Napoleon. No joke. Napoleon believed that every battle tended, for reasons of its own, to resolve itself into immobile, equal positions; he believed, in essence, in the law of Competitive Balance as applied to a battle. So on the day of a battle he would take two or three regiments of crack troops, and sequester them a distance from the shooting, eating and sleeping and trying to stay comfortable. Over the course of a day or several days, the troops in the field would take positions and lose them and retake and relose them, growing ever more and more weary, their provisions in shorter and shorter supply, and their positions ever more and more inflexible. Finally, at a key moment in the battle, with everyone else in the field barely able to stand, he would release into the fray a few hundred fresh and alert troops, riding fresh horses and with every piece of their equipment in good repair, attacking the enemy at his most vulnerable spot. He did this many times and with devastating effect—and if that’s not relief pitching, I don’t know what is.
Right. And Wellington won at Waterloo because he had what every team needs, a closer. His closer was Blucher’s Prussians.
The relief pitcher originally was a rarity. He was called the “change” because before 1891 substitutions from the bench were permitted only in cases of injuries. When a new pitcher was needed, he came to the mound (actually, the “pitcher’s box” as it then was) from another position, and the tuckered-out pitcher went somewhere else on the field. In 1904 the Red Sox played 154 games and Red Sox pitchers had 148 complete games. The bull pen had a six-game season, which means there really was no bull pen. In 1905 the Chicago Cubs’ pitchers had 133 complete games. However, early in the century other clubs began to follow John McGraw’s example by pressing starting pitchers into service as relievers. The Cubs, whose complete games plunged from 133 in 1905 to 99 in 1910, used Hall of Famer Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown in relief 44 times between 1908 and 1910, years in which he was averaging 32 starts.
The practice of using starters, including stars, as relievers was common for many decades. In 1930 and 1931 Lefty Grove relieved in 29 games. While Dizzy Dean won 30 games in 1934 he also relieved in 17. On the last day of the 1949 season George Kell of the Tigers edged out Ted Williams for the batting title, finishing at .342911 to Williams’s .342756. Kell had to get his last two hits off a Cleveland pitcher working in relief: Bob Feller. In fact, 86 of Feller’s 570 career appearances were in relief. Early Wynn relieved 79 times, Whitey Ford relieved 60 times.
The first real reliever, meaning the first man who came to the park expecting to make his living by entering late into many games, was the euphoniously named Firpo Marberry of the Senators. As Walter Johnson’s career came to a close, Marberry came in to close many of the great man’s games. In 1926 Marberry became the first pitcher to get 20 saves. (In 1965 the Cubs’ Ted Abernathy became the first reliever to record 30 or more saves in a season. Three pitchers did that in the 1960s. In the 1970s there were fifteen 30-save seasons; in the 1980s, fifty-four.) But Marberry was a starter as well as a reliever. In 1924 he started 15 games but relieved in 35 as the Senators won their first pennant. In 1925, when they won again, he appeared in 55 games. In 1926 he appeared in 64. However, his career was a false dawn for relief pitching as a career. Relievers had to wait more than two decades for the flowering of the craft.
The first modern “closer” was Joe Page of the Yankees, who appeared in 278 games for the Yankees from 1944 through 1950. In 1950 Jim Konstanty appeared in 74 games for the pennant-winning “Whiz Kids” Phillies. In the 1950s, with Elroy Face, Lindy McDaniel and Hoyt Wilhelm, relief pitching became a recognized vocation. Relief pitchers have only recently begun receiving proper recognition. When Whitey Ford rose at the New York Baseball Writers banquet to receive the Cy Young Award for the 1961 season, he said he had a nine-minute speech but would deliver only seven minutes of it. He would let Luis Arroyo, who had saved so many of Ford’s wins, do the final two minutes. Through 1989 seven relief pitchers had won Cy Young awards: Willie (now Guillermo) Hernandez, Sparky Lyle and Rollie Fingers in the American League; and Mike Marshall, Bruce Sutter, Steve Bedrosian and Mark Davis in the National League. All these awards were won since 1974. Fingers and Hernandez also were MVPs. So was Jim Konstanty in 1950. Hoyt Wilhelm is the only relief pitcher in the Hall of Fame. He set a major league record by appearing in 1,070 games for 8 teams in 21 seasons from 1952 through 1972. (Kent Tekulve, who retired during the 1989 season, appeared in 1,050 games in 16 seasons.)
Whitey Herzog, the Missouri Valley epigrammatist, says, “A manager is as smart as his bull pen.” Expanding that thought, he says, “When I managed Kansas City I wasn’t too smart because I didn’t have a closer. I got smarter in St. Louis because I’ve had Bruce Sutter, Todd Worrell and Ken Dayley. Today managers start with their bull pens and work forward.” La Russa says that if he were putting together a pitching staff from scratch, his first priority would be a hard-throwing closer. It is, he says, easier to get to the fifth inning in good shape than it is to get the last six outs of a game. In 1988 La Russa’s Athletics set a major league record with 64 saves. In 1989 Oakland’s bull pen made a 19-game winner out of Storm Davis, who usually is out of gas, and the game, around the sixth inning. He won 19 games while pitching just 169 Va innings, probably the fewest ever by a pitcher who won so many. The star of the Athletics’ late-inning show has been Dennis Eckersley, the only pitcher to have both a 20-win season and a 45-save season. His 1988 numbers, though overshadowed by Hershiser’s, were almost as remarkable. In the 45 games in which he earned saves his ERA was 0.17, one earned run in 53.1 innings. (Baseball’s rule makers have tinkered with the definition of a “save” almost as much as the Supreme Court has tinkered with the meaning of “equal protection” of the laws. What should constitute a save is an inherently subjective judgment. For now the rule is this: To get credit for a save a relief pitcher must finish a game and satisfy one of the following three criteria. He must enter the game with the potential tieing run on base, or at bat, or on deck; or he must pitch one inning with a lead of not more than three runs; or he must pitch effectively, in the judgment of the official scorer, for at least three innings.)
When Sparky Anderson managed the Reds in the 1970s he became known as Captain Hook because of his frequent recourse to four relief pitchers to supplement his shaky starters. “What we were doing,” he remembers, “was reducing each game to six or seven innings. If I have the bull pen and you don’t, you have six or seven innings to beat me.” In 1977 the Padres set a major league record with 382 appearances by relievers. In 1987 two teams broke that record (Reds, 392; Phillies, 389). In 1981 some careless person said the Yankees had an “incredible” record of 51–3 in games in which they led going into the eighth inning. But Bill James found that the average record for American League teams leading after seven innings was 49–5. The Cleveland Indians, part of baseball’s Third World, were 42–3. And James found that the Yankees’ record was 0–41 when they were behind after seven. Again, most teams win about 90 percent of the games in which they are ahead going into the eighth inning. Teams with good bull pens win 95 percent.
Batters are given to complaining that no one ever had it so hard. Actually, today’s batters do not have some of the problems earlier batters had. For example, before there were lights for night baseball, back in the days when games took less time than they do now, many games started at 3:00 P.M. In the slanting light and shadows of the late innings, Lefty Grove’s fastball probably did indeed look, as one batter said, “like a flash of white sewing thread coming up at you.” However, the coming of the division of labor to the pitcher’s mound has made hitting harder. Speaking about the role of hard-throwing relief pitchers, Pete Rose, who can not stop picking on Ty Cobb, says, “If Ty Cobb had to hit off those guys, he might have batted .315.” Pete has a point. Consider 1930, which was 1968 turned inside out. In 1930 baseball finally did it. It went too far in favor of offense, even for the tastes of the most vulgar offense fanatics. In 1930 the National Leag
ue—that is right, the league—hit .303 and 43 National League players hit .300 or better. Thirty-two American Leaguers and three American League teams hit .300 or better. Was the ball juiced? Probably. And yet there were 1,099 complete games pitched during all that year of cannonading. Both leagues probably hit something like .340 in the fourth and fifth at bats against shell-shocked starters. Today most starters have their pitching arms in ice when relief pitchers put the game on ice.
Since it was first done in 1973, 33 relief pitchers have earned credits (wins or saves) in 50 percent or more of their teams’ wins. Peter Gammons notes that, leaving aside the strike-shortened 1981 season, only one team reached the World Series in the 1980s without having a reliever with at least 19 saves. That one team was the 1986 Red Sox, who lost games six and seven of the Series largely because of their bull pen. In 1986 the Twins lost 91 games and finished sixth in baseball’s weakest division. They hit .261 with 196 home runs. In 1987 they again hit .261, again with 196 home runs. Were they in a rut? No, in 1987 they were in the World Series, which they won. And some baseball people were prepared to say that the most important difference between the 1986 and 1987 Twins was the addition of one relief pitcher, Jeff Reardon, who came to the Twins in a trade and had 31 saves.
In 1901,87.3 percent of all games were completed by the starting pitcher. In 1988 only 14.8 were. In 1989 only 11.4 percent were. In the four seasons 1985–88, the Dodgers led the National League in complete games with 133. But by the time you got down the list to the fifth-highest total you were down to the Phillies’ 75. The top five National League teams had a four-year total of 478 complete games, an average of just under 24 a season. The difference the DH makes is apparent in the total for the top five American League teams: 643. In the decade from 1978 through 1987 the number of complete games declined 46 percent. In 1978 there were 22 pitchers who worked 250 or more innings. By 1987 the number was 13. In 1988 it was 11. In 1989 it was 7. The major league leader was Bret Saberhagen (262 Va).
The primary reason for this decline is the rise of relief pitching as a respected role in the day-by-day running of a team. And one reason for that rise is the memorable example of the 1980 Athletics. Manager Billy Martin took a talented staff of starters and ruined it with too much work. They had 94 complete games that year, almost twice the number of any other team in the league. By 1983 four of the five starters had sore arms and were out of the rotation.
However, by now there is something of a tradition of wearing out relievers instead of starters. Through 1988 only three relief pitchers had recorded at least 30 saves in four consecutive seasons. (Lee Smith, with the Cubs, 1984–87; Dan Quisenberry with the Royals, 1982–85; Jeff Reardon with the Expos and Twins, 1985–88. In 1989 Reardon became the first to save 30 or more five seasons in a row.) There are several reasons why it is not uncommon for a relief pitcher to go from hotshot to has-been, from (as one player put it) “Cy Young to sayonara.” One reason is the mental strain of relief pitching, most of which is done in high-pressure situations with the game on the line. Another reason is the physical wear and tear. The better a relief pitcher is, the more often a manager, living for the moment, is apt to use, and eventually abuse, him. Third, a relief pitcher, more than a starter, can get by relying on a particular pitch, such as Bruce Sutter’s fork ball, or even a quirky delivery, such as Dan Quisenberry’s severe sidearm. But when batters are given a second look in a game, the batters master the timing and motion of the pitch and pitcher. So managers tend to use such pitchers briefly but, and for that reason, often.
Jim Leyland was Gott’s manager. The pipe-smoking Leyland is a lean, fine-featured man with salt-and-pepper hair and mustache. When strong sunlight causes him to squint, the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes crinkle like those of a captain who has just stepped onto the conning tower of a submarine. The Pirates are on the low side in terms of complete games because, Leyland says, “We’ve got two real horses down there.” By “down there” he means the bull pen. The horses snorting and pawing the dirt were then Jeff Robinson and Jim Gott. “Sometimes—and I don’t mean this negatively—your real good short relievers, after they’ve established themselves, they save games on their reputations alone.” That is just one of the hard-to-quantify benefits. “There’s not enough said about the impact a short reliever has on the entire ball club. If you’ve got a guy down there who’s a stopper, it’s a big mental edge. When you bring him in your whole team picks up because they know the game is pretty much over. It makes them more on their toes defensively. They make plays they normally might not make because they know he’s going to be around the plate and save the game. There are so many edges when you’ve got that guy down there.” One of them is that a strong reliever also produces a ripple effect through a pitching staff, making the rest of the staff, and the rest of the team, better. The starters need not husband their energies quite as much as they might otherwise do. The batters feel less pressure to pile up big innings early.
One of the men whose task it was to control Gott was catcher Mike LaValliere, known as Spanky. LaValliere is built to be a catcher. The Pirates’ 1989 media guide says he stands 5 feet 10 inches. The media guide is fibbing. He is about 5 feet 7 and weighs 200 pounds. This human fire hydrant won a Gold Glove in 1987 when he had a .992 fielding percentage with just two passed balls in 867.1 innings and led the league in throwing out base runners (49 of 115 for a .426 percentage). In 1988 he was named to the Sporting News postseason all-star team. He has one of baseball’s drier wits. When asked if he tells Leyland when he thinks the starting pitcher is running out of gas, he responds, “More often than not the opposing hitters let us know. If we see the names on the backs of our outfielders too much, that’s a pretty good indication.” LaValliere adds, “With Jeff [Robinson] and Jim in the bull pen, I get more aggressive with the starting pitchers. I don’t go into a game thinking that I’ve got to throw some off-speed stuff so they’ll still have a little bit of a fastball in the eighth and ninth innings. With us, it’s basically to get ’em to the sixth.”
“My time,” says Gott, “is the eighth and ninth.” It sure is. In his first two full seasons as a closer (1987–88) he never pitched a three-inning stint. Short stints are not for artistry. The canvas is too small. Pitching at its most elegant is (in words Roger Angell used to salute Catfish Hunter) “a tapestry of deceit and experience and efficiency.” But that is not the way Gott does it. “Basically,” says LaValliere, “what Jim is going to do is throw his 95-mile-per-hour fastball and his 89-mile-per-hour slider. We’re not going to get tricky or try to fool anybody.” And LaValliere doesn’t worry about location. “As long as I can catch it and the hitter can reach it, that’s what we’re looking for. If Jim starts worrying about location, he’s not going to be effective.”
Still, Gott is not as, well, random as the relief pitcher of whom a teammate said, “He doesn’t throw to spots, he throws to continents.” But Gott’s “spot” is the strike zone. Gott says the hitters he least likes to face are “the Tony Gwynns of the world, the Tim Raineses, the contact hitters. With me coming straight at them, it’s just a matter of timing. The big guys, the power hitters, have bigger holes in their swings.” Gott is one power pitcher who has no trouble pitching inside. “They know that I like to pitch inside and that I’m not in a situation to throw at somebody because the last thing I want in short relief in a close game is to hit someone and put him on first.” Gott also throws what is being called “the pitch of the Eighties.” Baseball is a bit like New York society, which produces a “hostess of the decade” every year or so. The first “pitch of the Eighties” was the split-finger fastball. But the stately march of progress is ever onward, as is the struggle of pitchers against the fire-breathing dragon of offense. So the second “pitch of the Eighties” became—drumroll—the circle change. It is thrown with the arm motion of a fastball but is significantly slower. Furthermore, it tumbles out of the circle formed by thumb and forefinger, acquiring a rotation that causes it to run d
own and in (when thrown by a right-handed pitcher to a right-handed hitter). What Roger Craig has been to the split-finger fastball, Ray Miller is to the circle change.
Miller and Gott go together well, and they suit the city they found themselves in 1989, although each took a while in baseball to get there. Both Miller and Gott are no-frills people. They subscribe to the straight-ahead approach to their business. Like the Pirates, they are hard-core baseball.
The Pirates originally were called the Alleghenys. Imagine, a team named after some mountains that are, as mountains go, not much. (Could have been worse. The Brooklyn Dodgers once were the Bridegrooms.) Some franchises are strongly associated with particular parts of the game. When you think of the Dodgers you think of a tradition of pitching, particularly Koufax and Drysdale. When you think of the Pirates you think of hitting, from Willie Stargell and Roberto demente back through Ralph Kiner and the Waner brothers (Paul and Lloyd, Big Poison and Little Poison), Pie Traynor and Arky Vaughan and, most of all, the man Branch Rickey and some others say was the best player ever, Honus Wagner.
Pittsburgh’s hard-core baseball tradition is best seen far from Pittsburgh, in the Florida town where the Pirates train. A sign on the left-field fence says Bradenton is “the friendly city” and, for good measure, “a little bit of paradise.” Perhaps. But the best part of Spring Training in Bradenton is that it still has some of the scruffiness associated with life in what used to be baseball’s slow lane. More and more communities have cottoned on to the fact that Spring Training can be big business and have lured teams with posh training “complexes.” Crowds are so big in some places that there are ticket scalpers. Oh, well. All this is probably progress, but Bradenton’s McKechnie Field, located in the midst of the hum of ordinary commerce and living, should be preserved for the flavor of Spring Training before it became upscale.
Men at Work Page 20
