Three Nights in August

by Buzz Bissinger

  Morris struck out Vazquez on a 92-mph fastball, and there was baseball to La Russa, just beautiful baseball. It had that pop, that sweetest sound, the same sound that had moved Cal Eldred to defy the laws of nature with his patched-up pothole of an elbow and return to the game. Morris threw a curve to start the cat-and-mouse against the second-place hitter, Mark Kotsay. He swung through it, not simply a curve but one of those curves that almost genuflects by the time it's through, and there was baseball to La Russa, more beautiful baseball. Kotsay was able to turn on the next pitch, lining it up the middle. It was the ninth pitch of the game for Morris. And then came a different sound altogether, the sound of ball against bone.

  The ball hit Morris's right hand. La Russa and Duncan and the assistant trainer, Mark O'Neal, ran to the mound to try to assess the seriousness. Morris threw a warm-up toss that hit the backstop, and that was it. He was lifted, and even the home plate umpire told La Russa that it was a shame, because Morris had been on, his fastball clocking at 92 and 93 and 94 mph. A resulting CT scan showed a nondisplaced fracture of his pitching hand, above his right index finger, that would sideline him anywhere between three and six weeks.

  In desperate times, men of course do strange and desperate things. In La Russa's case, the urgency was exacerbated by another bedrock theory of his: When in doubt, try something. Jeff Fassero was thrust into the starting rotation in the hope that this jumper cable would give him some spark. He had been a starter for most of his career with Montreal and Seattle, and he responded. He liked the challenge of starting, which is why La Russa threw him up there. Garrett Stephenson needed a different path. La Russa gave him a carefully designed whacking—We're sending you to the bullpen —the only words a starter fears more than Can I talk to you a minute? And, later, when he was promoted again to the starting rotation, he too responded. Brett Tomko, the number three starter, was so laid back on the mound that he confessed to actually feeling sleepy on his pitching day, despite stuff of such quality that Duncan in spring training pegged him for eighteen wins. He also got whacked with the threat of long-term banishment, and he started winning. Danny Haren was promoted out of Double-A, even though he probably wasn't ready yet, and he started winning. Pujols embarked on a thirty-game hitting streak. Bo Hart, who during the previous off-season had worked in a department store to make ends meet, was still hitting the flying crap out of the ball after his send-up from the minors.

  When they came into Philly from Pittsburgh in early August, they were tied for first after dropping three and a half back in the immediate aftermath of Morris's injury. They had gone 14 and 8 in his absence. They had played four three-game series, and they had taken the rubber game of each, and now Morris was coming back. It had the same uplift of a midsummer trade in which the Cards had landed a great number one starter without giving up anything.

  Anticipating his return, La Russa and Duncan went to work in the plane to Philadelphia on the Thing of Beauty. The most pressing question was where to fit Morris within it. The last game of the three-game series against the Phillies was also the Sunday night Game of the Week on ESPN, and both men wondered how fair it would be to throw Morris into the fire like that when he hadn't pitched for three weeks. The alternative was Tomko, and they worried about Tomko in a situation like this. In high-pressure moments on the mound, you could see the confidence drain from Tomko's body. He lost faith in the curve in these moments. He pretty much lost faith in everything. So Duncan walked to the back of the plane to tell Morris that he would start the Sunday night game and also to tell Tomko that he wouldn't start the Sunday night game.

  Then they went back to work on the Thing of Beauty. La Russa penciled in and erased and then penciled in some more and erased some more, the tricky goal to maximize starts for Morris and Woody Williams while ensuring that they also pitched in the pivotal series left on the schedule, in particular the three games against the Cubs at the end of August. By the time the plane landed in Philly, they had the Thing of Beauty worked out. They had mapped out the rotation for the team's remaining forty games, and it was a Thing of Beauty, the defining document for the rest of the season, their Magna Carta. Morris would be getting eight starts and Williams nine. Their presence would be guaranteed in the Cubs series, as well as series against the Astros in August and September. It was the first time all season that La Russa and Duncan had felt excited about their chances to compete and win from here until the end. They looked at each other on finishing the Thing of Beauty—without saying a word, of course—but thinking the same lofty thought: Man, maybe we can pull this thing off.

  Until the phone call from Weinberg.

  II

  ON THURSDAY NIGHT after dinner with several teammates in Philadelphia, Morris had slipped on a small set of marble stairs in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel. He didn't think much of it at the time and headed for the elevators. His ankle felt a little tender, but he wrapped it and went to sleep; when he woke up the next morning, it was sizably swollen. Which is when Weinberg was called. Which is when Weinberg called La Russa on the way to the hospital for an x-ray. Which is when La Russa's mood, tentative on game day to begin with, crashed.

  The word was that Morris would be out a minimum of two weeks, maybe three. The ankle was significantly sprained, and the injury had occurred on his landing foot, meaning that every pitch he threw might exacerbate it. The Thing of Beauty was worthless now. It would have to be completely reworked; the immediate repercussion was that Tomko, after being told he wouldn't start Sunday night, would now be told that he would be starting Sunday night, akin to parents saying that they want to adopt you and then deciding against it and then taking you anyway because nobody else was left at the orphanage.

  Morris came into the clubhouse, limping noticeably. Steve Kline looked at him.

  "How'd you do that?" he asked. It was a question requiring an answer that Morris clearly didn't want to go into.

  "The lobby," he curtly replied. And then he limped into the asylum of the trainer's room, which was off-limits to reporters.

  For La Russa, it was a pivotal moment, one of those moments in which managing the team mentally was more important than managing strategically. He was adamant that none of what was happening would defeat them. The team had regrouped and rebounded when Morris had gotten hurt against San Diego, and they would do the same now. He was trying to be positive, but it wasn't easy. He couldn't help but agonize over the upcoming series against the Cubs, knowing that Morris, slotted for Game 3, could not pitch it. He also knew that the Cubs were about to embark on a hellacious road trip, nine games in ten days, culminating in the series against the Cards. He hoped they would go 0 and 6 before they arrived in St. Louis, because wouldn't that be lovely, send the punky boys packing. But what if they broke even, or they went 4 and 2? What if they came into Busch thinking they could win because they could win? What if they threw Prior and Wood and Zambrano at them versus Stephenson and Williams and Tomko? What if what if what if what if?

  And what now ...

  The Phillies three-game series was a disaster, an accumulation of miseries. Williams couldn't keep the ball down in Game 1. Matheny failed on a hit-and-run. Haren was great until the sixth of Game 2, when he challenged and lost and gave up two home runs. Edmonds turned an inside-the-park homer into a double when he ambled to first, thinking he'd hit it out of the park; if he'd hustled like he should have, he could have made it home when the ball landed in an unpopulated portion of the outfield. Martinez left eight men on base. Tomko was as shaky as La Russa had feared in Game 3 with six runs and two homers in three innings. Even Pujols wasn't immune. He got the flu and missed one game entirely. The series ended on a fitting note when La Russa got ejected in the ninth for exhorting the umpire to eject Phillie pitcher Turk Wendell for hitting a Cardinal after several Cardinals had already been hit. In doing so, he pulled his little cheat sheets out of his back pocket and ripped them up, and while the fluttering of those little torn pieces to the artificial turf might have made
him feel momentarily calmer, it also meant that he would now have to do them all over again because the Phillies were coming to St. Louis the following weekend.

  But the three-game series is the perfect drug; by definition, it leaves the system quickly. It is over, finished, and then on to the next one. Pittsburgh was in next for three games, and something stunning happened during that series: the setback that had occurred five days ago now offset by such amazing news that it sent La Russa dancing out of his office in what looked remarkably like an imitation of Jackie Gleason on his old variety show. Which was almost as amazing as the news itself.

  III

  "MORRIS LOOKED pretty darn good. I was really surprised."

  La Russa, still in his uniform after an ugly first-game win against the Pirates, smiled for the first time all season when he heard those words from team doctor George Paletta.

  "Hallelujah."

  Paletta thought it was possible for Morris to go against the Cubs in Game 3, as it was still nine days off. The biggest risk was making sure that his mechanics were proper, in particular that he took a normal stride and landed correctly on his follow-through. A bullpen session with Morris had been scheduled for the next day. Paletta cautioned Duncan and La Russa to scrutinize him closely. He also advised that the only way to tell for sure how his ankle was healing would be to have him pitch at game-level intensity.

  Paletta left, and La Russa pounced. Because Morris had to pitch at game-level intensity anyway to make sure he was okay, La Russa sounded out Walt Jocketty on the prospect of letting Morris pitch Saturday against the Phillies on a limited pitch count, instead of heading down to the minors for a rehab game or, worse yet, waiting until the Cubs' series. Pitching against the Phillies would give Morris all the intensity he needed, La Russa reasoned, and, more important, would give him a start before jumping into the fire against the Cubs.

  Jocketty was dubious. But before he finished his sentence, La Russa was doing his away-we-go Jackie Gleason move to the trainer's room to talk to Weinberg. Jocketty could have canceled the idea, but what La Russa was suggesting made sense, as Morris would have to pitch somewhere before the Cubs' series.

  When La Russa came back a few minutes later, he was smiling as broadly as the kid who got the train set for Christmas and the lifetime subscription to Penthouse. He pulled out the Thing of Beauty that had become so ugly in the immediate aftermath of Morris's ankle.

  "Let's go to work now," he said.

  He continued to toil in his uniform, the clubhouse emptied out until the only person left was the assistant equipment manager, Buddy Bates, rattling through with a set of white plastic hangers. He slotted in Morris for Saturday against the Phillies. He slotted him in for Game 3 on Thursday against the Cubs. He restored the initials MM in six other places so that he and Williams had fourteen starts of the games still remaining. "That looks better," he said when he was done. Then he said what he always said when something worked, or at least looked like it might work: "Son of a bitch. "

  Morris went five innings that Saturday, his pitch count recorded in the dugout like the heartbeat monitor of a hospital patient:

  Eighteen in the first. Up to twenty-nine by the second. Up to forty by the third. Up to fifty-seven by the fourth. Up to seventy-five by the fifth. If you push it any more, he's going to need a defibrillator.

  He threw fifty-two strikes out of those seventy-five pitches. He gave up six hits and left on the short end of a 1–0 Phillies lead. He kept his team in it, and an inning later, the Cardinals turned the tables into a 5–1 lead that held up. If his ankle hurt—and it must have, given what it had looked like a few days earlier, a sight so gnarly that Morris himself regretted looking at it right after eating lunch—he didn't give in to it. He threw mostly fastballs and sinkers, but he didn't try to overthrow. His mechanics were smooth. His curve ball was still pissed at him for that month of rust, doing what curve balls so often do when they've been slighted, refusing any immediate offers of conciliation. His competitiveness was his kill shot, and you couldn't help but wonder if something private and indescribable had passed through to him from someone else who had pitched the exact same way.

  He had done what he had been asked to do, just as five days later he would be asked again, this time against the Cubs in the rubber game.

  14. Kiss My Ass

  I

  LA RUSSA REMEMBERED the first time he had ever heard the mention of Morris's name. It was late in 1995, and after a ten-year run with Oakland, La Russa was thinking about his future. He was trying to figure out where to go next—maybe Baltimore—when he found himself sitting at a dinner banquet next to Walt Jocketty.

  Jocketty had become the general manager of the Cardinals in 1994 after spending almost all of his major-league, front-office career with Oakland, so he knew La Russa well. He was from Minneapolis originally, and the combination of that Minnesota accent, where every answer still seems in the form of a curious question, along with the white hair as finely woven as pasta, exuded Rotarian solidity. He didn't seem like someone who tried to BS his way through as a general manager—make up complete lies about the talents of players who needed to be traded—when some would argue that the whole point of being a general manager was to lie, make your BS better than the other guy's BS. Almost uniquely, he had survived, and survived well, by telling the truth.

  Jocketty's style also reflected something else—an increasing anachronism in baseball today. He believed that direct communication with a manager and coaches on personnel decisions could only enhance the quality of a ballclub. He showed none of the tendency to treat the manager as middle manager, there to be seen in the dugout but never heard, a few steps up from batboy. He listened carefully to the evaluations of La Russa and Duncan on possible players coming in and possible players to be shipped out. He respected their expertise and intuitions, which isn't to say that he always agreed with them or only listened to them exclusively. The decisions were Jocketty's, but La Russa—similar to his experiences with Rollie Hemond on the White Sox and Sandy Alderson on the A's—never felt deserted. But Jocketty was still a general manager.

  He was by nature a hyperbolist, an enthusiast who could put a good spin on anything, find truth and justice in a three-card monte. At the table that night, he told La Russa and Duncan, who was there as well, about all the great young pitchers the Cardinals had coming up in the system. Alan Benes was mentioned, and so was someone named Matt Morris. He argued convincingly that the Cardinals had a strong pitching core, and he got La Russa and Duncan fired up, as they had been through enough to know that no matter how prodigious a team's hitting, it is pitching that always carries a team into the October light.

  It was pretty much on the basis of that dinner that La Russa and Duncan, traveling in loyal tandem as usual, decided to make St. Louis their next stop. When they got down to spring training in 1996, they liked what they saw not only in Alan Benes but also brother Andy, who had signed as a free agent. But there was this other kid, Morris, even younger, whom the Cardinals had taken in the first round out of Seton Hall. The pitchers were throwing off the mound, and La Russa and Duncan were watching them. They looked up and down the row, and their eyes kept coming back to this 6'5" kid with the delivery, the way he arched his back, the way he got over on his front leg, the way the ball left his hand so beautifully. "Everything was so gorgeous," La Russa remembered. And although La Russa knew enough to heed his own admonition— Never fall in and out of love too early in the spring —forget it.

  He was smitten, and by and large the love has been rewarded. But tonight in Game 3 is different. Different because of Morris's still uncertain ankle. Different because the Cardinals are going against a pitcher who has won six of his last seven starts and last time out, six days ago, carried a no-hitter into the eighth. Besides his competitive heart, Morris is also going to need the return of his stuff. He has to keep the ball down, and his curve—unhittable when it's on, because of its vengeful drop at the plate—must drop the picket signs a
nd get back to work. It's also the rubber game of the three-game series, and in the 162-game season of baseball, trying to make it manageable, winning the rubber game of every three-game series is the way La Russa stays in contention. It's why he tells his players to think of it as if it's the seventh game of the World Series.

  Morris is long and spindly on the mound, almost bow-legged. He likes to work quickly, sometimes too quickly when he's excited, which he obviously is tonight in Game 3, given the stakes. The Cardinals' win last night, coupled with Houston's victory over Los Angeles, have only perpetuated the seesaw torture of the standings: three teams separated by 11 one-hundredths of a percentage point:

  HOUSTON 70-62 .530 —

  ST. LOUIS 69-63 .523 1

  CHICAGO 68-63 .519 1½

  It only adds to the pressure on Morris tonight, and there's something else to watch for besides his ankle. It's a concern for Duncan and La Russa every time Morris pitches, as baseball may be the only organized profession in the world where theft is perfectly legal. There are virtually no rules about it. Instead, like suspected cattle rustling, it's taken care of with an impromptu code of justice much like a batter getting hit by a pitch. It is not tolerated if discovered, and there are some who will resort to the threat of death. But everyone is up for grabs—the pitcher, the catcher, the third-base coach, the first-base coach, the manager, the bench coach—because of a tendency to inadvertently spill secrets.

  In recent years, since so many major-league pitchers are moved up before they've learned the subtler aspects of the game, La Russa has noticed a new twist on baseball theft. Preying on that virginity, players sit on the bench watching for whether a pitcher is tipping off his pitches in the process of his wind-up by the way he reaches in for a forkball or fans the glove on a curve; the wider the glove, the easier the detection. It's a burgeoning phenomenon because so many pitchers, with so little experience in the minors, haven't learned how to conceal what they're throwing. Some players, like Shawn Green of the Dodgers, can figure out a pitcher's pitches with uncanny accuracy. And this is only one of an assortment of attempted thefts that La Russa has seen in his managing career.