From posers to closers: as the reliever's status has grown, the days of putting just anyone in the pen are long gone - management of relief pitchers

Baseball Digest, August, 2003 by Gordon Edes

THERE ISN'T ANOTHER JOB IN baseball with a history, reputation, or personality more muddled than that of the relief pitcher.

Relievers are indispensable. "No one can win a World Series," said Troy Percival, star closer of the defending champion Anaheim Angels, "without a good closer. You can't even make the playoffs without a good closer."

Where would New York be without Mariano Rivera, who has been the Yankees' true Mr. October in their most recent string of World Series successes?

"Just check the numbers," said Leo Mazzone, the Atlanta Braves' pitching coach.

Relievers are rejects. "We were going to release Dan Quisenberry in A ball," said former Red Sox general manager Lou Gorman, who was running the Royals when Quisenberry emerged as one of the game's best relievers for a six-season span in the 1980s.

"He came to spring training and was evaluated: 'No prospect,' 'no prospect,' 'no prospect.' The scout says, 'Don't release him,' so I put him on the Waterloo, Iowa, club. Steve Boros was the manager and he calls me and says, 'Lou, this guy can't get anyone out. It's embarrassing to put him out there.' I said, 'We'll release him in June. I'll get you more pitching in June.' In Wausau, Wisconsin, Quiz gets beaten up in a game and when he comes out, he can't raise his arm. Severe tendinitis. Eighteen, 19 days later, he comes back, and he can't get his arm to here (Gorman holds his hand chest level) but he can release it from here (navel level), so the ball begins to sink. Boros drops him a little lower, the ball sinks even more, and the rest? He became. the most dominant reliever we ever had."

Relievers have been known as "firemen"--that may have started with Mace Brown, the legendary Sox scout who as a reliever with the Pirates in the 1930s used to throw horseshoes at the local firehouse, and a sportswriter had the bright idea of posing him in a fireman's hat--"stoppers," and "closers."

Relievers are often failures in their intended profession, demoted to the only area of the ballpark with a name that reeks of fertilizer: "the bullpen." A sore-armed Dick Radatz was still a Sox minor leaguer when he begged Johnny Pesky not to send him to the pen. Pesky insisted, and Radatz became "The Monster," who counted Mickey Mantle as his most vaunted (and regular) conquest.

Many consider Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers, the man with the waxed handlebar mustache and the unhittable slider for Charlie Finley's A's (and later the Padres and Brewers), the best reliever of all time. "He was No. 1," said Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson. "He threw that hard, quick slider, and when he lost his fastball, he adjusted with that funny pitch. He had great control and could throw to any part of the plate he wanted. And he had no fear."

But he sure didn't start out that way. "In 1971, my first year over there, Fingers was one of our starters," said Dick Williams, the former Red Sox manager who won two World Series in Oakland. "Vida Blue had just come on the scene, we had Catfish Hunter and Pat Dobson, and he was our fourth starter. But every time it came close to his time to start, he'd back out, just get nervous as hell. He didn't get the job done. So we put him in the bullpen, put him in meaningless situations, and he kept getting people out. So finally we put him in a tight spot, and he did the job.

"'When he had to think about it, he was his own worst enemy. But when he didn't know he was going to pitch, he was great."

Fingers was 39 when he retired with 341 saves, a number long since eclipsed by Lee Smith (478), a World Series MVP award (1974), and Cy Young and MVP awards won with the Brewers in 1981. He might have kept pitching, he said, because Pete Rose wanted him in Cincinnati in 1986. But according to Fingers, owner Marge Schott was less enthused. "Marge Schott wanted me to shave my mustache," he once recalled. "I told them, 'You tell Marge Schott to shave her St. Bernard and I'll shave my mustache.' That was the last I heard about that."

No days rest

Relievers once were just starting pitchers who should have been enjoying a day off, but didn't. When managers needed someone to finish a game, they called upon one of their starters who wasn't working that day. Bill James, the Red Sox' stats analyst who has written two richly detailed essays on the history of relief pitching, observed that in 1904, John McGraw won the National League pennant with the New York Giants, even though his team finished last in the league in complete games. In 1911, Cubs ace Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown made almost as many relief appearances (26) as starts (27), and that practice continued well into the 1930s.

There were a few exceptions--Charlie Hall was a key man on the first Red Sox team to play in Fenway Park, the world champions of 1912--but generally they were looked upon with disdain. James cites an article in the 1912 Reach Guide, "'Relief' Pitcher a New Fad," that begins: "Indication of the growing extravagance in major league circles is the fact that in addition to carrying assistant managers (we call them coaches today), major league clubs are actually anxious to find pitchers who can be used for relief purposes only." The nerve.