Saturday, June 4, 2005
Keep running or head for home?
By STEVE ADAMEK
STAFF WRITER
The man who once declared "It ain't over 'til it's over" knew when it was over for him.
"I struck out three times in one game," Yogi Berra said. "I never did that in my life. ... It was the fastball. When I knew I couldn't hit the fastball, that's when I knew."
Yet, how many ballplayers these days know when it's over and accept it? How do they, plus those who manage and employ them, tell? Is a slump at age 35 the same as one at 25, or is a slump for an older player "on the way to being terminal," as Yankees manager Joe Torre put it?
That's a question he confronts this season with players such as Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams, just as his Mets counterpart, Willie Randolph, does with Mike Piazza. And it isn't only about hitters; pitchers such as Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson and Tom Glavine face the same reality.
"It's definitely the toughest job you have as a manager," said former Mets manager Davey Johnson, who confronted the issue with Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez. "You're always, as a manager, dealing with that problem."
Managers and coaches in other sports, however, are generally a little more objective than athletes about how near the end might be, although Johnson admitted he wanted to keep Carter and Hernandez around beyond the 1989 season, despite their fading skills, when the Mets chose not to re-sign them.
Carter, though, went on to play three more seasons with the Giants, Dodgers and Expos, and Hernandez 43 games with the Indians.
Few athletes in any sport do what football's Jim Brown did four decades ago at age 29 - retire at the height of their careers. Most end up winding down like two of New York's baseball icons: Mickey Mantle, who finished his career as a first baseman for the dreadful Horace Clarke-era Yankees of the 1960s, and Willie Mays, whose stumbles around the outfield with the Mets in the 1973 World Series left behind a career-ending image far
unlike what came before it.
"Very few players say, 'OK, it's over,'Ÿ" said Dr. Cristina Versari, head of sports psychology for the San Diego University for Integrative Studies, who's currently counseling several NBA players nearing the end of their careers on such issues. "Most players will play until they can't play any more and the decision is made for them."
"You always think you can still do it," said Jim Bouton, the former Yankee and "Ball Four" author who pitched into his 50s in the now-defunct Metropolitan League and finally quit at 58. "You never think you're too old."
But, of course, unless you're a freak of nature such as Nolan Ryan, whose gas tank finally ran dry at 46, or Julio Franco, still platooning at first base for the Braves these days at 46, age steals what your brain believes. Your brain may think you're still 25, but your body knows it's 35.
The bat speed slows. The fastball loses a couple clicks on the radar gun. The pitches that clipped corners for so many years start finding the middle of the plate, as Torre remembers with Braves Hall of Famer Warren Spahn, whose attempt to hang on with the Mets and Giants "was one of the saddest things I've ever seen," according to the man who caught Spahn's 300th victory.
"Sometimes, you don't want to get the message," Torre said.
"It's always a tough thing to watch," Johnson said. "It's a case of where the spirit and the mind are there, but the body can't do what it used to."
Case in point: Mays at 42 in the '73 Series, when he was roundly criticized for tarnishing the career he built with the New York and San Francisco Giants. Yet Berra, his manager with those Mets, said he had no problem with Mays hanging on, nor did another contemporary, Sandy Alomar Sr., then in the middle of a journeyman's career and now a Mets coach.
Simply put, those in the game believe if a player wants to keep playing for whatever reason and can deal with the diminished performance, fine.
"I believe that [Mays] was trying to give the last days of his great time that he had in the game to the New York fans," Alomar said, "[people who] never saw him play when he was in his prime when he was [there].
"The same thing happened to Hank Aaron. He finished with the Brewers because that's where he started [with the Milwaukee Braves]."
Mantle, meanwhile, played on because he hoped to finish with a .300 career average, longtime teammate Whitey Ford believes, although like Mays, there was talk about him needing money that didn't flow as freely as it does today.
Roy White, the Yankees' coach whose first four seasons as a player coincided with Mantle's last four, remembers hearing that the team convinced Mantle to stay as a drawing card for an otherwise dreadful product.
Whatever the case, White - who believes players can perform much longer these days because of better conditioning - heard Mantle often issue a refrain that's common among players on the downside of their careers.
"I heard him say a couple times, 'I used to hit that guy,'Ÿ" White said.
It's much the same thing Tommy John said from a pitcher's standpoint when, shortly before his career ended in 1989 when the Yankees released him, he said, "I've never seen this many groundballs find holes."
Robbie Alomar, his father Sandy said, shut it down during spring training after 17 seasons because "He felt like he wasn't playing up to his standards."
Still, Versari believes, most athletes hang on for two reasons. First, they've never been anything other than "athletes," their identities since childhood defined by sports. Thus, she said, "Most of the problems players are going to face start the day their careers end."
Then there's the money, which in the old days kept players going because they didn't make enough. Now, with utility infielders making multimillions, they can't make enough.
"Very few are able to say, 'I'm tired of making $20 million a year, so I'm just going to quit,'Ÿ" Versari said.
So, most play on and try to deal with their demise, as Piazza, 36, said he would earlier this season by being "a little more philosophical" and "pragmatic."
Ultimately, though, according to Bouton, "The thing about sports is, either you can do it or you can't do it."
The toughest thing, apparently, is to know the difference.
E-mail:
adamek@northjersey.com
