Ausmus' impact on Dodgers can't be measured by statistics (cont.)

The Dodgers' pitching staff ended the regular season as baseball's best: Its cumulative 3.41 ERA led the majors, and was the lowest by any club since the 2003 Dodgers' 3.16 mark. What makes that achievement even more remarkable was that L.A. lost last season's opening day starter, Derek Lowe, to free agency, and was forced to cobble together a rotation that featured 11 different starters, including an assortment of rookies (Clayton Kershaw, McDonald) and journeymen who had previously appeared to be washed up (Randy Wolf, Eric Milton, Jeff Weaver, Jason Schmidt, Vicente Padilla).

Ausmus' fingerprints are all over the staff's success, believes Kershaw. "He's still a good player," Kershaw says. "Defensively, he will block everything, he'll throw out guys, he'll obviously know the right pitches to call and stuff like that. There's a trust with a guy when you know he's been around for 17 years." Indeed, in the seven games in which Kershaw threw to Ausmus, the 21-year-old yielded only four runs and a .133 batting average against, and didn't allow either a triple or a home run.

"But I think we see his impact even more with Russell," Kershaw continues. "Russell's the guy that leads the [pre-series] meetings, because he's going to be the primary catcher. I know he and Brad get here at least a couple of hours early before the first game of each series, and talk about all the hitters' weaknesses and strengths and stuff like that. When it comes time for all of us to meet, from last year to this year I feel like from Russell's grasp of the hitters and the way he talks about them, you can just tell that Ausmus has rubbed off on him a lot."

Ausmus operates as effectively in the Dodgers' clubhouse as he does on the field and in meeting rooms. One early order of business for him this season was to integrate Manny Ramirez into the clubhouse, after he finally joined the team this spring in the wake of a generally nasty contract negotiation. "Hey, Manny," Ausmus said upon Ramirez's arrival. "Why'd you only get a two-year deal? I guess they only give three years to the really special players -- like Casey Blake." Blake, another of the Dodgers' offseason signings, has a career .266 average and 146 home runs, to Ramirez's .313 and 546.

"Hey, Manny," Ausmus called out in the clubhouse on April 16, after Ramirez had begun the season with nine straight games without a homer. "Have you checked the stats recently? You and me are tied for homers. Ramirez and Ausmus. Tied."

Ramirez cackled. "They don't pay me to start," he said. "They pay me to finish."

In some ways, Ausmus' role with the Dodgers is similar to the one he played with Dartmouth's team from 1987 to 1991.Ausmus signed with the Yankees after they selected him in the 48th round of the 1987 draft and agreed to allow him to attend classes for two trimesters a year, and to play in the minors in the spring and summer. (Despite that limited schedule, it took him only five and a half years to graduate, with a degree in government). As he was a professional, Ausmus was not allowed to play for the Big Green, but Dartmouth's then-coach Mike Walsh says that he never missed a practice while he was on campus, even if it meant arising before dawn in his Chi Gam frat house to trudge through New Hampshire snow drifts to attend February sessions that began at 5:45 a.m. "We arguably had the greatest catcher in the history of the Ivy League as our bullpen catcher," Walsh says. "We had one pitcher named Mike Remlinger who was a first-round draft pick," -- and who went on to play 14 big league seasons, most successfully with the Braves -- "but everybody else was kind of your average Ivy League pitcher. Brad would work with them, and those are the kinds of pitchers with whom you have to extract every ounce of ability out of them."

Ausmus' experience at Dartmouth prepared him to effectively work with the range of styles and skill-sets he'd later encounter in pitchers at the game's highest level, but perhaps equally important is that it nurtured his ability to relate to the wide variety of personalities with whom a major league catcher must deal on a daily basis. "It taught me to deal with people who are from different backgrounds, and have different beliefs," he says. "It socializes you in that sense. You learn to understand that there are going to be people who are very different from you, and to respect them, and even learn from them."

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Ausmus' understanding of the game and of the people who play it has placed him atop the short list of current players who are widely believed to possess the characteristics to manage a club someday. "Of anybody in the game today you can see as a future manager, he's the guy," says Hampton. "In that regard, he's above and beyond any other player who has put on a uniform in the past 20 years."

If he is to follow that path, he would join the fraternity of former big league catchers who have had successful second careers as managers -- a group that currently boasts eight active members, including three of the four managers who remain alive in the playoffs in Torre, the Yankees' Joe Girardi and the Angels' Mike Scioscia. Ausmus, though, says he remains far from seriously considering that possibility. "There are only 30 managerial jobs, so to assume you'll get one of them is a bit arrogant," he says. "Whether I manage or not, I don't know -- I don't know if it would ever avail itself."

Besides, Ausmus still has plenty of other of things on which to focus: fellow catchers to tutor, 58-foot curveballs to block, superstar egos to put into check, pitchers to prepare. "When he gives you advice, you take it to heart a little differently because it's coming from one of your peers, as opposed to a coach," says Kershaw. "When a coach tells you to do something, I don't want to say it's like a teacher telling a kid to behave, but sometimes it comes off like that. But when Ausmus or one of your peers says, 'Hey, work on this, I'll help you out with this,' you take it to heart a little bit differently."

Ausmus did not have an at-bat during the Dodgers' three-game NLDS sweep of the Cardinals, and he might not see the field against the Phillies in the NLCS, but he'll continue to play the role that he has perfected in 17 seasons in the big leagues: that of a winning ballclub's heart and mind, if not its muscle.