Greetings, readers. As baseball season crawls nearer with spring training only a month away and fantasy leagues forming and planning their drafts, here are my thoughts on closers.
“Closer,” as a sports term, is generally reserved for baseball, but in a broader sense every sport has its closers. Brandon Roy was a closer for Portland. He wanted the ball in the final seconds and when he had it good things often happened. Place kickers are closers. They enter in the final seconds with the game on the line and their job is to be successful. Even individual sports, like golf, need a closer or at least a closer mentality. Tiger Woods and his red sweater signified a closing frame of mind to him, his opponent, and all who watched. For years, Phil Mickelson needed a “red sweater” to close out leads and win.
Famous players performed famously in the closing seconds of games. Joe Montana, Larry Bird, and Wayne Gretzky all carried the label superstar partly because they refused to lose. They won the close games in such dramatic ways that many of those games earned the name miracle. Video of those games still run on television. After Alex Smith made the big plays last weekend, video of Joe throwing the pass to Dwight Clark thirty years ago in what became known as “The Catch” filled the cable channels.
“Closer” moments were immortalized by the voice of Jim McKay in the iconic opening of ABC’s Wide World of Sports in his description of “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.” When it happens, a closer is close by.
There isn’t a sports fan alive that switches the channel when he sees the replays of those moments, or stops describing the game he attended when victory was snatched from defeat. It’s the reason we watch. Miracles in sports. Miracles, other than sports miracles, are hard to come by.
Think about how many times you’ve been in the stands for a game like that. What’s your number? If it’s more than a couple you many need to adjust your standards. For me the number’s one. Blazer game back in the ‘80’s against Philadelphia with less than a second and the Blazers one down and coming out of a time out with the ball out on the side. They maybe had enough time for a catch and shoot, or maybe not. (Think Wisconsin in the just played Rose Bowl.) I don’t remember who threw the lob but it went to Billy Ray Bates who caught it at the rim and rammed it home at the buzzer for the win. Much later, as the cheers died, I thought to myself I’d never see a more exciting ending of a Blazer game. It was the last Blazer game I ever paid to see. I’ve missed a few great ones, but television is more omnipresent. I still see those precious moments at home. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not the same thing, but better than no moments at all.
Closers are athletes who have a frame of mind that doesn’t collapse with the game or the match on the line. Their game stands fast in the face of self-doubt and the risk of failure. In baseball, the closer appears in every close game. Often he inherits a last gasp moment. It takes magic and steel to walk to the mound with your friends and fans looking to you for sealing the deal. Are closers immune to the pressure the rest of us would feel? No. They still face self-doubt and failure on nearly a nightly basis, but they deal with it better than we do.
Closers are all about stats. They aren’t pretty boys with sleek physiques and handsome faces. They have bizarre windups and often even more bizarre personal habits. They don’t make the covers of magazines. Closers are about saves.
The closer is expected to get three outs and not allow any runs. When they do, they receive a “Save.” Aside from a rise in blood pressure, the team doesn’t care how many pitches it takes because pitch count for the closer is not an issue. Forty pitch innings aren’t that rare. Closers work along the edges of the strike zone. The best aren’t afraid to issue a discretionary walk, but never two in the inning. Their fastball is in the high 90’s and some even surpass 100 MPH. A closer with a strong second pitch is often getting paid more per pitch than any other pitcher on the team.
Baseball and football are the only sports that have specialists to win games. In football a kicker inside his range is expected to make the field goal — if the snapper and holder do their jobs.
In basketball, hitting the game winning shot is different from game to game, and in the hands of position players. Great players are more successful than others because they are better shots. If other team sports could be said to have a closing strategy it’s have your best players in the lineup at the right moment.
When it comes to selecting a closer for your fantasy league team, do the research. Read everything you can find on the guy. Did he stay healthy in the often season? How his home life? All that stuff counts. As your closer goes, so goes your season.
For the 2012 season, the Extra P_int is joining the world of fantasy baseball. Stay tune as the draft approaches.
Thanks for reading.
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