OUT OF THE SHADOWS

John Smoltz credits a clear mind and sound elbow for helping him stand taller.

In that anatomical vein, he says, “This is the year when I get a lot of things off my back.”

Such as the monkey of great expectations.

Such as the talk-show baggage that one day portrays him as Cy Young and the next produces only sighs.

The Atlanta Brave right-hander insists he has stopped battling the dial, the demons of other people’s opinions.

Brett Butler helped him understand that he can’t satisfy everyone.

Smoltz faces the Dodgers tonight with a record of 17-5, the best in baseball.

At 29, blessed with “inner peace” and an elbow capable of delivering his impressive repertoire on a consistent basis, Smoltz now goes to the mound with what he calls the “total package.”

Opposing hitters have trouble getting beyond the wrapping.

They are batting .206 against Smoltz, who leads the National League in strikeouts, is 10th in earned-run average (3.05), has gone seven innings or more in 14 of 23 starts, twice dominated the Dodgers, 3-1, and is averaging 10 strikeouts and only 2.13 walks per nine innings.

A reflective Smoltz sat at his locker in San Francisco recently and said he is “driven, but not obsessed,” to unload all the expectations of the past.

He “keeps chopping them off” in what is tantamount to an in-your-face season.

Make no mistake: A grinning Smoltz wasn’t entirely kidding when he told teammates Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Steve Avery in the spring that this would be his year, his turn for the Cy Young Award.

He seems on his way toward acquiring a new label: Best pitcher in baseball.

“I’m not comfortable with that because it can change from week to week, month to month,” Smoltz said.

“I never want to stagnate, I always want to get better. In some ways, perhaps, I’m at a peak mentally and physically, but I don’t feel that what I’m doing has made my career any more significant.

“I could have pitched better at times [in the past], but I couldn’t have given any more effort. I took all the criticism. I never spit it out.”

Never gave in, he meant, when many wondered why he never won more than 15 games with what might be the best stuff on the best staff in baseball. Even General Manager John Schuerholz pondered the question last fall, saying Smoltz consistently “went out with great stuff and wasn’t able to amass the numbers the other guys did. You wonder, scratch your head.”

The other guys? Part of the perspective is the shadow they cast.

Smoltz has 79 wins since the beginning of 1991, third among active National League pitchers. The two ahead of him are Glavine, 103, and Maddux, 100. As pitching coach Leo Mazzone noted: “It kind of annoys me when people say John has now turned a corner. What corner?”

The point is that Smoltz hasn’t exactly been idle.

--The Braves have handed him the ball in Game 7 of a postseason series three times, and he has lost only once in 13 postseason starts, registering a 5-1 record and 2.76 ERA. He was most valuable player of the 1992 playoff against the Pittsburgh Pirates and holds the all-time record for most strikeouts in NL playoff history.

--He led the league in strikeouts in 1992 and ‘93, was the youngest all-star pitcher in Brave history (at 22 in 1989) and tied Warren Spahn’s franchise record with 15 strikeouts in a nine-inning game in 1992.

--Between the All-Star games of 1991 and ‘92, he was 22-8 with a 2.85 ERA in 37 starts. He is 29-12 in 52 starts since his elbow was freed of bone chips and spurs in September of 1994, while the players were on strike.

Impressive credentials, but Smoltz never had that one year that defines the great pitcher and establishes him clearly in the public’s and media’s mind.

Smoltz bristles at that, saying people never take the time to break down a year, to look beyond the surface.

“I was 15-11 with seven more starts in 1992,” he said. “I pitched well enough to win them all. My final record was 15-12.”

He acknowledged, however, that there were too many times when he lost his concentration, allowing “the expectations and criticisms to rule” his life.

“It was a constant battle, a roller coaster,” he said. “There were times I didn’t even want to go to the ballpark.

“People would do me wrong and I’d want immediate justice. I had to learn it wasn’t up to me to correct or deal with.”

Tough lessons.

Two seasons ago, when Smoltz’s shoulder was in such bad shape that it would pop out of its socket and he’d pop it back by hanging from the roof of the dugout, a since-fired host of a radio talk show told his audience that Smoltz’s problems stemmed from being too concerned about his golf game.

A low-handicap golfer who plays in virtually every city when the Braves are on the road and has supplemented his income on the off-season celebrity tour, Smoltz called to tell the host he could come practice on the indoor and outdoor putting greens at his home in Duluth, Ga., and asked, “Why, if you’re such a Braves expert, have you never been inside our clubhouse?”

Said Smoltz: “I’d listen to those shows for a laugh and end up in a rage.”

He became so accustomed to defending himself from the print and radio blitz, the onslaught of opinions as to how good he should be and why he wasn’t, that he carried a tape recorder for a time to make sure he wasn’t misquoted. Playing partners never knew when to duck on the golf course, and his expressions on the mound seemed so pained that his mother and grandmother stopped watching.

“I challenge anyone to go through what I went through for four years,” he said, “but I also did a terrible job of handling it. I had to learn that I can’t control what people think and can’t worry about it.

“I mean, people made winning 20 sound so easy that it was tough coping with the expectations.

“My perspective and focus was in the wrong place.

“I had to learn that my kids don’t care, and my dog doesn’t care and my wife’s still there when I lose.”

During off-season Bible study sessions Butler told him that his thin skin was as big a problem as his elbow or shoulder, that he was going through what Butler had gone through.

“He told me that if I was in a room with 100 people and 98 said nothing but positive things about me, I’d worry about the other two,” Smoltz said. “He was right. I know I’m going to lose games at times, have rough periods, but I’m not going to be distracted by what people say. I have peace now.”

Maturation alone has helped, and Smoltz has benefited from several years of work with sports psychologist Jack Llewellyn, who said that Smoltz’s 1996 success is a measure of his improved physical status, supplemented by a strong mental development.

Llewellyn has worked with Smoltz on controlling his emotions, recovering faster from adversity, on and off the mound.

“It really comes down to maturity,” Llewellyn said. “John is real happy with who he is and what he brings to the party now.

“I mean, there’s no question but that many of the traits he’d otherwise be admired for, his sensitivity and conscientiousness, were liabilities for him at times in the past when he’d listen and try to please too many people.

“Now, if people are happy with who he is and what he does, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too.”

All of it would mean nothing if not for the improved stability of his elbow.

It has allowed Smoltz to continue refining a split-finger fastball--or takeout pitch, in Mazzone’s terms--and to reach a new level of command with his dominating fastball, augmenting what the pitching coach describes as “the nastiest breaking stuff I’ve ever seen from a right-hander.”

Brave broadcaster Don Sutton, who won 324 games, said Smoltz is dominating hitters early in the count with his fastball “and putting them away with just about anything he wants. Pitchers learn at different stages, and he’s pitching now as his stuff has always dictated. It’s not a video game to him anymore. He’s not getting ahead 0 and 2 and ending up 3 and 2. He’s got a new toy. It’s called domination.”

Smoltz might have run to the booth to dispute that in the past, but he simply said: “I wouldn’t agree. I’m healthy now. I can do the things I want to do. I was very limited in the past. I didn’t have my best stuff all the time. To say I could have challenged hitters more is foolish. People have no idea how I felt.”

They do now, and certainly will when the season is over and his four-year, $16-million contract expires, leaving him eligible for free agency.

Smoltz insisted he isn’t thinking about that, isn’t looking ahead.

Acquired by then-general manager Bobby Cox from the Detroit Tigers for Doyle Alexander in 1987, he was the first of the Atlanta building blocks. Alexander helped pitch the Tigers to a division title that year, but Smoltz has been the cornerstone of a dynasty.

He may finally get his own Cy Young, but he didn’t just turn that corner--no matter what some people think.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Braves’ Arms Race A comparison of Atlanta’s top four starters: 1996

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PITCHER W L ERA G IP H R ER BB SO Avery 7 8 4.02 20 118.2 127 58 53 32 83 Glavine 12 5 2.65 24 159.2 148 55 47 52 127 Maddux 10 9 2.86 24 173.0 160 64 55 18 129 Smoltz 17 5 3.05 23 165.1 123 63 56 39 183 TOTAL 36 27 3.14 91 617.1 558 240 211 141 522

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1992 (BEFORE MADDUX, AVERAGES)

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PITCHER W L ERA G IP H R ER BB SO Avery 11 11 3.20 35 233.2 216 95 83 71 129 Glavine 20 8 2.76 33 225.0 197 81 69 70 129 Smoltz 15 12 2.85 35 246.2 206 90 78 80 215 TOTAL 46 31 2.93 103 495.1 619 266 230 221 473

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SINCE MADDUX (AVERAGES)

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PITCHER W L ERA G IP H R ER BB SO 1993 75 33 3.03 142 973.1 888 361 326 285 650 1994 43 28 3.42 95 653.2 570 260 238 204 531 1995 54 29 3.14 115 774.1 660 283 264 213 642

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