Men at Work Page 4

  At 1:30 in the afternoon on a muggy Monday in Boston the Oakland Athletics are working on their data base. Tony La Russa and three aides are working in the small, spartan, dull beige office used by the visiting team’s manager, just off the larger but still cramped room where the team dresses. There will be a game tonight at Fenway Park and the pulse of the park is quickening. For the men in La Russa’s office the atmosphere is like that inside a cramped bunker during a day of desultory shelling at Verdun. The booming cannons echoing in the concrete cubicle are actually beer kegs being unloaded, none too gently, off trucks and onto Fenway’s concrete floors on the other side of the cubicle’s wall. The only soft sound is the splat of tobacco juice into paper cups. (Red Man and Skoal Bandits are the preferred “smokeless tobaccos.” David sunflower seeds and Bazooka bubble gum—not at the same time, please—are preferred by the younger generation.)

  That is not a sound often heard in the management suites of major corporations. However, it is important to remember that a baseball manager is management. True, he also is in the ranks with the players—labor, if you will—in the sense that he is an active participant in a competition for two to three hours on game days. But all day, every day, in season or out, he is management. If a baseball club were to develop the corporate culture comparable to that of, say, IBM—and the Athletics are the most likely to do that—it would, in the best business school manner, draw up a job description for the office of manager. It would find in that function five component parts.

  First, the manager participates in the formation of the 24-man roster (usually 10 pitchers and 14 players) and the farm system that develops talent, and the scouting and drafting of young players for that system. The club’s general manager and his associates can not do this without close consultation with the manager. They must consider his preferred style of play. And the manager must, in turn, be prepared to modify his preferences to fit available personnel.

  The manager’s second function is to prepare the 24 players to play. That involves giving them the relevant information about opponents. It also involves taking care that all 24 players are used often enough to maintain high morale and to have role players ready to replace injured regulars. Third, the manager must provide himself and his coaches with data useful for decisions during the game. Fourth, the manager must manage the players in game situations. The fifth function is far more important than it was even just a few years ago. It is to represent the team to the public, in countless press and broadcast interviews before each game and in a general debriefing and assessment immediately after each game. These interviews, which require equal and huge amounts of patience and delicacy, do much to define the team to its public. And they reverberate back into the clubhouse and affect morale.

  This day, in Boston, the manager is seated at a metal desk dreary enough to be government-issue. He is wearing socks but no shoes, jeans but no shirt and a frown of concentration. On the desk is The Elias Baseball Analyst. With La Russa are Lach, Dunc and Schu. Frenchy will filter in and out.

  Rene Lachemann, former manager of the Mariners and Brewers, is the 1988 Athletics’ first-base coach. He is halfway dressed in his uniform—pants and undershirt—and on his feet are shower clogs. He chews tobacco and swears constantly, almost musically, using the strongest language to express or embellish even the mildest thoughts and feelings. Dave Duncan, a former catcher, is the Athletics’ pitching coach. Tall, quiet and reserved, he speaks almost always in a tone high school teachers use to sedate unruly classes. Duncan has the demeanor of a deacon. He is in full uniform. So is Ron Schueler, whose official title is Special Assistant to the Vice President, Baseball Operations. Schueler is a jack of many trades and a master of one of baseball’s modern trades, that of advance scout. He has been in Boston watching the Boston Red Sox play the Mariners. Jim Lefebvre, a.k.a. Frenchy, is the third-base coach and hitting instructor. He was National League Rookie of the Year in 1965 with the Dodgers, and was named to the National League All-Star team in 1966. By 1973 he was playing in Japan. He is a man of overflowing ebullience. It sometimes seems that he can not negotiate a sentence without laughing somewhere in the course of it. Of course that is subject to change because during the 1988–89 off-season he was sentenced to serve as manager of the Seattle Mariners.

  As the beer kegs bounce and rumble on the other side of the wall, the sound in the room is the soft murmur of men swapping information. Duncan does most of the talking. La Russa listens, occasionally questioning or commenting, constantly writing notes in a tiny, meticulous shorthand. This meeting amounts to panning for gold, sifting mountains of mere gravel, one panful at a time, looking for glittering flakes. And finding them. “We threw him 20 first-pitch strikes last year and he swung at one of them,” says Duncan about one Red Sox hitter. “I have him with one ground ball to the left side and that was right down the third-base line.” “The three fastball hits he got last year were all up, two up in the middle, one on the inside part. He got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight outs on fastballs.” “Bankhead [a Seattle Mariners pitcher] struck him out yesterday with curves.” “He’s a good middle-breaking-pitch hitter—that’s his bat speed.” “Last year he was trying to go the other way—inside out—with runners on base.” “In for effect, out away.” “Mac’s [Red Sox manager John McNamara] been pitching out.” “In sacrifice situations, they tell me, bunt the ball to Dewey [Red Sox first baseman Dwight Evans] because he can’t make that throw [back to first base].” “He’s showed bunt but doesn’t bunt.” “In any kind of RBI situation, first pitch he’s hacking.” The Athletics think they have the sign second baseman Marty Barrett uses to put on a pickoff play. “And [catcher Rick] Cerone and [third baseman Wade] Boggs have a [pickoff] play. They just throw a fastball away and Cerone comes up throwing. They got a guy at third the other day.” “He was trying to hit Bankhead to right-center.” “Book him.” (That means, pitch him “by The Book,” which is high and in with fastballs and low and away with breaking balls.)

  The meeting is relaxed, quiet, low-key and with little nonsense. It is a steady compilation of small decisions about defensive positioning (“… second base two strikes to pull… shortstop in the hole… right fielder toward the line… third baseman straight…”) that will be dispensed to the team in a meeting on defense in about three hours. This is what that meeting sounded like:

  DUNCAN: “Walter [Weiss]. The Hriniak approach to hitting. You see consistencies in that, right? The guys that practice his method of hitting, basically, are looking down and out over the plate. Most of those guys are vulnerable to down and in, more so than guys with a conventional approach to hitting.* Another thing about this club is that they are aggressive, swinging early in the count.”

  LACHEMANN: “With the exception of Boggs.”

  DUNCAN: “A lot of their young guys are up there hacking, so make quality pitches early in the count. If you make good pitches early in the count you can get them out without throwing a lot of pitches to them and getting them to hit your pitches. Burks. He’s a bad breaking-ball hitter. He’s a dead high fastball hitter. You can jam him, get in on him good with fastballs, you can go down and away with fastballs. Keep it down, throw him a lot of off-speed pitches.”

  RON HASSEY, formerly of the White Sox, who is the Athletics’ catcher tonight: “I remember him going deep [hitting a home run] when I was with Chicago, with a fastball.”

  DUNCAN : “The fastball to him is basically a purpose pitch [that is, not meant to be hit but rather to set up another pitch].”

  On and on and on it goes. Barrett, says Duncan, is a “guess hitter” so change the pattern of pitches. Lachemann warns Hassey, “Don’t let him peek on you,” meaning that Lachemann thinks Barrett likes to sneak looks back at the catcher giving the signs, or at least location. Lachemann says, “Schu says he’s hot.” So jam him inside, but the only pitch he can hit off The Wall (the Green Monster, Fenway Park’s left-field wall) is an inside pitch that misses a bit out over the plate.
Hassey says, yes, when Barrett closes his stance it means he wants to shoot the ball the other way. But Barrett knows teams are pitching him inside so he’s opening up and hitting down the left-field line. With Boggs, take it for granted until late in the game or an RBI situation that he will take the first strike. So get the first strike with a fastball down the middle. Evans is a Hriniak protégé, looking for thigh-high out and away. Go by The Book: hard stuff up and in, keep the breaking stuff down and use them early in the count. On Greenwell, anything you do inside has got to be off the plate or it is going to be out of the park. Hassey says, let’s get the first strike with a breaking ball, then use the fork ball and mix the fastball in and out. When he starts diving for the outside pitch, bust him inside. Cerone is hot, swinging at a lot of first pitches. But his bat speed right now is slow, so he might not be able to get around on fastballs.

  Jim Lefebvre, talking to the hitters about Red Sox pitchers, says Jeff Sellers has not pitched for ten days and has been erratic even when pitching regularly. He will give up walks “so be a professional hitter—make him throw strikes.” Lefebvre asks Don Baylor, formerly with the Red Sox, if he can add anything. He can: “He’s [Sellers] 3-and-2 on every hitter who goes up there. One night he was 3-and-2 on nine hitters. His fastball sails, almost like a cutter. He doesn’t know why, whether he’s holding the ball cross-seams or whatever.” (A cut fastball is not, as the name might seem to suggest, a scuffed ball. Rather, it is a semi-slider, a fastball that runs because the pitcher “cuts” his delivery, turning his wrist a bit to pull down through the ball when releasing it.) And, Baylor adds, reliever Dennis Lamp’s slider is not quite up to the name. It is a “slurve.” He is throwing a lot of four-seam fastballs. (A four-seamer is gripped in such a way that it comes out of the hand rotating so that four seams instead of just two are spinning into the air that piles up in front of the ball. This gives maximum motion to the ball.) Baylor continues on Lamp. “He’s been called for four balks. Run on him.”

  Lefebvre mentions that Red Sox reliever Bob Stanley is still living down the wild pitch he threw in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series. “He faced one hitter yesterday and 33,000 people booed him.” Anyone know pitcher John Trautwein? Walt Weiss says he faced him last year in Triple-A ball. Watch his backdoor slider (that is a slider that starts outside and slices in over the outside corner of the plate). Lefebvre warns the team to be “alive when on third. Cerone has a new pickoff move with Boggs.” Duncan reminds his relief pitchers that Brady Anderson, like most Hriniak-influenced hitters, likes to dive out for the down-and-away pitch, so he is vulnerable to the down-and-in pitch. Barrett flashes the pitch signs—fastball or breaking ball—to the Red Sox outfielders and it is possible for someone in the Athletics’ bull pen to read Barrett’s signs and relay them—by, say, crossing or uncrossing his arms—to the bench or batter.

  There is more, much more, but you get the picture. It is a pointillist painting, lots of dots of information resulting in a filled canvas, a portrait of the Red Sox. The proper way to view a pointillist painting is to stand back far enough to permit your eyes to see the points of color blend into forms with sharp lines and clear shades and shadings. Standing back is what the manager and his coaches do before they step onto the field.

  Usually the Athletics’ bus leaves the hotel heading for the park at 5:00 P.M., but this is the first game of the first series of the season with the Red Sox, so the middle infielders and center fielders have come to the park early for a series of meetings. The first meeting is about what La Russa considers the first order of business: “How to get guys out.” Does that mean how to pitch to them? Not really. It means, primarily, defensive positioning. (As we shall see when it is Cal Ripken’s turn to speak, pitching and defensive positioning are parts of a single piece of music written as a duet. No soloist can play baseball properly.) With players seated on a tatty couch, folding chairs and the floor, Duncan calls the meeting to order.

  DUNCAN: “Burks. Right-handed hitter. Third base, we play him straight. Shortstop, we play him to pull. Second baseman will be up the middle until there’s two strikes on him and then we’ll move back to straightaway. [With two strikes, Burks will be more tentative, more defensive, less free-swinging, with a more compact stroke.] First base will be slightly off the line. Shortstop, stay in the hole with two strikes. Left field, we play him straight. Center field, we play him to the left-field side, right fielder plays him straight.”

  LEFEBVRE INTERRUPTS: “He’s a stolen base threat.”

  A PLAYER: “Does he steal third?” The answer is yes. ANOTHER PLAYER ASKS: “Will he bunt?” The consensus is “both ways,” meaning first- and third-base lines.

  DUNCAN: “Barrett, straight at third. Shortstop is going to play Barrett a couple of steps up the middle. Second base is going to play him straight. First base about a step off the line.”

  LACHEMANN INTERRUPTS: “Second base be alive with a runner on first base and less than two outs.”

  DUNCAN ELABORATES: “He’ll try to shoot the ball that way. Be ready to go into the hole.”

  A PLAYER: “Doesn’t he hit most of the balls in the air that way?”

  DUNCAN: “He does. Outfield. We’re going to shade the left fielder toward left-center. Center fielder is going to be on the right-field side of straightaway. The right fielder is going to be straight.”

  LA RUSSA: “He’s a hit-and-run threat but you have a tough call playing second because of Burks and the stolen base threat. Who is covering and how quickly do you leave?” (Barrett is a right-hander, and normally in a stealing situation with a right-hander up the second baseman would cover. But Barrett likes to “shoot the ball” through the hole between second and first with the first baseman holding the runner on, so the second baseman should not leave his station too soon.)

  DUNCAN: “Boggs: Third base is off the line. Shortstop and second base both, we’re going to pinch the middle [that is, move the shortstop to his left and the second baseman to his right, each closer to the imaginary line that bisects the diamond]. First baseman straight. In the outfield, left fielder straight, center fielder to the left-field side. Right fielder is going to play slightly toward center field. Evans: Straight all the way around the infield. Straight in left. Center, barely off straightaway to the left-field side. The right fielder will shade just a little to right-center. Greenwell: Left-handed hitter. Straight at third. To the middle strong at shortstop on Greenwell. Not a shift but a strong to the middle. Second base play him a step to pull. First base is going to be straight on him. So Walter [Weiss, shortstop], you just have to get strong to the middle on him. And a slight pull at second base. Horn: Left-handed hitter. All right, we’re going to shift on him. Third base off the line. Walter, you get directly behind second base. Second base will be playing normal pull. First base straight pull.”

  A PLAYER: “What position does he play?”

  LACHEMANN: “He’s a fucking DH. He don’t have no fucking position. Big guy.”

  DUNCAN: “In the outfield we’re going to give him the left-field line. The center fielder is going to be about five steps over into right-center. And the right fielder will play a straight pull. Is that right, Hendu? [Dave Henderson, who played with the Red Sox for several seasons, nods.] Rice: We’re off the line at third and first. And we’re straightaway at the middle infield positions. We’re just kind of crimping the hole a little bit on him. Anderson: Left-handed hitter. Third baseman is going to play off the line, just a little bit, even with the bag. Shortstop will play a step up the middle, second base straight, first baseman straight. In the outfield we’re straight, on the right-field side.”

  A PLAYER: “Will he bunt?”

  ANOTHER PLAYER: “Yeah. He was their leadoff man when Burks was down.”

  A THIRD PLAYER: “Who do they like to hit-and-run with?”

  LACHEMANN: “Last year I got Barrett on tape—I don’t know if he’s still doing the same thing—put on his own hit-and-run. He’d rub the end of the bat, that t
ells the runner on first.”

  HENDERSON: “That’s what I had with him.”

  A PLAYER: “He won’t count on you [Henderson] remembering.” (General laughter.)

  DUNCAN: “Benzinger: Switch-hitter, hitting left-handed. Off the line at third. How strong in the middle do you think we ought to play him? Fairly strong up the middle?”

  HENDERSON: “Up the middle to pull. Not like a Greenwell.”

  DUNCAN: “Two or three steps to the middle. Slight pull at second base. Straight at first. Bunch the outfield and play him on the right-field side. Play him just the opposite of hitting right-handed.”

  LACHEMANN: “You guys out there in center field, you gotta be backing up hits off the fucking Wall all the fucking time. If you go back to the fucking Wall, the other guy’s gotta come over and help you.”

  HENDERSON: “You’ve got to make a decision early. If you’re going for the ball, go for it so the other guy can tail off [that is, play a carom off The Wall if the ball is not caught].”

  Some bits of information tossed about in these meetings this day concerned how the Red Sox played the previous few days against the Mariners. These bits came from Ron Schueler. As the team’s advance scout, he sees the team that the Athletics will play next, or a team the Athletics will play soon. An advance scout reports back to the manager by telephone or in writing or, as in this case, in person. His subject is the upcoming opponent’s tendencies. Advance scouts are paid to be tendency-prone. Such a scout is a sort of spy, but he is quite open about it. In fact, there is a nice camaraderie among such intelligence agents as they sit behind the screen behind home plate in every major league park. They are armed with stopwatches to time pitchers’ and catchers’ release times (we shall deal with this shortly) and batters’ times running to first base. They also have charts and, sometimes, radar guns to time the velocity of pitches. The lap-top computer, the fax machine and Federal Express might all have been invented for advance scouts. All these modern marvels are used by them.