High five

These guys went above the call and had career years for the Sox

By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff, 10/1/2003

OAKLAND, Calif. -- When Bill Mueller was still with the San Francisco Giants, assistant general manager Ned Colletti said, the third baseman was so unfailingly polite that Colletti and general manager Brian Sabean would call him ``Eddie Haskell,'' after the character on "Leave It To Beaver.''

"It was always, `How it's going, Mr. Sabean?' and `How's it going, Mr. Colletti?' with Bill,'' Colletti said the other day. ``We loved him. We traded him on a Friday to the Cubs for Tim Worrell, but then we heard he was planning to go to the Cal-Stanford football game the next day, which is the big game around here. So we called back the Cubs and asked them to hold off on announcing the deal for at least a couple of days, because we didn't want him going to `The Game' as anything but a Giant.

"Am I surprised by anything he has done with the Red Sox? He could always hit, so winning the batting title was no surprise. The power? Not for a guy who always has worked like Billy Mueller does. It's such a cliche, and people hate to hear it, but Billy Mueller is a ballplayer."

Mueller is a ballplayer who after eight seasons in the big leagues in which he never hit above .300 won his first batting title at age 32, one of five players on this playoff-bound Red Sox team who have enjoyed career years. David Ortiz, discarded by the Minnesota Twins after last season for financial reasons, set career highs in home runs (31), RBIs (101), and batting average (.288) and, like Mueller, is in contention for the American League's Most Valuable Player award. Catcher Jason Varitek, fully recovered from the elbow surgery he had in June 2001, set career highs in home runs (25) and RBIs (85). Kevin Millar, who was bound for Japan until Sox general manager Theo Epstein interceded, set career highs in home runs (25) and RBIs (96) while raising the fun quotient, in tandem with Ortiz, to a level unseen in the Sox clubhouse for at least a generation. And Trot Nixon, despite missing the last three weeks with a strained left calf muscle, eclipsed career bests in batting average (.306) and home runs (28) and his 87 RBIs put him within reach of his high total (94) until he was hurt.

"It was a situation where we just fed off each other," Nixon said. "It seems like every week there was a new hero --Ortiz, Millar, Manny [Ramirez], Varitek, maybe me, Johnny Damon, Todd Walker. It was unbelievable. It was not just Manny and Nomar [Garciaparra] and Ortiz.

"Remember, Ortiz struggled early, then all of a sudden he just exploded the last two months. We just fed off each other. There will probably be another team down the line that breaks the records we set as a team, but it may take a while."

One Sox official said the team had its eye on Mueller for some time. Mueller was poised to re-sign with the Cubs, but when Chicago offered him only a one-year deal, Epstein trumped that with a two-year, $4.2 million deal with a club option for a third year.

"You know my feelings about the guy," said Sox utilityman Damian Jackson, who knew Mueller from their National League days together. "He's just a serious, serious professional hitter who takes a lot of pride in his job, and according to the numbers mastered the craft this year."

Mueller won't do TV interviews. "Just don't like 'em," he says.

When he won the batting title, Jackson said, "He gave me a little smile. I gave him a big hug. He just doesn't like to draw attention to himself. He's extremely humble, and that's real."

Sox catcher Doug Mirabelli was a teammate of Mueller in San Francisco, where Mueller played his first five seasons, then returned at the tail end of the 2002 season. (The Worrell deal came in November 2000.)

"There's a consistency about the way he goes about his job every year," Mirabelli said. "He's very competitive and really into every game he's ever been in. He knows the strike zone. He knows what strikes he doesn't hit well, and he doesn't often come out of his routine."

While the Sox had targeted Mueller in the offseason, it was different with Ortiz. He was just one of a half-dozen names on a list Epstein had of prospective first baseman-DH types.

"His power numbers with us were not surprising," the Sox executive said, "because when he hits the ball he's a left-center hitter. A lot of his outs in Minnesota were to left-center. You could see that on any hitting chart. Those balls in our park are off the Wall or in the Monster seats.

"The big question was his defense. He can catch the ball, but he has trouble with ground balls. We saw him as a part-time first baseman and DH, which he was until the [Shea] Hillenbrand deal. We thought he'd probably get around 250 at-bats."

The Hillenbrand trade not only netted the Sox a closer, Byung Hyun Kim, but opened the way for Ortiz, Mueller, and Millar to all play regularly. Instead of four players battling for at-bats, there were three.

Buck Martinez, who is back in the TV booth after managing the Blue Jays for part of two seasons, said, "I worked the A's-Twins series last year, and even then [Ortiz] was sending the message, `I can get the big hit for you.' He's a very patient hitter, yet a very aggressive hitter who is just what you want in a hitter, a guy who can drive the ball quite a way.

"And he's oblivious to pressure. I don't know if I've ever seen a team bring in three first-year players like Ortiz, Millar, and Mueller who have made such an impact both on and off the field. None of those guys are afraid to stick their fingers in someone's face and tell them, `We're here to win.'

"Ortiz has been in the playoffs, so that gave him the right to say that. But no one here really knew Mueller or Millar. I was sitting on the Yankees bench one day with Don Zimmer, and he pointed to first [Millar] and third [Mueller] and said, `You know, I don't even know their names, but those guys are ballplayers, that's what they are.

"And they've made this a throwback kind of club, an old-fashioned kind of team. `Let's play hard, let's have a good time, and let's get after it.' "

Jerry Narron, the Red Sox bench coach, is a former catcher who works regularly in drills with Varitek. Narron, who managed Texas before coming here, was asked what he has learned about Varitek.

"Just the way he goes about his business," Narron said. "He has a tremendous work ethic, a very selfless, a very intelligent player. I think it takes a full year at least to come back from the kind of injury he had. I think we all felt he would have a big year with the bat, but I'm most impressed with the way he cares about his pitchers. For me, he'd be in the elite group of catchers even if he didn't get a hit all year, because of the way he works with the pitchers, and cares about them.

"I told my son, Connor, `Watch him play every day, and try to be like him every day.' "

Nixon believes that by adding a toe tap to his batting stance, Varitek has harnessed the strength in his lower body, which has allowed him to generate even more power.

"We always knew Tek was a guy who could crush the ball," Nixon said, "but he's gotten the lower half of his body into the ball this year, and has a much better weight transfer. He just flies through the ball now."

Buck Martinez is another unabashed Varitek fan. Told that Varitek is due $6.7 million in the last year of his contract, Martinez said, "He's a bargain. He put in so much time working with his pitchers, maybe his hitting suffered early on. But now where he's gotten the feel for his pitchers, he can concentrate more on his hitting.

"But how often do you see a young catcher, an offensive player, come into the big leagues and put so much effort on his catching and pitching staff? Give me a guy who cares as much about his pitching staff as he does, and you'll win."

When Epstein took the job, he said the superstars were in place. His job was to surround them with enough talent to make the Sox lineup strong from top to bottom. He accomplished that feat, in great measure because of five players who had career seasons against which they will now measure future performance.

And what makes a career year a great year?

"When you're here," Nixon said, "playing in October."