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 Nats name Riggleman Jim Riggleman was officially introduced as the manager of the Washington Nationals. |
Dealing with errors and mental mistakes
As a pitcher you rely on 24 other guys and they rely on you. It’s so important as to how you handle an error or mental mistake made by one of your teammates, the types of things that become so magnified in the postseason given the high stakes baseball being played.
I took it as a challenge to pick up my teammate if he made an error or mental mistake because as a pitcher there are so many times throughout the season that your teammates pick you up with big hits or outstanding plays in the field.
So that was the challenge for me. If one of my teammates messed up, I would seek to have the next batter hit the ball to that teammate because I knew that teammate would be more determined than ever to make a solid play on the ball. When one of my fielders made an error behind me and I ended up giving up a run, I felt bad because I didn’t do my job to pick up my teammate – who might very well have been the same guy who two weeks earlier dove for a ball and saved a win for me.
In 1985 when I got back to Minnesota for my second tour of duty with the Twins, Frank Viola admitted that if a teammate made an error behind him he let it affect him. His body language on and around the mound showed that and opponents sought to take advantage of it.
Viola gives me credit for telling him to stop allowing what happened behind him to influence his pitching performance. A poor mound presence affects the rest of your team. If a guy makes an error behind you and you’re kicking the dirt or acting childish out there, your teammates are saying forget about him. The concept of winning and losing as a team evaporates and that’s never a good thing.
Thrown a curve in my postseason debut
As a kid playing baseball you dream about one day getting to the majors and pitching in the postseason. Just when I was about to realize my dream, it became somewhat of a nightmare.
My first time in the postseason was 1970 with the Twins when I was 19 and I was supposed to start Game 3 of the ALCS against the Orioles. But because we lost the first two games of the series at home on the flight to Baltimore Twins manager Bill Rigney came to me and informed me that he was going to start Jim Kaat over me in Game 3.
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I was crushed, so upset I even somehow that night lost a watch that had been given to me by my parents. To this day, I don’t know how I lost that watch. All I could think about was losing out on the start. As it turned out, I ended up being called upon to relieve Kaat in the third inning but it wasn’t the same as if I had started the game. The Orioles swept us so my first postseason was not my most memorable one.
A one-of-a-kind feeling
The highlight for me of all of my postseason pitching performances came in 1979 when I was with the Pirates and I started Game 3 of the NLCS against the Reds in Pittsburgh. We were going for the sweep of Cincinnati and for me that game could not have turned out any sweeter.
I threw a complete game, allowing only a solo home run to Johnny Bench as we won, 7-1. It took 122 pitches to get the job done and what made it the most special memory of my postseason career is that I was on the mound when the last out was made, a strikeout looking of Cesar Geronimo. It was me my teammates rushed to mob in celebration. When it’s you that your teammates are jumping up and down on in celebration, that’s so cool and for me it didn’t get any better than that.
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