Three Nights in August by Bissinger Buzz

Author:Bissinger, Buzz [Bissinger, Buzz]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2006-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

9. Whodunit

I

SAMMY SOSA leads off the top of the fourth by grounding out to second on a breaking ball from Williams. Moises Alou strikes out on a breaking ball from Williams. Eric Karros flies out to center on a breaking ball from Williams. It's a fourteen-pitch inning. He is moving deeper and deeper into that zone of pure performance, each inning better than the previous. Unlike many pitchers, his stuff gets, as La Russa says, "more oiled" as he progresses further into a game. Because he is a pitchmaker rather than a thrower, he has to feel out his pitches, make sure that the cutter has bite and that the curve isn't too fat. So he often does in the first inning what Darryl Kile did: checks out his equipment like an auto racer to see what is working and what may need a little bit more fine-tuning. After the first two or three innings, the location and command of his pitches only improve, and he tends to sail ever more smoothly on to the seventh or eighth.

It's beautiful to watch a pitcher who can work a ball like this, somehow make the plate seem spacious and roomy and easy to target when it measures less than 20 inches across. In his foxhole, behind the camouflage of his get-away-from-me grimace, La Russa entertains an effusive thought: He's nailing it. And against Kerry Wood, he has to nail it if the Cardinals are to hang on long enough to force Dusty Baker to resort to his bullpen. There is no margin for carelessness or frustration or mental lapse. Williams has done yeoman work in speeding up right-handed hitters' bats with the fastball inside so that they're way out in front when he comes in with his curve. His best side of the plate is the first-base side, the away side for righties, but tonight he's also been effective pitching inside to them. Which means that he's working both sides of the plate, so vital to the success of any pitcher. He's showing the kind of stuff that took him to a 12-and-3 record before the All-Star break.

He fell into a rut after the break and lost some confidence; tonight marks his sixth straight attempt to push his win total to fifteen for the season. La Russa and Duncan noticed that after the All-Star break, Williams had changed his style, trying to pitch everybody as if they were Babe Ruth. Instead of going after hitters to get strike 1, he tried to be too fine with his pitches, even with nobody on when a get-me-over fastball or curve would have the least consequences. The culprit, they suspected, was fatigue. Because of the crisis in the bullpen the first half of the season, Williams went deep into virtually every game he pitched. La Russa and Duncan needed him, and he responded beautifully, but the use wore on him. His arm inevitably got tired, which led to a lack of confidence in the sheer

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