2001 Diamondbacks Play Off

ARIZONA

DIAMONDBACKS

SPECIAL LOCAL SECTION

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SANDRA TENUTO

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BY YOUR AUTHOR

LUIS GONZALEZ Has there ever been a player improve more after 30 than Luis Gonzalez?

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ne puts the question to Joe Garagiola Senior, who one way or another has been around baseball since the ‘30s as a player, broadcaster, analyst, humorist, and doer of good deeds, and the first thing he does is correct one.

“Improved is if you’re a singles hitter and you start hitting more singles,” he says. “Luis is a CHANGED player.”

And having thus set one straight, he proceeds to answer the amended question.

“No,” he said. “I don’t recall anybody CHANGING (caps are Joe’s) that much after 30.”

Just so!

Before 30 Luis was a gap hitter who year in and year out would hit .270 or so, drive in 70 runs or so, and hit 15 home runs or so.

And that’s exactly the kind of solid, dependable, productive professional the Diamondbacks thought they were getting when he came to Phoenix from Detroit (along with a half million dollars cash) for outfielder Karim Garcia three days after Christmas in 1998(and they think the Brinks job was a big heist!).

And they would have peen perfectly satisfied had it turned out that’s “all” they got. Especially when you factored in his intangible value as a genuinely humble, immensely likeable community and clubhouse asset.

But what they actually did get, of course, was the poster boy for the post30 phenom syndrome. We’re talking careers highs his first year in hitting (.336), home runs (26), and RBI (111, not to mention a 30-game hitting ARI00

streak that touched off the first wave of Gonzo Fever in Bank One Ballpark.

Given his track record over his previous eight seasons in The Show, many felt these amazing numbers were just an aberration. But what they were was just openers.

His average did drop the second year, all the way to .311 (which was only

LEE SCHMID

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BY JOE GILMARTIN

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40 points higher than his pre-Phoenix lifetime average). But he set new career highs in home runs (26) and RBI (114).

But as the late Dizzy Dean likely would have observed, we still hadn’t seen nuthin’ yet!

This year Luis Emilio Gonzalez became the 19th player in major league history to hit 50 or more home runs in a season. Further, he was in the hunt for an even rarer Triple Crown until August, and not incidentally pretty much carried the Diamondbacks’ offense during long stretches when other big guns faltered.

And there’s still more!

As the regular season was winding down he was making a serious run at Babe Ruth_s 80-year-old major league record for total bases (457) in a season, and en route to that, the National League record (450) set by Rogers Hornsby 79 years ago.

And more yet!

In April Gonzo took his late-blooming power game where neither Bonds, nor Sosa, nor even McGwire (or for that matter even Ruth) ever went when he set a National League record and tied the major league record for home runs with 13 in the month.

And on his last at bat of the month he took a dramatic shot at breaking the mark he shares with Ken Griffey Jr. when he hit a blast that would have gone out of any other part of Bank One Ballpark except the exact part he did hit it, and he had to “settle” for a 407foot triple off the center field fence.

Finally, he completely blew his cover as one of the most under-recog-

LEE SCHMID

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nized super stars in baseball when he won the home run hitting contest at ARI00

the All-Star Game in Seattle.

Although the “change” in Gonzo took full flower in Phoenix, it actually started in Detroit the year before he got here.

“I’d always been a guy who used the whole field,” he says. “But you try to

learn to adapt to whatever park you’re playing in. And with that short porch in Tiger Stadium I would have been crazy not to try to pull some more balls. With that overhang in right, you could hit the ball 300 feet and get a home run.”

So Gonzo, whose previous high had been 15 home runs, hit 23 for the Tigers, and the transformation was successfully launched. But while the launching pad was Tiger Stadium, Gonzo credits his teammates and surroundings here with boosting it into orbit.

“In my whole career I’d always hit fifth behind power hitters like Jeff Bagwell, Tony Clark and Sammy Sosa,” he said. “But from the first day I walked in here I was put in the No. 3 spot in a good, veteran lineup. And in 1999, with Jay (Bell) in front of me, and Matty (Matt Williams) behind me, I got to see a lot of good pitches, and just got my confidence going. And that’s a big part of hitting. You feel good up there and start getting locked in, and good things happen.”

But despite his freshly minted membership in the MLB’s ultra-exclusive “50” Club, and his All-Star feat, he still insists he’s not a home run hitter.

“I’m really not,” he says. “I still go up there and try to use the middle of the field. I like to consider myself a guy who doesn’t strike out 100 times a year.

Most home run hitters are guys who do strikeout 100 times and try to reach the fence every time up. But my job basically is still to put the ball in play and hit the gaps.”

And while the power surge obviously hasn’t gone to his swing, it’s even less likely it will ever go to his head.

Gonzo’s no different now than he was back in his pre-30 years when he was batting .270 and only hitting 15 home runs. He’s still got the same work ethic, the same genuine humility, and the same team-oriented goals. In fact, he seems almost embarrassed by the attention his home run binges generated.

And while various explanations for his blossoming into full-blown stardom at a relatively “old” age have been offered, Diamondbacks’ manager Bob Brenly probably sums it up best with a mantra he never tires of repeating: “Gonzo’s a good hitter, Gonzo’s a smart hitter, Gonzo has a game plan.

And when Gonzo gets his pitch he doesn't miss it.”

That pretty much says it all.

CURT SCHILLING Curt Schilling could have taken the easy way out.

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fter being traded to the Diamondbacks last season in the midst of a pennant race, he struggled to a 5-6 record with Arizona—despite a solid 3.69 ERA—and could have blamed his performance on a sore right shoulder. Or the pressure that comes with being anointed a team’s savior.

He did neither.

“Was I completely healthy? No, absolutely not,” Schilling said. “But the fact of the matter is, you get paid to win. I started out 3-0 here and then didn’t pitch well. I had good enough stuff every time I took the ball to win— I just didn’t pitch well enough.”

Obviously, 2001 has been a completely different story. By mid-September, Schilling was 20-6—baseball’s lone 20-game winner—with a 2.85 ERA and 257 strikeouts in 227 2/3 innings.

The biggest difference?

“Health,” Schilling said without hesitation. “I’m completely healthy.”

He began the 2000 season on the disabled list recovering from arthroscopic shoulder surgery and started 16 games with Philadelphia—going 6-6 with a 3.91 ERA—before joining the D-Backs July 26. Arizona had to send four players to the Phillies for Schilling—Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa, Vincente Padilla and, most notably, bonus baby Travis Lee—so when the veteran right-hander wasn’t able to carry the Diamondbacks into the postseason, he was criticized, and many wondered why the trade was made in the first place.

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LEE SCHMID

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BY JUSTIN DOOM

“You take the good with the bad when it comes to criticism,” Schilling said, shrugging. “I pitch for two reasons: I pitch for the respect of my

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JOEL ZOLONDEK

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teammates and the respect of my opponents.”

Which is blatantly obvious.

“Last year, when he came over, it

wasn’t a full year yet since his surgery,” Luis Gonzalez said. “He’s a lot stronger and healthier (now), and from day one, he’s been a workhorse for us.”

Said manager Bob Brenly: “Most people in baseball say it takes 12 to 18 months to come back from something like that (shoulder surgery). And he was pitching—and pitching effectively—but nowhere near the level he’s at this year.

Shilling said that he’s also made some pitching adjustments this season “He’s only made one,” said future hall-of-famer Tony Gwynn. “He’s throwing his curveball.

“It’s really the only thing. He still has that fastball, his splitty, but he’s throwing his curveball a lot more and he’s throwing it for a strike. Before, when he was in Philly, and when he first came over here (Arizona), he’d mix in a slider, he’d mix in a curveball, but he wouldn’t throw very many of them so you could always count on a fastball or split.

“Now he’s mixing in his curveball.

He throws it at times where you just don’t expect it. Other than that, it’s just the same old Schilling. He’s always been aggressive, he always comes right at you. And he knows how to pitch.”

Said Brenly: “He’s got four good pitches and on a given day, it he’s got his really good fastball, he can basically get by with his fastball and split all day. Other days, maybe he doesn’t have quite the same feel for his splitfinger and he’ll go more with the curveball.”

Much has been made this season of the Koufax-Drysdale comparison to Randy Johnson and Schilling, and rightly so. The Diamondbacks’ pair of aces have carried the team throughout the season and—in addition to the monster year Gonzalez is having — is the main reason Arizona’s spent most of the year in first place.”

“It’s an honor to be mentioned in the same breath as those two guys,” Schilling said, “but Randy and I aren’t going to win this thing for us. It’s going to take solid starts from four or five guys the rest of the way out.”

It’s also going to take continued dominance from the two best pitchers in the National League this season, in what’s quickly becoming one of the tightest pennant races in recent memory.

“It’s a good kind of pressure,” Schilling added. “It’s fun.”

Certainly a lot more fun when completely healthy.