The Rotation (8 page)

While Dorfman had helped Halladay build the right mind-set to succeed in the majors, Queen had helped him build a delivery and pitch repertoire that would work.

Queen, who pitched in the majors from 1964–72, was a longtime Jays' pitching instructor. He got hold of Halladay when the Jays sent him from Dunedin to Double-A Knoxville early in the 2001 season. The first thing Queen did was berate Halladay. He told the pitcher he was soft. He called him a wimp. He gave him the old you're-too-good-for-this lecture while questioning his manhood the whole way.

“He kicked me in the ass,” Halladay said after Queen's death. “He challenged me. I think sometimes you need that. You need the honesty.”

Once Queen got the old-school, drill-sergeant stuff out of the way, he went to work on the delivery. He killed Iron Mike, that straight-up-and-down delivery that allowed hitters a good look at the ball. He taught Halladay to start his delivery with a slight step back from the rubber to create some north-south momentum toward home plate. He junked the over-the-top release point and lowered Halladay's arm angle to about three-quarters. That and a couple of new grips added movement—sinking and cutting action—to
Halladay's straight fastball, making it more difficult to hit. A little shoulder tuck was added to hide the ball.

Halladay worked on these adjustments for two weeks in the bullpen, with Queen often breathing fire down his neck.

“After fifteen days I was able to take it all out in a game,” Halladay said. “It was night and day.”

The deaths of Dorfman and Queen, and Campbell three years earlier, touched Halladay deeply.

“This makes you step back and realize how many influential people you've had in your career, and how many people you really owe a lot of credit and gratitude to,” he said in May 2011. “You obviously can't do it by yourself. Things like that kind of bring that to the forefront.”

It's typical of Halladay to share credit. Heck, this is the guy who didn't leave out anyone, not even the batboy, when he bought $4,000 gift watches for his teammates and others after his May 2010 perfect game. But everyone from Gord Ash, the man who came up with the plan for Halladay to start over at square one, to Buck Martinez, Toronto's manager at the time, say the credit begins and ends with one person—Roy Halladay.

“Roy did the work,” Martinez said. “He deserves all the credit. He could have flipped us off and told us to go to hell. He could have said, ‘I'll go down, but I'm not going to do anything.' But to his credit, he made a commitment. He went from being a borderline failure, Number One pick, maybe out of the game, getting his brains beaten out, to the best pitcher in baseball. I remember catching him in the bullpen when he came back. It was pretty special.”

A new pitcher with a new mind-set, Halladay climbed his way back to the majors in July 2001. Slowly, he established himself as the best in the game. He won 19 games and had a 2.93 ERA in 2002. He won the Cy Young Award a year later.

There are stages to a ballplayer's career: 1. Establish yourself as a major leaguer; 2. Make a lot of money; 3. Get a ring. Over the years, Halladay reached the first two stages, but by 2009 it was pretty clear to him that he was going to have difficulty reaching the third stage in Toronto. The Jays played in a tough division with the high-powered and deep-pocketed Boston
Red Sox and New York Yankees. At 32 years old, Halladay didn't see how the rebuilding Jays were going to catch those two clubs, at least not while he still had bullets left in his right arm.

Halladay was due to become a free agent at the end of the 2010 season and he had made it clear to Jays officials that he would sign elsewhere, with a contender, when his deal expired. During the first half of the 2009 season, he quietly asked the Jays to consider trading him to a contender. Jays officials were under no obligation to deal Halladay, but they were open to it, provided they could get top value, such as multiple blue-chip prospects, in return. Dealing Halladay with a year and a half left on his contract would fetch the Jays a higher price than hanging on to him for another year, and it would be better than risking just draft-pick compensation if he walked away to free agency after the 2010 season.

In 2009, Ruben Amaro Jr. was in his first year as Phillies general manager. The Phils were coming off a World Series championship in 2008 and had the lineup to get back to the World Series in 2009, but the starting pitching was suspect. Cole Hamels was having trouble duplicating his great work from the previous October and Brett Myers had been injured. The team scouted and eventually signed veteran Pedro Martinez, but he wasn't the guy Amaro really wanted. Amaro had long ago become obsessed with the tall right-handed ace of the Toronto Blue Jays. The Phillies and Jays train just five miles apart in neighboring Florida towns. Amaro had seen enough of Roy Halladay to know if he ever had the chance to get him, he would go for it.

“As far back as '08, they were eyeing Halladay,” one team insider said of Amaro and his predecessor, Pat Gillick. “They knew he was going to be a free agent after 2010. For a long time, Roy was Ruben's white whale.”

J. P. Ricciardi knew this. He was Toronto's GM from late 2001 to 2009, and a smart, young, wisecracking baseball executive, much like Amaro. Early in the 2009 season, Amaro told Ricciardi, “If you ever do anything with Doc. . . .”

“I'll let you know,” Ricciardi said.

On July 6, 2009, Ricciardi called Amaro and said he was ready to start taking offers for Halladay.

A day later, Ricciardi told Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports that Halladay was available—for the right price. Rosenthal posted a story on FOX's Website. He nearly broke the Internet.

Ricciardi was contacted by a Philadelphia writer asking what it would take for the Phillies to get Halladay.

“The type of talent that makes you stand up and take notice,” Ricciardi said. “All the clubs that have contacted us understand that.”

Ricciardi added that if no team met his steep price, he'd hang on to the best pitcher in baseball.

“It's going to take a lot,” he said. “Someone is going to have to have the stomach for this and I'm not sure anyone does.”

On the executive level of Citizens Bank Park, Amaro went into action. Advisers Gillick and Dallas Green urged him to go get Halladay.

“Ruben has a chance to make history in this town if he gets this guy,” Green said at the time.

All the usual contenders—the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers, and Angels—called Ricciardi about Halladay.

“I tried to get in it,”Yankees GM Brian Cashman said. “But Toronto told us to trade him in the division, it would have been twice the sticker price.”

In many ways, Ricciardi's talks with clubs other than the Phillies were hollow because Halladay had a no-trade clause and Philadelphia was the place he—and his family—wanted to go. Halladay admired the team's roster and liked that it didn't seem filled with egos. He believed the Phils knew how to win and could keep doing it.

“There was just something about the Phillies for all of us,” Halladay said.

Even the pitcher's oldest son, Braden, wanted his dad to be a Phillie.

“He didn't like New York or Boston because we always got beat up by them,” Halladay said with a laugh in the summer of 2011. “So I think that turned him off a little.”

Focusing on the Phillies as the July 31, 2009 trade deadline approached, Ricciardi sent his most trusted aides to watch the Phils' top minor-league prospects.

Finally, as Halladay prepared for what many thought would be his final start as a Blue Jay in Toronto on July 24, Ricciardi prepared his wish list. He wanted outfield prospects Domonic Brown and Anthony Gose, pitching prospect Kyle Drabek, and left-hander J. A. Happ.

Amaro almost gagged on that price tag.

“I couldn't give up my top position prospect [Brown] and my top pitching prospect [Drabek],” he said later.

Halladay made that start on July 24 in Toronto. “We love you, Roy,” shouted one fan, sensing that Halladay would soon be dealt. Phillies scout Charley Kerfeld popped in for the game just to make sure Halladay got on and off the mound healthy. The talks went on with the Phillies trying to build
a deal around a package that included catcher Lou Marson, infielder Jason Donald, pitcher Jason Knapp, and Happ. In some variations of the deal, the Phils may have been willing to include Drabek, but the Jays wanted more. Ricciardi's job was on the line and he needed to make a big score for Halladay.

“To quote Sonny Corleone, ‘I've got to come out of this with more than just my you-know-what in my hand,' ” Ricciardi said the day after Halladay's July 24 start in Toronto.

Ricciardi used his best sales pitch on Amaro.

“Ruben,” Ricciardi told Amaro over the phone. “You make this deal and you'll be like Caesar riding through the streets of Philly after he just conquered the Gauls.”

In another conversation, Ricciardi mentioned a famous Clearwater eatery in his appeal for the Phillies' top prospects.

“Ruben, we're talking about prospects here,” he said. “In three years, they'll be serving me my breakfast at Lenny's.”

Even as he pursued his obsession, Amaro kept other options open. He needed starting pitching and he couldn't limit his focus to one guy. In Cleveland, the Indians had put a “for sale” sign on Cliff Lee, and though he didn't wear the “best pitcher in baseball” label, he had won a Cy Young Award and Phillies officials liked him. The Phillies' front office juggled two pursuits—Halladay and Lee—as the deadline approached. On the morning of July 29, Halladay rose in his Seattle hotel room, thinking that this indeed might be the day he made his last start for the Jays. Talks between the Phillies and Jays had reached a point where the deal was going to get done or it wasn't.

“We're going to get one of them,” a Phillies official said that morning, referring to Halladay or Lee.

A short while later, reporters who had followed the Jays to Seattle in anticipation of a Halladay trade, read Internet reports that Cliff Lee was hugging Cleveland teammates in the visiting dugout in Anaheim. He had been traded to the Phillies. Halladay was crestfallen. He knew he was stuck in Toronto. He knew another postseason would go on without him. His biological clock was ticking and he wondered if he'd ever get to pitch in a postseason. On top of it all, he had to go out and pitch a game against the Mariners. In one of the most difficult starts of his life, he lost, 3-2, in unusually stifling Seattle heat. After the game, Halladay appeared drained and anguished. He disappeared to a back room in the clubhouse for a while. Most
of his teammates had already boarded a bus for the airport when he emerged to speak with reporters.

“When all was said and done it had to be the right situation for Toronto,” Halladay said that day. “That wasn't the case. I'm a Blue Jay and I'm happy to be one.”

Only half of that last statement was true.

“I liked being where I was, but I was ready to go somewhere where we had a chance,” said Halladay, looking back at that day two years later. “Going through that month with nothing happening—it kind of sucks it all out of you. It was disappointing, but at the same time, a weight was gone.”

Halladay finished speaking with reporters that day in Seattle and headed for the bus. Possibly the worst part of his day was about to come. The Jays were headed for a series against the A's in Oakland. They would be staying at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, the same hotel where the Phillies were staying for a concurrent series with the Giants. Down the street, in an equipment trunk in the visiting clubhouse at AT&T Park, was a Phillies jersey with Halladay's name and No. 34 on it. It stayed buried at the bottom of the trunk. Lee showed up and was issued No. 34. Halladay's long July drama was over. All he wanted to do when he got to the St. Francis was lock his door and get away from it all.