Long Shot (38 page)

Todd Pratt replaced me again and came to bat against Kevin McGlinchy in the bottom of the fifteenth with one out, the bases loaded, and the Braves leading by a run that Lockhart had tripled in. Pratt worked a walk to tie the game and bring up Robin Ventura. For a long time that year, Robin, in addition to being a good guy to hang around with, had ranked as a leading candidate for the MVP award, which Chipper Jones would win. (With thirty-two homers, 120 RBIs, and a .301 batting average, Robin finished seventh. I was next.) But what Ventura’s 1999 season is best remembered for is the so-called grand-slam single he hit over the wall in right-center field to win game five of the league championship series. When the ball cleared the fence, Pratt was so ecstatic that he ran back and hoisted Robin off the
ground between first and second base. Then the rest of us joined the mob. The ultimate ruling was that only Roger Cedeno, the runner on third, actually scored. It didn’t matter. We were back in business.

There was a day off before the series resumed in Atlanta, and for twenty-four peaceful hours not a single Brave bruised me with a bat head or lowered shoulder. For that matter, the Atlanta hitters didn’t exactly bash Leiter in game six; but they knocked him out in the first inning, nevertheless. Al hit the first guy and walked the second. Then, following the same old tired script, I made another throwing error on a double steal. Al hit Chipper, Jordan singled, Eddie Perez singled, it was 4–0, and just like that our best pitcher was out of the game. One more run scored after Pat Mahomes replaced Leiter. Millwood was the Braves’ starter, and that’s how it stood until the sixth, when Fonzi doubled, Olerud singled, I hit a sacrifice fly, Ventura doubled, and Darryl Hamilton singled. Suddenly it was 5–3. But in the bottom of the inning, the Braves tacked on two more. And made me very angry.

Turk Wendell hit Brian Jordan leading off, and Jordan was out for blood. He was on third with the bases loaded when Walt Weiss hit a ground ball to Olerud, who brought it home to me. There was no chance for a double play, so I stretched out like a first baseman to receive the throw. Jordan folded me up like a tea table—all but chopped my knees in half. I’d had enough. I snapped. Totally lost it. I screamed at Jordan, “Get your ass off the field! Keep walking, motherfucker!” The whole time, I was hoping desperately that he’d turn back toward me so I could do something stupid. Brian Jordan had played safety in the NFL and was a powerful dude who might have ripped my head off, but at that point, I didn’t give a shit. Thankfully, he kept his cool, and I was still around in the seventh inning when Cox summoned Smoltz for another relief appearance.

This time, we jumped all over him. Double by Matty Franco. Double by Rickey Henderson. Single by Olerud to make it 7–5. And then me. I was squeezing my bat handle so hard that sap was coming out of the other end. Smoltz, in turn, was feeling challenged, and he responded by challenging
me
. With fastballs, that is. Bear in mind, Smoltz had enough stuff and control that he could throw a good breaking ball for a strike in any count. That had been verified for me when I caught him over the first two innings of the 1996 All-Star Game. I thought at the time, this guy’s good. He was also one of the most intensely competitive pitchers I ever faced. As Olerud took his lead at first and I dug in representing the tying run,
that
was the reason for all the fastballs that Smoltz kept bringing and I kept fouling off. I knew he wasn’t going to give in and send up a breaking ball, and that was fine with
me. In fact, I loved it when pitchers threw down the gauntlet. It was a rush.

I’ve hit longer home runs than that one, but none that felt better, through and through. The game was tied.

In the top of the eighth, Melvin Mora put us ahead, 8–7, with an RBI single. In the bottom, the Braves brought in Otis Nixon, an old pal of mine from the Dodgers, to pinch-run for Eddie Perez against John Franco. As great as Franco was, and as close a friend as he was for a while there—like Olerud, he was a great help in guiding me through the challenges and pressures of New York—I have to say that I didn’t enjoy catching him with a speedy runner on first. Johnny’s best pitch was a kind of fading changeup, and I could never throw anybody out on that damn thing. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have even tried to get Nixon. My throw ended up in center field, Nixon scooted to third, and Brian Hunter drove him in with a single to tie the game. I made the first out in the ninth against Rocker, and then Bobby put me out of my misery. He brought in Pratt to take over for me in a double switch.

Pratt had been uncanny in his reserve role, and once again, he came through, putting us ahead in the top of the tenth with a sacrifice fly that scored Benny Agbayani. In the bottom of the tenth, Ozzie Guillen singled in Andruw Jones to retie it. As Henderson and Bonilla played cards in the clubhouse, our memorable season ended in the eleventh, with Kenny Rogers on the mound. Gerald Williams led off with a double and Rogers intentionally walked both Chipper Jones and Brian Jordan to load the bases. Then he
un
intentionally walked Andruw Jones, and that was it.

I couldn’t believe it when Atlanta got swept by the Yankees. It’s often been said that the Braves underachieved by losing four out of five World Series and failing to get that far nine other times (after winning division championships) in their remarkable fifteen-year run (remember, there was no postseason in 1994). And that may be so, I suppose. But I prefer to remember them for all the games and titles they
did
win. The Braves were the worthiest opponent of my time.

That said, they could sure screw up a good summer. After they got us in game six, I was so disconsolate that I couldn’t even fly back with the team. Instead, I rented a car, cranked up the music, and just started driving west through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, checking out Civil War sites—loved Vicksburg—and fattening up at greasy spoons. I didn’t tell anybody but Danny. I just needed to get the hell away.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A baseball team is a social circle. For at least seven months of the year, the players dress in the same rooms as each other, shower in the same showers, fly in the same planes, drink in the same bars, spit in the same dugouts, argue with the same umpires, complain about the same managers, get misquoted by the same writers, celebrate the same victories, and curse the same defeats. As it happened, our Mets clubs—the ones around the turn of the century, in particular—were uncommonly companionable. Groups of eight or ten of us would frequently sit around a table with glasses of wine and shoot the shit about the game, among other things. A carload or two would go out for karaoke, and I’d get it started with “Welcome to the Jungle.” We’d rent out rooms to watch championship fights together; even Bobby would come.

I’ve found it wise, though, not to get too attached. With rare exceptions, baseball relationships are short-lived. Whether it’s by trade, free agency, retirement, jealousy, disagreement, marriage, or no particular reason at all, we inevitably go our separate ways. Eric Karros remains my best friend in the game, but I rarely speak to him anymore; we live on opposite coasts. I enjoy the company of Al Leiter, but our paths seldom intersect. I see Johnny Franco on occasion, but it isn’t the same.

My connection with Rickey Henderson lasted just over a year. The Mets released Rickey in May 2000, which meant that he helped us to the playoffs in his only full season with the ball club. He was instrumental in not only getting us there, but in how the playoff shares—the bonuses earned from MLB for each postseason series—were divided. The shares meeting is always an interesting exercise in human dynamics, sort of a microcosm of democracy. Rickey was the most generous guy I ever played with, and whenever the discussion came around to what we should give one of the fringe people—whether it was a minor leaguer who came up for a few days or the parking lot attendant—Rickey would shout out, “Full share!” We’d argue for
a while and he’d say, “Fuck that! You can change somebody’s life!” I admired Rickey’s heart, but I usually came down somewhere in the middle.

Meanwhile, with Olerud gone, I’d lobbied hard for the Mets to sign my old cohort, Todd Zeile, to play first base, which they did. As an example of the fluid nature of baseball relationships . . . Zeile and I had been good friends in Los Angeles and briefly in Florida. In his absence, in 1999, I’d taken Robin Ventura under my wing. Robin, who had spent ten years with the White Sox, was new to the Mets and funny as hell, a great storyteller. Some of his best gags involved his old hitting coach, Walt Hriniak, who had become a sort of baseball cult hero for his work with Wade Boggs. Robin kept me laughing with Hriniak stories of “Boggsie,” “green cathedrals,” and old-school stuff like telling opposing pitchers, as they walked by the batting cage, that “we’re getting ready for your ass.” Not surprisingly, when Zeile came to New York, he fell in with Robin and me. But Todd and Robin were both married, and they had more in common with each other than they did with me. I was the odd man out.

Generally, I enjoyed hanging around with married guys, because I learned from them; but it always seemed to me that married players were somehow a little less motivated—a little more satisfied, perhaps—than single guys. On the road, for instance, Todd and Robin might lie around by the swimming pool until the early afternoon, something I’d never do and never tell them
not
to do. In our case, another point of departure emerged when several of us invested in a movie,
Dirty Deeds
, that Zeile was involved with as a producer. It’s not in my DNA to take my money lightly, and I didn’t get much of a kick out of losing it. I grumbled. Mostly I was angry at myself for investing unwisely and ignoring the time-tested advice about doing business with friends. It was a teaching moment. It also made me a little more savvy, movie-wise, in a way that would later come in handy.

Ventura and I, however, remain linked by a dubious distinction. On March 30, 2000, the two of us became the first players to go 0 for 5 in a major-league game played outside North America.

We opened the century in Tokyo, playing exhibition games against the Yomiuri Giants and Seibu Lions—whose star, Kaz Matsui, the Mets would sign three years later, making him the first Japanese infielder to jump to the major leagues—and two games that counted against the Cubs. Hideo Nomo had given me a good name in Japan, and I enjoyed it there, but not excessively. I left that job to Matty Franco, a pinch hitter and utility guy. One day, Matty assured me that, the night before, he and his gang had “brought Tokyo to its knees.”

For what it’s worth, I can say that I hit a home run in the first major-league game played off the continent, though not before Shane Andrews of the Cubs. We lost that game and won the next one, when Ventura and I contributed our collective 0 for 10 in the middle of the order.

We played at that running-in-place pace for about the first month and a half, getting a lot of production out of Derek Bell, a funny man and veteran outfielder who had come over with Mike Hampton in a trade with Houston. Derek was a Florida guy who had his own style. His pants covered his shoes and he sported an oversize, old-school jersey. In the year he spent with the Mets, he lived on a boat he docked off the East Side. I might go so far as to say that Bell was our MVP for the first half of the season.

For me, however, it was a mixed bag. The good news was that I was hitting to all fields. The bad news was that I was
throwing
to all fields, too. A May game against Arizona was a prime example. I cracked a two-run homer to drive in the winning runs, and the Diamondbacks stole seven bases.

Mechanically, my throwing was all out of whack. I’d missed a few games with a right-elbow injury after Todd Helton of the Rockies crashed into me at home plate, and that surely didn’t help the situation; but it was no excuse. For a catcher, getting run over at the plate simply comes with the territory.

That aspect of the game ultimately emerged as a point of controversy when Buster Posey, the outstanding young catcher of the Giants—who were the defending world champions at the time—got the worst of a collision with Scott Cousins of the Marlins in May 2011. The result was a gruesome injury to Posey’s leg that ended his season more than four months early.

Cousins put his shoulder into Posey, knocking him backward, and there was an outcry from fans and critics who thought it was a dirty hit; but I didn’t see it that way. There’s a difference between a runner attempting to bowl over a catcher to knock the ball loose—which Cousins did—and one who is intent upon inflicting pain. I agree, absolutely, that an umpire should call a runner out if he thinks the guy is deliberately trying to hurt the catcher. I’d label it the “dirty slide rule” and base it on such things as whether the runner had some of the plate available to him and whether the catcher was actually in possession of the ball. It wouldn’t bother me at all to see some kind of suspension attached to a dirty, dangerous play, because there’s no place in the game for it. That said, one size doesn’t fit all; every situation is a little bit different. I’d leave the call up to the umpire’s discretion rather than implementing any kind of all-encompassing legislation. The commissioner’s office has already neutered the sport too much in the area of retaliation. Enough’s enough. Let the game play out.

The most egregious hit I ever took was the one in 1998 from Michael Tucker, which I thought was more out of line than the hard lick that Brian Jordan—another Brave—put on me in the 1999 playoffs. Until the Tucker play, the worst had been perpetrated by
another
Brave, Mike Kelly, in April 1994, when he came home in the tenth inning on a single to right by Jeff Blauser. I took the throw a couple of feet behind the plate, which made it easy for Kelly to score, but he came after me anyway with a late slide. I was able to get out of the way somewhat and avoid an injury, but to me, that’s the kind of play that should carry repercussions. I hadn’t put myself in a precarious or vulnerable circumstance.