The Rotation (5 page)

The Phillies invited Hamels to big-league spring training camp in 2004. Though the pitcher had no chance of making the big club after just 100 pro innings in the low minors, club officials were eager to get a look at the 20-year-old prospect. On March 5, just before Hamels was about to be sent to minor-league camp, the Phillies brass decided to give him a start against the New York Yankees in Tampa. Two years earlier, Hamels had been playing catch with Mark Furtak as he rehabbed his broken arm. Now, he was about to pitch two innings against a Yankees lineup that had played in the World Series the year before. This would be the day that every sports fan in Philadelphia—not just the hard-core baseball fans, but every sports fan, from leather-lunged E-A-G-L-E-S backers to the orange-clad Flyers rooters—would learn the name Cole Hamels.

In his second inning of work, Hamels faced Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Tony Clark. He struck out all three of them. In one inning, he went from prospect to mega-prospect, becoming probably the most ballyhooed minor-leaguer in franchise history.

It was no surprise that Hamels went to his changeup against the famed Yankee hitters. Major leaguers are wired to hit fastballs, and a good changeup—one that looks like a fastball until it dies at the plate—can reduce even the best hitter to a pile of frustration. As a youngster, Hamels watched Trevor Hoffman close games for the Padres throwing almost nothing but changeups. “I need that pitch,” he said to himself. When Furtak got a look at Hamels as a sophomore in high school, he agreed. Hamels needed that pitch.

“He didn't have enough fastball to get it by hitters,” Furtak said.

Furtak had no doubt the fastball would come as Hamels got stronger, but in the meantime, he decided to teach him the changeup and have him pitch backward—i.e., throw changeups in counts where hitters usually expect to see fastballs.

Furtak showed Hamels the changeup grip and told him to throw it.

“He threw it right into the ground,” Furtak said with a laugh.

Hamels kept throwing the pitch and picked it up quickly. He had nice movement and fade on the pitch. He had the confidence to throw it in games because he had a first-round draft pick behind the plate. No matter where Hamels' changeup went, Scott Heard was going to catch it. Four years later, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez couldn't hit it.

Phillies officials left that game in Tampa thinking that Hamels was riding in the high-speed lane to the majors. But it turned out that Hamels was pitching with a secret that day. His elbow hurt even before he took the mound, but he was so excited about the opportunity to pitch in a big-league game against the Yankees that he said nothing about it. It would be the first of several mistakes that Hamels made early in his pro career, the first of several mistakes that the young pitcher turned into the learning experiences that helped him become one of the top pitchers in the game.

Hamels made just 10 starts in 2004 and 2005. Ten. There were times when the same people who believed he would be a fast-tracker to the majors wondered if he was going to be an injury-plagued washout, just another great talent that never got out of Double-A. Hamels was slowed significantly by an elbow strain in 2004, and in 2005 by a lower-back condition that he learned would require almost constant maintenance.

In between the elbow strain and the back issue, Hamels broke a bone in his pitching hand throwing not a changeup, but a punch, in a fight outside a Clearwater barroom called Razzel's Lounge. A group of Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays minor leaguers were finishing up a night on the town on January 29, 2005. Words were exchanged between some of the ballplayers and some of the locals at the bar. Hamels said he acted in self-defense when he popped one of the locals. Clearwater police said he and the ballplayers were the aggressors, with Hamels, then 21, getting out of a car to throw that punch. No charges were filed, but Hamels was punished in more ways than one. The organization revoked his invite to big-league spring-training camp. And the broken hand required surgery and another trip to that prison known as injury rehab.

While the Phillies' big leaguers worked out of the major-league complex that February, Hamels reported to the minor-league complex for rehab workouts every afternoon, long after the big leaguers had left.

“I wish I was there,” he said one day that February, his voice filled with regret.

There would be more regret later that season. Hamels' hand healed and he went 4-0 with a 2.19 ERA in six starts at Single A Clearwater and Double-A Reading. Phillies officials were starting to think that Hamels might
be able to help the big club late in the season when lower back soreness ended his season in late July.

Back to rehab prison.

Hamels saw back specialists and was diagnosed with a disc problem. He had always been a kid that could grab a baseball and ring up a dozen strikeouts with ease. But now, in his early twenties, he had grown to 6-4 and it would take work to keep his long frame strong and aligned. It would take work to compete at the levels Hamels wanted to reach. Would he be willing to do it?

“I took a lot of things for granted,” said Hamels, reflecting in 2006 on the hurdles he'd encountered early in his pro career. “I was a player who got by year after year on talent. But talent only takes you so far. The fact of the matter is you actually have to work at this game to be successful. I've learned that the hard way. But sometimes, to be a better person and player, you have to learn things the hard way.

“When you see an opportunity in front of you dwindling and diminishing because of the way you go about your business—it's not a good feeling. I got offtrack that first big-league camp. I hurt my elbow and didn't tell anyone. Then I got in the fight. I made a mistake. I learned to walk the other way. It was a wake-up call. Everything.”

Hamels echoed a lot of those remarks during spring training in 2011.

“You think you're invincible,” he said. “I thought I was invincible. But then you learn. You learn that you have to take advantage of your opportunities because they disappear fast.”

Razzel's is still there in Clearwater, on Gulf to Bay Boulevard, just a couple of miles from the Phillies' training facility. It is strictly off-limits to the Phillies' minor-leaguers. Call it
The Cole Hamels Rule
.The fight is still brought up to Phillies officials from time to time. Six years after it occurred, one longtime club official said that once he was sure Hamels' hand would heal, he actually didn't mind that the pitcher had the little dustup.

“Cole came from a perfect, almost
Leave It to Beaver
background,” said the official, asking not to be named. “It showed he had some 'nads.”

Married with two young sons, Hamels barely recognizes the guy that threw that punch outside of the bar in January 2005.

“Values change,” he said during the spring of 2011.

Hamels laughed.

“The funny thing is that place is a shithole,” he said. “There were so many better spots.”

When measured against the new generation of big-league stadia, Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati is hardly an eye-catcher. There is no panorama of the city skyline because the diamond faces away from downtown. On the outside, the place looks to be encased in poured concrete. The Ohio River flows languidly beyond the right-field wall, bringing with it driftwood, barges, and the occasional passing recreational boat.

Despite its lack of aesthetic charm, Great American Ball Park has been almost a personal field of dreams for Cole Hamels. After enduring long hours in Clearwater rehabbing injuries to his elbow, hand, and back, he finally made it to the major leagues and debuted in Cincinnati on May 12, 2006. He was nervous.You could see that in the five walks that he allowed in five innings. But there was also magic in that left arm.You could see that in the zero hits he allowed until his final inning and in the seven strikeouts he rang up.

Hamels had an aura about him as he took the mound that night.

“You heard about him all the time when he was in the minors,” said Brett Myers, who had been the team's No. 1 pick in 1999, three years before Hamels. “There was nobody else doing what he was doing. I didn't do it. Gavin Floyd [another former No. 1 pick] didn't do it. He was making hitters look stupid. It was like, ‘What does he have that makes him so good?' When he got here he showed us. He had great command and a great changeup. He was polished as hell. And he had heart and attitude.”

Though he'd mix in an occasional curveball, Hamels was working mostly with two pitches—fastball and changeup—in those days. He would eventually learn, painfully, that he'd have to broaden his repertoire, but that was enough for a rookie pitcher who had the benefit of being unfamiliar to big-league hitters.

Hamels went 9-8 with a 4.08 in 23 starts that first season. He was just 22 years old. The next season, he established himself as a mainstay in the rotation, going 15-5 with a 3.39 ERA in 28 starts. One of those starts—made in Cincinnati—figured importantly in the Phillies' rise to top of the National League.

It was April 21, 2007. The Phillies were off to a dreadful 4-11 start and heat was building on third-year manager Charlie Manuel. When the Phillies arrived at Great American Ball Park for their game against the Reds that night, the beleaguered Manuel called a team meeting. It lasted 80 minutes, so
long that batting practice was cancelled. Manuel spoke in the meeting. So did coaches Jimy Williams and Davey Lopes. Veteran pitcher Jamie Moyer was one of several players to speak his mind, telling his teammates they were playing like “a bunch of pussies.”

As the meeting went on, Hamels, just 23, sat and listened. This wasn't the perfect environment for that night's starter to prepare for a game, but things were a little desperate, so he had to deal with it. In talking about the meeting a few days later, Chase Utley said it was very beneficial in helping the team come together. But the best thing that happened for the Phillies' unity—and possibly Manuel's job status—that night was the performance that Hamels turned in when he took the mound. He pitched the first complete game of his career and struck out 15 in a 4-1 victory that started the five-game win streak that helped the Phillies extricate themselves from their early-season hole. Six months later, the Phils snapped a 14-year playoff drought and won their first of five straight NL East titles.

The Phils were a quick out in the 2007 postseason, but 2008 was a different story. Armed with a little October experience, a ripened lineup, a terrific bullpen, and a white-hot pitcher named Cole Hamels, the Phillies won the World Series that year. Still pitching with mostly fastballs and changeups, and the occasional curveball, Hamels went 5-2 with a 2.35 ERA in his final eight regular-season starts. He then won three Game 1s in the postseason and started the NLCS and World Series clinchers. He went 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA in five starts that October and won two series MVP Awards.

Not bad for a 24-year-old.

But that was just the thing. Hamels was just 24. He was young and on top of the baseball world and he didn't handle it well.

After brushing the confetti from his shoulders and telling the adoring crowd that he looked forward to winning the World Series “again and again and again,” Hamels bathed a little too deeply in the spoils of success that off-season. He chatted with David Letterman and Ellen DeGeneres on TV. He and his wife, Heidi Strobel, a former contestant on the television reality show
Survivor,
moved into a penthouse at Liberty Place in Center City Philadelphia. He did autograph shows. In February, he appeared on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
with the headline: “The Fabulous New Life of Cole Hamels.” The only problem was this new life wasn't so fabulous. While taking his victory lap around America, Hamels forgot what earned him the tour—his magic left arm. He neglected his off-season workouts and came to spring training in 2009 in less than peak condition. He was to be the Phillies' Opening Day
starter that season, but was knocked from the assignment when he experienced elbow soreness in spring training. That soreness was a result of not coming into camp in pitching shape. He had tried to catch up in a hurry and tweaked the elbow.

Hamels opened that season with a poor showing—allowing 11 hits and seven runs in 3⅔ innings—in Denver, then failed to lock down a 7-1 lead against the Padres in an 8-7 loss at home on April 17. After the game, he said he was embarrassed. A few days later, he admitted he lost focus of what was important over the winter and did a poor job preparing for the season.

“If it comes down to the end of the year and we lose the division by one game, I can easily raise my hand and say I screwed up,” he said. “I should be ready and by not being ready I'm jeopardizing the team. I pretty much didn't fulfill my end of the bargain and get ready the way I should have. This has been a big learning step. I didn't want to learn it, but I have.”