Dusty Baker is scheduled to announce his retirement from managing Major League Baseball today. I was fortunate to cover Baker for three years, 2000-02, my first years as a traveling baseball beat writer. My stories with Baker are endless. I plan on occasionally sharing some of them on this Newsletter.
Because it occurred exactly 21 years ago today, I’m starting with the story of Dusty, Russ Ortiz, and the infamous game ball souvenir.
A friendly reminder, the San Francisco Giants were seven outs away from winning their first World Series title since moving from New York in 1958. They led the Angels, three games to two, in the best-of-7 series. They held a 5-0 lead in the seventh inning of Game Six of the World Series with one out.
I remember feeling the pressure to craft an epic lede paragraph, as part of a game story that would be remembered forever. I thought about how the front page of newspapers get saved after championships. How these newspapers get framed and hang on walls. My story needed to be epic. I kept writing, deleting, writing, deleting. It had to be perfect. This had to be the best game story of my life.
Russ Ortiz was 28 years old at the time, in his fifth season in the majors, his fourth straight without missing a start in the rotation. The Giants drafted him in the fourth round in 1995 for these moments. He walked a lot of hitters, but it didn’t cost him as much as you’d think. Back when wins mattered, Ortiz won between 14 and 18 games for four straight years, and his 3.61 ERA in 2002 was the second-lowest of his career to that point.
That year in the playoffs, he started Games 1 and the all-or-nothing Game 5 of the Division Series against the Braves and won both: 2 runs in 7 innings, then 1 runs in 5.1 innings in the clincher. Against the Cardinals in the NLCS, he took the only loss, giving up four runs in 4.2 innings. Then he started Game Two of the World Series and was torched, seven runs on nine hits, getting knocked out in the second inning.
But in Game Six, he was brilliant through six innings: no runs, two walks and two singles against the Angels, his childhood favorite team.
In the seventh, Garret Anderson grounded out. Seven outs away. The clubhouse workers began putting up tarps for a champagne celebration. Then Troy Glaus and Brad Fullmer both single. It was the Angels first rally of the game.
Ortiz was taken out of the game. As customary, Ortiz handed the baseball to manager Dusty Baker. Famously, or infamously, Baker gave Ortiz the baseball right back as a souvenir.
Giants fans know what happened next all too well. Felix Rodriguez entered. Scott Spiezio fouled off five pitches, then on the eighth pitch of an epic at-bat, pulled a pitch to right field that just barely cleared the short wall, a three-run homer that changed the game. The Angels scored three runs in the eighth inning, won the game, then won Game 7 the next day.
The story of Baker giving the baseball to Ortiz has taken on almost mythical proportions over the years. Some fans and media thought Baker was tempting the Baseball Gods. Some Angels players have even said when they saw it, they took that as a sign the Giants thought the game was already over, and that motivated them to comeback for the win.
This is what Spiezio told reporter Sam Blum a few years ago:
“Russ starts walking off. Then (Baker) says, ‘Hey,’ then brings him back. And gives him the game ball. I’m like, ‘Oh man.’ I couldn’t believe that these guys thought it was over. The rest is history. … My whole thing is, like, you would never do that in a regular game.”
Spiezio’s quote makes great copy, but I’ve never understood this mentality. The concept that you are two wins away from winning the World Series, but seven outs away from losing the World Series, and you needed an exchange between a pitcher and a manager involving a baseball to motivate you is baffling to me.
Anyway, this story skips ahead to 2021. It’s the final weekend of the minor league baseball season. I’m broadcasting for the Albuquerque Isotopes and we’re playing the Sacramento River Cats. One of the Isotopes pitchers was Frank Duncan, who grew up in San Francisco and was 10 years old during the 2002 World Series.
I knew Duncan was a Giants fans and told him that J.T. Snow, the Giants first baseman on that team, was at the ballpark as a TV analyst for the River Cats. I had a feeling that Duncan would want to meet Snow. I was correct. I brought Duncan to the press box. Almost immediately, Duncan said he always heard a story and wanted to know if it was true.
Is it true Dusty Baker give the baseball as a souvenir to pitcher Russ Ortiz as he left the mound?
Yes, Snow confirmed, the story was true. It wasn’t the first time somebody asked Snow this question. Snow could tell the question was coming before it was even asked. Yes, Baker gave Ortiz the baseball back. I was grinning at the exchange because I knew the answer. I’ve heard this story so many times myself, knew it was true, but never get caught up in the hysteria over it.
Then Snow told a story that I didn’t know.
I was not taking notes and I’m paraphrasing here, but trust me, this is what JT told our little group in the press box.
Dusty came to the mound, the infielders gathered around, and Dusty said, “I’m thinking about bringing Felix in.” Ortiz simply said, “OK.”
Dusty didn’t take the ball immediately. He said “I’m thinking” about bringing in the reliever. Dusty wanted to see if Ortiz would fight to stay in the game. JT knew it. Jeff Kent knew it. Rich Aurilia knew it. David Bell knew it. Benito Santiago knew it. They all realized what Dusty was doing.
Except for Ortiz. He didn’t know what Dusty was really asking.
Last year, after Baker won his first World Series as a manager with the Houston Astros, reporter Daniel Brown tracked down Ortiz in Oklahoma to discuss that fateful mound visit and his reflections on Baker.
It wasn’t until years later, upon seeing a replay, that Ortiz noticed there was no signal until Baker got to the hill. Had Ortiz known that he might have lobbied harder to stay in the game.
“Because I would have loved to try to talk him into, ‘Hey, I have this guy. Scott Spiezio. I have this guy. Like, I know exactly what I need to do to get a ground ball.’”
As for getting that infamous ball thrust into his glove, Ortiz said that was misinterpreted, too.
“I was kind of still in that zone, you know? Just totally zoned out,” Ortiz recalled. “So, I handed him the ball once he made the call (to the bullpen) and started to step off, and he grabbed me and said, ‘Here, this is yours, I want you to have this.’”
I covered Ortiz for three years (2000-02) and I can tell you that Ortiz was not a cocky competitor on the mound. On the inside, yes, he was intense and fiery. But he didn’t show emotions or stare down hitters. He was a nice guy, genuine, quiet, courteous, religious, reserved. His interviews were always dry. I don’t mean that in a negative way. He wasn’t a one-liner kind of guy. He always showed respect to the manager.
Bottom line: it really wasn’t in Ortiz’s personality to dramatically talk his way into staying in the game on the mound. [Plus, he thought he was already out.]
Once Spiezio hit the home run, I started writing a second game story. I saved the game story of the Giants winning the World Series and started a different story of the Angels forcing Game Seven. For the next two innings, I toggled back and forth between files, writing two versions of a game story, depending on whatever team won.
The game started early enough (just after 5 pm) that I wasn’t on the tightest of deadlines. Even with a time of game of 3:48, that left me about 45 minutes to get some quotes for my story.
The Giants clubhouse was somber, as you might expect. I got the quotes I needed, but decided to wait out the media pack, hoping for a dramatic quote that no other reporters would get.
I had a really good relationship with Santiago. He made a couple predictions that season that turned out to be true. I wanted to see if he had one more prediction in him. I’d use that as a barometer on how demoralizing the Game Six loss was. It was worth the wait.
Here’s how the front page looked and my story began:
This is probably the first you’re hearing of Santiago’s bold prediction. Even my own headline writers didn’t put his quote in headlines. Nobody else had Santiago’s quote. This was 16 years before Twitter existed. [What I also remember about the 2002 World Series is that it was the first time I accessed the internet without having to use AOL dial-up.]
I saved my story of the Giants winning the World Series on my laptop. I remember looking at it a few times. It was never complete because once the Angels took the lead, I had to focus on the real story. But I never thought to save the story anywhere else, and when my laptop died, so did the story-that-wasn’t.
Handing a baseball to his starting pitcher, as a cool keep sake, shouldn’t have been a controversy. It showed the humanity of Baker in that moment, how he’s always thinking of others. I never understood why so many Giants fans clung to that moment or why anyone would think it impacted the rest of the game.
Russ Ortiz still has the baseball and cherishes it.
I wish I still had my fictional game story.
I wish I had a baseball from Game Six of the 2002 World Series.
At one point, I actually did. A foul ball went into the press box and I scooped it up. What happened to my baseball? I gave it to a cute girl at a bar that night. If you read this, Megan, I hope you still have the baseball too.