One on One

by John Feinstein

  I wasn’t so much angry about them deciding to choose Bob over me—although I certainly wasn’t happy about it—as I was really angry that they’d deceived me. There had been no talk of a tryout. They had said, “If we do a tennis segment we’d like you to come on.” When I pointed that out to the guy, he said, “What I said was, ‘If we do a segment, would you be available to come on?’ ”

  I told the guy to never call me again and said a number of very impolite things to him. That night, because I’m a masochist, I turned on Nightline.

  This is how Ted Koppel opened the segment: “What James Scott Connors has done at the United States Open tennis championships for the last two weeks is defy mortality. That is certainly something with which all of us can identify.”

  Oh my God. The guy had not only cut me, he had stolen my line! Beyond that, at the end of the year, when Sports Illustrated compiled its ten best lines of the year, guess what line was number one. You got it.

  I have never once done a pre-interview since that day. I’ve had shows say to me, “We don’t book guests without a pre-interview.” I tell them, “Fine, I don’t do pre-interviews, and if you want to know why I’ll tell you.” Most back down—because most of the time when national shows call me it is when there’s some kind of breaking news, not when I have a book out—but occasionally I’ve not done shows over the pre-interview issue. If I say something worth repeating, I’m going to say it publicly, I’m not going to be Ted Koppel’s unpaid researcher.

  All of that said, the success of Hard Courts was important to me because it proved that I could write a successful book on a sport other than basketball. And when Peter Gethers—then my editor it Villard Books, which is a Random House imprint—asked me what I wanted to do next, the answer was easy: baseball.

  As much as I always wanted to cover tennis, as much as I still love college basketball and golf, there’s no doubt my favorite sport is baseball. In 1969, the year of the Miracle Mets, I went to sixty-six games at Shea Stadium. I also went to twenty-five at Yankee Stadium. My buddy Marc Posnock and I would buy general admission tickets in the upper deck and, when we could, sneak downstairs. By September that year, the Mets were selling out and sneaking downstairs wasn’t possible. That was okay. We were there.

  To this day, there are few things I enjoy more in life than sitting in a ballpark watching a game and keeping score. I am psychologically incapable of being at a baseball game without keeping score. There is no tangible reason for me to do it, I just do. For years I kept score when I watched games at home, but the arrival of children in my life and the advent of the remote have pretty much ended that. Can I sit and watch a baseball game for nine innings on TV? Absolutely. Do I do it very often anymore? No.

  I have always seen spring training as nirvana. For as long as I can remember, every year as soon as the World Series ends I begin counting the days until pitchers and catchers report. I always know the day the first exhibition games will be played—and God bless baseball for still calling them exhibitions, unlike other sports that stick the “preseason” euphemism on them—and, of course, I always know when Opening Day will finally arrive.

  When I was young, spring training always began the same way: The Yankees would play their opening exhibition game against the Washington Senators in Pompano Beach on the first Thursday in March. The Mets, who shared Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg with the St. Louis Cardinals, would play Saturday–Sunday against the Cardinals. The Mets-Cardinals first weekend was always on TV—I watched. Sometimes I watched the Mets while listening to the Yankees—who usually played the Orioles that first weekend—on the radio.

  I never went to spring training as a kid. There was always school, and even during spring break, I usually had something going on. Plus, my dad was working anyway. Even after I first went to work for the Post I didn’t go because I was always smack in the middle of the basketball tournament in March.

  After the success of Hard Courts, I wanted to do baseball. I wanted to go to spring training and spend a year traveling from ballpark to ballpark. I didn’t have children yet but was hoping that would change in the near future. That meant this was the time. Peter Gethers, who I have forgiven for being one of the founders of fantasy league baseball, loved the idea.

  So in the spring of 1992 when pitchers and catchers reported, so did I. Which was great. The only problem for me was that very few people in baseball had any idea who I was. I had gone to the winter meetings in December to try to meet as many general managers and managers as possible and had found it a largely frustrating experience. Baseball is a very closed sort of world. Those who are in it look at those they consider outsiders with a great deal of suspicion.

  There were some people who went out of their way to be helpful from the start: Pat Gillick, who was then the general manager in Toronto, seemed to grasp what I was doing right away and said he’d be glad to spend time with me. So did Joe McIlvaine, who was the GM in San Diego, and Bud Selig, who was then the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. Phyllis Merhige, who was the PR person for the American League, went out of her way to tell me she’d give me any help and guidance she could—and has been as good as her word for almost twenty years now. Katy Feeney, her counterpart at the National League back then, not so much.

  I also learned a great lesson during that week from Jeff Torborg, who had just become manager of my beloved Mets. Since he was managing the Mets and since I had been told he was a bright, outgoing guy, I sought Torborg out almost right away. He was always friendly, although clearly guarded—I guessed because he didn’t really know me.

  One afternoon during a luncheon for managers and the media, word was passed that the Mets were holding a two o’clock press conference to announce a trade. Rumors had been swirling all week that the Mets were going to make a big deal before the meetings were over. Walking out, I saw Torborg.

  “Is this the big trade?” I asked.

  He smiled. “It is for the guys involved.”

  It was said almost as a joke—and to let me know it was a minor deal—but when I thought about the comment, it occurred to me that Torborg was right. To the guys involved it was a big deal. I try to remember that no matter what I’m covering or who I’m dealing with: to the people involved, it is always a big deal.

  My most interesting encounter during those winter meetings was with Bobby Valentine, who was managing the Texas Rangers. I approached Valentine pretty much the same way I was approaching everyone else: introduction and explanation that I was working on a book on a season in baseball and that I hoped we might sit down and talk, perhaps during spring training.

  Valentine and I were standing in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, which was where the winter meetings were being held that year. Valentine looked at me and sat down on top of a nearby table.

  “How long would this take?” Valentine said, one foot on the floor, the other dangling in midair.

  That was a fair question and fairly typical. “Honestly, Bobby, I don’t know,” I said. “Everybody’s different. It really depends a lot on you.”

  “Uh-huh. And what do I get out of it?”

  That brought me up short. (This was before Barry Bonds had asked me directly for money, so this was new to me.)

  “I guess nothing a lot different than what you get out of talking to newspaper guys or TV or radio guys,” I said. “The difference is that instead of talking in short bursts every day, you might talk in longer bursts a couple of times over the course of the season.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a big-time book writer, aren’t you?”

  “I write books, yes.”

  “So why should I help you with your book?”

  I’d had enough. Bobby Valentine wasn’t exactly Tony LaRussa or Tom Kelly or Bobby Cox.

  “You shouldn’t, Bobby,” I said. “There’s no need. Listen, thanks for your time.”

  A lot of guys were a lot more polite, just saying, “Come see me when you get to spring training.”

  Whi
ch is what I did with most people.

  All the myths that surround spring training aren’t myths—they’re true. The warm weather in Florida and Arizona at that time of year is intoxicating. Spring training isn’t nearly as relaxed as it used to be, and it has become a big moneymaker for the owners. But from a reporting standpoint, it is still about as relaxed an atmosphere as you can find in professional sports.

  On my first full day in Florida, I did long sit-downs with Doug Melvin, then the assistant GM of the Baltimore Orioles (now the GM of the Milwaukee Brewers), and with Johnny Oates, the Orioles manager. The next day I spent almost two hours with Joe Torre, and the day after that I talked at length to Tom Glavine, who had just won his first Cy Young Award the previous season, and to Bobby Cox. The spring training pass I had been provided, thanks to being put on the Orioles media list by their PR director, Rick Vaughn, was a magic wand—it got me everywhere I needed to go.

  I hit it off with Bobby Cox and Joe Torre right away. Torre, who was managing the Cardinals then, is a basketball fan and he knew who I was. In fact, when I introduced myself to him, his first comment was, “What are you doing down here in the middle of basketball season?” Cox didn’t know me but was still more than willing to sit in his office and talk for most of a morning in the old West Palm Beach clubhouse, where the Braves trained.

  Cox was the classic throwback baseball guy. He’d had a brief Major League career, playing third base for the Yankees for two years when they were struggling in the late 1960s. Like a lot of not-great players, he had developed a keen understanding of the game that made him a good manager. It wasn’t just his knowledge of the game though: Bobby Cox was the manager everyone wanted to play for. He was the uncle every kid loves to have come over to the house. He knew a lot, he could teach a lot, and he always managed to make it seem like fun.

  Torre was the same way. He had been an excellent player, a one-time MVP (1969), and was a borderline Hall of Famer long before he locked up his spot in Cooperstown during his tenure as the Yankees manager. He loved to tell stories about his pal Bob Gibson and about coming up to a Braves team that had Henry Aaron, Eddie Mathews, and Warren Spahn on it.

  It wasn’t surprising that the managers were more of a natural fit for me to talk to than the players. They were older, more experienced, and had seen and done more than most of the players. Jim Leyland and Tony LaRussa—who were in Pittsburgh and Oakland then, and were best friends—became two of my main characters. Buck Showalter, a rookie manager with the Yankees, also proved to be a wonderful story, even though the Yankees weren’t very good.

  And then there was Bobby Valentine.

  Early in the season I tore my Achilles tendon. I was on crutches for a month, which didn’t exactly make going into clubhouses or moving around ballparks easy. But I dealt with it, and most people were sympathetic. The only person I remember who wasn’t sympathetic was Jody Reed, who was playing second base for the Red Sox at the time.

  I was in the visiting clubhouse in Baltimore one afternoon, waiting to talk to Roger Clemens, who could not have been more accommodating to me throughout that entire season. My crutches were propped up against the wall. Reed walked past me, looked at the crutches, and said, “Make sure those things don’t fall over. Someone might trip on them and hurt themselves.”

  Sure, Jody, I’ll be real careful.

  During the crutches period, I did a lot of my work from Baltimore since it was only forty-five minutes from my house. As luck would have it, the Rangers came to town and I went up to talk to Nolan Ryan and watch him pitch. Ryan was forty-five and nearing the end of his remarkable career. I’d spent an afternoon with him in spring training during which he had spoken eloquently about dreading the day when he wouldn’t be a baseball player anymore.

  “You can get an idea what it’s going to be like when you’re hurt and on the disabled list,” he said. “You can be here in the clubhouse, talking to the guys, but you’re not here. You’re invisible. You can’t help them win that day so, to them, you’re not there. When I retire the thing I’ll miss most is being one of the guys, being a part of a clubhouse. I know no matter what I do, I’ll be invisible. You aren’t in uniform, you’re invisible.”

  Fifteen years later, Mike Mussina put it more succinctly: “I’ll miss not having a locker. When you don’t have a locker in here you really don’t belong anymore.”

  Ryan is now the president of the Rangers. That’s about as close to not being invisible as you can be without being in uniform or having a locker.

  On the afternoon that he pitched in Baltimore early in the 1992 season, I hobbled into the clubhouse on my crutches—making sure not to drop them lest I hurt someone—and found Bobby Valentine standing right outside the manager’s office. To get to the main area of the visiting clubhouse in Camden Yards, you walk (or hobble) right past the manager’s office.

  “What happened to you?” he said as if I were an old friend.

  “Torn Achilles,” I said.

  “Did you have surgery?”

  “No. I should be off these things in a couple weeks.”

  “Why don’t you come into my office and sit down.”

  I had no idea if he remembered me from the winter meetings at all, but I accepted the offer. As soon as I sat down, Valentine looked at me and said, “How’s the book project going?”

  He did remember me.

  “So far so good. The crutches have been a bit of a pain, but people have been really nice overall.”

  “Do you still want to talk to me?”

  “Um, sure, if you have any time along the way…”

  “How about right now? I’m not doing anything until we go out to stretch.”

  The great thing about covering baseball is the pregame access to the clubhouses. Again, it isn’t as good as it once was: in 1992 clubhouses were open to the media three and a half hours before game time and stayed open until forty-five minutes before the first pitch. The three-and-a-half-hour rule was rarely enforced. You could usually walk into a clubhouse as early as you wanted and either meet someone or try to find someone. Baseball people get to work early. Only twice during that 1992 season did anyone enforce the three-and-a-half-hour rule on me: Lou Piniella did it one day in Cincinnati when he was in a bad mood (and apologized the next day), and a snarky clubhouse guy in Pittsburgh did it once. That was it.

  And so Valentine sat and talked for almost two hours. He was funny and smart and likeable. I wondered if it was the crutches.

  THE ENTIRE SEASON—crutches aside—was a joyride for me. I spent time hanging out with umpires, with owners and GMs, with the Phillie Phanatic and with commissioner Fay Vincent. In fact, I was with Vincent, who I really liked, three days before the owners forced him out and made Selig acting commissioner—for life, apparently, as he’s still commissioner almost twenty years later.

  Vincent, who had replaced his good friend Bart Giamatti under the worst possible circumstances in 1989, when Giamatti died suddenly of a heart attack, was trying desperately to convince the owners that going to war with the players again was a bad idea. As early as spring training, he could see disaster looming.

  “If we have another work stoppage [the sport had endured seven of them dating to 1972], the public is going to see it as a battle between a group of greedy millionaires and a group of greedy billionaires,” he said. “And they will be correct.”

  The owners had hired a guy named Richard Ravitch as their labor negotiator before the start of the season. Ravitch had a rep as a union buster and had told the owners he could break the baseball union, which has been the strongest in sports dating back to the days when Marvin Miller first took over and led the players out on strike in the spring of 1972, causing a brief delay to the start of the season.

  Since that time, every single negotiation—seven in all—had ended with some kind of work stoppage and with the players “winning,” for the simple reason that Miller and Don Fehr, his successor, were smarter than whoever represented the owners each t
ime. Now the owners had hired tough-guy Ravitch and were girding for a fight.

  Vincent was pleading with them not to do it. “If there is a strike, it will be a long one,” he predicted. “And it will damage the game, regardless of the outcome.”

  Vincent spent most of the 1992 season trying to broker a peace that simply wasn’t going to happen. By the end of the summer, Ravitch and the owners had come to see him as a stumbling block in the way of the war they intended to start. They asked for his resignation. Initially he refused. But when he realized the owners had the votes to fire him after they had voted 18–9 to express “no confidence” in his leadership—he changed his mind and resigned on Labor Day, an irony no doubt not lost on him.

  I had lunch with him in his office in New York three days prior to that. Vincent had fallen off a roof and down four stories while in college trying to escape from a dorm room he had been locked in as part of a prank. He had recovered from his injuries, after being told he would never walk again, to the point where he walked slowly with the help of a cane. Most days though, rather than deal with going out to a restaurant, he ate lunch in his office with Rich Levin, who had come to Major League Baseball as the director of public relations when Peter Ueberroth became commissioner in 1985, and ended up staying until 2011.

  Vincent and Levin would eat lunch and then light up a cigar. I turned down the cigar—they’ve always given me a headache.

  “They believe Ravitch,” Vincent said that day as he puffed on his cigar. “They’re making a big mistake, but he’s got them convinced this is the way to go. The irony is that Bart and I talked when he was commissioner about the fact that one of the most important things we needed to do was improve the relationships between the owners and the players. When I tried to do that during the lockout [spring training 1990], a lot of the owners saw me as a traitor.”