Chapter 19: American League Championship Series

You've gotta be good to get into the playoffs, but being lucky helps, too. We had handled the Twins with uncharacteristic ease, and we felt good about it, because they were a tough, tenacious bunch.

But even tougher for us, season-long, had been the Oakland A's. Oakland had to face the White Sox in their first-round playoff series, and the Oriole players paid attention, because we had scuffled against Oakland every time we'd faced them, over the past two seasons.

Most of the time, sportswriter-talk about "matching up" with other clubs was just that -- talk.

But we really did seem to have a match-up problem with Oakland. Two seasons earlier, when Paul Warren's Orioles had last been in the Championship Series, they hadn't matched-up all that well against the Los Angeles Angels of Pismo Beach, either, and Baltimore had lost that series.

But in addition to having to be good to get into the playoffs, you maybe have to be lucky as well. We got extremely lucky, because the Chicago-Oakland series went seven games, and the White Sox won it.

None of us would ever admit it during a recorded interview with the press, but we had a much better record against Chicago's White Sox, and we had a better feeling about meeting them in the ALCS.

One nice thing, for the pitchers, about the post-season is that you don't often have to face unknown quantities -- replacement players you've never seen before. During the regular season, there's a constant parade of guys who are up for a few days to fill in for an injured regular, or young prospects who are getting a late-season look-see by their club.

Nope. In the playoffs, the lineups are set, and most of the kids you saw in September are left off the tightly controlled post-season roster. Managers tend to play everything close to the vest, and even if the young guys were still around, you would mostly see the tried-and-true veterans.

And that's good because... (?)

That's good because even though they may be sounder ballplayers than the new guys, you at least know what they're capable of, and how to pitch to them. Some of them, you can get with ridiculous roundhouse curveballs that a high school kid ought to be able to catch up with. Some will go for the breaking pitch, outside and low, even though when fans see it on television, they shake their heads and think, "Hey, even I wouldn't have swung at that!"

Some -- even some of the established, successful veteran hitters -- can't catch up to a good inside fastball. At least, that's what I'm told. My own fastball isn't quite up to the standard necessary to test this assertion.

What makes it all interesting, of course, is that even if you know a hitter's weaknesses, you can't always exploit them. First of all, you've gotta make the pitch, and it's got to go where you want it to go. You miss -- even by a little -- and instead of exploiting a hitter's weakness, he's exploiting yours.

Second, even if you know his weakness and are able to make the pitch, you seldom can rely on that same pitch, over and over again. Not during the same at-bat, against the same hitter. So what, if maybe he fouls off your breaking ball low and outside. Fine. That's strike one. The art of pitching involves either figuring out how to make him swing at two more, or inducing the hitter to make contact with the ball, fair-but-not-cleanly.

That's how I've survived thus far; by inducing them to hit ground balls to my infielders. All the dudes I've struck out in the big leagues, added up together, might total one outing for Pedro Martinez. (But, hey, Pedro would have had to pitch all nine innings, and it would have required an exceptionally good game on his part.)

So here we were, opening the seven-game ALCS against the White Sox. We had an edge on them in face-to-face encounters during the regular season. We had a higher team batting average. Our pitchers had a better team.ERA, and we'd hit more homers, scored more runs, and won five more games, overall, than the Sox.

So why bother to play it out on the field at all? Right?

They won the opener, at their house, 9-1.

Shit.

OK, so that wasn't the end of the world. We needed to split in the opening two games in their park, and then go home for three -- maybe the only three we'd need. We did get the second game, 8-6 in 13 innings, and I got to pitch, briefly and inconsequentially, in the 11th inning.