We Need A Hero

Mild mannered off the mound but a bulldog on it, can young Cole Hamels save our fair metropolis?

by E. James Beale

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Published: Aug 19, 2008

It was the fifth inning, and young Cole Hamels was throwing a no-hitter. His team, nationally ranked Rancho Bernardo, was facing Torrey Pines, a rival high school in San Diego's prestigious Palomar League, and Rancho Bernardo was up by a run. Hamels lifted his right knee to his chest, shot a glance over his shoulder at the batter, then in one live movement uncoiled toward home plate, letting his throwing arm whip back to his body, his chest fall parallel to the ground and his left leg fly up to the sky. A small, white, leather-covered, 5-ounce sphere of cork and rubber raced toward the plate — and the batter bunted.

Courtesy of Gary and Amanda Hamels SUPER COLE: Young Hamels developed an uncanny ability to hit what he was throwing at. The excuse, "I didn't mean to hit him," didn't work.

The bunt went foul, but the slight was clear to Hamels: Breaking up a no-hitter with a bunt is "like hitting a guy from behind," he says. It was an insult, and, to Hamels, one that everyone should know better than to make. If the batter didn't get that, he would soon: Hamels' next pitch drilled him in his back.

Two innings later, the same kid came up again. It was the final inning of the game; the no-hitter had been broken up, but Hamels was still holding on to a one-run lead. There was one out, and a runner on first. Hamels threw one pitch: another beanball. The kid was back on base, another welt richer.

"If you get a hit swinging it, well hey, nice job. But I wanted to send a message that if you can take advantage of bunting, I can take advantage of drilling you," Hamels says. Recalling the incident, his voice rises just enough to show he's still not happy with the guy. "We'll see who feels better tomorrow."

His coach, Sam Blalock, came to the mound to ask Hamels what he was doing — his star pitcher had just put the tying run in scoring position. "It doesn't matter to me," Hamels told his coach, knowing he had just attracted the attention of the scouts in the crowd, the anger of the batters he was about to face and the potential wrath of his coaches on the bench, all in the final inning of a one-run game against a division rival. He was putting the game, his perfect record and his team's prestigious ranking all on the line.

But he was right — it didn't matter. Six pitches — all 94 miles per hour or faster — and two strikeouts later, Hamels walked off the field victorious.

This is what Cole Hamels — now the 24-year-old, unquestioned ace of the Philadelphia Phillies — is capable of: complete dominance, both psychological and physical. It's not a level he's sustained in his tempestuous young career, but it's precisely what, if his team is to return to the playoffs and succeed there, the Phillies are going to need from him.

Cole Hamels is 6 foot 3, 190 pounds, almost all of it legs. After games he dresses slowly, pulling rumpled tees from his carefully ordered locker and dropping them over a chest that drapes from his shoulders like a shirt on a hanger. Typically, he matches them with loose cargo shorts and sneakers. Over freckles too faint for TV cameras to pick up, he's grown just enough stubble to let you know he could grow a beard, but never enough to suggest that he will. He doesn't look unathletic, but out of his red-and-white uniform he wouldn't stand out of a crowd as an athlete.

Nor does he act like one, per se. Off the diamond, Hamels' friendly smile and mild-mannered demeanor will remind you more of your affable cousin just out of college and searching for a career. He smiles when he answers reporters' questions, but seems more engaged talking about blockbuster movies and last-second fantasy football letdowns than discussing the details of his job. Sure, his nickname is "Hollywood" and his wife is famous (Survivor alum and Playboy model Heidi Strobel), but he hardly lives up to his moniker in the tabloids; while fellow stars Pat Burrell, Ryan Howard and even Chase Utley are seen out and around town, Hamels and Strobel generally manage to stay out of the public eye. Hamels cites the couple's favorite activities as watching movies and working out. Derek Jeter he is not.

All of which is to say that when Cole Hamels starts pitching, it's surprising. Hamels' changeup has been rated, statistically, as the most unhittable in the game. He is regularly compared to heroes from Steve Carlton to Johan Santana to Johnny Podres to Neal Heaton. This year, despite his mediocre win-loss record — 10-8 at press time, due to bad luck with run support — Hamels has emerged not only as the Phillies' star, but also their rock. He is 12th in the league in Earned Run Average (ERA), second in Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP), third in strikeouts (Ks) and, despite his history as injury prone, first in innings pitched.

In a game where even the best of batsmen fail 70 percent of the time, good pitching can seem almost insurmountable. And indeed, when Hamels is throwing all of his pitches — aside from that changeup, he throws a fastball and a curve — for strikes, he can breeze through nine, 10, 11 batters in a row, seemingly without breaking a sweat. During the course of a game, most pitchers will spit, fidget and adjust themselves, moving constantly like a boxer working an opponent. Hamels, at his best, remains contained and stoic for innings at a time.

When he is "on," he works quickly, putting his glove hand up in front of his face, taking his signal from the catcher and methodically repeating the same motion he's been using since Little League. It's something analysts love about him: "Hitters feed off changes they make you make," explains former Phillies pitcher and current postgame analyst Mitch Williams enviously. "That is what he does an exceptional job of: He doesn't show anything." This may sound straightforward, but remaining focused under the pressure of pitching is no easy task. Williams was nicknamed "Wild Thing" for his infamous inability to do so himself.

Hamels has been "on" practically all of this season — but that's no guarantee of smooth sailing from here on out. Not only has his team been mired in inconsistency, but the young ace has a history of suffering setbacks.

The last time Hamels spent a year completely injury-free was his sophomore year of high school. Baseball Prospectus once compared him to "faberge eggs, china dolls and ice sculptures." Charlie Manuel, his manager, admits that he is "always worried about Cole," and that he and pitching coach Rich Dubee discuss the pitcher's health a lot. What's more, it was one year ago this week that Hamels was placed on the disabled list with an injured shoulder, and his league lead in innings pitched means that, already, he has thrown to nearly as many batters this year as he has in any other Major League season. Hamels understands the concern — "Even when I pitch well, it seems like everyone is putting that asterisk there, asking, 'Well, how long will this last?'" he says — and he wants to do away with it. "If I can go one year and stay healthy," he says earnestly, "all of the speculation and the rumors are going to disappear."

And health is not the only reason the Phillies faithful worry about Hamels. During the playoffs last year, he resisted a plan to start on short rest for a playoff game, something that caused some in Philly to view him as a diva. Hamels' take is analytic: He trained to play every fifth day; why would he mess with success? Then, this spring, Hamels told a group of beat writers that the Phillies' $500,000 contract offer was a "low blow," and vowed that the offer would "affect, down the line, certain things that come up." He has since backed off those comments. "Of course I regret [saying that]," he told me recently. But many in Philadelphia still wonder whether he has the constitution to carry a team.

Amid this backdrop of question marks, Hamels is about to become more important. A pitcher in baseball, much like a goalie in hockey or a keeper in soccer, is the rare team athlete who can, for a game at a time, put his team on his back and win by himself. And in a pennant race, this value only increases: Steve Moyer, president of Baseball Info Solutions (the group behind The Bill James Handbook), explains, "Baseball has become an odd game in that, for an entire season, you need five starters. Then once the playoffs start it becomes an entirely different game" (only three or four starters will pitch). Because he pitches a greater proportion of innings, an ace's greatest value is during the playoffs. Throughout the year, Charlie Manuel has been conscious of Hamels' workload, and given his ace an extra day of rest nearly every time the Phillies have an off-day; as the playoffs approach, that will stop. Hamels is going to have to be the man, and while he has been the best pitcher on the staff for two years running, he has yet to start an opening day.

It's a cliché, but with great power comes great responsibility. As Hamels — mild-mannered, injury-prone, 24 and playing for a contract on a veteran team — emerges as the Phillies' clear ace, the time for him to assume that responsibility has come.

Michael T. Regan CREAM OF THE CROP: You could argue that Cole Hamels is not a top-five pitcher in the National League. But you'd be wrong.

Amanda Hamels tells an endearing tale about her son's ability. When Colbert Michael Hamels was young, the family yard was often covered in sporting equipment — tennis balls, soccer balls, baseballs — and Cole, early on, developed an uncanny ability to hit whatever he was throwing at. Mrs. Hamels explains that this was sometimes a bad thing, as she would receive complaints up and down the block that her son had hit a neighbor's child/pet/car with one of these balls again. Cole quickly learned that the excuse, "I didn't mean to hit him," wouldn't work on her — he could land anything on a dime, and she knew it.

Still, though Hamels has always been talented, that talent hasn't always put in him in the spotlight. Part of this was Cole's size; his mother concedes that he was "one of the scrawnier kids" in Little League, and Coach Blalock kindly recalls Cole as "just a tiny booger." Another part was his demeanor. Tim Fillmore, Hamels' Little League coach, talks about Cole the way you would talk about any decent player on a youth team — he was good enough to make all-star games, but not someone you projected to make it to The Show. Mark Furtak, who would become Hamels' pitching coach in high school, confesses that at a young age he "never would have imagined that [Cole] would develop into what he has become."

As such, Hamels didn't stand out in his freshman year at Rancho Bernardo, going 4-3 with a 4.23 ERA in nine games for the freshman team. Pretty good — but not many pretty good ninth-grade pitchers end up anchoring Major League staffs.

It was the summer before Hamels' sophomore year when he really began to emerge. Not only was he physically starting to come into his own, but Coach Furtak began to see his talent, got in his face and demanded that Hamels start thinking of himself as a varsity player. Cole responded. He dominated hitters on his way to an 11-1 record with a 2.81 ERA and better than a strikeout an inning. Still, on Rancho Bernardo, a school that Major League Baseball scouts have nicknamed "The Factory" for the consistent quality of players it produces, Hamels was able to blend in. He was fantastic, but seniors Matt Wheatland and Scott Heard would be first-round draft picks at the end of the year. Hamels was allowed to develop in a situation where he could be really good and he didn't have to be the man — a situation he'd find himself in again.

That summer, after Wheatland and Heard graduated and left their team to Hamels, he encountered a setback that almost ended his career. After slamming into a car in a game of street football and thinking nothing of it, Hamels took the mound in a summer league game, went to the third or fourth inning, peered across his shoulder, uncoiled and released. "It sounded like a tree branch snapping," Hamels says. The ball went straight to the top of the backstop and his arm just dangled. "When he threw that ball," Blalock thinks back, "well, you don't want to be around and hear that."

Hamels had broken his humerus into two pieces, an injury that is as bad as it sounds. His doctors had never performed a surgery like the one he would need: "They were asking me if there were any other sports I could play," Hamels remembers. Two metal rods were inserted into Hamels' left arm, running from his elbow to his shoulder, both about the length and width of a coat hanger. The surgery took a full year to recover from, and wiped out Hamels' entire junior season. After a sophomore campaign that had put him on the professional radar, Hamels once again was out of the glare of media attention, relegated to a slow and painful rehabilitation process.

Then, almost a year to the day after he broke his arm, he started throwing again. And a surprising thing happened: Due to both natural growth and all the rehab he had been doing, Hamels came back throwing even harder than he had when he went down. His first outing back, the scouts came in full force, albeit with tempered expectations, to see if he still had it. His coaches decided to let him throw 50 pitches, and then, no matter where he was in the game, pull him out. The first inning he struck out the side on nine pitches. He ended up with 10 strikeouts in five innings on just those 50 throws.

His final year at Rancho Bernardo, Hamels ended up 10-0 with a microscopic 0.39 ERA and 130 Ks in just 71 innings. "Senior year he was just unfair," says Furtak. "He did not struggle." Mike Arbuckle, Phillies director of scouting, took notice. "He was unbelievably polished — he looked like a college pitcher in a high school body." Still, he didn't act the part. "Off he field he didn't carry himself like a star at all," says Jason Fillmore, a childhood teammate of Hamels. "You wouldn't know he was a baseball player if you saw him walking through the halls of high school. ... He's two different people. When he's not pitching, he'll be laughing in the dugout, then he stands on that mound and becomes totally focused."

After being picked 17th in the 2002 amateur draft, Hamels entered the Phillies system, where he continued to dominate. In 2003 he struck out 115 in 74 and two-thirds innings and posted a 0.84 ERA for single-A Lakewood before being promoted to Clearwater, where he didn't allow more than two earned runs in any of his five starts. By the end of 2004, in 117 Minor League innings, Hamels had a 1.31 ERA and 171 strikeouts. He was on the fast track to The Show, and to being a star there.

In late January, 2005, however, he went to a bar. There, one of two things happened. The legend goes that he got into an altercation with another patron, left the bar, gathered his boys, came back to the bar, and then broke his pitching hand on the face of the guy he'd argued with. Hamels' story is a little different. He tells me that a stranger pulled his friend out of a car and he came out to defend his buddy, breaking his hand in a defensive swing. Either way, Hamels was, again, forced to come to grips with the fact that he wasn't invincible, this time without the sympathy that surrounds an unlucky high school athlete. Again, just as Hamels' moment was nearing, he was forced to put it on hold.

This pattern — lunge ahead, fall back — continued throughout his career. In 2006, Hamels' first year in the majors, every contribution he made was a pleasant surprise. Last year, almost as soon as Hamels emerged as the Phillies' ace, he suffered an injury, just in time for the Phillies' pennant drive. Everything he accomplished when he came back was impressive, but if he had failed, he had the psychological safety net of his injury — no one would assume he couldn't handle the pressure, just that he was still hurt. Even as recently as the beginning of this season, with Hamels again at that point of almost-stardom, Brett Myers was given the opening-day start, an honor reserved for the man the coaching staff trusts the most.

Courtesy of Gary and Amanda Hamels PHILLIE FOR LIFE: Cole played for the Phillies in Little League. The grown-up franchise would do well to keep him dressed in red and white. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The changeup is a deceptive pitch, meant to fool rather than attack the batter. When described, in comparison to other pitches, it sounds weak: The fastball is meant to overpower, the curveball breaks across the plate, the slider bends and twists, and the changeup — well, the changeup isn't the fastball.

Coming out of the pitcher's hand, the changeup is meant to look like a standard fastball. For most pitchers, this means not only changing one's grip, but also subtly slowing down one's arm — if a hitter is looking for a fastball, he will miss the slower changeup, but if a perceptive hitter is looking for a changeup, he'll usually kill it. For Hamels, however, there is no perceptible change in his arm speed when he switches between the pitches. Coming out of his hand, his fastball and his changeup look exactly the same.

"It comes in really straight, then just fades away," explains Phillies catcher Chris Coste. "It's not tight — it's a nasty pitch, but the way the movement is, it just tails and dips. I don't want to use the word 'lazily,' but that is what it does. It looks so hittable and then it just falls off." Because the changeup looks like the fastball, hitters are ready to swing at a fastball. "It doesn't even matter if a guy is sitting on it," says Mitch Williams. "When they swing at that arm speed, he's unhittable."

As soon as Coach Furtak taught him the pitch in his sophomore year of high school, it was clear that Hamels had something. "It was like a snake," explains Furtak. "It would go three different directions at once." Admittedly, "He would never throw it near the strike zone," but because he would have such great motion on it, he could still get guys out.

"I topped out at 83 [mph] as a sophomore — those guys I would play against would kill 83 miles per hour," Hamels tells me, breaking down how he developed the pitch when so many kids his age were radar-gun-obsessed. "I saw guys start to spin around in the box when I threw [the changeup], then saw them miss my fastball because they're behind." Seeing hitters who could hit a 93 mph fastball miss one that came in 10 mph slower made him an instant convert.

Most pitchers are afraid to throw changeups consecutively, because if a hitter gets a beat on the pitch, it starts looking like no more than a slow fastball. But Hamels will throw it two, three, four times in a row. "If the hitter doesn't make an adjustment, he should throw it back-to-back-to-back," Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee explains. It's a rule Hamels takes to heart. Last year, in a June 2 game against the San Francisco Giants, Hamels faced Barry Bonds, statistically the best hitter to have picked up a bat during Hamels' lifetime. Hamels decided to challenge him with changeup after changeup, throwing five in a row at the imposing slugger. Throwing any pitch five consecutive times to a player like Bonds is beyond tempting fate; it's bordering on lunacy. If someone with Bonds' talent can get a good read on a pitch, the odds shift enormously toward the hitter. The changeup was especially brash. But Hamels' fifth changeup struck Bonds out.

It isn't just the changeup, though. Hamels "does a lot of things to keep you off-balance," explains Florida Marlins All-Star second basemen Dan Uggla, moments before going hitless in three at-bats against the Phils ace, continuing his season-long hitless streak against Hamels. "He'll work backward [use his 'out' pitch for strikes, opposite of conventional wisdom], which makes it so you never know what he's going to throw."

In baseball, a quality start is defined as going at least six innings and surrendering three or fewer earned runs. This season, Hamels has gone more than six innings and given up fewer than three runs 15 times. He's emerging as a presence on the mound; when he flares his shoulders and bears down on the batter, he can intimidate even the most grizzled of vets. You could argue that he's not a top-five pitcher in the National League — but you'd be wrong.

"He's the guy who, when we hand him the ball, he's capable of throwing a shutout and maybe even a no-hitter," explains Manuel. Dubee says that he is "special, anytime he's going out on the mound you've got a great chance to win." His teammates are equally enthusiastic: "Hollywood means a lot to this team," says first baseman Ryan Howard. "Playing behind him gives us the confidence that he's going to go out there and shut them down." All-Star second baseman Chase Utley's analysis is simpler. When asked about Hamels' raw stuff, he stops, thinks, looks over at his ace and says flatly, "I'm glad he's on our side."

But has this role, this importance, sunk in with Hamels? On a Phillies team stacked with superstars — Howard and shortstop Jimmy Rollins have won the last two National League MVP awards, and Utley is one hot month away from making it three in a row — he still says he doesn't envision himself as the team leader. "I've never seen myself as old enough," he says.

Two days before a recent start, and just hours before the Phillies would fall 8-2 to the Florida Marlins and see their NL East lead narrow to just one and a half games, Cole Hamels is asked whether he, the Phillies' second-youngest player, is ready to take baseball's second-oldest team to the Promised Land. Standing by his locker with his hair uncharacteristically askew and his left shoulder wrapped in a mound of towel-covered ice, it seems as if even he's not sure of the answer.

"When you have a bad game, you have to remember that you're trying to compete with guys who are four or five years older than you, on top of having four or five years more experience," he tells me, using the second person to suggest that he's not totally comfortable with the concept. He asks himself, "What am I going to be like in four years?" This helps relieve the pressure. "I realize that I don't have to be really good, I just need to be good."

This is not exactly the mind-set Phillies fans want from the star of a team with playoff aspirations this year. But if you look closely at Hamels' career, you see that the mild-mannered 24-year-old's off-field persona is often disconnected from the ace pitcher's performance on it. On the mound, Hamels is capable of leaving that clubhouse self behind.

As the Phillies' playoff push nears, two big questions about Hamels linger. The first is health. The second is whether he can go to that place he's gone when he's been at his best: where he decides that his changeup is too nasty even for Barry Bonds, and that no punk kid is going to break up his no-hitter with a bunt, even if he has to strike out the side to prove it.

He does, on rare occasion, give voice to that cocky, dominating pitcher. When Hamels was in the midst of his contract dispute last year, rumors began to swirl that he was upset not only with the organization, but also with Citizens Bank Park, the notoriously hitter-friendly Phillies stadium with the short left-field wall. I brought this up to Hamels one day in the locker room. He scoffed.

"It doesn't matter how [close] the fence is," he told me. "They're not supposed to hit the ball."

(e.james.beale@citypaper.net)

E. James Beale is City Paper's sports blogger. Read his work every weekday at The Sports Complex, citypaper.net/sports.

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