Fitness and Starts

It is early in the baseball clubhouse on Heritage Park Way, early in the morning and early in spring training, and the ribbon-wristed pitchers for the Houston Astros have made it to the coffee pot and back, but not much more.

Their faces and forearms are the color of a firetruck and, after a week of camp, their bodies are about as maneuverable.

A few minutes before 9, having fixed their entrance to a team meeting to the second, including a pause for a last swallow of inspiration from Styrofoam cups, they seep toward the double steel doors, a dozen rubber soles abrading the carpet beneath them.

Near as anyone could tell, Roger Clemens has not sat down. A folding chair that appears to belong to his locker crowds the next locker, as do Clemens’ shoulders, as does Clemens’ energy. He frees a leather glove from the clutter, thumps it one time, and when he turns his eyes hold October clarity.

“It’s no secret what I do behind the scenes gets my body ready for a season,” he says. “It’s a commitment to yourself as far as paying the price.”

He will be 43 in August.

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TAMPA, Fla. -- At 1 Steinbrenner Drive, crises are stacked with the duffel bags, catastrophes sorted with the Louisville Sluggers, and stress shined with the batting helmets, by general rule.

Already, before their first sweat would stain flaky white halos on their navy caps, they had answered for their New York Yankee qualifications, their steroid use, their past October. Their owner had discharged his first rant.

It is what Randy Johnson says he always wanted; the city, the stadium, the uniform, the baseball on opening day.

So he walks the clubhouse, his stride seemingly covering it in thirds, passing All-Stars and World Series heroes, the celebrated and the dispossessed, having arrived here finally, his fastball alive to see it.

“I really enjoy doing it,” he says. “God-honest truth, I really enjoy the challenge of going out there and continuing to do the things that I’ve done. Because I can.”

He will be 42 in September.

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PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- It is raining outside and his shoulders are damp, because it is their day to work, because a season is coming and that’s just the way it is.

The folds around his eyes are sharp and creased, like reused wax paper, having done it all, seen it all.

His is the stock of pitching royalty, 16 years with the Atlanta Braves, 32 postseason starts, countless hours beside Leo Mazzone, outs where it appeared none were to be had.

In his third season with the New York Mets, Tom Glavine throws to corners few others see, pitches to dimensions few others conceptualize. His mind takes the ball and his body follows, at least 32 times in each of the last nine seasons, steady as spring rain on Florida’s east coast.

“I’m not going to sit here and say I worked harder than anybody, but I’m committed and regimented with what I do,” he says. “I don’t change it a lot. I don’t really take a lot of time off anymore.”

He will be 39 in three weeks.

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At the top end of rotations throughout baseball, and off a postseason in which the elite clung in part to the likes of Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield, Kevin Brown, Woody Williams and Clemens, some the game’s aged starters are growing in stature and dependability.

From a lifetime of five-man rotations and relief specialists, of advancements in medical treatment, technology and rehabilitation, and of an appreciation for the financial benefits of a long career, a dozen starters -- Clemens with Houston, Johnson and Brown with the Yankees, Schilling, Wakefield and David Wells with Boston, Greg Maddux with the Chicago Cubs, Glavine with the Mets, Al Leiter with Florida, Jamie Moyer with Seattle, Williams with San Diego and Kenny Rogers with Texas -- have pitched to the verge of or into their 40s.

Once an oddity in recent generations -- Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton and few others as physically and emotionally taken, the occasional knuckleballer, the once-great hanging on in a pitching-starved era -- the older starter is embraced as much for his durability as his skill. The Astros will pay Clemens $18.5 million this season. The Yankees will pay Johnson $48 million over the next three seasons. Wells, Williams and Leiter were popular free agents this winter.

The privileged franchises have found value in the veteran starter in the playoffs particularly, when the season is to be settled by sure knowledge and a surer hand; the Yankees and Red Sox alone have five starters who will be 39 or older this year.

“When things get tough,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said, “the game slows down for them.”

It doesn’t always work; Brown did not get out of the second inning in Game 7 of the last American League championship series. Many suspected his chronically aching back was to blame. And while he pitched superbly for most of the playoffs, Schilling had his heel surgically patched for several of those starts, yielding in the off-season to a permanent surgical solution.

As the innings and pitches accumulated, and as their 30s dawned, these starters turned to the weight room, year-round training, better nutrition and the tiny details that helped them endure one more season, and then another, until they became another decade.

“With Roger and myself, based on what we’ve done over a period of time and the workout regimen, I think that’s why there’s longevity,” Johnson said. “I don’t think there’s been a great drop-off from what we expect out of ourselves. I think we had to work a little bit more to achieve those things. But, like I’ve been trying to tell a lot of the younger kids I’ve played with, if you work out now and understand what you’re trying to do in the weight room and bring it out to the mound, when you do get older ... it won’t be something new for you.”

In his 18th season, Johnson throws nearly as hard as he did in his prime, despite a history of back and knee ailments, and wastes fewer pitches outside the strike zone. Like Clemens and Schilling, he remains a power pitcher, nearly 3,400 innings into his career. Clemens has thrown 4,493 innings.

The decision to preserve his body, Johnson said, “was kind of made for me. Obviously, I’ve always done workouts like a lot of people have, the arm exercises and all that. As you get older, the workload on the field becomes a little more. So, you understand the workout load in between starts has to be a little bit more.

“There’s one intangible amongst that group you’re talking about -- Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, myself and Clemens -- we have all worked extremely hard during the off-season and in between our games. It’s been well-documented. Steve Carlton with his strength coach. Nolan Ryan had a regimen he worked out on. Clemens is well-documented. Myself, over the last 10 years. That intangible is connected to all the people you’re talking about.”

Clemens is the standard, both in terms of strength and conditioning and of mental preparation, in the season and out, during starts and between them. In spring training, he takes the ball only after two hours of working out, simulating the first seven innings of the game. He takes the mound in a full sweat, his legs quaking from running and lifting.

Jeff Kent, who played alongside Clemens in Houston last season, said Clemens’ work ethic was “stupid, as in phenomenal. I mean, wow, I’d like to get that stupidness, too.”

Clemens is so focused during the season, Kent said, he is invulnerable to moments of laziness, distraction or fatigue, which has saved him from catastrophic injury since shoulder surgery in 1985.

“I’m surprised at the guys who’ve been here for two or three years who really don’t have a set routine, something they know they can count on,” Clemens said. “So they bounce around, back and forth. It’s a long-term plan and sometimes it won’t equal wins and losses on the field, but you know you’re ready to take on the season, ready to take on the seven months. That’s what crossed my mind when I was getting ready to sign my contract to do this again. It’s not about just wanting to play again, it’s crossing that threshold to do it.”

Often, when preparation and work ethic aren’t enough, pitchers call Dr. Frank Jobe. It has been 25 years since Jobe pioneered ligament replacement surgery, starting with Tommy John, for whom the procedure is named.

By his reckoning, Jobe has performed “thousands” of the surgeries. In a recent study, he said, 75 current major league pitchers had undergone the Tommy John procedure. While the surgery has gone largely unchanged, advancements in shoulder, rotator cuff and body core strengthening have come fast, allowing pitchers to continue the practice of throwing a baseball overhand, largely incongruous with the body’s makeup.

“In the old days, there were never any specific exercise programs,” Jobe said. “If you tore a rotator cuff you were sent back to Topeka or wherever you were from. When I started this in 1964, we didn’t really understand the injuries very well. If they had surgery, they were through. ... Now, there are guys that are still power pitchers.”

In Atlanta, where the organization maintained the arms belonging to Glavine, Maddux and John Smoltz, they emphasized rotator cuff exercises, pitching mechanics and steady, low-exertion throwing. Glavine and Maddux combined for six Cy Young Awards and Maddux passed 300 career wins last season. Neither throws hard. Smoltz, who is 36, had ligament reconstruction surgery before the 2000 season, became a closer, and is expected to rejoin the Brave rotation this season.

“That’s where you have to marvel at what Randy and Roger are doing, throwing as hard as they do the older they get,” Glavine said. “That’s the amazing thing, those two guys. If you’re going to find guys that pitch that hard, that long, they’re going to be hard workers. They’re not going to get there by accident.”

When they do arrive, any more, there is little reason to have brought their birth certificate. Just their fastball.

As Torre said, “You can find guys who can hit and run and catch it. But you can’t get guys who can throw strikes and get people out.”

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FORT MYERS, Fla. -- A couple of World Series ago, back when the Yankees were still in them, David Wells cranked his left arm, a trusted friend through thick and, by each off-season, thicker.

It was so easy. He found his glove, found his cleats and somewhere in mid-February he found baseball again, right where he had left it in October.

He once shared a clubhouse with Clemens, matched service time with Johnson, admired Nolan Ryan. He shared their profession, if not their end-to-end dedication to it, and he’d managed.

“Goes to show you that you don’t need to bust your butt every day to be successful,” Wells said then. “I’ll leave the working and conditioning to those guys forever. They can write a book and do videos. They can make money on that, on how to last 20 years in the big leagues by conditioning. I’ll write the one, ‘How not to work out.’ ”

He laughed. Two days later, his back seized and he walked off the mound in Game 5 after a single inning, a World Series the Yankees would lose in six games to the Florida Marlins.

David Wells now has a personal trainer.

He will be 42 in May.

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Old Glory

Career statistics of pitchers who have stood the test of time, pitching in their 40s:

*--* Player Age W L ERA G GS CG SHO S IP BB SO Cleme 42 328 164 3.18 640 639 117 46 0 4493 1,458 4,317 ns .0 Moyer 42 192 145 4.15 506 453 27 8 0 2939 843 1,782 .2 Johns 41 246 128 3.07 489 479 92 37 2 3368 1,302 4,161 on .0 Wells 41 212 136 4.03 588 417 52 12 13 3022 644 1,974 .1 Brown 40 207 137 3.20 473 463 72 17 0 3183 882 2,347 .0 Rogers 40 176 123 4.27 657 370 35 8 28 2666 964 1,664 .2

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