Moneyball by Lewis, Michael (mobile ebook reader txt) 📕

He needed to reinstruct his hand how to be a part of a catcher’s body; he needed to relearn how to do a simple thing he had done his entire life, the simple thing he now did for a living.

The Boston Red Sox had given up on him—just last week, had traded him to the Colorado Rockies for infielder Pokey Reese. He was in his sixth year in the big leagues and eligible for arbitration and the Rockies quickly made it clear to him that they weren’t going to risk having some arbitrator say they had to pay Scott Hatteberg $1.5 million. A million and a half dollars actually wasn’t much for a guy who’d spent five years in the big leagues, but the Rockies thought it was three times what he was worth. Thinking no one else would take an interest in a catcher who couldn’t throw, they immediately granted Hatteberg his free agency. Then they proposed a deal: five hundred grand for one year. That was a 50 percent pay cut from the $950,000 he’d made in Boston the year before. Hatteberg refused. At midnight December 20, 2001, the Rockies’ rights to Scott Hatteberg expired; one minute later, at 12:01 A.M., Paul DePodesta, assistant general manager of the Oakland A’s, telephoned Hatteberg’s agent.

This was truly odd. Hatteberg hadn’t the slightest idea why the Oakland A’s were so interested in him. All he saw was that one major league baseball team treated him like a used carpet in a Moroccan garage sale, twenty-eight other teams had no interest in him whatsoever, and one team was so wildly enthusiastic about him they couldn’t wait till the morning to make him an offer. They pestered his agent on Christmas Day! When the Rockies heard that the Oakland A’s had called Hatteberg’s agent and initiated a bidding war, the team improved its offer. They wound up nearly matching Oakland’s money. So what? They wanted him just in case. Just in case something happened to some other guy. Billy Beane wanted him to play. Billy Beane wanted him to hit. Hatteberg told his agent to cut a deal with Oakland: one year with a club option for a second, with a base salary of $950,000 plus a few incentive clauses. The moment he signed it, a few days after Christmas, he had a call from Billy Beane, who said how pleased he was to have him in the lineup.

And, oh yes, he’d be playing first base.

Baseball players share with airline pilots the desire, when they aren’t working, to live in sensory deprivation chambers. In the off-season they can be found in clusters in central Florida, or the Phoenix suburbs. Hatteberg and his wife, Bitsy, had bought a house on a golf course just south of Tacoma, Washington. It wasn’t their dream house—they’d have to wait until he finished playing ball for the place on the water. It was a real estate antidote to professional baseball. It would hold its value and could be quickly and tearlessly sold. When he was on the road, he knew that his girls were safe. Here a barking dog counted as crime.

Late at night, the dogs knew not to bark. Puttering around, surrounded by walls of silence, trying and failing to get comfortable with what Billy Beane had just said, he came across relics of his career. Old catcher’s mitts, and old bats with his name branded into the barrel. Pictures of him at Washington State, where for three years he’d been the catcher. A framed jersey he’d worn as the catcher for Team USA in the 1990 Goodwill Games. Another he’d worn as the catcher for the Boston Red Sox. Catcher. He was a catcher. He’d been a catcher since he was ten years old. Two weeks ago he’d turned thirty-two. Twenty-two years behind the plate.

His living-room window looked out onto a blue-green fairway freshly carved out of a blameless Washington forest. Most guys golfed in the off-season; he preferred fly-fishing. The moisture on the fairway glistened in the artificial light. This time of year it was dark nearly half the time, and when it wasn’t dark it was raining.

First base!

Billy Beane had promised not to tell the press that he’d hired Scott Hatteberg to replace Jason Giambi. He couldn’t replace Giambi. Two guys couldn’t do it…. First base!

Scott Hatteberg realized that he had to do something. He was going nuts. He thought of the pair of asphalt tennis courts down the road, built as a sop to the few prisoners of this gated community who didn’t play golf. A few days after Christmas he strapped his daughters into their car seats, alongside his wife, his batting tee, a bucket of old baseballs, and a brand-new first baseman’s mitt. The girls he dropped in the sandbox beside the courts, Bitsy he asked to hit grounders at him off the batting tee. Mrs. Scott Hatteberg listed herself at five foot one, 100 pounds. She wasn’t built to hit in the big leagues. She didn’t even look capable of grounding out to first base.

Bitsy had noticed something about her husband. Even though he’d been in the big leagues for five years, and had been the starting catcher for the Boston Red Sox, he had never really thought of himself as a big league ballplayer. The other players volunteered their autographs to fans before games. He never did, not because he didn’t care to, but because he was worried they wouldn’t know who he was. He doesn’t admit this; she senses it’s true all the same. And she doesn’t particularly like it. It isn’t that she wants baseball fans to know who her husband is. She wants him to know that they know who he is. And so, from the end of December to the start of spring training, in the drizzling rain, with her daughters wailing that they want to go home, she whacks big league ground balls at her husband.

Ron Washington was the infield coach for