Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  7. Gonzalez Must Pay

  I

  BY ELEVEN on Wednesday morning, when he arrives at the clubhouse, La Russa has sublimated the sour memories of Game 1. Although he had hoped for the best before the game yesterday, he'd prepared for the worst. There's no use dwelling on it, although the simple reality is that the Cards have to win the next two to take the three-game series.

  During batting practice in the watery afternoon light, La Russa walks the field with a red fungo bat in hand. The tapestry of batting practice is elaborately stitched, an ingenious workmanship behind the strategically placed cages and nets that rim the basepaths. Inside the empty stadium, its rhythm has deceptive leisure; it's the only time ever in baseball when all the puzzle pieces are simultaneously engaged: hitting, running, fielding, throwing. La Russa takes it all in, roaming here, roaming there, seeking omens.

  He watches Edgar Renteria scuttling along the sandy apron of the infield, tucking the ball into his glove and then making the throw to first. Will his ailing back keep him out of another game at shortstop? La Russa needs Renteria tonight because he is a superb hitter, and he needs him because of his golden glove, his footwork as light and fluid as a ballet dancer's, able to reach deep into the canyon crevice between second and third.

  There's also Renteria's attitude, the combination of competition and puckish joy that spills onto the other players. Team chemistry is its own odyssey, and different players contribute different catalysts. Rolen leads largely on the basis of his grinding performance; outside the field he's as careful with his words as he is with his emotions, no air leaking out of the tires. Albert Pujols leads because he is the great Pujols. Woody Williams leads because beneath his Texas twang is a pitcher who simply guts it out.

  Renteria leads with joie de vivre, developing handshakes for each player on the team, customized to his own idiosyncrasies, ending hitters' meetings with his Latin hip-hop chirp of Let's go play, dawg!! He is the favorite of his fellow teammates, but his sense of the game makes him more than just another clubhouse cutup. He doesn't wilt when the heat is on. At the age of twenty-two in the eleventh inning of Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, he delivered the game-winning single for the Marlins off a breaking ball from the Indians' Charles Nagy. It was a feat for anyone that young, but behind it was an untold story of baseball intelligence: Jim Leyland, the Marlins' manager at the time, is convinced that Renteria set up Nagy with a deception worthy of a fifteen-year veteran, jumping out of the way of a first-pitch Nagy breaking ball to suggest that he was mystified by it, when he only wanted Nagy to think he was fooled so he would get another breaking ball on the next pitch.

  Renteria gathers up a few more grounders; then he takes his turn hitting in the cage, fifteen at-bats. He turns to La Russa afterward and gives a thumbs-up. Renteria doesn't look 100 percent to La Russa, but he appreciates the determination Renteria's gesture implies. He's managed players who, given any reason to take a free pass because of the threats posed by tonight's opposing pitcher, would ride the entire bus system with it. So Renteria's decision has meaning to him, gives him a lift.

  A few minutes later, La Russa's mood is yanked back to half-mast when he hears that Dusty Baker has juggled the Cubs' pitching rotation in anticipation of another series against the Cards starting Monday. The timing of it—on the heels of Prior's effortless victory last night even without his usual sharpness—only taunts him.

  "Prior's starting on Monday," a reporter informs La Russa.

  "Says who?"

  "Dusty."

  "The Tribune had him starting Sunday."

  "Dusty said it today."

  "I hope they get their ass beat on Sunday," he snaps like a door slamming shut.

  Back at his desk, La Russa feels even more tense than he usually feels before a game. As he mulls the matchups, he knows that the Cards cannot lose tonight if they want to remain in the division race. There is still ample baseball left to be played: thirty-one games. But Game 2 is a rarity: It emits psychological reverberations capable of dictating the rest of the season. Beating the Cards tonight will guarantee the Cubs a series win at Busch Stadium, imbuing them with more confidence than ever that their time has finally come.

  At least tonight's matchups offer the hope of a more even contest than in Game 1. The Cards' starter, Williams, has the better record—14 and 6—and earned his first stint as an All-Star this season. Kerry Wood, on the hill for Chicago, has struck out 208 batters in 168 innings. Tonight's game also promises to be one of memorable and beautiful contradiction because the starters' styles are so different: Dada versus minimalist, surfer versus swimmer, punk rocker versus song stylist. Williams was drafted in the twenty-eighth round as a shortstop out of college. Wood was picked fourth in the first round, already a bit of a legend because of his smoke artistry at Grand Prairie High School in Texas, with the inevitable comparisons to those other Lone Star legends: Ryan and Clemens. Williams knocked around the minors for five years and hardly became a household word when he finally made it to the majors. Wood stayed in the minors for only two seasons and in 1998, as a rookie, struck out twenty Astros to tie a major-league record. Williams is methodical on the mound, plugging away. Wood, five inches taller, with a small, punched-in face and a sneer across the lips, looks like the kind of guy who cuts you off on the Interstate and then gives you the finger. Williams wins with command and location. Wood wins by letting it rip.

  One of three different Woods will take the mound tonight. There's Wild Wood, who has no idea where any of his pitches is going and walks too many batters to be effective. There is Controlled Wood, who consciously tries to keep the ball around the strike zone and not walk batters. Then there's Effectively Wild Wood, with enough pitches in and around the strike zone to make him consistent but a few every now and then where he's simply not sure where they're going to go.

  Williams has no similar dramatic aspirations. Like a lot of major-league pitchers, he's plain-looking, really, with a trim beard and no outward hint of the physique that can harness a ball on the mound. The stuff he throws is low-octane, but it leaves a trail of baffled hitters. This is a guy they should hit, should just get to. But they don't, because Williams has learned how to pitch; he's a textbook example of how finesse can trump velocity.

  When asked to describe Williams, Dave Duncan uses one word—"pitchmaker"—and, as is his style, doesn't elucidate further. He goes back to his computer in his Spartan office, as if maybe he's already said too much. But coming from Duncan, it speaks volumes, the ultimate compliment from teacher to pupil. Williams throws three kinds of fastballs: the straight four-seamer, the cutter, and the sinker. The four-seamer is about speed; the cutter and the sinker, about movement and location. With the cutter going one way and the sinker the other, his fastball works both sides of the plate, creating particular havoc for right-handed and left-handed hitters. They don't know whether it'll run in on them or away from them, which makes them off-balance. They lose their senses in a fog of uncertainty. When he strikes out hitters, they retreat to the dugout, bitching about how in hell could they just have struck out against a guy who throws so slow—90! Are you kidding me, I haven't seen 90 since Little League. It addles them beyond a particular at-bat. Next time up, they arrive at the plate frustrated, and Williams's style only breeds more frustration: The son-of-a-bitch just did it to me again. Compounding the frustration are his three quality off-speed pitches—a curve, a slider, and a changeup—all of which he can locate with precision.

  Williams is also the ultimate survivor, proof that heart still counts for something, that behind the dizzying array of statistical predictors and indicators is the exquisite mystery of flesh and blood. With San Diego in 2000, he opened the season with a 3–2 record. He was off to a good start, the only hindrance an odd numbness in the fingers of his pitching hand. He let it go—simply the price of doing business, he figured—and it hardly hampered him when he went eight and a third innings against Florida in early May. But the numbness persisted. A series of
medical tests found an aneurysm near his right armpit. Had it gone untreated, it could have meant the amputation of his pitching hand. He underwent successful surgery in early June and was back in the Padres' rotation by July.

  The essence of Williams—why La Russa and Duncan coveted him—could be seen in how he performed on his return. He pitched four complete games and recorded the best ERA of his career as a starter. As a Cardinal, he's become another of Duncan's prodigies, an ex-.500 pitcher whose winning percentage has increased by nearly a hundred points. In the days before he starts, Williams spends hours watching tape of past performances, feeding a video addiction almost as intense as Mike Matheny exhibits as catcher. He watches what he did with the hitters, how he got to them, and he compares his outings with the Cardinals to what he did in San Diego to make sure he doesn't fall into any bad habits. When he meets with Duncan before Game 2 to go over the Cubs hitters, he already has formulated a strategy to use against them. It relieves Duncan of the need to plot out the game plan entirely on his own, as he had to do with Garrett Stephenson. This meeting is much more productive than yesterday's—all the fat trimmed. Williams leaves with a pinpoint sense of what needs to be executed, how Ramon Martinez in the two-hole is susceptible to the slider, how Alex Gonzalez at the seven-spot likes sitting on curve balls late in the game, particularly if he has seen a lot of them, how Damian Miller at the eight-spot can't resist high heat, even if it's over his head.

  Williams also won't be daunted by Stephenson's three nemeses. Kenny Lofton and Aramis Ramirez are a combined 9 for 40 against him, with only one dinger. Randall Simon's numbers are so lack-luster that he isn't even starting tonight. In fact, the matchups throughout the Cubs' lineup benefit Williams nicely:

  LOFTON 5-20-0

  MARTINEZ 2-10-0

  SOSA 2-14-1

  ALOU 6-26-1

  KARROS 8-29-1

  RAMIREZ 4-20-1

  GONZALEZ 3-14-0

  MILLER 7-14-0

  When La Russa looks at them, he doesn't smile, but he also doesn't grimace. The biggest threat comes from Miller in the eight-spot, which, if you're the opposing manager, would appear to be just the spot where you want a batter who has a bead on your pitcher. But La Russa perceives a potential danger there, obscure to the baseball layman but ominous to La Russa. He obviously fears Miller's coming up with men on base and maybe driving them home. But what also worries him is Miller's coming up with two outs and the bases empty, which seems like the very scenario a manager would want: Even if Miller does get on base, Wood comes up next in the pitcher's spot. But La Russa doesn't want to end the inning with Wood, because that might give the Cubs an insidious advantage when they start the next frame with the top of their order. So it's not only that Miller gets hits off Williams; Miller may get a hit tonight that imperceptibly tilts the game—as delicate a system of pulleys and levers as has ever been created—toward the Cubs.

  La Russa frets over that behind his desk. But another sheet of stats reminds him of how meticulously ruthless Williams can be against the Cubs, the ball zigzagging all over the plate, like a pesky fly. The last time he faced them, about seven weeks ago, Williams went seven and two-thirds innings in a 4–1 Cardinals win to run his record to 11 and 3.

  Of course, Wood's matchups against the Cardinals hitters also benefit him nicely:

  ROBINSON 4-16-0

  HART 1-2-0

  PUJOLS 7-23-3

  EDMONDS 8-27-2

  ROLEN 3-16-1

  MARTINEZ 3-17-2

  RENTERIA 5-27-0

  MATHENY 1-13-0

  There are homers to be had, but with the exception of Pujols and Edmonds, nobody is hitting above .250 against Wood. Once you get past the cleanup spot, nobody is hitting above .200 against him.

  If the two pitchers are on tonight, Williams pitching like Williams and Wood pitching like Effectively Wild Wood, the game will be taut and low scoring, an edge-of-the-seat nail biter from the top of the first to wherever it ends. But there's something else gnawing away at La Russa. Wood's past performance hints that tonight, the Cardinals' manager may have to make what he calls the "most gut-wrenching decision of all" in twenty-five years of making them, an agony affecting him even worse than losing.

  II

  WHAT WILL HE DO if he thinks that Wood is intentionally throwing at one of his hitters? Wood has already plunked fourteen batters this season. He not only leads the league but also is on a pace to hit more batters than any National League pitcher since 1907. There's certainly no love lost between him and Pujols after he brushed him back with a pitch on July 4 at Wrigley Field. His blazing high-and-tight fastball, which keeps hitters uneasy, may well be his most effective weapon. Which is why La Russa is feeling so on edge.

  "There are so many conflicting emotions," he says, when your batter gets hit. Because how do you sort it out? How do you know for sure that the pitcher acted intentionally? Pitchers themselves, even his own, were generally mum about it, their own version of Omerta. Throughout baseball in general, the whole subject was taboo, never honestly discussed, never acknowledged, although it is deeply embedded in the game.

  Some managers ignored it. They expected the players to take care of it themselves. But La Russa knew that such inaction bred enormous ill will down the length of the dugout, the possibility of a silent but corrosive insurrection against a weak manager who wouldn't defend his own guys. A player took it personally when he got hit. The results could be lethal, not only physically but also mentally, in the form of a persistent fear that accompanied him on every trip he made to the plate. So at the very least, hitters expected their pitchers to protect them against that arrogant son-of-a-bitch on the mound who had just used them for target practice because his stuff wasn't good enough on its own. And if they thought they couldn't rely on their pitchers to defend them, they would sit in the dugout and become more angry and upset than they were already. But if a pitcher did respond on his own, he might pick the wrong victim or a strategically inopportune moment.

  La Russa was managing Double-A in Knoxville in 1978 when Harold Baines, a beautiful hitter and the first pick of the 1977 draft, arrived there on his way up the White Sox farm system. From his own years of managing, Paul Richards, then the farm system director for the White Sox, knew only too well what pitchers might do when confronted with young hitters capable of launching a moon shot. So he gave La Russa some instructions on how to manage: "You must make sure Harold Baines doesn't get abused."

  If a pitcher hit Baines, Richards told La Russa, don't let it fester. Don't let it spread beyond your control. Don't let the players determine how to retaliate. If Baines did get plunked, Richards added, it mightn't be such a bad policy to pick the best hitter on the opposing team and make sure your pitcher plunked him. A batter for a batter in the Hammurabi Code of baseball, a deterrent against future attacks.

  La Russa took Richards's advice to heart. Over the years, he made it clear to his players that the Hammurabi Code was in his hands, not theirs. He told his teams: "If you think you should be protected, and there's no retaliation, you don't go to your pitcher. You come to me." La Russa would determine whether the plunk had been intentional and how to respond.

  In determining whether a pitcher had behaved with malice aforethought, La Russa always checked with Duncan. As a pitching coach, he could be more dispassionate, could better tell the difference between a pitch that had simply wandered off course and one that had found its target.

  Duncan's input helped, but the feelings that swirled through him were still agonizing, still worse than losing—the most difficult feelings he ever had to face in baseball. In virtually every case of a batter getting hit by a pitch, La Russa and most other managers went through a traumatic struggle to determine real intent. Much of the uncertainty had to do with teams needing to pitch inside to be successful. In ratcheting down an opponent's offense, the advantages of pitching inside were too numerous to avoid: the very reason Duncan had tried to pound the philosophy into Garrett Stephenson the nig
ht before. It was undeniable that by making a hitter "inside conscious," the plate then widened for a pitcher to make a pitch away. It was also undeniable that hitters, in combating pitches inside so they wouldn't get jammed, tended to start their swing early, which in turn made them susceptible to slower off-speed pitches. In today's style of baseball, where more and more hitters are able to reach the outside of the plate and get the thick head of the barrel on the ball, the only way to move them off that territory is to pitch inside.

  Because pitchers do pitch inside, batters inevitably are going to get hit, and therein lay La Russa's dilemma. Was it simply a pitch that had gotten away? Was the pitcher trying to intimidate by going inside? Or was the pitcher taking a cheap shot and deliberately plunking someone? Other variables had to be considered as well: the pitcher's own reputation as a cheap-shot artist, and the club he was pitching for (some teams hit batters often enough to suggest that they'd made a policy of it). La Russa was also aware of his own innate bias, the same bias that all managers have: It was intentional if one of his batters got hit, accidental if one of his pitchers hit a batter. If sparks flew during a game, it was often this built-in bias that caused them. It's also why, when La Russa's batters were on the receiving end, he went to Duncan for help.

  But once you were convinced of malicious intent, deciding how to respond got only more fraught. Because this wasn't about playing a hit-and-run. This wasn't about putting on a bunt. This wasn't about pushing for a run or saving one. This was about hitting someone. "If you put yourself in the manager's shoes, the responsibilities and the consequences are huge," La Russa points out. "You're telling someone on your club to hit someone on the other side." Thrown baseballs had ended careers; one had killed a major-league player. In meetings with pitchers during spring training, he issued clear guidelines: Any kind of message had to be aimed at the ribs or below, and nothing above the shoulder would be tolerated.