The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse (30 page)

When Vin Scully described the inside of Busch Stadium as looking like an internal hemorrhage, he meant it with great affection. Scully deeply admired the Cardinals’ winning ways and loved to talk about how the organization had both the first female owner and the first infielder who wore glasses. Since Kershaw had pitched the final game of the NLDS and needed to rest, the Dodgers sent Greinke to the mound for Game 1. St. Louis countered with young Joe Kelly, who had pitched fewer innings in his career than Kershaw had that season. But Cardinal youth weren’t wired with the same tremors as young players on other teams. They seemed bred from birth not only to expect to play in maximum pressure situations, but to thrive.

After the public address announcer said Carl Crawford’s name, Kelly stood on the mound holding the ball with both hands and breathed in the weight of the moment. Then he fired strikes one, two, and three. Crawford walked back to the dugout. Mark Ellis stepped into the batter’s box next to polite applause from St. Louis fans. Quiet and midwestern nice, Ellis did not have much in common with most of the better-known Dodgers. Whether or not they were arrogant, there was no denying that Los Angeles played with a panache that bothered opponents. The Cardinals preferred the kind of hard-nosed, head-down,
aw-shucks baseball that had long been glorified as the “right way” to play the game. They were like the Diamondbacks, but better. The 2013 NLCS was more than just a battle for a spot in the World Series: it was a culture war.

Ellis singled.

Since the Cardinals had home-field advantage, the Dodgers would have to win at least one game on foreign soil to take the seven-game series. Swiping Game 1 with Kershaw on deck to pitch Game 2 would be ideal, and doing it by drawing blood in the first inning to knock the optimism out of the home crowd would be even better. Hanley Ramirez walked up to the plate looking to drive in Ellis. Ramirez had scorched the ball during the NLDS, going 8-for-16 with four doubles, a triple, and a home run. His six extra-base hits tied a playoff record for most ever in a National League Division Series. To say he had enjoyed a great year at the plate was an understatement. Ramirez’s 1.040 OPS was the best in major-league history for a shortstop with at least 300 at-bats. It was also tops in the NL, and second-best overall, behind only Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera (1.078). Had he played in enough games, he might have been the National League’s MVP. And unlike Puig, Ramirez didn’t rattle. Cardinal pitchers knew it.

Teams in the NL Central had developed a reputation for pitching inside to brush hitters off the plate. In 2013, the four NL teams that hit opposing batters the most were in the league’s Central Division, with Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis going 1-2-3, and the Cubs taking fourth. It wasn’t that they were necessarily trying to hit opponents on purpose. A good way to gain an advantage over a hitter was to buzz him with an inside fastball to move him off the plate. If that player got hit, well, so be it. The free base was annoying, but it was the cost of the strategy. Plus, many of the hit batsmen were dangerous sluggers that opposing teams wanted to pitch around anyway. The approach was economical, too: hitting a guy cost only one pitch, but walking him required four.

It’s not often that the most important pitch of a seven-game series
is thrown in the first inning of the first game. But that’s what happened. After getting ahead of Ramirez in the count 1-2, Kelly drilled him in the left flank with a 95 mph fastball that ricocheted off his body so hard it sounded as though it had hit his bat and cracked it. Ramirez reeled away in agony, and after talking with Dodgers trainer Sue Falsone, walked to first base. At first it was difficult to tell how badly Ramirez was injured. He had been so brittle during the season—playing in just eighty-six games—that every time he ran or threw or swung he seemed to wince. Each trip around the bases was an adventure. With Ellis and Ramirez on first and second with one out, Gonzalez and Puig both struck out to end the threat. Ramirez remained in the game, hopeful he had just sustained a bone bruise. But as the innings wore on, the sharp pain near his skin radiated deeper, through his bones and into his lung. Each breath he took felt like a mistake.

Greinke mowed down the first six Cardinal hitters he faced, allowing only one ball to leave the infield. Carl Crawford doubled to lead off the third inning for the Dodgers, and Ramirez came to bat again after Ellis grounded out. This time Kelly walked him. And then, unable to locate the strike zone, he walked Adrian Gonzalez to load the bases for Puig. With the count 2-1, Puig grounded into a force-out at home. Then Uribe came up with two out and slapped a first-pitch sinkerball up the middle to drive in Ramirez and Gonzalez. Those two runs looked like they might be enough for Greinke, who took the mound in the bottom of the third and struck out Cardinals third baseman David Freese and shortstop Pete Kozma to start the inning. But Kelly worked a two-out hit, and leadoff hitter Matt Carpenter walked, bringing up the dangerous Carlos Beltran with two on and two out. Beltran whacked a changeup from Grienke toward the deepest part of center field. Andre Ethier sprinted back to the fence, jumped, and missed it. Two runs scored. Ethier was playing out of position, but the Dodgers had had little choice but to put him in center with Matt Kemp injured and unable to play. By October, even the players who weren’t on the disabled list were battling some kind of nagging injury. For Ethier it
was shin splints. Perhaps the most amazing thing about these Dodgers was that they were playing for the National League title without a true center fielder on their roster. An excellent defender would have caught Beltran’s fly ball. The game was tied 2–2.

It stayed that way for ten more innings.

Greinke went eight full frames, giving up two runs and striking out ten. He became the first pitcher to strike out double-digit Cardinal hitters in a playoff game since 1944—an extraordinary feat considering St. Louis had participated in more postseason games in the last sixty-nine years than any other team in the National League. In his two playoff appearances with the Dodgers so far, Greinke had given the club fourteen innings while surrendering just four runs, debunking any lingering concerns about his anxiety disorder.

With the contest tied at two in the eighth, Adrian Gonzalez led off with a walk. Because Gonzalez represented the potential winning run and also possessed the slowest feet of any Dodger player, Mattingly opted to have the speedy Dee Gordon run for him and substituted Gonzalez out of the game. It was a questionable move: Ramirez had struck out to end the previous inning, and the shortstop was in obvious pain. Removing Gonzalez from a tie game meant that if the contest went to extra innings, the Dodgers’ lineup would be without its cleanup hitter on an evening when its number-three hitter could hardly swing a bat. Gordon was fast, but the Cardinals’ catcher, Yadier Molina, was the toughest backstop to run on in the league. While it was possible that Gordon could successfully steal second off him, Mattingly didn’t send him, which all but negated the value of subbing him for Gonzalez.

Some Dodger players could not believe Gonzalez was being removed from a tie game. It didn’t help their frustration when Gordon was erased a batter later after Puig grounded into a fielder’s choice. Mattingly put Michael Young into the game for Gonzalez at first base, and it was clear he was quickly becoming the skipper’s favorite bat off the bench. The Dodgers had claimed the veteran Young off waivers
from the Phillies in late August, and he had fit in well with his teammates right away. Young had never won a championship during his fourteen seasons in the big leagues, though he did finish as a runner-up on the Texas Rangers team that had their hearts broken by these Cardinals in the 2011 World Series. Texas had been one strike away in back-to-back innings from its first-ever title in Game 6, only to lose to furious comebacks by St. Louis.

Young was dealt to Philadelphia before the 2013 season. As he was nearing the end of his career, the thirty-six-year-old infielder told the Phillies he didn’t want to be traded again. But when the Dodgers gauged his interest, the situation was too good to pass up. Young had been born and raised in Los Angeles County, and grew up a Dodger fan. What could be better than winning a ring with his hometown team? Beating the Cardinals to do it, perhaps. Heading into the series with St. Louis,
Young was perhaps the most outwardly animated Dodger; he sent many inspirational expletive-laden messages to a group-text chain of eight or so teammates in hopes of firing them up.

Batting in Gonzalez’s spot, Young got his chance to be the hero in the top of the tenth inning. After Carl Crawford flied out to right, Mark Ellis tripled, becoming the first Dodger to make it to third base since the third inning. The Cardinals then walked Ramirez intentionally again to set up a potential double play but also because whether he was injured or not, they didn’t want any part of him. With one out and runners on first and third, all Young had to do to give Los Angeles a lead was hit a fly ball deep enough to score Ellis. With that in mind, he got under a pitch from Cardinals closer Trevor Rosenthal—who was in his second inning of work—and drove it to right field. Carlos Beltran caught the ball, and Ellis broke toward home. Dodgers third-base coach Tim Wallach knew Beltran had a strong arm in right, but he also knew that Puig, who was due up next, had failed to hit the ball out of the infield in four earlier attempts that night, so this might be the Dodgers’ best chance to score. Ellis sprinted for home. Beltran threw him out by an eyelash.

Young got another chance in the top of the twelfth. Crawford led off the inning with a single and Ellis bunted him over to second. The sacrifice opened up a free base to put Ramirez on at first, which is what the Cardinals did, avoiding the Dodgers’ best hitter again. With runners at first and second and one out, Young grounded into a double play. Then in the bottom of the thirteenth, Beltran singled home the winning run. The Cardinals took a 1–0 series lead.

‘That was probably one that got away,” Mattingly said afterward. And who knows how it would have turned out had Gonzalez remained in the lineup? Gonzalez led the Dodgers in runs batted in, which usually didn’t say much about a hitter, except that in Gonzalez’s case it did because he was much better at hitting with runners on base than with nobody on. Batting in his place, Young had stranded four runners. That hurt. But what hurt worse was the sight of Hanley Ramirez sitting at his locker after the game, doubled over his knees with his forehead resting in his hands. For almost ten minutes, he did not move or speak. This was not good: as Ramirez went, so went the Dodgers. They had suffered countless calamities during this crazy season and they had survived. After everything they had overcome, would their dream year end on a hit-by-pitch? No one knew whether Ramirez would play again. And no one knew whether Puig would start hitting. The only certain thing was Kershaw. He got the ball for Game 2.

•  •  •

The day began with Ramirez penciled in the Dodgers lineup. But minutes before Game 2 started, the ailing shortstop was scratched. Though X-rays came back negative, he was unable to swing a bat because of the pain in his side. The training staff offered to give him a Toradol injection,
but Ramirez was terrified of needles. A powerful anti-inflammatory painkiller, Toradol had a reputation for keeping broken athletes on the field when there was no time to rest. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo—who often dealt with rib and back fractures—had relied on a weekly shot of the drug to save his career. During Game 3 of the NLDS, Carl Crawford had crashed into
the stands to catch a foul ball and landed on his shoulder with his feet over his head. He received a shot after the game. The following day, he homered in his first two at-bats. Afterward, when he was asked about the pain he laughed and said he didn’t feel much of anything.

Ramirez did not win any friends in the locker room by nixing the painkilling shot. He was the best hitter on the team and the Dodgers’ offense had gone limp without him; the same hitters who hung thirteen runs on the Braves in a playoff game had failed to score one run in the previous ten innings. Whether it was fair to expect Ramirez to swing a bat through pain, this was the playoffs, and it was difficult to imagine champions like Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, or Michael Jordan asking out of a postseason lineup unless they were facing limb amputation. Dodger players weren’t happy with Ethier, either. After he said he couldn’t go in Game 2 because his shin hurt, his replacement in center field, Skip Schumaker, took him aside and chewed him out. When Ramirez was scratched, the club still believed his rib was merely bruised. A later MRI would show a hairline fracture.

Opposing Kershaw was Michael Wacha, a twenty-two-year-old rookie with a nifty changeup who had made just nine regular-season starts in the major leagues. Wacha stood on the mound and wiggled his limbs to stretch all six foot six of himself with a detached calmness, as if he had no idea he was pitching the biggest game of his life. What he lacked in experience he made up for in confidence. During his final start of the regular season, he came within one out of no-hitting the Nationals. In his next start, in Game 4 of the NLDS versus the Pirates, he saved the Cardinals from elimination by pitching seven-and-a-third innings of one-run ball, striking out nine. Still, no one thought Wacha would best Kershaw, except maybe Wacha himself.

Wacha flummoxed Dodger hitters from the start. Figuring Kershaw would throw him a first-pitch fastball, the Cardinals’ leadoff hitter, Matt Carpenter, ambushed him by swinging hard at his first offering of the game. He tripled. But Kershaw stranded Carpenter at third by not allowing the next three St. Louis batters to hit the ball
out of the infield. He retired the side in order in the second, third, and fourth, too. The pitcher’s duel was on.

Wacha was just as dominant. He set Los Angeles down in order in the second, third, and fourth; the Dodgers had managed to hit only a few lazy fly balls. When Puig struck out for the second time to end the fourth inning, it was clear Yadier Molina was in his head. Molina had been playing Puig like a marionette in the series. When Puig looked for a ball up, Molina called for one down. When Puig looked outside, Molina went in. The Cardinals’ catcher had company in Puig’s psyche.
The drug cartel that helped smuggle Puig to the United States was always around and asking for more money. It was unclear how much they would need to be paid to go away forever, but those close to Puig felt the extortion might never end. What could he do? If he didn’t pay them what they wanted, they threatened to kill him and his family. His mother worried constantly. Opposing fans hated Puig for being a cocky, rich punk—but in reality he was nearly broke. Puig had signed a seven-year contract worth $42 million in the summer of 2012, and received $12 million up front as a bonus. After taxes, most of that money had gone toward paying off the people who had orchestrated his escape from Cuba, as well as agents, lawyers, and managers. Plus he was being sued by one of the men he defected with.