Inside Baseball: The Best of Tom Verducci

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

Copyright 2006
Time Home Entertainment Inc.

Published by
Sports Illustrated Books

Edited by Rob Fleder

Book Design and Cover Photography by Steven Hoffman

Time Inc.
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NewYork, NY 10020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote a brief passage in a review.

ISBN 10: 1-60320-384-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-60320-384-5

Sports Illustrated Books is a trademark of Time Inc.

To my mother, Vita,
and to the memory of my father, Anthony

Copyright

Dedication

I
NTRODUCTION
by Roger Clemens

P
REFACE
: M
Y
L
IFE IN
B
ASEBALL
by Tom Verducci

T
HE
A
MAZIN
’ C
OLLAPSE OF THE
M
ETS

E
ARLY
R
ISER

T
HE
P
LAYERS
’ M
OST
V
ALUABLE
P
LAYER

T
HE
H
IGH
P
RICE OF
H
ARD
L
IVING

A
LONE ON THE
H
ILL

A F
AREWELL TO
S
KINNY
A
RMS

N
ASTY
S
TUFF

A
CES
H
IGH

T
HE
L
EFT
A
RM OF
G
OD

A G
AME FOR
U
NLIKELY
H
EROES

T
HE
P
OWER OF
P
EDRO

H
IGH
-W
IRE
A
CT

T
OTALLY
J
UICED

600
AND
C
OUNTING

T
HE
U
LTIMATE
G
AMER

W
HAT
I
S
R
ICKEY
H
ENDERSON
D
OING IN
N
EWARK
?

H
ITTING
B
OTTOM

H
EADY
S
TUFF

F
IVE
O
UTS
A
WAY

A
T THE
E
ND OF THE
C
URSE, A
B
LESSING

I W
AS A
T
ORONTO
B
LUE
J
AY

BY ROGER CLEMENS

Y
OU MIGHT SAY THAT TOM VERDUCCI AND I BROKE
into the big leagues together. It’s hard to remember a time when Tom wasn’t known around the game as one of the best baseball writers in the country; but in 1984, when I was a rookie with the Red Sox, he was enjoying his first full season on the baseball beat, as a backup to the regular Mets and Yankees writers for
Newsday
. Our paths have crossed often since then, and we’ve had a lot of great conversations, particularly since he joined S
PORTS
I
LLUSTRATED
in 1993. I really got to know him over the years, but I only began to understand why I’ve always enjoyed his work so much in the spring of 2003.

I was pitching for the Yankees, getting close to my 300th win, and one day Tom asked me about the exercise regimen I follow between starts. He wondered how a guy in his 40s was still able to generate a 95 mph fastball. Lots of reporters have asked about my workouts, and I figured this would just be another one of those stories.
Roger runs, blah blah blah
. “No, I don’t want you to
tell
me about what you do,” Tom said. “I want to
see
it.”

I’d never heard that from a writer before. Of course, I hadn’t seen many writers who were in the kind of shape Tom appeared to be in, either. (Just to give him a hard time, I tell him he looks like Jason Sehorn, the former New York Giants cornerback.) “Forget watching it,” I replied. “How about you
do
it with me?”

Tom laughed, but the next morning he was standing outside my apartment in Manhattan, dressed in full workout gear and ready to go. It was a damp, gray day, the kind of morning that makes you want to sleep in or flip the channels until it’s time to head to the ballpark. But Tom, my trainer, another workout buddy and I headed over to an empty soccer field and got after it, far from the spotlights of any big-league stadium. We went right into what I call the SEAL Deal, a 33-minute drill where I alternate abdominal work—a total of about 950 crunches—with quarter-mile runs. I don’t care what kind of shape you’re in, that program will get your attention. I won’t mention any names, but through the years I’ve invited many of my teammates to that workout. Most of them got through maybe half of it … and then they never wanted any part of that again.

My trainer and I were ready to have some fun with Tom, but he stayed right with us, running and doing crunches like he was the one making a start in a few days. All right, maybe he skipped a few of the crunches. But he didn’t bow out. That impressed me, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. Tom wasn’t chasing
me
around that soccer field. He was chasing a story, trying to find out how I do what I do, and he’s always willing to go a little further and dig a little deeper than most writers. When he wants to chat in the clubhouse or behind the batting cage, players know his questions will have a little more on them than what we usually hear. Not in a nasty way; one of the things that stands out about Tom is how calm and even-keeled he is and how fair he is in what he writes. Everything he does is above the belt. Players appreciate that, especially in a business where sometimes what’s said in an interview can be spun out of context. You know whatever Tom asks will be well thought out and what he writes will reflect what was said, even when he hears it while grinding through the last lap of a 6:40 mile.

Maybe the fact that Tom is a pretty good athlete accounts for why he so accurately captures the personalities of the players he writes about, whether it’s Sandy Koufax or Rickey Henderson. And as this collection shows, Tom writes stories that stick with you long after you’ve read them. I remember thinking about one during, of all times, a spring training drill when I was with the Yankees. Dwight Gooden, who was also a rookie in ’84, was in camp with us as a part-time coach. As we were taking PFP (Pitchers’ Fielding Practice) I couldn’t help but think that instead of hitting me grounders, Doc should have been getting ready to go into the Hall of Fame. I thought back a few years, to when Tom had told the stories of Gooden and Darryl Strawberry in
The High Price of Hard Living
, one of the pieces in this book. It’s a reminder that talent isn’t enough to guarantee success in this game.

The same goes for writing, and few reporters I’ve met combine natural talent with a work ethic the way Tom does. He’s the rare writer who has as much to offer those of us inside the game as we do him, which is one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed going back and reading the stories in this book again. I’m not just talking about trade news or tidbits about guys on other teams that come up in conversation. I’m talking about stories like
Totally Juiced
, Tom’s ground-breaking piece on baseball’s steroid problem, and the Marvin Miller piece,
The Players’ Most Valuable Player
, a short profile of the man who made it possible for today’s players to live the lives they do. Those stories were eye-openers for players as well as fans.

Tom and I have talked a lot about that subject: about how power pitchers approach their craft, about mechanics, about the difference between eras like Koufax’s and mine. In a way, pitching and writing are similar. No matter what happens in a game, the guy on the mound is the one who gets the
W
or the
L
next to his name. And a writer, especially one who writes with substance, puts himself on the line, too. And like a good pitcher, a writer can’t be afraid to fail.