by John Smoltz
Well, I looked. My swollen thumb—about the size of fingerling potato at this point, and I am only slightly exaggerating—was spewing forth pus. I mean, it was just unnatural. It turns out that all along, my nail was slightly deformed and had gradually been growing into my thumb, eventually leading to the festering digit attached to my hand. It’s a common thing to have an ingrown nail—I think most people have had one from time to time—but almost nobody has one for years and years—like more than a decade—and tries to throw a major league fastball.
Anyway, so they ended up cutting half my nail off. It would be the first of four different procedures during the off-season to try to get my thumb back to normal. To make matters worse, after undergoing all these procedures, I developed a staph infection. Spring training was now right around the corner and instead of logging hours on the mound, I was spending my days at the hospital. At one point I was in so much pain I had to get nerve blocks just to sleep. Yep, I could tell already: It was going be another stellar year for Smoltz.
So, long story short, I finally kicked the staph infection and reported to spring training. Because of the thumb—and what was supposed to be a “minor” procedure—I had never been less prepared for the start of a baseball season as I was that year. Not only had I not spent any time throwing, I still couldn’t even pick up a ball. And I do mean that literally. My thumb was still so painful I couldn’t bear to actually wrap my fingers around one and grip it in my right hand. I couldn’t stand to toss a Wiffle Ball underhand to one of my kids, let alone reach back and try to fire a fastball in the mid-to-upper nineties.
I just kept nursing my thumb back to health—rest, ice, anti-inflammatory meds, rinse, and repeat. After weeks of nursing it with patience that nearly put me over the edge, I could at last pick up a ball, and finally, I started throwing again. I started out just throwing in the bullpen and then I managed to get up to six or seven innings of spring training work, which is nothing. There I was, about to enter my first year as “The Closer” and I wasn’t ready. Not only had I not totally adjusted to the routine of working day to day out of the bullpen, I had to fake like I was ready to pitch on the mound. Now, there’s a recipe for success if I’ve ever heard one.
Truthfully, if I hadn’t had fourteen years of experiences to pull from, there’s no way I could have started that year on any roster. But in the end, the challenge of that off-season likely played a vital role in preparing me for the challenges of being a closer for the first time.
Let me tell you, there’s no way to fake it in the big leagues. Hitters at the pro level are too good, and they reminded me of that right away. In my second game out as a closer, I got rocked. It was April 6 and I came in for the top of the ninth against the New York Mets. The game was tied 2–2 and the very bottom of the Mets’ lineup was due up to bat. It should have been just another day at the office. Well, it turned out to be one of those shoulda, coulda, woulda deals. Before I knew what had happened, I had given up eight runs in two-thirds of an inning. Bobby had to bring in Aaron Small to get the final out and I heard some boos as I walked off the mound. My ERA had gone from 0.0 to 43.20 in about ten minutes. It was unbelievable.
That miserable outing was a humbling experience, to say the least. The media jumped all over me. It seemed like everyone had something to say about it. One friend even called to tell me, “Hey John, only fifty more innings and you can get your ERA back to three.” Nice. Everyone was questioning me and my ability to get it done, but besides my coaches and teammates, nobody knew the real story behind it. Nobody in the press knew about my thumb and I certainly wasn’t going to let anyone in on it. For one thing, I wasn’t going to hide behind my injury or use it as an excuse, but I also wasn’t going to let anyone on another team know that I wasn’t quite ready or that I didn’t think I could get the job done.
It really had gotten to the point where it was natural to assess the situation and think that I had nothing to gain and everything to lose with this deal, with trying to figure out how to be the closer and work around my thumb. But I really wasn’t thinking about that. I was only thinking, John, it’s rally time. I just did what I did best when the chips were down: I put my head down and I worked through it.
As things progressed, I finally determined that I was just going to have to learn how to throw all my pitches again. My fastball, my slider, my curveball, you name it—I was seriously going to have to go back to the basics. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? How one ingrown thumbnail could wreak such havoc? But I think any pitcher would agree, the thumb on your throwing arm is as critical to your delivery as your elbow, your shoulder, or anything else, for that matter. The mechanical motion of pitching requires every part of your body to work in sync. If just one piece is slightly off, it sets off a chain reaction that affects another thing, which affects another thing, and so on and so forth.
I wish it had been different. I wish it had been easy, but it wasn’t. For the entire first month, every day was a battle, a new challenge. But every day I learned something new and I got better, both as a pitcher and as a person. I never thought I couldn’t hack it; I never thought it wouldn’t work, but even I couldn’t have predicted what would happen after I survived those torturous early weeks in April. I went from being booed to being lights-out; I would finish the season leading all of baseball by recording fifty-five saves and earn the National League’s Rolaids Relief Man Award. In my first full season as a closer, I had darn near broken Bobby Thigpen’s record for the all-time most saves in a single season. All-time.
The next two years in the bullpen would be not be as stunning statistically, but I definitely had two more solid seasons, finishing 2003 with forty-five saves and 2004 with forty-four.
The transformation from starting pitcher to closer was such a tough, tough transition. It was really like playing right-handed your whole career and then learning how to play left-handed temporarily. It proved to be the ultimate challenge. When my ingrown nail flared up, things moved beyond “ultimate” to this Mission: Impossible category.
But all along, through all the trials, I never doubted that I would find a way to make it work. Looking back, it was another one of those times when I had to step out of my comfort zone, embrace the change that was happening in my life (even though it was against my own wishes), and try to make the best of the situation. I failed a ton, sometimes on a daily basis, but I just kept on learning. And that’s really one of the secrets to my success. I didn’t ever look at failure as a reason or an opportunity to quit. I always looked at it as an opportunity to grow. And grow I did, night after night, in Atlanta’s bullpen.
Chapter Seven
CLOSING FOR DUMMIES
People don’t often believe me when I tell them that the transition from starting to closing was, without a doubt, one of the toughest obstacles I had to face in my entire career. Some people think I must be joking considering some of the injuries I’ve faced, or the major surgeries I found ways to come back from. Other people just don’t understand how there could be such a difference between starting and closing. I mean, it’s all pitching, right? The short answer to that question is “Yes and no.”
I guess it can be hard to understand if you’ve never pitched before, because, as with most things in life, proximity and perspective matter. In reality, starting and closing are alike in the way a portobello mushroom and a white truffle are alike. Now, I’m no chef, but I have sat on the couch next to my wife enough times to know those guys on the Food Network would have a heart attack if you said they were the same. The same thing goes for pitchers when it comes to starting and closing. After having done both now, I can assure you, they are like night and day.
After many failed attempts at trying to describe the difference between starting and closing to people who don’t know much about pitching, I finally came up with an analogy that seems to help. It goes something like this: Say you are at work. You go get in your car and start to drive home. You drive the speed limit and get back to your house, n
o problem. That’s starting. That’s structured. You knew where you were going and you were absolutely comfortable getting in the car and going there. Now go back to work and try it again, only this time, when you get in your car, get it up to a hundred miles an hour immediately, and this time, no matter what, don’t let up on the gas until you arrive home. Along the way try to avoid the following likely scenarios: causing an accident, running off the road, and harming yourself and/or anybody else. Now, how did you feel? Were you in control? Were you confident that you were going to arrive home safe and sound? Well, that’s closing. And now you also know why there are a limited number of guys who can do it.
When I first went down to the minors to start rehabbing as a reliever, I had to abandon a lot of things that I had grown accustomed to as a starter—not the least of which was my old routine. That may not sound like much, but it was really one of things that I hated most about closing. I make no bones about it; I’m a structured guy. I like to schedule things; I like to know what I’m doing today, tomorrow, next week, etc. So starting was perfect for me, since I knew I would pitch every fifth day during the season, barring things like bad weather or injuries that occasionally added or took away a day here and there. Most of the time you could count on four stressless days in between starts because, besides watching tape or studying your next opponent, there is little else you can do to help your team win. So you sit back, you watch, you learn. You’re a teammate. Then, on the fifth day, you pour everything you have into the game. Over time, your body gets used to this buildup to game time and then the downtime in between, especially mentally. I really thrived on it.
Closing could not have been more different. From one day to the next, I never had any idea when I would be called upon to pitch. When I went to bed at night, I had no idea if I would pitch the next day. When I got up in the morning, I still didn’t know. When I got to the park, same story. By the fifth inning, I might have an idea, but I still didn’t know for sure. A lot of times it would be nearly ten o’clock at night before I would know. Maybe it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but it proved to be a huge challenge for me. Closing took away one of the things I liked most about starting: knowing when I was pitching next. I was never in control of the rotation per se; my manager was, obviously, but knowing the schedule sort of gave me a false sense of control. By going to the bullpen, I sacrificed two things that really helped me tick: knowing what was coming and feeling like I was in control.
It took me a while to adjust to this new reality and I quickly learned that one of my biggest obstacles was simply going to be time. In pro baseball, all the players are expected to be at the park every day at a certain time, regardless of whether you’re a starting player, a bench player, or a reliever who may or may not pitch that day. So for me, as a closer, this meant on the average day there would be at least six hours from the time I walked through the door to the time I might pitch. I think we’ve been over this already, but it’s worth repeating: I do not wait well.
So how do I kill six hours, prepare myself to pitch in case I am called upon, yet still stay sane in the process? Should I concentrate on the game or watch it from a distance? Should I avoid it entirely? These were the things I had to work out if this closing thing was going to work. What I really needed was my own Closing for Dummies book, but the one I found at Barnes & Noble had to do with real estate, not pitching.
Anyway … so I knew challenge number one would be coming up with a new routine that would enable me to survive six hours without letting all the uncertainty drive me up the wall and still be ready to pitch if/when called upon.
Challenge number two was going to be the actual bullpen itself.
When the 2002 season began in Atlanta, the indoor bullpen at Turner Field was small and sparse. It was basically an oversize storage area with some folding chairs in it where the relief pitchers and catchers could go to get out of the sun when they weren’t watching the game or warming up in the practice area cut out of the right-field stands. Now, by “get out of the sun,” don’t think I’m implying the space was air-conditioned, because it wasn’t. The only respite available from the sultry Atlanta summer was shade.
Well, after spending one game in the bullpen, I knew that just wasn’t going to work for me. So I sat down with Bobby and told him, “Look, I’m not saying I am better than everyone else. That’s not it at all. I just can’t sit there all night and still be in prime condition to come out and close. I just can’t do it.” Bobby didn’t give me any grief about it at all. I think at this point in my career he trusted the fact that I knew what I needed to do (or in this case couldn’t do) to be ready to pitch.
So next I started hanging out in the clubhouse and watching the first half of the game on TV. This didn’t work either because I had the tendency to get too wrapped up in the game. For example, if the game wasn’t going well, I would get really upset because I knew I wasn’t going to pitch. (Sounds crazy, I know, but you have to remember I always want the ball. Always.) Or, on the other hand, if it was close, I’d be expending all this energy and getting all worked up about a game I had absolutely no control over. Eventually I found a way to sort of monitor the game—mostly so I’d have a feel for the strike zone in case I did pitch later—but not sit there hanging on every pitch or swing of the bat. Basically, I tried to keep my mind away from it for five innings after I had a good idea of what kind of strike zone the home-plate ump was calling. During this time, I would start getting my body warmed up and ready to go. I would jog and stretch, basically try to get loose, and then head down to the bullpen for the sixth.
After trying out this approach for a little while, I got an even better idea. (A man can do a lot of thinking in six hours of nightly purgatory.) I decided it was time for the bullpen to get an Extreme Makeover. I just looked at the guys and told them, “Dang it, we’re going to have fun down here.”
When you do something this nontraditional, you give others built-in excuses to predict failure. Some people seemed to be skeptical at first. The common thought was, “This is not going to work; you’re going to be too relaxed.” Good grief, I seriously cannot even write that line without laughing. First of all, I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of being too relaxed. Second of all, there’s no reason why relief pitchers can’t relax during the game, be professional, and still be focused when they get the call.
The Braves allowed me to feng shui the bullpen; but when it came down to making it happen, I ended up personally footing the bill for the entire project. When I weighed the monetary investment it was going to require against the opportunity to have a space that would help me and the other guys be ready when Bobby picked up the phone, it wasn’t even close. Spending some money to help myself be primed for a strong outing? That made good financial sense to me.
By the time I was done with it, the Braves’ bullpen was the Taj Mahal of major league bullpens. It was a thing of beauty. We tore down a wall, put in a new air duct for a/c, and brought in six reclining chairs and a refrigerator. Now, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t Happy Hour all the time down there. We had rules. First of all, rookies couldn’t come in and just hang out. We’d let them in on occasion, especially if it was really hot, but it wasn’t an open invitation. Another rule was that if you needed to take a nap, you could take a nap, but you couldn’t get carried away. We just approached things with common sense. We had a veteran bullpen and we all seemed to flourish once we had a new place to chill, literally. It cost me $28,000 for the wall and air duct alone, but I would do it all again in a heartbeat.
Once the new bullpen was open for business, I changed my routine slightly. I still stayed in the clubhouse for the first five innings, but then I would come down and sit in my recliner for two innings and relax. By “my” recliner, I literally mean I took my favorite recliner from home and transplanted it in the bullpen. I never really intended it to be a permanent donation—it was seriously my favorite chair of all time—but after I moved it down there, my wife didn’t w
ant it in the house anymore. The last time I checked, it was still there, ably helping the next generation of Braves’ relievers sit through games in relative peace and comfort until the phone rings.
It may seem extreme to go to such lengths to create my own happy place, but I just have this tendency to get too wrapped up in things if I’m not careful. Really the worst thing I can do is overthink. When I was a starter, I tried not to think about pitching at all in the hours before I took the mound. By that point I had already done the work—I had looked at the charts, I had watched the video, I had met with the pitching coach, etc. I figured out early on that I had to get all my prep work done on the days in between starts so I could come in on the day I pitched and just try to relax. When it came to closing, this became a little more challenging, but I eventually figured out how to be prepared yet still keep myself from obsessing on game days.
Going through this process of figuring out a new routine was really vital to my success. I knew I had to figure out a way to get myself in the right mind-set night after night. Not surprisingly, the same principle I followed in starting proved to be true for closing: The more I didn’t think about pitching, the better off I often was. That’s just what I had to do; it’s just what worked for me. Other guys had other routines—some guys had to pitch the game the night before in their head before they went to bed. To each his own, you know. There’s no one set way to be successful, but for me and what made me tick, I needed to do certain things.
The bullpen and my mind-set weren’t the only things that required some refurnishing to make my move to the bullpen successful. I still had a lot to figure out about the art of closing.
Thankfully I had several things going for me in this department. One, I had already pitched for more than a decade in the majors. Starting and closing are different, as I have already pointed out, but certainly there are still principles that apply to both disciplines. So while a lot of it was new to me, it wasn’t like I was a complete rookie. The other great thing I had going for me was that we just happened to have a group of veteran guys in the bullpen at the time and they were always willing to let me pick their brains. We had three former closers on our staff—Darren Holmes, Steve Reed, and Mike Remlinger—and those guys were always there for me, helping me along the way.