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Effectively wild Journeyman Abbott truly unhittable for five innings
Updated: Monday October 22, 2001 9:07 AM
By Jamal Greene, Sports Illustrated An old saying that Seattle pitcher Paul Abbott might have learned a little something about over 17 professional seasons for 15 different teams in six organizations -- not to mention Sunday night -- goes that on a journey of a hundred miles, ninety is only halfway. Baseball men like to talk about "a gamer," a pitcher who keeps his team in the game even when he doesn't have his best stuff. In Yankee circles in recent years the sobriquet is most often linked to Orlando Hernandez, who has consistently pitched capably in the playoffs armed only with hanging breaking pitches and 89-mph fastballs. Abbott has always lacked the combination of talent and luck to ever have been called a big-league ace, but in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, he earned the title of gamer. Trailing in the series, facing a hostile crowd and matched against probable Cy Young award winner Roger Clemens, he of you can't hit what you can't see, Paul Abbott espoused a parallel philosophy, that of you can't hit what you can't hit. "Abbott pitched outstanding," said Yankee first baseman Tino Martinez. "He was effectively wild. He was all over the zone but he made great pitches when he had to." The numbers are extraordinary, and reminiscient of Marlins pitcher A.J. Burnett's nine-walk, no-hit performance last May: Abbott walked eight men in five innings -- the most by anyone in a LCS game in eight years -- and 48 of his 97 pitches were balls, but no Yankee even came close to getting a hit off him. "I really didn't have anything working that I could rely on," Abbott said. "I just threw everything I had at them. I didn't want to give in to them." We knew Abbott was tough. He has undergone two major surgeries over the last four years -- Tommy John surgery on his right elbow in 1997 and then reconstructive surgery on his knee after he tore his ACL in Puerto Rican winter ball a year later. Since coming up with Minnesota in 1990, he has logged 10 separate stints on the disabled list. At last season's ALCS he was the losing pitcher in Roger Clemens's one-hit, 15-strikeout gem against the Mariners in Game 4. Clemens dusted off Alex Rodriguez twice in the first inning of that game, and the following inning Abbott put Yankees catcher Jorge Posada on his back. Asked about the obvious purpose pitch later, Abbott said, "We're playing a man's game." (Abbott appeared to do the same thing on Sunday, throwing high and tight to Paul O'Neill an inning after a pitch came close to Bret Boone's head). In Game 4, though, Abbott, who features a 92-mph fastball, a slider, a curve, and a good changeup, didn't allow his toughness to be overcome by his arm. "Sometimes when a guy is effectively wild," said Yankee DH David Justice, "you go up there anticipating a strike and it's a ball or anticipating a ball and it's a strike. You don't know what to expect. That's pitching." By fastening the noose that never quite proved his undoing, Abbott recalled another saying, that when the gallows is high, the journey is shorter to heaven. Thanks to Bernie Williams and Alfonso Soriano, he still hasn't quite gotten there.
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