RMJ 163 July 28
MONDAY, JULY 28 ● Houston, vs St. Louis
I slept nine hours, and I felt great upon awakening. Ryan is going to a baseball camp at the Dome this week. I have to have him out there at noon, so I will be able to catch up on some paperwork. As we drove into town, I asked him about his game.
“I’m just about up with most of them in fielding,” he said. “But my hitting isn’t as good. I get a lot of hits, but some of our guys hit the ball harder than I do. I might change teams.”
This caught me by surprise; I knew he wasn’t playing much on the Stars, but thought he liked the guys and the coaches. Now, it seems, another team is forming in our neighborhood. He is hopeful that he can make it. But I sense he has lost some confidence; maybe this clinic will help him.
I know one thing: If he still wants to play this winter, I have to try to help him more than in the past. If he could make this new team, he would be playing with kids who will go to the same high school. At this point our goal — his and ours — is to play high-school baseball. I continue to think that he will be good enough to pitch, but it wouldn’t hurt to improve the hitting and fielding — just in case.
As it turned out, the Dome clinic was a waste of time. He only got to field a few balls and hit a few. He didn’t get to pitch at all, until I came down afterward and caught him.
I was hoping he would be challenged, but instead, he was bored. Most of the kids were younger, and there were only five or six instructors for roughly 100 kids.
So now he is going to go to a clinic in the morning at the University of Houston. Maybe he will get more out of it, because the kids will all be his age. I have a hunch, however, that if he is going to get a lot better, we are going to have to spend a lot of time together, one-on-one.
Gerry came by before batting practice, and I asked him if I should try to talk to Tal Smith about Derek. He said that Tal was involved in meetings regarding the new stadium, and he had been tied up all day. Gerry said he would invite him to come down to the field during BP if the meeting broke up in time.
In the meantime, I looked up some pertinent numbers:
Career on-base average: Merced .364 Bell .328
Career slugging average: Merced .432 Bell .424.
Merced is 30 years old and Bell is 28.
Merced is a professional baseball player; Bell is an occasional baseball player. I’m not going to belabor this subject; it won’t do me any good. We’re going to win it or lose it with Bell, and I’m confident we can do it.
But I wonder what will happen if I stop playing him? If I really want to field my best team, I can’t play him every day.
I played him today, however. He went 0-for-3 with a walk, and he made a spectacular catch.
Our streak ended at nine, and the Cardinals kept their hopes alive with a 2-1 victory.
We played good ball except for an error by Bogey on a line drive by Royce Clayton; the ball hit in his glove and popped out. Clayton ended up scoring the first run of the game.
We never really threatened Todd Stottlemyre. He pitched a marvelous game, as I feared he would.
This guy is a tremendous competitor. He not only pitched eight scoreless innings, he also drove home the winning run with an eighth-inning double, and he was thrown out trying to stretch it to a triple.
Dennis Eckersley came in to get the save; Bagwell greeted him with a home run. Gonzo was called out on a 2-2 pitch, and he really let home plate umpire Rich Rieker have it. Rieker allowed him to blow off a little steam, but when Gonzo persisted, Reiker kicked him out of the game. Gonzo charged the umpire, and I had to race out of the dugout to get in between them; I can’t afford to have a good player suspended for any length of time.
Gonzo responded fairly well to my intervention. I felt like I should have said something to the umpire, but I wasn’t sure Gonzo was right. I figured he probably was, but who knows? It’s embarrassing to get called out on strikes. Sometimes an argument is really about saving face.
Derek struck out, then Sean Berry reached on an error. Mouton ran for Berry and stole second on the first pitch to Ausmus. Brad hit the second pitch hard, but right at Clayton. Clayton bobbled it, but he got the throw off in time. It was wild high-and-inside, and Gaetti had to leap off the bag to catch it. Luckily for him, he came down right on top of Brad and tagged him out.
The way the game finished showed how hard the Cardinals were pressing for the win. They didn’t show much poise, but they had tremendous intensity. This could be one helluva series.
We only had an advance sale of 14,000, but 12,000 more showed up — and the way they were yelling in the ninth, they sounded like 40,000. There were also at least twice the usual number of reporters at the postgame conference.
The theme of my remarks was my admiration of Stottlemyre’s performance, and kudos for the gritty Redbirds. As hard as I try, I can’t get the writers to write what I want the other team to see in the paper. The writers tend to take snippets of what I say and use them out of context. I can’t say I was misquoted, but I frequently feel that they have conveniently missed the point.
For example, they didn’t use anything I said about Stottlemyre, which would have absolved our hitters of blame and would have given credit to the opposition.
When I was asked about “a game of inches,” I talked about a ball Thomas Howard hit with men on first and second and one out in the eighth. It was a liner up the middle, and Clayton turned it into a double play.
“I don’t know why he was playing there,” I said. “Tank usually hits a lot of balls the other way — especially with two strikes.”
This made the paper, and it was phrased in such a way as to make it sound like I was whining and that the Cardinals were lucky to get away with a mistake.
When I was asked about the importance of the game, I talked about Stottlemyre’s effort; about some of our great fielding plays; about Holt’s pitching; and about Bagwell’s home run.
“If you want to know how important a series this is, all you have to do is look at the left side of their infield. You could tell how hard they were pressing in the ninth. They really wanted this one.”
The only part that made the paper is the part in italics.
After a thousand words of praise, all the Cardinals will read about is my saying that they were lucky and that they were pressing.
The last thing I want to do is to say things that will inspire the other team. And that is the first thing Alan Truex wants to write. He has made some of our players so mad that they won’t talk to him.
I don’t have that luxury, but I do have editorial control. In the future, I will not elaborate on anything if he is around. I will simply keep my answers short and boring. If fighting words come out, they will have to be his — not mine.
We are now just three days away from the trading deadline. I did not see Tal today; I hope to see him tomorrow.