Aces of Diamonds

Baseball Digest, July, 2000 by Gordon Edes

"It's not that the Indians gave up," Schilling said, "but there's a defeatist attitude when you face a guy like that. It's like what's happening on the PGA tour with Tiger Woods. Instead of figuring out what you're going to do with your bat, you say, `What are we going to do tomorrow, because there's no way we can win today.'

"An ace has an aura. He doesn't have to have his `A' stuff to win. He wins on most days even when he doesn't have his best stuff. Before the season starts, if you ask me how many games I'm going to win, I can't tell you. But every time I get the ball, I honestly believe I'm going to win that night. Something weird is going to have to happen for me not to win. That's the way I've always felt."

Schilling may be accused of having a pitcher's bias. Not so Hal McRae, the former outfielder who starred on the terrific Kansas City Royals teams of the 1970s and '80s. An ace, McRae said, makes as much of an impact in his own dugout as he does in the opposing team's dugout.

"We were talking about it in the cage not long ago," said McRae, now the hitting coach for the Philadelphia Phillies.

"Teammates get up for the ace. They play better defense. They're more alert. Their concentration is at its peak.

"The opposition fears the ace. They know it's going to be a tough ballgame. The opposing manager fears the ace. He hates to run his ace against your ace. He'd prefer to use him the day before or after, so he doesn't waste a good effort by his ace and lose.

"It gives your club a lift when your No. 1 pitches. You know you can beat anyone. You know you don't have to score eight runs and still have a better-than-average chance to win today. Maybe today you won't have to grind quite as much.

"Over the long haul of 162 games, if you feel like you've got to grind every day, it's going to wear you down."

An ace doesn't wear you down. If his name is Pedro Martinez, he can lift up a team, a town, a Red Sox Nation.

"Guys like him," Gullett said, "come along once in a lifetime."

RELATED ARTICLE: Some random observations on pitching aces, from those who know them:

PEDRO MARTINEZ MADE 15 STARTS WITH AN extra day's rest last, season (getting at least five days off between starts instead of four). In those 15 starts, he went 13-0. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa explains the importance of giving an ace additional time off:

"We used to do that a lot with Stew (Dave Stewart) and Welchie (Bob Welch). They used to go deep into a game over and over again. You can only go so long. It's really important to get that extra day, because it's important to try to get to the last month of the season and have some arm left. All of a sudden, you reach the pressurized games in September and October and the arm's dead."

Do aces have a shorter shelf life? Some studies have shown that pitchers who log 200 or more innings, especially early in their career are more susceptible to injury. The Red Sox have three other pitchers--Ramon Martinez, Bret Saberhagen, and Jeff Fassero, who were all No. 1 starters on other staffs. Saberhagen has undergone shoulder reconstruction and tore his rotator cuff again last season, Martinez had shoulder reconstruction surgery, and Fassero had elbow surgery. And last season, Pedro Martinez twice went on the DL with shoulder problems.