Moneyball - Michael Lewis [127]
Ray had put an end to that particular stab at baseball efficiency. But when the A’s coaches told him to stop trying to steal bases, he had stopped. His whole career Ray Durham had been hired to steal bases; the moment he arrived in Oakland, his coaches told him to stay put wherever he was until the ball was hit. Billy had traded for Ray not because Ray stole bases but because Ray had a talent for getting on base—for not making outs. And so, for the first time in his career, Ray mostly played it safe on the bases. From the aesthetic point of view, this was a pity. Let Ray Durham do what he pleased on the base paths and he became a human thrill ride. The other night in Seattle, after a passed ball, he went from second to third in a heartbeat and then, instead of stopping like a sane person, just flew around the bag and headed toward home. The entire stadium suffered a little panic attack. The Seattle catcher dove and spun, the Seattle pitcher felt his sphincter in his throat, and forty thousand Seattle fans gasped like they’d just reached the first crest on a giant roller coaster. A millisecond later Ray screeched to a halt, trotted back to third, and chuckled. Ray knew how to use his legs to fuck with people’s minds.
Not running is about as natural to Ray as not breathing, but until now he’s bottled up not just his speed but his feelings. Now he says, “It’s different here, huh?”
Wash snorts. “It’s the shit,” he says. “We have twenty-five stolen bases all year. Eight were guys going on their own and getting it. Ten were 3–2 counts. Seven, Art gave the green light.” One hundred and sixty games into the season Art Howe has given base runners the green light a grand total of seven times. It’s got to be some kind of record.
“Ray, how many bags you got this season?” asks Wash.
“Twenty-five,” says Ray.
“When he came over, he had twenty-two,” says Wash. “So he got three bags here. Two of those he took on his own.”
“You run on this team and you’re on your own,” says Boz, ominously.
“Yeah,” says Wash. “There’s a rule on this club. It’s okay if you get it. If you don’t, you got hell to pay.” That would cast Billy Beane as Satan.
Ray shakes his head in wonder, and goes back to taking his cuts.
Crack!
“If you say base-running isn’t important, you forget how to run the bases,” says Boz.
“You wanna see something funny,” Wash says. “Come sit with me in the third-base box and watch that shit comin’ at me. Nobody on this club know how to go from first to third.” In addition to being the infield coach on a team that can’t afford to waste money on defense, Wash is the third-base coach on a team that can’t afford to waste money on speed. Whenever a ball goes to the wall, he’s required to make these weirdly elaborate calculations to take into account the base-running talents Billy Beane has provided him with. He doesn’t want to hear that foot speed is overpriced.
Ray can no longer concentrate on his hitting. “Cautious doesn’t work in the play-offs,” he says.
Wash and Boz don’t say anything to that. Ray’s got three weeks, at most, before he’s a free agent deciding which multi-million-dollar offer to accept: Ray can say whatever he wants about Billy Beane’s approach to baseball. In a few days the Oakland A’s will face the Minnesota Twins in the first round of the play-offs, and all the noise on the television and in the papers is about how the play-offs are different from the regular season. How the play-offs are about “manufacturing” runs. The play-offs were all about street cred, and science didn’t have any.
“I don’t see a lot of play-off games where the score is 8–5,” says Ray. “It’s always 1–0 and 2–1.”
“The fact of it is,” says Wash, “Billy Beane hates to make outs on the base paths.”
Ray shakes his head sadly and resumes taking his cuts.
I’ve stumbled upon a revolutionary cell within the Oakland A’s, three men who still believe