changed the game. Home runs are way up—2017 set the major-league record. And the consequence of that is that strikeouts are way up too. If batters aren’t shortening up their swings, they get more chances to hit it out, but they also swing and miss more. Also, you can’t tell me the ball ain’t changed with the way it’s flying off bats.

  The thing is, you’ll hear people gripe that all this is a problem and that it’s making games take longer and ripping some of the nuance out of the sport. But I’m not too sure a lot of people in the stands, who pay a great deal of money for their seats these days, want to see a quick 1–0 game. They may want it to last, and to see five or six home runs in one sitting. Or one of Aaron Judge’s mammoth home runs.

  Which brings it back to this modern Yankees team with guys like Judge, the giant outfielder sensation, and Gary Sanchez, a catcher and another powerful young hitter. They have both been so successful early in their careers that it’s natural for people to ask if they can form a core like Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and some of the others. Only time will answer that. But I think the key thing to remember about Jeter and Posada is that it wasn’t just about their talent. It was their personalities and how they played the game.

  The most remarkable aspect of that duo was how polished they were. Both off the field and in their approach to baseball. They showed up every day and took immense pride in their work. They did every little thing, from practice to warm-ups to the final out. At the plate, Jeter wouldn’t just get hits. He’d move runners over. When he made outs, they were often productive outs. They had style, grace. More than anything else, from the first day they stepped onto a major-league diamond, they played like fifteen-year veterans.

  Take Posada. He was a lot like Munson, in that sense of pride about mastering his job, which for a catcher is more important than any field position. The catcher calls the game for the pitcher and sets the tone. And Jorge was a great hitter, Munson was too, don’t get me wrong. But both of them loved catching, then they loved hitting. Posada loved catching because that was his number one job.

  So what’s exciting for the Yankees now is that they have the potential to build the same type of young, exciting, talented team that brought all those World Series trophies to the Bronx. Sanchez and Judge, they have incredible talent. While they have work to do to refine their games, they’ve already showed star power. And it’s not just them. It wouldn’t shock me if Greg Bird, the first baseman, turned out to be just as good or better than the rest of them. His approach at the plate is like a fifteen-year veteran’s. He can make great contact and pick the right pitch. And there are more in the minors who can get there soon.

  There are also the pitchers: Luis Severino showed he has the potential to be a real ace in 2017. I’ve always been real high on Jordan Montgomery, too, another pitcher, even though he didn’t come into the season with all that much hype. There are more on the way.

  All of this sets up for a future Yankees fans should be thrilled about. For years our minor-league system wasn’t very good. It clearly has been these last few years. The outlook is great, so much better than it was in the mid-2000s. But just because these guys have talent and the potential to be that great doesn’t mean anything yet. There’s a lot these guys can learn in the coming years about transitioning from great players to polished ones. When they do that, the sky is the limit. It’ll be fun to watch.

  14

  THE REAL YOGI BERRA

  The world lost a giant when Yogi Berra died on September 22, 2015. If someone more beloved walked this earth, I’d like to meet that person. Baseball stars, heroes, and legends have come and gone. None has cast the long shadow that Yogi did. He connected with Yankees fans, baseball fans, and people who didn’t give a flying hoot about the sport in a way nobody has ever done, so far as I know. Everybody dreamed of being a little bit like Yogi. Part of what made Yogi such a towering figure was that he dreamed bigger than anybody else around him.

  The Yogi I’d like to tell you about is someone a little different from the person in the stories he has become famous for. Because if you have only a cursory knowledge of Lawrence Peter Berra, you might only remember him for saying some silly things. They even have their own terminology: Yogi-isms. I’m not sure how many of these he actually said (he himself said, “I never said most of the things I said”) or whether or not he invented them, but Yogi-isms have come to be one of the ways he’s best remembered. Sayings like:

  “Baseball is ninety percent mental; the other half is physical.”

  “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

  “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”

  “It gets late early out there.”

  “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

  “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

  Here’s the thing about Yogi. There are so many things one can take away from his life: the values of passion, hard work, kindness, mentorship, stubbornness, righteous indignation—the list goes on. But if I could leave you with one thing, it’s that he taught the world that the only opinion of yourself that matters is your own. He was constantly told no in his life, and he inevitably fought his way to yes. He was told he was too small, yet he became the biggest man in baseball history. He was laughed at for the way he spoke, and he grew to be one of the most brilliant commentators the world has ever seen. That is the legend of Yogi. He might have had a funnier way of explaining it, but he was the most underestimated athlete and person this great game ever saw. I was just lucky to be friends with him.

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  Everybody has a picture or an idea about what Yogi was like, but there’s a Yogi that people don’t know as well. Not Yogi the cartoon or Yogi the lovable old man. This is Yogi the relentless, fierce, unyielding baseball player. From the very beginning, he had to overcome the fact that he did not look like a baseball player. He did not sound like a baseball player. He never went to school past eighth grade; the son of Italian immigrants, he sounded like it. He never grew past five foot seven, although it seemed as if his ears kept growing to fit the head of a man twice his size. Picture a tall, handsome, and charismatic baseball icon. Well, Yogi was the opposite.

 
Maybe that’s why when he tried out for the Cardinals, his hometown team, he was offered half the money one of his friends received. It didn’t matter that Yogi could hit a baseball farther than players who had eight inches on him. So even though he came from a humble background where every dollar meant the world to him, Yogi refused a deal from Branch Rickey, considered one of the greatest general managers to ever work in baseball. He held out until somebody signed him for what he felt he deserved. And if no team signed him, so be it. Eventually one team did just that. The New York Yankees.

  And despite Yogi Berra doing pretty much everything you could ask of him—from playing in the minor leagues to serving in the U.S. Navy during the invasion of Normandy—he still faced doubts about whether he could make it. He hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat, yet people couldn’t stop making fun of the way he swung. That was because he swung at everything. People laughed at some of his attempts. He chased breaking balls at his feet and fastballs above his head. But the funny thing is, usually folks who swing at everything end up striking out a lot. Yogi was the opposite. He was obsessed with putting his bat on the ball. During his first five years in the majors, he hit seventy-five home runs—which was one more than the number of times he struck out.

  The only thing more remarkable than his uncanny hitting ability was his astonishing excellence behind the plate. Catchers are typically big. Yogi’s small size and awkward, stubby build made people question whether he would last back there. Second, catchers are the brains of the club. They help align the defense. They have to know where the ball goes on any given play. Most important, they need to call the pitches. That requires a thorough knowledge of every opposing batter, and always being on the same page with your pitchers.