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Lee's stellar pitching lifts Texas, but free agency is looming
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By Bob Nightengale
October 25, 2010
Arlington, TX — As the Texas Rangers convened behind closed clubhouse doors July 9, manager Ron Washington announced to his players the move that forever changed the franchise.
"We have traded," Washington said, "for Cliff Lee."
"I grabbed my cell," starting pitcher C.J. Wilson recalls, "and sent a message to my friends. 'We are going to the World Series.' "
Three months later, the Rangers are in the World Series for the first time in franchise history, facing the San Francisco Giants beginning Wednesday at AT&T Park.
And Lee, 32, already with two of the most dominant postseasons by a left-hander on his résumé, is starting Game 1.
"He's not the Dalai Lama," Wilson says. "He's a human being. But he's sure made all of us better versions of ourselves."
There perhaps has never been a player who has changed the postseason landscape more. Lee has elevated one team to new heights, and left others wondering how their fate may have differed if they acquired him.
"I don't know whether we would have made the playoffs without him," general manager Jon Daniels says, "but I do know we wouldn't be here without him."
Now that the Rangers have him, at least for another week or so, they've seen enough to know they don't want to experience the future without him.
"He's already made an indelible imprint," Rangers managing partner Chuck Greenberg says, "but it's not done. In our mind, this is a book with many chapters to be written over a long period.
"And we're looking forward to every bit of it."
Difference-maker
The Seattle Mariners thought their offseason acquisition of Lee would position them to win the American League West. Instead, their season slipped away, and sitting 14 games out of first place on July 3, they dangled Lee on the trade block.
If the Minnesota Twins had landed him, Lee would have potentially started twice in the AL Division Series — and might have eliminated the New York Yankees a round sooner than Texas did.
The Yankees nearly had Lee until the Rangers, leading the division by 5 games July 9, sweetened their proposal with first baseman Justin Smoak. The Yankees say with Lee, they would have beaten the Rangers.
And if the Philadelphia Phillies never traded him to Seattle last winter, maybe they are in the World Series today.
"I think wherever Cliff would have gone, we would have been in the Series," says wife Kristen, 31. "I don't think he would want me to say that."
Lee, a soft-spoken Arkansas native, may never utter those words. There is no swagger to him. But he does possess a conviction that this is his time of year, and when he steps on the mound, he's going to beat you.
He has pitched eight times in the postseason, this year and last — when the Phillies lost the World Series in six games to the Yankees — and still has never lost a game. He's 7-0 with a 1.26 ERA.
This year's numbers are numbing: 3-0, 0.75 ERA, 34 strikeouts and one walk in 24 innings.
"He has as good of command," says Nolan Ryan, Rangers President and Hall of Fame pitcher, "as anybody I've ever seen."
Lee's command was so exceptional that he walked only 18 batters for the season, becoming just the third pitcher in history to pitch at least 200 innings while walking fewer than 20 batters. The feat was last accomplished by Red Lucas of Cincinnati in 1933.
"Confidence will give you peace of mind," Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux says, "and he definitely has that. And guys see that. When he showed up in the clubhouse, it was a moment of truth for some guys. It was a wake-up call saying, 'We're not messing around here. We want to win. You all in, or not?' "
When he sat in the clubhouse before Game 5 of the AL Division Series against Tampa Bay — then the biggest game in Rangers history — Daniels remembers Lee acting as nonchalant as if it were a spring training contest. He calmly pitched a six-hit, complete game, and Texas won its first postseason series in 50 years.
Lee's eerie calm, which leads to his confidence, may come from his 9-year-old son, Jaxon. Lee carried him in his arms, clutching him tightly, during the celebration on the field after the Rangers won the pennant.
Jaxon was just four months old when he was diagnosed with acute myelogen leukemia. He was given a 30% chance to live, Kristen says. He went through chemotherapy, and later radiation treatment and a stem cell transplant. Today, he is in remission, and a vibrant, healthy boy.
"After we went through that," Kristen says, "Cliff knows that baseball isn't life or death."
The experience, Lee says, has taught him to live in the moment.
"Any time you get a chance to get to the World Series is incredible," Lee says. "We really feel this is our year. If we keep playing the way we have, I expect good things to happen.
"I think we'll be holding the trophy at the end."
Rangers or Yankees?
After the Rangers clinched the pennant with a Game 6 win against the Yankees, Lee was mobbed by reporters on the field, even though he did not pitch. He was scheduled for a potential Game 7. No matter, he was the one everyone wanted.
The main line of questioning: With a pennant in hand, will he turn his back on the Yankees and other deep-pocketed clubs come free agency this offseason?
"I love this city," Lee says. "I love my teammates. It's going to be a good team for years to come. For my family, this couldn't be a better situation.
"Free agency is when a player finally gets a choice, and I'm looking forward to that. There are so many things that can happen. I'm just more focused on helping this team win a World Series."
Then came the words that the Rangers will hang onto.
"If we do that," Lee says, "it would be hard to walk away."
It has been long assumed that Lee, who is earning $9.6 million this season, would end up a Yankee, given that they spent $243.5 million on two starters the last time they failed to reach the World Series in 2008. Those two starters now are ready to recruit him: CC Sabathia is one of Lee's best friends and a former teammate in Cleveland, and A.J. Burnett is another Arkansas native, who like Lee, is a client of agent Darek Braunecker.
Yet, Lee and Kristen say, the Dallas-Fort Worth area feels like home to their family, which includes daughter Maci, 7. They are just a 40-minute flight from their hometown of Benton, Ark.; they are moving into a restored 1927 house in Little Rock this winter.
They attended the same middle and high schools, and their families and friends still live there.
"That's the greatest thing, being so close to home," says Kristen, who says she is superstitious and refuses to answer her phone when Lee pitches.
"Cliff can fit in anywhere, but it makes my life a lot easier. We've never had a short commute before. Having a direct flight from Little Rock is great."
Says Greenberg, whose ownership group took over the team in August after winning an auction in U.S. bankruptcy court: "We think we have things to offer from a lifestyle standpoint that are enormous advantages.
"We can't control what the Yankees or any other club chooses to offer. We know we're going to have to be aggressive financially.
"We're not going into this with a pea shooter. The old Rangers are gone."
Perhaps the Rangers' greatest sales pitch simply was having Kristen sit in the visiting family section at Yankee Stadium during the playoffs. She says there were ugly taunts. Obscenities. Cups of beer thrown. Even fans spitting from the section above.
"The fans did not do good things in my heart," Kristen says.
"When people are staring at you, and saying horrible things, it's hard not to take it personal."
Who knows if the fans' behavior will have any affect on Lee's decision. Nothing ever unravels him, Kristen says, unless something interferes with him during deer hunting season, which starts Nov. 13 in Arkansas. Free agency can wait a little longer.
"Everyone in Arkansas thinks the world of him," says family friend Larry Crain, 69. "Little Rock has historically been Cardinals territory. But you see more and more Rangers fans now. They're even wearing his jersey."
When the Rangers' flight arrived in Dallas after they beat Tampa Bay in the Division Series, more than 1,000 fans waited at the airport, chanting Lee's name.
Now, besides asking Lee to help them win a World Series, they'll soon issue a formal request, asking he stay for the next five or six years.
"We don't want him going anywhere," second baseman Ian Kinsler says. "In the offseason, I'm probably going to call his phone, oh, a couple of hundred times.
"Yeah, he's been a nice pick-up."
• World Series News Archive Index:
2010, 2009
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