The Roger Angell Baseball Collection (98 page)

Here is Bob Boone again: “It’s much more fun catching a guy with excellent control, because then you feel you’re part of the whole jockeying experience. Here’s a ball that’s just inside-fine. Now go back outside and put the ball on the corner this time. You’re
orchestrating
that. Catching somebody like Tommy John is more work mentally, but it’s much more pleasurable, and after it’s over you’ll both think, Hey, we had a great game. There’s no doubt that a catcher can help a pitcher, but he can’t be a dictator out there. When you’ve established that rapport with a pitcher you know, what you put down in a situation is almost always just about what he’s thinking. When that happens, it gives the pitcher the confidence to throw a good pitch. You adjust as you go along—to the hitters and to your pitcher’s abilities on that given day. If you can do it, you want to save something to use late in the game, because there are always a few batters you can’t get out the same way more than once. If you’ve got through the order the first time without using your pitcher’s whole repertoire, you’re a little ahead. But pitchers change as a game goes along, of course, and then you have to adjust to
that.
Say your pitcher’s best pitch is his slider, but then by the way he warms up for the next inning you think
Uh-oh,
because suddenly it isn’t anymore—not at that moment. But then four pitches later it may be back again. It’s a feel you have, and that’s what you really can’t teach to young catchers.

“Sometimes you get a sudden notion for an exotic call—something that’s really strange in a certain situation that you somehow know is the right thing. You’re jamming the man—throwing the ball right by him—and suddenly you call for a changeup. Ordinarily, you don’t do that, but even if I’m watching a game from the bench I can sometimes feel when the moment comes:
Now throw him the changeup.
It’s strange and it’s strictly feel, but when it happens and you have the closeness with the pitcher he’ll come in after the inning and say, ‘You know, I had exactly the same idea back there!’ But in the end, of course, it’s how he throws those pitches that matters.”

Pitchers can always shake off a catcher’s sign, to be sure—some shakeoffs are only meant to set up doubt in the batter’s mind—and catcher-pitcher negotiations go on between innings or during a mound conference. These last are not always diplomatic murmurings. “There almost has to be a lot of screaming and yelling between pitchers and catchers if they’re going to get along,” Tim McCarver told me. “With Gibby”—Bob Gibson, that is—“it sometimes happened right out on the mound. I remember a game against the Pirates when Clemente hit one of his patented shots to right field, and when Gibby came past me to back up the throw in he yelled, ‘Goddam it, you’ve got to put down something more than one ringer back there!’ ”

Ted Simmons said, “Sometimes you have to persuade your pitcher out of a certain pitch in the middle of the game. It’s hard for him to remain objective in the heat of battle. If he’s had some success, I might go out there and ask what he’s thinking, and if he says, ‘Over the years, I’ve gotten this guy out with this pitch in this situation, even though it’s dangerous—let’s say there are two on and he’s getting ready to throw a changeup—then I say, ‘Fine. Let’s go.’ But if I go out there and he says, ‘Well, I just got
a feel,
man,’ and he’s lookin’ at me with cloudy eyes, I say, ‘Look, we’ll do that next time—OK?’ It’s a matter of being convincing.” Ted Simmons, I should add, is one of the most convincing men in baseball. He is a sixteen-year man in the majors—the last three with the Brewers, the rest with the Cardinals—and is one of the prime switch hitters in the game: in 1975 he batted .332 for the Cards and drove in a hundred runs. He is known for his intelligence and knowledge of the game—splendid assets, but what I most enjoy about Simba is his passionate way of talking baseball. He talks the way Catfish Hunter used to pitch—feeling for the corners early on and then with a widening flow of ideas and confidence and variation in the late going: Cooperstown stuff. When we sat down together at Sun City last spring, I asked him about the difference between National League pitching—almost an idle question, I thought, since I was pretty sure I knew the answer: a lower strike zone in the National League, and more breaking balls in the A.L.

“I don’t know how it began, but it’s there, all right,” Simmons said. “It’s a difference of
approach.
The National League, in my mind, throws the slow stuff early in the count and then throws the fastball late, with two strikes on the batter. To me, that makes more sense, because you’re forcing the batter to hit the ball—that’s the objective—and the odds are always against a base bit, even with the best hitters. The American League approach, from what I’ve seen of it in two years, is to throw hard early—to get two strikes and no balls, or 2–1 or 2–2—and
then
go to the slow stuff. So if you’re 2–1 in the A.L., you’re apt to go to 3–2 every time, because they’ll throw a curveball and you’ll foul it. Then a curve or a slider, and you’ll take it, for 3–2. Then another slider or curve, and you’ll foul it, then
another
curve-ball, and you’ll swing and miss it for a strikeout or hit a fly ball for the out. So there are three or four extra pitches on almost every batter, and that’s one reason why the American League has such long games. The A.L. philosophy is to get two strikes and then don’t let him hit, and the N.L. thinks, Get two strikes and
make
him hit it.”

I asked him which league had the better pitchers, and he thought about it for a while. “I think the American League pitchers are
probably
better, on balance,” he said at last, “because they have to be refined when the count is against them—to throw that breaking ball and get it over the plate, throw it in a way to get the man out. The very best of them may be more subtle and refined and tough than the N.L. pitchers. I’m talking about guys like Dave Stieb, of the Toronto Blue Jays, and Pete Vuckovich here. Vukey was with me on the Cardinals, you know, but he made the adjustment very fast when he came over to this league. But there are always exceptions. Somebody like Steve Rogers”—of the National League Montreal Expos—“could pitch very well in this league.”

Bob Boone and Milt May have also had experience in both leagues, but they both gave a slight edge to National League pitching. May said that the N.L.’s preference for the slider—the faster breaking ball—as against the American League’s prejudice for the curve, might make the crucial difference. Boone said, “I think the real difference between the leagues is about six National League pitchers. Soto, Seaver, Carlton, Rogers, maybe Reuss, and any one of three or four others. Put ’em over in the American League, and they’re even.” (Tom Seaver, who came to the Chicago White Sox over this winter, has already made the switch.) “I would guess there are deeper counts in the A.L., but I wouldn’t know for sure. I know there’s more confidence in control in the A.L. In either league, it’s hard as hell to get a base hit, most days.”

Simmons wanted to be sure that I understood the extent of the catcher’s involvement with other aspects of the game—with his manager, for instance, and with the deployment of the defense on the field. “With some managers,” he said, “you can come to them in the dugout in the middle of the game and say, “This pitcher has
had
it. I assume you know that. But I want you to know I’m having to struggle with every pitch in every inning. I can’t set up a program with this man, because he’s faltering. Now I want some notion about your objectives. Do you intend to pitch him one more inning, or three more? Then if the manager says, ‘Wow, let’s get somebody up out there,’ I can say, ‘Well, OK, I can get him through one more inning,’ and you work that inning like it’s the ninth, with nothing held back. But there are some managers who can’t respond to that assertive approach, because of their personalities—I can think of a half dozen of them that I’ve been involved with—and with those, well, you have to find some other way to get the message across.”

We moved along to defensive alignments, and I noticed that sometimes the intensity of his message made Simmons lift his hands to either side of his face as he talked, as if he were peering out of his mask at the game.

“You have to move your people around,” he said. “It’s part of your job, and part knowing how your manager wants things done. You’ve got a left-handed pull hitter up there, and you decide you’re going to do one of two things. You’re going to throw him low fastballs away and hopes he tries to pull it, or slow stuff inside and
make
him pull it. So you set up your defense accordingly. Your second baseman plays in the hole, your shortstop is back of second base, and everyone in the outfield moves over two steps toward right. But if your second baseman is still playing at double-play depth, then you’ve got to stop and move him over. You can do that with a little gesture, just before you put down the sign—and I never put down anything until I know I have the second baseman and the shortstop’s attention anyway. I just look them right in the eye and go—” He waggled his glove hand imperceptibly. “If he still has a question, when you get back to the bench you can say, ‘Hey, don’t you see how we’re pitchin’ that guy?’ This happens a lot, but people don’t always appreciate it. Sometimes you’ll see catchers with large reputations who’ll stop and turn to the umpire and call time out and turn to the world and walk out a few steps and gesture to the man they want to move over, and everyone in the stands will say, ‘Ah, yes, there’s a man who knows what he’s doing.’ But it just isn’t essential. It isn’t done.”

The ultimate responsibility—for the game itself, Simmons suggested—is more difficult. “The catcher is the man who has to be able to think, and he has to make the decisions—and to face the consequences when he’s wrong,” he went on. “Whether it’s fun for you or a burden, that’s where it’s
at,
and the real satisfaction in catching is making that decision for everyone—for your pitcher, your team, your manager, and the home crowd. It’s all in your lap. Think of a situation. Think of something that happens all the time. The count is two balls and one strike, they have a man on first base, and you’re ahead by one run. There’s a pretty good hitter up—he doesn’t strike out much. Now, you’re the catcher and you’ve got to decide if they’re going to hit-and-run. And with that you’ve got to decide if you’re going to pitch out and negate all that, and what the consequences will be if you’re wrong.

“Now we’ve got to where the fun is—where you know your allies, the capabilities of your pitcher and your team, and you also know the opposition, to the point where you’re playin’ with their heads. Because you know their manager and their way of playing, you know already what they’re going to do. You have a gut feeling about it:
God, he’s going to run.
You
know.
But instead—it’s so easy to do this—you think, Well, I’d better play it safe, because I’m not sure, and we don’t want 3–1 on this good hitter. So you call a fastball away to that right-handed batter, and he does hit the ball to right on the hit-and-run—the runner’s gone—and now you’ve got first and third, which is much, much worse. And you say to yourself, God
almighty,
I
knew
they were going to run! Why didn’t I pitch out? Well, what you learn later on, when you’ve grown up as a catcher, is not to fight that urge, because you understand that if you were in their dugout and you were that manager you’d run. So you learn to stop being just a catcher, and to be them as well as yourself. Until you can get to that point, accept that burden, you’re not in control. Once you do, you’re a successful catcher—the man everyone relies on and looks to for leadership, whether they know it or not.”

Ted Simmons had a good season last year, in spite of the sudden late-summer collapse of the defending-champion Brewers, who wound up in fifth place in their division, eleven games behind the Orioles. He kept his stroke when all about him were losing theirs, and wound up with a .308 average and a hundred and eight runs batted in. For all that, it was probably Simmons’ last year of regular work behind the plate. During the off-season, Milwaukee traded for Jim Sundberg, and it is expected that he will now take over the day-to-day catching chores for the Brewers. Simmons, who has suffered from a chronic problem in his right shoulder, looked slow and work-worn behind the plate in most of the games in which I watched him last year, and he is at an age when many full-service catchers begin to wear down physically. I think he will find surcease in his new role as a designated hitter—if his pride allows him to accept this limited service. But I still felt bad when I heard the news of the trade, since it seemed to mean that Simmons’ passionate involvement in the flow of things would now become distanced and muted. The game is no longer in his lap. His change of fortune made me recall a remark of Dave Duncan’s last spring: “By the time you’ve learned it all, by the time you’re really proficient, you’re almost too old to go on catching.”

I cheered up pretty quickly, however, when I recalled one more little talk I’d had with Ted Simmons, which had made me realize that his special feeling for the subtleties and rewards of catching will never be entirely lost to his teammates. On another day in Arizona last spring, I watched a few innings of a morning B-squad game between the Padres and the Brewers. Simmons wasn’t playing, but then I spotted him in the Milwaukee dugout, where he was seated between two younger Brewer catchers, Ned Yost and Bill Schroeder; Simmons kept moving and gesturing, and when I changed my seat, moving a little closer to the diamond, I saw, without much surprise, that he was talking excitedly. When the game ended, I sought him out and asked him about it.

“We were just talkin’ catching,” he said. “I feel that every ballplayer, including myself, has the responsibility of training his replacement. People who are afraid to do that aren’t very secure. What we saw was what you saw in that game—do you remember it? There was a time in the fifth when they’re up at bat, with a man on first, and the count on the batter went to 2–2, I said to the guys with me, ‘You’ve got two alternatives on the next pitch—what are they?’ They both had the answer: fastball in or slider away. I said fine, but how do you decide which to call, and they didn’t know. I said, ‘Based on your pitcher’—and never mind right now which pitcher we were talkin’ about. ‘Based on your knowledge of this pitcher, can he throw the 3–2 slider for a strike?’ They both said no, and I said, ‘Well, then, you have to call for the slider on the 2–2, so that if the pitcher misses with it, then he’ll be able to come back with the fastball on 3–2. But
if
he’s a pitcher who
can
throw the slider on 3–2, then you can put down the fastball on 2–2—the fastball inside, to lock him out. If you miss, then you go to the slider on 3–2, and he’s dead.’