RMJ 56 April 11

FRIDAY, APRIL 11 ● St. Louis, vs Cardinals

I was not so quotable tonight, though the day started á la bon vivant. Gerry and I went to lunch with John Rollins, the editor-in-chief of The Sporting News, at Harry’s in St. Louis. It was a fine meal all around: good food, good conversation. 

The only thing missing was the red wine and a fine Maduro cigar, but then, this was lunch, not dinner — and that is precisely why I don’t often “do” lunch.

The most interesting subject of discourse was baseball’s conspicuous lack of leadership. John mentioned that Paul Beeston of the Blue Jays has been rumored to become the Chief Operating Officer of baseball. That led to talk about commissioners.  A COO is fine, but it is clearly an advocate position.

The players have Don Fehr as Executive Director of the Players’ Association; why shouldn’t the owners have their man? 

Until a few years ago, the owners did have a commissioner on the payroll. But because the job was created in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal for the purpose of restoring integrity to the game, it was thought to be a politically-neutral position.

There was only one small problem: the commish was paid only by the owners. Naturally, they have always considered him their man.

Over the years, baseball commissioners have thought themselves to be above and beyond politics; they have been guardians of the game as they see it. On more than a few occasions, commissioners from Kenesaw Mountain Landis to Fay Vincent have invoked the “best interests of baseball” clause in decisions that have had punishing effects on many owners.

Until Fay Vincent’s dismissal, the position has been respected by the owners because those punished have been in the minority. Now that the business of baseball is more complex, the owners want the man they pay to be an advocate, and that is fine. But they still need a commissioner, and so do the players.   

The logical solution to the problem is to have the players and owners agree on a commissioner, and to share the expenses of his office. The players would probably go for this idea, because they have been seeking a partnership role in the sport for many years. The owners, however, are generally immune to groupthink. They are mavericks who would never understand the concept of giving up control in order to gain it. And so, they will likely go on with no commissioner, and maintain an adversarial position with the players for the foreseeable future.   

Gerry has been with a big-market team and with a small-market team. He has seen both sides, and his opinion is that the industry will not find sanity on this side of Armageddon. I happen to agree with him. John Rollins does too.

It’s sad that so many people see the crash coming, but not enough of them are owners, to steer clear. That’s precisely why you need wine and cigars when you speak of these things. Then you can just go to sleep, and wake up in a new day. At lunch, you don’t have that option.

           

I should have known this would not be the best day when I pulled a calf muscle running across the street from the hotel to the ballpark in the rain. This is the third time I have felt this little burn in my left leg, and the third time was not a charm.

Cardinals shortstop Royce Clayton was having a different type of day. It started with a home run on Shane Reynolds’ first pitch.

I was a little disturbed when The Perfessor told me that Shane had his worst pregame warmup of the year. I could see that he wasn’t too fast, but I had faith that he could keep us in the game long enough to give us a chance to win.

The Redbirds are a M*A*S*H outfit these days. Many of their key players are wounded. If we could just hit Donovan Osborne like we did in Houston, we would still have a good chance to win.

Shane pitched out of the first with no further difficulty. In the third, the Cardinals scored another run. A Clayton double was the big blow.

We had a chance to tie the game or even take the lead in the second, but Clayton made two incredible plays to deny us even a single marker.

Later, we had the bases loaded with no outs and Biggio hit a long fly ball to center.  John Mabry, who usually plays right because of his ordinary speed, had enough dash to get there, and then made a spectacular catch. We had to settle for two runs when we could have had at least four.

Going into the bottom of the eighth, the game was tied at 2. Shane had thrown 102 pitches, and he seemed at least as good, if not better, than he was earlier.

He got Clayton out, then walked Mark Sweeney. Dimitri Young followed with a smash to Bagwell. Jeff threw the ball wide to Tim Bogar at short, and the relay back was a millisecond late. That brought Ron Gant to the plate.

I turned to Vern and said, “This guy has hit Shane well. But he’s not swinging that good now, and I don’t think Shane will make a mistake.”

Vern did not seem inclined to visit he mound; I really didn’t think he needed to. I was confident Shane wouldn’t give Gant a pitch to hit.

But he did.

Gant swung and missed at a split, and Ausmus called for another. Later, in the locker room, Shane told me, “You know how you said this spring that sometimes you don’t have a good feeling about a pitch that the catcher calls, and you throw it anyway? Well, that was the pitch. I knew he was looking for it, and I threw it anyway. I didn’t need anybody to come to the mound to tell me that. I just blew it.”

You may have guessed that Gant hit the pitch out of the ballpark. He did, and that was that. But I still thought we had a chance, even though Dennis Eckersley was coming into the game, looking for his first save of the year.

I had Pat Listach, Bill Spiers, and Thomas Howard ready, and they were a combined 10 for 14 off Eck. If two of them could get on, I had the top of the lineup due with Biggio, Mouton, and Bagwell.

Well, we never got to the top, because Eck struck out the side. It was a stunning blow to me, as I just assumed we would win the game. Even with the Cardinals’ great defense and the clutch pitching of Osborne, I thought we would win on health and ability alone. It was a good lesson, I think.

I felt relaxed during the game. Perhaps I should have been more vigilant. I don’t know if it would have changed anything, but it couldn’t have hurt.

We’re 6-4 now. If we play this well all season long, we’ll win our division. And we are bound to start hitting better. But can this great pitching hold up, or have we wasted the opportunity to have a really good winning streak?

           

The last day in Atlanta, Biggio asked me why I hadn’t been staying in the locker room after the bus left, to have a few beers with the boys. It was a good question. If we are going to develop the camaraderie we need to win a championship, I will have to be part of it.

This loss to the Cardinals was tough to take. I decided I should stick around and do a little commiserating. There wasn’t much to talk about, though. Ten or fifteen guys stayed late, but no one said much. There wasn’t much to say.