Carlos Delgado — The Hitman

By Trevor Cole
Originally published in Toronto Life magazine, 2004



In the Blue Jays batting tunnel, with the cooing of an early Fleetwood Mac video on an overhead TV bringing retro glories to mind, Carlos Delgado swings away. Thirteen years ago, in this long, spare room deep in the concrete gut of the SkyDome, just before the 1991 All-Star Game, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the first President George Bush described for gathered reporters their expectations of economic and political reform in the Soviet Union and South Africa. Now, about three hours before a game against the Texas Rangers, with the room draped in netting instead of flags, another powerful man with a politician’s smile is searching for reform of a different sort.

And he’s not finding it.

Every five seconds or so, as hitting coach Mike Barnett stands watching with his hands on his hips, trying to detect flaws in Delgado’s stance and motion, batting practice pitcher Jesus Figuroa underhands one more clean white ball into the hitter’s zone above a painted representation of home plate, then ducks behind a protective screen as it comes zinging back past him and ricochets off the equipment or the padded wall behind. Ball after ball explodes off Delgado’s bat with the sound of 12-gauge fire.

“I’m forcing it,” Delgado tells Barnett. “I’m trying to overdo it today.”

A year ago, it seemed, success came naturally to the Blue Jays’ famed cleanup hitter. He was in the midst of a storied season that would leave him ranked among the top seven in the major leagues in at least six important hitting categories, that would see him become runner-up for the American League MVP award, that would offer compelling argument for him as the personified ideal in a modern American League hitter: patient, powerful and productive. But two months into the new season, his power has deserted him. He sits 46th in runs batted in, 60th in home runs, an ungodly 107th in slugging and 110th in on-base percentage. The man whose potency was the stuff of Blue Jays legend looks to be, at the moment, no more than Samson shorn of hair.

These are pivotal days in the life of the Toronto Blue Jays and the best slugger in their history. As you read this, Delgado, now 32 [as of June 25] is entering the final months in the final season of a contract that will pay him $19.7 million (U.S.) this year. The first trading deadline looms at the end of July (there’s a second at the end of August), which means Delgado may be dealt to a new team within days, if general manager J.P. Ricciardi can get the right players in return, and more important, convince Delgado to go. As a player with a no-trade clause in his contract, Delgado has the power to veto any deal. As he told me, with his trademark lofted eyebrow and knowing grin, when I asked whether he’d still be around when this story came out: “I couldn’t answer that question. I mean, I couldn’t answer it today. If it ever happens, I’ll be the only person who can answer it, you know what I mean?”

Of course, no general manager of a team in the playoff hunt is going to trade for a slugger who’s lost his power, and none will be willing to pay him what he’s used to as a free agent next year. So Delgado’s future, immediate and otherwise, in a hardening baseball market depends on his finding what has left him. Which might be why, though visiting baseball writers still adore him for his accessibility, and he still manages to joke around as he works (“What the hell are we listening to? Are you kidding me?” he demanded, in mock indignation, before switching the batting tunnel TV from country music videos to classic rock), there are days now when the smile flees. “He can be moody,” says Mike Wilner, who reports on the Jays for TheFan590. “If he’s not happy you don’t want to go anywhere near him.”

Delgado’s struggles through the first months of the season may have been troubling to him, but they’ve been instructive for Jays watchers. Back in March, it was assumed 2004 would be the last season for Delgado, or any high-priced slugger, in a Toronto uniform. The only question was how would the Jays, hemmed in by their Rogers-given budget and their general manager’s penchant for producing a mid-tier team on a mid-tier budget, perform the year after Delgado was gone?

Statistically, it’s now possible to say the big-ticket slugger that Jays fans have gotten used to has already left. Home run totals get a lot of the attention, of course, and thanks to Delgado’s slump as well as the woes of the hitters around him, the Jays rank near the bottom of the league in that category. But when it comes to wins and losses, home runs aren’t the telling stat. What matters is the number of runs scored. As it turns out, the Blue Jays run production by the end of May, when Delgado produced like a low-budget talent, was down exactly one run, from 5.5 a game to 4.5 a game. Welcome to your 2005 Toronto Blue Jays.


BALANCE OF POWER: THE LINEUP

The concept of the cleanup hitter—the imposing run producer sitting fourth in the batting order, able to clear the bases filled by the high-percentage hitters coming before him—has been around so long it seems inherent to the game. But it isn’t true. The earliest batting lineups, in the mid-1800s, were set up according to the player’s positional number—pitcher, catcher, third baseman and so on, one through nine—regardless of ability. When managers first started trying to build more effective lineups, they generally situated batters in their order of ability, from best to worst.

It wasn’t until the 1880s and ’90s that thinking became more strategic, and the fourth spot became the RBI position. Cap Anson, a heavy-hitting first baseman for the Chicago White Stockings, was put first or second in the lineup for a few years in the late 1870s until he became the team’s player-manager. Then he slotted himself into the fourth spot, his RBI numbers began to rise and the team, which had been finishing fourth and fifth in the standings, almost immediately began to win. By the time of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the 1920s, batting-order theory had evolved to the point where the pure power hitter, as likely to strike out as hit a home run, was generally placed third, while the power hitter with the more consistent stroke, the more reliable run producer, hit fourth. Thus, it was Ruth hitting third in the great Yankee lineup, followed by Gehrig. Some debate continued as to whether the team’s “best” hitter, combining power and consistency, should bat third or fourth (The great Oakland A’s lineups of the early 1970s reflected that debate, often flipping Sal Bando’s steady power and Reggie Jackson’s high strikeout/home run threat between the two positions). But there, pretty much, the evolution stopped.

Today, no one disputes the need for power like Delgado’s somewhere in the lineup. The run production, the intimidation factor that induces pitchers to hem and haw around the strikezone and thus throw more pitches than they should—these things are vital. But does it really matter where a power hitter hits? In the age of sabermetrics, a school of analysis that attempts to find the objective truths buried in baseball statistics, maybe not. According to baseball writer and historian John Thorn, one of the authors of Total Baseball, “Sabremetric studies indicate that the difference between the very best batting order you could compose, in terms of maximum run scoring potential, and the very worst order you could compose, from that same perspective, amounts to a hill of beans.” All things being equal, says this line of thinking, regularly putting your worst hitter in the cleanup spot, even the pitcher on a National League team, will cost you one, maybe two wins a year.

J.P. Ricciardi, regarded as a proponent of modern baseball thinking, respectfully demurred when I approached him on the field before the Texas game and asked whether the fourth spot in the lineup was less important than most people thought. “I don’t think it’s overrated,” he said. “You want a clean-up hitter that’s a guy who’s gonna be able to drive in runs.” Of course, this merely underlines the importance for the Blue Jays of having an effective Delgado or some equivalent in the fourth spot — rather than, say, Vernon Wells, who as a power hitter does a nice impression of the Yankees’ number two hitter Derek Jeter. But on the day we spoke, Ricciardi was loathe to offer nuanced insight into his middle-of-the-lineup conundrum. Had he talked to Delgado about his struggles this year? “No,” he said, fixing me with his hawk’s glare. “That’s why we have a hitting coach.” And what happens on the day you no longer have Delgado, Mr. Ricciardi? “I don’t even know,” said the man in the crisp Oxford shirt. “I haven’t thought about it.” Jays fans can only hope he will schedule a moment to begin thinking about it soon.


BALANCE OF POWER: THE HITTER

Back in February, Jays manager Carlos Tosca said this about Delgado’s arrival at the spring training complex in Dunedin, Florida: “I guess it’s kind of like how it feels when your dad comes home from work. It’s a pretty good feeling, the security of having him there.”

Delgado’s power has always been balanced by the equally positive force of his personality. We’d seen smiley players before—Joe Carter and Dave Winfield were always willing to flick the charm switch for the camera, Kelly Gruber was once adored the way you’d adore a handsome, dangerous in-law—but no one made us glad of his presence as consistently, or for as long, as Delgado. Even before he became a major-league Blue Jay, we heard about Delgado’s homerun exploits in the minor leagues, we anticipated his coming. And unlike Alexis Rios, the latest minor-league phenom, he didn’t disappoint when he arrived. His first month and a half as a big-leaguer produced nine of the most stirring regular-season home runs we’d ever seen, and after one or two dips back into the minors to complete his apprenticeship as a hitter, he returned in 1996 as the complete power threat. Not only has he more career home runs, doubles and RBIs than any other Blue Jay, he’s gotten on base and crossed home plate more often than anyone in the team’s history, fleet runners like Lloyd Moseby included, And he’s done it all with a greater air of joy than most star hitters can manage.

This is why, though his salary has been a boot on the team’s neck since 2001, when then-general manager Gord Ash signed him to a $68-million deal, Delgado is not begrudged. He’s our security, our proof that we’ve made an effort to win and value a man who delivers on the promise of his charm and his paycheque with actions that make him worthy of respect in what we might call the real world too. Unlike most star players he eschews gaudy statements of wealth, living during spring training, for instance, in a small $182,000 (U.S.) home he purchased in a Tampa Bay retirement community (by contrast, according to reports, Derek Jeter spends those six weeks in a 5,000-sq-ft $1.9 million (U.S.) home in one of the city’s posher neighbourhoods). In Toronto, Delgado often bikes to the SkyDome from his home in Yorkville. During the off-season, he lives modestly in what he calls “just a normal house” on a cliffside property near his home town of Aguadilla, on the northwest corner of Puerto Rico. He spends time with his parents, Carmen and Carlos, plays uncle to his young nephews.

And while some players seem to present their charity efforts like another jangley bracelet, Delgado goes about his in comparative earnest. To help improve medical care in his home town, he provides funding for a telemedicine link between Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston and Aguadilla’s Hospital Buen Samaritano. The group Ayuda de Grandes Ligas was apparently organized by Delgado in 2000 to focus the relief efforts of major league baseball players when mudslides and floods killed thousands along the coastal region of Venezuela. “We want to channel help through us,” Delgado told a news conference then. “We want to be the filter of help.” The charitable organization he started, the Extrabases Foundation, funds efforts to help abused, handicapped and homeless children, both in North America and Aguadilla. “Very dedicated,” says Glenn MacDonell, executive director of Ontario Special Olympics, of Delgado’s efforts on behalf of the Sports Celebrities Festival, which he’s flown up for each December for seven or eight years running. “He’s always very, very accommodating to do anything the event requires of him,” which, MacDonell adds, isn’t true of everyone.

Pro athletes are usually even less inclined to make political statements than they are to spend a winter’s day in Canada, but recently, before an Armed Forces Network game, Delgado opted out of videotaping greetings for U.S. soldiers in the Middle East. “It was because I didn’t believe in the war in Iraq,” he told me simply. And while he insisted that “I don’t have a problem at all” with the U.S. military, it’s not the first time he’s taken issue with them. In 2001, Delgado, along with singer Ricky Martin and boxer Felix Trinidad, both fellow Puerto Ricans, bought space in the New York Times and the Washington Post to protest the U.S. Navy’s bombardment of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. “They were using it as target practice,” Delgado explained, after showing me the Puerto Rican flag stitched to the tongue of his shoe. “The economy’s bad, they have the highest incidence of cancer, they have the highest rate of unemployment. So obviously it’s causing problems.” The practice, said Delgado, ended last May. But the cleanup continues. “It’s going to be a few years.”


BALANCE OF POWER: THE SWING

Even a flawed Delgado swing has majesty. Seeing it only from the perspective television gives you, face on, tends to minimize its drama. Stand behind him though, to get the full measure of his strength, watch him extend a muscled right leg and raise his bat high to stir the air above his head, and witness the force unleashed in a blur—there’s something epic about it.

I sat with Delgado in front of his locker prior to his batting session with Mike Barnett. He was lodged in the black swivel armchair that establishes his authority in the clubhouse (though lately centrefielder Vernon Wells has acquired one too). After he’d stretched a latex surgical glove onto his large right hand and spent ten minutes rubbing Lexol lubricant into his first baseman’s mitt, I asked him to try and explain where the power of his swing comes from, or should.

“It’s quick hands,” he said instantly. “Yes, you use your body, you drive with your legs, but I think most of your power comes from your hands, basically from here down”—he indicated his forearm, from elbow to wrist, and explained that by taking the proper downward path to the ball, a hitter could create backspin.

If there’s an essential magic to hitting a home run, backspin would be it. Try to lift the ball out of the park with an uppercut swing, as logic might seem to dictate, and you’ll only create topspin and force the ball down, which makes you a tennis player. Send your bat toward the pitch on a downward plane, however, and the ball goes higher and farther. “That’s the thing about hitting,” says Mike Barnett. “It’s illogical.”

Delgado thought it might be easier to demonstrate this than describe it, so he got out of his chair and took his stance in the corner of the clubhouse. There’s something oddly delicate about a slugger, without his bat, trying to demonstrate the shape of his swing—you pull your hands back, create some momentum, then stride so that your upper body moves backward as your lower body goes forward (“That’s what they call ‘step away from the ball’”), then your foot comes down, to give you a brace to hit against ... “and you go.” There was no bravado in Delgado as he showed me all this; he seemed a little shy.

The choreography of a power hitter’s swing is more complex than any other, because so much depends on timing. A singles hitter worries merely about getting his bat on the ball. A power hitter has to have bat, hands, legs and body all working to maximize thrust at the precise moment of contact. This is why sluggers are often described as “streaky,” why they can seem so easily out of sorts, because it’s hard to get all the elements just right.

“This whole timing deal,” said Delgado, when I asked him what seemed to be going wrong. “You want to get your foot down and then fire your hands. Right now it looks like my hands and front foot, they’re going at the same time.” A pitcher likes nothing better than to see a slugger’s hands moving forward too soon—that’s the whole purpose of changing speeds, alternating between the fastball and the change-up—because it dissipates the hitter’s strength. The swing “is what we call ‘leaking,’” said Delgado, “and then you got no power.”

In the batting tunnel, with Mike Barnett watching and Stevie Nicks singing in the background, Delgado works on his start, getting himself ready—“being in balance,” he’d said—and timing the beginning of his swing. In a line off the corner of the painted plate, he places three baseballs one after another as a visual reminder to let the ball travel, to not try to meet it too soon. “No matter what I say,” Barnett tells him, “the big thing for you is always this.” He moves his fist like a batter’s leading hand, back and through, cutting a short, direct path to the ball. Delgado takes a swing and makes even more resounding contact than usual.

“God damn,” says Barnett, approvingly.

As he walked into a slice of sunshine lying across the field from the SkyDome’s partly open roof, Barnett spit a chaw and explained the hitter’s plight. “You can talk mechanics till you’re blue in the face, but the hitter’s gotta have the feel.” Delgado, he said, works harder than anyone to find it. “His work ethic is second to none. His preparation, day in and day out, is absolutely amazing to me.”

Often, when a hitter struggles, his batting coach suggests he’s “trying too hard.” And maybe it’s no coincidence that the year after Delgado narrowly missed winning an MVP award he expected to win, he’s enduring the hardest season of his career. “He has such tremendous pride in his ability,” says Barnett, “the way he wants to play the game, the way he wants to win, he starts trying to do too much. He’s human, just like anybody.”

During official batting practice, as Club President Paul Godfrey stood chatting not far away in a grey suit with salmon pinstripes, Delgado took his turns in the cage. Again the sound of the ball hitting his bat seemed different from the sound everyone else made. There was an extra crackle in the air, as if the wood was especially stressed. Finally, in his third turn, he sent a ball into the right-field seats. Maybe something about that swing felt right to him, because he stopped immediately and walked back into the clubhouse. That night, in Delgado’s first at bat against the Texas Rangers, pitcher R.A. Dickey threw a changeup, trying to get the hitter’s hands out in front, trying to get his power to leak away. Delgado hit it to that same spot in the right field stands for a two-run home run.

On television, Sportsnet’s John Cerutti watched the replay and marveled at Delgado’s swing: “Look at how balanced he is.”