Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  Later, when La Russa managed the American League in the 1989 All-Star game, he took his theory of danger a step further when he put Bo Jackson in the one-hole. La Russa once again had the luxury to do so, because just about everybody on the team was a dangerous hitter. But still, Jackson wasn't your prototypical lead-off hitter. He had great wheels, but he struck out a lot: a natural-born cleanup hitter. His power carried danger, though: the ability to change the dimension of a game right away. When Jackson hit a 455-foot home run off Rick Reuschel in the bottom of the first, La Russa again saw what that danger can do to an opposing pitcher: rattle him and keep him rattled. When the next hitter up, Wade Boggs, who had everything but power, homered off Reuschel, it only confirmed to La Russa why explosive danger at the top is a good thing.

  Another reason for explosion at the top—stacking the deck early—is to capitalize on the starting pitcher's uncertainty. In the first inning, even the best hurlers are still evaluating the feel of their fastballs and off-speed, no matter how well they warmed up. (Starting pitchers generally agree that there is little correlation between how well they warmed up before a game and how well they actually perform during it.) Sometimes, in the absence of classic power, its catalyzing effects can still be manufactured. In 2001, La Russa had Placido Polanco bat second for part of the season. He was hardly a power hitter, but he was a great hit-and-run man, and toward the end of the year, La Russa almost always had him hit and run, both to push for a run and also to keep defenses on edge. But there is no sudden explosion tonight, even of the manufactured variety.

  Normally, the veteran second baseman, Fernando Vina, would hit lead-off and the right fielder, J.D. Drew, hit second. But Vina is just coming off a torn hamstring that sidelined him for three months. He's played a few games in the minors to get the timing of his stroke back, but he looks lost at the plate and isn't ready yet, which leaves La Russa with Bo Hart, a last name straight out of central casting given the way he plays. He's the poster boy of scrappy, listed at 5'11" and 175 pounds, although he doesn't seem even as big as that. He's twenty-seven years old but looks in his late teens, with his nubby blond hair and a chin vainly struggling to grow something, as if he's not quite ready yet to grow something. When he's in the clubhouse on the road before a game, he likes to play cards—cards —as sweet as it gets in baseball.

  His play at second since coming up from Triple-A in June has been exceptional, really. Into the middle of July, he was hitting over .350, and it's clear that he's one of those guys with average skills and above-average heart and fire. La Russa can't help but love players like that, but he also knows that stories like his rarely end the way they begin. Since mid-July, Hart has cooled off considerably. He's hitting .283 coming into the three-game series. With 240 at-bats, he's not the virgin he was when he came up, and every pitch Hart takes in the major leagues is one more chance for pitchers to discover and exploit the places he's having trouble getting to.

  His stroke is compact, a delayed swing in which he lets the ball virtually get to the plate before he goes to hit it. He has good punch for a player that small, like a pinball smacking off a lever. But he has trouble with the breaking ball, which surprises La Russa because a swing like that should allow him to recognize a curve ball and react to it. Hart also tends to get too aggressive out of the strike zone, resulting in a quick strike 1 to put him into a hole. All this makes him a perfect hitter in the eighth spot, where that aggressiveness and punch would be a definite plus, making pitchers pause before thinking that they can simply go after him with high heat. But it's another La Russa adage that you can't dwell on what you don't have and can take advantage of only what do you have, so Hart is starting and batting second.

  As for Drew, capable of launching the ball as far as anyone in both leagues, he went on the disabled list nine days ago. He's injured again, as he was at the beginning of the season. It's the sixth time he's been on the disabled list since coming into the league in 1998, surrounded by more anticipation than any other rookie since Mickey Mantle. Perhaps never in his managing career has La Russa had a player more tantalizing in terms of talent and more difficult to unleash. But like many young players, Drew came in with the advantages that only plot against you if your goal is the realization of what God gave you: a long-term contract, too many early millions, a billboard mystique about him before he had taken a single road trip.

  To La Russa, there is a certain bittersweet tragedy to Drew, the embodiment of the best of times and the worst of times in baseball. The best of times for players because there is so much money out there and the ability to control your future. The worst of times because the money corrupts and compromises, makes it easy to play under your maximum and to reject the daily commitment that wins awards and World Series rings, because you can still make a ridiculous living at three-quarters speed. "A lot of young players fall into this trap where it's uncomfortable to push yourself on a daily basis," says La Russa. "They settle for some percent under their max. If you have the chance to be a two-million-dollar-a-year player, they might settle for 75 percent of that. In the case of J.D., if you have the chance to be a twelve-million-to-fifteen-million-dollar-a-year player, you settle for 75 percent of that."

  The irony for La Russa—and what an irony it is—is that Drew may be too talented, that it comes too easily to him. He plays with little outward passion for the game, gliding through because even when he glides through, he still gets enough hits and enough home runs to make about three and a half million dollars a year. La Russa knows that of all the qualities that a player possesses, outward passion is the most deceptive in terms of what it indicates. When Harold Baines played for La Russa on the White Sox and in Oakland, he had no outward passion. He said little in the clubhouse and even less to reporters; once, after hitting a prodigious home run to win a game, his answer to the standard question "Guess you got a piece of that, huh, Harold?" was expressed in one word: "Evidently." But Baines was also a great competitor—one of the best late-inning clutch hitters that La Russa has ever managed—with no correlation between outward temperament and inward passion for the game. La Russa doesn't feel the same about Drew.

  He still believes in him, but he's also had ample opportunity with him, and he wonders whether it would be better for someone else to open himself up to the seduction of his limitless talent, find what he never could.

  When he thinks of Drew, La Russa inevitably thinks of another player he once managed in the 1980s, Jose Canseco, the charming, self-destructive, preoccupied poster boy of distraction. Once the multiyear contract came Jose's way—once the money got into the heavyweight millions—playing every day became nostalgic. "I'm a performer, not a player," said Canseco, which in a lifetime of incredible comments from players, may well be the most incredible one ever spoken to La Russa. But the comparison between the two players goes only so far, because Canseco did work for the advantages he eventually got. He did turn in that MVP year with the Oakland A's in 1988 when he became the first player ever to hit forty or more home runs and steal forty or more bases. He loved hitting with two strikes—half of his home runs that year were with two strikes—which is about the discipline of getting a little wider and not striding as much and working on reflexes through tedious short-toss drills during early batting practice. Canseco had competitive passion before he pissed it away, only to have his body betray him when he tried to recover what had once made him.

  That leaves La Russa with Kerry Robinson in right field batting first, and La Russa has significant concern about being left with Robinson in right field batting first. It's the classic tension between manager and bench player: how much Robinson thinks he should be playing versus how much La Russa thinks he should be playing. Robinson aches and itches to be in the lineup every day. He sees himself in the same category as the Marlins' Pierre, who is on his way to stealing sixty bases this season, whereas Robinson is stuck on the bench most of the time. That's the way he feels about it— he's stuck there —and that infuriates La Russa, giv
en his team-as-puzzle theory. He sees Robinson as a role player with a left-handed bat, good speed, and nice range in the outfield. All this means that Robinson can be vital in the right situations. But La Russa doesn't see him as another Pierre. As far back as spring training, he flat-out told Robinson that if he really thought he should be playing every day, he should go to the general manager, Walt Jocketty, and demand a trade. "Go find somebody who's going to give you the four or five hundred at-bats," La Russa said. "And I hope they're in our division so we can play against you."

  Robinson accepted his fate; he had no choice. But he still doesn't like it, and he makes few bones about not liking it. He sulks when he is not in the lineup regularly—as when he sat on the outermost edge of the dugout by himself in Houston one day as if he were fishing off the end of a pier—and La Russa hates sulking. As for how Robinson will perform now that he is starting, La Russa doesn't really know. Robinson has played pretty well since replacing Drew—8 for 14 in his last four games. He's getting it into the opposite field, which is a good sign, because it means that he's not trying to do too much by trying to power and pull the ball every time he's up. But as a lead-off hitter, Robinson is the antithesis of danger. He has no home runs in 165 at-bats so far this season and only three in his five-year career. Nor does he compensate for it with his on-base percentage, which is a meager .302.

  The players continue to do what players do. They sit in front of their lockers and catch up on a little mail, which they never catch up on, given the torrents of letters that come in addressing them as "mister" and beseeching them with religious humility for autographs. They put on headphones because even they can't take the deafening sound of "P.I.M.P." stampeding through the locker room. They contend with the reporters already swarming, asking them the obvious so the obvious can be restated. They pad on those white slippers into the eating area, an oasis that provides not only sustenance but also a fine little hideout, as it is off-limits to the media. They make square little white-bread sandwiches from the trays of cold cuts. They help themselves to the private stock of ballpark hot dogs sunning on a metal grill. If they feel like having an omelet, an obliging cook will prepare one with fresh vegetables and finely diced cubes of turkey and ham and bacon. They read the sports pages of USA Today and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the other sections of the paper generally untouched by human hands. They grab from the plastic tubs of Butterfingers and Ding-Dongs and Twinkies and Kit-Kats and Snickers that have been laid out on a series of shelves. They dip into canisters of Bazooka and Double Bubble and individual sticks of Juicy Fruit that a clubhouse attendant has already unwrapped for them. They reach for the little packages of David's sunflower seeds that now come in four flavors: original, toasted corn, barbecue, and jalapeno hot salsa, for those who may need a little pick-me-up in the late innings. When they leave the kitchen, some go into the weight room to lift weights or to ride one of the stationary bikes. Some go into the training room where arms, in particular pitching arms, are salved and stretched and iced, in vain efforts to shield them from the inevitable attacks of time and extended use.

  A steady flow of players leaves the clubhouse altogether and goes in two different directions. A trickle heads for the indoor cage to work on various drills: One is the basic hitting drill off the tee to hone the swing; a second is the short-toss drill in which batting coach Mitchell Page kneels about 15 feet away on one knee behind a screen and gets it in there with enough velocity and varied location to allow hitters to work on their two-strike reflexes as well as laying off the sinker or the high fastball; the third is a drill, invented by Pete Rose, in which first-base coach Dave McKay tosses the ball but the hitter purposely doesn't swing, instead simply watches the ball over and over as it comes in, to gain further intimacy.

  A trickle heads through a nondescript red door. Inside is a dark little submarine of a room overstuffed with televisions and video consoles and satellite feed boxes and cable boxes and two computers and wires as criss-crossed as dreadlocks. Pipes leak in a corner, and several holes in one wall suggest something serious to do with rodents. Given that the Secret Weapon resides here—La Russa's own term for him—the place should have a little more flair, a little more style. Then again, Chad Blair doesn't look like much of a Secret Weapon, so maybe it's the right fit, after all.

  Blair's standard-issue uniform—a T-shirt and shorts just above the cusp of some raw and ugly knees—gives no inkling of the contribution he makes. Nor do his glasses or his sweet, shaggy-dog voice. His physique is small and unimposing, entirely out of place beside those he works with. Blair also looks bleary-eyed all the time, maybe because his wife and he just had a baby girl, or maybe because his professional life is spent staring at grainy images, searching for the tiny differences that draw an unforgiving line between those who can and those who sometimes can and those who never will.

  II

  BLAIR IS the Cardinals' video coordinator, a vocation he stumbled onto in the early 1990s, when he was a freelance cameraman in the Bay Area and the Oakland A's built a video room for $100,000. It looked nice and had fancy equipment, but the team had no idea what to do with it, so Blair was asked to run it. It's been his life ever since: the compilation and dissemination of bite-sized chunks of video. At first, only coaches studied film, but it has become essential for players as well, or at least those players who want to remain competitive. Of all the changes in baseball over the past decade, the rise of video is the most significant. It has transformed the sport, showing hitters and pitchers how to refine their craft so minutely that their profession is no longer merely a game of inches. Now it's a game of an inch because of the ability of video to alert players and coaches to the slightest imperfections, and many franchises are spending millions for the latest in razzle-dazzle imaging technology.

  Blair's Lair dazzles nobody. It's all of 750 square feet and has only one computerized editing system. It's dark even with the lights on. Its array of machines and screens has clearly been cobbled together since its humble start in 1996, when there were only two tape decks and a TV monitor. Now Blair can pull in cable or satellite feeds from virtually every team in both leagues; he can compile video on every player in the game. But it isn't simply the diligent collection of footage that makes Blair special; that's a technician's skill. He also has microscope eyes that can discern subtle patterns in the opposition. For Cardinals hitters, it's about identifying the repertoire of an opposing pitcher beforehand, seeing what he throws and how he throws it and where he throws it, so they can seize on a pitch when it comes or lay off of it. For Cardinals pitchers, it's about finding the hole that every hitter possesses somewhere in his swing and avoiding the wheelhouse.

  Blair isn't a substitute for any of the coaches. He never says anything unless asked. But he's another detective on the never-ending trail of clues to how opponents can be exploited. Despite his ugly knees, players love the sharpness of his eyes and respect his analysis. They listen to him. So do La Russa and Duncan, no small acknowledgment from two men who between them have close to seventy-five years of experience in the game.

  Blair's job imposes weird demands and limitations. As part of his duties, both at Busch or on the road, he charts pitches during the game by virtue of a center-field camera that feeds into a little video monitor in whatever clubhouse he happens to be in. It means that he is present for every game of the season yet never gets to see one in the flesh. His whole life is subterranean, spent beneath the steel skeleton of something. He is always squinting at something: a television monitor, an editing machine, a computer screen. He knows pitchers and he knows hitters solely by those pixilated images that come at him day after day, as if this is the only way baseball exists. It seems as though it should all blur together after a while: the difference in movement between one fastball and another too imperceptible to matter, one hitter's sinker hole no different from a dozen other hitters' sinker holes. But Blair's eyes are just different. Sinker holes are like fishing holes, each one unique and worthy of di
scovery. As for pitchers, he picks up on the slivers of gradations that make home plate, relative to its size, the most hotly contested piece of real estate mankind has ever known: a million battles fought over terrain that measures 17 inches across at its widest point.

  As part of his preparation for a three-game series earlier in the month, Blair watched Dontrelle Willis of the Marlins and noticed that his high herky-jerky leg kick, beyond being something cute for broadcasters to talk about, is an essential factor in his remarkable success this season as a rookie. Blair realized that it enables him to hide the ball up to the moment he delivers it, which gives him one of those fastballs that sneaks up on hitters, gets in on them real quick so that a pedestrian velocity of 92 mph seems a lot faster when a hitter tries to catch up with it. He watched the Marlins' Brad Penny and noticed that it isn't only his 95-mph fastball that kills a hitter but also the way Penny plays havoc with the hitter's line of sight: the high-heat fastball traveling the ladder up and the big-break curve ball traveling down.