SCOTT OSTLER FOR CLOSERS, IT CAN PAY TO BE CRAZY.
“It scares you, all the noise, the rattling, the shaking. But the look on everybody’s face when you’re finished and packing, it’s the best smile in the world, and there’s nobody hurt and the well’s under control.” — The late Red Adair, king of the oil-field firefighters
The cosmic, 50-cent question of the day: Does the pressure of being a bullpen closer drive these guys crazy, or does their craziness drive them into the job?
Not every ninth-inning relief specialist is looney tunes, of course. Some seem like normal people. But clearly there is a high incidence of eccentricity.
The Giants have featured Rod “Shooter” Beck (mullet, glare, pendulum arm), Brian Wilson (primal beard, self-proclaimed genius) and Sergio Romo (emotional pixie with an out pitch named after a child’s toy). The A’s have given us two of history’s most theatrical closers in Dennis Eckersley and Grant Balfour.
Putting out the fire in the ninth is not a job for the man who shrinks from the noise and the rattling and the shaking.
“It definitely takes a powerful spirit,” Giants outfielder Hunter Pence said, “because the ninth inning is a big inning. You’ve got to end the game, you’ve got to make the last out, and that’s a very powerful moment, and the emotions are big.”
Former catcher Eli Whiteside, the Giants’ bullpen catcher, says of the closers: “They’re the last man standing.”
Or falling. It’s life or death on a nightly basis. The stress and inevitable failure might have contributed to the early deaths of closers Beck (drugs), Donnie Moore (suicide) and Steve Howe (drugs).
There is no other job like it in sports. Chill alone for three hours or so, then saunter into the spotlight and “save” the day. Or “blow” it. Field-goal kickers are last-minute men, but if called upon in the game’s final seconds, usually they’ve been kicking all game.
Intense pressure creates diamonds, and in baseball, it seems to create nuts.
“I think the job makes you crazy,” Eckersley told The Chronicle. “I don’t know what people thought of me, but I don’t think I was weird at all (before becoming a closer) . ... Some of the goofy ones, maybe they’re goofy because they’re trying to take the pressure off. But the job does make you crazy because of the pressure.”
That would help explain the historic gallery of goofballs at the end of the bullpen, like Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky, Greg “Moon Man” Minton, Mike Marshall, Goose Gossage, Dan Quisenberry, Sparky Lyle ...
Closers come in all sizes and styles, but they have one thing in common: They can handle the heat.
“In the ninth inning, the adrenaline goes to a whole other level,” says A’s reliever and sometimes closer Sean Doolittle. “In my experience, it’s all about finding a way to harness and use that adrenaline . ... It’s a whole different beast, for sure.”
To harness the beast, many closers use theatrics, organic or invented.
Ryne Duren (Yankees, ’50s and ’60s) came at hitters with four fearsome weapons: a wicked fastball, a killer hangover, terrible eyesight and lousy control. Duren didn’t go as far as the Yankees’ Hugh Casey, who knocked down on-deck hitters, but Duren liked to throw his first warmup pitch high above the catcher’s head and onto the screen behind home plate.
In terms of drama, Eckersley made the “Phantom of the Opera” look like a stagehand. His dark hair flowing behind him like a man on a speeding motorcycle, Eck would yell at hitters and fist-pump his strikeouts. He says now that his bravado and antics were his way of masking his fear, which otherwise the hitters could smell.
“It wasn’t premeditated,” Eckersley said of his mound persona, “but I think it gave me an edge . ... Mound presence is huge. It says, ‘Game over.’ You’re trying to project that. A lot of times that’s fake, but you have to be good at it . ... Absolutely, it matters more for a closer. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. You have to project confidence, own the mound.” Or project insanity. “When I was a rookie,” Doolitttle said, “Balfour was our closer, and that guy used the adrenaline and energy of the ninth inning like nobody else that I’ve ever seen. He harnessed it, he wrapped his arms around it, he rode it. I mean, he used every bit of the energy and adrenaline that was in the atmosphere when he came into the game. We kind of fed off that as a group.”
A’s reliever John Axford says Balfour’s rage “worked for him, and you could see how it maybe disrupted hitters, how it maybe upset them when they were in the box.”
The closer can’t walk around all day cursing and snorting and gunning down imaginary strikeout victims. Every closer must have, or acquire, the ability to flip the switch, from Jekyll to Hyde, to achieve what Buster Posey calls “an intense, maniacal focus.”
“Romo will always be the goofiest guy we’ve ever had in the clubhouse,” Posey said, “but really, after about the fifth inning, it changed, it switched over, and he was all business.”
Another cosmic question: If the theory is that good closers are crazy, how do we explain “normal” closers like Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman and Mark Melancon, who seem devoid of emotion and flair?
On further investigation, it turns out that the quiet ones are not always as normal as they appear.
One misconception about Rivera is that his walk-on music, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” helped geek him up. In reality, Rivera didn’t select that song, didn’t even hear it. He was locked so deeply into his zone that Metallica could have been playing live in the stands and Rivera wouldn’t have noticed.
Oakland’s Axford has shared a ’pen with two of the normal guys, Hoffman and Melancon. He was a teammate and catch partner of Melancon for a few weeks one season in Pittsburgh.
“He would be smiling, laughing, happy, talking and goofing around with the guys,” Axford said. “But his intensity and focus, even playing catch, you could see that. Almost any time there was a ball in his hand, or was about to be a ball in his hand, there was a switch. There was something that happened that changed for him.”
As for Hoffman, the Padres’ right-hander, Axford says fans “would see him and see a professional, see some normalcy at the back end of the ’pen. You don’t have a guy that’s fist-pumping and yelling at hitters. He does his job, and it’s a handshake and you’re done.
“But when you’re in the bullpen with him, there’s an intensity level that is unparalleled, and I’ve never seen it before or since . ... He essentially became a different person — not that calm, collected version of himself that seemed to be out there on the mound.”
Hoffman’s intensity was startling, Axford says, “to the point where I felt like I couldn’t even look at him.”
Simple job, closing ballgames. The pay is good, and so are the hours — 10 minutes or so a game. But you have to embrace the noise, the rattling and the shaking.