A pitcher and his shortstop

So Derek Jeter is retiring from the Yankees at the end of this year, something he announced to the world before the season began to assure himself of a grand farewell tour. This kind of thing is one reason I have never been a fan of him. His image has always been meticulously crafted. He's presented as the selfless team player, the straight arrow, the "Captain," someone who always has his team at heart rather than his own glorification, and of whom one never hears a discouraging word.

Maybe that's because he never speaks, except in platitudes, and only then to juxtapose his white hat image in contrast to the villains of the game, like A-Rod. He believes his private life is off limits to others and will talk only about baseball. Well, as my mother taught me, perhaps, "It's better to be thought a fool than speak and prove it."

Jeter's silence has served him well. He's avoided all the usual scandals.

As an example, she once pointed to a long drive Joe DiMaggio and Frank Crossetti took together from San Francisco to New York one year. She told me, "They rarely spoke during the drive because they were real men." My father, no fan of Joe D, chimed in, "That's because neither of them had anything to say."

Jeter's silence has served him well. He's avoided all the usual scandals: PEDs, strippers, drugs, DUIs, and a string of bimbos calling him their "baby daddy." This is not to say Derek has been an ascetic. He's had all the Usual Suspects as girlfriends — models, (Vida Guerra, Lana Dutts, Hannah Davis), a songbird (Mariah Carey), and actresses (Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Jessica Alba, Jessica Rabbit and someone named Minka Kelly, to whom he was engaged from 2008-2012). Kelly was his fiancé for five years before they split. Imagine, five years without being able to commit. Well, presumably, at least Minka got a consolation prize from her former beau, a basket of baseballs and photos of her ex, autographed, which he reportedly gives to his many girlfriends at their parting.

It tells you something about him. He is rarely seen with them in public; it's always in the privacy of his home — and what a home it is. He's a grown man heading toward middle age with still the arrested development of a child. His 31,000 square foot Taj Mahal on Davis Island outside Tampa, is one of the largest homes ever in Hillsborough County. But it’s a child’s home, lived in by one man, presumably without a dog, or a cat or even a green cheeked conure parakeet, either, but no one will ever really know because of his excessive privacy. The house has no lawn, just a paved drive, garages for his cars, and a high concrete wall. His privacy is so complete that he’s even managed to avoid revealing how much money he’s paid for this monstrosity.

At the same time, poor A-Rod can't cross the street against the light without it being plastered all over the tabloids as an example of his disrespect for, well, just about everything. Yet more than one major league player has told me a lot of the Yankees like A-Rod better than Jeter, and consider A-Rod a better teammate. Of course, none of them will admit this publicly because of the stranglehold Jeter has on the media, the Yankees and his fans. Interestingly, A-Rod proved he was a better teammate when he was traded to the Yankees in 2004. Remember, it was A-Rod, arguably the best shortstop in baseball at the time, who offered to move to third base in deference to the Yankee captain. While Jeter was maybe one of the top-five shortstops in the game, he was no A-Rod, and the Yankees might have been a better team with A-Rod at short and Jeter at third or second.

But Jeter refused to change positions, and the Yankees weren't going to make him. And last season, when he returned too soon from his broken ankle to play hurt and prove what a gamer he was, nothing much was said when he got hurt again and ended the season having appeared in only 17 games.

OK, so all the above proves I'm not a Jeter fan. Yet I have to admit that if I was a major league pitcher today, and Jeter was at the peak of his game, Derek Jeter would be the one shortstop I'd want to play behind me. Why? Simple. Jeter's always caught the ball. J.J. Hardy, the Orioles' Gold Glove shortstop told me the cardinal rule of playing shortstop is, "You can't throw the ball if you don't catch it."

The cardinal rule of playing shortstop is, "You can't throw the ball if you don't catch it."

This reminded me of a catcher I pitched to in the minor leagues. We called him "Bubba" because he was from the University of Texas, and an All-American. He was smart, he called a great game, and seemed to sense the pitch I wanted to throw. When I was wild and walked a few batters, Bubba picked them off base more than a few times to save me from a disastrous inning. He also knew enough to come out to the mound when I had lost my control and tell me what I was doing wrong. Most other catchers who caught me during my wild streaks only exhorted me to "Throw strikes!" as if I was deliberately walking batter after batter because I loved to hear the fans screaming, "Take the bum out, he's toast!"

Bubba's only flaw, however, was that he never concentrated on actually catching the ball. I'd throw a perfect fastball on the outside corner of the plate and Bubba would jab at it like a boxer, sending it rolling away onto the grass. To the umpire, it looked like a bad pitch, and Bubba's dropped strikes gave the umpires the impression I was even wilder than I was. To this day, I can still hear our old manager, Travis Jackson, who played shortstop for the New York Giants in the ‘20s and ‘30s, shouting from the dugout, "Catch the ball, Bubba! Catch the goddamn ball. You're a CATCHER, Bubba!"

Jeter may not have the greatest range as a shortstop, and he may not have made as many highlight reel plays at shortstops as Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith or the Mets' acrobatic Rey Ordonez, considered one of the best fielding shortstops in the game in the late-‘90s. But you can rest assured if the ball touches Jeter's glove, he catches it and throws the runner out. And he's gotten to a lot more balls than he should have because he never quits on a play. (i.e. in the 2001 ALDS, his cutoff of a relay throw to the plate that he flipped backhanded to Jorge Posada to nail a disbelieving Jeremy Giambi, who didn't bother to slide.)

In the pitcher's mind, his job is to make the batters hit the ball so his fielder can catch it. Runner on first, one out, the pitcher throws a sinker, or overhand curveball, to induce the hitter to hit a groundball because he has confidence his shortstop will turn it into a double play. Shortstops like Jeter take a huge mental burden off a pitcher and are a comfort to their psyches, giving them one less thing to worry about. Pitchers know they won't be betrayed on a groundball that should be caught. All a pitcher has to do is concentrate on his pitches.

But if he doesn't have confidence in his shortstop, it messes with his pitch selection. He throws a riskier pitch, say a high fastball to go for a strikeout, and just maybe the batter deposits the ball in the left field bleachers. And on those occasions when a pitcher doesn't do his job, when the batter lashes a hot shot between third and short, he doesn't expect his shortstop to catch it. Even if that shortstop makes a phenomenal play and the pitcher escapes the consequences, he still feels as if he failed to do his job.

Hardy told me that shortstops and pitchers have a special relationship, second only to that of catchers and pitchers. "We can see the catcher's signs," he said, "and have an idea where the pitcher wants to put the ball in play. My locker in the clubhouse is next to Matt Wieters, our catcher, and I can hear him discuss each game plan with our pitchers." This gives him an idea where to play each batter, and if the plan changes in the middle of the game, "they'll signal me to move a couple times," he said. "But that, too, can tip off the batter to what he's going to throw. If the pitcher moves me toward the hole, the batter knows he's not throwing him a slider low and away."

Of all the teammates I had over the years, I always felt closer to my shortstops than my catchers.

Of all the teammates I had over the years, I always felt closer to my shortstops than my catchers. I usually called my own pitches and considered that my responsibility — I didn't need a catcher for that. But I relied on my shortstop. A good one made me feel like a gun fighter going into a saloon to draw down on the bad guy, knowing that his right-hand man was behind him at the door to make sure there were no surprises.

In high school, I had two shortstops. One was Brian Murphy, a talented athlete who also played basketball and football. Brian had great lateral movement, quick hands and a strong arm. He could glide deep in the hole to backhand a line drive and then fire the ball to first base to double up the runner. He would eventually play 17 years in the minors and then become a minor league manager and coach, although I don't know that he could ever teach anybody to be as physically talented as he was. But he also had the annoying habit of losing interest on a routine play. I shuddered every time I induced the batter to hit a ground ball right at him. He approached the ball nonchalantly, without interest, as if it were beneath his talents, then kicked it across the infield while I fumed on the mound.

My other shortstop was Eddie Rowe. He had no lateral movement, no quick hands, no cannon arm. Yet Eddie was my closest teammate because I trusted him to catch the ball if he could reach it. He charged everything, regardless of the short hop, to get to the ball as quickly as possible and close the distance to first base, to make up for his merely adequate arm. When Brian played behind me, I was always nervous, wondering when he would betray me. With Eddie behind me, I never thought about my shortstop. I just knew he'd catch the ball, no matter what.

I asked J.J. Hardy what pitchers want from a shortstop. He told me, "A guy who's not flashy, who's in the right position to make every play without having to dive for the ball. I like to think I'm that guy. You won't see a lot of highlight reels of me diving in the dirt. I take pride in making all the plays I'm supposed to. "

I told him about watching DiMaggio play centerfield on TV. My extended Italian family loved the Yankees — Joe Di, Phil Rizzuto, Crossetti, Vic Raschi, Yogi Berra. Every Sunday my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins - even my old grandmother Maria, who did not speak much English, and didn't know much baseball — were glued to the TV whenever the Yankees played. In the middle of one game, my grandmother said in Italian, "Which one is the great DiMaggio?"

As if on cue, a fly ball was hit into the gap between left and center. DiMaggio broke instinctively, ran gracefully toward it, got to it in plenty of time, camped under it and caught the ball. Any other centerfielder would have had to catch it on the run. Grandma said in Italian, "Ah, that's the great DiMaggio."

J.J. smiled at that story and said, "I want to be like that, always under control." Then he told me he admired other shortstops who could make the kind of plays he never could, like Jeter catching a ball in the hole and then leaping in the air to fire the ball to first. "If I jumped like that," he said, "I could never throw the ball with any accuracy." Yet J.J. has a rifle arm. In fact, 25 of the 30 teams that scouted him in high school wanted to sign him as a pitcher. He had a nice mid-90s fastball, but it was straight as a string, a liability for a pitcher, but not for a shortstop.

But to make a strong throw, J.J. said, he had to have his feet planted, which is why he was no Ordonez. "Have you ever seen Ordonez go deep in the hole for a ball?" he asked, "Sliding on one knee then bouncing up and throwing a strike to first? I can't do that."

"They try to be flashy," he said, "even on routine plays. They like to get dirty on balls they don't need to."

I asked him who the most underrated shortstop in baseball was today. Without hesitating he said, "Brendan Ryan, the backup to Jeter on the Yankees. He's as good as they get defensively. He makes every play look easy." Who was the most overrated? He smiled at me. He wasn't going to go there. But he did tell me the most common flaws of overrated shortstops. "They try to be flashy," he said, "even on routine plays. They like to get dirty on balls they don't need to." Because they always seem to be moving, lunging and diving, he said. "They make a lot of errors, or even turn what should be errors into hits because they try to make every play look hard by not getting in front of the ball in time. Pitchers don't like that."

"Tell me about it," I said.

Like most shortstops today, J.J. is tall and rangy, like Jeter and A-Rod, and his idol, Cal Ripken Jr., who is 6'4. He said, "Ripken was the first big shortstop who changed the concept of the position."

I told him that wasn't quite true. The emergence of the tall, rangy shortstop surfaced in the 1940s, with the Cardinals Marty Marion, who was 6'2. Up until that time, the position usually seemed to be manned by fielders whose height seemed perfectly defined by the name of the position. Rizzuto of the Yankees was 5'6 and Harold Henry Reese of the Dodgers only a little taller. In their heyday, the ‘40s to mid-‘50s, they were known respectively as the Scooter and Pee Wee, which tells you a lot about the position. Scooter ranged around the infield, scooting across the dirt like a water bug, and Pee Wee always seemed to be sprawled on the ground like some ragamuffin kid from the farm.

Marion redefined the position and when Scooter retired in 1956, Tony Kubek, who stood 6'3, replaced him at shortstop. The feeling in baseball at the time was that rangier shortstops could get to the same balls Scooter and Pee Wee did, but with less motion, and had stronger arms. Besides, teams were no longer relying on their shortstops simply to be slick fielders who usually batted eighth, and sometimes even ninth, after the pitcher. The day of the one-dimensional shortstop was ending. The men who played the position were expected to carry their weight with a bat, too.

Before I left him, I told J.J. he was the kind of shortstop I would have loved to have playing behind me. But I probably wasn't the kind of pitcher he would have like playing behind, with a lot of balls and swinging strikes, strikeouts and walks, and fly balls instead of groundballs.

"It's hard for me to play behind that kind of pitcher," he said, "it makes it harder for me to focus with all those strikeouts and walks and fly balls. I prefer a sinker baller who pounds the strike zone and gets a lot of groundballs instead of a guy always behind in the count. That guy forces me to concentrate harder than if I was getting 10 groundballs a game. It's exhausting concentrating like that. After the game, I'm wiped out. "

* * *

My two most vivid memories of the shortstops that played behind me when I was pitching are separated by 36 years. The first memory is of a game I pitched in Quincy, Ill., for the Davenport Braves of the Class D Midwest League in 1960. It was the last game of a long season during which we had been mired near last place since the start. I had thrown well that year, with a good 95-97 mph fastball and an unhittable overhand curveball when I managed to throw it anywhere near the plate. Which was exactly my problem. I had thrown well that year, but I had not pitched well, with an ERA of almost five thanks to my average of almost eight walks per game. On the last day of the year, my record was 4-12.

On that hot, humid afternoon along the banks of the Mississippi River, none of our players wanted to play, including our pitchers. We all just wanted to get back on the bus as soon as possible, go back to Davenport, pack our bags and flee. For some, it would be their last minor league game.

Still, ever hopeful, I raised my hand when Travis Jackson, our manager, asked who wanted to take one for the team and go to the bullpen that day. I had pitched terrible two games before, with too many walks, wild pitches and runs scored. I figured I might at least try to redeem something.

So I went to the bullpen and watched a dispiriting game that neither team seemed to want to win. Finally, in the bottom of the ninth, the game tied with one out, Jackson gave me the signal to warm up. I had barely thrown 10 pitches by the time our pitcher loaded the bases and Jackson waved me into the game.

At any other time of the year I would have simply reared back, eyes closed, and fired fastballs, hoping against hope for two strikeouts. I toed the rubber, and my catcher, the redoubtable Bubba, gave me a sign. Curveball. What the hell, I thought, why not? I threw a nice overhand curveball, straight down. The batter swung and hit a sharp one-hopper to our shortstop. He fielded it and flipped the ball to our second baseman who fired to first for a double play, and I was out of the inning.

To this day, I can't recall who that shortstop was. I only know that on that one pitch he made me feel like a real pitcher.

Jackson yanked me for a pinch hitter in the top of the 10th. We scored a run and my reliever, I think he was an outfielder pressed into emergency service, got three outs. I was rewarded with an effortless victory, my fifth, to go with my 12 losses.

Of all the games I pitched, I remember that one most clearly. It showed me what I could have been if only I thought more and struggled less.

Flash forward to 1997. On a dare, at the age of 56, I got in shape one last time to pitch a game for the Waterbury, Conn., Spirit, an independent league team in the Northeast League. My 95 mph fastball was only a distant memory, but I had picked up a nice little slider during my six months throwing to a high school catcher three times a week.

After I warmed up in the bullpen on the night of the game, I walked into the dugout to the encouragement of my unknown teammates. "Come on, old man, show us what you got." "You can do it, Gramps." "We're behind you, just make them hit it."

I took the mound and promptly threw two fastballs off the plate. Déjà vu all over again, I thought. After 36 years, another endless round of walks and boos.

My catcher put down his sign, one finger, fastball. I was ready to throw when I remembered that one pitch victory of mine in Quincy so many years before. I shook off the sign. He put one finger down again. I shook him off again. He got the hint and put down two fingers.

I nodded, began my delivery and threw a nice little slider just off the plate to the right-handed batter. He reached out for it and hit a little dribbler past the mound. My heart sank. I was sure it would be an infield hit.

Then I saw my shortstop, whose name I would never know, charging the dribbler, bending over, scooping it up barehanded and simultaneously firing it to first to nab the runner by a hair. I couldn't believe it. I smiled, relaxed, took a deep breath and retired two of the next three hitters to end the inning without giving up a run and finally put a period on my pitching career.

I walked off the mound, my teammates running alongside me, slapping me on the shoulder, "Way to go, man!" I wasn't Gramps now; I was their pitcher.

I looked for my shortstop on the bench to thank him for making the play that calmed me so I could get through this one inning, the last I would ever throw. But there were so many young faces there, I didn't know which one was his.