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Ryan Howard refused to eat away his career
By Jeff Passan
October 27, 2009
Ryan Howard showed up for a commercial shoot earlier this year and his clothes didn’t fit. The producers knew he was a certain size, bought his wardrobe accordingly and didn’t understand what happened. The tags were right. Just Howard knew how to explain why everything looked so baggy, how a leviathan had become trim, fit and healthy – and not forgotten how to hit a home run better than anyone in the world.
“It’s survival,” Howard said last week, one day after his Philadelphia Phillies clinched their second straight National League pennant and began preparation for their World Series showdown against New York starting Wednesday night. Survival instincts course through Howard. He has spent his career fighting negative impressions. He was too old to still be in the minor leagues, or he struck out too much to succeed, or he wouldn’t ever touch breaking balls. One by one he swatted aside the stigmas, only to run into another this year that posed a legitimate threat to his future.
Howard was getting fat. Not just a wee plump, either. Between the long 2008 season and the celebrations for Philadelphia’s championship, Howard was carrying around 275 pounds on his 6-foot-4 frame. He knew the history of fat hitters, too. Mo Vaughn and Cecil Fielder and countless others faded in their early 30s, waistlines expanding and hitting zones contracting. Howard turns 30 in November. He refused to peter out like the others. So Ryan Howard, the one legitimate threat to the single-season home run record, the man who hit 200 faster than anyone in history, did something drastic.
And it might just save his career.
Some mornings Howard was told to show up with an empty stomach. Though it sounds like the beginning of a horror workout, the remaking of Ryan Howard is as rooted in science as anything, and Jason Riley advised Howard to do so intentionally: Early in the day, food was replaced with plenty of liquid and a belly full of amino acids, which would increase the fat-burning capability of his workouts.
Riley is the guru behind the Athletes Compound at Saddlebrook Resort, a boutique workout facility in Tampa, Fla., that caters to elite athletes who want to maintain their fitness or, in Howard’s case, overhaul it. In order to have lasting relevance – to be not just the first to 200 homers but 300 and 400 and beyond – he needed to evolve. He could hit home runs the rest of his career, content being one-dimensional, and that would be enough to make him beyond wealthy. Only that didn’t motivate him. Albert Pujols did. Howard saw the acclaim Pujols received for his glove and told his agent, Casey Close, he wanted to be like that. Close pointed Howard to Tampa.
“The biggest thing was Ryan knew something wasn’t going right,” Riley said. “That’s how Casey got him to commit. His energy level was low. He was constantly battling fatigue. Getting up was a struggle, let alone playing 162 games. We made it apparent that he can get through a season and feel good.”
After on-and-off workouts at the Athletes Compound before the 2008 season, Howard fully committed this offseason. In early January, he went to Tampa for a full-bore evaluation: a biomechanical assessment, a body-composition analysis, joint manipulation, conditioning tests and a nutritional breakdown. In the last category, Howard failed spectacularly. His heft wasn’t because he was lazy and didn’t work out. He just ate like any 29-year-old bachelor: poorly.
So he stayed in Tampa until spring training. He let the facility cook his meals. He ate organic for the first time. He cut out fat. He feasted on lean meats and whole grains. He ate chicken covered with an almond crust instead of bread. It was a million miles from Subway.
“I’m trying to play as long as I can,” Howard said. “To do that, I need to be in shape. I can’t be getting fat. It won’t work that way. And if I don’t start now, then by the time I’m supposed to go downhill, I will. I want to be able to maintain this shape. If I tackle it now, stay in front of it, I can beat it.”
The reason is twofold. Howard wants to continue contributing to a Phillies team that believed in him even as he toiled as a 25-year-old at Triple-A behind Jim Thome, gave him a chance and watched him hit at least 45 home runs and drive in 135 runs in each of his four full seasons. Just the same, Howard wants to remain relevant once his current contract expires after the 2012 season. Were Howard to inflate, he’d run the risk of pigeonholing himself a designated hitter. That would cut free-agent suitors in half, and if the deepest-pocketbook teams already have a DH, Howard would find himself in career limbo.
The rare fat guy stays in baseball uniforms well into his 30s. Most are pitchers. Babe Ruth was an exception. And perhaps Howard could be, too, though he’d rather not risk it, especially in an environment where getting any sort of long-term deal in your 30s necessitates an act of God.
“More and more clubs are looking at that line of demarcation,” Close said. “Anything you can do to keep Father Time away, you have to. Ryan and Derek [Jeter] look as good as I think they ever have. They’ve shaved three or four years off their bodies.”
Jeter, the Yankees’ shortstop, is another of Close’s clients. He trains with Riley as well, and a few times this offseason Jeter and Howard ended up at the gym simultaneously. In Jeter, Howard saw another paragon, someone who found his game fading as he hit baseball’s version of Social Security age – 35 – and resolved to make himself great again. Jeter’s greatest bugaboo was lateral movement, and his defense was as good this year as any this decade.
While Howard honed his footwork and other pieces of his game, his diet was the great equalizer. Gone were all fried foods. His body adjusted quickly. By the time spring training started, Howard had lost 20 pounds. His second chin disappeared. He looked three, four years younger. The trainers at Athletes Compound started calling him Calvin Klein, because they were convinced he could model. The Phillies treated him like one, handing him a three-year, $54 million extension in February.
“You could notice right away how good he looked,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said.
Howard didn’t stop at 255 pounds. The Athletes Compound agreed to call every hotel the Phillies stayed at this season and instruct the on-site chef to cook meals tailored specifically to Howard. During a trip to Washington, D.C., this summer, Howard talked nutrition with Sam Kass, the White House chef. This wasn’t about losing weight anymore. Howard had changed his life.
And if he were to step on the scale today, a year after he rumbled around the Phillies’ victory celebration, the readout might shock everyone else around the clubhouse but would merely make Howard grin: 242.
He gritted out the means, and the end is a beaut: Ryan Howard is in the best shape he can remember, in the World Series for the second straight year, playing the greatest first base of his career, hitting better in October than anyone not named Alex Rodriguez and even legging out a triple.
No, tectonic plates did not shift and the earth’s gravitational pull did not get jarred out of whack during Howard’s head-first slide into third base during Game 3 of the NL Championship Series. He wanted to punctuate it right, boldly and with some audacity, two more RBIs among the eight that helped him win the NLCS MVP award.
He’s not fatigued anymore. Not close.
“The guys that are good do it when it matters most, and his Septembers and Octobers have been ridiculous,” Phillies reliever Chad Durbin said. “The guy got hot, and whether guys were tired or not, it didn’t matter. He was going to carry the load. This postseason’s just another indication he’s going to keep doing it.”
For how long is the question. Howard’s metabolism continues to change. The temptations for a hamburger remain. And when all of those conspire to break Howard, he thinks of his career, what it means, how he can do anything – he came into this spring vowing to first-base coach Davey Lopes that he planned to steal bases, and he quadrupled his previous career total with eight – and plans on coming into spring training next season even lighter. Perhaps close to the 235 pounds he touched at one point this summer.
“I knew I could lose the weight,” Howard said. “It was a matter of doing it. And I knew I had to, because it’s tough to survive playing baseball.”
Back to that instinct again. Howard survived all of his strikeouts because of his run production. He survived a steady diet of breaking pitches and grew into single most productive major leaguer against sliders in 2009. He still hasn’t conquered his inability to hit left-handed pitching. He’s sure he can survive that, too.
Because this was the biggest test of Ryan Howard’s baseball career, and he stared it down, confronted it and continues to win. He even got a new wardrobe out of it.
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A-Rod proves he belongs in pinstripes
By Gordon Edes
October 27, 2009
NEW YORK — This, more than anything else, is what the man in the mirror most desperately wanted to see, a reflection other than just his own.
Alex Rodriguez is no longer the loneliest man in pinstripes. It all changed Sunday night, in that moment when Mariano Rivera struck out Gary Matthews Jr.(notes), and A-Rod thrust his arms overhead and ran toward the middle of the field on a parallel course with Derek Jeter. There they were met behind the mound by Mark Teixeira, the Yankee newcomer who had already done more than anyone to make A-Rod feel like he was finally home. Teixeira wrapped his arms around both Jeter and A-Rod in a spinning roundelay of joy.
The player who had done so much to set himself as a man apart – with the biggest contract and the tawdriest headlines and the most famous girlfriends and then, this spring, the most spectacular fall from grace – had finally found himself in the vortex of a group to which he’d been denied membership for so long.
Alex Rodriguez has played in the big leagues since he was 18 years old. Except for Ken Griffey Jr., in whose orbit he once flew in Seattle, no active player had appeared in more games without going to a World Series than A-Rod. That ended Sunday night, when the New York Yankees beat the Los Angeles Angels, 5-2, to win the American League Championship Series, 4 games to 2, setting up a date with the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday night in Yankee Stadium.
The implausibility of it all, that Rodriguez would be going to the Series in what began as the season of his greatest discontent, one in which his reputation was smeared by the humiliating brush of steroid use and his body crippled by a hip injury that left him scared and uncertain, was not lost on the 34-year-old third baseman.
“That’s the most irony,” he said, “but with no expectations, trusting my teammates, taking walks, doing the little things, you end up doing big things. That’s the lesson for me.”
And so he knocked off Rivera’s cap in their mad pas de deux, nearly disappeared inside CC Sabathia’s bear hug, locked arms with Jorge Posada and Jeter, then ultimately broke off for another long embrace with Jeter, a one-time best friend with whom he’d spent his first five seasons in New York sharing an uneasy truce, one that left both men diminished. Jeter, by the disappearance of the Yankee hegemony that had ruled in the earlier years of his career, Rodriguez by a barren harvest of Octobers that mocked his unquestioned skills.
No more.
“After going through surgery and going through all those tough times, he’s proved it,” Posada said. “He doesn’t have to prove anything [anymore]. He’s the best player in baseball.”
Rodriguez was not named the most valuable player of this ALCS; the hardware went instead to Sabathia, who won two games, including a virtuoso effort on three days’ rest in Game 4. But Rodriguez comes into this World Series as the most feared man in these playoffs, one who was accorded an ultimate sign of respect when Angels manager Mike Scioscia had him walked with two outs and nobody on base in the ninth inning of Game 5.
Rodriguez has hit safely in all nine of the Yankees’ playoff games this season, 11 in a row dating back to 2007. He has hit five home runs, three of which tied games in the seventh inning or later, something no other player has done, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. He drove in at least a run in the team’s first seven October games, then was credited with another RBI when he drew a bases-loaded walk Sunday night.
He reached base on all five of his plate appearances in Game 6, on two singles and three walks, and finished the ALCS batting a team-best .429. The singularity of his achievements came with the realization of how much better he was, subsumed into a group.
“I was scared,” he said about his hip surgery. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to contribute. I had a lot of limitations. The whole year was trusting my teammates and being one of the guys.
“All I cared about all year was winning games.”
Yankee manager Joe Girardi said it all began that first night in May when Rodriguez returned from his long rehab and hit the first pitch he saw into the seats in Baltimore. “A man on a mission,” Girardi said. “He’s been tremendous for us.”
Yankee owner Hal Steinbrenner, whose first official season as Yankee owner began with Rodriguez’s confessional under a tent in Tampa, was asked if he’d imagined this scene back in February.
“Yes,” he said, “because he’s just an unbelievable guy.”
The unintended irony of that description is hard to miss, considering Rodriguez was less than truthful when first confronted with details of his steroid use. But he weathered that controversy, worked his way back from his hip surgery, and then, after missing the first month and a half of the season, rejoined a team that was much different than the one that had missed the playoffs the year before.
“I knew that with the guys we brought in this year, they were special talents and special people,” Rodriguez said, “and all of them did a phenomenal job of playing so well in New York the first year. That’s something a lot of people can’t do, including myself.”
Such an admission would not have been possible for the A-Rod who obsessed about falling short of everyone else’s expectations. But this year, he said, he felt like he was playing with house money. “I have nothing to lose,” he said.
Freed from the exorbitant expectations he placed on himself, Rodriguez on Sunday night was rewarded with the hour of his greatest triumph.
“He played great,” said Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, who has counseled Rodriguez often. “We’ve been looking for that since ’04, and we finally got to see it.”
Jackson, of course, is not unacquainted with controversy.
“It drove me,” he said, “and I think Al has handled it well. He got his focus on the game and got his mind right and game right.
“When his game is right, buddy, he’s awfully, awfully good.”
Good enough to be placed among what the Yankee hagiographers refer to as the “true” Yankees?
“He’s got to win a World Series,” Jackson said. “There’s more time to go. But the guy’s a great player, dude. If he catches on, he’s going to be very tough.”
If that happens, Alex Rodriguez will not have to kiss the mirror. The mirror, the one held up to so many Yankee greats in the past, will kiss him back.
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Head-to-head: Phillies vs. Yankees
By Tim Brown
October 27, 2009
NEW YORK — Spend some time working through the Phillies and Yankees, what they might look like together on a diamond over a week or more, and maybe the difference is Mariano Rivera(notes) in the eighth and ninth innings, or Ryan Howard in a pair of ballparks that seem built with him in mind, or Chooch Ruiz at a big moment, or Alex Rodriguez operating at full-blown, April-to-September capacity.
Ask anybody in these parts what separates the New York Yankees from the Philadelphia Phillies and you probably get: 24 championships, 33 pennants, “and Jersey.”
But there’ll be less to it than that, starting Wednesday night at The Stadium.
Filled with stars and personalities and egos and, well, more stars, here’s how a potentially great World Series will break down:
Carlos Ruiz: He doesn’t hit much in the regular season, but he is improving. Every October he delivers something (or two things, or three) big for the Phils. Maybe he’s overlooked down in the eight hole. Or maybe pitchers are looking for a rest by the time they get to him. Also, the pitching staff loves him. The whole pitching staff.
Jorge Posada, Jose Molina: So, A.J. Burnett has been assigned to Jose Molina. Well, Burnett’s postseason ERA is almost 41⁄2 and he’s walked 10 in 18 1/3 innings. So, if Burnett is going to give up runs – and these are two hitter-happy ballparks – he might be better off having another big-league hitter in the lineup. Posada didn’t produce much in the first two rounds, but Molina is close to an automatic out.
Ryan Howard: The NLCS MVP, Howard seemingly hasn’t missed an opportunity in the first two series. His 14 RBIs lead the postseason – it helps to keep playing – and he terrorized the Los Angeles Dodgers, who walked him six times and still couldn’t stay out of his way. He’s taking the ball away to left-center field and the ball in to right field, usually loudly.
Mark Teixeira: A huge regular season has given way to – dare we say it? – an A-Rod-ian October. Yes, he’s handy around the bag. Yes, he’s saved a small handful of errors on wayward throws from his infielders. He’s also hitting .205. The Yankees didn’t spend all that money to get Mike Jorgensen. Good news for the Yankees, he swung the bat better over the final two games of the ALCS.
Chase Utley: Assuming the wacky throws and headlong leaps to Chuck Knoblauch were a passing phase, Utley is among the most complete players in the game. He also has exactly two RBIs (and one extra-base hit) in these playoffs. The World Series could turn on which No. 3-hitter – Teixeira or Utley – gets hottest fastest.
Robinson Cano: His rebound regular season – he was sixth in the AL in batting, sixth in runs scored, fifth in batting average against righties – has led to a rather soft postseason. The Yankees certainly seem better off with Cano if the weather stays warm. He, of everyone on the field during those cold nights, looked least comfortable. Cano was on base a lot in the ALCS, so apparently he is seeing the ball better.
Jimmy Rollins: The former MVP had a down regular season (certainly a down first half), and a down first two series, right up until the moment he broke Joe Torre’s heart. And that’s kind of the point about Rollins. While he hasn’t seen many big nights, he doesn’t scare off the big moments, and that’s why the Dodgers and Jonathan Broxton(notes) never did get back into the NLCS. He’s also a Gold Glover.
Derek Jeter: Young again, Jeter has played what amounts to most of an entire season (609 plate appearances) in Octobers and, OK, November. His on-base percentage this October is .435, which propels a Yankee offense that was at its finest in Game 6 against Joe Saunders. In Saunders’ 3 1/3 innings, the Yankees had seven hits and drew five walks. It’s who they are, and what he starts.
Pedro Feliz: Considering he typically bats seventh, Feliz gives Charlie Manuel pretty good production, though for some reason he went to Philadelphia and lost his home run stroke. During the regular season he was ninth in the NL in hitting with runners in scoring position, though drove in only two runs in the division and league championship series.
Alex Rodriguez: A little professional and personal humility appear to have gone a long way for A-Rod, who suddenly is everything the Yankees could have hoped him to be – the best player on the field. He crushed the Twins, then crushed the Angels and easily could have been MVP over CC Sabathia. Oddly enough, he’s batted only .260 at the new Yankee Stadium.
Raul Ibanez: That very productive first half flattened out in the final months, but the Phillies could hardly complain about Ibanez’s first season with them. If they did, though, maybe it would be his hitting with runners in scoring position (.233). Still, he drove in nine runs in the Phillies’ first two series and is a serious threat behind the Utley, Howard and Jayson Werth. Ben Francisco could also seem time here in the AL park.
Johnny Damon: He seems to show up at a lot of good times for the Yankees, stuck in there between Jeter and Teixeira in the lineup. A smart guy, Damon figured out early that Yankee Stadium III was going to play short to right field, and went about grooving a swing that would take advantage of it. As a result, he’ll be dangerous in both venues.
Shane Victorino: The switch-hitter does every little thing for the Phillies, it seems. He’s got a little power, hits for a little average, steals some bases, plays a terrific center field, drives in some runs and wins games in all the little corners. He’s batting .361 in the playoffs with seven RBIs, just what you’d figure.
Melky Cabrera: After winning back the job in the regular season, Cabrera looked during the division series like he was trying to give it back to Brett Gardner(notes). But, with parts of the Yankees’ offense not working, he picked it up in the ALCS, where he batted .391 and drove in four runs. Like Victorino, he makes a lot of plays in the outfield.
Jayson Werth: A wonderful athlete, Werth has blossomed into one of the most productive right fielders in the game on both sides of the ball. While his average has suffered some, he’s become a home run threat. It’s not just the home park, either; Werth’s home and road numbers were pretty close. He’s tied with Rodriguez for most home runs (five) this postseason.
Nick Swisher: Joe Girardi stuck with him for Game 6 of the ALCS, but Swisher might be running out of rope. In nine playoff games he has one extra-base hit and 11 strikeouts. Not even the Mohawk worked.
Committee: For the moment, its appears Manuel will open the series against the left-handed CC Sabathia with Ibanez as his DH and Francisco as his left fielder, allowing him Ibanez’s bat and the defensive upgrade. Against the right-handed Burnett in Game 2, you’d more likely see Matt Stairs(notes) or Greg Dobbs(notes) at the DH. While that means pop, it also could mean rust: Stairs and Dobbs have eight plate appearances between them in the postseason.
Hideki Matsui: The Yankees haven’t seen much of Matsui in the playoffs, not in terms of production. But, he still scares a pitcher, for sure. You certainly know what you’re going to get from Matsui, who’s the same guy on the road and at home, against lefties and righties. He’ll almost certainly get his chances against the Phillies, who might have little choice but to pitch around A-Rod.
Brad Lidge: It’s exciting, and it’s edgy, and it’s sometimes mortifying, but Lidge has stepped out of his horrendous regular season to hang tough in the playoffs, where he hasn’t yet allowed a run. In fact, he hasn’t given up a postseason run since the 2008 division series. He has three saves and hasn’t blown one, something that can’t be said by, oh, Joe Nathan, Huston Street, Brian Fuentes or either of the Jonathans (Papelbon, Broxton). There’ve been some rocky moments, but in general the Phillies’ bullpen has stood up better than expected. Chad Durbin and Scott Eyre have been especially good.
Mariano Rivera: The other playoff closer to have not blown a save. Yeah, him. He did, however, give up a run in Game 6, which would explain the half-mast flags around town Monday. Rivera has no flaws and this time of year he can go six outs at a time. Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain weren’t dominating in the ALCS. Lefties Phil Coke and Damaso Marte would figure to be tested against the left-leaning Phils.
Cliff Lee, Pedro Martinez, Cole Hamels, Joe Blanton / J.A. Happ: Lee’s first playoff experience has been exceptional, having allowed two earned runs in 24 1/3 innings over three starts. Whatever it turns out the Phils gave up for him at the deadline, you’d think the trip to the World Series and the chance to repeat was worth it. The Phils do get somewhat shaky from there, as much as they’d like to believe in that Pedro start at Dodger Stadium and dismiss Hamels’ recent outings. The Yankees won’t let either off the hook the way the Dodgers did.
CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Andy Pettitte: Climb on, boys. Sabathia has dismissed any thoughts that Octobers got a bit large for even him by winning three games, pitching on short rest and asking for more. And while some believed Sabathia should have gotten the start Sunday against the Angels, Pettitte went out and won his 16th postseason game and his fifth playoff clincher. Burnett looks like the weak link here, but he has great stuff.
Francisco made a huge catch in left field during the division series and Stairs drew the most important walk of their season in the NLCS, so the Phillies’ B teamers already have made their October mark. Eric Bruntlett(notes) has had meaningful roles in previous World Series runs with the Astros and Phillies. Though the DH will alter his routine, Manuel in the playoffs generally runs his eight guys out there and lets them play.
Like Manuel, Girardi doesn’t move a lot of guys around. There’s not much need to. Gardner and Freddy Guzman(notes) do the pinch-running and Posada will be available to pinch-hit if Molina were to catch Burnett in the NL park. Girardi also could DH Posada and save Matsui for the later innings. Jerry Hairston Jr.(notes) was 1 for 8 as a pinch-hitter in the regular season.
Charlie Manuel. He doesn’t always say it just right, but you get what he means, and Ol’ Cholly just keeps winning. It seems like forever ago since half the town wanted Manuel fired. Now he wins championships and rides in parades. The players accept his authority and play hard for him, no small achievements anymore.
Joe Girardi. After a rocky and ultimately disastrous first season back in New York, Girardi reworked his communication skills, opened his door and found acceptance. He integrated three more stars – Teixeira, Sabathia and Burnett – into the clubhouse. He dealt with all that was – is – A-Rod. Partly as a result, the Yankees are back in the World Series for the first time in six years. Girardi gets some of that credit.
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Martinez to start World Series Game 2 for Phillies
Associated Press
October 27, 2009
NEW YORK — Pedro Martinez is scheduled to start for the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 2 of the World Series on Thursday night at Yankee Stadium.
The 38-year-old Martinez has a long history of memorable moments against the New York Yankees from his days with the Boston Red Sox. The right-hander, signed by the Phillies in mid-July after he sat out the first half of the season, also spent 2005-08 in New York pitching for the Mets.
Cliff Lee will start Game 1 on Wednesday night for Philadelphia. Cole Hamels, last year's World Series MVP, gets the ball in Game 3 at home.
CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte will start the first three games for New York, but manager Joe Girardi on Tuesday would not reveal his pitching plans beyond that.
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