A Black Hole?

Bud Black sat on an empty milk crate in a hallway made narrower by buckets of batting-practice baseballs and explained how it was he arrived here, with the Angels, to lead a pitching staff most consider among the worst in baseball.

He does not believe that, of course. He recited the names of the youngsters who will pitch for him this season, who will have to, because it is their time:

Ramon Ortiz, Jarrod Washburn, Brian Cooper, Scott Schoeneweis. There are others, too, and that shouldn’t frighten them at all, he said, because it does not frighten him.

Maybe that’s a good place to start with Bud Black. That is, when it became his time? And why he understood that it was? He left a rewarding job with the Cleveland Indians for one with the Angels.

First off, Black wasn’t what scouts call a “stuff guy” when he was a pitcher. “Stuff guys” are Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens and Ramon Ortiz. “Stuff guys” have fastballs that hiss so furiously that to batters it sounds personal.

Most pitchers don’t have the luxury of a 95-mph bailout. They are left to learn to pitch, right on the edge, what with smaller strike zones and livelier baseballs and all else that makes even marginal pitchers worth millions.

Some become bigleague pitchers. Others gripe about never getting a chance on their way to becoming decent weekend golfers with 9-to-5 jobs.

Black was fortunate in that regard. He experienced a pitching epiphany, some 20 years before the Angels so desperately required a pitching coach who would enlighten their youth and maintain their aged.

It came on a mound in Kansas City, in 1982, Black’s rookie year, and it bore the face of Cloyd Boyer, an old pitching coach who might have given the same speech before.

“And I was in a jam,” Black recalled.

Boyer arrived at Black’s side and he looked around. Two men on base. Only one out. Black maybe not sure what to do next.

“Buddy,” Boyer said, “there are times when you have to make a pitch to prove you belong in the big leagues. You have to make pitches.”

The left-hander nodded, and Boyer nodded back.

“This,” Boyer said, “is one of those times.”

Back on the milk crate, surrounded by buckets of scuffed baseballs, Black smiled broadly at the lesson he carries with him still, to his first job as big league pitching coach. In a clubhouse not far from where he sat, there were a dozen pitchers whose time it was to throw those pitches, to find a way.

“I remember that and I always followed that advice,” Black said. “If you think about it, every pitcher gets in trouble at one time in a ballgame. The good pitchers make pitches.”

That day in Kansas City?

“Actually,” he said, “I ended up getting a double-play ball. As I recall, it wasn’t a great pitch, but it was hit right at the shortstop.”

He chuckled again.

“But, that’s not the point,” he said. “The point was, major league pitchers make pitches. Everybody has the stuff. It’s who makes the pitches.

“Was I going to make the pitch to keep the score 2-2? Or, was I going to walk a guy or give up a triple or whatever?”

It is a question the Angel pitching staff will be asked many times. Will Ken Hill make the pitch? Will Ortiz? Will Kent Mercker? Black believes so, or he would not have left an organization that seems destined for the postseason every year, or a front-office job that by many accounts was an early step toward becoming a general manager.

Black, a special assistant to Cleveland GM John Hart last year, was a finalist to become new Indian Manager Charlie Manuel’s pitching coach, but Manuel chose former Angel coach Dick Pole, with whom he’d had a long relationship. Then Mike Scioscia called.

“I think deep within him, the uniform is not something he’s willing to shed,” Indian assistant general manager Mark Shapiro said of Black. “But, I don’t think there’s a limitation on what he can do in the game.

“He possesses a very rare combination of attributes you just don’t find. He played and had success in championship environments. He’s extremely intelligent under business and game conditions. He’s a tremendous communicator, which I think is his most valuable asset, and he has a passion for the game. He is one of the more positive human beings I’ve ever been around. The Angels are lucky to have him.”

Black appears to have found a staff that will accept him, despite one professional season as a pitching coach, and that at triple-A Buffalo two seasons ago. Black won 121 games in 14 big-league seasons, pedigree enough for a staff that lacks even one core pitcher with 15-victory expectations.

“Not only is he good at the mechanics of it,” said Mercker, who is also left-handed, “but the thought process of it as well. At this point, for me, the physical part is there. But you can always get an edge mentally. He’s a guy who’s been in every situation you can be in, and he’s smart enough to recall what he did in those situations.”

Said Jason Dickson: “With Bud, it’s not really one conversation. It’s the daily conversation, and it’s not always about baseball. When it is, obviously he did something right, so you better listen. He knows how to get hitters out.”

It shouldn’t take much to convince the Angels’ young pitchers that being smart, using the fastball, throwing strikes, is the better way.

“A lot of young guys, in particular, don’t know how to go about attacking a hitter with what they have,” Black said. “At this stage in their careers, they’re just not going to come up with five or six miles per hour of velocity at age 26. You don’t come up with any more of a breaking ball than what you have. It just doesn’t happen. What these guys have, they pretty much have. Now it’s a matter of getting the most out of that and then understanding what it takes to get the best hitters in the game out.”

It takes only a few afternoons in training camp to understand the Angels are not overloaded with “stuff guys.” Fortunately for them, Black is still making pitches, just like Cloyd Boyer told him.