by John Smoltz
At the end of the 2011 season, we all saw what happened in Boston after the Red Sox had one of the worst closing months in baseball history and fell out of the playoffs. What came next were stories from anonymous sources that some Red Sox pitchers were drinking beer in the clubhouse during games and perhaps even in the dugout. The media latched onto this story, using it to help paint this picture of a supertalented yet lackadaisical team that frittered away what looked like a sure-thing trip to the 2011 postseason.
Now look, I haven’t talked to these guys; nor do I claim to know anything more about the situation than what we’ve all heard from the media, but I’m not buying it. I’m not condoning any players’ behavior, but I’m not buying the stories either. I’m not buying that the Red Sox’s hapless, 7–20 September record can be hung on the heads of pitchers drinking beer in the clubhouse on their off days—if they indeed were. This is just one of those situations where a team happened to have one of the worst months in baseball history and now everybody wants to know why. Something—other than poor performance and injuries—has to take the blame.
See, the thing that I hate about this story is that it makes it seem like these guys were lazy, that they weren’t pitching well, and that they obviously didn’t care. What I can say after playing with the Red Sox not too long ago is that I’ve seen how hard some of these guys get after it. So to me, that part of the story couldn’t be more wrong. When it comes to being prepared to do their job, I guarantee these guys were as prepared and as focused as you can get. Whatever went on that might have caused team distraction or team dissension is what went on. Like I said before, it’s not as simple as one plus one equals two.
Year in and year out, I battled the inherently flawed perception that playing golf somehow meant I wasn’t taking baseball seriously. For me, nothing could be further from the truth. I have never put too much stock in my career stats, but if they are useful for one thing, it’s for proving the following point: My golfing habit shouldn’t have worried anyone.
Well, that is, anyone besides a guy trying to get the barrel of his bat on my cutter.
Chapter Eleven
FAIRWAY TALES
I was not only incredibly fortunate to find an outlet that really worked for me and a manager who allowed me to pursue it, but I was also lucky enough to be surrounded by guys who shared the desire to tee it up on their off days. It was really remarkable how this worked out, but almost to a man, everybody who came to Atlanta to pitch during this era either golfed already or was ready and willing to be indoctrinated into our culture. Steve Avery, Pete Smith, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Charlie Leibrandt, Kevin Millwood, Denny Neagle—I could go on and on. We all went out and played golf together, and I’m telling you, we had the time of our lives.
For us, it was always golf served with ample sides of trash talking and practical jokes. When we got out on the golf course, we undoubtedly resembled a bunch of fraternity brothers more than a bunch of pitchers. We always kept score, but we also prided ourselves on inventing new and improved ways to startle, scare, or otherwise mess with each other during a round. We loved to draw a reaction out of somebody. When we weren’t busy thinking up novel ways to screw with each other, Mother Nature certainly did her part, duly delivering some of the most hilarious moments. That reminds me, have I mentioned that Greg Maddux is scared to death of snakes? Words cannot do it justice, but trust me, whenever Greg spotted a snake, a scene of sheer, funky-chicken panic ensued. You’d be laughing for the next day and a half guaranteed.
One of our trademark maneuvers was to mess with someone who was legitimately trying like heck to bury an important putt. If this has never happened to you, take it from me, there’s nothing like standing over your ball, completely focused down to your last exhale, then smoothly drawing back your putter only to have someone sneak up right behind you and whip the flagpole through the air right as you make contact with the ball. The noise that flag can make if you whip it fast enough—I’m telling you, it’s enough to shock you into next week, not to mention make you inadvertently fire your ball eleven feet past the hole. But at least it was standard procedure to take a mulligan in those circumstances. That’s when you know the guys care.
Typically, there was always a subplot underscoring the round and the main story line of who was winning or losing on any given day. The antics revolved around whoever happened to be sharing carts that day. We never stripped down to shirts and skins to differentiate between teams, but it was always understood that it was “every cart for itself.” A cart left unattended and without proper surveillance was an open invitation for mischief. The occupants were liable to return and find the key missing, the scorecard pencil hopelessly lodged between the windshield and the dashboard, or the bag straps loosened to allow for a nice game of fourteen-club pickup the next time they punched it. We were really just a bunch of guys doing our best to not act our ages.
One of the best stories from golfing with the guys involves three main characters: Steve Avery, PGA Tour pro Billy Andrade, and a dead bass. On this day we were playing in two groups of four: Steve, Greg Maddux, and I were in the lead group, and Billy was in the trail group with Tom Glavine. So we’re out playing the round at Keene’s Pointe, an amazing course near Orlando, and Steve finds this big dead bass, like four or five pounds easy, washed up on the side of a pond. He promptly picks it up and stuffs it behind the gas pedal of Greg’s golf cart when he isn’t looking. (Standard procedure whenever you find a dead bass, right?)
Of course, the next time Greg gets in his cart and stomps down on the pedal, much to his consternation, neither the pedal nor the cart is going anywhere. He finally looks down to see what the heck the problem is and is predictably taken aback by the dead bass lying on the floorboard of the golf cart. But then he just starts laughing. You come to expect shenanigans like this when you golf with our crowd.
So Greg, inspired by the classic dead-bass-behind-the-gas-pedal trick, attempts to one-up Steve. After our group finishes out number nine, he retrieves the dead bass from the cart and promptly stuffs it, mouth first, into the hole. It was so big that half of its body and tail flopped over onto the green. We just stood there cracking up at the sight of a dead fish nestled up next to the flag. Nothing had even happened yet, but it was already hilarious.
So the next thing you know, Billy hits his tee shot into the water. He takes his drop, and then somehow manages to hit this epic iron shot out of the rough. We’re all standing there, our eyes peeled on the arc of the ball, thinking, Man, that’s a nice shot. Look at thing carry … you don’t think it’s going to … as the ball promptly landed on the green and started rolling toward the hole. Wow, it looks like it’s on a good line. Still rolling. You don’t think? Still rolling. No, it’s not going to … (Gulp.) The ball disappeared into the hole!
Now, out of all the things that could have happened, that certainly wasn’t what we were envisioning. Everyone in Billy’s group was hooting and hollering about the birdie and they didn’t even have a clue about what else was in the hole. With the dead bass and the flagpole, it was tight quarters in there. There was only one gap, just wide enough for the ball, remaining. And somehow, Billy’s ball had found that precise spot like a heat-seeking missile. It was nothing short of a miraculous shot, and let me tell you, we never heard the end of it. That dead bass turned out to be a real pain in the … well, you know what I mean.
As much as we all loved playing golf together, it became pretty clear early on that if I wasn’t the one organizing it, it wasn’t happening. I think it’s fair to say that I was the most avid and structured guy in the bunch, so I took care of all things golf. For lack of a better term, I became the golf concierge of the Atlanta Braves: I made all the phone calls, I got all the rental cars, and I lined up all the tee times. I told the guys the time and the place, and their only job was to show up. It was a lot of legwork, but I did it and it was always well worth the effort.
And thanks to Rick Mahler, I was already well on my way to
authoring my own little black book. It actually came in really handy, because over the years we played at so many places that I would never have been able to remember all the people we had met and spoke to at various clubs. And things like people’s names are no small matter when you are basically trying to talk your way onto a golf course. I learned that fact the hard way in ’89 and ’90 when I would call a place like Oakmont out of the blue. I’d finally get a clubhouse guy or a starter on the phone and I’d say, “Hey, this is John Smoltz with the Braves and I was just wondering …” Click. A lot of times I didn’t even get to finish the sentence. Now, after 1991, I didn’t always get to finish my sentences either, but at least I wasn’t getting interrupted by a dial tone anymore. I was usually getting interrupted by an excited voice wanting to know who else I was bringing with me and when we’d like to play.
For Maddux, Glavine, and me especially, golf was our common bond. The three of us, we just had the perfect personalities for one another. I was the jokester, Maddux was the goofy son of a gun, and Glavine was the dry, stoic guy. I’d have to work on Tommy a little bit, get him to come out of his shell, but once he did, he could be really funny. We had such camaraderie together, we loved competing against each other, and it was really through all our rounds of golf that we became great friends and trusted allies. Some of my favorite memories of Greg and Tommy stem from the time we spent out on the golf course.
Take Greg Maddux, for example. Here’s a guy they called “The Professor,” and for good reason when it came to baseball. It was like his mind was an encyclopedia of his pitching career and he could thumb through the chapters at whim, recalling all kinds of details on hitters he had already faced, including what pitches he had thrown on what count and what it had led to—walk, hit, strikeout, etc. It was information he exploited ruthlessly on the mound. Here was a guy who never had a 98 mph fastball but could downright baffle a hitter. He had this almost photographic memory for pitching, but he was horrible at remembering people’s names. I’m not much better, but seriously, he’s the worst.
So there we were at the Houston Country Club one time and we introduce ourselves to our caddies. Greg’s caddy is named M.C.
I almost lost it right there as they were shaking hands, but I managed to hold it together long enough until we had teed off and the caddies were out of earshot. Then I was like, “Man, Greg, this is perfect. You’ll never forget this caddy’s name. Just remember MC Hammer. You got this.”
Greg’s penchant for screwing up names was a running joke with all of us. It never failed that one of us would bring along some friends to play with us for the day and Greg would end up calling them all sorts of things, anything besides their actual names, before we were done. Say, for example, the two friends were named Mike and Eric. We’d all shake hands and introduce ourselves before we started the round, just as anyone would do. But the next thing you know, Greg’s calling them Mark and Earl and he doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. He’s just trying to make conversation and be friendly, as he is by nature, but meanwhile he’s punting their names into the stands left and right. The rest of us would all be snickering and getting a kick out of it, when we weren’t busy explaining to our buddies that Greg didn’t mean anything by it. He was just really bad with names.
So, back to good ol’ M.C. I remember standing there, thinking to myself, There’s just no way he can screw this name up.
Well, as it turns out, during the round Greg came really close to hitting M.C. with one of his tee shots. It was just one of those things: a misfired shot, a total accident. Greg felt bad about it, even though his ball had missed M.C., and as we drove up the fairway we stopped so he could get out and apologize to him before we continued playing.
So Greg walks over to the caddy and says something like “Man, that’s my bad, C.W.”
I seriously fell out of the cart. I mean, my goodness. Here’s a guy who can remember a changeup he threw on a 2–2 count to Mike Piazza in the fifth inning with one out and a guy on third in a game four years ago, and he can’t remember a caddy’s name. That’s just ridiculous. We finally ended up just warning friends not to take it personally when—as opposed to if—Greg screwed up their names. If he couldn’t remember M.C.’s name, there was no hope he’d remember theirs.
I don’t know how apparent this was to all the fans, but Greg, Tommy, and I were genuinely friends who enjoyed each other’s company. We really enjoyed a cohesive relationship, even though we were basically taking turns for the Cy Young (except when Greg hogged it for four years straight there) for five or six years. We competed against each other all the time in golf and in baseball, but we never let anything get too serious. It was always about giving a guy a hard time, not messing with him to the point that you really trounced on his confidence. We kept it fun and I think we all made each other better.
Without any hesitation, I readily admit that I would have been a completely different pitcher without the influence of Greg and Tommy. I learned so much from those two, and golf opened that door for me. Greg and I played together for eleven years; Tommy and I for fifteen. If you can just imagine the amount of time we spent in cars traveling to and from golf courses, let alone on the courses themselves, you start to get the idea. Golf became the medium through which we shared a lot of things, not the least of which was baseball.
When we were together, I tried to tap into things that made me better as a baseball player and I wasn’t afraid to ask questions. I think we all felt like this, like there was something we could learn from each other. We all had our strengths and our weaknesses. We all brought a different perspective to the table. Like, for example, I had been trying for years to learn how to throw a changeup and was never really able to get the hang of it. Here I had access to two guys who could throw devastating changeups. So I asked them about it, and they tried to explain it to me. Now, I never did master the changeup, but I assure you it wasn’t due to a lack of effort or asking questions on my part.
One of the most important things I learned from Tommy he didn’t even have to communicate to me. I learned a lot just watching him pitch all those years: his mental toughness, his ability to always go out there and put himself in position to win baseball games. His stubbornness was a big part of how he was successful, and I tried to emulate him in that way.
When it came to Maddux, I think I was served an apprenticeship in pitching just sitting there in the dugout next to him during games. Even from the dugout, Greg just had this ability to pick up on little things that a hitter would do that would expose his flaws. I wouldn’t see it, I couldn’t pick it up like that during a game; I’d have to see it on video. But he could recognize it right there. What was also uncanny was some of the things he could predict. I can’t tell you how many times we would be in the middle of a conversation and he would suddenly tap me on the shoulder and say, “Hey, heads up. If this pitch gets down and in, all he can do is pull it foul, and it’s coming over our dugout.” And sure enough, the next thing you know, the ball is whistling over the dugout and we’re ducking out of the way. Stuff like this happened on more than one occasion and it always amazed me.
When it came down to it, we were always of the mind-set that it was “us against them.” Not “Glavine vs. Smoltz” or “Maddux vs. Glavine” or so forth. Sure, we cared about our personal stats on some level, but really our desire to be able to pitch deep into games consistently and put together quality starts was a by-product of driving for our ultimate goal: helping our team win championships. Thankfully, we did get to accomplish that goal together in 1995.
Okay, so enough about Glavine and Maddux. Their heads are already big enough as it is. Let me pick on one of my other partners in crime for a moment: Steve Avery. As you might have guessed already from the dead-bass story, Steve is seriously one of the funniest guys I’ve ever been around. Just saying his name makes me want to laugh, especially when I start thinking about my favorite golf story starring him.
On this occasion we were playing at the
Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Now, I think most people know that Florida is one of those states where it pays to keep your eyes peeled for wildlife when you’re spending time outdoors. The state harbors some reptiles that not only have a penchant for hanging out on golf courses, but let’s just say they can ruin your day. What we all learned through this story is that it’s not just the reptiles you need to be concerned about: You better keep your eye out for those baby cranes as well.
In this story, we had all made it to the general vicinity of the green on the eighteenth hole and things were serious. Scores were tight and bragging rights would depend on who could finish the hole with one putt or two. As we all went about our business and focused on our final shots, what we all failed to notice was a family of cranes, complete with little babies, meandering about in the adjacent marsh.
Steve’s ball had landed on the back edge of the green, closest to the marsh. He walks up to the green, takes a quick look at his lie, and then starts backpedaling toward the marsh, attempting to read the break.
So there’s Steve, backing up one step at a time, his attention completely focused on the pin and the distance that appears to be between it and his ball. And there are the cranes, just wandering about in the marsh, doing whatever it is cranes do. Steve was maybe fifteen yards from the hole at this point, which, as it turned out, was one step too close to one of the baby cranes.
Mayhem ensued, prompting both emotion and commotion. The mama crane, obviously fearing for her young, lets out this bansheelike scream. It was seriously like something out of a horror movie; it was just deafening. That alone was going to be enough to require a wardrobe change for Steve. At this point, though, his only concern was getting away from the mama crane and her precious brood. Quickly.
Meanwhile, the rest of us stood there doing what we do best: laughing our butts off. Well, that is, until we saw what was coming from the other direction: Big Daddy Crane.