108 Stitches

by Ron Darling

  One of the tells I looked for as a young pitcher was whether or not I could see the sink in my sinker ball as it left my hand. To me, I’d always thought of that as a good thing, but Mel chased me from that notion early on. He’d say, “If you can see the sink, then they can see the sink.”

  What he looked for, he said, was the sting in his hand. He’d say, “If I catch you and my thumb starts hurting, your sinker’s good. That’s how it works.”

  ’Nuff said, right?

  * * *

  My relationship with Dave Duncan goes back a little further than the first day I showed up in an Oakland A’s uniform. Remember, Dunc was Tony La Russa’s pitching coach for an incredible run of 27 straight seasons—a run that took the two from the Chicago White Sox to Oakland and, finally, to the St. Louis Cardinals. Before he became one of the game’s most successful, longest-tenured pitching coaches, he was a big league catcher, mostly with the A’s. That’s the role he was in the first time we met, only I’m pretty sure the meeting didn’t mean as much to Dunc as it did to me.

  I was maybe ten or twelve years old, on a trip to Fenway Park with my Little League team. We didn’t go to a whole lot of baseball games when I was a kid, but on this outing I remember trying to hunt down autographs—one of the sweet offshoot pastimes of our great game, yes? After the final out, I ran to the Red Sox parking lot with my friends, but we couldn’t get near any players, so we made our way to the visiting team lot. We were all die-hard Red Sox fans, but we were equal-opportunity autograph seekers; we’d take whatever we could get. The Sox had played the Oakland A’s that afternoon, and there wasn’t a whole lot of security in the visitor’s corner of the stadium, and I managed to sidle up to Dave Duncan, who’d taken over as the A’s everyday catcher. He was out of uniform by this point, so I didn’t know who he was, only that he was one of the A’s players. He made a show of being gruff, or put-upon—but, really, he was a gentleman about signing.

  I went home later and checked the legible part of Dunc’s signature—“D.D.”—against my program, and I started following him in the box scores after that. It turned out, that was the only autograph I ever collected, so to wind up under his tutelage when I got to Oakland, it felt kind of full-circle-ish. (That’s not really a word, is it?) And yet the thing about Dunc was that he wasn’t the sort of guy you could tell that story. I could tell right away it would have embarrassed him. It would have put him in a spot where he would have had to show some emotion, made him uncomfortable.

  Once again, it just wouldn’t have been cool.

  Of all the players I’ve been around, all the coaches who had a hand in my career, Dunc was the most clinical, the most analytical—this at a time when clinical analysis wasn’t exactly the order of the day. He was the very first person I knew who paid attention to positioning and analytics, which of course has become a significant part of today’s game. In the early 1990s, though, baseball was very much a game of instinct and tradition. Things were done a certain way—in large part, because they had always been done that same certain way. True, there were exceptions to the game’s cardinal rules: when I was a kid, for example, watching the Game of the Week on television, I remember how opposing teams used to pitch to Willie McCovey and deploy what was known as the “McCovey Shift,” but that was an outlier-type move. With Dunc, though, he’d look at the numbers, and let it be known how he wanted us to pitch to this or that hitter, how we should line up in this or that situation. He was subtle about it, didn’t really call attention to what he was doing, didn’t even tell Tony La Russa what he was doing, or why. Tony wasn’t that kind of manager back then. He left it to Dunc to take care of the pitching, but if he’d have known his pitching coach was basing his moves on something other than his gut, I think his head would have exploded.

  And yet for all his insight and instinct, for all his success as a pitching coach, even Dunc had to tip his cap from time to time and allow greatness into the equation. This takes me to one of my favorite Dave Duncan stories, although it’s also one of my very favorite Tom Seaver stories, which is where the greatness comes in. Seaver was pitching for the White Sox. It was late in a game against the Baltimore Orioles. Tom was getting up there in years, close to forty, so La Russa and Duncan were looking on from the Chicago dugout worrying he was getting gassed. There were runners on first and second, two outs. Seaver fell behind the batter, 2–0, so La Russa flashed Duncan a look that said, What are we into here?

  One of the toughest things for a young manager or pitching coach is to know how to handle a seasoned old pro with the pedigree of someone like Tom Seaver. The tendency is to leave him alone to do his thing, even as the “book” is telling you to make some other move, because while you’re feeling your way into your role the last thing you want to do is show up a future Hall of Famer. These guys were all about the same age, had all been in the game about the same time, and yet they didn’t have a whole lot of history together, so this was a tough road to navigate.

  Sure enough, Seaver ended up walking the batter on four pitches, loading the bases and bringing up Ken Singleton, a veteran slugger who also was nearing the end of his long career.

  La Russa nodded toward the mound, indicating to Duncan that he wanted him to head out there to take Seaver’s pulse.

  “You all right?” Duncan said when he got to Seaver’s office.

  Seaver looked at Dunc like he had no idea what he was talking about, why he was out there on the mound with him. “What do you mean?” he said—like he didn’t have the time for this sort of thing. He had a game to pitch, and there was no room in his game plan for the kind of small talk Dunc seemed inclined to pursue.

  “You just walked that guy to load the bases,” Dunc said. It was merely something to say, even though he was stating the obvious.

  Seaver waved him away—said, “No, no, we’re good.”

  Back in the dugout, Duncan sat back down next to La Russa. He told the manager what Seaver had said. He added, “If he says we’re good, we’re good.” Like he was reassuring La Russa while trying to reassure himself.

  The two turned their eyes to the game. Singleton dug in. First pitch was neck-high. Ball one. La Russa said, “I thought you said we were good.” Like it was now Duncan’s fault, the White Sox now on their heels.

  Second pitch was neck-high. Ball two.

  La Russa flashed Duncan another look. He was not happy. They both started to think the game was slipping away from them.

  Next pitch, 2–0, Seaver got Singleton to roll over on a changeup, grounding out to the second baseman to end the inning.

  When Seaver got back to the dugout, La Russa walked over to him and said, “That’s all for you today.”

  Seaver, professional that he was, simply shrugged and said, “Okay, Skip.”

  Dunc walked over to Seaver and said, “Boy, you had me worried out there.”

  Here again, Seaver looked at him like he had no idea what he was talking about—which, in fact, he didn’t. “What do you mean?” he said.

  “That walk,” Dunc explained. “Those first two pitches to Singleton.”

  Seaver waved away Duncan’s concern—said, “I only walked the guy ’cause I didn’t want to face him. I knew if I had Singleton 2–0, I could throw him the changeup and he’d roll it over.”

  Dunc told me years later that he was stymied by Seaver’s response. He might have seen it coming, but it just about floored him, that a pitcher could be so confident in his approach, that he would rather pitch with his back against the wall and no margin for error than to allow a situation to dictate the way he would attack a hitter. The lesson here, of course, is that great pitchers dictate the action, not the other way around. Dunc was so taken by the exchange he walked over to where La Russa was sitting in the dugout to tell him about it. La Russa didn’t buy it, at first. He, too, had thought Seaver was tiring, and had somehow managed to dance his way out of a jam.

  Later, away from the stadium, La Russa found a way to ask Seaver about it—know
ing Tony, so that he could add to his growing arsenal of information on how to deal with a crafty old veteran.

  By this point, Seaver had just about had it with these two guys second-guessing him. He said, “Boy, you and Dunc certainly don’t have a lot of quality pitching around here, huh?”

  To Seaver, this was Pitching 101. He was playing chess out there on the mound, while others were playing checkers—only, to exaggerate my point, he was Bobby Fischer or Boris Spassky, playing at the very highest levels, while the rest of us were fumbling along playing Chinese checkers. None of us knew what the hell we were doing, compared to Tom Seaver. And to this day, this exchange between one of the greatest pitchers of all time, in late career, and two of the greatest coaching minds of all time, in early career, stands as the best example of what it means to be in control of your surroundings.

  It was a place I was lucky enough to find a time or two before the game was done with me.

  2

  “A” Is for “Aase”

  When you’ve got a bunch of stories to share, the tendency is to group them in what ways you can—or, following the conceit of this book, to search for a common thread that might allow you to tie a bunch of them together.

  And yet there are some stories that stand alone. They don’t fit neatly alongside one set of stories any more than they might lead naturally into a whole other set, but I’m determined to share them just the same, so I’ll lean on the alphabet for structure, every here and there—the lazy writer’s approach to assembling a compendium of baseball anecdotes, but as you’ll see it can be surprisingly effective, and I figure if I cop to it here my laziness will seem deliberate. (It’s a little like issuing an intentional walk, yes?) To help with the compending, I’ve asked my friends at the Elias Sports Bureau to identify all the teammates who played with me over my career—and in the pages ahead and in several chapters to follow, I’ll invite readers to join me as I thumb through the resulting list of nearly three hundred names and see what book-worthy anecdotes come to mind.

  What I’ve discovered, as you’ll see, is that even though these memories find me in alphabetical order, they help to tap other memories and find ways to stitch themselves to other teammates, other moments, other remnants from the game’s rich and storied past.

  First on my list of former teammates, as he must be on hundreds of other such lists, is the alphabetically correct Don Aase. Trouble is, I can’t think of a story to attach to Don, other than the fact that he’d been an All-Star closer for Baltimore during our storied 1986 season, and the fact that he’d made his major league debut for Boston in 1977, back when I was still in high school, cheering on my beloved Sox. Even then, story or no, I was struck by the Double A at the front of Don’s name. I wouldn’t say it cast him as my favorite pitcher, but it was a little unusual, made him someone to remember in this lexicographic way—same way a Red Sox fan of a certain age might follow Luis Tiant, say, for his unusual delivery … or Billy Conigliaro, for the way he reminded us of the career his brother Tony might have had.

  It was a marker, of a kind.

  Indeed, I have some specific memories of checking the box scores and following Don’s career as I went on to pitch at Yale, and work my way through the Rangers’ and Mets’ minor league organizations, and each time it attached in some manner to the unusual spelling of his last name, my eyes pulled instantly to the very top of any roster he happened to be on.

  By the time Don arrived at Shea Stadium, he was an 11-year veteran. He’d signed with the Mets as a free agent ahead of the 1989 season, and we were only too happy to have him in the fold. He was incredibly gracious to the young pitchers on our team—to me, especially. He loved to talk about the game, about how to get hitters out, how to handle certain situations. If he didn’t have a book on an opposing player, he at least had an idea, and I learned a lot from his approach. That was always a big thing with Don—to at least have a clue. And he was right about that, absolutely. Step to the mound and expect to blow the ball past hitters, and you’re well and truly doomed. Develop a game plan, study your opponents’ tendencies and weaknesses, and line them up against your strengths, and you give yourself a chance.

  Don was only five or six years older than me, and I’d already had some sustained success of my own at this midpoint in my career, but our relationship was very much that of a mentor-mentee. And now, nearly thirty years after we played together, I’m still struck by the Double A of his name, which in the end wasn’t even enough to place him first on an alphabetical list of all-time major leaguers. Wasn’t even enough to place him second or third. He’s behind Hank Aaron, obviously—and here he’s in good company, because almost everyone else who played the game is behind Hammerin’ Hank on some list or other. But he’s also behind Hank’s brother Tommie, which of course makes sense, and a journeyman pitcher named David Aardsma, who briefly toiled for the Mets during my time in the broadcast booth. That puts Don Aase in the cleanup spot on the all-time list, and he rates a mention here for the way his life and career—his very name!—stand as a compelling reminder of how difficult it is to leave a mark in the game.

  * * *

  Bill Almon was traded to the Mets early in the 1987 season, and one of the reporters covering the team pointed out to me back then that it might have been the first time two Ivy League ballplayers were big league teammates. Bill, who’d had an earlier stint with the Mets in 1980, went to Brown University, and he’d grown up in nearby Warwick, Rhode Island, so we also had New England in common.

  A few things about Bill: One, he was the first overall pick in the amateur draft, coming out of Brown, which wasn’t exactly known as a baseball powerhouse. Two, he was incredibly tall for a shortstop. That was the first thing we all noticed when he suited up with us. Three, he was one of the most relentlessly positive players I ever saw on the field. Or, I should say, heard on the field. He was an inveterate cheerleader. We used to call him “The King of Cliché,” because he’d sit on the bench and shout out this endless stream of positive patter.

  Show ’em where you live.

  Get a good pitch to hit.

  Take two and head to right.

  After a guy hit a double, he’d holler out to the next guy up and say, “Trade places with him.”

  It was almost annoying, listening to Bill all game long, but it came from such a cheerful, positive place it became kind of endearing.

  By the way, I never did follow up on that tossed-off aside from the reporter to see if there had been other Ivy League teammates—remember, I’m the lazy writer I introduced you to at the top of this chapter. I might have gone to Yale, and I might have been a pretty good student, but I was never the kind of pretty good student who went back to the library to fact-check the claims of my professors.

  It felt like there was truth to the claim, and like a lot of American voters these days, that was good enough for me.

  * * *

  Tucker Ashford was a former first-round draft choice of the San Diego Padres (second overall!), who was trying to jump-start his career as a utility player when I was called up to the Mets at the butt end of the 1983 season. We were only teammates for a month or so—in fact, I think I played against him more than I played with him. He’d been in the Yankees organization when I was traded to the Mets, so our paths would cross whenever our Tidewater team would play the Columbus Clippers.

  What struck with me about Tucker, and what has stayed with me all these years, was his name. Tucker Ashford. First time I heard it I thought it was just about the best baseball name ever. It’s perfect, right?

  Actually, the name works in just about any arena:

  And the Oscar goes to …

  With the first pick in the NBA draft, the Boston Celtics select …

  Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States …

  So that’s my Tucker Ashford story: I always wanted his name. Again with the names? Go ahead and blame the alphabet, for the way the Tucker Ashford entry appears almost immediately
after the Don Aase entry. And go ahead and blame the game itself for the fact that Tucker’s career never panned out the way you’d like to see for a tip-top draft choice. But his name? I’ll take it.

  * * *

  Harold Baines was probably the quietest player I ever played with. He just did not speak. Ever. We became friendly enough as teammates that we learned to golf together on a municipal course near the stadium, where we sometimes played after day games.

  If you look at Harold’s numbers, you’ll see that he was one of the greatest hitters to ever play the game—like, ever. But he never got a lot of love from Hall of Fame voters because he spent the second half of his career as a DH. If his knees had stayed right, and he continued on in the field, he would be enshrined with the all-time greats, no question.

  Even on the golf course, Harold didn’t speak. Our teammates gave him a wide berth at the ballpark. They honored who he was as a player and gave him the room he seemed to need to do his thing. But once we became golf buddies, I’d sidle up to him from time to time during a game and check in with him. One night, against the Texas Rangers, we were facing Nolan Ryan—and Ryan was blowing his usual smoke. In fact, it seemed like he was blowing a little harder than usual, felt to me like it was going to be one of those nights for him.

  First time through the order, Harold grounded out, didn’t look too good at the plate, and when he came back to the dugout I walked over to him and said, “Boy, he’s really bringing it tonight.”

  Harold just kind of shrugged and said, “He’s throwing all right.” For some reason, he was unusually talkative that night, because he kept the conversation going—said, “I’m sitting on his change.”

  I heard that and thought, Against Nolan Ryan? You had to be some kind of hitter to sit on a changeup against a hard thrower like Nolan Ryan. (Long as I’m on it, calling Nolan Ryan a hard thrower is a little like calling Randy Johnson tall.) But that was Harold Baines for you—confident as hell, smart as hell, patient as hell.