Starting and Closing
Page 11
Watching this last series play out—and only being able to contribute five innings in two games—was enough to convince me to do something about it. I vowed to myself right then to find an opportunity to engage my general manager, John Schuerholz, sometime during the off-season. I felt burdened to look him in the eyes and share with him what I knew: that I truly felt I could contribute much more to the Atlanta Braves as a starter than as a closer. I didn’t know what would happen, but I figured it was worth a shot.
I approached John shortly after that and just asked him if he would be up for meeting for lunch sometime to discuss some things I thought might make us better. He agreed and he seemed genuinely interested in the idea. I was really encouraged by his attitude. As the years went by and I grew to know the Atlanta organization inside and out, this was the kind of conversation that I truly liked to have, to just have the opportunity to share with my general manager the perspective I had as a player on some things that might make us better and help him make the big decisions. It only happened a couple of times, but whenever it did I was grateful for the opportunity.
When I sat down for lunch with John at McCormick & Schmick’s restaurant in Atlanta that off-season, I had not only done my homework about the position change and its expected impact on my arm, but I had also made peace with the situation. No doubt I was there to lobby for my return to the starting rotation, but in my heart and mind I was prepared to do whatever the GM thought was best for the team. When we began to talk, I wasn’t emotional, but I was emphatic. I was emphatic that I should be back in the rotation.
John opened the lunch with a question that had been a long time coming, to my mind. He asked me, “John, what do you think makes us better? You as a starter, or you as a closer?”
Basically I told him the facts don’t lie. That although I had really enjoyed the opportunity to close games for the team, we just weren’t winning. We hadn’t won a series in the postseason since I went to the bullpen full time, not one series. In all the years I had started in the playoffs, we had never lost a first-round division series. “So if you’re truly asking me, what makes us better,” I said, “what makes us best is me as a starter. Hands down.”
John had his doubts at first, but he really seemed to warm up to the idea as we talked things over and he got a sense of how confident I was that I could start again. Once we had kicked around the merits of moving me to the rotation, the next topic was the bullpen. My move to the rotation would obviously help address a need in the rotation, but John would need to find a closer to take my place. Here’s where I knew the timing of everything could be an issue. Neither of us could predict if or when John would be able to find a closer, and we didn’t have the luxury of time to just wait and see. If there was any chance that I might be starting, I had to switch gears right now.
So before we left the restaurant, I said, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, John. I will train to start. If you get a closer, then I’ll go ahead and start. But if you don’t get a closer, then I’ll close. But I can’t train to close, and then turn around to start. It just doesn’t work that way.”
Now, there was one more thing I had to ask John Schuerholz about: a new contract. As things stood, I would enter the 2005 season with one year left on my current contract. I was not in any way interested in going through another year of proving that I not only wanted to stay in Atlanta, but that it was worth it to the Braves to keep me here. I didn’t want to be a free agent at the end of the next season again; I really wanted the opportunity to sign a longer-term contract that would allow me hopefully to finish my career in Atlanta. When I brought this up, John didn’t flinch. He just said he would try to make it happen for me. First, he’d work on the closer piece, and then we’d discuss my contract. That sounded perfect to me.
This was by far the easiest and most amicable discussion I had ever had with my general manager regarding my role within the Braves organization, and I was really optimistic about the outcome. There were no guarantees that any part of our plan would work out as intended, but things were looking better than I could ever have imagined.
Not too long after that lunch, John called me at home to deliver some news: He had just acquired relief pitcher Danny Kolb from Milwaukee. Danny was coming off two years as a closer with the Brewers and his numbers looked promising: The previous year he had saved thirty-nine games and been selected to play on the All-Star team. The plan appeared to be taking shape. The next hurdle would be negotiating another contract.
As affable as John Schuerholz had seemed to be during our lunchtime strategy session, when it came time to commit money to the deal and make my return to the rotation official, there were still a lot of doubts. Looking back, I certainly understand and respect that there was no precedent for a thirty-seven-year-old pitcher with some arm issues to be able to successfully transition from being a closer to a starter again. And beyond that, there’s obviously some justifiable doubt that a general manager has to have when a player is getting older. No GM wants to be the guy responsible for signing a veteran to a longer deal only to find out the hard way a year later that the guy didn’t have two or three good playing years left.
John asked me, “What makes you think you can still throw two hundred innings a year?”
As far as I was concerned, there was solid evidence that I could do it. I had been proving myself to him and overcoming doubts my entire career. I understood his having doubts. What I was proposing was unheard of, and taking risks like that isn’t often good business, but I think if John had had a better idea of what drove me—the engine that was ticking inside, my desire to want to do this—I think it might have lessened his doubt.
The relationship I had with John Schuerholz can be hard to explain. It’s safe to say we didn’t talk very much, but it’s not like we despised each other either. Really, for the most part, our relationship was nonexistent if we were not negotiating a contract; he did his thing and I did mine. It was unfortunate and really disappointing to feel as disconnected as I felt to such a big part of an organization I truly loved, but it’s almost like it had been destined to be that way from the very beginning. To say that John Schuerholz and I got off on the wrong foot would be the understatement of my career.
When I first came to the Braves, Bobby Cox was the general manager, and my first contract negotiation was simple, straightforward, and easy. Then, after three years, when John came in and established himself as the new general manager, it was like a complete regime change in the front office. John was intent on implementing the same system he had used as the GM in Kansas City, and it caught me off guard to say the least.
You see, I was one of the players caught in the middle of this change. Here I had been indoctrinated according to Bobby’s way, and there were certain expectations for both sides that had already been discussed and understood. Now everything had changed, and I was stuck in a place where John basically wanted to start the process all over again.
I was literally days away from being eligible for arbitration, which would have allowed me some leverage as a player to try to settle my contract dispute with the team, but John didn’t want to make an exception for me and he didn’t have to. I didn’t think it was right, and my agent didn’t think it was right, but in reality there wasn’t much I could do about it.
At that precise moment in time I had few options besides verbally appealing to John to basically make an exception and asking to be grandfathered into his new system. I met with John, face-to-face, to make my case. He explained his position and didn’t budge. So my agent at the time, Ed Keating, advised me to do one of the toughest things I could ever imagine doing: He advised me to walk out of camp, as it really was the only way I could make a statement. This was not an easy decision, but at the time I listened to my agent.
Walking out is one of the few regrets I have about my career. I felt fairly confident that it would work, but it didn’t in so many ways, causing a rift in my relationship with John. I’m not sure what a p
layer–GM relationship is supposed to look like, but I didn’t help my chances of building a positive one by the way things started out.
Because we were at a stalemate, John ended up just renewing my contract, which meant I was going to be taking a pay cut from what I made the previous year, despite going 14–11 on a team that had lost almost a hundred games in 1990. It was a tough pill to swallow in so many ways, as all I really accomplished was to damage my relationship with my new general manager.
As I look back on it, in all fairness to John Schuerholz, it’s easy to see how he saw things differently from his perspective. Here he is the new GM and this young kid tries to hold out for more money. I’m convinced that the seeds of our relationship were sown right there in 1991.
In the off-season of 2004, more than a decade had passed since my first negotiation with John Schuerholz, but time had done little to improve our relationship. So as we attempted to negotiate a contract that would allow me to return to the starting rotation, I was forced to convince him that I was capable of delivering for him yet again. The discussion was becoming somewhat tiresome to me because in my mind, there wasn’t any doubt.
It was hard to explain, but I knew I had it in me. So much of this game is won or lost in your mind-set and I knew that my mind—and my body—were capable.
“John,” I said, “look at my track record. I’ve done this for fourteen years. I can go out there and pitch two hundred innings in my sleep.”
Thankfully, we finally agreed to terms and I signed another three-year contract. And with the exception of my first start on Opening Day, that next year was really an unbelievable one. I pitched as good a stretch of baseball as I had ever done in my entire career. Really, it seemed like the older I got, the better pitcher I was becoming. In 2005, I pitched 237 innings (including the postseason), leading the whole team by 34 innings, was among the league leaders in ERA, and I was the only guy on the staff to win a playoff game.
Yet my record was still only 14–7, which, while not bad, was indicative of a rough season for our bullpen. I think it was eight times I left a game that season with a lead that the bullpen lost. When this part of the plan failed to pan out, the media went looking for explanations. This was tough for me because there were some perceptions being floated around in various news articles that I knew were just not accurate. Some stories claimed that I was responsible for the demise of the bullpen. Others insinuated that I had forced John Schuerholz’s hand—that I had basically bullied myself back into the rotation—but that just wasn’t the case. In my mind, I had given him the ultimate luxury of all GMs: the option to use me in either role.
I understood that people had fallen in love with the idea of me as a closer, but when it came down to it, nobody seemed to understand that we weren’t accomplishing anything—at least in the playoffs—with me in the bullpen. I think the record shows that my return to the rotation had a bigger, more positive impact on the Braves than I could have had as a closer—though admittedly, and unfortunately, it didn’t translate into another championship.
Like I said before, it can be hard to describe the relationship John Schuerholz and I had. It’s not like we spent years sniping at each other, but it’s not like there wasn’t an undercurrent of tension at times either.
Any feelings or observations that I had about my GM, though, I always tried to keep to myself. The first time I saw a reaction from him that surprised me resulted from an interview shortly after the All-Star break in 2006 when a reporter asked me a question about what our team needed to do to get back in the playoff picture that year. We had sunk to the bottom of our division on June 18, but had been busy clawing our way back into the race—bolstered in part by a seven-game winning streak from July 8 to July 18. My answer to the reporter was simply, “Now that we’re playing good, I hope management will do whatever it takes.”
What I was trying to say and how it was interpreted were two very different things. I was just trying to acknowledge that it was our job as players to get us back into the race in order to allow management the opportunity to make changes. I meant my words to be complimentary, but John Schuerholz certainly didn’t take them that way.
When the media asked John about my comments, it was obvious by his answer that he misunderstood what I was trying to say. He used that forum to remind me what he had accomplished in the past as the GM, but he never talked to me about it directly. How he handled it didn’t sit well with me because in my mind I had made a comment that any competitive player would make. But I let it go and just made a mental note to change my media tactics when it came to John. I vowed not just to watch what I said (as I always had), but not to say anything at all. Well, that’s what I tried to do anyway.
Later that same season, Jeff Schultz, a columnist from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, interviewed me after a game. It started out innocently enough, but then he wanted to know what I thought the Braves needed to do, what changes we needed to make this season in order to reach the postseason. Specifically, the question was: “If you were GM, what kind of moves would you make to improve this team?” I knew where he was going with this. I knew no matter how I answered the question, John Schuerholz was going to take it personally and I attempted to plead the Fifth.
“Oh, no, no, no,” I said, “I will never do that again.”
Jeff said, “Why not?”
“When I answered this question in the past, he gets all over me,” I said.
“Who is he?”
“Come on. Homeboy upstairs. You know who I’m talking about.”
Now, those who know me know that it’s just in my personality to say things like that, to just be a little sarcastic. I didn’t mean anything by it. I certainly didn’t mean any disrespect to John. But there it was, and I couldn’t take it back. I really should have known better than to say something like that to a reporter, but I seriously didn’t think the newspaper would run with it.
In reality, it would have been better for me if I had just walked away when Jeff started leading me down that path. Let me digress for just a second here. This is one thing that probably burned me more times than it should have—I was always very generous with my time. In retrospect, I probably spent too much time with reporters. I think reporters sometimes took advantage of the fact that I would be open and honest. It really seems like if a reporter had a point he wanted to make, he would often use me to make it. So what begins as Jeff Schultz vs. John Schuerholz morphs into John Smoltz vs. John Schuerholz in the paper.
The next day, when I walked into the clubhouse, Bobby called me into his office. “John wants to see you right away,” he said, and handed me a copy of the newspaper.
I never looked at the paper—and when I say this, I mean never as in except in meetings like this where someone was taking exception with something I had said. Needless to say, my blood pressure was already rising before I even read the article, and sure enough there it was, plain as day: John Smoltz calling John Schuerholz the homeboy upstairs. Great.
About five minutes later, as I headed upstairs, I knew said Homeboy was not going to be happy. I felt like a little kid making the long walk to the principal’s office; I knew what was coming and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
John took one look at me, pointed to the paper, and said, “I thought we had a better relationship than this.”
John proceeded to go through this whole dissertation about how disrespectful I had been, about what his colleagues thought about it. Finally, I said, “Time out, John. Look, I meant no disrespect. I’m sorry this guy did what he did, but I was referring to you in the third person.”
We were in his office for a long time that day and we both had the chance to get a few things off our chests. The last thing I remember saying to him was something like “I guarantee you will never see another comment from me in the paper about anything regarding the team or you. Nothing. But don’t tell me you thought we had a better relationship than this. We don’t even talk.”
I’m certainly m
an enough to admit that I have made some mistakes in my day, and I obviously do regret my choice of words in this case, but it certainly was never my intent at any time to undermine or disrespect my general manager.
I used to think, as perhaps many people did, that me and the Braves—we were forever linked. I mean, I was barely old enough to walk into a bar and order a beer the first time I took the mound for Atlanta. I literally grew up under the lights of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and later Turner Field, and I always dreamed that one day I would retire under them, too. But, of course, that dream never materialized.
Despite any hard feelings that at times existed between me and my general manager, the fact is I always loved being an Atlanta Brave. I loved playing for Bobby Cox. I had the time of my life in Atlanta and it was an amazing thing to be on a team that had gone from among the very worst in baseball to the very best. John Schuerholz and the Atlanta Braves gave me an opportunity to compete in the playoffs fourteen straight years, and it was never hard for me to remember why I wanted to stay, even in late 2008. Really, right up until the moment I signed with the Boston Red Sox, I still wanted to be a Brave.
I’m going to revisit my divorce with the Braves for one main reason—to explain what it taught me and what it could teach someone else. The fact is, in life, and especially in today’s economy, we aren’t always able to completely control our environment. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. Sometimes you’ve got to move and change jobs. You can wish all you want for things to be different, but the truth is that oftentimes we have little control over the cards we are dealt. You can choose to be bitter, or you can choose to move on and be better. For me, I did feel bitter at first with the way things ended, but I chose to saddle up and move on.
When I elected to have shoulder surgery in June 2008, I held a press conference. I think for a lot of people it seemed like farewell. I never once said I wasn’t coming back, but the tenor of the conversation seemed to gravitate toward this feeling like, “You know, he’s had a good long run. Maybe it’s time to just call it a day.”