Starting and Closing

by John Smoltz

  This was really a critical moment for me in St. Louis, the fact that this shoulder inflammation would be a nonstory. Had I not already traveled down all these roads of injuries and surgery and rehabs, and spent so much time with medical professionals dissecting, so to speak, my body and learning my own limits and tendencies, this could have really been it for me right there and then. But as it turned out, my shoulder needed nothing more than a few extra days of rest between starts. Ten days after my last start I would take the mound in St. Louis against the Cubs and it was business as usual: six innings pitched with six hits, two runs, and four strikeouts.

  This was really one thing that made a tangible difference in my performance in St. Louis—I enjoyed the ability to do whatever I thought I needed to do for my shoulder, whether it was throwing between starts, not throwing between starts, or whatever. They simply left it up to me and it helped me thrive.

  I continued to pitch well down the stretch until it came to my last start at Cincinnati on September 30. That game proved to be my only hiccup with the Cardinals and it was unfortunate because it kind of tainted the nice little half season I was having with them. I only lasted four innings that evening against the Reds, and I gave up not only six hits but six earned runs. It was really frustrating to end on that note, especially because I felt I was battling against more than just your run-of-the-mill challenges, like trying to establish the outside corner with the home-plate umpire. I’m not trying to grab for excuses here, but when I got my hands on my first game ball, I knew I was in trouble.

  I’d been pitching now for more than twenty years in the pros and these were the worst baseballs I’d ever pitched with in my life. It’s perhaps a little-known piece of baseball trivia that all game balls are required to be “properly rubbed so that the gloss is removed,” according to MLB rule 3.01(c). The balls are rubbed with a special mud that takes the shiny, fresh-out-of-the box sheen off them, without scratching them or altering their aerodynamic properties, so pitchers can actually grip the ball. The balls in Cincinnati that day were so slick that I had no feel for the baseball—it literally felt like a cue ball in my hand—and that’s about the worst thing you can have as a pitcher. The obvious lack of mud on the balls coupled with the crisp game-time temperature proved to be a nightmare combination for me.

  Now the Reds’ starter, Bronson Arroyo, obviously had to pitch under the same conditions and use the same balls, and he did a nice job. I tried to go out and battle, too, but it did not pan out well for me. I lasted only four innings, the low point coming in the third when I gave up four runs on one swing from Laynce Nix—a grand-slam home run.

  That game was one of many that didn’t go our way in the final month of the season. We would lose six of our last seven after clinching our division on September 26, ending our season on a particularly sour note by getting swept at home in a three-game series with the Milwaukee Brewers. We were not roaring into the postseason; we were plodding. And plodding never bodes well for deep October runs.

  In the first round of the playoffs, we were matched up against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Western Division champions, in the best-of-five National League Division Series. Games One and Two would be played in L.A., since the Dodgers had posted a slightly better regular-season record. When you considered the strength of our starting pitching, with Chris Carpenter scheduled to start Game One and Adam Wainwright Game Two, I think all of us thought we had more than a good chance to take both games, even though we would be playing on the road.

  Going into the series, I was in a little bit of limbo between the bullpen and the rotation. It was hard to tell where I would fit into the puzzle of the postseason from the outset. With Carpenter and Wainwright opening the series, Tony understandably slid me to the bullpen for the first two games. There was at least a possibility that I might get the nod to start Game Four, but we didn’t even know if there would be a Game Four at this point. I understood all of Tony’s decisions and I understood my role, but it didn’t make it any easier to go sit and wait and watch as our postseason unfolded from the bullpen. Even now, at forty-two, with a surgically repaired shoulder, I still felt I could go out there and deliver. And I ached for the chance.

  To say things got off on the wrong foot for us in the NLDS is a mighty understatement. Three pitches into Game One, Chris Carpenter had already surrendered a single and a two-run home run. He would go on to last five innings, but the Dodgers roughed him up for nine hits and four runs. On the offensive side, we had plenty of opportunities, but we weren’t able to capitalize on them, leaving fourteen runners stranded on base and going three-for-thirteen with runners in scoring position. Tony La Russa reached into the bullpen five times over the last four innings of the game, but none of the calls were for me, and I watched Game One from start to finish from the visitors’ bullpen in right field. Final score: Cardinals 3, Dodgers 5.

  Everyone’s expectation of dominating starting pitching came to fruition in Game Two as Adam Wainwright faced off against Dodgers’ starter Clayton Kershaw. Adam was cruising early, retiring the first eleven batters he faced before giving up a solo home run to Andre Ethier in the bottom of the fourth. He would go on to pitch eight innings, allowing only three hits, and the one run. Thanks to a solo home run in the top of the second by Matt Holliday and an RBI double in the top of the seventh by Colby Rasmus, we had established a one-run lead over the Dodgers going into the eighth. With the way Adam was pitching, it looked like it might be enough.

  Adam had the game so well in hand that Tony La Russa was already contemplating his pitching strategy for Games Three and Four. Joel Piñeiro was already penciled in for Game Three, but it appeared Tony might be leaning my way for Game Four when he called down and instructed bullpen coach Marty Mason to have me get up and start throwing a side session during the eighth inning.

  I knew throwing a side session that night boded well for me to be tapped as a starter later in the series, but the timing seemed a little off. Never in my life had I thrown a side session in the middle of a playoff game with a one-run lead, but Tony had called for a side session, so that’s what I did.

  Everything appeared to be going just as planned right up until we were a strike away from closing the game. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, on a 2–2 count, on the very verge of the series going back to St. Louis all tied up at 1–1, Dodgers’ first baseman James Loney hit a line drive right at left fielder Matt Holliday. Cardinals’ fans everywhere rejoiced, anticipating the final out. It would be Dodgers’ fan rejoicing seconds later, though, as Holliday infamously caught the ball with his body, not his glove, and the ball fell to the ground. Loney advanced to second on the error, and the door had swung wide open for the ensuing two-out Dodger rally. Two batters later, the tying run would cross the plate.

  With the game now tied up at 2–2, Tony made another call to the bullpen. Conditions had changed and thus my assignment had changed. If the game stayed tied through the ninth, Tony was going to bring me in for the tenth. I was so shocked by the news, I didn’t think my heart could take it.

  You see, throwing a bullpen session and throwing to get ready to enter a game are two very different things. I hadn’t been throwing hard, maybe 70, 75 percent, but I had been up throwing for a while. Now I had to switch gears, and switch gears fast.

  I couldn’t believe what was happening and I had an adrenaline rush I hadn’t experienced in a long time. I loved moments like this, but I wasn’t prepared in any way to hear the words you’re in midway through my side session.

  I got ready and I probably would have been okay to go for the tenth, but on this day there would be no tenth. The Dodgers kept their implausible two-out, ninth-inning rally going, eventually knocking in the go-ahead run on a walk-off single to end the game. In a blink we had gone from taking the series back to St. Louis all tied up at one game apiece to taking the series back entrenched in a two-game deficit. It was hard to wrap your head around the final outcome after we had basically dominated the game nearly
wire to wire.

  As expected, Tony La Russa went with Joel Piñeiro in Game Three. I had held out hope that I might get the nod, mostly because I had a pretty good track record in elimination games. I had lost only one such game in my career, Game Four of the World Series against the Yankees in 1999. At the same time I completely understood and respected Tony’s decision. Joel was their guy, he’d rung up fifteen wins in the regular season, and there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t do the same in Game Three.

  As it was, Piñeiro struggled, allowing four runs on seven hits through only four innings of work. When the scoreboard read 4–0 in the bottom of the fourth, Tony La Russa decided it was time for a change. He called down to the bullpen and had both me and Dennys Reyes get up and start warming up. Dennys would get the nod first, in the fifth, coming in and retiring all three batters he faced. Right after he recorded the third out, the bullpen phone rang again: Tony wanted me to come out for the sixth.

  My blood was definitely pumping as I cycled through my customary fifteen pitches and prepared myself mentally and physically to enter the game. On the verge of pitching in my first postseason game in four years, I remember thinking, All right, this is what you wanted to do. This is what you worked so hard to get back to. When Skip Schumaker hit a fly ball to left field for the final out of the fifth, after a year of wondering if the moment would ever happen again, I was headed to the mound in the postseason one more time.

  I had made the journey from the bullpen to the mound so many times before, but never did it seem longer than it did that day. For the first time I could feel my heart racing, almost like I was having an out-of-body experience. I couldn’t believe what I was feeling: I couldn’t swallow and I had absolutely no saliva. It was an anxiousness I had never felt before. It wasn’t fear; it was wanting the moment almost too intensely.

  My racing emotions were accompanied by a sudden flash of memories before my eyes, like a thirty-second movie of everything that I had gone through in that last year. The day I went under the knife, the rehab, Boston, the widespread belief that I wasn’t even supposed to be able to come back. It wasn’t like I was dying, but it’s like I sensed that this could be it: This could be my last trip to the mound.

  In some ways I wished it all could be different, that I wasn’t coming out of the bullpen in the sixth with my team already down 4–0 in an elimination game. In so many ways, the past year had not been the path that I wanted or the journey I thought it could have been even now, but rising above that bittersweet brew of emotion was something else entirely: a sense of amazing accomplishment. The fact was, when I finished my walk, I looked down and found myself exactly where I always wanted to be: on the mound in the playoffs. Just by being there, in that moment, I had accomplished something.

  I knew enough from my years of closing that I couldn’t come into the game and focus on the score. So I ignored the scoreboard and came in pitching as if we were locked in a tight game. I had always pitched playoff games like there was no tomorrow, but this time it was more than just a mantra to get myself locked in. It was the absolute truth.

  The first batter I faced was Casey Blake. After working him to a 2–2 count, I got him to hit a ground ball to our shortstop, Brendan Ryan. When I saw the ball coming off the bat, I thought it was an out, but Brendan didn’t play the ball cleanly and Blake ended up being safe at first. Man, what a frustrating way to start.

  When I look back now, though, it was completely in keeping with the theme of things rarely starting off on a good note for me.

  I shrugged off the reality of the base runner and focused in on the next order of business: Ronnie Belliard. And I reminded myself that the five pitches I had thrown to Blake had been promising ones. You usually get a sense pretty quickly of how good your stuff is, and by all indications, my stuff seemed solid. After five more pitches, I knew it was solid. Belliard went down swinging and he would prove to be the first of many on this day, with Russell Martin and Vicente Padilla following suit in the inning. After giving up that first weak hit to Blake, I had struck out three guys in a row, all swinging, and I had to smile to myself as I walked back to the dugout. I was in a familiar groove.

  Unfortunately for us, Padilla, the Dodgers’ starter, was also in a groove this day and was still dominating our lineup in the bottom of the sixth. It was three up, three down, and I was quickly walking back out to the mound for the seventh.

  I picked up right where I left off in the sixth, striking out Rafael Furcal and Matt Kemp to start the inning. I had just struck out five batters in a row, as many as I ever had in the postseason.

  I had a healthy respect for the next batter up, Andre Ethier, the Dodgers slugger who had hit thirty-one homers in the regular season and who had already hit a two-run homer earlier in the game off Piñeiro, but I was still plenty confident with the way I was throwing the ball. Two pitches later the count stood at 0–2 and I was one pitch away from striking out six hitters in a row, which I had never done in the postseason.

  I should have been suspicious that the story line was getting a little too good at this point, because it was. After fouling off two pitches, Ethier would get all of my next one, launching it to center for a triple. In a heartbeat I went from an 0–2 count with two outs and nobody on to a runner on third and Manny Ramirez up. Perfect.

  Manny would be the Manny who delivered in this case, promptly driving a ground-ball single into left field, scoring Ethier. I would give up another single to James Loney before eventually getting Casey Blake out on a fly ball to left field to end the inning. As I walked off the mound, I didn’t know if that was it for me or not, but when I got to the dugout, Tony confirmed it. He was bringing in Jason Motte for the eighth. My day was done after two innings in which I had allowed four hits, gave up one run, but recorded five consecutive strikeouts. Almost six…

  I sat down on the bench with the rest of my teammates, hoping and wishing for a rally that would never happen. Albert Pujols drove in a run in the bottom of the eighth, making the score 5–1, but it would prove to be the last run of the day. When Rick Ankiel struck out with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, we could only sit and watch the Dodgers celebrate before a hushed crowd at Busch Stadium.

  For all the postseasons that I had been a part of, to lose three games in a row like the Cardinals had just done—it was brutal. Just unreal. I think we all had this feeling like everything had happened too fast, that it wasn’t supposed to go this way. It was hard even to process that our season was already over.

  In my perfect world, things would have ended differently. In my perfect world, we would have gone to another World Series and I would have started Game Seven, but that wasn’t to be. Sure, we were swept out early, but in the end, it was a sweep worth savoring for me. When I walked out of the game, regardless of the scoreboard, I felt a sense of accomplishment beyond what anybody could ever have known.

  Losing was certainly a bummer, but there was enormous satisfaction in simply proving I still had it. I had been able to deliver in the moment again, and not only had I delivered, I was a click away from starting and ending my career with St. Louis on two improbable strikeout streaks. I was so proud of all the work that had gone into just getting back to that moment, and that alone was enough for me.

  After the game, I remember trying to put everything into perspective for Kathryn, all the sadness and all the joy that I was feeling at that same moment. I remember telling her, “Despite all that you witnessed in this last year, despite all the pain, all the struggle in Boston, all the heartbreak with how things ended with the Braves, I somehow managed to also have the time of my life.”

  No matter how many times I had done it before, no matter how successful my résumé was in the postseason, this was different. This was a point where I was vulnerable and I wasn’t quite at my best, but I got another chance to prove to myself that I could do it. To me, those two innings of postseason work solidified everything, and despite what anyone might say, everyone needs that sense of acc
omplishment to be able to say to yourself, I did it.

  I did it. It might not mean much to anyone else, but it does to me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A HAMBURGER, A HOT DOG, AND A FRENCH FRY WALK INTO A BAR…

  When I walked off the mound for the last time in 2009, there was a part of me that thought this might be it for me, as in The End. But that thought at that moment was really nothing more than a premonition, or maybe even an acknowledgment that there were no guarantees at this stage of my career. If you had interviewed me after the game, I would have told you (and I remember telling some people), “I hope to be back again with the Cardinals in 2010.” Really, my mind-set at the end of 2009 was the same as it had been at the end of 2008, coming off of shoulder surgery: I still thought I could pitch and I still had the desire to pitch. And in my mind, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t pitch for another year or two.

  The way my contract was written, I became a free agent again after the World Series, but the Cardinals seemed genuinely interested in the possibility of bringing me back for another year. In my mind, I was really thinking it could be the start of a nice little run in St. Louis. They had such a strong team, I knew they would have more chances to represent the National League in the playoffs, and I was hoping to have a role in that journey. So with that said, I went into the off-season fully dedicated to preparing to play what would have been my twenty-second season in the major leagues. I knew the work ahead, but the thrill of chasing yet another postseason drove me on.

  That off-season, though, was not as seamless and pain-free as I would have liked. I struggled a little bit at times, more than I had expected to, but even with my shoulder not being quite 100 percent, I knew I could still do what St. Louis was looking for me to do. I could still be the perfect insurance for them out of the bullpen. I’m telling you, I could still go pitch in a major league game today. I’d have to throw all sliders, but I could still get people out.