Sixty Feet, Six Inches
Page 16
Reggie Jackson
On the other hand, Jim Palmer didn’t have much of a breaking ball, but he had a little tight slider, a big high fastball that he threw about ninety-five, a big high leg kick, and a lot of smarts. Palmer threw what I call a slop curveball. It was a spinner that he’d just try to get over for a strike. But he was definitely a great pitcher.
Bob Gibson
That was the same curveball I had. I hardly ever threw it, except occasionally to left-handers. Just like Palmer, it sounds.
Reggie Jackson
I never swung at that curveball, because when a guy throws ninety-five you can’t look for a rolling breaking ball that’s seventy miles an hour. Mostly, Jimmy pitched me away, where I liked it, but a little up where I couldn’t quite get to it. I did hit two home runs off him one game, and we lost the game 3–2. He’d pitch around me a lot of times, and be satisfied to get out the right-handed batters who hit behind me.
Palmer once told me, “I didn’t care to pitch to you.” He threw a no-hitter against the A’s in 1969 and walked me three times. Whenever I faced him with the game on the line, he either walked me or I went after a ball that was up in the zone and hard as he could throw it. I’d swing and miss that high fastball, foul it off, hit a hard ground ball at the shortstop.
Bob Gibson
That was roughly how I pitched Willie McCovey. McCovey was a guy who had all the power you’d ever want, and he was a low-ball hitter. I don’t think it’s a great idea to throw guys down and in, period, but if you threw one there to McCovey he’d drop the barrel of that big bat and hit it about seven hundred yards.
With Willie, though, I made one exception: I’d throw him a slider down and in—way down and in—if it was the first pitch. He wasn’t about to take it. I could count on him swinging. But then I’d work him up the ladder. The next pitch would be about belt-high, and the next one was letter high or higher. I used to laugh because when I’d get two strikes on McCovey he was so determined to hit that ball at his neck that he’d go up on his toes to get it. He couldn’t—no way—but he was damn sure going to try.
Reggie Jackson
Hoot may say he didn’t like to pitch inside too much, but you can bet he would have buried the ball in on me. He’d have shown me the ball away to make me think something might be there, then he’d have thrown it as hard as he could inside. With two strikes, that slider that starts at the middle of the plate and breaks down and in—lefties swing over it. If we hit it hard, we hit it into the home-team dugout.
I never had the privilege of facing Gibson, other than that one at-bat in the ’72 All-Star Game. I wish I could have, just for fun. I’m a baseball fan, and that would have been a pretty awesome thing to do.
Bob Gibson
I threw my slider a couple different ways, and I don’t know that I’d give Reggie the big one that broke more. I had a quicker one that got right in on your belt buckle. That’s what I would have shown him. That’s what I did with McCovey when I threw him a slider.
I pitched Willie Stargell a lot like I did McCovey—hard stuff, sliders way in tight, maybe go up the ladder. Most of the good hitters like that—those big, strong lefties—I’d work pretty much the same. Try not to give them anything down and in on the plate.
On Opening Day, 1969, Stargell had three hits off of me. I threw him inside and wham! Just knocked the devil out of it, out of the park to right field. It was a pretty good pitch, I thought. The next time I pitched him away and whoom! He smoked one right up the middle. Next time up, I thought, I’m tired of this, and bam! Hit him right in the back. Next time up, he scorched one to left field. I thought, well, hell. I had to give it to him. He was just hot that day and I wasn’t going to get him out.
Bob Gibson
More times than not, I reserved most of my worrying for the cleanup hitter. The number-four batter is supposed to be the one who can hit the ball out of the park, and for that reason the number-three batter, generally speaking, is going to get some pitches to hit.
There are exceptions to that. The three-hole hitter typically has the best all-around bat on the team, and he might be so much better than the cleanup hitter that he’s the guy you don’t let beat you. Babe Ruth hit third. Hank Aaron hit third a lot. So did Barry Bonds. The Cardinals bat Albert Pujols third, and that’s part of the reason why Ryan Ludwick had such a big year in his first season as a cleanup hitter. Pujols was on base almost three hundred times, so they had to pitch to Ludwick. To his credit, he responded.
Reggie Jackson
I batted in both spots at various times, but I preferred cleanup. Either way, I always had the advantage of solid RBI people following me in the lineup. In Oakland, it was Sal Bando and Joe Rudi. In Baltimore, I hit third in front of Lee May, who led the league in RBIs the year I was there. Lee May might have been the most effective guy who ever batted behind me. He wasn’t a high-average hitter, but he had dynamite in the barrel. In New York we had Graig Nettles, Chris Chambliss, and Oscar Gamble, and if Lou Piniella hit fifth he could handle the bat and drive in a run. Don Baylor followed me one year in Anaheim. All good hitters.
Had I not had those guys behind me, smart pitchers might have made easy work of me in RBI situations. They’d have taken advantage of my natural aggressiveness. They’d have exploited my instinct to feel personally responsible for driving in the run, which compelled me to expand my strike zone. If I hadn’t been able to trust in Sal and the rest, I suspect I’d have gone too far in that respect, to the point of getting myself out on a regular basis. As it was, I could be selective enough to take the walk if they gave it to me. It was hard, but prudent. At the same time, though, I was more likely to get something to hit than I would if the batter behind me was a soft touch.
A pitcher like Gibby is not going to give me much to swing at if it’s late in the ballgame and he’s got lesser hitters following me, especially right-handed hitters who don’t handle him very well. That said, there might be other games when he’s having his way with me but not the batter behind me, in which case I might get a crack at one. The scenarios change dramatically from game to game, inning to inning, and batter to batter.
Bob Gibson
I played most of my career before expansion, when the talent was more concentrated, and at that time the great hitters—I’m talking about the guys in the middle of the order—seemed to come in pairs or triplets, which was no coincidence.
The Giants had Mays, McCovey, and Cepeda. The Cubs had Williams, Banks, and Santo. The Braves had Aaron and Mathews. The Pirates had Clemente and Stargell. The Reds had Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson, and then the Orioles had Frank and Boog Powell. The Yankees had Mantle and Maris. The Tigers had Kaline and Cash. Yastrzemski always had some other slugger with him, whether it was Dick Stuart or Tony Conigliaro or George Scott or Ken Harrelson or Reggie Smith or Rico Petrocelli. When two great hitters come up back-to-back, you have to deal with at least one of them.
These days, it’s rare that you find a lineup with two of those guys. When there’s only one big hitter, and say he comes up with a man on second base, I have no problem throwing him some bastard pitches and walking the guy if he won’t chase them. For that matter, I’d almost always pitch to the right-hander instead of the left-hander, unless the right-hander was Aaron.
If it was Hank, I might just go ahead and pitch to Reggie. Well, no might about it. I would. Anybody but Aaron.
Reggie Jackson
Not a bad guy to be second fiddle to.
There was a tough situation in Boston with Ramirez and David Ortiz. If they put runners on base in front of those guys, you had a problem on your hands. Pick your poison.
It’s impossible to calculate the difference that the guy behind you makes, but it’s enormous. If I had a bad year, I couldn’t blame it on the hitter behind me; but you could chart the changes in your success. The strikeouts and walks would go up and down.
In that light, it makes what Bonds did all the more amazing. He had a year when he walked 23
2 times, and he still hit forty-five home runs. That’s almost unimaginable.
Bob Gibson
I’d have probably walked him 232 times myself. He would have been my Aaron, the guy who wasn’t going to beat me under any circumstances that I could control.
There’s a hitter like that in every lineup, but there’s no particular formula to tell you how to pick him out. Most of the time it’s pretty obvious—who can hurt me with a home run?—but your gut feeling trumps the numbers. You go with a combination of personal experience and common sense. Billy Williams probably hit me better than anybody, but even so, and despite the fact that he was left-handed, I went ahead and pitched to him because he had Ron Santo and Ernie Banks behind him and I didn’t want either of them hitting two-run homers. If Williams had batted cleanup, I’d have probably pitched around him more.
As it turned out, Billy Williams drove in more runs against me than Banks and Santo combined. He hit ten home runs off of me, and that was more than Banks and Santo combined; and if you throw in Jim Hickman, George Altman, Randy Hundley, Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert, and Adolfo Phillips—all the best hitters the Cubs had—you’re still two homers short. Strange as it sounds, though, I don’t know that Williams ever really hurt me. I was more concerned with Banks.
Reggie Jackson
It’s respect for the home run. That’s what that is.
As you might expect, I have the same kind of respect. In my day, probably more than today, home runs were a big deal. Your batting average can dry up overnight, but those taters stick to your bones. They don’t evaporate.
Even so, I wish I’d have hit for a higher average—and not for the sake of singles. Hitting for a higher average would have meant more home runs.
I realize now that I should have been a consistent .300 hitter. The only time I made it was with the Yankees in 1980, and that was also the only season in my last eighteen that I hit forty homers. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. There doesn’t have to be a trade-off between home runs and base hits. Contact is a good thing. Eventually, I learned not to lose my cool over strikeouts—which was handy, considering that I struck out more than anyone else in history, by a wide margin—but if I had it to do over again, I’d try harder to keep them to a minimum. If you don’t strike out, you put the ball in play more often. If you put the ball in play more often, and you’re a natural home-run hitter, you hit more home runs.
I don’t see how Dave Kingman could hit thirty-seven home runs and bat .204, and hit thirty-five home runs and bat .210. The kind of season I admire—the kind of season that makes sense to me—is the kind that Alex Rodriguez put together when he hit fifty-four home runs and batted .314, or when he hit forty-eight home runs and batted .321. Hank Aaron batted .305 for his career. Willie Mays was a career .302 hitter. I should have done that. I should have hit for a higher average.
I just didn’t give it the care that I should have. I didn’t realize that base hits and home runs can go hand-in-hand, if you’re good enough.
Bob Gibson
If I’ve got a bunch of guys on my team who can hit home runs, I’m not worried about singles or walks or stolen bases or anything else. I don’t care about any kind of speed-and-power combination in the lineup.
If I don’t have power, sure, I’ll take speed. I’ll take Brock. I’ll take Rose’s singles and Don Mattingly’s doubles. But if I’ve got a choice, give me Aaron and Mays and Mantle. Give me McCovey and Mathews. Give me Bench and Banks. On that team, I’ll put Reggie at second base and pitch the left-handers outside.
But you know, it’s a little odd that I’d feel that way about it, because the guys who wore me out were the left-handed banjo hitters. Ron Fairly, Willie Davis, Al Oliver. I used to break Al Oliver’s bat and he’d still drop the ball right over the infield. Made me nuts.
Of course, I wouldn’t put Billy Williams in that crowd, except that he swung the bat from the same side. That was the common denominator. Nearly all the guys who hit me were lefties. Part of it was because I had a hard time keeping the ball elevated on the outside corner against left-handers. It would tend to come down when I threw to my hand side. I didn’t want the ball down against lefties, so I’d end up pitching them inside more than I would have liked.
Other than Aaron, who had eight home runs against me, right-handers just didn’t bother me much. Even Aaron batted only .215 against me. I didn’t give up more than four home runs to any other righty, except for Deron Johnson, who had five; and he batted .154. Frank Robinson had four, and his average against me was .229. Clemente had four, and his was .208.
Reggie Jackson
I hit better against right-handers, but the difference wasn’t as significant as some of my managers seemed to think. Billy Martin used to sit me down against lefties now and then. Billy also batted me seventh a few times, so I’d come to expect almost anything from him.
But I didn’t expect to be on the bench for the final game of the 1977 playoffs, when the Royals went with a left-hander named Paul Splittorff, whom I actually hit fairly well. In fact, earlier that year, my first home run as a Yankee had come against Splittorff.
Oh well.
Bob Gibson
If I’d have been Paul Splittorff, I’d have applauded that move. Get all those home-run hitters out of there.
Reggie Jackson
It must have been motivational genius on Billy’s part, because after that game we went straight to the World Series and I was MVP. That was the Series when I hit five home runs, four of them without swinging at another pitch in between. Of course, none of them was against a lefty.
In reality, I didn’t find it easy to handle a tough left-hander. I considered it something special when I homered against one. I got one against Mickey Lolich in 1968, my first full year in the league, and I felt like I’d taken God out of the park.
But here’s something Billy couldn’t have known. I hit eleven grand slams in my career, and eight of them came against lefthanders. Figure that one out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THINGS THAT A FELLOW JUST HAS TO DEAL WITH
Bob Gibson
Umpires tend to have their own strike zones. That’s sad, but it’s true. I always had a problem with that.
There’s supposed to be a strike zone, not an umpire’s strike zone. But you have to live with it. The worst was 1969, when they lowered the mound and tightened the strike zone at both the top and bottom. That was hard enough, but some umpires made the adjustment and others didn’t, or they’d make them in different ways. It was disorienting. After a while, it seemed like there was almost no such thing as a high strike anymore.
I always made sure to find out, in the first few batters, what the umpire considered a strike that night. But it’s not right that you should have to do that. A strike should be a strike.
Reggie Jackson
Baseball at least tried to address the issue with the QuesTec system, which was designed to compare each umpire’s strike zone with the actual strike zone. But it was only installed in about a third of the major-league stadiums. In the ones that had it, cameras were stationed at various points to track the path of the ball and put each pitch within the framework of the batter’s stance. The purpose was to make the strike zone uniform. It was a noble cause, and it accomplished its objective to some extent. The studies showed that a lot of umpires were calling a strike zone that was wider than the plate and smaller vertically than it’s supposed to be.
For the 2009 season, QuesTec was replaced by a new system called Zone Evaluation, which was put in all the parks. That’s an improvement. But whatever the system, I’m not a big advocate. I’m too much of a traditionalist for that.
Bob Gibson
Put the umpire back there and let him screw it up in the way he wants to. That’s how it’s been played all these years, and I don’t know why they should have some kind of machine telling you what a strike is.
Reggie Jackson
I suppose the quality of umpiring is as good as it can be.
Bob Gibson
It could be better if the umpires would stop thinking that they were such a big part of the game and that they need to be seen and recognized. Just call the balls and strikes. We don’t care about all this other stuff. A good umpire should be like background music, just kind of there. Now you get “Steeeriiiiiiike!”
Come on. “Strike one.” That’s all you want.
Reggie Jackson
I’d prefer “Ball one.”
I’m not as concerned with an umpire’s style as I am with his strike zone. It’s a tough deal for a hitter when you’ve got a guy back there like Ed Runge, who didn’t issue many walks. He wanted to get the game over with. You’d walk up to the plate and he’d say, “You’d better be swinging.”
Bob Gibson
Ed Runge. Oh yeah. Heh-heh.
Ed Sudol was another one who had a big strike zone, a pitcher’s strike zone. If you saw Sudol you’d remember him because he had his own way of showing if a ball was outside, like he was shooing it away with both hands. But if he called it outside, it was outside. You could throw the ball four inches off the plate and Ed Sudol would shoot that hand up and go, “Strike one!” I thought, man, I love this guy. Love him! You didn’t have to come close to the plate. “Strike two!” Guys are swinging and bitching and woofing at him, and I’m just out there smiling.