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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > May > 03 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USEven Smoltz has his limits
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sooner rather than later, especially since the man himself confessed on Saturday at Turner Field that his time left in baseball shouldn’t include an “s” behind the word “year,” folks will get it when it comes to John Smoltz, but only after he’s gone from the game with his Hall of Fame arm.
Right now, they don’t get it.
They really don’t.
Game after game, year after year, decade after decade, Smoltz pitches and prospers no matter what. He mostly does so in obscurity, at least when compared to the extent of his aches and pains. That’s why the Braves right-hander has spent this year hurting more than you think. We’re talking about much more.
In other words, you should place an asterisk by Smoltz’s splendid numbers, spanning from his 2.00 ERA to his 36 strikeouts in 27 innings to his .214 opponents’ batting average. There even were those seven innings that he threw during the night in which he became just the 16th player in baseball history to strike out 3,000 or more hitters.
Through it all, with those in the batter’s box grimacing more than the man on the mound, Smoltz was in pain.
How much pain? “I would say significant,” said Smoltz, describing the depth of that pain for the first time to a visitor at his locker before the Braves’ 9-1 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. “Significant to the point where I could not throw the ball between starts.
“You know, when you talk about pain, it’s relative to the person, but not necessarily consistent to everybody. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m tougher than anybody else, but I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve just gotten used to the certain threshold of pain. I can power my way through, but I cannot finesse my way through.”
Still, Smoltz just pitches and prospers no matter what. Not only that, he always is contemplating ways to keep doing so. We needn’t go further than the last few days, when he gave more reasons why he ranks among the most unappreciated athletes of all time.
For instance: After he heals from his current stint on the disabled list with his severely inflamed biceps tendon and inflammation of his rotator cuff, he said he’s willing to end his second coming as a starter with a return to the closer role. This is the same Smoltz who agreed to interrupt his sprint to Cooperstown as a starter for the opening 14 years of his more than two decades in the pro game to become a needed force in the bullpen for 3-1/2 years.
Great players usually aren’t that flexible, and even if they are, they usually aren’t that great anymore afterward. Now Smoltz is on the verge of another dramatic career change just 11 days shy of his 41st birthday, and he’s doing so willingly.
“Whether it’s starting, closing, starting, closing, I will try to figure out a way,” said Smoltz. “But what I won’t do is continue to pitch in pain just for the sake of pitching.
“I’m at a point in my career that I want to enjoy my life, and I really don’t want to go through the type of pain that I’ve had to go through, to be honest.”
He’s gone through it this season without mumbling a word. Despite the eternal throbbing, extending from the tendon stretching from his right elbow toward his shoulder, he threw five strong innings in his first start, and then he went six innings in his second. He went five innings after that before his “adrenaline” game that featured his 3,000th strikeout and a season-high seven innings.
What followed was April 27 in New York, where all of Smoltz’s considerable guts couldn’t keep the Mets from managing seven hits and four earned runs against him in four innings.
He was off to the disabled list after that, and he plans to return potent enough to help what he calls a “great” team reach the playoffs.
Then what? Retirement, or more of the same for an ultimate warrior? Smoltz eased into a smile, saying, “If anything, I’m taking just a year [at a time].”
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