RMJ 206 September 9

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 ● Denver, vs Colorado

I woke up feeling like I had been hit by a car. The whole right side of my rib cage — front and back — was sore. I immediately took a deep breath.

Last spring, I had a bout with pericarditis that eventually required surgery. The symptoms were a sore rib cage on the left side — front and back — and shortness of breath.

I had no problem breathing, so I eliminated pericarditis from the list of deadly ailments that may have come upon me overnight.

This is the way you think when you are in a slump.

 

Ashley’s mother- and father in-law came down from Keystone, and I met them for lunch. The meal was pleasant, but I remained preoccupied about my chest pain. When we finished eating, they went back to the hotel to rest, and I went to the ballpark. It was 12:45 — my earliest arrival time of the year.

It was a gorgeous afternoon: sunny and warm, but not too hot. A year ago, I would have been bicycling along Cherry Creek, or sailing along on my Rollerblades.  I would have been browsing in a bookstore or checking out the offerings of the many western art galleries. I wouldn’t even be thinking about the ballpark midday. I rarely arrived at the park more than three hours before the game, because it only took me two hours to prepare. I wasn’t into wasting time.

Now, I hang around, with nothing to do, on a daily basis.

Today, I had six hours to kill and only an hour’s worth of work to do. I really should have spent a few hours shopping, or I could have gone back to the room to read about the Goat Brothers.

I guess I went to the ballpark because I wasn’t feeling well. When I am away from home, the ballpark is the next-best thing.

This time, the park gave no comfort. I couldn’t sit still; kept moving around: my office, the coaches’ room, the lunchroom, the training room.

Dave arrived about an hour after I did, but I didn’t share my health problem with him; don’t ask me why. Perhaps I was just wallowing in the misery of the losing streak, and the pressure from Drayton and Tal.

I knew that it would be difficult to win here, with our puny lineup. Sure, I can hit Biggio third and Bagwell fourth, but what about the rest of the spots? The Rockies have Ellis Burks, with 28 home runs, hitting second — and Vinny Castilla, with 38 homers, hitting sixth. Everyone in-between is in the same class.

No, they’re not all that fast. We can outrun them in the Dome. But we sure can’t beat them in Home Run Derby.

It really doesn’t make any difference to me which way we line up. I am more concerned with getting everyone going at the same time, like we did in July. If Bidge and Baggy are agreeable to change, so be it. That will make Drayton happy, and it may even produce more runs.

Here in Denver, most everyone hits well. I could probably put Chuckie and Billy Spiers in front of the “B” boys and do just fine. The big problem is stopping the Rockies.

 

I continued to pace around like an expectant father in a hospital waiting room. Bidge usually arrives by 2:30, but today he was late. He finally arrived about 3:30, and we talked privately for about 20 minutes. He said he would do anything I wanted him to do, but that he preferred to hit leadoff.

I remembered his reluctance to play the lead role in the spring. But now he feels comfortable, and he is having one of the best leadoff years ever. He has 21 home runs and 78 RBI. He has stolen 32 bases and has scored 128 runs. If he had hit third all year, he would have a few more RBI and a few less runs scored. In any case, he is having a monster year.

I understand his reluctance to change spots. Like most ballplayers, he is superstitious, and he doesn’t want to mess with a good thing. Honestly, I don’t want to either, but I may have to — not for Biggio and Bagwell, but for the team.

A dramatic lineup change would change our cosmic bearing. It may spur a winning streak, or hasten our downward spiral. Or it may have very little effect, other than to stir things up and create a controversy.

We decided to leave the lineup alone in Denver and reassess the situation when we got back home on Friday.

I knew Tal would be a little peeved when he tuned in the game and saw no change. He has to take the heat from Drayton, and I do not underestimate that burden. It’s not that Drayton is overbearing; he’s just so darned persistent.

Still, I have to live or die with my lineup. Ultimately, I will live or die on my record. Tal honestly thinks a new lineup would help; I concede it might.

He has pressure from above, and I have it from below.  

 

When I finally got around to mentioning my chest pain to Dave during batting practice, he seemed unconcerned.

“You probably slept on it wrong,” he said, as he gave me a couple of Advil. Sleeping wrong was something I had considered — along with tuberculosis, cancer, heart attack, and other internal disasters.  I also considered hypochondria, and I dismissed that notion; I had some real pain.

A few minutes after I talked with Dave, Dennis Liborio came up to me and asked if I had heard about Richie Ashburn.

“No,” I said. “What happened?”

“He died this morning,” Dennis said. “He called Eddie Ferenz about six in the morning, and said he wasn’t feeling well. Eddie got the trainer up, and by the time they got to his room, he was already dead.”

“Heart attack?” I asked.

“I don’t know. That’s what they think.”

Richie was a friend of mine. We played golf together, shared a few meals.  He was an original. Always wore a hat, smoked a pipe. He had an unusual staccato speech rhythm, not unlike Paul Harvey.

I remember one Sunday when he taped an interview with me for the Phillies pre-game show on radio. It seemed like we chatted for maybe three or four minutes, then he stopped for a commercial break. Then we talked for two or three more minutes.

“How do you do these interviews without a stopwatch?” I asked.

“I got the stopwatch right here, pal” he said, pointing to his head.

A few minutes later, I saw his partner, Harry Kalas.

“That Whitey is amazing,” I said. “He does an interview at least seven minutes long, without even using a stopwatch. I’ve been doing these things for fifteen years, but I could never come close to guesstimating seven minutes. How does he do it?”

“Any way he wants to do it,” Harry said. “If he has a good talker, like you, he goes long and we miss the first few hitters. “If he gets a guy who is tough to talk to, he goes short and I have to fill a couple of minutes before we start.

“That’s how he does it.”

I laughed then, but I’m not laughing now. Richie’s death only made me feel more uncomfortable with my own pain. This made me feel guilty, because I was thinking of myself and not him.

It had been a long, discouraging day, and we hadn’t even started dealing with the powerful Rockies — a team that has been hot lately.

 

The game actually went well. Mike Hampton pitched masterfully. We got home runs from Derek Bell and Billy Spiers and won 7-4, snapping our three-game losing streak.

I used Martin and Springer to finish up, and they were fine. But I had little faith; I could smell doom in the Rocky Mountain breeze. My body was running a low-voltage current throughout the game.