Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 15

In today’s edition, David Wells often drove Joe Torre crazy, but one thing you could always say about the portly lefty is when he was at his best, he was tough to beat, and that was the case in Game 5 at Fenway Park.

David Wells always believed that Babe Ruth was his kindred spirit, so much so that in 1997 he purchased a Ruth-worn Yankees cap for $35,000 and wore it on the mound for a midseason start, against the wishes of manager Joe Torre.

“Joe Torre caught wind of it and was like, ‘Hey, you can’t wear that hat, it’s not required uniform,’” Wells told the YES Network many years ago. “I’m like, ‘But how cool would that be to wear the hat Babe Ruth wore?’ It kinda brings back history because it is history. I’m like, ‘I’m gonna wear this hat.’”

Authority was never something Wells ever paid attention to. Remember, this is a guy who grew up in San Diego as a fan of the Angels. No, not the baseball Angels but the notorious motorcycle club Hell’s Angels because his mother’s longtime boyfriend was a chapter president named Crazy Charlie.

Wells usually did whatever the hell he wanted, damn the consequences. “Shit happens,” he once told Sports Illustrated. “I do what I want to do and say what I want to say. I don’t give a rat’s ass what people say or think about me.”

And that was certainly true when it came to Torre. A couple years ago, appearing on a New York Post podcast that included his former teammate, reliever Jeff Nelson, Wells said, “I never liked Joe as a manager. He did stuff to me that he shouldn’t have done to anybody. But, you know, we all knew he treated certain guys in different ways. But it was alright, we didn’t care if he talked to us or not. Joe and I are friends now, I respect him. Just the playing days. You don’t want nobody telling you what you can and can’t do. That’s just how we work.”

With that revelation, it becomes easy to understand why he defied Torre that day. After donning his regulation cap in the dugout and making sure Torre saw it, just before he jogged out to the mound for the top of the first inning at Yankee Stadium he made the switch.

“Joe was pissed,” Wells said. “He said, ‘I told you not to wear it.’ I said, ‘Well, I wore it.’ After the game he called me in and he’s like, ‘You’re fined $2,500.’ I’m like, ‘That’s it? All right, whatever it is, at least I got to wear the hat.’”

Wells reportedly paid the fine in $1 bills which is exactly what you would expect Ruth to have done. “He’s the most recognized athlete of all time because he dominated his sport like no one ever has, and he still burned the candle at both ends,” Wells said, explaining his love for the Sultan of Swat. “He was the first rock star in sports.”

Given how Wells burned sticks of dynamite at both ends as opposed to candles, yeah, he and Ruth were kindred spirits all right. The Ruth cap affair was only one of a number of incidents involving Wells that drove Torre, George Steinbrenner, and sometimes even his teammates batty during his tumultuous time in pinstripes.

But true to his hero, Wells also saved some of his best on-field performances for when the stakes were the highest, and the Babe certainly would have been proud of him in Game 5 of the ALCS when he frustrated the Red Sox for seven innings and allowed the Yankees to take a three games to two lead with a 4-2 victory.

“I live for this time,” Wells said after giving up just one run on four hits and two walks before turning the game over to Mariano Rivera who put forth a six-out save. “I get an opportunity to pitch in a big game, and I’m not afraid to take the ball. I live for being the guy to go out there and be the one on the mound, try to make things happen, try to shut the other team down, because I’m not afraid to fail.”

Said Jorge Posada: “We needed him to have exactly the game he threw today.”

The only reason Wells was pitching for the first time in the series was because Torre had made the decision, following the postponement by a day of Game 4, to give that start to Mike Mussina.

Mussina was a bit fussy, especially when it came to rest between starts. He liked to stay on a consistent schedule so that he could follow his precise routine, so rather than mess with that (not that it ended up mattering because Mussina took the Game 4 loss), Torre pushed Wells back to Game 5 because he also knew it wouldn’t affect Wells in the least.

He might be in the bar until the wee hours of the morning on the day he was scheduled to pitch, but once he took the mound, Torre could count on the portly 40-year-old being all business and ready for the moment.

“We know what he’s capable of doing, there’s no question,” Torre said. “A manager and coach’s job is to facilitate whatever a pitcher needs or whatever a person needs. There are certain restrictions, obviously, and everybody has to follow the rules and stuff like that. But whatever it takes to get the best out of someone, we’re all in this thing for one reason and that’s the win. He certainly is capable, and tonight … I can’t tell you how huge it was for us to win this. David was terrific.”

This was a night when some might have believed the pitching matchup favored the Red Sox. Grady Little gave the ball to Derek Lowe, his No. 2 man behind Pedro Martinez, a 17-game winner in 2003. He had gotten knocked around at Yankee Stadium in Game 2 when he gave up six earned runs, so the assumption was that back at Fenway, where Lowe had pitched so well all season, he would rise to the occasion.

This was the only mistake David Wells made in Game 5:

For the most part the righty did, but all it took was one sloppy inning to decide his and the Red Sox fate. In the second, Posada walked and moved to second on a groundout, so with two outs and lefty-swinging Nick Johnson due up, Little had Lowe issue an intentional walk to set up a confrontation with Aaron Boone.

It was the percentage play, no doubt, especially given how Boone had been struggling in the postseason, but Boone reached via an infield single on an 0-2 pitch to load the bases. That brought lefty Karim Garcia to the plate. Garcia was back in the lineup after missing Game 4 with a cut on his hand suffered during the bullpen melee in Game 3 and with the Fenway mob booing him as loudly as they used to boo Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, Garcia ripped a grounder through the middle for a two-run single.

“I really tried to ignore the fans,” said Garcia, who had been 1-for-10 lifetime against Lowe before the hit. “I’m a professional and all I have to do is play baseball. They can say whatever they would like to. That’s what they paid their tickets for.”

Lowe’s next pitch was lashed to right field for an RBI single by Alfonso Soriano and those three runs were all New York would need.

Wells got into his first spot of trouble in the third when he plunked Trot Nixon and gave up a single to Jason Varitek. Johnny Damon moved the runners up with a groundout, and here, Wells got Todd Walker to pop out to short left, then struck out Nomar Garciaparra, breathing a sigh of relief because it was a terrible cutter that Garciaparra missed.

“Hung it, too. Right down the middle,” Wells said. “I’m grateful he missed. If he didn’t, the ball would still be going. It would have been on Nantucket Island.”

He threw another bad pitch in the fourth and Manny Ramirez drilled it over the Green Monster to make it 3-1, and David Oritz followed with a single and Boston appeared to have something going. Instead, Kevin Millar grounded into a double play and Wells struck out Bill Mueller.

Then in the fifth, Soriano booted a leadoff grounder by Nixon, and after two outs, Walker singled and Garicaparra walked to load the bases. That brought Ramirez up with a chance to flip the script against Wells. Instead, he grounded to Boone who stepped on third to end the inning.

Said Torre: “He got some huge outs and getting Manny with the bases loaded, that was unbelievable.”

Wells would retire the last seven men he faced, so after the Yankees pushed across an insurance run in the eighth on Hideki Matsui’s RBI groundout, Rivera took over. However, the Red Sox were the one team who always gave Rivera problems and the first batter he faced, Walker, drove a triple to right and then scored on Garciaparra’s groundout.

Ortiz then singled with two outs, but as the tying run, Millar grounded out to keep the score at 4-2 and Rivera worked an easy nine-pitch ninth.

In the victorious clubhouse, Reggie Jackson, special advisor to George Steinbrenner, was holding court on the topic of Wells. You might say Reggie had a rather tumultuous playing career in New York, and it was no surprise that he felt a sort of bond with Wells, a man who marched to the beat of his own drum.

“David Wells is a special man,” Jackson said. “That’s what I call performing with the lamp on. Nobody likes him. Nobody roots for him. And now everyone here’s patting him on the back. That’s the way it was for me. Everyone gets on his butt, everyone talks about him until he gets out there for the big game, and everyone roots for him. He can pitch, that’s for sure.”

Especially in the postseason. This game improved his all-time playoff record to 10-2, and with the Yankees it was 7-1 in eight playoff starts, a 3.20 ERA with 42 strikeouts and just seven walks.

“Boomer succeeds because he’s not afraid to fail,” general manager Brian Cashman said. “Beating this lineup, in a game this important, in this ballpark - what he did was nothing short of spectacular.”

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