Living on the Black Page 3

  A long-toss session usually begins with the pitcher and whomever he is throwing to — frequently in spring training, two pitchers will throw to one another — standing no more than twenty feet apart, softly throwing the ball back and forth. Gradually, they will move back as their arms start to loosen up, usually about ten feet at a time, until they are standing anywhere from 100 to 120 feet apart. (The pitching rubber is sixty feet, six inches from home plate.) A major league pitcher can throw a ball on a straight line from 120 feet if he wants to, but most pitchers don’t throw at much more than 60 percent of their velocity when long tossing.

  An early-winter session can last for as little as ten minutes, with no more than ten or twelve throws from the maximum distance. When a pitcher is well into spring training or the regular season, he might throw as many as forty or fifty times from the full distance. There’s no windup involved, no throwing from the stretch. It is, essentially, a game of catch played at a very high level.

  Glavine long tossed with Sain for ten days. He still felt some soreness the first few days, but after about six or seven days he noticed that he was pain free. By the time the ten days were up, he was throwing free and easy from 120 feet for fifty tosses.

  Sain asked how his arm felt. “Great,” Glavine said. “Pain free.”

  “Okay; tomorrow you’ll throw off a mound out of the bullpen,” Sain said. “If that goes well, we’ll get you back in a game in a few days.”

  At that juncture if Sain had suggested to Glavine that he pitch standing on his head, Glavine would no doubt have done as he was told. The bullpen session — another fifty pitches at about 80 percent of full velocity with some breaking pitches mixed in — went fine. Two days later, Glavine was back on the mound.

  “Never felt another twinge again,” he said. “Johnny’s theory was simple: my arm just wasn’t stretched out because in high school you don’t pitch that much. Plus, even though I probably didn’t know it, I was trying to throw harder than I had in high school. The rest of the season went fine.”

  Baseball’s minor leagues, except at the Rookie League level, are filled with players of all ages and varying experiences: Triple-A is one step from the majors, and teams there are often full of players who have been in the majors and will be back there shortly. Double-A has a handful of players who might be ready to jump straight to the majors but know, for the most part, they’re still probably a year away from being ready to go there. The Single-A level is divided into “high-A” and “low-A,” which are exactly as described. Once upon a time, the minor leagues went as low as “Class D” ball, but someone somewhere decided that classifying anyone below A-level was somehow insulting. Thus, there is high-A and low-A and, below that, rookie ball and short-season rookie ball, which is where Glavine had been sent initially. Short-season is almost exclusively for players who have just finished high school in June, although there are occasional exceptions.

  When short-season was over, Glavine went home for a week and then flew back to Florida to play for the Braves Instructional League team.

  Instructional leagues, which are held in the fall, are just that: a place where younger players are sent to learn their craft. There are no Crash Davises in instructional leagues, only younger players deemed by their teams to have the potential to make the majors. I-league games aren’t really games in the traditional sense.

  “You might start the first inning like a regular game, then go out in the second, and they say, ‘Okay; man on first. Let’s work on your pickoff move this inning,’ ” Glavine remembered. “They might keep you out there for five outs if you have an inning where you don’t throw a lot of pitches, or get you out of there after one or two if you’re struggling.”

  Glavine had a good fall but was happy to return home for the holidays. He had been gone for most of six months. Because his bonus money was being banked in case it was needed down the road and his minor league pay was about $650 a month, he went to work during the winter on his father’s construction crews.

  “Dad steered me clear of the real heavy lifting,” he said. “But I can remember carrying cement on a few occasions and thinking, ‘Whoo boy; be careful with that left shoulder.’ ”

  The shoulder survived the winter, and Glavine found himself promoted to low-A ball the following spring in Sumter, South Carolina. He was a little disappointed not to be sent to Durham, home of the higher A team (not to mention “Bull Durham”) but felt better when it was explained to him that the Durham team was, generally speaking, for older players — guys who had gone to college or had slipped back from higher levels of the minors.

  It turned out Sumter was a team filled with genuine prospects: Lemke was there, as were Jeff Blauser and Ron Gant, all of whom would end up with the Braves and have lengthy major league careers. Friendships were cemented that summer. The players even found time to tour Fort Sumter, the spot where the first shots of the Civil War had been fired. “Not a whole lot else to do in that town,” Glavine remembered. He pitched well at Sumter, but the thing he remembers most is the heat.

  “Just absolutely smoking; every day, every night,” he said. “Hottest summer of my life, bar none.”

  Even in the stifling heat, Glavine pitched well, leading the league in ERA (2.35) while striking out 174 batters in 168 innings. “I guess at that level I was still a flamethrower,” he joked. “I had learned a lot in the Instructional League. I was starting to become a pitcher.”

  He returned to the Instructional League that fall and was promoted to Class-AA Greenville at the start of the 1986 season. He was on the All-Star team in July and pitching so well that he began to hear rumors that he might get called up to the big leagues in September. The Braves were an awful team — they would go on to finish the season 72–89 after going 66–96 a year earlier — and the thought was that calling up some of the team’s bright young prospects in September, when the roster limit was expanded from twenty-five players to forty, might give Braves fans (those that were left) some hope for the future.

  Early in August, Bill Slack, Glavine’s pitching coach in Greenville, sat him down to tell him not to listen to the rumors. “You’re staying right here until the end of the season,” he said. “Don’t listen to any rumors about moving up.”

  A week later Slack called Glavine in again. “You’re going to Richmond,” he said, simply.

  Richmond was the Braves’ Triple-A farm team — one step away from the majors. Glavine was excited and disappointed.

  “We had a group of really good guys,” he said. “I felt very comfortable where I was, and, mentally, I was thinking I’d finish the season there and, with luck, make it to Richmond the following spring. On the other hand, I was being promoted; I felt ready to make the move, and I was one step from the major leagues.”

  The jump to Richmond wasn’t an easy one. “It was the first time I felt a little bit intimidated,” Glavine said. “You could go out there to pitch, and half the lineup might be guys who were in the majors a month earlier. I was twenty years old, and most nights I was facing a lot of guys who had ten or twelve years of professional experience. I had two.”

  He struggled during the last month of the season, going 1–5 with an ERA of more than 5 runs a game. During the playoffs, he pitched out of the bullpen and did better. He even got a save one night. “I didn’t know it because coming out of the bullpen was so confusing for me; I didn’t know what the score was,” he said. “I thought we were up four, and we were only up three. I’d have probably been more nervous if I’d have known.”

  The Braves ended up winning the International League championship, giving Glavine a small taste of what that success felt like. Shortly after the season had ended, Glavine was at home preparing for a nonbaseball off-season. As a Triple-A player he was too advanced for the Instructional League, and he was looking forward to some extended time at home. One afternoon the phone rang, and Glavine heard a voice say, “Tom, hi; it’s Hank.”

  That would be Hank as in Hank Aaron, then (and sti
ll in the minds of many) baseball’s all-time home-run king. Aaron was director of player personnel for the Braves. The team wanted him to play winter ball in Central America. Glavine’s gut told him that would be a mistake.

  “I’d been playing ball almost nonstop since graduating from high school,” he said. “I thought I needed a rest, a winter to take it easy and be fresh for spring training. Being twenty years old and telling Hank Aaron no wasn’t easy, but I was convinced I was doing the right thing.”

  Aaron pushed a little bit, telling Glavine that playing winter ball would probably enhance his chances of making the team the following spring. “Maybe,” Glavine said. “But if I’m good enough to make the team next year, I’ll make it. If I’m not, some more time at Triple-A probably wouldn’t be bad for me.” He hung up, convinced he was right but still feeling a little bit strange about saying no to Hank Aaron.

  “The funny thing is, these days, that call never happens,” Glavine said. “A young pitcher like me — the last thing they would want to do is have me pitch all winter. In fact, occasionally, they tell guys who want to pitch in the winter not to pitch. They’re far more careful about babying young pitchers now than they were then.”

  As he expected, Glavine began the season at Richmond. A year older, a little more experienced, he pitched much better, even though his record (6–12) didn’t reflect it. His ERA was 3.35 — more than two runs lower than it had been the previous summer. “I lost a lot of games two-one and three-two,” he said. “It was frustrating, but I knew I was pitching well, and I was starting to hear again that I might get called up.”

  The Braves weren’t any better than they had been a year earlier (they would win three fewer games), but they were starting to make over their roster under the leadership of Stan Kasten, the team president, and Bobby Cox, who had been hired after the 1985 season as general manager. Kasten and Cox had a simple plan: build around young pitching. Glavine was one of those young pitchers they were counting on to make their future brighter. There were others, including Pete Smith, whom Glavine had competed against in high school. In fact, during the first four years Kasten and Cox were in charge, they had six first-round draft picks; five of those picks were pitchers.

  They also made a decision in the winter of 1987 to re-sign Doyle Alexander, a thirty-seven-year-old journeyman pitcher who clearly would not be around when the team became a contender again. “We signed him for one reason,” Kasten said. “We thought he was still good enough that a contending team might trade us a young pitcher for him during the summer.”

  They were right. On August 13, the Braves traded Alexander to the Detroit Tigers, who were fighting for the American League East pennant. In return, they got a twenty-year-old prospect named John Smoltz. Alexander went 9–0 for the Tigers and did help them win their division. But the trade certainly worked out for the Braves.

  Glavine was in Toledo when the Braves made the trade. On the night of the trade, he pitched what had become a typical game for him: seven innings, one run; then he was lifted for a pinch hitter in the eighth, trailing 1–0. He took the loss. He was back in his hotel room when the phone rang. It was Triple-A manager Roy Majtyka: “The Braves traded Doyle Alexander to Detroit,” he said. “You’re going up. You’ll meet the team in Houston.”

  The next few days are still a blur in Glavine’s mind. He had to call his parents, his friends, his sister, and his two brothers. He had to find a way to get from Toledo to Houston, and he had to figure out how to get enough tickets to get his family and friends into the Astrodome four nights later when he was scheduled to make his major league debut.

  He had no idea who John Smoltz was. All he knew was that his presence in the Braves organization had gotten him promoted to the majors. He had no idea that Smoltz would become a key part of the Braves staff and his best friend in the game. “If I had known that Smoltzy would spend the rest of our lives telling me he was the reason I got to the majors, I might not have gone,” he said, laughing. “But I guess, in the end, it was worth it.”

  He reported to Houston on August 14 and began preparing for his first start as a big leaguer. His opponent would be Mike Scott, who had won the National League Cy Young Award the previous season.

  Glavine was twenty-one years old, and any thoughts about giving up baseball to go to college were in the past. He was nervous but excited. Bring on Mike Scott, he thought.

  2

  The Lawyer’s Son

  WHILE IT MAY BE EASY to describe the whereabouts of Billerica to someone — twenty-five miles northwest of Boston — it is not nearly as simple to tell someone exactly where Montoursville, Pennsylvania, can be found.

  “It’s the next town over from Williamsport” lets people know that it is on the doorstep of the place where the Little League World Series is held every year but still doesn’t help that much unless you have been to the Little League World Series.

  If you check a map, you will find that Montoursville is 180 miles northwest of Philadelphia and 215 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

  In short, Montoursville is near almost nothing. According to the 2000 census, it has a population of 4,777. And, depending on your point of view, the second most famous person to have grown up in Montoursville was either Tom O’Malley, who spent several years playing in the major leagues; Blaise Alexander, a semisuccessful NASCAR driver; or Kelly Mazzante, who plays in the WNBA.

  There is no doubt, however, about who Montoursville’s most famous native son is: Michael Cole Mussina.

  Montoursville is where Mike Mussina grew up, where he still lives today, and where he plans to live when he is finished playing baseball.

  “It’s home,” he says with a shrug. “I’m comfortable here.”

  These days his home sits on a two hundred–acre tract of land that he purchased in 1994 for $510,000 during his third full season with the Baltimore Orioles. There are three main buildings on the property: a large, comfortable house, where Mussina, his wife, Jana, and their three children live; a gym that is larger than some college gyms; and “the barn,” which houses not animals, but several dozen old cars Mussina has collected through the years.

  Mussina has come a long way — though moving only a short distance — since his days growing up as the best athlete ever to come out of Montoursville. Malcolm, his dad, was, and is, a local lawyer; Eleanor, his mom, is a retired nurse. Mike is the older of their two sons — his brother, Mark, also still lives in town — and quickly established himself as a star in every sport he tried. While Glavine’s first love was hockey, Mussina’s was basketball.

  He can still tell you off the top of his head that he scored 1,421 points as a three-year starter at Montoursville High School (then again he can recite almost any of his lifetime stats in an instant), and even now he and Mark often begin their winter workouts in the family gym by playing basketball — anything from a shooting contest to full-court one-on-one, depending on the day.

  Mussina also played football growing up and was a good enough placekicker and punter — he also played wide receiver — to get some scholarship interest from various colleges during his junior and senior years of high school. “If I had thought I was good enough to play Division 1 basketball, that probably would have been my first choice,” he said. “But I wasn’t that good. I was a reasonably good high school player; I probably could have gone to a D-3 school and played, but not D-1. I knew my best shot was going to be baseball.”

  Like Glavine, Mussina was a star pitcher from an early age. He wasn’t all that big, but he threw hard — very hard for a kid — and he had good control. He enjoyed trying to throw different pitches, in addition to his fastball, and was always fooling around with different grips.

  “One thing people don’t understand sometimes is how much we [big league pitchers] study pitching and study baseball,” he said. “I enjoy pitching and I enjoy competing, but I also enjoy the game itself. I like to watch other guys pitch, especially guys who are good at what they do. After all these years, I know
a lot about pitching. I can watch a young pitcher throw three pitches and probably have a good idea about his potential. It isn’t just how hard he throws, but how he throws: his delivery, the look on his face, and, after a few pitches, how he responds to any suggestions I might make.

  “Pitching isn’t just physical. Sure, you need certain tools and ability. But if you’re going to do it well for a long time, you need more than that. You need an understanding of what goes into it.”

  To some, Mussina might sound immodest when he talks about how much he knows about pitching — and about a lot of things. He can come off at times as one of those people who believes he’s always the smartest guy in the room. One reason for that is that he frequently is the smartest guy in the room.

  In 2006 Mussina appeared in the documentary Wordplay, which is about people who are fascinated by crossword puzzles. He was one of a handful of famous people the filmmakers found who did crosswords regularly. The others were former President Bill Clinton, Daily show host Jon Stewart, and former New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent. Not the kind of company most baseball players keep on a regular basis.

  “They were different than me,” Mussina explained. “They all do the Times puzzle on a regular basis. I prefer USA Today. I’ve done the Times, but it’s really hard. I enjoy USA Today because it’s easier and I can get through it faster.”

  That’s sort of typical Mussina. He knows he’s smart, but he doesn’t feel any need to prove he’s any smarter than he really is. The main reason people frequently get upset with him is that he doesn’t feel a need to massage people’s egos. He is completely honest when he answers questions and never gives a knee-jerk answer. Often, he will pause a while before answering the question because he is thinking it through. Sometimes he will challenge the premise of the question before answering it.