Moneyball - Michael Lewis [125]
Tonight, as he steps into the box, he promises himself that he won’t swing at anything down in the zone until he has two strikes. He’ll wait for what he wants until he has no choice but to accept whatever happens to be coming. He’s looking for something up—something he can drive for a double, and get himself in scoring position.
He settles into his usual open stance, and waggles the shiny black contraband bat back and forth through the zone, like a golfer on the first tee. As Grimsley comes into the stretch, his face contorts in the most unsettling way. He actually grins as he pitches, and it’s not a friendly grin. It’s the grin of a man who enjoys pulling wings off flies. The effect on the TV viewer is unnerving. But Hatty doesn’t see Grimsley’s face. He’s gazing at the general area where he expects the ball to leave Grimsley’s hand. He needs to see just one pitch, to get his timing down. He’s thinking: if I can lay off the first pitch I might get a pitch up in the zone. Over and over he’s telling himself: lay off the first pitch. The man who will this year lead the entire American League in laying off first pitches feels he needs to give himself a pep talk to lay off the first pitch. It must be the caffeine.
He lays off the first pitch. It’s a ball, just low. Another round of horrible facial expressions, and Grimsley’s ready again. The second pitch is another fastball, but it’s high in the strike zone. Hatty takes his short swing; the ball finds the barrel of his bat, and rockets into deep right center field.
He leaves the batter’s box in a crouching run. He’s moving just as fast as he does when he hits a slow roller to the third baseman. He doesn’t see Grimsley raging. He doesn’t hear fifty-five thousand fans erupting. He doesn’t notice the first baseman turning to leave the field. He doesn’t know that there’s a fellow from Cooperstown following him around the bases, picking them up, and will soon come looking for his bat. The only one in the entire Coliseum who does not know where the ball is going is the man who hit it. Scott Hatteberg alone watches the ball soar through the late night air with something like detachment.
The ball doesn’t just leave the park; it lands high up in the stands, fifty feet or so beyond the 362 sign in deep right center field. When he’s finally certain that the ball is gone for good, Scott Hatteberg raises both hands over his head, less in triumph than disbelief. Rounding first, he looks into the Oakland dugout. But there’s no one left inside—the players are all rushing onto the field. Elation transforms him. He shouts at his teammates. He’s not saying: Look what I just did. He’s saying: Look what we just did! We won! As he runs, he sheds years at the rate of about one every twenty feet. By the time he touches home plate, he’s less man than boy.
And, not five minutes later, Billy Beane was able to look me in the eye and say that it was just another win.
Chapter Twelve
THE SPEED OF THE IDEA
BILLY BEANE never allowed himself sentimental feelings about a game, or a player, or his own experiences. He’d walled himself off from his finer feelings, or tried to. He defined himself by his distaste for, rather than his romance with, his ballplaying past. This set him apart from most people who made their living in the game. Former big league ballplayers usually have friendly ghosts.
The sympathy most former ballplayers had for their own professional experiences—for the way they played the game—was nevertheless a problem for the anti-traditional Oakland A’s. They needed to employ men with experience, but with that experience came the usual feelings and hunches and instincts. Billy often felt as if he were having to fight the past in his players and coaches—that Paul DePodesta was the only person in the entire organization who drew the same conclusions from the same data as he did. And, as the play-offs approached,