Starting and Closing

by John Smoltz

  As February and spring training inched closer and closer, the Cardinals and I were still talking, but they hadn’t offered me a contract yet and I was starting to get that feeling that it might not work out. Five other teams had conveyed interest in me, but at this point in my career I was going to be pretty picky. I wasn’t just trying to make a roster for the sake of making a roster. Really, at this point, it was going to come down to whether St. Louis wanted me or not.

  In the midst of waiting and seeing how things were going to play out contractwise with St. Louis, my agent Lonnie Cooper and I started talking with Turner Broadcasting System about joining their broadcast team.

  Pursuing broadcasting was not really out of the blue per se, as later in my career I had dabbled with it a little bit, but my experience was limited to a handful of spots I did from the dugout in Atlanta and from working one series of the playoffs in 2008 for TBS. That year I was out with shoulder surgery and they invited me to come broadcast alongside Brian Anderson and Joe Simpson. It was an amazing experience, but when I look back, what’s even more amazing is that everything went as well as it did. I never really went through a whole regimen of preparation, like I didn’t attend rookie broadcaster spring training or anything. I just sat down in the booth and started talking into the mike. I was completely clueless about some aspects of it, especially the production side of things, but I really felt comfortable in the booth from day one. In my mind, I was just sitting there talking about a game I loved.

  Looking back, my performance during the playoffs in some ways served as an audition. All things told, I had one week to make a decision either way. What would be my occupation for 2010: player or broadcaster?

  All throughout the negotiations with TBS, I was still negotiating with the Cardinals. As intrigued as I was about the opportunity to broadcast, my number one desire was to play in 2010. Realistically, I only had a few playing years left, whereas I liked to think I still had many years to get into broadcasting. I was really prepared to fill in for St. Louis wherever they might need me, whether it was pitching out of the ’pen, or spot-starting on occasion, and I still felt like I could deliver for them in either of those roles. But in the end, the Cardinals decided to go in another direction.

  I’m sure there was a lot of concern about my shoulder and doubts as to whether or not it could hold up for yet another season. And in retrospect, they may have been right; I don’t know. There’s no way for anyone to predict what that next year in baseball would have looked like for me.

  When the Cardinals decided not to re-sign me, I was really fine with it. The one thing I always appreciated about St. Louis was that they treated me with unbelievable respect and dignity, even down to our very last conversation when they delivered the news that I didn’t really want to hear. In the end, St. Louis was the greatest place I could have gone and it was really a fitting end to my career. I will always be thankful for the opportunity they gave me in 2009.

  It’s a little crazy how everything came together in this one-week period: I ended my baseball career and I went right into this transition into the next phase of my life in the space of seven days. From the outside, it might have looked like I never missed a beat, but I was incredibly fortunate to have everything work out as if it had been planned along, because it really wasn’t.

  As I look back, maybe it shouldn’t surprise me so much that I am a broadcaster today. When you consider that ever since I was first able to operate a radio, my life has been filled with a steady diet of play-by-play and color commentary, I guess it starts to make sense. I can’t deny it: I love to listen to baseball games. In Michigan, I had the pleasure of growing up listening to the legendary Ernie Harwell, the voice of the Detroit Tigers, and I soaked up his love and enthusiasm for the game every chance I could get. Later on, when we started to get the games on TV, I would turn the volume down and watch the game, but still listen to Ernie. I loved the way he broadcast a game; he could captivate your attention like nobody else.

  Tiger baseball games dictated a large part of my schedule. If the game came on at 7 P.M., all my homework, all my chores, everything that needed to get done was done by 6:59. If the team was on the West Coast and the game was late, I’d set my alarm clock for school in the morning and I would fall asleep listening to the game. I could usually get in three innings before I nodded off.

  I never set out to be a broadcaster; it’s just the kind of the way things worked out for me. But when I look back now, I wonder if it wasn’t all a part of my master plan—just a plan that I wasn’t aware of myself. I look back to times in my career and certain things I did, and it just amazes me, like all the times I impersonated broadcasters. Early in my career, I used to have a lot of fun with fellow pitcher Mark Grant whenever we played in San Francisco. When we played the Giants on the road, all the starting pitchers would watch the game in the clubhouse because the dugouts were too small to fit the whole team. Left to our own devices, Mark and I began to do these elaborate mock broadcasts of the game. We’d watch the game with the sound off and call it for all the other guys. We’d get into it like it was a playoff game and every hit was high drama. Mark would be like, “And here’s a line drive to left field!” and then I’d hit two bats together to make the sound effect. It was goofy stuff, but we had a blast. And the funny thing is that here we are today and both Mark and I are broadcasters.

  One great part of my original contract with TBS in 2010 was the opportunity it afforded me to broadcast Braves’ games for Peachtree TV here in Atlanta, which TBS owned back then. When they first approached me and asked me to do twenty-five home games, I warned them what they were in for. I said, “If you get me, you get the whole package. You’re going to get the goofiness, the jokes, you’re going to get it all. I’m going to call the game, but I’m going to bring some silly humor to it, too.”

  They were all for it and I had an absolute blast calling the games for Peachtree that year. For one, it was my team, it was the Braves, but then there was the opportunity to work at the local level. The local broadcasts afforded me a great chance to practice and make mistakes and learn in between calling the national games on TBS and the MLB Network, whom I also signed a contract with, and, at the same time, have some fun and let my hair down. (Even if I don’t have as much of it as I used to.) I got into this routine of telling one funny joke a game, and people seemed to love it. When people ran into me at the store or somewhere out in town, I was amazed by how many could do nothing but talk about my stupid joke. One time I was hitting a urinal at a movie theater, and I’ll never forget an older man in his seventies walks by and says to me, “Three-legged dog, I get it, I get it.” It was so cool.

  I was really looking forward to coming back in 2011; I had this funny gig planned out to wear a different toupee for each game—it was going to great. Only it didn’t happen. TBS sold Peachtree TV to Fox Sports South and it was a real bummer; I missed out on covering the Braves and I missed that little irreverence you can’t get away with as much on national TV as you can on local. Plus I still haven’t figured out what I am going to do with all these toupees.

  My penchant for having a little fun in the booth actually predates my first contract and my short time with Peachtree TV. You can actually trace it back to the very first time someone entrusted me with a mike in 2004, back when I was the Braves closer. TBS had approached me and asked if I would be willing to broadcast from the dugout during a game sometime, and I was really intrigued. I knew the guys were going to give me a hard time about it (which they did), but I thought it would be fun. At the same time it was obviously going to have to be a special situation. I talked it over with Bobby and we eventually worked it out so that I could have an off day during the final weekend of the season. So as we faced the Chicago Cubs in our last three-game series of the year, for one night I swapped my spikes for a set of headphones and dived in as the third man.

  It was my first time out and I was determined to make it a memorable one. So the very first thing I did
was set up a practical joke with the late Skip Caray and Joe Simpson, the broadcasters I would be joining, not so literally, in the booth. As a pitcher who had spent a lot of off time in the clubhouse, I had been listening to Skip and Joe go back and forth during broadcasts, and rag each other through the years, so I knew they would be up for it. The joke was going to be on Glenn Diamond, their producer, who of all things is now my producer. So anyway, I told Skip and Joe, “Listen, let’s just get Glenn right out of the box. Whatever question you ask me, I’m going to pretend like I can’t hear it, like there’s some kind of a connection problem.”

  So the first time Skip brings me into the broadcast, he says, “So, Smoltzy. What are the Braves’ chances this year for the playoffs?”

  Though I had clearly heard his question in my headset, I immediately acted like I hadn’t quite made it out. I started fumbling with my headset and I let some awkward dead air go by. About this time I knew Glenn must be starting to switch into panic mode. So I said, “Hey Skip, I’m having a hard time hearing you down here. I think you were asking me about the ivy? Something about what do I think about the ivy here at Wrigley Field?”

  And with that, I launched into this elaborate answer about the ivy. I found out later that Glenn, all the while, was in the truck lighting up the tech guys: “What’s going on, what’s the problem?!”

  When I had finished my soliloquy on the finer points of creeping vines and the lack of padding they truly provide outfielders gunning for balls at the wall, Joe Simpson, as only a good straight man would do, asked me, “John, what do you think about the ivy here at Wrigley Field?”

  I said, “Joe, I’m really having a hard time hearing you. I don’t know what the deal is, but I think you asked me about our playoff chances and the run we’re about to go on?”

  Before it was all said and done, Glenn finally figured it out and I then explained to the audience what was going on, because I’m sure they had no clue what was happening. But that’s how I started my first gig behind the mike.

  I think this is a side of my personality that didn’t come across as much during my baseball career, but I love to mess with people. In order to understand this, though, you’ve got to understand a little about my dad and how I was really genetically predisposed to be a good-natured prankster from the beginning.

  My dad is the kind of dad who would routinely dress up in a gorilla suit at Halloween and then sit stock-still in a chair on the porch. As kids came up to trick or treat and my mom handed out the candy, they would be looking at him, wondering if the thing in the chair was just a stuffed gorilla. And my dad would just sit there waiting for the right moment to do something. He might have been guilty of scaring the pants off a few kids, but nobody ever went home crying. It was all in good fun; he’d scare the older kids, but just surprise the younger ones.

  I guess the other thing you could say about my dad is he’s a tad eccentric. One of the best ways I can think to define eccentric in this case is to describe a car he once drove. My dad worked primarily in electronics sales while I was a kid. At one point he was working for Sony and they had just started selling one of the very first electronic display calculators, which were made by Ricoh. This was back when calculators were selling for like $1,250 bucks. Anyway, nobody back then seemed to know Sony was selling calculators, so he took it upon himself to clear up that little oversight in the Lansing area.

  My dad bought a 1970 Ford Maverick and basically transformed it to resemble a calculator. He had the front end of the car—which was conveniently very boxy—and the hood painted with the keys and the display. Then he fabricated a life-size roll of paper that he mounted to the roof, replaced the gas cap on the back of the car with an industrial three-prong electric cord that sort of hung down on the bumper, and had big letters stenciled down the side panels that read FOR FREE TRIAL, CALL SONY. Then he topped it all off by adding a bunch of speakers so that he could broadcast this sound track of advertising about the new calculators mixed with crazy animal noises like dogs barking or windows breaking, as if people were throwing out their old rotary adding machines. His car, which he named “Ricoh,” drummed up both attention and calculator sales, but it’s safe to say that as kids, my brother and sister and I didn’t always think it was the coolest car to be seen in around town.

  When my dad would take me to school, I always told him, “Okay, Dad, the basketball coach wanted me to get some exercise in this morning, so if you could drop me off a mile from school, I think that would be a great start.” I can laugh about it now, but through all these things he did, my dad really taught me a great lesson in life: He was never ashamed of who he was or what he did. As a kid, I didn’t always understand it, but it’s definitely something that I appreciate today. In my family, we embrace things like playing the accordion, dressing up in gorilla suits, and driving around in cars that look like calculators. We may be a little quirky, but we’re proud of who we are, we’re proud of our last name, and I guarantee we never run out of things to laugh about.

  I think it’s safe to say that these parts of my dad’s personality rubbed off on me in their own way. I never broke out a gorilla suit in the major leagues, but there was one pretty famous hairy mask dating back to my instructional league days. And whenever I sensed that there was a moment when I could get someone, I took full advantage. One of my favorite stories happened just like that; I saw an opportunity and I ran with it.

  This story unfolded on one of our many late nights on the road. We had played an evening game on the West Coast and then promptly flown back to Chicago right after the game, so we didn’t get in to the hotel until like three or four in the morning. So our whole team shows up at the hotel at once and the lobby was quickly overflowing with bags and luggage.

  I happened to be standing nearby when the phone rang at the bellman’s desk, so I looked over and I noticed that the phone had caller ID. And then I noticed the name: It was a player calling for his bags. The lone bellman on duty was already busy ferrying bags to rooms, so I did what any good guy would do—I started fielding all of his calls for him in his obvious time of need. And, I might have taken the opportunity to say a few things that pro baseball players aren’t used to hearing from a hotel bellman.

  The first guy calling was adamant about needing his bags right away, so I told him, in a disguised voice so he didn’t know it was me, “Look, I’m sorry, sir, I know how important you are and everything, but we’re swamped. If you want your bag right now, you’re just going to have to come get it yourself.” And then I hung up on him. I could tell already that this was going to be good.

  The phone just kept ringing and I just kept laying it on thicker and thicker. The next guy who wanted his bag all snappylike got the following response: “I’m sorry, sir, it appears your bag has been damaged. We’re going to need you to come down and take a look at it.”

  I used every line I could think of, promptly ticking off one teammate after another. I remember one of the guys called and said, “Hey, when you bring up my bag, can you bring change for a hundred?” I promptly told him, “Look, man, if I had change for a hundred, I wouldn’t be doing this job.”

  By the end, I think I jacked with almost every guy on our team and I’m sure I had some folks spinning upstairs. You can just imagine what they thought about this bellman treating them like some punk.

  I was having a good time already, but it was the very last call that night that was the best. One of the guys wanted to know if a certain place was open and if it was within walking distance of the hotel or did he need a cab. Initially, I was like, “Look, I’m so overwhelmed down here I don’t have time for this. Find out yourself.” Click.

  Then I promptly called him right back and said, “Hey sir, look, I feel bad about that little outburst. I just don’t have enough help down here. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. Would you like me to call you a cab?”

  He said, “Nah, don’t worry about it. I can do it.”

  I said, “Sir, I really feel comp
elled to call you a cab. Do you want me to call you a cab?”

  He kept refusing, but after we went back and forth three or four times, he finally said, “Okay, sure.”

  So I said, “You’re a cab!” And I hung up the phone and immediately exited the area. My work there was done.

  Those are the kinds of things that I loved to do. Even today, if you are around me long enough, I’m going to getcha.

  My dad taught me a little something about messing with people, but he also taught me a little something about engaging people. From a young age, I was always organizing games and getting the other kids in the neighborhood to come play. I always loved stirring the pot and challenging other people, and in turn challenging myself. I loved the camaraderie and bonding that could take place. When I was a kid, I didn’t play it safe just to be liked or to fit in, or be cool. As a matter of fact, I took grave risks of not being popular and not fitting in. I mean, how uncool is it to try to get your entire varsity basketball team to go bowling? But it was always just who I was and what I thought was important. And it always seemed to help the various teams I played on gel and play better together.

  This tendency to engage people and to play practical jokes has been a mainstay of my personality from the beginning, and it really permeates everything that I do and everything that I am involved in. By far the most elaborate way I have engaged a group of guys was the Bible Bowl.

  But let me preface this by saying that I have been fortunate to be a member of one of the greatest Bible studies ever for more than fifteen years. I started attending way back in 1995 and it has had the most unbelievable impact on my faith. This Bible study was first led by Tim Cash, who later became one of our baseball chaplains. Tim has been one of the most powerful mentors for me in my faith. He has walked with me through some of the toughest times in my life, and both he and his wife, Barb, have helped me stay focused on the journey and helped me handle things that were way beyond my own abilities. I was always able to do things in the athletic world that amazed some people, but when it came to the philosophical world, I have always been amazed by the Cashes.