SoB '06, Part I

In Game 5 of the NLCS, Tom Glavine was doing what he’s done for so long: in the simplest terms, living on the edge. And he, of all the pitchers in the league, has made a damn good living out there.

Glavine has a proven knack of dangling a pitched baseball just a fraction of an inch (or two) in the gray netherworld of the official strike zone. A place sometimes just to the left and sometimes just to the right of the plate, a place which when tickled incites ecstasy in his supporters and agony in his detractors, a place where the home plate umpire, his grotesquely plump body painfully bruised by the regular pounding of wild relievers or untrustworthy receivers and with eyes permanently blinded due to an overindulgent diet of crudely fermented liquors and undercooked red meat, can only shrug his shoulders and smilingly suggest that, well, yeah, maybe it was close enough, what the hell, whaddaya say we call it a strike!

Yes, fans, just so you know what’s to follow, I’m talking Baseball again.

Many moons ago, owing to my passionate interest in The Game, I began offering my end of season observations to some close friends. I admit my views on this game, while sometimes mildly amusing, are usually just like Glavine’s best pitch.

But for a shallow interlude, due to my life enduring a phase only loosely described as O.B.E. (Overcome By Events), I tied that old swayback horse to the hitching post and left him standing there alone for a few years. Today I’m saddling ‘er back up, curiously wandering off into parts unknown, thus giving you this, my Status of Baseball 2006.

I’ve spent the last couple months or so reviewing the replays, deciphering many poorly written bar napkins, and occasionally even attending a few live games. I confide that in the past I’ve spent much time glorifying this or that aspect of The Game. Strangely, this season anyway, I find myself picking at everything that’s wrong with it. And there is so much to report on that account.

But, in order to do this a bit more properly than I usually do, I present to you the following summary from the beginning. This S.O.B ’06 will highlight the three topics of The Designated Hitter Rule, The Office of the Commissioner, and The Hall of Fame.

Without further adieu, let’s get back to the game.

In the bottom of the fourth inning of Game 5 of the NLCS, starter Tom Glavine was still pitching and his team, the NY Mets, were leading 2-0. The series was then tied 2-2, a bold result which compared how evenly matched these two teams really were better than any other remarkable standard. In any typical closely fought 7-game series, as the average student of the game knows, the winner of Game 5 would be in a very, very good position.

With one out and nobody on in bottom of the fourth, Glavine was on cruise control and Mets fans rejoiced. They could see where this was going. Old Tom had regularly fooled the ump and urged the last six Cardinals to swing at his marvelously just-off pitches, historically recorded in a pristine box score of 3 ground outs, 2 strike outs, and 1 pop fly.

Enter from stage left a man named Albert Pujols. Admired by all pasty-reddish fans near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri, the heroic Pujols was slowed by nagging injury but obviously there to viciously wield his wooden hammer, break Glavine’s monotonous trend and get the Cardinal’s offense back in the game.

But, as big Albert waddled to the plate, he didn’t just carry the endless hope of an entire city on his broad shoulders. He also had an ugly little secret in the Official Rules of Baseball hidden his back pocket.

The unspoken secret was that if Albert was in the American League instead of the National, he would not be the starting first baseman for his team. As a franchise player, his nagging injury may have made that far too risky. Instead, he would be the Designated Hitter and perhaps not playing in this NL city game at all.

In the AL, Boston’s Ortiz lead the league during the regular season with 54 HR, 137 RBI, was second in slugging percentage, third in runs scored, sixth in on base percentage.

In the NL, Pujols was the man with 49 HR, matched Ortiz with 137 RBI, was the league leader in SP and OBP, and fifth in total runs scored.

Ortiz is often argued as the Most Valuable Player in the AL. Pujols enjoys the same debate within the NL.

The only outstanding concern in the debate is that Ortiz is a DH. Pujols is not.

If the Red Sox played the Cards in St. Louis, one is left to wonder how Ortiz would find his way into the lineup. There is no doubt how Pujols would do it.

But this foolishness is not about the men involved. It’s about the rules.

In the bottom of the fourth, Pujols waited anxiously at the plate for Glavine to deliver, contorting a sore body into his familiar pre-swing ritual. Once released, he breathlessly unwound his torso, bat and ball all merged invisibly for a moment then a muddy white blur disappeared quickly into a red ocean beyond the left field wall. The house splashed in a wave of thundering cheers, the game was now 2-1 Mets, and the Cards were suddenly back in it.

Not visibly shaken, Glavine then encouraged Encarnacion to pop out. There were two outs and nervous Mets faithful everywhere believed the game was still in control.

But more was brewing and Rolen just stood there. He watched ball four and took first. Then a mean Edmonds reached out, placed his bat on another off the plate offering and poked a smart single into right field. The always disheveled-looking Ronnie Belliard, another sweaty waddler who rarely if ever keeps his shirt tucked in, somehow found his way to the batter’s box with men on first and second, two away.

Not to fear, with Glavine barely struggling to regain his composure, I was momentarily confident that a free-swinger like Belliard was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Then it happened, one of those unusual things that often unfolds during a tight series game. It’s something that you don’t normally see, something that I’ve learned to wait and watch for, something that changes the whole atmosphere of the game.

It’s like that scene when the poor Chicago man in the audience interfered with the play a few years ago. I remember I was watching that particular tragedy in a Cubs-infested bar in south Omaha. As soon as that scene went down, I put down my beer (a dark amber, I believe) and started laughing uncontrollably, instantly realizing that the game was over and the Cubs were done. The Baseball Gods had spoken and no mere mortal ever comes back alive from that kind of decision. Ahh, I think the Cubbies in the bar were not amused by an unrestrained Bamboo that night and I was forced to remove myself to other, friendlier confines.

Just as well, I suppose.

But this year, the first time I saw it live on TV, I couldn’t believe it.

”That didn’t just happen”, I said incredulously to myself.

Thank God for digital replay. Without it, I couldn’t be so confident in this story. I was turned onto the power of TiVo-like replay by an ex-pat pal who now suffers in Denver. Nice town, lovely ball park, real shitty baseball team. Hey, I can dig it. But he likes to play back televised close-ups, particularly of managers speaking with umpires and the like, to enhance his lip reading skills. Yep, there’s much to be learned by this technique.

Still watching this particular game, I paused for a minute to play back Belliard’s at bat and was thoroughly amazed by what I saw. It happened so fast in “real time”, I had thought maybe I was just seeing things, but I pressed slow-motion and witnessed the completely alarming sequence again and again.

In slow-mo, Belliard digs in and blinks while Glavine bends over preparing his delivery. Belliard blinks two or three more times. Each time he blinks, his eyelids appear to blink upwards, like an exotic lizard or something, and his eyeballs seem to turn up into his head. Very strange behavior, if you ask me. Perhaps, I thought, the Cards should reduce the “lead” in the dugout coffee pot. But then the real defining event occurs, the movement that sets off the true sequence to change the game.

Just as Glavine was beginning his pitch, Belliard took a half step forward towards the plate.

It wasn’t a full step. Maybe it was just a bit of a shuffle, perhaps only 2 to 3 inches forward. And it wasn’t even very sneaky. I mean, even my poor sight caught some slight indication of it during regular speed. Belliard is a large dumb target, his movement in one direction or another is rather hard to disguise.

Why wouldn’t Glavine see that as well? Noticing that dumpy old Belliard was crowding the plate, wouldn’t Glavine have changed his tack a bit on the fly, come a bit harder inside? Seems to me that would be an excellent counter move but Glavine, for whatever reason, continued on and laid his routine slider about 3-5 inches off and down the outside. Belliard, with lizard eyes presumably now opened, casually laid his bat out there in no-man’s land and the ball jumped effortlessly between the first and second basemen.

Had Belliard received some pre-game advice on that pitch? It looked like the same pitch and the same swing that Edmonds had used to get on just prior to that at bat. Two different consecutive batters, same pitch, ended with the same result. Belliard just doesn’t look smart enough to do it on his own. Was it something that everyone expected? Had La Russa told the Cards to be ready for that point in the game when Glavine would be up to his old tricks and to take advantage of it when possible? Had the whole deadlocked series been a sham, Cards players just waiting for their meeting with Glavine’s off the plate slider to turn the tables in their favor?

Beats me but Rolen scored, men on first and third, two outs, tie game, new game, fresh start, Glavine was finally exposed, the Mets lost their bats, and the Cards went on to take Game 5 and the series in 7.

Incredible!

Good luck with all of that but it’s significant to note that none of Belliard’s odd game changing sequence in the NLCS would have any meaning if Pujols hadn’t hit his homer. And he probably wouldn’t have done that if the NL had the DH rule. He wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to bat and then he couldn’t have set up Belliard to shuffle up and tie the game.

Cheers,
Mb