Living on the Black

by John Feinstein

  Literally and figuratively, they were going in opposite directions.

  Glavine was wired, excited by what was to come during the next three days. Mussina was tired, depressed by what was going on and dreading the next three days, even though he would not be pitching.

  “I love these games,” Glavine said, sitting in front of his locker. “I think the whole Subway Series thing is awesome. I walk in here when we play these games — or when we play at Yankee Stadium — and I’m tingling. I’m sure Cubs–White Sox is great and Angels-Dodgers or Giants-A’s, but there’s nothing quite like this. I mean, just look around. This is a big deal.”

  The Mets clubhouse was packed. Every member of the New York media appeared to be at Shea, along with a lot of out-of-town media. Fox would televise the Saturday game and ESPN the Sunday game, so a lot of their people were milling around too.

  Because Shea Stadium was built in 1964, the home clubhouse is relatively small — not as big as the visitors’ clubhouses are in most of the new parks built in the past fifteen years. The visitors’ clubhouse at Shea isn’t as small as the one at Fenway Park or at Wrigley Field, but it is very small, especially for a Subway Series.

  “It’s a pain in the neck,” Mussina said, looking at the masses packed into the visitors’ clubhouse. “The whole weekend is a pain in the neck. People don’t understand. We play big games with a lot of media attention all the time. In a sense, we’re used to it, and that’s okay. But you walk in here, and everyone’s looking for a back-page story or wants to know what you ate for breakfast.”

  He paused and smiled. “Froot Loops.”

  A few feet from where Mussina stood putting on layers of clothing because the weather outside was miserable, Yankees utility man Miguel Cairo was on his hands and knees, laying down masking tape across the entryway to the players-only section of the clubhouse — the hall that led to the training room and the players’ dining area.

  “Miggy,” Mussina asked. “What in the world are you doing?”

  “These guys,” Cairo said, gesturing at the horde of media. “Some of them are coming over and trying to look into the eating room. I’m putting down a boundary they can’t cross.”

  “Good thing to worry about, Miggy,” said Joel Sherman, a New York Post columnist who was also observing Cairo. “You guys are eighteen and twenty-one and ten games out, and you’re worried about where we’re standing. Good priorities.”

  Cairo glared at Sherman, who glared back.

  A Yankee employee walked around the room informing anyone who would listen that Kei Igawa had thrown nineteen pitches from halfway up the mound that day in Tampa as part of his “retooling” project.

  Mussina couldn’t resist. “Nineteen pitches from halfway up the mound?” he said. “I guess he must be on the Pavano plan.”

  No one had seen Carl Pavano for weeks since he had been placed on the sixty-day DL, but Mussina insisted that his car was still at Yankee Stadium. “It’s parked right next to mine,” he said.

  Hearing that, one could not help but think of the classic Seinfeld episode in which George Costanza leaves his car in the Yankee Stadium parking lot for days, and George Steinbrenner decides he must be dead. Steinbrenner drives to the Costanzas’ house in Queens and tearfully informs Mr. Costanza when he answers the door that he has terrible news: “George is dead.”

  Mr. Costanza, played brilliantly by Jerry Stiller, looks at Steinbrenner and says, “Ken Phelps for Jay Buhner? What were you thinking?!”

  No one thought Pavano was dead, except as a pitcher for the Yankees.

  To call the Yankees clubhouse tense would be a vast understatement. That day, Jason Giambi, the team’s on-again, off-again slugger, had been quoted in USA Today as saying, “I shouldn’t have used that stuff,” an obvious reference to steroids. He had then gone on to say that Major League Baseball “owed fans an apology” because of what had happened in what was now becoming known as “the steroid era.”

  Having the story break on day one of the season’s first Subway Series set off a heightened media frenzy. Writers, radio reporters, TV reporters, and camera people were ringed around Giambi’s locker awaiting his arrival when Mussina first walked into the clubhouse.

  “What’s up with that?” he asked.

  Someone tossed him a copy of USA Today, which he read.

  “Honestly, I don’t get it,” he said a little later while Giambi was no-commenting reporters on the story. “I mean, is there anything in here that we didn’t already know? I guess to outsiders, since almost no one has admitted to doing steroids, it’s a big deal. In here, where we all know guys have done steroids, this really isn’t news.” Mussina pulled on a jacket and said, “I need some air — any air” — and headed for the dugout.

  Mussina was far more concerned about reports that general manager Brian Cashman and manager Joe Torre might lose their jobs if the Yankees didn’t perform well over the next six days: three games with the Mets and three at Yankee Stadium with the Red Sox.

  “To be honest, no knock on Cashman at all, but something happening to Joe would affect us all a lot more because he’s the guy we work with day in and day out,” Mussina said. “I know how this business works, especially here, but, my God, is it Joe’s fault that we’ve started six different rookie pitchers this year and we aren’t even at Memorial Day? Is it his fault I got hurt and Wang got hurt?”

  He paused and sat silently for a minute, staring at the rain and the tarpaulin while the dugout heaters hummed overhead. The game-time temperature that night would be a balmy fifty-two degrees, with the wind making it feel more like forty-five. It would only get colder as the night wore on.

  “It feels like it’s been November all season, except for about a week,” Mussina said, staring up at the dugout heaters. “I can’t remember seven weeks like this since I got here. In Baltimore I went through three-years like this, and it wasn’t any fun.

  “The fact is, we just haven’t been a very good team. Part of it is the starting pitching; although we’ve been better since Andy called that meeting. It’s more been about doing the things good teams do. Good teams get a runner in from third with less than two out most of the time. Good teams move a runner one way or the other. Good teams turn one-run innings into three-run innings, not the other way around. Good teams make a play in the field when they really need it.

  “We haven’t done that very much. Everything has been a struggle. In some ways, my season is a lot like the team’s: I’ve been bad, I’ve been hurt, I’ve gotten a little better, then I’ve slid back. I know I have to be better, and I know we have to be better.

  “There’s nothing more deceiving in baseball sometimes than a pitcher’s won-lost record. Look at Andy and look at me. I’m two and two and he’s two and three, but there’s no comparison in the way we’ve pitched. He’s been good almost every time out. I’ve had two decent outings, and that’s it. My ERA is almost three runs a game higher than his, and we have the same number of wins.

  “The worst I ever pitched in the big leagues was in 1996, and that’s the closest I ever came to winning twenty games. If I hadn’t given up one run in eight innings my last start, my ERA would have been over 5.00. In 2001, my ERA was 3.15 and all my numbers were better than Roger [Clemens], but he was twenty and three.

  “Right now, though, there isn’t much deceptive about our numbers. We’re what — eighteen and twenty-two? We’ve played to that record. That doesn’t mean we aren’t better than that, but we better start playing like we can supposedly play pretty soon. I figure it will take ninety-three to ninety-five wins to at least get a wild card. Do the math. That would mean going seventy-seven and forty-five the rest of the way to win ninety-five. Are we capable of that? Yes. But we better not dig the hole very much deeper.”

  Mussina was genuinely concerned that Torre might get fired. “I really don’t want my manager to get fired,” he said, his voice a lot softer than usual. “Not only would it be unfair, it would hurt the ballclub. People reall
y don’t know just how good Joe is.”

  Mussina had battled with Torre on occasion during his seven years with the team, but he had the utmost respect for him.

  “Because he always looks calm on the bench, people don’t think he’s intense,” Mussina said. “But he is. When we aren’t playing well, he lets us know. Once or twice a year, he’ll walk in after a game, and, instead of going to his office, he’ll just stand in the center of the clubhouse. Those of us who have been around awhile know that means he’s really upset.”

  Mussina remembered exactly where and when that had happened in 2006. “We were in Washington, and we weren’t playing well. We had a big lead on Saturday, blew it, and lost the game. But I think what really got to him was Shawn Chacon.”

  Chacon had helped save the Yankees’ season in 2005 after coming over in a trade from the Colorado Rockies. But he had pitched poorly in ’06, and, even with a big lead that day, couldn’t get out of the fifth inning.

  “Joe went to get him with two outs in the fifth, when he was one out from qualifying for a win. But he’d blown most of the lead by then. Still, he flipped the ball to Joe and made it clear he was upset to come out.

  “In the clubhouse, Joe started talking about playing well as a team, not as individuals. He didn’t raise his voice, but he was clearly angry and looking right at Chacon.

  “At first Chacon is looking back at him. Joe keeps talking, never really raises his voice but is getting hotter and hotter, and he takes a step in Chacon’s direction. At first, Chacon took a step toward Joe. Then he stopped and looked down. Joe finally says, still looking right at Chacon: ‘Does everyone understand?’ Chacon just nodded kind of weakly. The message was clear.”

  Two weeks later, Chacon was traded to Pittsburgh.

  Mussina stared at the rain for a while longer and finally said: “It’s just not much fun around here right now.”

  THINGS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN more different than it was with the Mets at that moment.

  They had finished April a solid 15–9 and were now 26–14 and in first place, after going 5–2 on a trip to Arizona and San Francisco and following that up by taking two of three from Milwaukee and three of four from the Cubs on the current homestand. The previous day they had rallied with four runs in the ninth for a 6–5 win over the Cubs and were riding high coming into the Subway Series as the only first-place team in town.

  “It feels like we’re starting to become the club we all expected we could be,” Glavine said. “We’ve had some ups and downs, but lately we’ve been a lot more solid. The feeling in here is very up.”

  Glavine was pretty up himself, even though his pitching had been a little bit uneven in May. After the “Tony Randazzo” game in Washington, he had pitched in Arizona in the first game of a seven-game road trip. He hadn’t been awful, but it had probably been his worst outing of the season. He’d given up four runs in six innings, three of the runs coming on home runs: a two-run shot by Chris Snyder in the fifth, and a solo shot by Orlando Hudson in the sixth after the Mets had tied the game at 3–3. Glavine left in the seventh for a pinch hitter. The Mets won 9–4 after scoring six runs in the ninth, but Glavine was long gone by then.

  “It was one of those games where there were a few pitches you’d like to have back,” Glavine said. “Obviously the home runs, but I just wasn’t as sharp as I had been — certainly not close to what I’d been in Washington. It was one of those games in the middle — I could have lost, I could have won; I ended up with a no-decision.

  “I really didn’t feel all that sharp early, so I was glad to at least give the team six innings and not force the bullpen to go out there early. In all, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. I was glad we won. Still, that made three straight starts without a win for me: the Atlanta game where I thought I was going to win; the Washington game where I probably should have won; and this game where I could have won. You definitely don’t want to go down the road feeling like it’s hard to win games. Not this year anyway.”

  The Mets pulled into San Francisco in the midst of Barry Bonds Mania. While the rest of the country viewed Barry Bonds’s assault on Henry Aaron’s all-time home-run record as something between a bore and a pox, in San Francisco Bonds was viewed as a heroic figure. Glavine had always had great respect for Bonds’s ability but found it hard to find any joy in his chase of Aaron.

  “I guess I try to take the view that he’s innocent until proven guilty,” he said. “Although the circumstantial evidence out there is kind of hard to ignore. If he did it [Glavine paused as if trying to keep a straight face], he’s certainly not the only one. He’s just the most talented.”

  Glavine had always pitched pretty well against Bonds. He had given up four home runs to him through the years and had learned — or so he thought — to stick to fastballs away and changeups when pitching to him. “Last thing I always say when we go through their lineup is ‘No sliders to Bonds,’ ” he said. “He crushes my slider.”

  Glavine pitched the middle game in the San Francisco series. Barry Zito, who the Giants had signed to a seven-year, $126 million contract the previous winter — beating the Mets for him in a bidding war — won the opener against Oliver Perez, and Glavine faced rising star Matt Cain in the second game.

  Right from the start, Glavine felt like he was going to have a good night. Brian Runge was the home-plate umpire, and the first knee-high pitch Glavine threw was called a strike. He threw another, and it was a strike too. Then he threw one a little bit lower, and it was also a strike.

  “Any time an umpire is giving me that low strike, I know I have a chance to pitch a good game,” he said. “Not only is that a good pitch for me and a tough pitch for a hitter, but it gives me a lot of confidence knowing I can go there and probably get a strike call.”

  It also helped that for one of the first times all year, the Mets bunched some runs for Glavine early, getting three in the first and another in the second, to stake him to a 4–0 lead. It was the first time since opening night in St. Louis that Glavine had a lead like that early in the game. It was a perfect night to pitch — warm without a lot of breeze (rare in San Francisco) — and Glavine felt as if he were on cruise control.

  Until Bonds came up in the fourth.

  “Paulie [Lo Duca] put down slider,” he said, laughing about it later. “I don’t shake my catcher off very often. I started to but then I thought, ‘He’s thinking Barry takes the first pitch a lot, and he’ll lay off a slider, especially if I keep it away a little bit.’ So I figured what the heck, let’s try it.

  “Mistake.”

  Bonds didn’t lay off the slider. Instead, he hit it about nine hundred feet into the night. Glavine had to laugh while Bonds circled the bases. “I guess he can still hit my slider,” he said. “Thank God no one was on and I had a four-run lead. Otherwise I would really have been kicking myself. I’d gotten him out on a changeup in the first; I should have kept throwing the changeup until he hit it.”

  That turned out to be all the Giants got. Glavine scattered six other hits, walked only one, and struck out five. For the first time all season, he started and completed a seventh inning, throwing 105 pitches. The bullpen finished up. Glavine was 4–1, and the Number That Must Not Be Named was only six away.

  His night wasn’t over when the game finished. Somewhere between Arizona and San Francisco, it had been decided by several members of the team’s leadership — Lo Duca, Carlos Delgado, David Wright, Billy Wagner, and Glavine — that the team needed to do something as a bonding exercise.

  More often than not when teams do something like this, it is to break a losing streak or to try to get some kind of run going in a pennant race. This was neither of the above, just a sense within the clubhouse that even though they were 19–11 when they arrived in San Francisco, they needed to do something to catch fire, to get on a roll, to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the National League East.

  The bonding mechanism selected? Buzz cuts, given in the clubhouse by
various teammates.

  “Sometimes having everyone look ugly can bring you together,” Glavine said.

  Glavine had been allowed to escape the razor until after he pitched. But with the win secured, he had to endure the razor. This was bad on two levels: the first and far less important one was the surprising amount of gray that showed up when layers of his mostly brown hair fell away. The second and far worse was when photos of him taken right after the razor had done its work made their way to the Internet.

  “Different world,” he said. “In the old days I would have had a few days to work on an explanation speech.”

  That speech would have been delivered to one Christine Glavine of Alpharetta, Georgia, whose eight-year-old son, Peyton, was receiving his First Holy Communion that Saturday. Mrs. Glavine’s husband had been given permission by his employer to take the day off to fly to Atlanta to be there for their son’s big day.

  And now this.

  “Are you kidding me?” she screamed on the phone. “Do you realize that you look like a complete dork? Do you know that your son’s First Communion is Saturday, and you are going to walk in there looking like a complete and utter dork? How could you do this?”

  “Team bonding?” came the meek reply.

  “Team bonding my a —— . You couldn’t tell your teammates your son was counting on you to not look like a dork on Saturday?”

  If there was ever an example of an athlete taking one for the team, this was it. Glavine knew his wife was half angry, half amused, and that she understood jock rituals pretty well. He also knew that he did kind of look like a dork, and she was not happy about that.

  The Glavines are a religious family. Both Tom and Chris went to church with their parents every Sunday as kids and try to make it to church every Sunday they can, given Tom’s travel schedule eight months a year. Glavine is not one of those athletes who wears his religion on his sleeve. He will never say he won or lost a game because of God’s involvement. He talks about the role religion plays in his life only when asked about it, and even then he low-keys it.