Walks Are Boring

While much will be made of tonight's confrontation between Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, there was another clash of veterans today that was quite a treat.

It was the top of the first today in Kansas City, and Chicago's Frank Thomas was batting against Darrell May with one out and one on.

The name Darrell May might not jump out at you as the avatar of veteran wile, but you don't get to be a starter in the majors for your first full year at the age of 31 without some mental skills. I saw May pitch in the minors in 1994, and he sort of reminded me of Mike Boddicker -- all corner-painting and finesse, even at a young age. His minor league career stats show only reasonable command and quality, but not that overpowering fastball and strikeout numbers the scouts like. He spent four years in journeyman exile in Japan before hooking on with Kansas City in 2002, where he pitched poorly, but finally made a good showing last year with a respectable 10-win, 3.77 season.

I suspect it's no coincidence that this happened under the watchful eye of Tony Pena. We once watched Pena throw off the mound in the bullpen in Fenway, instructing his young starter on how to do it the right way. Tony's fire and enthusiasm has always been a delight, but desire gets you nowhere by itself. It takes a baseball intellect like Pena's to make so much out of so little, as he did last year in Kansas City.

Matching Pena in grizzledness on the diamond today is a sort of spiritual understudy, the current Royals catcher, Benito Santiago. Santiago, like Pena, made a bit of an offensive splash early in his career before settling in as the steady gloveman brought in to anchor a pitching staff. It's been quite a decent career for Santiago, as he's now in the top tier for games caught (something I consider one of the great achievements in baseball, having suffered through a couple of seasons as a catcher), and the last few years in San Francisco saw even his legendarily impatient bat find quite a few hits.

So Thomas works May to a 3-2 count, and the confrontation begins.

Frank Thomas may have dropped off the radar screen a bit more far than is deserved. Despite having spotty seasons the last half decade, marred alternately by injury and ineffectiveness, that batting eye is still there. Thomas enters 2004 10th on the all-time career OPS list, and at 35 that's a mark worthy of serious respect. A career OBP of .428 is not achieved by pure reflex: it takes a great talent at swinging the bat and connecting, thinking about the pitching, and a great batting eye. And last year, of course, the Big Hurt had a bit of a resurgence, getting that OBP back up to .390 and whacking 42 homers. His best years may have been too early for him to have really benefitted from the splurge in homers and home run parks, but his native talents and modern pitching and ballparks may yet serve to prop up his numbers for the last few years. His late fade and the somewhat unimpressive (by modern standards) home run total may conspire to keep him out of the Hall of Fame, but Thomas is among the really elite hitters I've ever seen, and certainly in terms of the ability to turn slugging ability into on-base percentage, he's second only to Bonds among his cohort.

Thomas' bat speed is a bit down, and fisting him up and in with fastballs is the only way to really break him down. So goes the scouting report. You don't get to be Darrell May without absorbing the scouting report pretty well, and you don't get to keep being Darrell May without challenging the better batters on full counts early in the game.

So May starts stuffing Thomas up and in with fastballs. Frank pops one up out of play, fouls one off the other way, zings one down the line. We're up to 8 pitches in the at-bat. The next one he waits and turns on, and hammers it down the line, where it hooks foul -- no, not really, it went just foul on a straight line, it was such a frozen rope. May doesn't try to nibble, he doesn't want to give up that base, and he's not intimidated by that near-miss. He keeps up in there. Thomas proceeds to zing a couple the other way, including back to back balls that magically land foul way down the right field line in that tiny area in Kauffman where there's enough room to catch it -- if only the right fielder were playing straight away. Thomas gets away with it. Eighteen inches the other way, it's a run scoring double on both hits; 72 inches, it's an out. But it's baseball and it's a pair of no-plays instead. We're up to pitch 14.

Then we have a conference of such gravitas it makes me want to stand at attention and sing whatever the Kansas City equivalent of "Tess" might be, or perhaps the national anthem. Tony Pena, on pitch 14 of a one-out at-bat in the first inning decides to visit the mound. He sprints out, and he and Santiago and May speak volubly but briefly about how to proceed in this at-bat. Aha, you think. Pena and Benito are going to Plan C now, they've got something Frank Thomas won't expect. The intellectual conference on the mound breaks up and May goes back to work.

But of course Thomas probably didn't "expect" anything. You don't foul off 9 pitches in a row by expecting anything in particular so much as watching and reacting. And you don't get to be Tony Pena, Benito Santiago, or Darrell May by being cute. The next pitch is a fastball up and in, virtually identical to half a dozen thrown during the previous nine fouls. Thomas, of course, gets wood on it, but it's not quite enough to get out of play. It's in fact a little weak, squibbing, dying over by the first base dugout rail, and Mike Sweeney doesn't have quite enough wheels to be waiting for it. He meets the ball just as it drops about a foot beyond the railing, but the railing has upended him. He gets enough glove on the ball for it to pop up, makes a second stab at it on the way down again and gets glove on it but just barely misses it because he's off balance.

So Frank Thomas is still alive, and he fouls off pitch 15, pitch 16, pitch 17, all busting inside. On the 18th pitch May goes down and away and tries to paint the corner and misses, and Thomas takes his base.

May proceeds to get out of the inning relatively easily, but pitches take your toll, and the mental battle wears you down. In the second, with two outs, May gives up a punch single to Aaron Rowland and faces Miguel Olivo, the number 9 hitter.

You don't get to be Darrell May without knowing how to pace yourself. The number 9 hitter is where you're efficient, and you get your outs by pitching to the ballpark. May does this with Olivo, but he's lost just enough energy on the fastball that Olivo hits it to dead center with some oomph on a 1-1 count. This may be part of May's plan, but that extra lick of energy not in that ball was enough that Olivo hit it squarely enough to clear the fence dead away. White Sox ahead, 2-0.

In the fifth May gives up two solo shots, another one to dead away center. He pitched 39 pitches in the first, nearly half of them to Thomas, and he was over 100 by then despite pitching quite well. Four was enough today as the White Sox won 4-3.

Frank Thomas, to my mind, won that game with an at-bat that resulted in no runs being generated -- directly. He always had that kind of impact on his club in his prime, and he can still have it. It was a tremendous display by both May and Thomas, and Thomas managed to beat both May and his support team, Santiago and Pena.

This time. You can bet Tony and Benito will be talking about that at-bat tonight.

Bonds vs. Clemens? A side show by comparison.