The day, clear and crisp in Seattle, will be remembered for Carlos Guillen’s slap bunt down the first-base line that finished a 2000 playoff sweep of the White Sox.
Those in the Mariners’ dugout who bothered to watch will remember it as well for the six innings pitched by White Sox starter James Baldwin.
“I knew he was hurting,” said Bryan Price, the Mariners’ pitching coach, “but he pitched his butt off. What did he give up, a run?”
If not a career.
Baldwin began that season winning 10 of 11 starts. He was the winning pitcher in the All-Star Game in Atlanta. He was dominant.
“It was right after the All-Star Game that I noticed the soreness,” he said recently in his new locale, the Mariners’ clubhouse. “I began losing velocity on my fastball. I didn’t say anything. I probably should have.”
Baldwin finally went on the disabled list in September but begged the Sox to let him pitch against the Mariners. What was left of him left in the seventh with the game tied 1-1.
“It was bad, bad, bad,” he said of his shoulder. “I look at the tapes now and wonder how I pitched at all. But you know what? I’m a competitor.”
It is exactly for those reasons–a once-dominant pitcher who has the gumption to get there again–that the Mariners signed Baldwin as a free agent.
They think they got a steal at $1.25 million, a starting pitcher who will give them the 200-plus innings Aaron Sele did, and in the playoffs might have the stuff to give them victories Sele didn’t.
If it works they’ve saved nearly $6 million in the transaction, money spent on getting Jeff Cirillo, signing Ruben Sierra and keeping Bret Boone.
“I think he’ll pitch very well for us,” said Price. “It wouldn’t surprise me to see him go out there and have a Paul Abbott-type of year, winning 16, 17, 18 games.
“No. 1, he’s healthy. And No. 2, he’s playing for the type of team that can give him the support he needs to win games.”
A year ago Baldwin split the season between the White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Even though he missed the first three weeks–he’d had surgery on the shoulder–he still pitched 175 innings, posting a record of 10-11 and an ERA of 4.42 in 28 starts.
“I think we’re the ones who will benefit from the surgery to James’ shoulder and the year he had coming back from it,” said Price. “There is nothing in the way he throws that suggests he’ll have any more problems. But with pitchers, as you know, it is a crap shoot.”
Baldwin, who says he’s never felt better, has an angry countenance on the mound, as if he’s a character created by the author of the same name.
“I’ve read some of his books,” said Baldwin, who isn’t named after the writer, “and he’s emotional. I’m emotional. He will let you know what is on his mind.”
In his own way, Baldwin wants the same intimidation.
“You have to be mean when you pitch,” he said.
“I want the hitter to know I’m focused. I want them to know I’m trying to get them before they get me.”
Baldwin grew up in the pine hills of North Carolina. His parents worked in what he called a “furniture mill.”
Baldwin was a high school football star, as a middle linebacker and a running back. He took recruiting visits to Clemson and North Carolina.
“I loved football; it was my game,” he said. “You have to play rough and I liked that.”
But when Baldwin, who is 6 feet 3 inches, 235 pounds, found that he could sign a baseball contract as soon as he graduated from high school–real money instead of a scholarship–he went with the Sox.
“Anything I got in those days was a big help to our family,” he said. “The White Sox paid me $65,000, and it made all the difference.”
Today, Baldwin lives 10 miles from where he grew up, although it seems further. He lives on course No. 4 at the famous Pinehurst Golf Resort.
“I could have never imagined that I’d be living at Pinehurst,” he said, “but I always knew I’d work hard enough to survive.”
Belying his visage, Baldwin seems as silly off the mound as he is serious on it. He has been a hit in the clubhouse, a nice man, father of two children, a guy who enjoys golf and music and is eager to be a part of a team he might be able to finish his career with.
“I always wanted to play for Lou Piniella,” he said.
“He loves to win and hates to lose. I’m like that.”
Baldwin chats with the young pitchers. Then he moves across the clubhouse to visit with his old buddy, former Sox center fielder Mike Cameron.
“I see happiness, togetherness in this clubhouse,” he said.
“These are people who did whatever it takes to win. I want to be with them.”
