Rivalries Part 2: Pedro vs. Sheffield

A quick story to start (warning -- Olympics and golf to follow. You are more than welcome to skip to the stars and our baseball rivalry of the day): We were at the Olympics in 1996, and it was the afternoon before the Opening Ceremonies, and all of us columnists were trying to predict who would be the athlete to light the torch. We weren’t predicting for fun – our professional lives were at stake. Whoever lit the torch (naturally) would be from somebody’s hometown. And that hometown columnist (naturally) would have to, in a matter of a minutes, weave together a moving column about the hometown hero lighting the Olympic torch.

“It’s going to be Edwin Moses,” Pat Forde was saying. Pat is now a terrific writer for ESPN, but back that he was columnist in Louisville. And he was taunting the wonderful Dayton columnist Tom Archdeacon. See, the great hurdler Edwin Moses is from Dayton. Pat had decided that Arch was going to draw the columnist short straw.

“Oh yeah, it’s got to be Edwin Moses,” Pat said. “Who else could it be? I mean we are talking about one of the all-time Olympic greats. You better start writing now Tom.” We were all joining in – it was all good fun -- and Arch’s face was turning a bit white. I was laughing calmoly because at the time I was columnist in Cincinnati and there was virtually no chance that Pete Rose or Marge Schott was going to light the Olympic torch.

“You really think it’s going to be Edwin?” Arch asked.

“Who else could it be?” Pat said. As I recall, he said it with gusto.

That night, as you probably remember, featured one of the most touching Olympic moments ever. A shaking Muhammad Ali – his body wrecked by Parkinson’s Disease but his aura shining bright – lit the torch. That would be Louisville’s Muhammad Ali. That would be Pat Forde’s town.

The next day, we ran into a bleary-eyed Pat Forde, who of course had stayed up half the night trying to write his Muhammad Ali torch story, and of course did not have time to make it right. He was not really in a joking mood anymore.

I bring this up because … well, because it’s funny. But also because every columnist has some version of this story. For more than 10 years now, I’ve been writing about golfer Tom Watson. He’s from Kansas City, he still lives in Kansas City (well, on a farm nearby), and I would say that around the world, he is the most famous Kansas Citian.

That means every reasonably major tournament that Tom Watson plays in, I’m on call to write a column of some kind. This has mostly been a good thing. I’ve developed a reasonably close relationship with Tom. I’ve followed him on some of the most beautiful golf courses in the World (Augusta, Pebble Beach, Shinnecock, Muirfield for starters). I’ve argued politics with him. He’s given me kid advice. I’ve talked Royals’ baseball with him lots of times.

The one thing I have not seen him do, though, is actually win a golf tournament. I mean, never. I once flew to Chicago when he was leading the U.S. Open, and the first hole I saw him play he double bogeyed. I followed him around at a Senior Tour playoff in Kansas City, and watched him lose. I traveled to St. Louis to see him in a match-play competition, which he promptly lost. So it goes. I’ve sometimes thought that, after all the columns I’ve written about the guy, it would be nice to see him win just once.

Sunday, I was at home, with my oldest daughter sleeping in my lap, and I watched Tom Watson build up a three-shot lead with eight holes left at the U.S. Senior Open – the one Champions Tour event that really has the cache to be called a Major Championship. And I was really excited for him. Sure, Watson has already had plenty of great golf moments – five British Open Championships, two Masters, Six PGA Tour Player of the Year Awards and the most famous chip in golf history. Right there you have enough glory for three lifetimes.

Still … something weird happened to Tom Watson. He stopped winning in the mid-80s when he was in his prime. He was the best golfer on earth. He was about the same age that Tiger Woods is now. He was not injured. He was still hitting the ball with the same force and precision. The problem – this is oversimplifying things, but not much – was that his putts stopped falling. Watson had been the boldest putter on tour – he never left a putt short. He would putt the ball three or four feet past the hole all the time, but his touch was so feathery that he always made the comeback putt. Well, suddenly, he started missing those comeback putts. Pars became bogeys. And, like that, the run was over.

I’ve always thought that had to be hard a hard thing to deal with, to have it all end abruptly like that. Watson was one of the finest ball-strikers in golf for two decades after he won his last British Open. But from 1985 through 1995, he won just one golf tournament. He won a couple more as an older golfer, and he’s won some stuff on the Senior Tour, but it never was the same. I don’t think he ever got closure.

Sunday, it looked like he would have his final crescendo. He led the U.S. Senior Open by three shots. He was playing a lot like his younger self – swashbuckling his way through, making long putts, getting out of trouble, overwhelming everybody. All he needed to do was make a few pars coming in, and the tournament was his … and there would be a huge roar for him at 18. I was happy for the man I have probably written more columns about than any other.

And then … it fell apart. I mean, it really fell apart. Every ghost, every demon, every hiccup, every flaw that has haunted Tom Watson for the last 25 years showed up for one giant reunion. He missed short putts. He hit into trouble and couldn’t get out. Balls buried in the sand. Balls got snarled in the rough. It was awful to watch. Watson shot eight over par on his final eight holes, and the truth is that it could have been even worse. He ended up fourth at the tournament that was his and his alone. And he looked so old.

It’s a strange thing being a sportswriter in the same town for a long time. On the one hand you are supposed to remain professional (Bill James HATES that word) and somewhat distant from the people you write about. On the other hand, you are supposed to know them well enough to give some insight into their triumphs, failures, motivations and fears. It’s an impossible dance, really. Sunday I was heartbroken for Tom Watson.

* * *

Matchup No. 2: Pedro Martinez vs. Gary Sheffield

How they’ve done: Sheffield is hitting .278 against Pedro in 36 at-bats. He has three homers and has walked six times (giving him a .370 on-base percentage). Martinez has struck out Sheffield six times. I love this match-up for one other reason – these are two of the most intimidating players out there.

Thoughts: A friend sent me an email the other day about Gary Sheffield. He wondered what people think about Sheffield. The guy has Hall of Fame numbers – but do people see him as a Hall of Famer? He’s been on playoff teams each of the last five years and probably is again, but do people see him as a winning ballplayer? He probably will be one of only three players to finish a career with 500 homers and 250 steals (along with Willie Mays and Barry Bonds – ARod will join the party soon after). But do people see him as an all-around talent?

It has led me to wonder if perhaps Sheffield is the most underrated player of his time. I think this because, quite honestly, until a couple of years ago I never gave him much thought. He was in the National League, and after 1996 I didn’t see many NL games. He was always in the papers for something vaguely controversial (in retrospect, it was usually because he wanted to get paid more), and I mindlessly classified him as a pain in the neck. He never seemed to lead the league in anything (he did have the one batting title – but no homer titles, no RBI titles, no Gold Gloves, no MVPs). And he was a part of that mercenary and hideous 1997 Marlins championship team.

That was about all I knew. Well, I also knew he was Dwight Gooden’s nephew, another association that did not necessarily make him more appealing.

So I remember being at Yankee Stadium for a Royals-Yankees series – always a joy – and Sheffield came up, and he was waving the bat wildly like he does, and I thought: Man, this guy is a strikeout waiting to happen. And so I looked up his numbers and found – whoa, the guy actually doesn’t strike out hardly at all. Among the great power hitters – guys with 400 plus homers – Sheffield has the fifth fewest strikeouts.

1. Stan Musial, 696 strikeouts.
2. Ted Williams, 709 strikeouts
3. Lou Gehrig, 790 strikeouts
4. Mel Ott, 896 strikeouts.
5. Gary Sheffield, 1004 strikeouts.

That’s good company, no? And so, I turned and closely watched Gary Sheffield play that series. And the guy was amazing. I don’t mean he was good. I mean he was amazing. I don’t remember precisely what he did, but I recall that he cracked hits all over the park. He made a dazzling catch. He stole a base. He made a rocket throw. But more than anything, he played with energy, with force, with will. I’d sort of assumed that Sheffield was just another mercenary player, coasting for a big salary, not running out ground balls and so on. But the player I saw that weekend wanted to win, and he wanted to win badly, and he wanted to win every single day.

There’s one great advantage of following the Kansas City Royals – you get to see which players on the other teams REALLY play hard every day. If you’re going to take a day off or check out mentally, the Kansas City Royals have been the team to do that against. Well, Sheffield played that series like it mattered, like there was something important at stake, and I left New York with a new admiration for him, an admiration that has never dimmed.

I don’t know what kind of guy Sheffield is – I realize he’s played for a good number of teams, and he has a little bit of the steroid stain. Also I’ve never even interviewed him one on one. And I don’t see him that often – it’s possible that I just happen to catch him on his good days. But based on what I’ve seen (and based also on his .399 on-base percentage, 146 OPS+, etc.). Sheffield is one of the true forces of the game.

Pedro, of course, is Pedro. I was in the Dominican with Tony Peña, and we went to see the house where he grew up (he still owns the house). He came upon a wall and pointed at a photograph and said, “That used to be a picture of Jesus.” The new photo was of Pedro Martinez.

As background, Sheffield was the sixth pick in the 1986 draft, which tells you that the sixth pick was a pretty good one to have in the mid-1980s – Bonds was the sixth pick in the 1985 draft. Other sixth picks in the 1980s were not so fortunate (Spike Owen, Erik Pappas, Paul Coleman, etc. – Kevin McReynolds is in there too). Sheffield was up in the big leagues when he was 19, and he was an everyday player for Milwaukee in 1990. He had an absolutely miserable season in 1991 – he was hurt, and he hit .194. The Brewers traded him to San Diego, and Sheffield (who always has thrived on disrespect) hit .330 with 100 RBIs.

Pedro, meanwhile, signed when he was like 11 years old or whatever. He started one game in the big leagues as a 20-year-old for the Dodgers, and he won 10 games while being used almost exclusively as a reliever in 1993. Los Angeles, as I recall, was convinced that Martinez was too slight to stand up to the wear and tear of being a starter and traded him to Montreal for Delino DeShields (I could be wrong on this analysis – Dodgers fans please feel free to correct me here). Pedro had three very good seasons as a starter, and then became superhuman in 1997 (he went 17-8 with a 1.90 ERA and 305 strikeouts). He was pretty much superhuman for the next six seasons.

The Sheffield-Martinez rivalry follows that pattern. From 1993 to 1996, Sheffield spanked Martinez pretty good. He went 6 for 16 (.375) with 4 of his 6 hits going for extra bases (two doubles, two homers). This makes good sense – Martinez was more or less a fastball pitcher in the mid 1990s, and Sheffield is one of the great fastball hitters ever.

In 1997, though, Martinez transformed into something otherworldly – and though Sheffield was in his prime he never really hit Pedro again. Since 1997, Sheffield is hitting .200 against Martinez (4 for 20) and he has only one extra base hit. Of course, that extra base hit is pretty famous in New York – he mashed a two-run homer off of Pedro in September 2004 as the Yankees beat the Red Sox and Martinez 11-2, which more or less clinched the division title for the Yankees that year.