I don't know if Jesus saves, but I know Joe Nathan does

[cosmolinguist]

All my heroes had colorful names...

Aguilera was one of the hardest words I had learned to spell up to that point in my young life. I already knew how to say it, though, thanks to hearing Herb Carneal or John Gordon say it in dozens of radio broadcasts.

The Minnesota Twins got Rick Aguilera as a last-minute addition to a last-minute trade for Frank Viola, the pitcher whose fake-signature was on my first baseball glove, which my small hand outgrew soon after he helped us win the World Series when I was five.

In 1991, Aguilera set a team record with 42 saves, and had three each in the ALCS and the World Series (the last being that Game Six, insuring it went down as Puckett's Game and not the won-in-six Series for the Braves that it so easily could have been).

I was nine and now my team had won the World Series twice in my short lifetime. I accepted this as only right and proper and would have probably assumed, if I'd bothered to think about it at all, that the Twins would win the World Series every four or five years now (I was aware they hadn't won it before, and had only been in it once, the unimaginable year of 1965, but...well, I guess I thought things were different now that I was around).

#

Closer is one of those jobs, like plumber, that no one notices if you do it right.

When the bathroom's flooded with sewage, then people call you.

The closer is the pitcher who comes in near the end of the game, in the last (usually) inning. Especially when his team's ahead by a couple of runs and all he's got to do is keep it that way so they win the game (if he does, it's called a “save”).

A starting pitcher may pitch six, seven, eight innings on a good day, more than 100 pitches, 20+ outs if he's lucky. All the closer has to do is get those last three outs.

Can't be that hard, right?

#

I'd pitched five days straight
They didn't want to bring me in
My arm was hamburger meat
They didn't want to bring me in
Bases loaded, nobody out
They had to bring me in
Some hot-shot rookie
They didn't want to bring me in
Switch-hitting batting champ
They didn't want to bring me in...

The crowd's yelling, the players are tense, the game is close. The pressure is high and mistakes are magnified: a little thing could mean the difference between a win and a loss. I hold my breath, fidget, flail, shout, swear, hide my head in my hands...and I'm just watching it on TV

It was the stillness before he pitched that had first caught her eye and her admiration. He didn't stalk around the mound like some of them did, or bend to fiddle with his shoes, or pick up the rosin bag and toss it back down with a little flump of white dust. No, Number 36 just waited for the batter to finish all of his fiddle-de-diddling. He was so still in his bright white uniform as he waited for the batter to be ready.

More often than not, the endings are happy. Million-to-one chances seem to happen nine times out of ten. (Baseball has the highest concentration of narrativium this side of the Discworld.)

MVP? Strike three!

My work was done again

And Tom Gordon points at the sky.

#

“Everyday Eddie” Guardado got his nickname because he'd pitch whenever you needed him to pitch. He appeared in 908 games, many of them in years when the Twins were so terrible even I didn't like them (I watched the White Sox on WGN and had pictures of Robin Ventura on my bedroom walls), and it's not easy to be a closer on bad teams; your job involves pitching when your team is winning. Sometimes those “save opportunities” are few and far-between.

In the early 2000s things picked up for the team and, perhaps not coincidentally, that's when Everyday Eddie beat Aguilera's record for saves in a season. (It is, in fact, the season depicted in the film Moneyball, where briefly seeing a jersey with Guardado on the back made me so happy I nearly jumped out of my seat...even though the movie had set me up to follow a different team and the Twins were supposed to be random baddies, I couldn't help but feel I was among friends when I saw that name on someone's back.)

#

Joe Nathan was traded to the Minnesota Twins “in what may be the worst trade in San Francisco Giants' history.” He went from hardly having closed at all to being the only Twin to make it to the 2004 All-Star Game. The only All-Star on a team, the closer? I don't know how often that happens, but it can't be very likely. The players sent to the All-Star Game are partly chosen by fans, which means it's a popularity contest full of big hitters and big egos; with a few exceptions pitchers, especially closers, aren't very well-known. It's not a cool thing to be doing.

So naturally the Twins shirt I bought myself had Nathan's name and number (he's another Number 36) on the back. I'm sure I learned this perversity from my dad: for Christmas one year I got a Vikings replica jersey but it wasn't the quarterback's or a star wide-receiver's name on the back, it was the name of a special-teams kicker.

Maybe I like obscure players, maybe I feel I owe it to those whose talent and skill go underappreciated... maybe I just love someone who can do one thing really well.

Nathan hasn't been the same since those words every pitcher dreads – Tommy John – and those words every small-market fan dreads – free agency – but not before he became the Twins leader in career saves.

If you're only in it for a little while, you'd better make it count.

And I still wear the Twins t-shirt with his name and number on the back. Vanishingly few people here will know what it means anyway, much less that it's outdated. Similarly, maybe you reading this won't all follow all the details, but I hope you see why the closer is one of my favorite things about my favorite sport.

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

With artistic help from The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King and "The Closer" by The Baseball Project.

[beldarzfixon.livejournal.com]

Nice to see someone besides me go with the baseball angle. I chuckled at the subject line =)

Also liked King's "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" reference

[cosmolinguist]

It's the first thing I think of when I see the word "closer"! And while I knew one song from The Baseball Project last year (yes, the one about the Twins), I only discovered they had two albums' worth (including the song "The Closer") the other day -- serendipitous! (Especially since I found out about them thanks to my sports-hating husband; he just likes the musicians in that band.)

[n3m3sis42.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. I watched the series too. Guess which team was mine. Heartbreaker.

[cosmolinguist]

Sorry :)

Still, the Braves went on to boringly dominate NL baseball for most of the decade, and the Twins were in the basement from the summer of '92 until I was in college, so I think Atlanta got their revenge!

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

It sounds very exciting. :)

[cosmolinguist]

I'm glad someone who doesn't care about what I'm talking about can still bring themselves to say nice things about it :) I do try to make the things I write really clear, but sometimes I just can't keep myself from getting swept away in the stats and stories.

[m-malcontent.livejournal.com]

Very cool...In Houston the first closer of note I can remember was Joe Sambito.....Dave Smith carried us through our mid 80's good teams. We have had (relatively) soft tossers like Doug Jones and maybe our current guy Brett Meyers....and during our World Series runs we had fireballers Billy Wagner and Brad Lidge (when he was still Brad Lidge, not the ghost who haunts the Phillies Dugout).

We are moving to the AL, next year...so I will be learning more about the Twins. I am too young to remember Harmon, but Kirby Puckett was always a favorite of mine. And I loved how you guys would always throw a monkey wrench in and battle and sometimes beat the big spenders in the AL East.

[cosmolinguist]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that moving-to-the-AL thing! That's so weird. "Why didn't they just leave the Brewers where they were?" I remember asking my dad when he told me, but that's because I remember how much fun it was having what passes for a border rivalry; the interleague games in the Upper Midwest still sell really well, no matter what the teams are like (especially before the Twins had outdoor baseball again).

I remember Billy Wagner :) And it is sad about Brad Lidge; one of the weird things about the Phillies becoming One of Those Teams that just boringly buy everyone is it feels like they're running the care home for players now a shadow of their former selves...

I like the way that even people who have nothing to do with Minnesota all seem to like Kirby Puckett, so I know it isn't just due to me and my impressionable age :) I was heartbroken when he had to quit baseball, an early indication for me that none of the good things last.

I loved how you guys would always throw a monkey wrench in and battle and sometimes beat the big spenders in the AL East.

It's a massive point of pride in Minnesota that we've had these good teams on absolutely no budget. The only hope for Twins fans for a while was "wait for Carl Pohlad to die"; his son owns the team now and the pursestrings are still pretty tight (I nearly cried when I heard about all the good guys we lost over the winter -- Cuddyer, Kubel, Nathan of course...) and we still feel like a farm team for those big spenders at times, but then not everyone gets the privilege of playing the Yankees or the Red Sox in the ALDS every year for like a decade :)

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

Great structure and voice!!

[cosmolinguist]

You find something nice to say about everything! That always makes me smile.

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

Closer is one of those jobs, like plumber, that no one notices if you do it right.
I loved that quote.

You know, I don't like baseball at all, and don't know much about it. But I believe the Giant's Brian Wilson was on one of the All-Star teams this year, and he's the relief pitcher/closer.

Even though the team had an incredible regular pitcher (well, last year he was, poor guy), it was the relief pitcher who made All-Star team.