Moneyball - Michael Lewis [78]
Above-average wit, too.
“So, what’s wrong with him?” I ask, after he leaves.
“His catching career was over,” said Paul. “He got hurt and can’t throw.”
It turned out that Scott Hatteberg had been on the Oakland A’s wish list for several years. He’d never done anything flashy or sensational. He didn’t hit an attention-getting number of home runs. He had never hit much over or under .270. He had the same dull virtues as David Justice and Jeremy Giambi: plate discipline and an ability to get on base. He, like them, was a blackjack dealer who understood never to hit on 19. The rest of baseball viewed Hatteberg as a catcher who could hit some, rather than as an efficient device for creating runs who could also catch. When he’d ruptured a nerve in his throwing elbow his catching days were finished, and so, in the eyes of most of baseball, was he. Therefore, he came cheap.
That he had lost his defensive position meant little to the Oakland A’s, who were forever looking for dirt-cheap opportunities to accept bad defense for an ability to get on base. One trick of theirs was to pounce on a player just after he’d had what appeared to be a career-threatening injury. Billy Beane had a favorite saying, which he’d borrowed from the Wall Street investor Warren Buffett: the hardest thing to find is a good investment. Hatteberg wasn’t like Jeremy Giambi, a minor leaguer they were hoping would cut it in the bigs. He wasn’t like David Justice, an aging star in rapid decline. He was a commodity that shouldn’t have existed: a big league player, in his prime, with stats that proved he had an unusual ability to create runs, and available at the new, low price of less than a million bucks a year. The only question Billy and Paul had about Scott Hatteberg was where on the baseball field to put him. Between Justice, who couldn’t play in the field every day and stay healthy, and Jeremy Giambi, who couldn’t play in the field every day and stay sane, they already had one full-time designated hitter. Hatteberg, to hit, would need to play some position in the field. Which one?
Chapter Eight
SCOTT HATTEBERG, PICKIN’ MACHINE
THE LIGHTS ON THE Christmas tree were off, his daughters were in bed, his wife was asleep—and he was up, walking around. His right hand still felt like it belonged to someone else. He’d played half a season for the Red Sox with a ruptured nerve in his elbow, that he crushed each time he straightened his throwing arm. He’d finally caved, and had the nerve moved back where it was meant to be; but when the operation was over he couldn’t hold a baseball, much less throw one. He needed to reinstruct his hand how to be a part of a catcher’s body; he needed to relearn how to do a simple thing he had done his entire life, the simple thing he now did for a living.
The Boston Red Sox had given up on him—just last week, had traded him to the Colorado Rockies for infielder Pokey Reese. He was in his sixth year in the big leagues and eligible for arbitration and the Rockies quickly made it clear to him that they weren’t going to risk having some arbitrator say they had to pay Scott Hatteberg $1.5 million. A million and a half dollars actually wasn’t much for a guy who’d spent five years in the big leagues, but the Rockies thought it was three times what he was worth. Thinking no one else would take an interest in a catcher who couldn’t throw, they immediately granted Hatteberg his free agency. Then they proposed