The Rotation (18 page)

Ruiz is soul mate to The Rotation.

“Everyone here loves him,” Roy Halladay said. “He's your favorite guy to root for.”

Underdogs always are.

The Phillies began their rise to the top of the National League East in 2007. Not coincidentally, that was also the year a stocky Panamanian named Carlos Ruiz established himself as the team's No. 1 catcher. By the end of
2008, Ruiz was walking to the mound in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the World Series to discuss strategy as closer Brad Lidge was bearing down on Tampa Bay's Eric Hinske. The Phils were one strike from winning the World Series. The potential tying run was on second. There was little question that Lidge would throw his signature slider, but Ruiz wanted to offer a quick directive. Lidge, you see, threw three different sliders during his storybook 48-saves-in-48-chances season in 2008. He had the get-me-over slider, a nice easy one that he knew he could throw for a strike early in a count. He had the one that he tried to “backdoor” over the outside corner with a lefthanded hitter at the plate. And he had the Torpedo—the Good One, as Ruiz calls it, the one that approached the plate looking like a fastball, and then dove sharply into the dirt. It was a wipeout pitch, a championship pitch, and throwing it meant Lidge had to have confidence that his catcher would block it.

“Give me the Good One,” Ruiz instructed Lidge on the night of October 29, 2008, as the packed house in Philadelphia held its breath in anticipation.

Three years later, Ruiz recalled that pitch as being “the best one Lidge has thrown in his life.”

As Hinske swung over the pitch for the out that clinched Philadelphia's first major pro sports title in a quarter-century, Lidge famously dropped to his knees, looked heavenward and shouted, “Oh, my God, we just won the World Series!”

He shouted it again as a joyous Ruiz arrived at the mound and started the celebration pile.

“I looked up to the sky, but I also looked forward at the fans and Carlos,” Lidge said. “I can't explain the feeling of euphoria I felt seeing the fans celebrate and having the team jump on me. That's what you play the game for.”

All Carlos Ruiz ever played the game for was a chance.

The World Series was a nice reward.

But it all started with the dream of simply getting a chance.

Ruiz was raised in David, a city in Chiriqui Province, Panama. His father, Jaoquin, a policeman, was killed in a car wreck while on the job when Carlos
was just seven.Young Carlos loved the game of baseball and poured himself into it. He was a scrappy little second baseman when he told his mother, Inocencia, that she would watch him play on television, in
las grandes ligas,
someday.

Young Ruiz caught the eye of a local baseball
impresario
named Allan Lewis. Known as the Panamanian Express for his running speed during his playing days with the Oakland A's in the 1970s, Lewis coached a local team and also scouted for the Phillies. He took Ruiz under his wing.

In the fall of 1998, when Ruiz was 19, Lewis phoned Sal Agostinelli, the Phillies director of international scouting, and said, “I got this kid. . . .” Agostinelli went for a look and immediately saw why a lot of the other teams had stayed away. Ruiz, squatty and maybe 5-8, did not have the kind of athletic body that the Phillies favored, but Agostinelli figured he'd give him the full look. Besides, it was nice and hot in David that day and Agostinelli, a former Phillies minor-league catcher, was eager to throw some batting practice and work up a sweat. Ruiz took his hacks. Agostinelli liked the kid's swing. He measured off 60 yards so he could watch Ruiz run. The kid came in at a below average 7.09 seconds. Ruiz took some ground balls at second. Pretty good. But not good enough to get Agostinelli to bite.

“I think he can catch,” Lewis told Agostinelli.

Agostinelli's eyes lit up.

Catcher is a premium position. Many can do it, but few do it well. Scouts are always on the lookout for catching talent.

Agostinelli turned to young Carlos Ruiz.

“Can you catch?” he asked.

Though he had never really caught, Ruiz nodded in the affirmative. Of course, he would have done that if Agostinelli had asked if he could recite the Gettysburg Address.

“If he can catch, he becomes a different animal,” Agostinelli told Lewis.

On that hot day in David, the scrappy little second baseman eagerly jumped behind the plate. His throws to second base impressed Agostinelli. His pop times—from catcher's mitt to second baseman's glove—were consistently under two seconds, which is very good.

“He immediately showed an above-average arm,” Agostinelli said. “He was quick around the plate and his hands were good from playing second base. We figured, if he hits, with that arm, he's got a chance.”

And that's all Ruiz wanted.

In the summer of 1998, the Phillies signed their first-round draft pick, outfielder Pat Burrell, to a big-league contract worth $8 million. Three
months later they signed Carlos Ruiz for a relative pittance—$8,000. A decade later, both players were in that mob of celebrating bodies the night the Phillies won the World Series.

“I didn't care about the money,” Ruiz said of his bargain signing bonus. “I just wanted a chance to play professional baseball.”

Unlike Burrell, Ruiz did not rise quickly to the majors. Underdogs seldom do. It took him eight seasons to get there, and there were some frustrating moments along the way. He considered quitting during his first season in the Dominican Summer League. There were times when he struggled at the plate and would spit out a cuss word in Spanish. Over the years, a cleaned-up variation of that unsavory word became his nickname, and there's hardly a night that goes by at Citizens Bank Park when Ruiz doesn't come to the plate accompanied by the familiar chorus:
Chooooooch!

Chooch showed early in his pro career that he could catch, throw, and hit a little bit, but learning to be a big-league catcher, a legitimate big-league catcher, required more than that. He needed to learn to call a game and work with a pitching staff, lead a pitching staff, become a soul mate to the guys on that little bump in the middle of the field. And he needed to learn enough English to communicate with pitchers. When he first arrived in the United States to play in the Gulf Coast League in 2000, his English was limited. He knew the word
chicken
. He knew how to say,
How you doing?

The Panama native's English got better and better over the years—so good, in fact, that he could have chosen to speak English when he told his mother he'd made the big leagues in 2006, but did so in Spanish and his mother wept; so good that he does a hilarious imitation of teammate Shane Victorino employing one of his favorite catch phrases. “You know, like I said. . . .” Ruiz will say with an impish grin whenever Victorino uses that line in an interview with reporters. If comic relief is needed, Ruiz is always there with a masterful imitation of a teammate's pitching delivery or batting stance. He does a belly-splitting imitation of former teammate Aaron Rowand adjusting his wristbands and going into his unique batting stance. He's got Kyle Kendrick's delivery down pat. And it didn't take him long to pick up Roy Oswalt's mannerisms on the mound. Oswalt is always moving his feet, grooming the dirt on the mound. Chooch nails it.

Ruiz credits many for his transformation from a scrappy second baseman that nobody wanted to a frontline big-league catcher. Pitching Coach Rich Dubee, Bullpen Coach Mick Billmeyer and former Phils' pitcher Jamie Moyer all worked with him on the art of calling a game and setting up a hitter.

“I remember when I first saw him in 2006, he was a timid little guy who'd catch in the 'pen,” Moyer said. “He learned a lot in 2007, and kept improving. He's evolved in a nice way. He has a certain confidence, almost an aggressiveness to him now that says, ‘I'm in charge.' Pitchers like that. He's definitely become a thinking catcher.”

Ruiz is a thinker.

When he's behind the plate, he tries to think like a hitter and a pitcher.
What is the hitter looking for here? How can I fool him here?
Dubee and Billmeyer say they have seen Ruiz learn to read a hitter's swing and make adjustments in a game plan from pitch to pitch.

“He sees a hitter two or three times in a game, understands what they're trying to do, and figures out a way for a pitcher to attack the hitter,” Dubee said.

“He's very good at thinking right along with the pitcher,” Billmeyer said.

Ruiz prides himself in becoming at one with his pitcher and when the two minds synchronize, well, it's a beautiful thing: The pitcher envisions the pitch he wants to throw, and in a split second, Ruiz has called for that very pitch. Halladay did not shake off Ruiz at all—not once—in his debut start with the Phillies on April 5, 2010. It was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Six months later, Halladay shook off Ruiz just once while throwing 104 pitches in a playoff no-hitter against Cincinnati.

Though he often hits eighth in the Phillies' lineup, Ruiz likes to swing the bat and wants to be a productive hitter. It bothers him when he doesn't contribute at the plate. One day during the 2011 season, when Ruiz was struggling at the plate, a reporter asked for a minute of his time.

“Not if you want to talk about my hitting,” he said glumly.

“It's about the pitching staff,” the reporter said.

Ruiz brightened.

He's always willing to talk about the pitchers because he understands his connection to them and understands they come first. No matter how well or how poorly he is swinging the bat, his focus is always the pitching staff. It has to be. A hitting slump can get Ruiz down, but he can't let it affect his performance behind the plate. Handling a staff is his priority, and the pitchers appreciate that.

“He does so much for our team behind the plate and often doesn't get a lot of credit for it,” said Halladay, who calls Ruiz the best catcher he's ever worked with.

Cliff Lee echoed those remarks after his sixth shutout of the season on September 5, 2011.

“Chooch did an unbelievable job calling the game, and I felt like he had [Atlanta] off balance from the start,” Lee said. “He gets a lot of credit for [the shutout]. I might have shook him off once or twice the whole game. He's really impressive.”

In the winter after the 2010 season, Halladay decided Ruiz deserved to be honored for all he does behind the plate. Halladay had just won the National League Cy Young Award. He wanted to do something for his bat-terymate, his baseball soul mate. He ordered an exact replica of the Cy Young Award he'd won and—in his typical, no fanfare, understated way—left it in front of Ruiz's locker one day in spring training of 2011.

Ruiz was deeply touched by the gesture, and all he could think of was returning the favor.

“Gotta get Doc a ring,” he said in the summer of 2011.

Ruiz isn't the only underdog in the Phillies team picture.

Truth be told, the manager might be the biggest underdog of them all.

Charlie Manuel was born in a car in Northfork, West Virginia, on the way to his grandmother's house, in January 1944, the eldest boy of Charles and June Manuel's 10 children. The kids all had nicknames. Charlie's was Fook, short for Fuqua, his middle name. By the time the family got to the last child, a boy, it had run out of nicknames, so he went by BB, Baby Boy. Manuel's father, a Pentecostal preacher, took his own life when Charlie was a teenager. Charlie and his brothers helped the family make ends meet working in a sawmill in his hometown of Buena Vista, Virginia.

Baseball was Manuel's ticket out of the sawmill. He signed out of high school with the Minnesota Twins, and then kicked around the majors for awhile before landing a big-money deal in Japan. Manuel hit 189 home runs in six seasons in Japan and was league MVP in 1979. Hardly a week has gone by during Manuel's time with the Phillies when a Japanese reporter doesn't approach Manuel and ask the
Aka Oni
—The Red Devil—about his playing days in Japan. How big was Manuel in Japan? Well, he says he did the first-ever commercial for a Sony Walkman. Who knew?