A Story Again

The Giambi situation, which until last weekend seemed like tragedy again, now has gotten at least a little more complex. My extended absence from this blog was related to the fizzling of the story: until a week ago, the Yankees were a last place team and Giambi was a mediocre former MVP. Nothing tragic or even interesting about that. Now, with the team winning and Tino eeking one line drive after another over right field fences, Giambi’s deterioration has once again become a public spectacle. A week ago, after winning a few games, the Yankees had time to notice that Giambi had quietly buried himself in a severe slump. He hadn’t had a hit in days, a home run in weeks. His average had sunk to just above .200. His face and body looked worse than his numbers.

Last week, the New York fans and media got vicious again. They could no longer ignore the batting average, the lack of any contact with the ball, the worried face, the defeated gait. Columnists began asking if could still be a major leaguer hitter; last week, Brian Cashman wondered the same thing, and apparently asked Giambi to go down to the minors. This seemed reasonable—the team’s recent success was too precarious to allow Giambi to work through his problems while playing for them; it would improve his skills and confidence to beat up double-A pitchers every night; he would be seen as a team player. I, for one, was annoyed when he did not agree to the move. Wasn’t his goal to get better again? Wasn’t practice the way to do it?

He told the media that he felt close to breaking out, which sounded ridiculous at the time. But then, facing maximum adversity—and flying beer—in Oakland last weekend, he came up huge. Once. When he hit that go-ahead double, it was tempting to frame that moment as a turning point. The setting and timing were certainly dramatic. But it was just one hit. So far on this road trip, which Torre promised would bring him more at-bats, he is hitting .250, with no home runs. Though hardly worth thirteen million dollars, the numbers do signify an improvement. Maybe he knew something when he said that he was getting his groove back.

I know how ridiculous that sounds. The statistics suggest—no, scream—that he owes most of his success to steroids: a .306 career batting average before the All-Star break in 2003, when, according to leaked reports of his grand jury testimony, he stopped using; a .213 average, with only 30 home runs, since. But I saw him in March. His power was not overwhelming, but his poise and swagger were back, along with his keen judgment of pitches. It seems clear that he can never again be a serious power hitter, but maybe he can achieve a high on-base percentage, smack some RBI doubles, and contribute as a role-player, if his ego permits.

Ego, or at least self-image, seems like the major issue now. Can he adjust to being the Yanks’ next Darryl Strawberry, taking whatever redemption he can get, instead of their next Mickey Mantle? When he refused demotion, he may have indicated that he cannot. Or he may have noticed something in his swing, some improvement that led to that big hit.

Frankly, I concluded last week that Giambi was finished as a major league hitter. Now, just a few days later, I think that this may not be the case. His .250 average in the past four games granted him an extension. His problems are certainly physical—he is thirty-four and playing without steroids for the first time in years—but they are also psychological: something has changed in his head since spring training. I can see it on his easy-to-read, expressive face. The sweating, the grimacing, the eyes that won’t look up from the ground: these are keeping him from performing. They may still get confident again. That is why the story is not over, not yet.

Swept Out Of Baltimore

The Yankees: not so good. They have won four and lost eight, and are providing Tampa Bay with rare company in last place. Over the weekend, they were swept by the Orioles, who played like the Yankees have for the past decade, combining strong starting pitching with gutsy offensive comebacks.

Jason Giambi is faring only slightly better. Last Wednesday, a day after the Yankees suffered a limp loss on Boston’s home opener, Giambi was the hero. His two-run homer broke a tie, was a dramatic response to his Beantown taunters, and led to a Yankee win. The team has not won since.

The day before that homer, New York papers devoted much ink to the Yankee problems that threaten to undermine their title-chasing: age in the lineup, bad luck in the bullpen, questions all through the rotation. Giambi, they all seemed to agree, was a virtual lost cause, a man who would not deliver more than mediocre numbers.

Then, Thursday morning—after the heroic homer—the back page of the Daily News read, “Jason Lives.” Word was that the Yankees had clicked, and so had Giambi. Now the season, and Yankee dominance, could begin in earnest.

This, of course, did not occur. After a loss in Boston and three losses in Baltimore, the Yankees are limping, dazed, back to the Bronx.

Giambi, in thirty-five at-bats, has eight hits, two homers, and three runs batted in. His on-base percentage is a respectable .357; he has walked four times and struck out nine. He has found himself on the brink of disaster on a number of occasions, and has always achieved last-minute reprieves. Problem is, long stretches of inconsistency often follow the reprieves. Sometimes Jason looks fierce and focused, sometimes he swats at the strangest pitches and pops up with men in base.

Failure and inconsistancy, of course, are givens in hitting. A .300 hitter fails seventy percent of the time. So far, though, Giambi has not found an adequate rhythm. Both Giambi and the Yankees would benefit from solidly bashing the Devil Rays this week. After that it is Toronto and Texas, and after that it is the month of May. At what point does this story reach its middle point, far enough from the beginning so that unqualified success becomes unattainable?

Teetering on the Brink

1.

Saturday, top of the third, score tied at zero. Orioles left fielder B.J. Surhoff hits a weak chopper to Giambi at first. The O’s Javy Lopez, who has just hit a one-out single off of Randy Johnson, starts toward second. We in the right-field bleachers cheer for the presumed inning-ending double play. As soon as we start clapping, though, the ball skips under Giambi’s glove and into right field; we throw our heads back, and scream, “No!” All runners are safe.

One guy behind me starts to chant, and soon it spreads through the bleachers and into the box seats: “Tino! Tino!,” as in, they want Martinez in the game and Giambi on the bench. The first boos of the year aimed at Jason are mixed with the chant. Lopez eventually scores, and the chant begins again.

Bottom of the same inning. Two out, bases empty. Bruce Chen, pitching for the Orioles, has been finessing his breaking ball to avoid Yankee bats. Giambi, up for the first time, watches one pitch go by, then another. Then several more. He strikes out looking, and the inning is over. A guy behind me yells, “get back on the juice, you fat fuck.” The boos accumulate as he trudges back to the dugout, head down. Jeers haven’t washed over the entire stadium yet; still, Giambi must know that the goodwill he worked so hard to cultivate is just about used up. I turn to my friend Josiah and say, “He’s got about two more bad at-bats before he really starts to get it.”

Remember: no one in baseball needs a decent April more than Giambi. If he starts with a slump, he gets booed; if he gets booed, his confidence suffers; if his confidence suffers, his slump is prolonged; if his slump is prolonged, everyone says he’s no good without the steroids, and his entire career is discredited. At the beginning of this game, Jason had two hits in his first week. He teetered on the precipice of an ugly situation.

Bottom of the fourth. Giambi steps in to a few boos, and promptly pokes one just over the right field fence for his first home run of the year. He seems in a hurry to run the bases, head down, biting his lower lip. All of a sudden the earlier strikeout seems smart--he was getting a feel for the pitcher, and now has him timed. The crowd cheers. I turn to Josiah and say, “That was the best timed-home run of his career.”

2.

The Baltimore series was hardly a showcase for Yankee talent. They dropped two of three games, and their three new starting pitchers were awful. Jaret Wright was shellacked Friday (the back cover of the Daily News said, simply, “Jaret Wrong”), Johnson’s slider abandoned him on Saturday—at one point, he walked in a run—and Carl Pavano not only lost on Sunday, but was smacked in the skull by a line drive. He went to the hospital, which was probably more fun than being in the clubhouse after the game.

But Giambi got out of it okay. His status still dangles, undetermined. He picked up another hit on Sunday, keeping his average at a not-quite-terrible .235 (better than Sheffield’s first-week .160). He did, however, make a big error in that game, dropping a Melvin Mora foul. It was Pavano’s next pitch to Mora, who should have been out, that sent the pitcher to the E.R., so Giambi’s mistake was remembered.

Today, in Boston, Giambi came up with two on, two out and runners on first and third. It was the top of the fourth, and the Yankees were trailing by a still-manageable 4-1. With the Fenway crowd chanting “ass-hole,” Giambi popped up on the first pitch. He had already struck out to end the second inning. He finished the 8-1 Sox victory with zero hits in four tries. Maybe he was pressing. Maybe Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball was dancing. Maybe the crowd bothered him. Maybe he’s in a slump.

He must be feeling the pressure intensify. As this happens, success will seem more elusive. Every game now assumes an increased significance: these are the days before we know the results of his comeback.

A Sudden Reversal

On Wednesday, Mariano Rivera’s mojo and cutter abandoned him, as he gave up five runs in the ninth, losing the sweep and granting Boston its first post-curse win. Yankee bats were held to four hits, and Derek Jeter, who won Tuesday’s game with a walk-off homer, got his helmet knocked off by an errant Mike Timlin fastball. Jeter went to the hospital, Rivera left the mound to boos, and Boston felt good again. Momentum shifts quickly in this game.

In addition to these Yankee problems, another concern is developing: Giambi has only one hit in seven at-bats this season. That early single on opening night was his last of the series. On Tuesday, with two on, two out, and a tie score in the eighth, he swung through a high fastball, ending a rally. Not only did he strike out, but he did it meekly. That scared look was back on his face: big eyes, worried mouth, strike three. Jason took a .289 batting average up from friendly Florida, indicating the return of his skills. Now, with the Orioles coming in this weekend, Giambi is two bad games away from being affixed with the dreaded label: slump.

He cannot afford that label. If he plays poorly in April, the pressure will pile on him for May, and so on for June and the future. Jason needs to get mean again, fast, if he expects fans to continue forgetting that he took steroids. This weekend will tell the story.

Opening Day

1.

Two things that I love, baseball and New York City, share a burden: people always say they were better in the old days. Sure, history is important to both, but the past often overshadows the exciting present. Baseball and New York are magnets for nostalgia. After a winter of reading and writing about the game, though, I have arrived at a surprising opinion: baseball has never been better than it is now (perhaps we can’t say the same for New York, but baseball in the city is certainly experiencing a renaissance).

Many people mourn the days of less ridiculous salaries (though the old players surely don’t miss being exploited by owners), and no steroids (though the will to cheat was then satisfied by saliva, sandpaper, and cork). I recently heard Bob Costas getting all misty-eyed about the years before regular television coverage: Mickey Mantle, he said, was more mythical when seen a few times a year on a little black and white screen. For Bob, modern baseball could not compare.

How, though, can anything be better when it is less understood? Scrutiny has brought baseball into glorious times of late. We now appreciate the physics of a curveball, the value of a walk, the foolhardiness of a sacrifice bunt. Young writers, statisticians and general managers, refusing to allow received wisdom to remain unquestioned, have revolutionized the game in recent decades. New stats have been developed that provide more accurate measures of a player’s value. Commentators who complain about the overabundance of numbers fail to understand that math doesn’t replace poetry; rather, it allows fans to appreciate the game for what it really is, instead of a romanticized—and ultimately false—ideal. Romanticism collapses into cynicism, while awareness leads to deeper appreciation.

2.
With exuberance inspired by these ideas, I finally—finally—went up to Yankee Stadium for the opening night of the 2005 season. My stated purpose, of course, was to watch Giambi, but I couldn’t help but be distracted by the general energy of the evening. Roger Angell wrote that opening day is more exciting than New Years because it promises an imminent summer; the mood in front of Yankee Stadium two hours before the game was exuberant. There were more drinkers than sports bars in the vicinity of the stadium, so revelers stumbled into the streets, chanting “Let’s go Yankees,” as if they were already in the bleachers. Boston fans strolled unharassed through Yankee nation, a new and striking development since last year. The forecast had not only predicted, but promised rain, but the rain stayed away. Presenting my ticket at the bleacher entrance, I was giddy—that’s the only word—and chatted with the security guy as he patted me down hastily, in a hurry to get rid of the overzealous weirdo.

Walking behind the bleachers to find my section, I caught fleeting glimpses of the outfield grass. The green was as intense as it had been in my winter dreams. The stifling ache of February and March were over, gone for a whole season.

The infield was covered by a precautionary tarp, so batting practice had been cancelled, but Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo was throwing in the bullpen when I entered the bleachers. Standing above him, amazed by the power of a major league pitch in close-up, I examined the spectators. Like the streets outside the stadium, the bleachers were suddenly friendly territory for Boston fans to flaunt their hats and jerseys. Though the Yankee fan in me was disgusted, the writer saw opportunity to hear varied perspectives. I began asking around about Giambi. My first subjects were a family of Red Sox fans from California, none of whom seemed to care about Jason. The mom, in Boston cap and shirt, called him a cheater, but complimented him for being upfront about it, unlike Bonds and McGwire.

Moving to Sean, a teenage Yankee fan from Connecticut, I asked if he felt betrayed by Giambi’s cheating. “He’s not the only one,” he said, shrugging. Howard, from Hillcrest, New York, who brought his young son to the game, said, “Anyone on steroids taints the game for me, but at least Giambi had the guts to admit it, unlike some of the others.”

Jason’s spring p.r. blitz seems to have worked. Most fans forget that he hasn’t admitted to anything. After a half-hour of speaking with Yankee and Red Sox fans, I concluded that the steroid scandal is not, at least in terms of Giambi, much of an issue right now. This takes my blog in a new direction, but in an exciting one: free of scandal, and back towards baseball. If Giambi is hitting .200 in three weeks, steroids will be right back in the headlines next to his name; right now, though, other plots dominate. Randy Johnson vs. David Wells, New York vs. Boston, Tino’s return—these were the stories on opening night.

Giambi’s play, in any case, indicated that he may be hitting well above .200 in three weeks. In the second inning Sunday, stepping in to an ovation louder than those given to Jeter, A-Rod, Sheffield, or Matsui, Jason turned on an inside pitch, driving it into right-center for a hot single. In his next two at-bats, he was hit by a pair of dull curveballs thrown by an unfocused David Wells. Boston fans criticized Giambi for failing to dodge the pitch in the second at-bat, but Jason’s actions seemed evidence of a keen baseball mind: facing an 0-2 count, with a slow curve coming toward him that wasn’t going to hurt, Giambi saw an opportunity to get on base.

The game was more dramatic and tense than its nine-to-two score indicated. Jeter began the season with a single, and the crowd cheered excessively, revealing the depth of our winter longing. Randy Johnson struck out Manny Ramirez looking in the first, and then again in the fourth. Hideki Matsui snagged a Kevin Millar home run back from over the left-field wall, irrevocably shifting the tone of the game. Those of us in the left field bleachers missed the play, which was obscured from our view. We saw the ball sail off of Millar’s bat, and we groaned (the score was 1-0 Boston at the time, and there was a man on base). When the rest of the stadium cheered, we in the bleachers looked at one another desperately—what happened?—and then, seeing the replay on the Jumbotron, we erupted into a relieved roar. Later, Johnny Damon bobbled an A-Rod single twice in two seconds, and cursed loudly after throwing the ball. We laughed and pointed, and the Red Sox fans were quiet.

The Yankees looked hungry but ready, professionals prepared to avenge their October embarrassment. During the first two innings, as each Yankee emerged from the dugout out of his winter absence, I felt, and could feel around the stadium, an ineffable sense of joy and relief. It was wild, like spring fever, and it was fleeting, gone by the third inning, when the season had already settled into its slow, easy rhythm. There may not be such a high for the rest of the summer, but that exuberant moment is why I will come back—baseball promises glimpses of ecstasy mixed with the fun.

About Face

Ooh, it felt good to be back watching baseball this week. On Monday, I caught the televised Yanks-Indians exhibition, my first since the Congressional hearings. The pleasure of focusing on the game’s details reminded me that, oh yeah, there was more to this experience than sad scandal.

So back we go to Jason Giambi’s attempt to rebuild his career. The hearings, and the media’s turn toward Bonds and McGwire, have taken Giambi out of the headlines for now, a lucky break for him. While the world has vilified other athletes, Jason has been free to concentrate on recovering his skills.

One way to measure the progress of Giambi’s comeback is to look at his face. He has always been one of the more expressive ballplayers, and is rarely difficult to read. Anyone can guess what he is feeling at almost any time. When reporters are firing tough questions, for example, his eyes get all big, screaming for help. When he is humiliated, as he was during the February press conference, his lower lip protrudes and his pupils dart from shoe to shoe. Some players cultivate a smooth, camera-ready persona, but Jason is either uninterested or unable.

So his honest face provides an important study of the man, and I have been watching it for the past few weeks. In Giambi’s first games this year, when spring training still threatened to be a daily torment, those big eyes stayed Clockwork Orange open while staring at opposing pitchers. His lips were pulled together in a tight frown, and his practice swings were tentative. You could almost hear him thinking, oh please oh please oh please don’t let me screw up and make them boo me.

But when he dug in against the Indians’ poor kid pitcher Monday, with Sheffield on base and two out in the first, Jason surprised me with a change: he looked fierce. His face was bullfight red, his eyes narrow, his mouth curled into a sneer. Come and get me, rookie¸ he seemed to say. The rookie did get him, inducing a hopper to first to end the inning, but Jason had made his point. He had gone down looking mean, and the pitcher couldn’t have been looking forward to their next encounter. In the third, Giambi drew a gritty walk and later, in the fifth, looped a slow-falling hit to center. He then noticed a slight hesitation by the outfielder and took advantage, lumbering to third for an improbable triple. This guy is a smart ballplayer, I thought, something that had never occurred to me before this spring.

In the seventh inning, while his teammates were batting, Giambi stood on the top step of the dugout, leaning forward against the railing. Still locked in on the pitcher, his mind seemed free of distraction. He was consumed by the craft of hitting. To stay focused on the details of the game—this is the real challenge in recovering from this scandal, for players and fans. The question for Giambi, of course, remains: will that face stay fierce when he moves north next week?

Mark McGwire, My Hero

My plan was to ignore the Congressional hearings and focus on baseball, but the sad drama got to me. It had been several years since I had seen him, and now under these circumstances: gaunt, older, bespectacled, nervous, and then crying—this was the Adonis who had captivated me and the country not so long ago, and who is so much smaller now: Mark McGwire.

McGwire was there during my childhood, teenage, and young adult years. Seeing him Thursday, middle-aged and defeated, was a harsh reminder that I, too, have gotten older. It was also a reminder that what seems perfect in childhood gets uglier and more complicated later in life.

In the beginning, the story seemed uncomplicated: 1989—the earthquake-delayed battle of the bay—was the year of my first World Series. The Oakland A’s were my first team. Mark McGwire was my first favorite player. In 1989, I was nine, my new team swept the series, and, apparently, Canseco and McGwire were shooting steroids into one another’s butt cheeks. Unaware of this, I hoarded McGwire’s baseball cards. I rose and fell with his slumps and successes. I took phantom home run swings in the back yard, and circled the bases pretending to Mark McGwire.

After a few fun years with the game, my enthusiasm was interrupted by the strike in 1994. This happened to many people, and I, at the dawn of adolescence, was especially distracted. Those were dark years for baseball, and I barely followed it, losing track of my hero. People often forget how low the game’s popularity had sunk by 1998, when McGwire and Sammy Sosa brought it back by chasing Roger Maris’ home run record. The story has been told enough about how fans, captivated by the drama, finally let go of their bitterness about the strike, but that summer really was as magical as it is now remembered—almost too storybook, almost too perfect.

While he was busy saving the game, McGwire unwittingly became involved with a few narratives more personal to me. For one, I was almost eighteen, and preparing to leave home for college. I had entered the sentimental stage of late youth, and was eager to reconnect with people and things that had given me meaning when I was younger. And who was that huge St. Louis Cardinal with thirty home runs by early summer? Mark McGwire—my boyhood idol was back; he had come with me all this way. He was like a friend who had moved away in the seventh grade and was now visiting for the first time. He looked different, and his voice was deeper, but it was the same old Mark and it felt good to see him.

That summer, he was part of another story that meant even more to me. My dad and I had been fighting a lot at the time, as dads and their smart-ass teenage sons will do. I may be getting a little too Field of Dreams here, but it is true that baseball had always been a common ground between us (that must be why that movie, despite its sentimental excesses, resonates). When I was young, he took me to games and coached my little league team. The decline of the sport in the mid-nineties served as a perfect metaphor for the strain in our relationship: we stopped following games, I quit little league to play in a punk band, and we argued over curfews, grades, and college.

In the late summer of 1998, as McGwire had 55, 56, 57 home runs and his games were televised every night, my dad and I watched them together. Our shared rooting instantly returned us to a time before my adolescence divided us. McGwire still unites my dad and me: we spent hours on the phone last week reminiscing and sharing our melancholy about the current situation.

The night Mark broke the record, I was stuck working at my summer job, and ran in the house right after he hit it. Both my parents’ eyes were damp, and as I watched the replay, and Mark hugging his son at home plate, and hugging Sosa, and hugging Roger Maris’ sons, I started to cry, which is exactly what I did Thursday in response to McGwire’s own tears as he came to terms to with his irrevocable downfall.

Now he has become a pariah, but I don’t see how people can be so indignant about someone else’s mistakes. Remember that parable about the stones? We want our heroes to be so great—perhaps that mentality itself is a root cause of the steroid era—and we act so offended when they reveal their humanity. But I’m not mad at him; I’m sad for him. He seems like a decent, sensitive guy who made a huge mistake. He is clearly tortured by that mistake, and will suffer for the rest of his life because of it. The mistake cannot, however, erase any of the meaningful moments of which he was a part. Unfortunately, it does shape them differently; this is unavoidable. Despite that, though, if I saw Mark today, this is what I would say: thanks for the memories.