Ninth Still Belongs to Closers Like Eckersley

Dennis Eckersley is the closer’s closer.

Displaying toughness while hiding his insecurities and using precision over power, Eckersley represents the standard of greatness among baseball’s elite relief pitchers. He fills the finishing role for the world champion Oakland Athletics, cramming stress, style and soul into a workday that usually lasts no longer than three outs in the ninth inning.

“It’s just one stupid inning,” Eckersley said. “It seems so silly, doesn’t it?”

In a baseball season colored by the improbable (six no-hitters), the predictable (a lockout) and the mystical (the rise of the Chicago White Sox and the emergence of home-run phenom Cecil Fielder), it is easy to overlook the sustained success of Eckersley. With 25 saves in 26 opportunities at the All-Star break, Eckersley is at the forefront of an extraordinary group of closers who dominate baseball’s late innings.

“I’m a control guy,” Eckersley said. “I’m not going out there as a dominating pitcher.”

The Chicago White Sox’s Bobby Thigpen may lead the American League in saves (27) and the Cleveland Indians’ Doug Jones, the Seattle Mariners’ Mike Schooler and the Minnesota Twins’ Rick Aguilera also may be on track for 40-save seasons, but Eckersley commands the most respect from his peers.

“What’s impressive about Eckersley is the way he gets things accomplished,” Thigpen said. “He is as close to perfect as you want.”

Roger McDowell of the Philadelphia Phillies said: “The man throws strikes, but he doesn’t throw strikes. He doesn’t give a batter anything to hit, yet he doesn’t walk batters. Amazing.”

Ask any reliever who baseball’s best closer is, and the short list -- which usually begins with the likes of the New York Mets’ John Franco, the Cincinnati Reds’ Randy Myers, the Boston Red Sox’s Jeff Reardon, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Lee Smith, the Toronto Blue Jays’ Tom Henke, the Baltimore Orioles’ Gregg Olson, Cleveland’s Jones and Chicago’s Thigpen -- invariably ends with Eckersley.

“When Eckersley is in the game, you feel like it’s over,” Olson said. “That’s the ultimate compliment for a short man. If you can have someone guarantee you 40 saves, Eckersley is the man.”

In this age of increasing specialization in baseball, closers such as Eckersley are the essential men of any pitching staff. The throwing relay of starter to middle man to closer was perfected only in the last decade.

Baseball’s first generation of great closers, Joe Page, Hoyt Wilhelm and Elroy Face, resembled today’s middle-inning relievers. They would replace the starter in the sixth, seventh or eighth inning, yet unlike today’s middlemen who give way in the ninth, the rubber-armed relievers of the past would complete a long day’s work. Rollie Fingers of the A’s redefined the closing role in the 1970s, emerging as the ninth-inning specialist who would snuff out an opponent’s final rally. He finished his career with 341 saves, No. 1 on the all-time list.

The 1980s turned into a bull market for closers, from the sidearmed trickery of the Kansas City Royals’ Dan Quisenberry to the fastball heat of Reardon, the New York Yankees’ Dave Righetti and St. Louis’ Todd Worrell.

“In this era, we look to the closer even more,” said Mets pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre. “We sometimes play the game trying to get to the closer. We want him to finish the game. More guys are accepting that role in a positive way because they can become stars.”

Players such as Olson, Thigpen and Mike Henneman of the Detroit Tigers head the new breed of closers -- young pitchers who were developed especially for this special task. Eckersley fits the classic role of reliever, a former starter who went to the bullpen to preserve his career.

Eckersley, 35, hit bottom both competitively and emotionally in 1986, when he was 6-11 with the Chicago Cubs. In the off-season, he confronted the source of his problems, alcoholism, checking himself into a treatment center.

The next season, renewed physically and spiritually, he landed with the Athletics. Manager Tony La Russa moved Eckersley to the bullpen, seeing a right-handed closer who could cut the corners of the strike zone.

“The majority of the credit for Eck is Eck,” La Russa said. “Mentally, he uses his experience. He has a great appreciation for his success. The game has humbled him several times before. You have a guy pulling as hard now as he did two years ago.”

Eckersley’s numbers -- 16 saves in 1987, 45 in 1988 and 33 in 1989 -- only hint at his greatness. He has blown only eight save opportunities since the start of last season, and during one stretch had a streak of facing 185 consecutive batters without giving up a walk.

“If you sit down and write everything you’d want in a relief pitcher, you’d find that Eckersley fills them all,” Oakland pitching coach Dave Duncan said. “He has talent, good physical ability, quality pitches he can throw over the plate, a resilient arm and the proper mental approach to the role and the job.”

Without hesitating, Duncan said Eckersley is a better closer than Fingers was in his prime.

“You’re walking a fine line when you’re talking about those guys,” said Duncan, a catcher who played with Fingers in Oakland for four seasons. “Certainly, the history of the game shows that Rollie is the best there is. In Rollie’s time, he was a dominant force, as Eck is today. But I go by the feeling I get when Eck is in the game. You feel confident he’ll get the job done. I’d say Eck is more dominant now than Rollie was.”

The level of Eckersley’s consistency in the face of adversity sets him apart in the ‘90s. The closer role is filled with one-year wonders who fail to reclaim the magic. Mark Davis has gone from 44 saves with the San Diego Padres in one year to a $12 million bust in Kansas City the next. Three years after winning the Cy Young Award with the Philadelphia Phillies, Steve Bedrosian struggles in the San Francisco Giants’ bullpen.

“You can’t be too high-strung in this role,” Eckersley said. “I’m emotional on the mound, but you can burn out quickly.”

Eckersley, of course, faced down his own baseball nightmare in 1988, giving up Kirk Gibson’s game-winning home run that helped launch the Los Angeles Dodgers to a five-game World Series triumph.

“People think, Kirk, and I’m going to fold,” Eckersley said. “But my circumstances were so much different. I appreciated what happened to my life with the battle against alcoholism and how I turned my life around. I saved 50 games that year, including the postseason, and I blow one game. What am I going to do, kill myself? How can you be bitter? It was the law of averages, and I fell out of a tree.”

Standing exposed, facing disaster the moment they are in the game, relievers are the game’s most vulnerable players. They are like air travelers -- hurry up and wait until the moment of takeoff. Imagine spending innings and hours in the bullpen, dealing with rowdy fans at Yankee Stadium, preening for the closed-circuit television cameras at Toronto’s SkyDome, shoved into a seven-man chicken coop at San Francisco’s reviled Candlestick Park. No wonder relievers live up, or down, to a flaky image.

“You have to be different,” said Olson, known to line up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the bullpen. “Our role is so uncertain. When I go to the park, I could be in the game, and then, I might not. It takes time to get into that mentality of sit, sit, sit and then, get up, you’re in the game.”

Once in the game, all great closers assume an invincible air. By force of will and physical power, they dominate.

“I have an ‘I don’t give a damn’ approach,” Franco said. “I’m the best, and no one is better. I visualize every hitter as the best in baseball, but they’ll only hit what I want them to hit. I have an attitude, but I have fun. Young guys like to show up people. Not me.”

Myers calls relief pitching “another day of work.” The Houston Astros’ Dave Smith says, “I’m a cheerleader for seven innings, and then I go out and say, ‘Here is my stuff.’ ” And Olson says what sets apart relievers “is competitiveness.”

But Eckersley gives voice to the fear of failure that all great relievers must accept and conquer.

“The stress is a killer,” Eckersley said. “People talk about relief guys being flaky, but that’s not the case. People react differently to being under that much pressure. Unless you’ve done it, you really don’t know what it’s like. The anticipation just builds and builds. Sometimes, it’s greater than what it seems.”

But for one inning, maybe two, Eckersley is in control of his emotions and his opponents. He pitches to succeed. And he pitches to avoid failure.

“I haven’t got a secret to my success,” he said. “My arm feels good; I’m consistent. But the next outing, I can get lit up. I don’t go out there saying I’m invincible. I pitch out of fear -- the fear of blowing it. That gets my attention, every time.”