Thirty-two years ago, when pitcher Chuck Finley got called up to the California Angels directly from the Single-A California League, one of the first people he ran into in the clubhouse was Reggie Jackson, who was 19 years into what would prove to be a Hall of Fame career.The celebrity slugger asked Finley what kind of year he was having at Triple-A. Finley swallowed hard, afraid to tell him he had never even touched Double-A. He just kind of stuck his left thumb in the air.
“I kept my mouth shut,” Finley said. “That may have been the smartest thing I ever did. If I had told him, he would have looked around and been like, ‘Are we even fucking trying?’ “
The game has changed since the years when rookies were afraid to open their mouths for fear of retribution from grumpy veterans and that is a good thing by most accounts, but vestiges of the old school remain. The relationship between the two best relievers on the St. Louis Cardinals is defined by one stubborn adherent of said old ways: closer Bud Norris.
The 33-year-old Norris has been mercilessly riding 21-year old rookie Jordan Hicks since spring training, reminding him to be at meetings on time and publicly calling him out when he is lagging in any of the details a visitor might not notice, but other players do. Perhaps Hicks will one day appreciate the treatment?
“Probably not,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny admitted with a chuckle. “But Bud’s going to do continue to do what he thinks is right as a veteran, so you respect that.”
Matheny said he has had conversations with Hicks to remind him that Norris’ badgering is a way to show he is invested in his success. Matheny sees Norris’ actions as an effort to carry on the dying tradition of teaching younger players in the harshest possible ways. Matheny himself faced that on the Milwaukee Brewers when he broke in as a young catcher 24 years ago.
“I think the game has progressively gotten a little softer,” Matheny said. “Man, it had some teeth not that long ago.”
Hicks, the hardest throwing right-handed pitcher in baseball, isn’t a fan of the treatment. Asked if he thinks it will one day pay dividends in his career, he said, “I have no idea. No comment.”
The roots of Norris’ saltiness, if you want to call it that, lay in the soil of his early years with the Houston Astros, when he was asked to take on a leadership position before he was ready. Norris was the closest thing the Astros — in their tanking phase — had to a veteran since he had reached arbitration, but he was struggling to establish himself. Most of his teammates were either being traded away or shuttled back and forth between Triple-A and the big leagues. Norris called it a “swamp.”
Before that mid-career phase, Norris was the young victim of veterans’ pranks. Astros teammates once drove his 14-year-old Acura out onto the warning track before a game and advertised it for sale using shaving cream. They were trying to send him a message that big-league players drive fancier cars.
Two years later, most of those veterans were gone and Norris was supposed to patrol the room.
“Everyone was looking to me to be the leader and I wasn’t ready for that,” he said. “I didn’t need the extra stuff on my plate. I really just should have been learning my craft and it definitely set me back mentally. It wasn’t a positive environment. Losing that many games for that many years makes it a pretty negative environment. I didn’t enjoy going to the ballpark most days and it messed up my personal life.”
Six teams later, Norris is thriving as the Cardinals closer. He has a 2.87 ERA, a 0.929 WHIP and 2.55 FIP. And Hicks, who has thrown a fastball at 105 mph, has been his ace setup guy, pitching to a 2.56 ERA, a 1.073 WHIP and 3.55 FIP.
The odd couple dynamic between the two pitchers isn’t an accident. Norris said he decided early on he wasn’t going to allow Hicks to let loose work habits affect his readiness to perform. Hick was originally optioned back to minor-league camp this spring for being late repeatedly, but the team couldn’t resist the allure of his electric right arm. The Cardinals relented going into Opening Day and he has been on the roster all season.
Like Finley several generations earlier, Hicks never pitched at the final two rungs on the minor-league chain. He was in Class A baseball last season.
“He’s learning,” Norris said. “He’s admitting when he’s wrong and he’s admitting when he’s right. We’re working together, but he still has a lot to learn on the pitching side, on the professional side of things, how to hold himself accountable for some things and just being a pro, coming to work every day and being ready to work, doing the little things, because they add up in the long run.”
Question Norris’ methods with Hicks if you like, but you can’t deny him his experiences. The game has a way of kicking you around if you stick in it long enough and Norris remembers each of the slights. The most recent came last season, when – he says – the Los Angeles Angels switched him from the bullpen to the starting rotation just before an incentive for relief appearances kicked in to sweeten the one-year, $1.75 million contract he signed there.
“It is what it is, you know?” Norris said.
Though Hicks it the most frequent target of Norris’ attention, he isn’t the only reliever who has sometimes prompted him to speak up. Matheny said he invited Norris to take leadership of the bullpen and he has responded by giving him occasional reports of pitchers not living up to the standards the team set in spring training. At times, Matheny said, he has levied team fines after Norris’ reports.
“I get regular updates,” Matheny said. “But that’s good. I invited him into that. We need leadership with each sub-culture of the team, including the bullpen, and he’s keeping an eye. He’s a stickler for what we established early on.”
The Cardinals’ unofficial keeper of the old school might not be the most popular player among his peers at all times. That doesn’t mean he’s going to change any time soon. The on-field results dictate whether something is working or not and, right now, the Cardinals’ two-man relief tandem is getting it done, no matter how squeamish it can get behind the scenes.