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Waiting for McGwire Slugger's absence makes us wonder what might've been
I will reveal to you now one of the most amazing sights I ever have seen in baseball. It is Mark McGwire's bat. The sweet spot of the barrel is pock-marked haphazardly with many half-inch, slightly jagged indentations. These are impressions created by the seams of baseballs. McGwire hits the ball so hard that he dents his bat. You get an eerie feeling gazing at these marks up close. It is like coming upon clues left behind at a crime scene. You sense the sheer violence with which he strikes a baseball. Alas, McGwire's bat was not so scary in the National League Championship Series. He could do no more than bat once a day because of a severe case of patellar tendinitis. His presence loomed over each game. The threat of his lone appearance carried palpable excitement. But mostly it was like a dark cloud with no rain in time of drought. And while the Mets never knew exactly when they might see McGwire, his limited availability created just as much anxiety for his own manager, Tony La Russa, as it did for New York manager Bobby Valentine. La Russa's dilemma about what to do with Big Mac was never more evident than in Game 4. The Cardinals lost the game 10-6 without McGwire ever stepping into the batter's box. That simply should not happen.
But then it was pointed out to La Russa he did have an opportunity to use McGwire as the tying run: sixth inning, one man on and the Mets ahead 8-6. Moreover, a left-hander, Glendon Rusch, was on the mound. (Valentine, though, likely would have hustled right-hander Turk Wendell into the game. McGwire is 0-for-8 against Wendell.) La Russa let Fernando Tatis bat; he whiffed. He let lefty J.D. Drew bat; he lined out to shortstop. Worst of all, he let weak-hitting catcher Carlos Hernandez bat; he grounded out. That was it. Never again would La Russa get the tying run to the plate -- for the rest of the series, as it turned out. La Russa, mentioning the Tatis and Drew at-bats, admitted, "Yeah, that was probably the only time to take a shot." The next day he added, "Probably there was some stuff in that game that we did that I was proud of, and there was some stuff that we did that I was not proud of." McGwire coped well with his limited availability, even jokingly referring to himself as Manny Mota. "One thing good has come out of all this," he said. "I know I can do it. So if late in my career a team wanted me to play part time and come off the bench to hit, I know now I can do it. I can handle it. It's something I know I could accept and do."
Game 1: No spot for him, not in a game the Cardinals trailed 6-0 heading into the ninth inning and lost 6-2. Game 2: McGwire was ready to hit several times, including as early as the fourth inning, but La Russa had no spot for him. He finally used him with first base open in the eighth inning of a tie game. Of course, the Mets walked him and escaped the jam and won with a run in the ninth. First base opened up in that inning when Drew hustled into second with a double rather than stopping at first base. If Drew did stop at first base, McGwire would have had the chance to swing the bat. "Oh, yeah," Valentine said when asked if he would have pitched to McGwire with Drew at first. "I liked that matchup, Wendell against him. I probably liked that better than with Drew up there." You can't fault La Russa in this instance, but the game did point out how awkward it is to try to find exactly the right spot for a player who can't field and can't run. "My heart was beating hard quite a few times," McGwire said of his several false starts at hitting. Game 3: McGwire bats with two runners on and two outs in the fourth against Rusch. It is a brilliant, aggressive move by La Russa. McGwire flies out to left field. The Shea Stadium crowd, lulled to disinterest by the 5-1 St. Louis lead, sprung to life at the sight of McGwire popping out of the dugout. La Russa unwittingly brought the crowd back into the game with the move. The Mets loaded the bases in the bottom of the inning, but they got only one run out of it. "When I went up there I was just hoping it didn't change momentum over to their side," McGwire said. "So I was glad when Andy [Benes] shut them down after that." Asked about the fans' response, McGwire said, "The louder it is the more I get into my tunnel, so I like it." Game 4: The missed opportunity in the sixth. Game 5: A meaningless at-bat in the ninth inning of a 7-0 loss. McGwire said his knee first began hurting in spring training. "I never had any problems with a knee, so I just thought it was normal aches and pains," he said. But the discomfort grew worse. He felt pain while pressing the brake pedal on his car. He felt pain sleeping at night. And then one night in a game in July he knew he could go on no longer. He has rested the injury for three months and still it is no better. "When I start running it's OK," he said, "but when I start slowing down and my weight goes on one knee, I still feel a little bite there." McGwire has said he prefers to use more rest this winter to recover. But he sounded as if he is coming around to the possibility of surgery. He and the Cardinals will make a decision in the coming days about what to do. "It's either-or," he said. "I'm told I can rehab it or sit down and have the major surgery. There's nothing definite yet. And it would be major surgery. They say if I have surgery in October I could be 80 percent by spring training." In the meantime, a hobbled McGwire was a cruel tease for La Russa and baseball fans. The Cardinals would have been a much more dangerous team against left-handed pitching with a healthy McGwire. The Cardinals would have been a bigger national television draw with McGwire. It was not a fitting stage for one of the greatest players in history; in his earlier trips to the postseason he was a supporting actor to stars such as Jose Canseco, Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley. In the end, the worst feeling of all is wondering what might have been -- a feeling La Russa knew too well after Game 4. Hampton's feat a rarityHow unusual was it to see a starting pitcher get the last out of a League Championship Series? When Mike Hampton did it in Game 5, he became only the fifth starter in the past 40 LCS series (since 1979) to do so. In his age of relief specialization, here is the list of throwbacks: 2000, Mike Hampton, Mets
No American League starter has pitched a complete-game win in an LCS clincher since Scott McGregor of Baltimore in 1979. The last pitcher to close out the World Series with a complete game was Jack Morris of the Twins in 1991. Where will Bobby V go?The soap opera about Valentine's future that seems to be played out every day in the New York tabloids has become laughable. One day one paper says the Mets are hot for Lou Piniella, and another day another paper says they will pursue Dusty Baker. In between, Valentine is rumored to be headed to the Dodgers. Then comes a report that the Reds asked for permission to talk to Valentine about their managerial job. You can't come up with much more of a grandstand play than to ask to negotiate with a manager who is on the verge of taking his team to the World Series. This much seems to be certain: The Mets want him back, but at their price (which may or may not include a guaranteed third year). And if Valentine reads that as bad vibes -- that he is coming back without full support from the front office -- he might just take his services elsewhere. The Dodgers? Well, consider this. According to a source with ties to the Los Angeles front office, "No way. He's got no shot there. They don't want him. I still think he's going back to New York." Pitchers no good on three days restValentine has had a superb postseason, outmaneuvering Baker and La Russa in successive series. His two best decisions were: 1) giving Timo Perez a start against a left-hander immediately after Derek Bell went down with an injury (it sent a message to Perez that he would play full time, rather than sharing time with Bubba Trammell ); and 2) showing no temptation whatsoever to use a starting pitcher on three days of rest. Valentine can be thankful for his depth of starters (wouldn't La Russa have loved to have Rusch, who didn't even crack New York's postseason rotation?). But he also realizes that it is poor practice to ask a pitcher trained to pitch every fifth day to suddenly alter that routine in the season's seventh month. " Orel Hershiser and David Cone did it," Valentine said, "but those guys are physical [exceptions] and they broke down anyway. It's like weightlifting. You break the body down and then you need time to rest, recover and build it back up." Mike Hargrove lost his job in Cleveland last year after starting Charles Nagy and Bartolo Colon on short rest. Then there is this irrefutable evidence: Every time a manager has used a starter on short rest over these past two seasons the starter has been awful. Every time. La Russa set up his rotation for the NLCS to have Kile pitch Game 7 (on short rest). Well, he set himself up for a game that never happened. The next time a manager is tempted to use a starter on short rest he should check these results, the pitching lines for starters in the 1999 and 2000 postseasons on three days of rest. They total a 19.11 ERA and 66 runners in 21 2/3 innings.
Quick LCS bodes well for MetsThe Mets gained a huge advantage by closing out the Cardinals in Game 5. They didn't have to use Al Leiter in a Game 6, which would have pushed him from Game 2 of the World Series to Game 3. More important, rest at this time of year is huge. Pitchers get days to regroup and managers get time to align their rotation. Think that helps? Consider this: Since the LCS expanded to a best-of-seven format in 1995, nine teams have nailed down their pennant in four or five games. Six of those teams parlayed their rest into a world championship. (One of the teams that didn't, the 1989 Giants, played another team that won a short LCS, the Athletics.) Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci covers the baseball beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send a question to his mailbag.
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