Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  His wife, slightly more detached about it all and therefore less sanguine, advised him:

  "If it hurts again, stop."

  Eldred mentioned his intention to a trainer he was friendly with, Mitch Doyle, at nearby Coe College. Doyle was surprised, maybe a little dubious about the ability of a pitcher to come back from four elbow surgeries. But if that's what Eldred wanted, Doyle was willing to help.

  They started by playing catch around the Coe College campus. Bit by bit, Eldred's tosses became a little stronger. He threw with a little more authority, although the worst thing to do was to overdo it, so he didn't. In September, he went to a clinic in Tempe to further rehab his arm. At the end of September, just before he returned to Iowa, he got up on the mound for the first time in nearly two years. He was nervous and excited and also practical. Well, if it works, it works.

  He wasn't throwing anything close to fire—his old fire was long gone, and he knew it would not come back. But he was exquisitely pain free, the most beautiful term there is to a pitcher who has felt pain, the roots of something still there. About a month later, he went back to Arizona to throw again, this time in front of about twenty scouts. One of them was Marty Keough of the Cardinals, dispatched by Walt Jocketty, the general manager. Keough was interested in Eldred's control, as the lack of it would indicate a physical problem that forced him to push the ball instead of throwing naturally. Eldred's control was excellent.

  The Cardinals signed him as a minor-league free agent. He came to spring training as a nonroster invitee, a thirty-five-year-old rising from the dead. He threw off the mound in the spring training complex, lined up in a row beside kids who had been thirteen when he had won his first major-league game. When Dennis Eckersley visited the Jupiter complex and heard that Eldred was in camp, he told La Russa:

  "Hope he doesn't break down."

  La Russa and Duncan watched Eldred carefully, refusing at first to let him throw a curve because of the arm stress it could cause. They watched him in his first appearance of the spring against the Marlins, the first game he had pitched in 690 days. He went two innings and struck out three and gave up one run on three hits. They watched him five days later, again facing the Marlins, when he gave up no hits in four innings and struck out four. And they watched him again five days later when he threw four scoreless innings for the second time in a row to lower his ERA to .90. His next two outings were wobbly, more than wobbly, nine runs and sixteen hits in eight innings.

  He was on the cusp. As the Cardinals began to trim their payroll to somewhere around $83 million, they questioned the efficacy of keeping Joey Hamilton and Al Levine, who had been signed in the off-season as relievers. In the best of all possible worlds, they would have kept them, but baseball is not the best of all possible worlds except for the Yankees, and by dumping them in the spring, they could save on their salaries. The Cards let them go, and the space they vacated allowed Eldred a spot on the opening-day roster as a right-handed setup reliever.

  La Russa admired his guts. He admired his professionalism. He admired the way he went about his business, one of those guys you never had to sit down with to remind him why he was playing. But La Russa also knew that he had made it by omission. Had there been no need to pare payroll, he might well have been back in Iowa. The team's right-handed relief pitching, particularly with the closer Jason Isringhausen on the shelf until June, scared the hell out of La Russa and Duncan. And although there had been moments of shine in Eldred's performance so far, La Russa had been through enough springs to know one thing:

  "Never fall in or out of love too early in the spring."

  In the ninth inning of the opening game of the season, with the Cardinals nursing an 11–7 lead against the Brewers, La Russa put in Eldred to get him reacclimated, give him a margin of error if there was error. The results did not inspire confidence:

  IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA

  0 3 2 2 0 0 1 Infinity

  He put Eldred in three days later, in the last game of the four-game series against the Brewers:

  IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA

  ⅓ 3 3 3 0 0 1 135.00

  Not much confidence there either. But Duncan worked with Eldred. He encouraged him to develop a two-seam sinker as a complement to his four-seamer. He helped him to modify his breaking ball so it had more of a side-to-side movement across the strike zone. In keeping with his belief in the value of the first-pitch strike, he urged him not to cut it too sharp on the first pitch, just throw something get-me-over and then nibble. Five days after his outing against the Brewers, Eldred came in to relieve in the twelfth in the pitcher's punishment of Coors Field in Denver:

  IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA

  2 0 0 0 0 2 0 19.29

  It was his first win in the major leagues in 1,014 days.

  His ERA started to resemble an Internet stock bubble, plummeting from that high of infinity and confirming the wisdom of the investment: scoreless inning against the Rockies on April 10—13.50. Two scoreless innings against the Astros on April 13—8.44. Three scoreless innings against the Marlins on April 27—5.06. Scoreless inning against the Mets on May 1—4.63. Scoreless inning against the Cubs on May 16—3.94. Scoreless inning against the Red Sox on June 10—3.46.

  He was prone to the ill-timed dinger. Sometimes the cutter slipped a little bit, landing over the plate when he wanted it more inside. Sometimes when Matheny wanted to go back away, Eldred shook him off and went inside, with the result a double pulled down the line. But he had appeared in fifty games during the season up until this moment in the bottom of the sixth. He had thrown fifty-one innings and struck out an equal number. He led the Cardinals relievers in wins with seven. And sometimes, when he threw the four-seamer and it went to the spot he intended and it exploded with a pop in the back of the catcher's glove as the hitter swung through it, he knew exactly why he was here: not for money, not for glory, not to build up his own statistical package, but because it was still where he belonged.

  III

  WHILE ELDRED gets loose, Matheny continues to gut it out against Kerry Wood. He fends off two fastballs foul before he flies out to left on a tough curve low and outside. It puts down the Cardinals in the bottom of the sixth, still behind 1–0, and it brings out Woody Williams for the seventh, as he didn't come up to bat in the previous inning. Eldred remains in his holding pattern, La Russa delaying any decision until he sees how Williams fares.

  He has an eleven-pitch inning, retiring the Cubs in order, even his nemesis Damian Miller. He's shown remarkable economy so far through seven: 104 pitches, 74 strikes, and 30 balls. He's thrown 13 first-pitch strikes to the twenty-seven batters he's faced and his line score up to now is about as good as it gets, all you could possibly want from him:

  IP H R ER BB SO

  7 5 1 1 1 6

  Which is probably why he slams down a bat in frustration in the back of the dugout when he learns that he is being lifted for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the seventh. He's pitching well, more than well, but the decision is easy for La Russa, given a fresh bullpen that should be able to hold the Cubs at bay for the eighth and ninth. Conversely, there are only nine outs left offensively, and when he pinch-hits for Williams, his thinking is clear: We need to start the rally.

  He picks the right-handed So Taguchi. Actually, he's already picked him; while Williams was still pitching the seventh, La Russa moved down the dugout and whispered into Taguchi's ear to get ready.

  Taguchi is from Japan. He starred for the Orix Blue Wave in the Japanese Pacific League after a distinguished career at Nishinomyia Kita High School and Kansai Gakuin University in Osaka. He won five Gold Gloves for his defensive play, generally ranked around the top fifteen in batting average, was a teammate of Ichiro, and signed as a free agent for a million dollars. He is still a star in Japan, and when he's up with the Cardinals—he's been back and forth between St. Louis and Triple-A Memphis—a little knot of Japanese reporters follows his every move, seeking ways to extol his contributions even when all he does is p
inch-run. He speaks little English, is polite to a fault, smiles to those he sees while offering a little self-effacing nod, and spends most of the time in the clubhouse, studying video. He first started playing baseball when he was three and it shows; his fundamentals are beautiful, a purer foundation of the game than with most American players. There is only one major flaw to him—he's had trouble hitting major-league pitching with consistency. It's why he has spent much of the season at Triple-A.

  Like every move that La Russa makes, this is not some seat-of-the-pants calculation, which isn't to say that it also won't fizzle: At the very least, he has some prior logic for it. Before each game, La Russa prioritizes his bench players, subject to the matchups they have against an opponent's pitching, and the crucial explanations of performance those numbers reveal. The choice of Taguchi here means not choosing Miguel Cairo or Eddie Perez or Orlando Palmeiro, pinch hitters La Russa feels he must save for the eighth or ninth innings, given that nobody is on base right now and the game is still close. That may make the decision easier, but it becomes complicated again since Taguchi has never faced Wood before, which means there are no matchup numbers to provide a glimmer of the future.

  In evaluating Taguchi, however, La Russa has discovered several key attributes about him. One is that he has never been in awe of the major-league baseball scene ever since coming over from Japan, which means that he won't be a deer in the headlights against Wood. Whatever his abilities—and they are not limitless—they will not disappear late in the game: take a leave of absence in the face of Pinch Hitter Madness, a hitter who by mandate is cold—thrust against a pitcher who has had seven innings to get hot and stay hot. La Russa has also seen Taguchi make a greater effort as of late not simply to stay inside the ball and hit the opposite way, but also to use the pull side of the plate. It means he's starting to cover both sides of the plate, crucial against a pitcher such as Wood, given that he is throwing to both areas tonight.

  Just like Williams, Wood has gotten sharper as the game has progressed. He's given up one hit since the third inning, and he's already struck out ten. He comes with a fastball low and on the outside, and Taguchi fouls it off for 0 and 1. Wood throws a slider that nibbles low and outside, and Taguchi hits another foul for 0 and 2. Wood throws a waste pitch nowhere close to make the count 1 and 2, but then he gets serious again. Taguchi's helplessness is palpable.

  Wood comes with a slider on the outside black, and Taguchi fouls it off. Wood comes with a curve that bites low, and Taguchi has no choice but to protect himself because of the count, and he fouls that off too, his fifth in six pitches. He's hanging in there in a decided pitcher's count, the reason La Russa went to him. Finally, on the seventh pitch, a fastball on the inside of the plate, Wood puts Taguchi away with a fly out to right.

  It goes down in the record books as a failure, of course, an 0 for 1. But to La Russa, it is a beautiful at-bat, a testament to Taguchi's deceptive grit and his obsessive scrutiny of video. Even though he's a bench player who's never faced Wood before, Taguchi is familiar enough with his pitches that he could at least battle them off. He won the at-bat without ever leaving the plate. It's also the most important at-bat the Cardinals have had thus far, because it took Wood to seven pitches at a time when each pitch he throws is a precious commodity, one more drop from a drying well.

  His count is up to 116 after Taguchi worked him for all those fouls. Kerry Robinson follows with a grounder to second, but he doesn't go down gently either, pushing Wood for six more pitches. Bo Hart doesn't do as well. He strikes out in three pitches to end the inning.

  Another agonizing chapter is slotted into the scoreboard with few pages left to figure out the whodunit:

  But Wood's count stands at 125. Even though he retired the side in order, and even though he's pitching a finer gem than Williams, Baker must now ask the very question that La Russa has been waiting for: Will Wood pitch the eighth?

  11. Under Pressure

  I

  Wood's at 125.

  La Russa doesn't envy Dusty Baker here, facing one of those decisions that, if it doesn't pan out, will have half the sports talk of Chicago saying he blew it because Whaddya crazy, how can you take Wood out of the game when he's pitching like he is, and look, don't get me wrong, Dusty's been really nice for the Cubs, but let's face it: He handles pitching about as well as he handled his little kid when he was the batboy for the Giants and almost got run over in the World Series and the other half saying, Whaddya crazy, it'd blow out Wood's arm, and look, don't get me wrong, Dusty's been really nice for the Cubs, but let's face it: He handles pitching about as well as he handled his little kid when he was the batboy for the Giants and almost got run over in the World Series.

  No decision has more public glare for a manager than when—or whether—he should remove the starting pitcher in a close game. In other sports, starters and substitutes routinely slip in and slip out. A coach makes a mistake and gets a chance to rectify it. It's a momentary lapse at worst. But in baseball, when you're out, you're out.

  Last inning, it was the scoreboard that pushed La Russa to hook Woody Williams, down 1–0 with only nine outs left. He knew he had to make a move, the only question was what move to make. As usual, he began with the matchup numbers of the Cardinals relievers against the top of the Cubs' lineup coming to bat in the eighth, then excavated behind them. It came down to a choice between Cal Eldred and Mike DeJean, the new arrival from Milwaukee. La Russa elected to go with DeJean, based on the fact that his out pitches—a running fastball to the third side of the plate and a forkball—would be more effective here than Eldred's out pitch, a cutter to the first-base side. Eldred has been working on a two-seamer to the third-base side, but he has yet to develop full confidence in it, which is another vote for DeJean. It all sounds smart and wise, but baseball doesn't care right now. DeJean gets Lofton on a fly ball to left for the first out. Then he gives up a single to Martinez, followed by a double by Sosa.

  Sosa's hit burns even more, since this was supposed to be the moment when DeJean sent a little message to Sosa in return for Wood's nicking Pujols's shirt, suitable retaliation for La Russa under the circumstances that Wood's act was probably inadvertent. At least make him dance a little bit, feel the heat. But the message got mixed up. His first pitch was a fastball way outside, off the plate. Then he left his second pitch, which was meant to be inside, on the center of the plate. Sosa killed it into the gap and Martinez easily scored for the added cushion of a 2–0 lead.

  That doesn't help with Baker's pitching choice, though; because it rotates around the noose of the pitch count, the extra run gives Wood and the bullpen equal room to maneuver. The bullpen is fresh; Wood is not. So that's a vote for the bullpen. But Wood only looks stronger, not weaker, and the Cubs bullpen, even when it gets the desired result, is best watched with both eyes closed. So that's a vote for Wood. Baker can use his bullpen to match up the Cardinals hitters to death, a pursuit he relishes almost as much as La Russa does. But Wood is overpowering tonight. But...

  Wood's at 125.

  Pitch counts are another part of the Darwinian evolution of the game, ignored for the first one hundred years, creeping into the consciousness over the next twenty, and now a sacred commandment. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, pitchers threw somewhere around 155 pitches a game. But one manager, Paul Richards, was beginning to consider the wear and tear on a pitcher's arm. When he was running the Orioles, he put Milt Pappas on a seventy-pitch count to nurture his arm, with the net result a seventeen-year career for Pappas and 209 wins despite the nickname of "Gimpy." It made sense to Richards, just as it made sense to him when, tired of watching Gus Triandos failing repeatedly to catch Hoyt Wilhelm's evil knuckleball, he invented an odd-looking catcher's mitt—as oversized as a clown bowtie—because there was nothing in the rules saying you couldn't. Close to twenty years later, Richards introduced La Russa to the concept of pitch count when he told him as a minor-league manager to place a strict hundred-pitch threshold on the
arms of White Sox up-and-comers Steve Trout, Richard Dotson, and Britt Burns.

  Today, that threshold is the golden rule, the moment when managers instinctively start to make appointments with the bullpen. But Richards, when he first started keeping track, was an anomaly. In the 1970s, when pitch counts were not recorded with the religiosity that they are today, Nolan Ryan once threw 235 pitches in thirteen innings against the Red Sox.* In addition, the relief game, of which La Russa may well be the key cultural anthropologist, had yet to evolve. The ninth-inning closer was not yet born, never mind the legions of setup specialists, each of whom might be called in just to get one out. Situational matchups between hitter and pitcher in the late innings, which La Russa probably relies on more than any manager ever has, weren't remotely contemplated. Counts eventually did begin to drop, among increasing suspicion that starters, particularly young guys, would inevitably blow out their arms if subjected to the rigors of the past.

  Like other aspects of baseball, a significant evolution was also taking place in the use of the bullpen. In the early 1970s, when La Russa was playing at Triple-A in Des Moines and Wichita, he noticed a manager in the league named Vern Rapp, in Indianapolis. Rapp's team maintained a stoked bullpen far beyond the traditional setup guy and closer—he had his own little legion of relievers—which set off La Russa's curiosity. Rapp said that it had become obvious to him that hitters, faced with the choice between seeing an effective starter in the late innings or a fresh reliever of good but hardly lights-out vintage, would still opt for the starter. Familiarity didn't breed contempt for a starter as much as it did comfort, Rapp noticed; a hitter, even if he were 0 for 3 against a starter with three strikeouts, would still rather face him because of the considerable value of having seen his full repertoire of pitches. Also, unlike a starter, a reliever could rely almost exclusively on his best pitch, and air it pitch after pitch because he knew he would be in on only a limited basis. Unlike a starter, he never had to worry about fatigue and pacing himself.