High-wire Act

Perfect Endings
Closers are expected to enter a game and, regardless of the circumstances, mow down opposing hitters without incident. Yet through Saturday only five closers had been perfect—allowing no base runners—in 50% or more of their save opportunities. Conversely, 12 closers put at least one runner on base in 80% or more of such appearances (minimum five save chances). Here are the leaders in each category.
	SAVE OPPORTUNITIES	SAVES	PERFECT SAVES	PERFECT SAVE PCT.
Highest Percentage of Perfect Saves
Dave Veres, Cardinals	9	9	6	.667
Jeff Nelson, Mariners	5	4	3	.600
Kazuhiro Sasaki, Mariners	27	24	15	.556
Tom Gordon, Cubs	11	8	6	.545
Billy Wagner, Astros	14	13	7	.500
Lowest Percentage of Perfect Saves
Derek Lowe, Red Sox	9	7	0	.000
Roberto Hernandez, Royals	12	9	1	.083
Antonio Alfonseca, Marlins	15	12	2	.133
Todd Jones, Tigers	15	10	2	.133
Trevor Hoffman, Padres	14	12	2	.143
Bret Prinz, Diamondbacks	7	5	1	.143
Source: Elias Sports Bureau

Airplane Pilot, tightrope walker, sword swallower, bomb-squad member, skydiver, closer. Success or failure in these jobs is absolute: You either do or you don't. The closer's job is the most clearly delineated one in sports. Most times he either gets a save—you need not mine far to hit the religious or heroic bedrock of the word—or a blown save, the cruelest, most negative stat ever invented. There is no middle ground. No safety net. Closers are the Flying Wallendas of baseball.

Trevor Hoffman fell off the high wire on May 27. Hoffman, 33, is the San Diego Padres' closer. He is the only active pitcher to have saved 30 games in each of the past six years. That afternoon the Padres gave the righthander a 4-2 lead to protect in the ninth inning against a division rival, the Arizona Diamondbacks. The game took a total of two hours and 47 minutes, but Hoffman lost it in an eye blink: single, home run, fly-out, single, home run. Drive home safely.

What happened in the wake of defeat, when utter failure is a virus that attacks the immune system of confidence, would reveal more about Hoffman's staying power than his National League-record-tying 53 saves in 1998. "To last in this job," Hoffman says, "you have to learn to take the good and the bad equally."

The results are brutally self-evident: You do or you don't. Many closers do (44 pitchers saved at least 30 games in a season over the past five years), but most don't for long. (Four current closers have saved 30 or more in each of the past three years.) Just about any pitcher with good stuff, given the liberalism of the save rule and the programmed use of closers by robotic managers, can save 30 games once. Mel Rojas, Heathcliff Slocumb and Billy Taylor proved as much in recent years—before they disappeared as quickly as they'd arrived among the brethren of closers.

Hoffman, one of the rare closers who endures, fought the virus after the Arizona defeat. He has developed an emergency routine for such cases. First, while sitting alone in the dugout, he reflects on what just happened; then, even after his worst outings, he goes to the clubhouse and fields questions from the media. "The people asking the questions are not responsible for the ball flying out of the park," he explains. Finally, alone, he finds something positive amid the despair. He won't leave the stadium until he is sure the virus is under control. This time Hoffman began the cleansing process at about 4:50 in the afternoon. He did not leave until nine o'clock that night.

"That's not normal, believe me—not that long," Hoffman says. "There were a lot of issues with that one. Some games have a lasting impact, and I thought that was one of them. I didn't do a whole lot, just kind of sat around, watched the Coca-Cola 600, drank Coca-Colas. The first home run ran through my mind. A 2-and-2 pitch. I threw a fastball. When I get to two strikes in that situation, it's easy to think, I ought to have thrown a changeup. But if he pops up a fastball to leftfield, you don't think twice.

"Confidence is everything," Hoffman adds. "If you start second-guessing yourself, you're bound to run into more bad [outings]. It took a while, but I got through it. It's a clich�, but it's true: It's better to have competed and lost than not to have competed at all. That's what I told myself. I battled. And I knew I'd be out there again."

Armando Benitez fell off the high wire on May 11. Benitez, 28, is the New York Mets' closer. He is, with only one 30-save season on his r�sum�, a work in progress. Whether he turns out to be Trevor Hoffman or Mel Rojas will depend on nights like this, when he surrendered the game-winning hit to the San Francisco Giants. The righthander's response, with the help of at least one other Met, was to demolish parts of the visiting dugout and clubhouse at Pacific Bell Park. The Giants sent the Mets a bill for $4,000 to cover repairs.

What was it that Hoffman said? Treat the good and the bad equally? How can any closer do that when, as St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa put it, he has to endure "a maximum amount of pressure in a minimum amount of time"? How can he do it when success is so intoxicating and failure so debilitating?

Stacey O'Neill heard about Benitez's rage in San Francisco and winced. Three months earlier O'Neill, Benitez's former girlfriend, had dropped domestic-abuse charges against the reliever only after he agreed to seek anger-management counseling. She had recognized a pattern of postgame behavior by Benitez that was linked to success or failure on the mound.