The late show

Sporting News, The, July 10, 1995 by David Falkner, Sean McAdam

The take on closers is that in order for them to be good they have to have a few wires crossed. Randy Myers, the Cubs' stopper, for years has gone around brandishing toy hand grenades, wearing battle fatigues and the like, all to keep the image going. Al Hrabosky, a closer for three different teams in the '70s and '80s, was dubbed "The Mad Hungarian" by sportswriters because of his wild facial hair and because he had a memorable and colorful routine in which he would walk off the mound before each pitch, turn his back to the batter as though he was lost in meditation before slamming the ball into his mitt, wheeling around and marching back up to the mound ready to pitch. Even when he lost the smoke on his fastball there was still plenty that billowed from his ears. Goose Gossage, the premier closer of the last generation, probably summed it up best: "I'm basically a normal pitcher if there's no pressure, but with the game on the line I go crazy, my whole personality changes."

It may come as no surprise, but craziness among closers is more show than tell. Sparky Lyle made a fetish out of sitting on cakes in his birthday suit, but he saved a lot of ballgames with the best slider in baseball. The Goose may have felt crazy, but he blew away batters with high heat that he could control with clinical precision. Years ago, I asked Kent Tekulve, then the Pirates' closer, about the Goose, who previously had been the team's main man for a season. "The thing about Goose," Tekulve said in a tone that was as close to reverential as major league ballplayers get, "is not only that he throws so hard but that everything is on the corner. You can't believe the way the man can hit corners with that kind of stuff."

Closers today, though, are not what they were a generation ago. Twenty years ago, closers came into fashion -- sort of. There always had been relievers in baseball, guys who mopped up or who held on. Usually relievers were second-string starters. Every once in a while, on a special team with a slot for a special pitcher like Hugh Casey, Joe Page or Jim Konstanty, the reliever also was something of a closer. With Elroy Face, the great Pirates reliever of the '60s, the line separating relievers from closers began to blur. Pitchers came into games in the seventh or eighth inning specifically to nail down victories, and the term save itself -- relatively unknown -- became a common feature in boxscores. But even more interesting, the idea of a closer, even in this short stretch of time, has been refined even further. Whereas 20 years ago Rollie Fingers or the Goose would stride out of the bullpen in the seventh or eighth inning -- "Gossage Time," it was called in New York -- today's closers rarely appear before the ninth and will be used only infrequently for more than an inning in any situation. Ironically, less work only has added up to more importance. Top closers these days are simply top stars, as eagerly sought-after as home-run hitters or 20-game winners. The Yankees opened the vaults to get John Wetteland before this season because they concluded he meant a championship. Everyone in baseball has taken note that Lee Smith has been the difference between worst and first in California. Heathcliff Slocumb has been the bearer of the same sort of magic in Philadelphia. Closers are becoming marquee attractions, just about as big as any All-Star this week in Texas.

There are theories about how all this came to pass -- many credit A's Manager Tony La Russa for the game's "structured" bullpen with lefty-righty setup men all leading to a ninth-inning closer -- but the reality is, today's closers are a breed apart. They are the game's thoroughbreds, finicky and nervy; their work is done on the narrowest of ledges, the highest of wires. They should be nuts even if they aren't. But in any case, how they think, what mindset they bring to their inestimably pressurized work, is very much to the point. It takes something to be a closer today. The music may be blaring "Wild Thing" from ballpark loudspeakers as the closer makes his way to the mound, but he'd better have a few other tunes in his head if he expects to succeed.

Because so much is riding on what he does, and because his work is so limited, closers want to be pumped. They look to go all out on each pitch they throw -- something starters never would dream of doing. There is no pacing involved and the work is all or nothing, so many closers enter a game focused only on getting a first batter, throwing an initial pitch for a strike. There is an inevitable swagger -- or at least manner -- to a closer. He is a gunfighter (and, like Dennis Eckersley, sometimes will pantomime blowing smoke away from an imaginary six-shooter after a "punch out") and a man obsessed. "Man, I try to go into the game with my head clear and stay within myself," says Bobby Ayala, the mariners' closer, who is among the American League's best this season. "I know I have a save situation when I enter the game and I go out there with everything. I'm going to throw my fastball all out, I'm going to throw my split with everything I have. ... I'm here, I'm in the big leagues and I'm pretty much saying to myself, 'These guys can't touch me.' I have good stuff and they're not going to touch me."