The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse (32 page)

Puig came up to bat with the bases empty and two out in the top of the second. He lowered his bat, carved a cross into the dirt just outside the batter’s box, and took a deep breath. With the game still scoreless and no men to drive in, he was looking to untie the contest with one swing. Puig had posted one of the best rookie seasons ever and was now one of the most famous players in the game. He knew that. He also knew that his brazen style of play inspired his detractors to hate him as much as his fans loved him. He was the most polarizing player since Barry Bonds. But unlike Bonds, who grew up in MLB locker rooms when his father played and learned how to isolate himself in a bubble of indifference, Puig had not mastered the art of self-protection. He believed that he could win Game 6 by himself. But Wacha had found the hole in Puig’s swing. After falling behind 2-0 Wacha threw Puig a high fastball that he swung at and missed. Then, he threw him another high fastball that he fouled off. With the fifth
pitch of the at-bat he struck him out looking with yet another fastball. Puig stepped back over the cross and walked back to the dugout.

The only Dodger who could will the team to Game 7 was perhaps Kershaw himself, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Two hundred days earlier he had taken the mound on the opening day of this wild season, and he had shut the Giants out and hit a home run. He had won the National League’s ERA crown for the third consecutive year by posting a minuscule 1.83 ERA, the best mark for any pitcher in either league since Pedro Martinez finished the 2000 season with a 1.74 ERA for the Red Sox. He was weeks away from winning his second Cy Young Award before his twenty-sixth birthday. He possessed the best slider in the game, and a top-three curveball. His stuff was as good as his karma. For all those reasons, what happened next was shocking.

Kershaw collapsed.

The first sign that Kershaw was fighting an unusual battle came in the bottom of the second when, after getting the first two hitters to pop up, he gave up a single to Shane Robinson and then threw two wild pitches to advance Robinson to third. In the Division Series, he salvaged a night when his fastball sailed on him by sticking his curveball and slider for strikes. But he seemed to have trouble spinning the curve in the cold, and it failed him. He watched, helpless, as one of his most potent weapons abandoned him when he needed it most. With Robinson on third, he went back to his fastball and struck out Cardinals shortstop Pete Kozma to end the inning.

Cardinals second baseman Matt Carpenter would go 1-for-4 in Game 6. No one would remember the three times he made an out. With one out in the third, Carpenter took ball one, then fouled off seven straight pitches. Left-handed batters had hit .165 against Kershaw that season, with a .253 slugging percentage. He had faced 171 lefties, and struck out 71 of them. Because of these numbers, opposing managers went out of their way to stack their lineups with righties against him (though their odds were just slightly improved). With each
hack Carpenter took, it became more and more evident that something was wrong with Kershaw. He simply could not put Carpenter away. On the eleventh pitch of the at-bat, Carpenter doubled. Carlos Beltran followed that up with an RBI single. Kershaw rebounded to strike out Matt Holliday, but then gave up singles to Molina and David Freese. With the score 2–0 and two runners on, Kershaw walked Matt Adams on a 3-2 pitch that probably should have been called strike three. Then, with the bases loaded, Shane Robinson smacked a single to right, which Puig threw away. The Cardinals became the first team to bat around on Kershaw in an inning in four years.

It was only four runs, and L.A.’s potent lineup had eighteen outs left to match that total. But after watching their ace get knocked around, Dodger hitters looked as if they’d just walked away from a bus wreck. Michael Wacha didn’t worry about them anyway. The rookie starter was brilliant, scattering just two hits and a walk over seven shutout innings. It was the line many expected Kershaw to post, and it demonstrated the beauty and the agony of the game. Kershaw remained on the mound after his torturous third inning but was pulled after giving up hits to the first three batters he faced in the fifth. It was his shortest start not related to the flu in over three seasons. When it was all over, he was charged with seven runs on ten hits. In a season of improbable highs and lows, the impossible had happened. The Dodgers went out with a whimper, losing 9–0.

After the game, Kershaw stood at his locker with his arms folded in front of him and his eyes fixed straight ahead. He maintained his composure when he spoke, but when he paused to consider a question his lips constricted into an upside-down horseshoe. He made no excuses. He had pitched poorly when his team needed him most, and there was nothing left to say. He had failed, for the first time in his professional career. And he had done so in the biggest game of his life. He would blame himself, but he was not the only Dodger who had failed. With their season on the line, their vaunted offense had mustered two hits against a pitcher who had spent most of his season in the minors. As
players dressed in silence, Mark Ellis stood in front of his locker and shook his head. “This team is too good to be done,” he said. “There’s way too much talent in this room for it to be over.” The Cardinals were headed to the World Series. The best team money could buy was headed home.

•  •  •

When the Dodgers sent out a press release announcing a year-end media session the Monday after the club was eliminated from the playoffs, reporters arrived at Dodger Stadium expecting nothing more than clichéd sound bites to sum up a disappointing end to a championship run. It had been a surreal season, but one of the reasons Mattingly had hung on to his job when the team flailed was that he was a man who chose his words carefully. He toed the company line even better than his mentor, Joe Torre, and for the most part resisted saying anything that would draw attention to the club’s personality clashes. When he and his coaching staff disagreed with the front office over how to discipline Yasiel Puig, he said nothing about it to the press. When the Dodgers didn’t announce that his contract for 2014 had automatically vested he kept his mouth shut. But perhaps trotting out Mattingly to answer questions about his future with the team when he still had no idea whether he would be back was the final insult.

Three days after the Dodgers were eliminated, Mattingly took his seat on a dais next to Ned Colletti. The interview room was jammed with so many media members that many were forced to lean against walls. Though Mattingly and Colletti sat in identical chairs behind the same table, there was an awkward distance between the men, as if a third person had been invited to sit between them but failed to show up. Mattingly sat with his arms crossed and his back turned slightly away from Colletti. It was unusual to see the skipper field questions in jeans and reading glasses. Baseball is the only of America’s big four sports where the club’s coaches wear uniforms like the players. Perhaps wearing clothes without the word
DODGERS
across his chest gave Mattingly the psychological distance he needed to speak out.

Colletti opened the session by giving a positive review of the season. “This team went from at one point being nine and a half games out and twelve games under .500 to win the West by eleven,” he said. “We beat Atlanta in the first round—a very good team—and came two wins from going to the World Series. I think it was quite a remarkable season.”

When it was Mattingly’s turn to talk, a reporter asked him about his job status.

“My option vested once we beat Atlanta,” Mattingly revealed to a room of reporters who had no idea. “That doesn’t mean I’ll be back.” He continued: “I love it here. But I don’t want to be anywhere where you’re not wanted.”

His words stunned the room. The new ownership group had, for the most part, been pitch-perfect in its two seasons running the team. But it had made its first major misstep: underestimating Don Mattingly.

Regardless of his perceived tactical deficiencies, Mattingly had taken a room full of pernicious egos that sat in last place at the season’s midway point to within two wins of the World Series. Had Hanley Ramirez not been neutralized by a fastball to the ribs the Dodgers might have won the whole thing. He kept his cool when the habitually tardy Puig turned a deaf ear to him. Another manager might have leaked stories about how impossible the kid was to coach to make himself look better. But when Mattingly had the chance to criticize Puig, he pointed out, time and again, everything his right fielder had been through even to get to Los Angeles. He called Puig a good kid. And he had done all of this as a lame-duck manager, knowing he was hiding the team’s inner turmoil from the public when he wasn’t sure if management had his back. Even if ownership agreed to let him return to manage for one more season, Mattingly told friends he would rather leave than work on a one-year contract again and have to answer questions after every two-game losing streak about whether he thought he would get fired. “This has been a frustrating, tough year, honestly,” he said.

Colletti sat and listened while Mattingly spoke and appeared nervous that Mattingly was lumping him in with the people who perhaps did not want him back. “I hired Donnie, and I’ve been supportive of him all the way through,” said Colletti.
“Even in April, May, and June.”

So if Colletti wanted Mattingly back, as he claimed, and Mark Walter was obviously a fan, then who wanted Mattingly gone? Stan Kasten was not present for Mattingly’s press conference, but he couldn’t have been happy with what was said. What Kasten valued most was control, and his soldier had gone rogue. The rest of the Dodgers’ coaching staff was also at Dodger Stadium that day for organizational meetings. They watched Mattingly’s press conference on a television in a room just down the hall. When it was over, Mattingly left the stage and joined them. They took turns high-fiving him.

The next day, Mattingly flew home to Indiana without resolving whether he would be back in 2014. Kasten flew to Chicago to meet with Walter. Mattingly’s calculated risk turned out to be smart. Even if the front office wanted him gone, Mark Walter, king of common sense, would require someone to come up with the name of a man who could do a better job under the same circumstances. It was easy to second-guess Mattingly’s game management, but far more difficult to find someone else who could handle that locker room. Puig wasn’t going anywhere. Matt Kemp probably wasn’t, either, at least not before the 2014 season began. Next year, the Dodgers figured to enter camp with the same four outfielders, each expecting to start. It was not easy to manage these personalities and there were no obvious outside candidates to take Mattingly’s place.

So Mattingly went home and waited for a phone call. The day after his press conference, the Dodgers announced the firing of his bench coach, Trey Hillman. Two weeks later, with his job status still up in the air, Mattingly was named runner-up for National League Manager of the Year.

The following day, Clayton Kershaw earned his second Cy Young Award, collecting twenty-nine of the thirty first-place votes.

•  •  •

That blockbuster trade between Los Angeles and Boston a year earlier did propel one team to glory—but not the Dodgers. Thanks to L.A.’s willingness to take on hundreds of millions in salary commitment, the Red Sox used their newfound financial freedom to build a team that won the American League pennant in 2013. Then they beat the Cardinals to win the World Series.

Just before the Red Sox hoisted that trophy, Dodger players packed up their lockers ahead of a long off-season. Yasiel Puig was one of the last to leave the stadium. On his way to the elevator, a reporter asked him through a translator if, now that it was over, he would like to talk about all the crazy things that had happened during his incredible rookie season, to separate fact from fiction once and for all. He smiled.
“In twenty years we can sit down and I’ll tell you everything,” he said in perfect English.

T
he 2014 season did
not start out well for Yasiel Puig.

After splitting time between Los Angeles and Miami in the off-season, the young right fielder reported to spring training weighing twenty-five pounds more than at the end of the 2013 season. But unlike the muscle that seemed perfectly concentrated in his arms and upper back the year before, these new pounds hung like Christmas garlands from his belly and backside. He looked like the chubby kid who had auditioned for major-league scouts in Mexico.

Portly Puig collected just eight hits in forty-eight chances during spring training, with no home runs or stolen bases. It was a small sample size, to be sure, but the Dodgers’ coaching staff wasn’t happy. How could a twenty-three-year-old baseball player whose game relied on his legs already weigh over 250 pounds? What did that say about his commitment to his career? Puig wanted to be the best player in the game, but he also hated working out. Could he ever achieve the former without the latter?

His off-season had not been as quiet as his bosses had hoped, either. With a reckless driving charge from the summer already on his record, a few days after Christmas Puig was pulled over by a Florida Highway Patrol officer for doing 110 on Alligator Alley through Naples at nine thirty on a Saturday morning. He was contrite, but when the officer noticed he was speeding with three passengers including his mother, he went ballistic.

“This is your mom? Oh, you’re going to jail. You are putting your mom in danger, oh hell no,” the trooper said to Puig in Spanish, in audio captured by a police recording of the incident. “Why were you driving that fast? You don’t care about anyone’s life in the car?”

“Yes, I do care. I’m sorry,” Puig responded. “Please forgive me.” But the officer was unmoved.

“Officer, I’m sorry. I’m begging you, sir,” Puig said. “I’ll do anything. I’ll never drive again. Please don’t take me to jail.”

After placing Puig in his squad car, the officer returned to Puig’s vehicle to explain to his mother, his cousin, and another passenger why he was being arrested.