PHILADELPHIA - If it were you, or me, or most other people enduring the deja vu of Monday night, we'd run screaming from any further mention of Game 4, or the Philadelphia Phillies, or Matt Stairs.
Jonathan Broxton is not you or me, and one of the absolute requirements of his job is a short memory. That is about to be tested, severely.
The Los Angeles Dodgers' closer gave up a crushing home run to the Phillies' Stairs a year ago in Game 4 at Dodger Stadium, setting up Philadelphia's clincher in the National League Championship Series.
In one of those cruel ironies that makes baseball so morbidly fascinating, Broxton had another shot at saving a Game 4 Monday night, and he coughed it up again. This time, Jimmy Rollins got the fastball he was looking for on a 1-1 pitch, and sent it into the gap in right center to score two runs, giving the Phillies a 5-4 victory and pushing the Dodgers a little closer to the dead of winter.
Again, Broxton is forced to try to forget.
"I've just got to shake it off and get out there tomorrow," he said quietly, standing up to a phalanx of notepads, microphones and cameras after his moment of failure.
"When you come back, you'll be put out there in the same situation. I just have to have a short memory."
Broxton saved 36 games during the regular season in his first full year as a closer. He also blew six saves, the most dramatic of which may have been the next-to-last Sunday of the regular season, when his team had a chance to clinch the division and he let a three-run lead get away in Pittsburgh.
But that was comparatively small, a regular-season game that only LA and Pittsburgh (and, OK, Colorado) cared about.
This is a nationwide stage, the step that leads to the World Series. Reputations are made in the postseason, good and bad.
Right now, the people who don't see Broxton every day will remember him as the guy who keeps stumbling in Game 4.
They will see how he walked pinch hitter Stairs on four pitches with one out in the ninth inning Monday, certain that the memories of last October were haunting him even if he says they weren't.
They'll see the pitch that hit Carlos Ruiz, moving the tying run to second, and they'll wonder if the pressure and the magnitude of the moment got to him.
They'll forget that he retired pinch hitter Greg Dobbs on a soft liner for the second out. But they'll remember the steady diet of fastballs to Rollins, especially the last one, whacked into the gap in right center.
If Broxton allows himself to dwell on all of that, if he doesn't purge it from his memory bank, he might as well retire right now, at age 25.
In the meantime, the other guys in his clubhouse will have to help him get past it.
"The only thing I can do is give him a pat, let him know I'm behind him 100 percent," said starting pitcher Randy Wolf.
"He's a big reason why we have the best bullpen in the big leagues. In the closer role you have to have a very tough skin and a very short memory. But it's happened to him before and he's gotten over it."
George Sherrill, who is the eighth inning guy now but has been a closer -- and knows what it feels like to cough up a lead -- said Broxton would set the rules of engagement in dealing with this.
"You probably want to give him his space, especially a guy that big," he said with a wry smile. "You just let him know you're there. If he wants to talk, talk. If not, just give him his space."
And if it's necessary to talk him down from the ledge, there is this: Dennis Eckersley gave up one of the most famous home runs in World Series history, yet after the Kirk Gibson home run in 1988 he went on to save 326 more games and punch his ticket to the Hall of Fame.
In other words, there is life after failure.
(Reach Jim Alexander at jalexander(at)PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
Post new comment