Living on the Black

by John Feinstein

  Mussina knew the weather was lousy. But he also knew he was lousy. He managed to make it through four innings — giving up three more runs in the third after the Yankees had tied the game at 2–2 — and another in the fourth. He had one good inning, the second, and that was it. Pavano had gotten one out in the fifth on day one; Pettitte had pitched to two batters in the fifth on day two. Mussina never made it to the mound for the fifth on day three. Torre decided eighty-four pitches and six earned runs was enough for one night.

  “On the one hand, you know it’s just one start and there’s no season longer than a baseball season,” Mussina said. “On the other hand, we really could have used a good start that night, and I didn’t come up with it. That’s a bad feeling. I had a chance to pick the team up and instead I let it down. No one likes doing that.”

  Back in the clubhouse he sat in front of his locker for a few minutes, stewing. Then he went to ice and watch the rest of the game. This was not the way to start the season, for him or for the rest of the starting staff.

  “I try not to take it home with me,” he said. “Especially when my family is in town, which they were that weekend. The trip home in the car is my time to let the frustration seep out of me so that when I get home I’m not in a bad mood for my kids.”

  Mussina almost never listens to the radio or to tapes or CDs in the car. Unless there is a specific reason to listen to the radio, he drives in silence, trying to get his mind to leave the ballpark behind. He does have XM radio, though. Why? “It came with the car,” he said.

  His second start would be in Minnesota. That was good news. No matter how cold it might be outside, the game would be played inside the Metrodome. The conditions would be perfect. Mussina was 20–5 lifetime against the Twins. The chances that his second start would be considerably better than his first appeared to be excellent.

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Tom Glavine walked into the visitors’ clubhouse inside Atlanta’s Turner Field and headed straight to the computer a few feet from the door to make certain his request for thirty tickets had been taken care of by the Mets.

  After five years, he had gotten over the initial shock of walking into the Braves’ ballpark and turning left to go to the visitors’ clubhouse instead of right to go to the home clubhouse. He always needed to come up with a lot more tickets in Atlanta than in any other road city for the obvious reason that it was still his home. The best part about the Mets’ three trips a year to Atlanta was that he got to stay at his house.

  The news on the field during his first four years as a Met had not been nearly as good. Put simply, the Braves had hamm-ered him most of the time, especially during his first two years in New York.

  “Even on those rare occasions when I did pitch well, things just didn’t seem to work out,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me.”

  Glavine had pitched considerably better against his old team in 2006. He had started against them three times and had gone 1–1 with an ERA of 3.32. Even so, the no-decision had perhaps been his most frustrating day of the season: the Sunday in Atlanta when he had been staked to a big lead and Willie Randolph had pulled him after four innings, with the lead down to 8–6. The Mets had gone on to win, but Glavine had not gotten the win, and it had produced his first — and only — real blowup with Randolph.

  Glavine’s numbers against the Braves were awful: he was 3–9 overall, with a 5.68 ERA. In Atlanta, the numbers were worse: 2–5, with a 6.70 ERA.

  “I think at first it was just us knowing him so well,” Bobby Cox said. “Then, after a while, it became mental. He expected us to light him up, and we did. But ever since he started pitching inside, he’s been tougher on us. We’ve gotten lucky a couple of times. To be honest, when we face him, I want us to win two-one. I don’t like to see Tommy embarrassed, but I like seeing us lose even less than I like seeing him embarrassed.”

  This matchup, five days into the season, was about as big a deal as an April baseball game can be. To begin with, the Mets were undefeated, having routed the Braves 11–1 the previous night in Atlanta’s home opener. The Braves were 3–1, having started the season with a three-game sweep of the Phillies in Philadelphia. The season was less than a week old, and already it was beginning to look as if the Braves and Mets would be dueling for the lead in the National League East all year.

  “I’m not sure we can stay with them,” Cox said, perhaps trying to put some early pressure on the Mets. “There are really no holes in that lineup at all.”

  Opposition hyperbole aside, the Mets’ everyday lineup certainly appeared to be outstanding. It started with shortstop Jose Reyes, who had emerged as a star in 2006 and at the age of twenty-three was considered by many the best lead-off hitter in baseball. “He may be the best lead-off hitter I’ve seen since Rickey Henderson,” Cox said, dropping the name of the sport’s best ever lead-off hitter. “I mean, what can’t he do? He hit nineteen home runs last year — that should improve. He stole sixty bases [actually sixty-four]. He’s gotten more patient [his walks had almost doubled in 2006], and he can really play the position. The kid is great.”

  The kid playing next to Reyes on the left side of the infield was just about as good. David Wright was twenty-four and already had two one hundred–RBI seasons behind him. He was bright and outgoing and got more female fan mail than anyone else on the team.

  Reyes and Wright were both the face and the future of the franchise. Both had been signed to long-term contracts the previous summer and were being compared favorably to the older Yankee duo of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, both lock Hall of Famers.

  Surrounding them were veterans like first baseman Carlos Delgado, who had failed to drive in at least one hundred runs only once in the previous nine seasons (and that had been in 2004 when he had driven in ninety-nine runs in Toronto, while missing thirty-four games with injuries). Delgado was also one of the team’s unquestioned clubhouse leaders, a thoughtful, stand-up person who had engendered some controversy because of his decision several years earlier to stay inside the clubhouse during the playing of the national anthem — a silent protest against the war in Iraq.

  Carlos Beltran, the quiet center fielder, had hit forty-one home runs and driven in 116 in 2006, after playing poorly in 2005, the first year of the seven-year, $119 million contract he had signed that winter. The Mets had signed Moises Alou to play left field during the off-season. Alou had been oft-injured throughout his career, but when healthy he was still a very solid, consistent hitter. Shawn Green, the right fielder, was showing signs of age but had also been a hundred-RBI man four times in his career. Paul Lo Duca, the everyday catcher, was a four-time All-Star who had hit .318 in 2006. Jose Valentin, the second baseman, was coming off a career year too, having hit .271, with eighteen home runs.

  If there was any question mark at all surrounding the Mets, it was age. Every starter other than Wright and Reyes was at least thirty: Alou was forty; Valentin and Lo Duca were thirty-five; Delgado almost thirty-five; Green thirty-four; and Beltran was about to turn thirty. Older players can be injury prone, and there is no way of knowing when they will start to lose their skills or, in some cases, lose them all of a sudden.

  The pitching staff was also old: Glavine was forty-one, and even though Orlando Hernandez claimed to be thirty-seven, no one in the clubhouse believed him. “I’m not saying he’s old,” Glavine joked, “but he does get mail from AARP.”

  Pedro Martinez was thirty-five and wouldn’t pitch for most of the season. Billy Wagner, the closer, would be thirty-six at midseason. There was some youth with Oliver Perez and John Maine, both in the rotation at twenty-five, and Mike Pelfrey at twenty-four. But the pitchers the Mets would probably rely on most in September and October were all a lot closer to the end of their careers than the beginning.

  “You can look at it one of two ways,” Willie Randolph liked to say. “We’re old or we’re experienced.”

  For four games the Mets had looked experienced and very good. They were hi
tting; the starting pitching had been superb; and they were, it appeared, sending an early message that they were still the team to beat in the National League East. Opening the series in Atlanta with a one-sided win was a very good sign.

  The second game of the series would be a 3:55 p.m. start for the benefit of FOX TV, which had decided to move back its Saturday game-of-the-week starting times to the late afternoon in the hope that it would attract more viewers coming in from Saturday activities. A cold front had engulfed the entire East Coast, and it was hardly a beautiful day for baseball: the game-time temperature was forty-one degrees, with whipping winds making it feel a good deal colder than that.

  “Definitely a two T-shirt day,” Glavine said in the clubhouse. “If I could wear more and still get my arm around to throw the ball, I would.”

  Watching Glavine and his old pal John Smoltz prepare to pitch was a good way to get a sense of how different their personalities are. Glavine is hardly different on a day he is pitching than on a day he is not. He will come in, change, go into the training room to get his arm worked on, and then relax in front of his locker, watching whatever is on the clubhouse TV or chatting with anyone who is around. About an hour before the game is to start, he will retreat into the training room with Peterson and that day’s catcher — usually Lo Duca — to go over the other team’s hitters.

  Smoltz, who loves to talk and tell stories most days, is completely hyper on the day he pitches. “My best friend might walk in the clubhouse, and it’s possible I wouldn’t recognize him,” he likes to say.

  On this particular day, Smoltz was bouncing from one locker to another in the Braves clubhouse looking for a second T-shirt that would fit him properly. Pitchers normally do not like to wear any extra clothing because it may affect their pitching motion. But they also need to work up a sweat, and on a cold day that can be difficult. Smoltz darted from locker to locker, saying repeatedly, “I need something that’s comfortable.”

  If someone had suggested he sit down and relax like Glavine, Smoltz would have looked at him as if he had just dropped in from Mars.

  Not only was it a difficult day to pitch, it was also a difficult day to field. The wind made it tough, as did the slanting, late-afternoon sun. Smoltz gave up a home run to Lo Duca in the first inning, but the Braves got it right back when Delgado dropped a perfect throw from Valentin on a routine Kelly Johnson ground ball to start the bottom of the inning.

  “Believe it or not, he lost the throw in the sun,” Glavine said later. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in my entire life — a first baseman losing a throw from second base in the sun. But it was a very strange day.”

  Glavine eventually walked the bases loaded before getting out of the inning on a Jeff Francoeur RBI ground out and another ground out by Brian McCann — Delgado was able to handle both throws. It was 1–1 after one. What was troubling for Glavine was that he had already thrown thirty pitches.

  Throughout his career, Glavine has had difficulty in the first inning. It is something he has never completely figured out. At times he has tried throwing fewer pitches in the bullpen, more pitches in the bullpen, and warming up a little earlier or a little later. “Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting used to the mound,” he said. “The mound on the field is always different than the bullpen mound so you have to adjust. Sometimes I just struggle with my control early, or maybe I’m trying too hard. One way or the other, I always try to get off to a good start. It just never seems to be easy for me.”

  A lot of great pitchers are more vulnerable early than late. As the old baseball saying “You better get him early” suggests, once a good pitcher gets in a groove, it is often hard to get him out of it. Glavine was a perfect example.

  He fell behind 2–1 in the second inning on a solo home run by Matt Diaz, the Braves’ young left fielder, but then settled in, retiring seven of the next eight. Smoltz worked out of trouble in the third, then gave up a single to Alou and a double to Green, with two outs in the fourth. A lot of players — most — would have scored on the Green double, especially with two men out, but Alou is slower than the bureaucracy in Washington, so he had to hold at third. The Braves opted to walk Valentin intentionally, so they could pitch to Glavine with the bases loaded.

  “I so wanted to drive the ball someplace for a couple of runs,” Glavine said. “Obviously they did the right thing pitching to me, but a hit in that situation off of Smoltzie would have been sweet.”

  Glavine is not one of those athletes who tries to claim that all games are the same or that he doesn’t feel extra butterflies in certain situations. Pitching against Smoltz, especially in Atlanta, was absolutely a big deal to him. They had faced each other only once previously. That had been in 2005, shortly after Glavine went through his pitching makeover. It had been one of Glavine’s rare good starts against the Braves. He had left a 1–1 game after seven innings, only to see the bullpen give up a run in the eighth, allowing Smoltz to win the game 2–1.

  “To say that it doesn’t feel different to go out there and pitch against him would be silly,” Glavine said. “He’s one of my best friends; we were teammates all those years. The last thing I want to do is lose to him. You walk into the ballpark for a game like this — it does feel different. A win means a little more; a loss stings a little more.”

  Smoltz had come up in the second after Diaz’s home run and had pushed the count to 2–1. Glavine then threw him a hard slider, which Smoltz hit weakly off the end of the bat back to Glavine. In the cold, hitting the ball that way stung Smoltz’s hands, and he yelled in pain as he dropped the bat.

  “Why’d you have to throw me a slider?” he yelled at Glavine, half joking as Glavine easily threw him out at first.

  “Because I needed to get you out,” Glavine yelled back, not joking at all.

  Now, Smoltz needed to get Glavine out. Trying very hard to give himself a lead, Glavine swung late at a good Smoltz fastball — even in the cold, Smoltz was still getting his fastball up to 95 and 96 miles per hour — and popped it to third. Opportunity gone.

  The Mets did tie the score in the fifth when Reyes walked and stole second and Beltran singled him home. They had a chance to take the lead in the sixth when Glavine sacrificed Green to second and Reyes walked again with two out. But Smoltz struck out Lo Duca with a 96-mile-an-hour fastball on his 118th pitch of the game to keep the score tied.

  “The only way I can get a win at that point is if we get to Tommy in the bottom of the inning,” Smoltz said later. “Because there was no way with that pitch count Bobby [Cox] was letting me come out for the seventh.”

  Glavine had thrown ninety-two pitches through five innings, struggling to throw his breaking pitches over the plate. Smoltz was having the same problem. Each was having difficulty getting a feel for the baseball in his cold, dry hands.

  Andruw Jones, one of the few Braves left who had been a Glavine teammate, began the sixth with a double to left after Glavine thought he had struck him out on a 2–2 changeup that plate umpire Randy Marsh deemed to be outside. “Sometimes baseball is a game of inches,” Glavine said later. “On that play it was a game of an inch — or less.”

  Francoeur, who often gives Glavine trouble because he doesn’t try to outthink Glavine but just swings at what he sees, hit Glavine’s 2–1 fastball hard to right, so hard that Jones had to hold up at third. The hit came on Glavine’s 103rd pitch of the day. He knew he was on a very short leash at that point. “I was hoping to maybe get through the inning somehow and give our guys a chance to get to their pen in the seventh.”

  It didn’t happen, in part because the defense let him down. Valentin did make a good play on a McCann line drive for the first out. Not wanting to throw a fastball to Craig Wilson, a dead fastball hitter, Glavine kept missing with his changeup to fall behind 3–0. When he did throw a fastball, Wilson, with the green light from Cox, crushed a line drive to right that was just foul. Glavine wasn’t going to throw him another fastball. He missed with another changeup,
and the bases were loaded. Randolph came to the mound. Diaz was up next and he had already homered. But Glavine convinced Randolph to let him try to finish the inning, pointing out that he didn’t feel that tired because of the cold weather.

  Randolph’s decision to leave Glavine in looked like a good one when Diaz hit a fly ball to right that would probably have been a sacrifice fly, except that Green, fighting the wind, dropped it. Jones scored to make it 3–2, and everyone moved up a base. That was it for Glavine, whose pitch count was now at 113 — fifty-seven of those pitches balls. It was one of the few times in his career that Glavine could remember throwing more balls than strikes in a game.

  Pedro Feliciano came in for Glavine, and the Braves scored twice more before the inning was over to make it 5–2. The Braves bullpen held on from there, and Atlanta won 5–3, meaning both teams were now 4–1.

  The loss was tough to take for Glavine because he had hung in on a tough day, giving up only four hits but being done in by his wildness — especially on his breaking pitches — and the Mets’ defense. Only two of the five runs charged to him were earned.

  “If you figure you’re going to have thirty starts in a year, you probably think there will be ten times when you’re so good you should absolutely win and ten times when you’re bad enough that you clearly deserve to lose,” he said. “The ten in the middle probably decided your season. That was one of those ten. I was good enough to win with some help, bad enough to lose without it. Unfortunately that was one of those days when I didn’t get the help I needed. Plus, Smoltzie made some big pitches when he had to.” He smiled. “I would expect nothing less from him.”

  The Braves won the next day to end week one in first place. There were only twenty-five weeks left in the season. The teams would meet again — fifteen more times to be exact — and so would Glavine and Smoltz.

  THE YANKEES FINISHED THEIR FIRST WEEK of the season 2–3, without a starting pitcher reaching the sixth inning. Kei Igawa, the $46 million Japanese pitcher, managed to make it through five innings in his Yankee debut but gave up seven runs in the process. An Alex Rodriguez grand slam in the ninth rescued the Yankees that day, but they lost to the Orioles in their next outing, with starter Darrell Rasner failing to get out of the fifth.