Moneyball - Michael Lewis [85]
Hatty took the first pitch, as he nearly always did, to get comfortable. Ball one. The second pitch was ball two. Cone had his best stuff that day. Hatteberg knew on the third pitch he’d see something in the strike zone, and he did. “I just about came out of my shoes,” he said. Foul ball. Cone just missed with the next pitch and the count went to 3–1. A hitter’s count. Hatteberg thought: If I get a hit, I get the ball. They always gave you the ball after your first big league hit. Then he had another thought: I’m one ball away from meeting Don Mattingly. It was Scott Hatteberg’s first appearance in a big league batter’s box and he was looking to draw a walk.
David Cone wasn’t going to let him have it. Cone’s next pitch was less a pitch than an invitation, an inside fastball in what Hatteberg called his “happy zone,” and he ripped it down the right field line. It banged off the right field wall a few inches below the top and bounded back crazily into the field of play. The Yankees right fielder, Paul O’Neill, saw it for what it was, a clean double, and gave up on it. Under a full head of steam Hatteberg rounded first, picked up O’Neill jogging for the ball, and…Don Mattingly. Mattingly stood directly in his line of vision. A twenty-five-year-old making his major league debut might be forgiven for hearing a soundtrack in his head: My first big league hit! My first big league hit! Hatteberg heard another voice. It said: Where am I going? Halfway toward second base he pulled up, and trotted back to his childhood. “Hey Don, how you doin’?” he said.
The television announcers, Bob Costas and Bob Uecker, were, at that moment, expressing their bewilderment at what they’d just seen—this rookie who has decided he prefers a single to a double. They agreed that rookies all had a thing or two to learn before they truly belonged in the big leagues. Mattingly just looked at him strangely and said, “Hey, rookie, anyone show you where second base is?” The next few moments, before he was driven around the bases to score the only Red Sox run of the game, etched themselves into Hatteberg’s memory in Van Eyckian detail. Mattingly standing behind him. Mattingly creeping in behind him, pretending to care if he ran. Mattingly razzing him. Hey, rookie, you’re about as fast as me. Hey, rookie, you ought to get those brakes checked. A few weeks later Mattingly retired. Hatteberg never saw him again.
Even in new, stressful situations, the quality at the center of Scott Hatteberg—his compulsion to make himself at home in the game, to slow the game down, to make it come to him, to make it his game—was apparent. He was one of those people whose personality was inextricable from his performance. No: whose personality was necessary for his performance. The funny thing is that pro baseball took one look at that personality and decided it needed to be beaten out of him.
By late 1996 he was in the big leagues for good. Once he arrived, however, he faced another challenge: the idiocy of the Boston Red Sox. His cultivated approach to hitting—his thoughtfulness, his patience, his need for his decisions to be informed rather than reckless—was regarded by the Boston Red Sox as a deficiency. The Red Sox encouraged their players’ mystical streaks. They brought into the clubhouse a parade of shrinks and motivational speakers to teach the players to