David Wells will be the first to tell you that as a baseball player, he was a little—well, crazy.
He admits he could throw strikes and if that meant retaliating when one of his teammates got plunked with a pitch, well, so be it. If that meant getting angry, no one would get angrier. Or if it meant being cool, he was the Ice Man.
The 2010 Hall of Fame inductee, a rare near-unanimous first-ballot choice, gives San Diego a distinction no other city or Hall (he isn’t eligible for Cooperstown until 2012), can match—two pitchers who tossed perfect games in the major leagues.
Wells did his in 1998 as he became only the 15th pitcher in major league history to accomplish the feat. Three have done it since.
“I knew it all along,” he said of the 4-0 win over the Minnesota Twins on May 17 in which he faced just 27 batters. “Long about the sixth or seventh inning, I got nervous and the crowd got into it. I just focused on my catcher (Jorge Posada) and hit my spots.
“You have to be on your game and striking out 11 batters makes it a lot easier, too.”
Wells said only two balls threatened to ruin everything. One was a shot hit to second baseman Chuck Knoblauch that bounced off his chest but was vacuumed up and turned into a ground out. The other was fly ball that the outfielder grabbed before it could touch grass.
Only one batter, Paul Molitor, famous for having great bat control, came close to a walk. He pushed the count to 2-2 as umpire Tim McClelland would not give Wells a pitch that he called low.
On the very next pitch, in the exact same place, Molitor swung over the ball to strike out.
“Oh my God, if he’d taken that one, I’m sure it would have been called a ball,” said Wells, reliving the relief 12 years later.
“Boomer” is one of the few pitchers who can properly put the other Brietbard Hall of Famer, Don Larsen, and his perfect game in the 1956 World Series, into perspective.
“No question about it, that’s one record that will stand forever,” said Wells, who during the winter months runs a hunting camp on his 1,200 acre ranch in Michigan with partners Kirk Gibson and Jake Peavy.
“It’s like Cy Young’s record 511 wins—no one will ever touch it. All of (the perfect games) are hard, but in a World Series?”
The 1998 season stands out in Wells’ mind, and not just because of that one game viewed by 49,820 fans at the old Yankee Stadium.
“That might have been the best year of my life,” said Wells, who was 18-4 with a 3.49 ERA and 163 strikeouts as opposed to 29 walks. “It was a great team that set the major league record for the most wins (114 in the regular season, 125 overall). It was an unbelievable climate and it was ridiculous how incredible we played.
“The thing about that team is every time there was even a little animosity, someone would step up and defuse the situation before it became a problem. That World Series title meant more than the first one (1992) to me because of the atmosphere and because we played the Padres, my home town team, that year.”
Wells’ career statistics include:
–A 239-157 record.
–2,201 strikeouts against 719 walks.
–Three-time All-Star.
–1998 American League Championship Series MVP.
–A 4.13 ERA.
Almost from the time he started pitching at Point Loma High, he knew he had a chance to make the major leagues. So did everyone else who saw him pitch.
“In the 30 years that I coached baseball in the Western League, David Wells was the most dominant pitcher I saw,” said former University of San Diego High coach Dick Serrano. “It was an education watching him pitch. I almost took a folding chair out to coach third base when he was pitching.”
Even Wells remembered it being easy.
“My senior year, it was so effortless,” he recalls of the 1982 season when he was CIF San Diego Section Player of the Year. “I’d get 16 or 18 strikeouts a game. I was pretty convinced I’d be a first round draft choice because of the number of scouts attending every game.”
A left-handed pitcher with a fastball in the mid-90s, he was not selected until the first pick of the second round by the Toronto Blue Jays.
“I was disappointed and I’m sure that cost me a lot of money,” said Wells, who signed for $50,000. “I was determined to prove them all wrong—you don’t pitch until you’re 44 unless you’re determined. I overcame two back surgeries, two knee surgeries and Tommy John surgery on my arm.”
Thanks to Double A coach Larry Hardy, Wells developed sound mechanics so he didn’t have much arm trouble in his 21 years. He also finally gave in and hired a personal trainer in 2002 whom he feels prolonged his career.
Wells is nothing if not opinionated. For example, his take on the 1994 strike-shortened season:m
–“That pissed me off,” said Wells, warming to the question. “The owners didn’t care and I thought if they don’t care, I don’t care. So I didn’t throw a ball until the first day of spring training the next year. Other guys started in January. I might have been on to something because by just throwing long ball (in the outfield) and then slowly in camp, I had a pretty good year (5-7, 3.96 ERA with Detroit).”
On his attitude on the mound:
–“I was a strike machine; I hated to back down to anyone. Sparky Anderson asked me to intentionally walk batters and I hated that. I never shied away from anybody. I was mad at the world and if I had to hit somebody intentionally, I would. Some days you just have bad days and the harder you try to throw a fastball, it’ll flatten out. Then you take it out on a chair in the dugout.”
On umpires:
–“There were some ‘pitchers’ umpires that I respected but for the most part, I didn’t like most of the umpires because I felt a lot of them held grudges. It was a power thing.”
On TV replay:
–“The umpiring in the last World Series was pathetic. They need to start doing replays on every play. If the replay shows they made a mistake, get it right.”
On today’s salaries:
–“When I signed in 1982, it was for $50,000. That same spot is a couple million now. If you’re in the right place at the right time, you can make a lot of money. You can have one good year and make a huge amount of money but I say make as much as you can when you can. And, everyone is entitled to a bad year.”
Posted on February 22, 2010 by Steve Brand
