Just have fun, baby
TymOgee
Dan Le Batard
10-25-03
NEW YORK -- The Yankees have more hits than the Marlins in this World Series.
And more runs.
And more doubles.
And more triples.
And more home runs.
And more help from the umpires.
And a better on-base percentage.
And a better slugging percentage.
And more walks.
And more sacrifice flies.
And a much better earned-run average (2.35 to 3.83).
So, naturally, the Marlins can win baseball's championship tonight.
Baseball is our most quantifiable game, making explanations for results
mathematical, formulaic, empirical. We have more ways to measure value and
worth in this sport than any other. We have no earthly idea how well an
offensive guard is playing in football, really, but we're always a couple of
computer clicks away from knowing how much power Derrek Lee is likely to
generate against right-handed relievers in late-inning situations during day
games on the road.
The scouting in this sport is so exhaustive that those two huge catches right
fielder Miguel Cabrera made against the Cubs of the National League playoffs
were made possible only because Florida's coaches were moving him forward and
backward and sideways with every single pitch, putting him in exactly the
position he needed to be in to make two catches he says he wouldn't have made
without every step of aid they gave him. Same goes for Lee's impeccable
placement against Hideki Matsui on the game-ending play in Game 5, when all
Yankee hope went to Lee's glove to die.
So, given all that, given all the mathematics and scouting and science, how in
the world do you measure empirically the value of this uproarious abstract the
Marlins have in their dugout?
The joy.
The fun.
The passion.
What's it worth?
And how much does it have to do with winning?
Clearly, the Marlins lead the league in fun. Reserve bench players who could be
pouting because of diminished roles have instead turned Florida's dugout into a
loud, uproarious playground that is far funnier than anything unfunny Robin
Williams has said during this series. And did you notice, in the middle of the
tension in Game 5 of the bleeping World Series, the way third baseman Mike
Lowell visited pitcher Brad Penny between pitches on the mound and both of them
walked away from the exchange actually laughing?
This has been the soundtrack to Florida's season since Manager Jack McKeon
arrived. That was his only edict, really. Have fun.
And so now, when he prowls the dugout making his strange noises, singing
push-em-boys-push-em whenever the Marlins are applying pressure on the bases,
the players sing-song behind him, too, making a major-league dugout sound like
a rollicking, drunken pirate ship. Push-em-boys-push-em gets echoed and
followed by a shouted ''grind-grind-grind'' from one player and a crass or
unintelligible sound chirped by a handful of others, and pretty soon what you
have, as the little Marlins face the mighty Yankees on baseball's biggest
stage, is a dugout full of grown men actually singing as they are presented the
challenge of their baseball lives.
And you know what the 72-year-old McKeon does as his players mock him in that
dugout?
Young again, he laughs right along with them.
You've seen how the Braves celebrate triumphs, so professional they might as
well go to the mound wearing bowties and carrying briefcases. The mercenary
Yankees, too, are plenty antiseptic, veterans always talking about the right
way to play (which, obviously, doesn't include a pirate soundtrack). But here
come the yo-ho-ho Marlins partaking in all sorts of ridiculousness, and you
have to wonder whether there is any correlation between how much fun they are
having and how often they are beating teams that aren't enjoying themselves
nearly so much.
Can all the looseness possibly explain how the Marlins have come from behind in
seven of their 10 postseason victories?
Fun can't beat Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and the Yankees.
Can it?
Fun can't possibly account for leading the Yankees in a series in which Derek
Jeter is hitting .409 and Bernie Williams is hitting .429 and Mariano Rivera
hasn't allowed a run and Andy Pettitte hasn't allowed an earned run and Roger
Clemens has gotten a standing ovation on the road and Mike Mussina has
outpitched Josh Beckett.
Right?
Left fielder Jeff Conine, for one, used to play stiff, robotically,
unemotionally until this funhouse mirror of a team distorted even him. So after
knocking off the Cubs, the 37-year-old Conine grabbed a TV camera in the
champagne-soaked clubhouse and, through all the cigar smoke, kept shouting,
''We shocked the world!'' until his face reddened with delirium. It was so
completely out of character that even Conine's startled wife, upon seeing the
footage, asked Jeff who the hell that was. Her husband said he did not know.
You win this much, and like this, and certain things get masked, of course. The
Marlins, no matter how much fiction gets written for winners, are not this
friction-free bundle of perfect harmony. No team playing this many games can
be.
So demoted players like Todd Hollandsworth, Braden Looper and Juan Encarnacion,
while always professional, haven't been thrilled about their reduced roles. And
Pudge Rodriguez, for all his leadership, has rubbed plenty of teammates wrong
with his in-your-face leadership, more than one of them having told him during
one of his rants to go bleep himself. During these playoffs, McKeon lit into
one player who arrived a half-hour late for a team flight, then through curses
told him to stick the cell phone he was talking on up his, well, you know. And
Josh Beckett's overt arrogance has resulted in teammate Mike Mordecai angrily
dumping a basket of baseball in Beckett's locker after Beckett didn't help pick
up balls after batting practice.
This type of stuff is perfectly normal on any team, mind you. But it also tests
some truths we know to be self-evident until they bend. Pudge's leadership has
been great, for example, because the team is winning, but those face-to-face
confrontations might not be so positive if the scoreboard read differently.
And, for all the talk of camaraderie, the Marlins are just like every other
major-league clubhouse, split along racial and ethnic lines, with all those
Hispanic players rarely understanding what the white guys are even saying in
the dugout when they start quoting movie lines loudly.
Conine, for example, was asked if he could speak with Cabrera.
''Sure,'' he said.
Do you understand each other?
''No,'' Conine said through a smile. ``But we speak.''
Regardless, if that last out ends up in the right place tonight, white and
black and Hispanic and country and city and religious and young and old will
converge on that mound for that celebration, a team united.
And as for how much fun had to do with the Marlins getting to that celebration,
well, we can't ever know.
But we can have an awful lot of fun watching.