Starting and Closing

by John Smoltz

  The more I got to know myself, through all my failures and regrettable outings, the more I realized what I needed to do, not only to enhance my strengths, but also to guard against my weaknesses and counterproductive habits. I learned that my high-energy personality could be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it always made me an intense competitor on the mound, but on the other hand, it was something that I had to learn to temper. See, I cared about pitching so much, it probably bordered on being unhealthy. I found out the hard way early on that I couldn’t just sit around and think about pitching all the time. As Ted had warned, baseball easily consumed me. Golf proved to be the perfect antidote, something that, somehow, was always able to counteract all the pressure and lofty expectations I had a tendency to put on myself.

  Through all the injuries, major surgeries, and just the monotony of doing the same thing for so many years, the two things I can point to that kept me persevering year after year for so many years were my faith in God and golf. There are, of course, lots of people who had a hand in encouraging me and taking care of me, not the least of whom were my manager, my doctors, and my family, but golf played a huge role in allowing me to pitch into my forties. Together with my faith, it helped me realize my full potential on the mound.

  “Hey, let’s go play golf.”

  Those were the five words that started it all. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was sometime in 1985, after I had graduated high school and been drafted by the Detroit Tigers. I was hanging out at home in Lansing, Michigan, with Chuck Cascarilla, one of my best friends still to this day. It was Chuck who had the sudden urge to go play the public nine-hole course nearby.

  I was like, “Golf? I’ve never played golf in my whole life.”

  I knew nothing, and I do mean nothing, about golf. The only thing I had ever thought about golf was that it must be a sport for nonathletes. Like most eighteen-year-olds, I thought I knew way more than I actually did.

  But Chuck managed to talk me into it. Not that it was real a hard sell; I’m the type of guy who’s always up for competing, but I can still remember teeing up the ball for the first time and thinking, What in the heck am I doing?

  I was so clueless out on the course, it wasn’t funny. You name it, I didn’t know it. I remember looking at all the clubs in my bag and not even knowing where to start. Driver, iron, pitching wedge—it was like looking in a toolbox for the first time and seeing a bunch of tools that look really handy and useful, but having no idea or feel for how to use them to accomplish even the simplest repair. When I look in my bag today, after countless rounds of golf, instead of questions, I see answers. Once I know the lie, the yardage, and have taken note of potential hazards and other factors like wind, I usually know the right club for the job.

  But back then, with no experience and barely any intuition, I did what I always do when I want to grow and learn: I started asking questions. Poor Chuck, who had some experience on a golf course, spent the entire round talking me through what to do on literally every shot.

  Well, we finally got to the fifth hole. It was a long par five and I was still 160 yards away after my third shot. Chuck, my indentured caddy, recommended a five-iron. I figured the one thing I couldn’t do, given the distance, was hit the ball too hard. So I took a couple practice swings and then proceeded to “grip it and rip it,” as they say.

  I definitely hit the snot out of that ball, but my technique left a lot to be desired. The leading edge of my club struck the middle of the ball and it took off like it was shot out of a bottle rocket, only parallel to the ground—and without the telltale sound effects. It seriously never got higher than ten feet in the air, but it was straight as an arrow, and flew right up the center of the fairway, hitting the ground about twenty yards from the hole.

  Little blades of grass proved to be no match for the momentum on this ball; it rolled right up the fairway and onto the green. And it would have just kept on rolling if it didn’t happen to be on a collision course … with the pin! Chuck and I watched as the ball crashed right into the stick and ricocheted into the hole.

  “Man, Chuck,” I said. “This game’s easy.”

  Chuck just stood there in absolute disbelief, shaking his head. Then he looked over at me and the ear-to-ear grin on my face and said, “That’s not even right. Your first birdie is a skulled five-iron.”

  My first birdie was like a slam dunk launched from the foul line—equal parts improbable and awesome—and it had left me smitten with the game.

  Not long after, I reported to the Detroit Tigers Class A affiliate in Lakeland, Florida, where I had a gazillion hours of nothing but time, so I bought some clubs and started convincing guys to come out and play nearby courses with me. But it was actually the infamous Doyle Alexander trade that sent me to the Braves in 1987 that really started my evolution in golf.

  In Atlanta, I was fortunate to have the late Rick Mahler, a veteran starting pitcher for the Braves, really take me under his wing and introduce me to golf in the big leagues. Every round with Rick raised my golf IQ. He took the time to teach me about the history and the etiquette of the game, as well as the fundamentals, while we played eighteen holes. I’ve never taken a golf lesson, but with Rick guiding me along, I soon realized that golf wasn’t just something I enjoyed doing; I seemed to be blessed with a little natural ability for it as well. I just have a knack for it, even going back to that very first birdie. I’ve never shot a hundred in my life—and there honestly haven’t been many rounds in the nineties either.

  But besides basically having him teach me Golf 101, there was definitely another perk to hanging around Rick. You see, Rick had this famous little black book that all the guys wanted to borrow whenever we rolled into a new town. He always knew where to go to have a good time, and he was always gracious enough to bring me along and let me experience things I never would have experienced otherwise. Rick taught me how to appreciate the good things in life. You know, like Oakmont, Bay Hill, and Winged Foot. His little black book was a veritable Farmers’ Almanac for pro baseball players who were addicted to golf. It had all the answers you needed for every city you visited: the closest courses to the stadium, the best courses within reasonable driving distance, and who you needed to call to get a tee time.

  All of those years that I traveled to all those cities—Los Angeles, Denver, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia—my first thought was always, What great golf courses are near here? I never went to a single museum. I guess that sounds bad, but the history of a city or some fancy artwork just wasn’t anything that ever interested me.

  A perpetual mix of baseball, golf, and downtime spent with my family proved to be the perfect formula for me. It kept me hungry and staved off the feelings of monotony that sometimes settle in midway through a season; I was always looking forward to my next day and whatever was up next in my own rotation: pitching or golfing.

  Over the years I developed a routine that helped me balance the demands of playing baseball, the escape of playing golf, and my responsibilities as a husband and father. I tried to pare my life down to the bare essentials, and on any given day of the week I was basically following one of two schedules: one for days I pitched (when I didn’t golf) and another for the four rest days in between (when I sometimes did). What I was doing on any given day always depended on a variety of factors: when I was scheduled to start next, if we were playing at home or away, and if the kids were in school. Perhaps it sounds complicated, but it really kept things simple for me. During the season, I didn’t make time for much besides my family, baseball, and golf.

  When we were playing at home, spending time with my family was always the priority. On rest days, I would get up, make the kids breakfast, and see them off to school. It was really the only way I was going to see them when the baseball season overlapped the school year. For the most part, I tried to fit in my golf on road trips—when my family wasn’t able to come along—or during spring training when the kids were still in school.

 
Keeping things in balance was always a challenge, just as it is for all parents, I think. Most people work and have families. Most of us have things we like to do and quite often need to do in order to blow off steam and take a breather from the sources of stress in our life. The same dynamic that existed for me and my family during my baseball career still exists after my retirement from playing, and I thrive whenever I can effectively balance three things: family, baseball (now as a broadcaster), and golf.

  I loved getting up in the morning and going to play a round of golf. I’d make it a point to get out on the course early so I’d be done by around noon, leaving me with several hours of downtime before it was time to go to the park.

  I never felt worn out or tired after I finished a round. It was actually quite the opposite. As far as I was concerned, going out and playing eighteen holes was like plugging me into a wall charger: It always seemed to reenergize my inner battery. It also enhanced my focus, enabling me to go to the park and devote my complete attention to my off-day routines.

  After I was done prepping for my next start—which could include watching video, meeting with the pitching coach, or throwing a bullpen, depending on what day it was—I’d go sit in the dugout and watch the game. I always tried to observe as much as possible from my perspective on the bench. Sometimes I was responsible for charting pitches, but even if I wasn’t, I’d really try to pay careful attention as the game developed, pitch by pitch. I always figured if I was sitting there, I might as well try to learn something (and joke around a bit and share a few laughs with my teammates as well). And once the game was over, I was headed back home.

  Professional baseball, by its very nature, lends itself to late nights and this sort of work-hard, play-hard mentality. For me, that was true, too, just in a different way than it was for some other players. At times, my passion for golf sort of made me this square guy in the round world of baseball, but I was okay with that. Even going back to my early years in the league, even as a young rookie, I was really comfortable with who I was and who I wasn’t. I was always much more concerned with being able to perform for my team at my highest level whenever I was called upon than my relative popularity within the clubhouse.

  If I wanted a reputation for anything, it was for being the guy who everyone wanted to have the ball when the stakes were the highest. That was my priority. And in order to do that, I learned early on that I needed to do certain things. For me, that included making time to play golf.

  The game I stumbled upon thanks to Chuck turned out to be a tremendous blessing to my pitching career. Golf was such a release for me. In baseball you’re always trying to perfect your mechanics, you’re trying to perform. When I played golf, I didn’t worry about my mechanics. I just let go and had fun. It’s no coincidence that some of the greatest games in my career happened to follow rest days on which I had been able to play eighteen holes. The day after golf, I would just feel fresher on the mound, both mentally and physically. Golf freed up my mind in a way that nothing else ever seemed to be able to do.

  As perfect an outlet as golf was for me, it’s safe to say that a lot of people—even my own teammates at times—had a hard time understanding how golf helped make me a better pitcher. There seemed to always be this undercurrent of suspicion, this notion like “Wow, imagine how good he could be if he ever gave up golf and truly focused on baseball.”

  Whenever a position player had a problem with my golf, I’d say, “Buddy, you and I were both shortstops in high school. We were both the best players on our team. You chose the wrong position.” In baseball, as in life, there are trade-offs. The shortstop gets to play every day. A starting pitcher can’t pitch every day. As the old cliché goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.

  The one person who always understood how golf benefitted me was my manager Bobby Cox. Bobby stood beside me all those years, in some ways acting as a buffer between me and the front office. The great thing about Bobby wasn’t just that he allowed me to golf, which he did, it’s that he had a completely different attitude about it. He embraced it. He was always one to encourage and even remind his players to do things like this, to find things they enjoyed doing away from the game. He knew it couldn’t be all baseball, all the time.

  When it came to the front office, though, it was a slightly different story. Now, it wasn’t like they hemmed and hawed after every round of golf; they respected Bobby’s decision to allow me and other pitchers to golf on our rest days. But it was always something you knew was liable to be used against you in the future. The tension surrounding my golf really cropped up every time anything was slightly off or wrong with me. Golf became the front-office guys’ built-in excuse for everything.

  It wasn’t really until I became the closer for Atlanta that my golf habit really became a point of contention with them. Over the years they had grown to sort of tolerate my fondness for playing golf on rest days in between my starts. But for someone who was a closer, things were different.

  I had a feeling that when I became a closer, my golf was going to do more than just raise a few eyebrows upstairs in the front office and in the media. There were no longer days prescribed for work and days prescribed for rest. I could pitch a couple nights in a row, every other day, or go three to four days between pitching just as I did as a starter. The problem, in the minds of the powers that be, at least, was where golf fit into this new schedule. But I resolved to continue golfing, even on days when I might have to pitch.

  Now, it’s not like I was running around doing whatever I wanted to do like an entitled veteran. It wasn’t like that at all. First of all, I knew that playing a round of golf would not in any way affect my ability to pitch one inning a day. And second, I had already talked about it with Bobby and he agreed with me. He knew how important golf was to me and he also knew he could trust me to be smart about it. I always had such respect for the game of baseball that I never did anything in my career without first checking with my manager and/or a doctor.

  But predictably, when I started working out of the bullpen and I was playing golf as usual, I started hearing about comments being made upstairs. General Manager John Schuerholz talked to me about it directly in Colorado when we played golf at the same time on the same course—ironically, I set his round up for him!

  He said, “Do you think golf will cause a problem with you closing now? I mean, look, I understand when you were a starter this was something you did on your off days, but with closing, it could be on the same day. Don’t you think…”

  I said, “No, John. It will not be a problem. I play golf at eight o’clock in the morning. I come back at noon. I’ve hit the ball probably thirty-five to forty times and putted the rest. I’m in a cart. If I can’t get ready to put in one inning’s work at nine or ten o’clock at night, something’s really wrong here and it’s not my golf.”

  Fifty-five saves later, no one said another word to me about it.

  Winning baseball games is always the best way to prove your critics wrong. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I think that fact is just part of the nature of sports today. When you’re winning, nobody questions you or your methods. But when you’re struggling, or your team is losing, questions are asked. Everyone—the media, the fans, the team’s front office—becomes hungry for answers. They examine and dissect every angle and try to come up with reasons why expectations are not being met.

  Now look, this is not an unhealthy discussion, on the surface. Obviously this is how teams become successful, by knowing what adjustments to make over the course of the season. The problem is that too often the conversation strays from a topic like the lack of depth in the bullpen to players’ habits away from the game. In the search for reasons why things have gone awry, possible distractions provide easy answers. In reality, though, most of the reasons they come up with just aren’t valid. The way I see it, there are baseball things that cause you to win and lose and there are nonbaseball things that can be blamed for why you win or lose. And the two are not th
e same.

  I’ve heard people make such ridiculous claims: that a team didn’t win because the players played cards too often, or a team didn’t win because they didn’t play cards. If you ask me, a lot of time it’s really much ado about nothing; it’s just hauling out the same old excuses for explaining failure. The underlying logic isn’t sound, but such talk has a powerful effect on some organizations today. Some teams have become so obsessed with what activities like golf or cards seem to imply about players that they just eliminate them from the get-go and ban players from engaging in them. It’s certainly an easy way to avoid bad press, or the threat of news stories casting certain perceptions about a team’s failures. But if you ask me, all the attention on these aspects of the game is counterproductive and, well, just plain distracting.

  Think about it. We only read or hear these stories when things aren’t going well. When a guy is overweight but he’s hitting well, no one says a word. When he’s not hitting well … he’s overweight. With me, when things went wrong, or when I might have had an injury here or there, people had to come up with something. And golf was that something. If I was in a slump? It was because of golf. If my elbow was hurting? It was because of golf. If my shoulder hurt, it was surely because of all that golf. I really didn’t have any other habits that they could point to, or pin on me (well, I did go to Bible study a lot, but that never came up). Golf was always the scapegoat, the magic answer for what was wrong with John Smoltz.

  Had I not played golf, I’m not sure what they would have blamed. The truth is, sometimes you just don’t play well and it is counterproductive for others to pile on the blame while you’re trying to work it out. A second truth is that I played almost all of my golf with other teammates, but because I was so up front about how much I enjoyed the game, I drew more attention—and occasionally more criticism—than anybody else.