Starting and Closing

by John Smoltz

  The one thing I think you can say about our World Series appearances is that rarely did we get outpitched. Now that may seem a little nonsensical because we lost way more times than we won, but the fact is, when you talk about getting outpitched, you have to look at the number of games that were decided by one run. We went to the World Series five times: 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, and 1999. Over those five Series we played a total of twenty-nine games. More than half of those games—seventeen to be exact—were decided by one run and we lost twelve of those. That means we lost roughly 70 percent of the time in extremely close games that could have gone either way. The year we won, 1995, was the lone year when we won more close games than we lost.

  Our pitching kept us in games, but it clearly wasn’t always enough to deliver championships. What we really lacked almost across the board was some timely hitting. The fact is, when you lose World Series games by one run, you fall victim to that clutch hit, that one play coming in and costing you a game, and eventually the whole Series.

  As starting pitching goes, so goes your organization, but to win it all you’ve got to have a combination of a team that’s hot and is capable of timely hitting. There were years when we just didn’t get that timely hitting, in 1991 and 1992 especially, and one year that we did, in 1995.

  I’m telling you, sometimes all you need is that one run.

  4. Sometimes fate just kicks your butt.

  I’m going to warn you in advance that I realize what follows is subjective. Surely there’s a more scientific way to explain our shortcomings, but I’m a simple man: I’ll leave the equations and acronyms to those with a proclivity for math and for the use of calculators. What I do know is that a few things about baseball can’t be explained Moneyball-style. You can’t define momentum any more than you can predict impetus. Things happen—things that don’t get recorded in the record books or official box scores—that can tip a game one way or the other. Call it a curse, call it fate, call it bad karma; it just seemed like more often than not, we were on the losing end of all of it, with the glaring exception, of course, being 1995. There are many, many examples that I can point to, but for the sake of brevity, I’m going to limit myself only to the 1996 World Series.

  Now remember, it’s 1996 not 2006. The Yankees have really done nothing for years; the last time they were in the Series was in 1981 when they lost to the L.A. Dodgers. Meanwhile, we came into the World Series in 1996 not only as the defending champions, after beating the Indians the previous year, but we had also been to the Series in ’91 and ’92. If anybody looked like the Team of Nineties at this point, it was us.

  That year we had swept the wild-card Dodgers in the National League Division Series, but then somehow found ourselves down three games to one in the NL Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. We proved to be down but not out, roaring back to win three games in a row in dramatic fashion and earn another trip to the World Series. We were returning to the Fall Classic for the second year in a row and we had momentum. We came in heavily favored to win another championship.

  The Series opened in New York on Sunday, October 20, after the original opener was scratched due to rain. The delayed start did little to extinguish our bats, and two short days later the record stood at 2–0. We had manhandled the Yankees—in Yankee Stadium, no less—blowing them out and winning both games with a collective score of 16–1. We were headed back to Atlanta with what appeared to be an insurmountable lead.

  But this is where things started to get a little screwy. We certainly had a nice lead, but everyone knows you never walk around like you’ve already won the thing. Well, someone should have told that to our local paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which ran an article that basically claimed, “The Series is over, why even play the games?” Seriously. I still remember picking up the paper and just groaning. It was such a bad omen. I couldn’t believe they would run something like that. What were they thinking? Now, I’m not saying the AJC is entirely to blame for our downfall, but I certainly am pointing out that their fate-tempting article seemed to be the first omen that the tables were about to turn.

  After the article, it seemed like we were fighting everything imaginable. The rest of the Series was one big train wreck for us. If it could go the Yankees’ way, it did. We couldn’t catch a break, let alone a foul ball, to save our lives. Here is a short—and incomplete—list of “random” occurrences that conspired against us in the next five days:

  Accidental umpire interference: Through five innings of Game Four, we’re up 6–0. In the sixth, right field umpire Tim Welke inexplicably impedes right fielder Jermaine Dye as he charges in to snatch what appears to be an otherwise routine foul ball popped up beyond the first-base line. The ball hits the deck. The batter, a certain Derek Jeter, gets a second chance at the plate and singles, touching off a three-run Yankee rally. The score after the sixth: Braves 6, Yankees 3.

  Some guy named Leyritz: Later in the eighth, Rafael Belliard muffs what appears to be a routine double-play ball, only managing to get the runner out at second. With one out and two on, the stage is set for a rally, but the next batter due up, Jim Leyritz, a defensive sub brought in for Yankee catcher Joe Girardi in the sixth, doesn’t seem to be a likely hero. Leyritz improbably delivers with a three-run home run, tying the game at 6–6, and bringing the Yankees back to life in the game and in the Series. It was later reported that Leyritz, not expecting to play, had spent most of the game in the Yankee weight room.

  No earned runs allowed, we still lose: Game Five. I pitch eight innings, strike out ten, throw 135 pitches, allow one unearned run, and still get the loss. The Yankees score their one and only run in the fourth, assisted by an error by center fielder Marquis Grissom. What should have been out number one results in Charlie Hayes on second, in scoring position. Two batters later, he scores. It was another error that would lead to yet another Yankee win.

  Win one for The Gipper Frank Torre: In between Games Five and Six, Frank Torre, big brother of Yankees manager Joe Torre, suddenly undergoes successful heart-transplant surgery, after waiting three months for a donor. He recovers enough to be able to watch Game Six from his hospital bed. The Yankees, obviously supportive of their manager and his family, are supplied with yet another reason to play hard.

  On October 21, we appeared to be on a collision course with destiny in the form of repeat titles. Five days later, we had somehow lost the World Series and destiny belonged to the Yankees. Their incredible win was our incredible loss. Not only did we lose another championship, we lost the foundation of the team that had gotten us to the World Series four out of the last six years. If we had won, would our general manager have gone in another direction and been able to keep the likes of David Justice, Marquis Grissom, Terry Pendleton, Jermaine Dye, and Steve Avery? That’s the kind of thing we’ll never know. What we do know is what did happen. The Yankees went on to dominate, even today. Meanwhile, the Braves are still chasing their first World Series win since 1996.

  Maybe to some people it sounds like we Atlanta Braves fans are crying in our spilled milk, but the fact is we were so close, it’s so hard to explain. It doesn’t make any sense, but the reality is a hit here, a pitch here, a run here, and I’m not writing a chapter about why there was only one ring. It’s like I said earlier: Baseball is a beautiful game, but it can also be brutally heartbreaking.

  Chapter Seventeen

  VINDICATION

  As I walked out to the mound for the first time for the St. Louis Cardinals on August 23, 2009, I was in a mind-set unlike anything I had experienced the entire time in Boston: I was comfortable, I was relaxed, and I was confident.

  On paper, there was really no reason to be confident or to truly believe that I could suddenly turn things around and resurrect my season. With the way I had pitched in Boston at times, there really wouldn’t have been any reason for my new team, the media, or anyone else to expect a win, even if they had sent me all the way down to Double-A ball. But that wasn’t how I sa
w things and that wasn’t how I felt about things either.

  Fresh off two weeks away from the game, I felt completely recharged and in a good place mentally. I knew I had the luxury of a little time, in the form of two starts, to just kind of get back in the swing of things. The expectations were pretty low and I was under zero pressure to come out and pitch lights-out. The Cardinals were well into first place, and even if I stank it up both times out, I was not going to be the reason why they missed the postseason. St. Louis had a great pitching staff led by Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, and Joel Piñeiro, and I was there to just give them that little extra boost at the end, if they needed it. My attitude was “Here we go, let’s finish strong.”

  My relaxed outlook was only one part of my recent surge in confidence. It’s really weird how this worked out, but it seemed like all the things that had been unknown and disorienting about Boston were now comfortable to me in St. Louis. It’s no fault of Boston’s; it’s just the way it worked out. I have family in St. Louis, so I got to stay with my uncle while I was there. The city seemed easier to navigate, the clubhouse seemed similar to Atlanta’s, and the philosophies were similar as well. I could go on and on. St. Louis was just a good fit for me all around.

  On top all of this, there were still other reasons why I was feeling more comfortable on the mound than I had felt in a long time. In addition to discovering the mechanical problem—that little heel movement—that had been plaguing my delivery at times in Boston, the Cardinals had helped me figure out that I had also been tipping my pitches.

  In St. Louis, all the starting pitchers made a point to come watch each other pitch side sessions in the bullpen. There was this great team mentality going on within their rotation, and they had created an open atmosphere where they were all sharing ideas and helping each other improve. Like I said before, St. Louis always reminded me of Atlanta.

  The first time Chris Carpenter saw me throw a bullpen, he came up to me afterward and said, “Hey, you mind me telling you something?”

  I didn’t know what he was about to say, but I’ve always been really receptive to feedback. Even if it was bad news, I wanted to hear it. So I said, “Not at all. Go ahead.”

  He said, “I know every pitch you’re going to throw before you throw it.”

  I was like, “Really?!”

  Chris and I stood there talking for a moment and things started to click in my mind. It was one of those “Aha!” moments that I still remember today. There I had been struggling the whole time in Boston and I had somehow neglected even to consider the possibility that I could have been tipping pitches.

  Tipping pitches is something that all pitchers have to guard against, and this can be hard to do, considering that pitching is basically an art of effective repetition. The problem crops up when you develop noticeable habits specific to each pitch you throw. We’re talking about subtle things—like the way you grip or regrip the ball, change your arm angle, or the way you hold your glove as you get ready to throw—that telegraph what’s coming next. If you’re not consciously thinking about being deceptive, you can start giving off hints and be none the wiser for it.

  For me, it was always my glove. If you watched me pitch long enough, you could start to detect by the angle I held my glove what was coming next—fastball, slider, change—to a fairly reasonable degree. I figured if Chris could tell what was coming after one bullpen session, he probably wasn’t the only one.

  I was eventually able to confirm that at least a couple of teams had cracked the code on my glove. It was disappointing news, but really a blessing at the same time. It was such a relief to know I had discovered two things that I could actually fix—just knowing this did wonders for me. Initially I had felt confident that the outcome could be different in St. Louis; now I had reason to believe that it should be. In my mind, it was time to get back to business as usual.

  For my first start, we were on the road against the San Diego Padres, so I began the game in the dugout, watching my new teammates come up to bat for me for the very first time.

  The Cardinals got things going early as Skip Schumaker and Brendan Ryan came out swinging and hit back-to-back singles. Cesar Carrillo, the starting pitcher for the Padres, then issued a four-ball walk to Albert Pujols. Before you knew it, it was bases loaded, no outs.

  I couldn’t have scripted a better start for us, and I was thinking, surely, with no outs, we were going to strike first. It all proved too good to be true, though, as the next three batters went three up, three down, and Carrillo pitched himself out of an early jam. I knew that stranding three base runners in the first inning was an ominous way to start a game, but as I strode to the mound, I wasn’t dwelling on the missed opportunity. I was anxious to just get out there and pitch.

  As I launched into my warm-up, things just felt right, they felt familiar. Here I was back in the National League, in a park that I had pitched in many, many times before, about to face hitters who not only had names and faces I recognized, but also had habits I knew. On top of that, my parents had been able to fly in for the game, and I knew they were there with me in the stands. It really felt like things were clicking into place, right up until I threw my first ten pitches.

  When the dust settled after my tenth pitch, I had runners on first and second with no outs. I had gotten ahead of both hitters actually, but the Padres leadoff man, Everth Cabrera, had hit a weak grounder to shortstop Brendan Ryan and beat the throw to first for a single. Tony Gwynn Jr. then hit what appeared to be a routine double-play ball to second baseman Skip Schumaker, but Ryan, covering second, bobbled the throw and both runners were safe on the play. Ryan got tagged with an error and I got tagged with two runners on and no outs—when it could easily have been nobody on and two outs.

  Right here at this point, ten pitches into my first start in St. Louis, there was a legitimate chance for the Padres to post a four-spot in the first inning. Or in other words, there was a chance that I was about to pick up right where I had left off in Boston.

  It might have seemed like it was time to panic, but I wasn’t panicking. I really didn’t feel anything but a lot of patience and a lot of peace. I was able to do something on the mound here in the very first inning with the Cardinals that I hadn’t able to do very well the entire time I was with Boston: slow the game down and control my own thoughts. As I stood on the mound, staring down one of the most dangerous hitters in the Padres’ lineup, Adrián González, I didn’t let myself feel defeated. I didn’t start counting how many runs were likely to cross the plate if I hung a fastball right now. I just took a deep breath, banished any negative thoughts from my mind, and reassured myself that I still had what it took to stop the damage right here, right now.

  I faced the same moment that had owned me to a certain extent in Boston and had owned me way back in 1991, when I had pitched myself into the worst slump of my entire career and started a season 2–11.

  In 1991, I was actually pitching pretty darn well, but what I couldn’t do in ’91 was pitch out of a jam. I would start a game and things would be going fine, but anytime things started to get a little hairy, I would begin to unravel. I would find myself up against the wall at some point in every game, and it was like Oh, here we go again. It became a foregone conclusion in my mind that once runners were on, they were going to score. And it seemed like more often than not, they did.

  I started to convince myself that if it could happen, it was going to happen. I wasn’t suffering from a lapse in fundamentals; I was suffering from a complete collapse of confidence.

  As the season wore on and the losses mounted, I spiraled further and further away from my old mind-set, a mind-set that had always given me this edge, this supreme confidence that I would outcompete any hitter in any situation. Now the tables had turned in my mind and that confidence was replaced with doubt. I was no longer convinced that I could get out of my own way when the trouble mounted.

  I lost game after game after game, but my manager, Bobby Cox, never stoppe
d believing in me the entire time. I don’t remember that he ever really pulled me aside or sat me down and gave me any special words of wisdom. It’s hard to describe this, I guess, but Bobby just had this ability to believe in people and he had this gentleness about him. As a pitcher, you can tell when your manager loses faith in you: You can tell by the way he comes out to get you, you can tell by a lot of things he says and does. Bobby never lost confidence in me, and I can only assume he believed in something that other people didn’t seem to see: my potential.

  It was really right here, at this specific point, that my manager changed the course of my career. No, that’s not accurate. He saved my career. I mean, you can just imagine the kind of flak Bobby Cox was taking for continuing to hand me the ball every five days. The critics were clamoring for the hook, for anything. The sentiment became “Send him down. Or send him to the bullpen. Do something, Bobby! The kid has obviously lost it.” Who knows what would have happened to either of us had I not eventually turned things around; I could easily have cost both of us a job. If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times: I will always be grateful for Bobby Cox.

  This is one point in my career where both Bobby and John Schuerholz deserve credit, though, because it was John who came to me and asked if I would be open to seeing a sports psychologist. Without hesitation, I said, “Sure, absolutely.”

  I had already admitted to my wife that I probably needed to see someone and I was really open to it. I wasn’t afraid to talk about the thoughts that were running rampant in my mind; I was just interested in getting better. I mean, at this point I was 2–11; I knew exactly what was going on. The truth was that at this rate, I was not going to be in the rotation much longer.