Cliff Lee was across the room from Halladay’s locker, which used to house Pat Burrell, and then Matt Stairs. Lee reclined in his chair, playing on his iPad, a popular way to kill time in the clubhouse. In 2003, hunting magazines filled the clubhouse at Veterans Stadium with outdoorsmen Jim Thome, Turk Wendell, Rheal Cormier, and Brandon Duckworth on the roster. In 2005, players filled down times with Sudoku puzzles. In 2007, they had PlayStation Portables, and linked up to play first-person shooters on cross-country flights.
For the 2011 season, it was Words with Friends or Angry Birds.
Lee glanced at Halladay, whose head remained buried in his locker. He was excited to watch the ace of the aces pitch.
“He knows what he’s doin’,” he said.
Instructions for the pregame festivities hung on a wall in the middle of the clubhouse. Above the instructions, two clubhouse TVs showed video of Astros pitcher Brett Myers, who would pitch against Halladay in the season opener. One TV showed video of Myers facing right-handed hitters; the other showed him facing left-handed hitters.
Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days”—with its sentimental reference to baseball—played over the clubhouse speakers, and the Boss’ words sounded particularly meaningful on the first day of the new season.
It felt like a personal message to the Phillies, who would try to win their fifth-consecutive National League East championship and—if all went well—a second World Series in four years. The Phillies know they must take advantage while they can because the team is getting older and the window of opportunity won’t stay open forever. They don’t want to look back on this season with regrets.
Springsteen stepped aside for Led Zeppelin as Halladay took the mound in front of a huge crowd and threw his warm-up pitches before the top of the first inning.
Of course, Halladay did not hear the music. He never does. Hours before his first start at Citizens Bank Park in 2010, Phillies Manager of Video Services Kevin Camiscioli asked Halladay what warm-up music he wanted. This is an important decision to many pitchers and hitters, but Halladay told Camiscioli that he could not care less because he wouldn’t hear it anyway. Nothing comes between him and his focus on the game. With the decision in his hands, Camiscioli told Phillies Music Director Mark Wyatt to play some Led Zeppelin. Wyatt, who sits in the Phanavision booth in the second deck along the first-base line, chose the combination of “Moby Dick” and “Good Times Bad Times.” Those two songs have played every time Halladay has pitched in Philadelphia.
RESPECT AMONG RIVALS
The Atlanta Braves’ rotations of the 1990s are regarded as the best in history, with three Hall of Fame-caliber pitchers in their prime in Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, and quality fourth starters like Steve Avery, Denny Neagle, and Kevin Millwood. The 2011 Phillies had the talent to compete with those rotations, a fact that wasn’t lost on Braves President John Schuerholz and former Braves Pitching Coach Leo Mazzone, both of whom were on the field before games against the Phillies at Turner Field in April.
“They have the opportunity to be as good as any rotation in the history of the game for a short period of time,” Mazzone said. “When you’re talking about the guys in Atlanta, you’re talking about three Hall of Famers. Now what I’m saying, for a year or two—or the window that they have—they have the opportunity to be as good as anybody. But nobody will ever be able to be as good as the Braves’ rotations because of the longevity of it.”
Schuerholz, who was Atlanta’s general manager in the 1990s, saw plenty of similarities between the Braves and the Phillies, but it stood out how the Braves quietly stole Maddux from the Yankees like the Phillies quietly stole Lee from the Yankees.
“We were always stealth,” Schuerholz said. “No one ever heard or knew by rumor or innuendo or by leak what we were thinking. My view about that as a general manager is, the more people who know what we are thinking of doing—or even thinking—it disadvantages us as an organization from getting the best job done. We keep this information to ourselves. It’s very proprietary and very confidential. If it leaks out, we are hurt. You may make yourself a hero telling somebody an inside story, but you’re hurting us. And don’t let me find that out.”
Schuerholz closed his inner circle; Ruben Amaro Jr. closed his. Amaro shared Schuerholz’s insistence for secrecy to the point he said he would lie if he believes it will protect the deal he is working on. And why would Schuerholz need more opinions on Maddux anyway?
“Hell, we knew Greg was one of the greatest pitchers to ever take the mound,” Schuerholz said.
The Braves won 14 consecutive division championships from 1991 to 2005. The Phillies hoped to extend their run to five in 2011.
“I’ve compared the Phillies of today to the Braves of the nineties,” Schuerholz said. “We worked it. We worked it for fifteen years. They’ve got a nice run going.”
Halladay pitched well against the Astros, although he certainly had pitched better. He allowed five hits and one run, and struck out six in six innings as the Astros ran up his pitch count to force him from the game earlier than expected. But off-season concerns about an aging and impotent offense showed through the first eight innings. Myers allowed just three hits and one earned run in seven innings as the Astros carried a 4-2 lead into the bottom of the ninth. The Phillies’ willingness to swing early in the count had Myers shaking his head the next day. He could not throw his curveball for a strike, but the Phillies never figured that out because they kept swinging early.
Anxiety filled Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies were without Chase Utley, who was injured, and Jayson Werth, who was in Washington after signing a seven-year, $126-million contract with the Washington Nationals. The Phils had invested more than $175 million in payroll, but the thought occurred to the thousands of fans in the stands that a bad offense could torpedo the season, no matter how well The Rotation pitched.
One fan mocked the Phillies as they jogged off the field before their final at-bat in the ninth.
“You can’t hit American Legion pitching!”
Rollins chuckled.
“Maybe it inspired us,” he said.
The Phillies strung together six singles—the final one coming from John Mayberry Jr.—to score three runs against Astros closer Brandon Lyon to win the game, 5-4.
Whew.
Opening Day is just one game in a six-month, 162-game season, but disaster had been avoided in Philadelphia. A 0-1 start in Philly might as well be a 0-20 start. Nobody knew that better than Rollins, Philadelphia’s longest-tenured professional athlete.
“It wouldn’t have been received well, especially with Roy on the mound and not being able to come up with a victory,” he said. “That was just desire to win. Nobody wanted to make that last out.”
The Phillies kept their fans happy one more day.
“Games like today’s go to show you we’re going to have to win as a team all year,” Halladay said. “As much as they talk about our pitching, we’re going to have to play as a team if we want to achieve our goals. This was a good example of that.”
If anybody questioned why Sports Illustrated positioned Cliff Lee in the middle of its Phillies rotation cover shot, they got the answer when Lee left the bullpen following his warm-up pitches before his first start of the season the next night.
Fans stood and cheered his entire walk from the bullpen to the dugout. No Phillies player had received an ovation like that since Jim Thome, when he played his first game at Veterans Stadium in 2003. Thome symbolized a rebirth of baseball in Philadelphia; Lee symbolized the Phillies’ place among baseball’s elite. Fans showed their love and appreciation. They cheered his jog to the mound in the top of the first inning. They cheered his first at-bat, even though he struck out. They cheered him after every inning, after each of his 11 strikeouts, and after he executed a sacrifice bunt to set up a two-run rally in the fourth inning of a 9-4 victory over Houston. He allowed four hits, three runs, and no walks in seven innings.
Lee left the
ballpark that night feeling he made the right choice returning to Philadelphia.
“I could definitely hear the volume when I was walking in,” he said. “It’s louder just because of the circumstances, obviously, getting a chance to come back. These fans have a knack for getting a little louder than everyone else. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s alcohol-induced or what.”
Two starts into the season, The Rotation was 2-0.
Carlos Ruiz walked into the trainer’s room following Lee’s performance and a teammate asked him how much fun he had catching Halladay and Lee in consecutive games.
“Oh, my God,” he said. “I can’t believe it. And tomorrow we’ve got Roy.”
Roy Oswalt allowed two runs in six innings in a 7-3 victory over the Astros as the Phillies started 3-0.
“Chooch, how much fun was that?” Danys Baez asked Ruiz.
“Oh, man,” he said. “And then we’ve got Cole Hamels.”
But Hamels’ season debut wasn’t in line with those of the first three aces. He allowed six runs in just 2⅔ innings against the rival New York Mets, and fans showered him with boos as he walked off the mound in the third inning of a 7-1 loss. The Rotation would not be perfect. That wasn’t surprising. Perfection is hard to come by in pro sports. What was surprising was the lack of patience fans had for Hamels, a 2008 World Series hero who had a strong season in 2010.
Toughened by five seasons in Philadelphia, Hamels kept the boos in perspective. He shrugged them off and threw seven scoreless innings in his next start against the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field on April 10.
“I’ve been booed many a time,” said Hamels, who acknowledged he once booed Adam Eaton while watching him pitch for his hometown Padres. “If you kind of get that response, it’s the understanding that people know that you’re good. They expect you to do well and when you don’t, they’re disappointed, just like anybody. It’s human nature.”
The Phillies won the early-season series against the Braves, the team that figured to be their top challenger in the National League East. Music thumped over the clubhouse speakers as the team packed its bags and moved on for a three-game series in Washington at Nationals Park, where they would see former teammate Jayson Werth in a Nationals uniform for the first time.
Music blasts following every Phillies victory, which makes the silence following a loss a startling contrast.
Jimmy Rollins is the music man in the Phillies’ clubhouse. He appeared in MC Hammer videos while growing up in Alameda, California. He started the Jimmy Rollins Entertainment Group, through which he got involved in the music business. He owns a share of the publishing rights to songs like Snoop Dogg’s “Sexual Eruption” and Sean Kingston and Justin Bieber’s “Eenie Meenie.” Rollins takes music seriously, but in previous seasons he passed the postgame music responsibilities to Werth.
LMFAO’s “I’m In Miami Bitch” became a theme song of sorts for the 2008 Phillies, playing following every victory, although not everybody caught on. Late in the season in Atlanta, former Phillies left fielder Pat Burrell’s ears perked up as he finally listened to the lyrics.
“Is this song saying what I think it’s saying?” Burrell asked.
Yes, it is.
“Who is this?” he asked.
LMFAO.
“LMFAO? What does that mean?” Burrell asked, furrowing his brow as he tried to come up with an answer.
“Leave me the fuck alone?” he guessed, with a perplexed look on his face.
His answer drew a couple chuckles, partly because he got it wrong—it’s Laughing My Fucking Ass Off—and partly because the answer fit his personality. Burrell was a good teammate and treated people directly involved with the team—players, coaches, the manager, and clubhouse attendants—well. But he had little use for anybody else, especially the media.
The Lonely Island’s “I’m On a Boat” was the 2009 theme song, which Rollins couldn’t stand. But Werth was the DJ, so it stayed.
“We had some anthems over the course of four years,” Werth said. “It was more just to give a vibe and get everybody on the same page. Keep it fresh. Keep it new. If you’re in a little lull and you’re not playing good, the music’s got to go. It’s never our fault. It’s always the music’s fault.”
Players get tired during the season. They get down. They get angry. Werth sandwiched absurd songs like “I’m In Miami Bitch” between legitimate rap and hip-hop for a reason.
They kept things loose.
Baseball lifers like to say pennants cannot be won in April, but they can be lost. A bad start can be a killer. Every bloated ERA and subterranean batting average is magnified. Players start to press, fans start to boo, and the next thing a team knows it is July, it’s buried in the standings, and its general manager is trading its star pitcher in a fire sale.
Phillies General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said in spring training the Boston Red Sox were the best team in baseball, but the Red Sox started the season 0-6. The Tampa Bay Rays won the American League East in 2010, but also started 0-6. Red Sox fans jammed the panic button. (The small handful of Rays fans didn’t even notice, and continued eating their grouper sandwiches at Frenchy’s.)
The Phillies started the season 15-6 for the best record in baseball. They were winning as everybody expected, but it often didn’t feel that way. It seemed like they were catching too many breaks and the pendulum eventually would swing the other way. They swept the San Diego Padres in a four-game series starting on April 21 at PETCO Park, but the team had scored four or fewer runs in 13 consecutive games. Manager Charlie Manuel got more and more frustrated with every runner left on base and every ball popped up in the infield with a runner on third.
Manuel’s in-game hunches backfired, too, putting him in a sour mood. He chose right-handed John Mayberry Jr. to pinch-hit against Nationals right-hander Livan Hernandez with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh inning on April 12 at Nationals Park. Manuel typically would have had left-handed Ross Gload hit in that spot, but Manuel chose Mayberry because he thought he could hit a grand slam based on the way the wind was blowing out to left.
Sabermetricians’ collective heads exploded with that reasoning.
Mayberry struck out swinging and the Phillies lost the game, 7-4.
“I knew when he went up there somebody was going to say something about it,” Manuel said after the game. “That’s fine, you know?”
Manuel sounded annoyed. He was.
He got more agitated when questioned about a pitching decision on April 15 in a 4-3 loss to the Florida Marlins. The Marlins had the bases loaded and one out in the seventh inning when they sent lefty-swinging Greg Dobbs to pinch-hit against Phillies right-hander Danys Baez, who had just issued a walk and a single. The Phillies had left-hander Antonio Bastardo warmed up and ready in the bullpen, but Manuel stuck with Baez. Dobbs singled to score two runs to give the Marlins a one-run lead. Manuel said after the game he let Baez pitch because if he had brought in Bastardo, the Marlins would have countered with right-handed hitter Wes Helms.
Most would have chosen Bastardo vs. Helms over Baez vs. Dobbs.
Managers make thousands of calls and moves in a season. Some work. Some don’t. Sometimes the player executes. Sometimes he doesn’t. It’s all part of a game played by humans, not robots, and sometimes it calls for a sense of humor.
“When we go real good, I’m the pitching coach,” Manuel joked later in the month. “When we go bad, [Rich] Dubee is. Same with hitting. When we get twenty hits, I’m the hitting coach.”
Manuel never joked about being a doctor or trainer. Injuries torture him because he cannot manage them. If a pitcher struggled, he could pull him. If a hitter struggled, he could sit him on the bench for a few games. But injuries? He just had to wait for his players to get healthy. With Chase Utley and Brad Lidge already on the disabled list, the Phils got another scare on April 15, when Roy Oswalt left the game with a strained back. It was an alarming sight, watching one of the four aces leave the
mound after throwing a few warm-up pitches in the top of the seventh inning. Oswalt downplayed it after the game, but he had a history of back problems, spending time on the disabled list in 2006 and 2009 because of them.
“This is totally different,” Oswalt insisted. “This is nothing like that. This is middle back. It’s not really lower back. This is middle. I felt like I could have gotten through the seventh, but I didn’t want to go out there, get in trouble, and then have to bring somebody in to clean up the mess.”
Oswalt said he expected to make his next start, but after finishing interviews with reporters, he gingerly walked away, favoring his back.
It certainly looked more serious than he made it seem, which was a reason to be concerned. Injuries seemed to be the only thing that could derail The Rotation.
Other players started dropping. J. C Romero strained a calf muscle. Jose Contreras went on the disabled list with an injured elbow. He had appeared in five games in seven days in late April, which had reporters asking Manuel if he had overused the 39-year-old Cuban. Manuel angrily defended himself before a game in Arizona.
A sore back wasn’t the only thing that plagued Oswalt early in the season. He left the team following a poor start in Arizona on April 26, when he learned that a series of tornadoes had torn through his home area in Mississippi. Some speculated that Oswalt’s head might not have been in the game, considering a tornado had destroyed his parents’ home the previous year. But Oswalt’s fastball had lacked its normal zip in his two starts since he’d strained his back against the Marlins, indicating that it was indeed an issue.
“I’m a little concerned,” Manuel said of Oswalt’s health. “But we’ll see what happens.”
Nobody knew when Oswalt would be back.
The injuries and absences weighed on Manuel, but the team’s offensive struggles ate at him most. From April 10 to April 27, the Phillies hit .216, with a .613 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. Their 3.25 runs per game in that 16-game stretch ranked second-to-last in the National League.
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