Living on the Black

by John Feinstein

  That was how many wins Glavine needed after the Braves went on to win 9–6 on that sparkling Sunday. They had now won four of six from the Mets to start the season and had jumped into first place. There weren’t a lot of smiles in the Mets clubhouse late that afternoon.

  “You hate to blow any lead,” Willie Randolph said.

  Especially to the Braves. Especially with Glavine seven outs away from number 294.

  ACCORDING TO THE TOM GLAVINE THEORY OF PITCHING, there are ten starts a year (if you are a successful starting pitcher) that you should absolutely win.

  Glavine had one of those ten starts in Washington, six days after the lost game against the Braves.

  Only he didn’t get the win. The reason, in the minds of all the Mets, was an umpire named Tony Randazzo.

  Umpires come in all shapes and sizes and, perhaps most important, personalities. More than any other officials in sports, they are given the independence to call a game in almost any manner they wish when working home plate. That’s been reined in to some degree by Questech in recent years and by Major League Baseball telling them to call the “high strike.” The strike zone, top to bottom, is supposed to be from the letters across the batters’s jersey to the top of the batter’s knees. The upper part of the zone had crept so far down in the late 1990s that hitters were taking belt-high pitches, and umpires were calling them balls.

  Even now though, umpires have distinctly different strike zones — so much so in fact that players scout them. Some umpires have wider plates than others, and some will give pitchers the low strike, something that makes Glavine very happy. “When I see a guy giving me the low strike early, I know I’ve got an excellent chance to have a good night if I’m even decent,” he said. Umpires also have different styles: Some make a strike call instantly; others take their time. Some make their calls loudly; others can barely be heard.

  In 2007, there were sixty-nine full-time major league umpires, ranging in experience from Bruce Froemming, who was in his thirty-seventh season (Froemming had been around so long that players occasionally asked him what the weather was like on the day Babe Ruth hit his 714th home run), to Lance Barksdale, who was entering his fourth full season. Umpiring is a little bit like being appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court: once you are in the majors, it will take an act of God or Bud Selig — God being more likely to intervene — to get an umpire fired.

  Randazzo is one of the least experienced umpires in the majors, even though he was in his eighth big league season. He had been one of twenty-four umpires brought to the majors in 1999 when twenty-two umpires had resigned as part of their union’s attempt to force the owners to give them a new contract. MLB had accepted the resignations, and it had taken a court battle of several years for some of the umpires to get their jobs back.

  In the meantime, Randazzo and twenty-three others were promoted, either at the start of 1999 or midway through that season. During that period, MLB had changed the way umpires worked, doing away with the tradition of American League umpires and National League umpires as part of the changeover in the way all of MLB was run. Now, there are no longer league offices or league presidents. Everyone reports to the commissioner of baseball.

  The crew assigned to work the Mets-Nationals series in Washington the last weekend in April was led by Larry Vanover, a fourteen-year veteran umpire, though a relatively inexperienced crew chief. The home plate umpire for the second game of the series was Greg Gibson, another member of the class of ’99. Randazzo was at first base, Charlie Reliford at second, and Vanover at third.

  It was a cool, comfortable Saturday night in Washington, and Glavine was matched up against the Nationals’ Jerome Williams, who had struggled mightily in his first three starts, much the way the rest of the Washington staff had. The Nats were in their third season in Washington, D.C., since Major League Baseball had abandoned Montreal following the 2004 season. Perhaps more important, they were in their final season in RFK Stadium, a decrepit relic that had been built at the start of the “multipurpose” stadium era. It had housed bad baseball teams — the expansion Washington Senators from 1962 to 1971 — and had been home to the Washington Redskins until 1996, when the team had moved to suburbia, into perhaps the worst-planned stadium in sports history. From 1996 to 2004 RFK existed for two reasons: to give the local Major League Soccer team, D.C. United, a home and to be available if the day ever came when Major League Baseball returned to Washington.

  Baseball had finally come back in 2005, and the Nationals’ first season had been a huge success. The team had been a surprising 81–81 and even spent some time in first place in early summer. Attendance was more than 2.7 million, and MLB was going through the lengthy process of finding the team an owner — something the franchise had not had for five years, beginning in Montreal. In 2006, Washington real estate mogul Theodore Lerner had been selected as the team’s owner. The team had not played as well, and Hall of Famer Frank Robinson had been fired as manager at the end of the season.

  Now, the Nationals were in full rebuilding mode. Stan Kasten, the man who had hired John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox in Atlanta, was the new team president. Manny Acta, a former Mets coach, was the manager. And most of the pitchers were like Williams: very young, inexperienced, and trying — without much success — to learn on the job.

  At twenty-five, Williams was one of the Nationals’ more experienced pitchers, having pitched two full seasons in San Francisco and part of two others with the Cubs. He had a big league record of 23–24 coming into the season, but his ERA as he walked to the mound on a cool, comfortable night with a crowd of just under thirty thousand in attendance, was 6.25. On the surface, this was a pitching mismatch.

  Baseball, however, isn’t played on paper. Williams kept walking hitters and then pitching out of trouble. Through six innings he had walked six, given up one hit, and left five men on base. Glavine was better. He had given up just three hits through five innings. In the sixth, with one out, Williams came to bat. Glavine quickly got ahead of him 1–2 and almost struck him out on a changeup that he barely fouled off.

  If Williams had struck out it would have been the twenty-five hundredth strikeout of Glavine’s career. “Which isn’t too bad for a soft-tossing lefty,” Glavine joked. “I was glad he fouled the pitch off. I didn’t want twenty-five hundred to be against a pitcher.”

  He got his wish because Williams crushed the next pitch, a fastball Glavine got careless with and left over the plate. “For a minute I thought he’d hit it out,” he said. “Which would have been both bad and embarrassing. I was actually relieved when it hit the fence.”

  Williams had hit the ball off the bottom of the left-field fence. He was so surprised to have hit the ball that far that he spent some time at the plate admiring his work before jogging to first, turning what should have been a double into a single.

  Grateful for that break, Glavine faced lead-off hitter Felipe Lopez. He promptly got him to hit a ground ball to shortstop, the proverbial tailor-made double-play ball. Reyes flipped the ball to Damion Easley, who relayed it to Carlos Delgado for the inning-ending six-four-three. Glavine took a step off the mound toward the dugout, then stopped in disbelief. Tony Randazzo had his arms spread, palms down, giving the safe signal.

  Glavine uses less profanity than about 99.9 percent of the athletes on earth. If he says he’s “pissed off” about something, that is enough to turn heads. Now though, seeing Randazzo’s call, he began walking in the direction of first base screaming. “What? What? Are you fucking kidding me?!”

  He was halfway to first base before he realized that he was screaming. Seeing his pitcher screaming at the top of his lungs while walking toward an umpire and his first baseman also yelling in dismay, Willie Randolph sprinted from the dugout. A manager comes out at a moment like that for several reasons. First on the list is making sure none of his players — especially his starting pitcher — gets ejected. Hearing Glavine screaming the f-word got Randolph moving instantly, because umpires are very
sensitive to that word. In fact, one of baseball’s unwritten rules is that if you say “motherfucker” to an umpire, you are automatically ejected. Umpires and players call it the magic word. Glavine hadn’t said the magic word, but Randolph wasn’t taking any chances.

  Beyond that, when a call is missed that clearly, a manager has to go out to show support for his players. There is no way a base umpire is going to change a call like that once he’s made it. Nevertheless, a manager has to go out and protest so his players know he’s backing them and to make sure the next close call is likely to go his team’s way. As in, “You owe us one.” Good umpires never give anyone a “makeup” call. But not everyone is a good umpire.

  “I used to say to coaches, ‘I owe you one, but I’ll never pay you back,’ ” said Hank Nichols, a great college basketball referee who works as an evaluator of umpires for MLB. “You make one mistake, fine. You should try never to make it two.”

  Randolph got to Randazzo with Glavine still several steps away, standing with his hands on his hips, still jawing, but a bit calmer now that his manager had arrived. According to Randolph, the first thing he said to Randazzo was “Just tell me you missed it, and I’ll go back in the dugout.”

  Randazzo adamantly insisted he had the call right, that Lopez had been safe.

  “You’re joking, right?” Randolph said. “You have to know you missed that one.”

  Umpires don’t miss safe or out calls on the bases very often. A play involving a force — no tag needed — is about as easy a call as an umpire can make. As long as he is in position and can see the runner’s foot hit the bag and hear the ball hit the glove, he shouldn’t miss very often. The most famous missed call at first base was in Game Six of the 1985 World Series, when Don Denkinger called Jorge Orta safe at first, leading off the bottom of the ninth inning for the Kansas City Royals. The St. Louis Cardinals led the game 1–0 and were three outs from winning the World Series. Orta was out by about a step. Denkinger called him safe, and the Royals scored two runs, won the game, and then won Game Seven the next night (11–0, the Cardinals completely failing to show up) and their first and only World Series title.

  Since then, all truly bad calls at first base bring up Denkinger’s name. This call wasn’t anywhere close to being as critical as Denkinger’s, but Randazzo had missed it just as badly. His reaction to Randolph wasn’t much better than the call. He started shouting at Randolph that he had the call right all the way.

  “That’s when I went off,” Randolph said the next day. “Look, umpires miss calls. They’re human. I make mistakes every day. But at least admit you missed it. Don’t start shouting at me that you didn’t. While he was screaming, he bumped me. That’s when I really got angry.”

  The argument grew heated quickly, and Randazzo ended up throwing Randolph out of the game. By now, all the Mets were angry. After Randolph left, Glavine had to get his mind off the call and back on the game.

  “Something like that happens, you have to pitch through it,” he said. “On the one hand, Randazzo blew the call. On the other hand, it’s up to me to get the third out, get in the dugout, and cool off. I didn’t do it.”

  He hung a changeup to Ronnie Belliard who smashed it into the gap in left-center field. Lopez scored easily, and the Nationals led 1–0. Glavine was now officially pissed. He was pissed at Randazzo and pissed at himself. He got the third out of the inning and walked off the mound barking angrily at Randazzo.

  “I was staring at him to see if he would look at me and say anything,” he said. “He didn’t look at me. I started to say something else, to really get on him, but I caught myself. You have to think about the next time he’s behind the plate and you’re pitching. Do umpires hold grudges? Of course they do. I’m not questioning their integrity; I’m just saying it’s human nature. A guy has given you a hard time in the past; you remember it. Maybe subconsciously you don’t give him borderline pitches. You have to be aware of stuff like that. I really wanted to go at him because the whole notion that everyone in the park knew he’d missed it but him really got to me. But I held back. I had to.

  “I would say the number of times I’ve done that in my career is less than five,” he said. “I would love to know what he thought when he looked at the tape after the game.”

  Umpires are required to look at tape after games, especially of controversial calls. There is a DVD machine in every umpire’s locker room, and they are given a DVD of the game as soon as it is over.

  The Mets were able to tie the game in the seventh, but their mini-rally forced Glavine out of the game. With runners on second and third, acting manager Jerry Manuel had to put in a pinch hitter for Glavine to try to get the runs home. He got the tying run in when Nats pitcher Jesus Colome — who had replaced Williams when he hurt his foot at the start of the inning — threw a wild pitch to pinch hitter David Newhan. But with Easley on third with the go-ahead run, Newhan grounded out.

  Glavine had thrown eighty-four pitches, meaning he had at least another inning in him or perhaps two on a cool, comfortable night. He had given up one run — with some help from Randazzo — and had been in control the entire evening. Yet, he headed up to the clubhouse after Newhan ended the inning, with no chance to get a win.

  “I felt like I had studied to take a test, had gone in and aced it, and then someone came up and said, ‘We gave you the wrong test; you have to take it again in five days,’ ” he said. “Some nights you know you were lousy and you deserve to get beat. Other nights you were okay and it could go either way. But when you pitch the way I pitched that night, and you come away with nothing, at least in part because an umpire blew an easy call, that’s frustrating.”

  The game ended up dragging on for four hours before the Mets won it in the twelfth, aided by another blown Randazzo call in the ninth, that helped them tie the game. “Give the guy credit,” Mets TV announcer Gary Cohen said. “He had three calls to make that night, and he missed all three.”

  The first had come in the fifth inning when Randazzo had called Easley and Reyes out on back-to-back dazzling plays by Zimmerman. Reyes’s call was close; Easley’s was not. “I probably should have gone out then,” Randolph said the next day. “Maybe if I had said something in the fifth, he’d have gotten it right in the sixth.” Good umpires will let players and managers know when they know they’ve made a mistake. “I remember in Baltimore when I was playing, Steve Palermo threw me out because he thought I was getting on him about a check swing from the dugout,” Randolph said. “It wasn’t me though, it was [Bucky] Dent and [Graig] Nettles. But he nailed me.

  “In those days George [Steinbrenner] was involved in everything. When he heard what happened he wrote a letter to [American League president] Lee McPhail and got everyone on the team to sign it, saying that it was Bucky and Graig, and Palermo got the wrong guy. I got a letter of apology from McPhail, and when I saw Palermo he told me he was sorry, that he’d made a mistake.”

  Frequently when an umpire misses a pitch or two, he will send word to a pitcher through his catcher that he missed a call. “The older guys, the ones who are more secure about themselves tend to be that way,” Glavine said. “Randy Marsh, Tim McClelland, Ed Montague, John Hirschbeck — guys who are usually right — will tell you when they know they got one wrong. Once they do that, there’s nothing left for you to say.”

  It can go both ways. Earlier in the month, when Glavine had pitched against Jamie Moyer, Montague had ruled that a Moyer pitch had hit David Wright in the foot. Moyer didn’t see it hit him or hear it, so he argued with Montague adamantly. “When I got in the clubhouse and saw the tape, I saw Ed had it right,” Moyer said. “He confused me a little because he didn’t give the sign you usually give for a hit batsman, but he had the call right. I picked up the phone, called the umpire’s room, and said, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. I saw the tape. You had it right.’ ”

  Like Glavine, Moyer was thinking about the next time he pitched with Montague behind the plate. “True,” h
e said. “But it was also the right thing to do.”

  If Randazzo regretted what had happened, he never let either Randolph or Glavine know. “Haven’t heard from him,” Randolph said the next day. “And I don’t expect that I will.”

  The fact that the Mets won the game was a little bit soothing for Glavine, but not getting a win when he had pitched so well was aggravating. “If I’m being honest, I want to get this done in part because I want it to happen but also so it can be off the table for everyone,” he said. “A night like tonight just sets it back at least another five days.”

  Glavine was 3–1 as April came to an end. He could easily have been 5–1. The bullpen had blown one game, and Tony Randazzo had helped blow another.

  15

  Back on Track

  IF GLAVINE WAS FRUSTRATED with three wins in April, he at least had the luxury of knowing he was pitching well and he was healthy. Mike Mussina had neither as May began. He had pitched two games, lost one, and gone on the disabled list after pitching a grand total of six innings to an ERA of exactly 9.00.

  The good news was that he had felt good while pitching the simulated game in the bullpen on April 27. Torre scheduled him to return five days later in Texas. Mussina had to wait six days because, naturally, it rained.

  The rainout was rescheduled for the next day as a day-night doubleheader because the Yankees were not scheduled to return to Texas again during the season. Day-night doubleheaders are a pox on baseball. They exist for the sole purpose of allowing the owners to squeeze out every last possible dollar from the paying public. In the old days, a rainout was made up with a doubleheader — one admission, two games. Nowadays, the owners want separate admissions, even though the afternoon game usually draws a tiny crowd since it is not on the original schedule.