The Rotation (21 page)

“It was the first thing Roy said,” Casterioto said. “And he was right. I was mad at myself for not thinking that way at first, but again, I'm a fan and I was caught up in the foursome.”

More than 70 media members, local and national, and club officials packed the news conference at Bright House Field. Lee sat in the middle flanked by Halladay and Blanton on his right, and Oswalt and Hamels on his left. This was the media's first shot to hear from Blanton after a winter of trade rumors and hype that completely ignored him. He was the skunk who'd crashed the lawn party, the fifth Beatle, and everyone wondered what that felt like. The question came quickly from David Murphy of the
Daily News
. Oswalt wasn't happy that a lightning bolt was thrust into what—for the pitchers—was supposed to be a ceremonial unveiling, a happy time at the beginning of a long journey. The veteran pitcher rolled his eyes in disgust at the question, but Blanton, who'd been traded before, handled it well. He even had his touché moment when Ryan Lawrence of the
Delaware County Daily Times
asked Hamels about being the only one with a World Series ring.

Blanton perked right up.

“Uh, I've got a ring,” said the man who earned the win in Game 4 of the 2008 World Series.

The Rotation's historic potential was the central theme of the news conference. Halladay, who spent a decade in Toronto wondering what it would be like to pitch in the postseason, looked to his left and said he had to pinch himself being surrounded by such quality talent. Lee summed up everything by acknowledging the staff's historic potential, but added a warning. “We haven't thrown a single pitch as a group yet,” he said. “It's kind of early to say we're one of the best rotations in the history of the game. Obviously, we're a very talented group, and there is potential for all of that. But it's just that—potential.”

The news conference ended and the pitchers headed off to tape an hourlong television special with Michael Barkann of Comcast SportsNet. All in all, it was a seamless day. The pitchers got their work in and killed a slew of media demands with one stone. No butter knives were thrust into any electrical sockets and Casterioto was happy about that.

When it was all over, long after the luxury cars and SUVs had pulled out of the players' parking lot, a spent Casterioto sat at a picnic table behind the clubhouse and reflected on the day he and his colleagues had been planning for—and dreading a little—since January.

His iPhone buzzed.

His eyes bulged in mock horror as another media request rolled in.

“Greta Van Susteren,” he said incredulously. “What's next,
Oprah
?' ”

Media interest actually continued for a couple more weeks with several national types joining the locals who'd been there all along.
Sports Illustrated
's Gary Smith spent more than a week in Clearwater. Widely hailed as America's best long-form sportswriter, Smith was raised near Wilmington, Delaware, and educated at LaSalle University. He had grown up a Phillies fan. Now, with his unique eye for detail and obsession with finding out what makes people tick, Smith was here to chronicle what was
the story
heading into the 2011 baseball season—The Rotation.

Smith was one of the first to arrive in the clubhouse every morning, right there with the beat writers, observing the pitchers as they ate breakfast at the cool kids' table in the clubhouse. (There are two long tables in the Phillies' spring clubhouse. The veterans congregate at one, the rookies and non-roster players at the other). Computer bag slung over his shoulder and
yellow legal pad in his hand, Smith constantly scanned the room for interesting details. Patient and polite, he waited for days to get his shot to interview the pitchers one-on-one. He also conducted lengthy interviews with teammates and club officials for a 5,000-word piece that ran in
SI
's baseball preview issue.

Not everyone was as patient as Smith. Pat Jordan spent 11 days in Clearwater working on a story for the
New York Times
Sunday magazine. Jordan had been a highly touted pitching prospect in the Braves' system in the early 1960s—he chronicled the death of his baseball dream in his 1975 memoir,
False Spring
—and big hitter at
Sports Illustrated
in the 1970s. He recalled doing interviews with Tom Seaver while the two drove to Shea Stadium. Those were the days when a player would show up in the clubhouse and chat leisurely with a writer while putting on his uniform, the days when a player would grab a brew and rehash the day with a scribe in front of his locker after a game. Those days, of course, are over.

Clubhouses used to be locker rooms. Now they are glorified coat rooms, places to hang your clothes and change before hustling off to get treatment in the trainer's room, lift weights, work with a strength and conditioning coach—a new addition to the baseball world in the last decade—or watch video, all in areas off-limits to media. Players simply don't have the time—and in many cases, the interest—for media interaction as they once did. Oh, the young ones like to be written about and will give you all the time you need to promote their prospecthood. But things often change once they've made it. All this is compounded by the increase in media. There are more people asking for a minute of a player's time than ever before. Walls have gone up, leaving old-school grads like Jordan frustrated.

“I've never done a story where the people I've needed to speak with are so difficult to get,” he said.

Jordan spent days wandering in and around the clubhouse, tiptoeing around Halladay's and Lee's work schedules. He always looked ready for a Jimmy Buffet concert as he wore shorts and untucked Hawaiian shirts and never took off his Ray-Ban sunglasses. Outside the back of the clubhouse, the gray-bearded writer puffed on a cigar as the sound of clinking metal could be heard through the open doors of the weight room.

“You can't smoke around here,” a team official told Jordan. “The smoke is blowing in the weight room.”

Imagine that story? HALLADAY MISSES START DUE TO SMOKE INHALATION.

Jordan rolled his eyes. He had no patience for the new breed of player,
media relations officials, or modern, regimented spring camps, and it showed in the story he produced for the
Times
magazine. He wrote learnedly about the art of pitching and how it pertained to The Rotation, but he left no doubt that things were better in his day. Maybe if they had let him smoke, the tone would have been different.

Everyone was looking for an angle to best capture The Rotation. Legendary
Sports Illustrated
photographer Walter Iooss had the most unique. When it came to access, the pitchers had no qualms giving it to Iooss. He was safe. In his own way, he was as talented as the pitchers and they knew it. And he would only make them look good. So good they could hang it on the wall.

On the morning of March 5, Hamels was scheduled to throw a between-starts bullpen session. Usually these are solemn workouts, a trip into the pitching laboratory where pitcher and pitching coach smooth out deliveries and adjust release points by a tenth of an inch. On this day, Hamels' “bullpen,” as they call it, was a show. Iooss and his staff had spent two hours setting up strobe lights and reflectors, all powered by a humming portable generator. The lights lured curious minor leaguers out of their clubhouse. Everyone was in the mood for a show. Hamels, in full uniform, delivered.

The lanky left-hander began by throwing fastballs. Iooss, kneeling on a towel a few feet away, started snapping pictures—10 frames per second so he wouldn't miss the sweat rolling down Hamels' cheek or the veins bulging in his neck. In time, Iooss was laying on the ground, shooting up at the pitcher with the blue Florida sky as a background.

Hamels was remarkably focused with such a production buzzing around him.

“Nooo,” he spat after throwing a pitch that he didn't like. He conferred with Dubee about the importance of releasing the ball on a downward angle.

Hamels didn't need much persuading when
SI
asked to shoot him at work. (They don't call him “Hollywood” for nothing.) He had been the subject of Iooss features in the past and liked the photographer's work. Iooss had promised to give Hamels some of the pictures.

“Cole likes to be photographed,” Iooss said. “He feels he looks good and that helps, too. He's self-confident about how he comes across in pictures.”

Iooss began shooting sports, everything from Super Bowls to Olympiads, in the 1960s. He's been around the block.

“Cole's a great-looking guy with personality,” Iooss said. “He's lucky he's married. Road life can kill a man.”

Before leaving camp, Iooss got The Rotation together for a shot that appeared on the cover of
SI
. It was Lee surrounded by the other starters, a shot modeled after a 2007
Rolling Stone
magazine cover depicting the rock band Maroon Five.
SI
editors debated which pitcher to put in the middle—Halladay or Lee? They went with Lee “because he came back and created all this drama,” Iooss said.

Cognizant of the media pull on the pitchers, Iooss recalled something Michael Jordan used to tell him.

“I like you, Walter, because you're good and you're fast,” Jordan would say.

“At this point they're all pretty fed up with pictures,” Iooss said after the group shot of the Phillies pitchers. “I was trying to get it over as fast as humanly possible. I got them out of there fifteen minutes early.”

Maybe Pat Jordan could pick up that extra time.

In the days that followed the first workout for pitchers and catchers, the clubhouse filled as position players trickled in before the February 19 first full-squad workout. Pitchers no longer owned the room. Big personalities such as Shane Victorino and Jimmy Rollins arrived. Ryan Howard's hulking presence seemed to fill one side of the clubhouse.