Men at Work Page 10
(At this point there was to have been a paragraph giving a particularly fascinating detail about La Russa’s use of another kind of pilfered information. However, as a condition of being given access to team meetings—a reasonable condition—and in order to allow La Russa to speak without inhibition in our many meetings, I had agreed to excise any detail that he might decide he did not want to see published. There were very few of these. But on the morning of October 27, 1989, the day the World Series resumed in San Francisco, he asked that I remove the paragraph that had been here. Because the detail being removed was such a telling illustration of his meticulousness, I put up a small, brief argument for keeping it in. It was a feeble argument and, considering the man I was trying to persuade, it was singularly dumb. “That detail makes you look good,” I said foolishly. He replied frostily, “The way a manager looks good is by winning games. That detail might cost me a run.” Case closed, as lawyers like La Russa say.)
It is best that managers not expect too much precision in a high-energy game with layers-within-layers of complexity. Tom Trebelhorn remembers learning the limits of managing when he was managing Rickey Henderson in Boise, Idaho. “I had Rickey when he was 17 years old. Of course I had him running on his own. All I had was a ‘stop’ sign for when I didn’t want him to go. But Rickey wanted the signs like everyone else. I said, ‘Rickey, that’s silly. We’ve worked on breaks and leads. What if you get on first and you want to run and I don’t give you the steal sign. What are you going to do?’ He said, ‘I’ll probably run.’ I said, ‘Well, okay, what if you get on first and I give you the steal sign and you don’t think it’s right and you don’t want to run, what’s that going to do? You probably won’t get a good jump and you’ll probably get thrown out and you should never be thrown out. I want you to feel it, I want you to taste it, smell it, get a good lead, get a good break, relax and go.’ But Rickey said no, everyone else gets on base, they get the signs, I think it’s neat, I want signs, too. I said okay, so we go over the signs: We’ve got take, bunt, hit-and-run, steal. And we’ve got a ‘takeoff’ sign, the one that erases—takes off—all signs. So Rickey gets on first, he looks over, I go through some signs, I finish with the takeoff. He steals second. Looks over for another sign. I go through most of the signs again, I don’t even come close to the steal sign. I finish by wiping everything off with the takeoff sign. He steals third. Later I say, ‘Rickey, this is ridiculous. You want the signs but you don’t know them.’ He says, ‘I know the signs. You gave me the takeoff sign and I took off to second and I took off to third.’”
Trebelhorn, who will be 42 on Opening Day, 1990, is a manager like La Russa. A former high school teacher, he had a professional career batting average of .241 in five seasons, all in the minor leagues in places like Bend, Oregon; Walla Walla, Washington; Burlington, Iowa; Birmingham, Alabama; Lewiston, Idaho. He is an advocate of edgy baseball. “I’ll tell you what I like,” says Trebelhorn. “A Paul Molitor bunting for a base hit. A steal of second. A Jimmy Gantner take-it-with-you [a drag bunt for a base hit] to the right side getting Molitor over to third. A Robin Yount hard ground ball to the backhand side of the second baseman whose only play is to first, Paulie scores. I love that.” So, he says, do the fans. “Our fans have changed.” In 1982 the pennant-winning Brewers of Harvey Kuenn were called “Harvey’s Wall-bangers,” pounding out home runs, and fans flocked to see them. Today, Trebelhorn says, the fans write asking him to bunt more.
“Every club is a lot more active in trying to take the extra 90 feet,” Trebelhorn says. “Not necessarily by bunting but by good flow on the bases—being able to go first to third, second to home, with runners on base being able to read a pitch in the dirt.” Trebelhorn says that one of his slower players, Joey Meyer, “clogs up” the base paths. “One hundred and eighty feet, please—at least. If he hits a lot of singles and gets a lot of walks, he can’t be our DH because that causes problems. What do you do if he leads off the seventh inning of a tight game with a single? You’ve got to run for him. So you tie up the game and you’ve got his spot coming up again in the tenth. It sure would be nice to have a possible home run, but I’ve had to run for him.”
When Trebelhorn was managing in the minor leagues, even when his team was far behind he would have his team running, to create learning opportunities. And that policy won games. “If we were way behind and they played behind our runners, we ran. If you don’t want us to run, then hold us on. And we’re still going to run. In Fresno [California], when I was managing Modesto, we were behind 9–3 and they didn’t hold us on first. We stole second. They didn’t hold us close at second, we stole third. Hit a sacrifice fly, it’s 9–4. We get another guy on, they hold him on, we still steal second. Now the catcher is fuming. We steal third, he throws the ball into left field, it’s 9–5. We lose 9–5. After the game, the catcher says, ‘That’s really horseshit.’ I said, ‘If you’re catching tomorrow night, I’m going to show you what horseshit really is.’ The next night we went 15 for 15 stealing. Rickey Henderson stole 7 bases in the game. And we barely won the game, 11–9.”
In 1988 National League teams attempted an average of 2.49 steals per game. American League teams averaged 2.10 steals per game. National League teams averaged 1.85 steals, American League teams averaged 1.34. American League runners had a slightly higher success rate, 68 percent to 67.2 percent. In 1989 National League teams attempted 2.31, American League teams 2.04. National League teams stole 1.57, American League teams 1.40. Again the American League success rate was slightly better, 68.6 to 68.1. These numbers give only negligible support to the standard knock against the American League, which is that the league plays stand-around baseball—stand around and wait for big things to happen, things like three-run home runs. National League teams, so the argument goes, try harder to make things happen by hitting and running, stealing and generally using their legs. National League partisans insist that a team that uses its legs is also using its head. So-called “little-ball,” playing for one run at a time, and hence 90 feet at a time, requires a higher ratio of mind to muscle.
Ray Miller, who has coached in both leagues, says he has been at Wrigley Field when the wind was blowing out and the balls were flying out, and he has been there when the wind was blowing in and the balls that batters crushed died before reaching the wall. But in the American League there is Seattle’s Kingdome, Minnesota’s Metrodome, Fenway Park, Tiger Stadium, Arlington Stadium. “They’re all Wrigley Fields,” says Miller. He believes the bigger ballparks make for better baseball because there is less emphasis on “getting Godzilla to the plate” to hit a home run. There is, accordingly, more emphasis on getting one run at a time. Rick Dempsey, who now has caught in both leagues, believes that National League teams are more inclined to play for one run at a time. This is either a cause or an effect, or both, of there being more base-stealing talent in the National League. And that has something to do with there being more fields with artificial turf. “You can get a better jump and run faster on that stuff,” says Dempsey, the word “stuff” expressing his distaste for the stuff. And he believes National League catchers will, when facing a running situation, call for more fastballs than they otherwise would call.
One reason people think this is so about the National League is that they think it ought to be so. Six of 12 National League fields have artificial turf and only 4 of 14 American League fields do. Another reason why many people think there are pronounced differences between the brand of baseball played in the two leagues is that there used to be such differences. There were when Maury Wills and other Dodgers in the early and mid-1960s were winning by manufacturing a few runs and counting on Drysdale and Koufax to make do with a few. A third reason why the leagues are thought to have different personalities is that this disparages the American League as the dumb league. National League partisans say the American League asked for disparagement when it adopted the designated hitter rule, which allegedly diminishes the strategic decisions a manager can make.
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La Russa has managed only in the American League and therefore only with the DH. He does not feel it cramps his style or denies him scope for his talents. He is right.
The reason the American League has the DH can be stated simply. By 1972 American League attendance had fallen to 74 percent of National League attendance. Fans like offense. In 1973 the American League adopted the DH. One reason for retaining the DH is that it contributes to the public stock of harmless pleasure in the form of constant controversy.
I have tried to think through the DH controversy in the light of political philosophy, the queen of moral disciplines and the profoundest guide to the right way to live. I have gotten nowhere. Or to be more precise, I have gotten two places—to opposite conclusions. Let us at least try to bring orderliness to this controversy that is so disordered by passion. Let us begin by setting a scene that puts it in context. Consider the case of the laughing umpire.
The DH almost always bats for a pitcher. Because the National League did not adopt the rule, the designated hitter was permitted in the World Series only every other year. In 1986 Peter Ueberroth, baseball’s commissioner, made a Solomonic decision. The DH would be permitted in games played in the American League team’s park. The first game of the 1986 Series was played in the National League team’s park, Shea Stadium, so the Red Sox pitcher, Bruce Hurst, had to bat. It was his first at bat in eons. The spectacle was so ludicrous that the umpire laughed.
Think about that. Umpires are carved from granite and stuffed with microchips. They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be natural Republicans—dead to human feelings. Hurst struck out his first two trips to the plate. On his way to his third strikeout, Hurst said defiantly: “I’m serious!” And the umpire cracked up. Can something that causes such a collapse of decorum be in the national interest?
The three arguments against the DH are: Tradition opposes it, logic forbids it, and it is anti-intellectual because it diminishes strategy. All three arguments fail.
Tradition? The National League, which fancies itself too highfalutinly traditionalist for the DH, plays an awful lot of pinball “baseball” on plastic rugs spread on concrete in cavernous antiseptic new stadiums in Houston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Montreal and St. Louis. Besides, by now the DH has a lengthening tradition. If longevity sanctifies, the DH is semi-sanctified.
The logic-chopping argument against the DH is given by Dwight Gooden, pitcher and logician: “The DH is a tenth player. Softball has ten players. Baseball has nine players.” This attempt to win the argument by semantic fiat fails because… well, if the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, baseball is whatever the rules say it is. This argument makes me queasy, so I will tiptoe off the thin ice and go back to the accusation that the DH diminishes strategy.
The theory that the DH is a war against intellect, and makes baseball safe for slow-witted managers, is a weak reed on which to lean for support. The theory is that when pitchers must bat, managers must be Aristotles, deciding when to remove pitchers for pinch hitters or when to have pitchers bunt. But it is disproportionate to preserve such choices, which are usually obvious, at the cost of having pitchers—one-ninth of the batting order—cause umpires to laugh.
National League chauvinists make much of the fact that in their league, if the fifth hitter gets on base, the sixth hitter must move him over so the seventh hitter will have a chance to drive him in. Otherwise the opposing team will pitch around the eighth hitter to get to the pitcher. So there is more emphasis on scoring one run at a time. But in fact, National League baseball may be more uniform and routinized because the so-called strategy regarding when to pinch-hit for the pitcher, or have him bunt, is so banal. More nonpitchers bunt in the American League than in the National League. And American League teams differ more than National League teams in their use of sacrifices. In some ways the DH makes managing more difficult. Again, most pinch-hitting situations are obvious. What often is far from obvious is when to remove pitchers who never need to be removed to increase offense. That is an American League manager’s problem.
To the argument that the DH takes a lot of strategy out of managing, La Russa responds brusquely, “It definitely does not. The National League is a great propaganda league. ‘We’re the hard-throwing, running, let’s-go-get-’em league and the American League is…’ It’s not true.” Warming to his defense of the DH, he says that handling a pitching staff—perhaps a manager’s most important task—is tougher in the American League. “Every decision you make in the American League regarding your pitching staff is based solely on who you think should pitch to the next hitter, or in the next inning. In the National League you get certain times when the decision is taken right out of your hands.”
The best case for the DH is this: It represents that rarest of things, the triumph of evidence over ideology. The anti-DH ideology is that there should be no specialization in baseball, no division of labor: Everyone should play “the whole game.” That theory is obliterated by this fact: Specialization is a fact with or without the DH. Most pitchers only go through the motions at bat.
Bruce Hurst may be baseball’s worst batter, but few pitchers are even adequate batters and many are, strictly speaking, laughable. So without the DH, every ninth batter is unserious. A pitcher hitting is like a shortstop pitching. Baseball does not expect an unserious pitcher—say, the shortstop—to pitch to one of every nine batters on the opposing team.
National League managers occasionally put a pitcher at another position—right field, for example—for an out or two to enable that pitcher to stay in the game while another pitcher copes with a few batters. And a National League manager can dazzle us with a “double switch.” That is a lineup shuffle usually used late in a game with the pitcher due up in the next inning. The manager changes the pitcher and a position player at the same time. He puts the position player in the pitcher’s spot in the batting order so that player can bat in the next inning, and he puts the new pitcher in the batting order in the spot occupied by the player who has been replaced by the new position player.
The “double switch” is nifty, but it is not frequently used. And it is not sufficiently nifty to be a powerful argument against the DH. As Tom Boswell says, “Watching pitchers hit 50 times a week for the sake of two moments of strategy isn’t enough fun.” The obvious solution to the DH conundrum is to expunge pitchers from the batting order but not replace them with a DH. Just have an eight-man batting order. A compromise solution would include what can be called the Carman Codicil. When Phillies pitcher Don Carman got his second major league hit after about 80 at bats, he was promptly picked off second. “I had never been to second,” he said by way of extenuation. The compromise: Only witty pitchers should bat.
At precisely 8.00 A.M. on Wednesday, August 31, 1988, Tony La Russa strides into the coffee shop of a motel hard by the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. That is where the Athletics play and where La Russa spent the night. Nine hours earlier his team had beaten the Boston Red Sox and they will do so again in four hours. La Russa is wearing running shoes, blue sweat pants and a T-shirt the distinctive orange of a Wheaties cereal box. The front of the shirt is emblazoned with the Wheaties logo. When a fan who recognizes him compliments him on the shirt, La Russa replies, tersely, “Read the back.” The back says: “Commitment to Excellence.”
Last night the mighty Athletics, who play “bashball” and after hitting home runs bump forearms rather than merely swap high fives, beat the Red Sox, 1–0. The Red Sox pitcher was Roger Clemens, who struck out 9 in 6⅓ innings. When you are facing Clemens, you come to the park knowing you are going to scratch for runs. The Athletics scratched. The runner who scored, Carney Lansford, reached first on a single to left, stole second and went to third on a wild pitch. He scored on a ball that traveled 30 feet. It was a suicide squeeze bunt laid down by Glenn Hubbard, who stands 5 feet 7. Funny business, baseball. Wh
y is La Russa not laughing?
Laughing? He is not even eating. All he has ordered is a wedge of melon, and he is barely picking at it. His stomach is, he says, not exactly upset, but he is still too tense, too drained to eat. The squeeze was only the third attempted by the Athletics that season. It was the first that had worked. Going into the ninth, Dave Stewart had thrown 120 pitches. He struck out Ellis Burks on three pitches. He did the same to Todd Benzinger. He got an 0–2 count on Jim Rice, then missed with a borderline ball. Rice fouled off two, then struck out. It was, La Russa says, one of the most draining games of his career.
Today’s game starts at noon. No one will have had enough sleep. It is the last day in August. Tomorrow begins the month when, for the best baseball teams, life is real, life is earnest. Emotions are high, as are the stakes. Nerves are often raw and tempers are short. Last night one player on each team was hit by a pitch. It is time to think about the ethical and prudential problems of batters being thrown at, and of retaliating when it happens to your batters. La Russa’s policy is the result of much reflection. He has thought often and hard about his reputation as a man with a hard side.
“If a guy is hitting well against our club, I have never, ever told a pitcher, ‘Let’s go ahead and hit him.’ Some guys do that.” In 1987, when McGwire was setting a record for rookies with 49 home runs, he hit 2 home runs on a Saturday against the Red Sox and got hit on Sunday. Hit on the head. La Russa’s normally muted tone changes as disgust fills his voice when he speaks about the practice some teams have of saying, “This guy’s wearing us out—knock him on his ass.” Gary Gaetti, the Twins’ third baseman, embodies everything La Russa likes in a player—intelligence, intensity, hustle. Once when an Athletics pitcher deliberately hit Gaetti, at a time when Gaetti was blistering Athletics pitching, La Russa called the pitcher on the carpet and told him, “You’ll never pitch for me again if you do that again.” La Russa explains, “We can make him [a hot hitter] uncomfortable pitching in on his hands. But that is it.”