TOM GLAVINE’S LIFE HAD CHANGED considerably in the two years that had passed since his one-hit, Series-clinching gem in 1995. He had coauthored a book that winter, None but the Braves, with the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo, that, as athlete autobiographies go, was extremely honest — especially when discussing the issues surrounding the strike of 1994–95.
He also talked about how he had met Carri, how he had proposed to her, and how thrilled they had both been when Amber was born in January 1995, but he said little else in the book about his personal life. There was a reason for that: his marriage was falling apart.
In June 1996, the story broke: Tom and Carri Glavine were filing for divorce. At that point, no one in Atlanta was a bigger star than Glavine. Going through the divorce was difficult for him for all the reasons that divorce is difficult, especially with an eighteen-month-old child involved. To have to go through it in public made it that much more painful.
“I guess the only good thing was that Amber was too young to read the papers,” Glavine said, forcing a laugh. “I don’t think any of us ever gets married thinking we’re going to end up divorced. So, when it happens, it’s a shock to your system. When you see it in the papers, and you know people are talking about you and gossiping about you, it’s that much harder.
“I was probably lucky, looking back, that it happened during the season. It meant I had an escape at the ballpark and on the field. I think if it had happened during the off-season it would have been that much tougher.”
Glavine pitched well in 1996, and the Braves made it back to the World Series, only to blow a 2–0 lead and lose to the New York Yankees in six games. Glavine pitched well in Game Three, but was outpitched by his union buddy David Cone. He would have been the Game Seven pitcher but there was no Game Seven.
His divorce was still pending the next spring when a friend of his told him that Christine St. Onge was in town. He wondered if Glavine wanted to get together with her.
Glavine already knew St. Onge. They had first met in spring training in 1988. She had been living in Palm Beach and working for Home Depot in their computer division, and the two of them had been introduced at a party.
“I had no idea who he was,” Chris said years later. “But I thought he was cute.”
Glavine thought the same thing about Chris. They dated off and on for the next couple of years, even though she lived in Florida and he lived in Atlanta. The relationship tailed off when Glavine started dating Carri, and Chris began dating someone she worked with in Florida. Each got married in 1992. They became parents within three months of one another — Chris’s son Jonathan being born in October 1994.
And then, in 1996, they both went through divorces. Each was on the rebound, but when they met again in the spring of 1997 they remembered liking one another, and a relationship began to bloom.
“At first it was just good fun,” Chris said. “We were both still finalizing divorces, and it was comfortable. But after a while it started to get a little bit serious, and I kind of wanted to know where we stood — or at least how Tom thought we stood. I had not yet introduced him to Jonathan [who was not quite three], and I said to Tom one night in August, ‘You know, if we’re going to keep going forward with this, I think you should meet my son. But if all we’re doing is having a good time and there’s nothing more to it, I don’t want you to meet him. I don’t want you in his life one day, out of it the next. If I’m just the girl you call on Tuesdays and Fridays and that’s it, fine, just tell me. But if it’s more than that, you should meet Jonathan.’ ”
Glavine said he understood. He said she was absolutely right to feel the way she did. And then he didn’t call for three months. “I guess I kind of freaked out a little,” he said. “The wound of the divorce was still kind of fresh; in fact I wasn’t legally divorced yet. I knew where Chris was coming from and that she wasn’t trying to pin me down. I guess I just wasn’t ready to deal with anything that involved moving forward in any kind of serious manner right at that moment.”
Chris was still working for Home Depot — out of Atlanta rather than Florida at that point. Not hearing from Glavine was disappointing, but she figured the message was that the relationship had just been a lark for him. “It made me sad,” she said. “Because I really liked him a lot.”
She was at work one morning just prior to Thanksgiving when someone told her that Tom Glavine was on the phone for her. The Braves’ season had ended in disappointment that October: after winning a sixth straight Division title they had been beaten in the National League Championship Series by the wild card Florida Marlins. Chris waited a moment or two and then picked up the phone.
“Hi, Chris. It’s Tom.”
“Tom who?” she said coolly. “Do I know you?”
Glavine wasn’t stunned but still caught a little bit off guard. “I guess I deserve that,” he said.
“You bet you do,” she answered.
Glavine wanted to see her again. He was sorry about the lengthy gap between phone calls. That wasn’t good enough. “If you want to go out with me again, you have to make a list of the ten reasons I should say yes,” she told him.
That night when Chris got home, there was a message on her answering machine. “I’ve come up with six so far,” Glavine said on the message.
The list included things like “really good tickets to Braves games” but did not include the one reason Chris really wanted to hear. “There was,” she said smiling, “nothing romantic. I don’t think he could quite bring himself to do it.”
Chris was torn. She knew she wanted to see Tom again, but a part of her was worried that she was just another jock date, the flavor of the month or week. Finally she decided to really put him to the test. “Why don’t you go with me to my office Christmas party,” she said. Tom agreed.
“For someone like Tom, there can’t be anything worse than a party like that,” she said. “There was no way he was going to get thirty seconds of peace. Everyone in Atlanta knew Tom Glavine. It was going to be autographs and pictures and ‘What happened in the playoffs?’ all night long. I figured if he was willing to go through that, then maybe he really did like me.”
Glavine went through it and never complained. He knew the drill. Having paid his penance, he began dating Chris seriously again. He met Jonathan. She met Amber. They were married the next fall.
At the start of the 1997 season, Glavine began negotiating a new contract with the Braves. They had picked up his option for that year at $5 million, which was fine with him, even though he was probably underpaid given his status and the market for pitchers at the time. Braves president Stan Kasten told Glavine and Gregg Clifton, Glavine’s agent, that he wanted to sign Glavine to a long-term contract before the end of the season so he would not file for free agency.
“They actually made me a very good offer,” Glavine said. “It was four years at $32 million with a club option for a fifth year at $10 million. I really thought I deserved a fifth year. Which led, of course, to one of my sessions with Stan.”
Kasten and Glavine have what can only be described as a unique employer employee relationship. Kasten, who is now president of the Washington Nationals, was something of a boy wonder among sports executives. He had been named general manager of the Atlanta Hawks in 1979, making him, at twenty seven, the youngest general manager in NBA history. Five years later, Ted Turner — who owned both the Hawks and the Braves — asked him to take over the Braves too, and Kasten’s first important move was to hire Bobby Cox as general manager. By the time Glavine arrived in Atlanta, Kasten was president of both the Braves and the Hawks.
Kasten quickly understood that Glavine wasn’t just a promising young pitcher; he was also bright and a clubhouse leader, albeit in a quiet way most of the time. Glavine liked the fact that Kasten was anything but buttoned-down, spent time with the players, and had a sharp sense of humor.
But they also clashed. They sat across from one another during many tempestuous negotiation sessions during the 1994–95 strike, and they frequently argued with one another about union issues and other political issues. Kasten, the management hawk, the antiunion man, was a Democrat. Glavine, the union man, was a Republican.
“Ask Tom to explain how that works,” Kasten liked to say. “One minute he’s Mr. Union Guy, the next he’s voting for whomever is going to lower taxes for the rich.”
“He makes a good point,” Glavine would reply.
When Kasten and Glavine met in the spring of 1997 to discuss a possible fifth year in Glavine’s contract, Kasten was adamant. “Look, Tom, I’m going to get a lot of heat from other owners for giving you this contract,” Kasten said. “You’re going to be the highest paid pitcher in baseball. We just aren’t going to give anyone a guaranteed fifth year.”
It was, as Glavine often says, “typical Stan.”
“First, he lectures me on why I should be grateful when I think the money he’s paying me is good but not in any way out of line based on my performance,” he said. “Second, he knows I will never pitch a game as the highest paid pitcher in baseball. For one thing Greg [Maddux] is up at the end of that year, and he’s going to get more than me. Kevin Brown is up too, and, as a free agent, he’s going to get more too.”
Glavine signed the contract. It was, he knew, good money. What rankled was when the Braves signed Maddux a month later — to a five year guaranteed contract. “He deserved it,” Glavine said. “But I sat and listened to Stan say, ‘No way will we give anyone five years guaranteed.’ A month later he gave Greg five years guaranteed.”
Even so, Glavine was happy with the deal. It meant he would be in Atlanta until he was at least thirty five, perhaps thirty six if the fifth year kicked in. He felt he had held up his obligation to the union to get as much money as possible — he was the highest paid pitcher in the game, at least in theory, when it was announced — and he didn’t have to leave Atlanta or even shop himself on the free agent market. Having been one of the leaders of the strike in 1994 and 1995, Glavine did not want to take a “hometown discount” to stay in Atlanta. Kasten understood that and made him an offer he felt comfortable taking.
“I had no desire to leave Atlanta, then or ever,” he said. “By then I had a daughter who was living there with her mother, and I liked where I was. It had become home, and I certainly didn’t want to leave the Braves or Bobby [Cox] or Leo [Mazzone] or Doggy [Greg Maddux] or Smoltzie.”
Maddux had come to the Braves as a free agent in the winter of 1992, after beating Glavine for the Cy Young Award while pitching for the Cubs. He had promptly won the next three Cy Young Awards and was the game’s dominant pitcher. Glavine and Smoltz, both likely Hall of Famers at the rate they were going, were the number two and number three pitchers in what was clearly one of the great rotations in baseball history.
If their personalities had been different, the three might not have gotten along. They were extremely competitive: as pitchers, as hitters, as golfers — but they enjoyed one another’s company and recognized that each made the others better.
“When I first signed, I was really a little bit nervous about how it would all work,” Maddux said. “These guys were already very established. They had won back-to-back pennants, and now I come along. Plus, for all intents and purposes, I took Charlie Leibrandt’s place, and Tom and John were both very close to him.”
There was nothing subtle about the way the Braves made the switch from Leibrandt to Maddux. On the same day that Maddux signed — December 9, 1992 — Leibrandt was traded to Texas. Signing Maddux was an upgrade — if he wasn’t the best pitcher in baseball, he was one of the three or four best — but Leibrandt’s departure was difficult for both Glavine and Smoltz.
Leibrandt had been the big brother in the trio, a few years older, someone who had pitched in the World Series (with Kansas City in 1985) in key situations before the Braves became contenders. He had come over from Kansas City prior to the 1990 season and had taken Glavine and Smoltz under his wing. The three were virtually inseparable, playing golf together almost every day, especially on the road.
“If we had a weeklong road trip, the only day we didn’t play was on the day we pitched,” Glavine said. “We’d usually pick up a fourth somewhere or just the three of us would go out, but it was a ritual.”
Fortunately, Maddux was also a golfer. He wasn’t quite as good as Glavine, who isn’t quite as good as Smoltz. Glavine’s handicap is usually in the five to eight range; Maddux’s is a little bit higher. Most days Glavine and Maddux would play against Smoltz, and the competition was fierce. “You just didn’t want to lose to John at anything because you weren’t likely to hear the end of it anytime soon — or ever,” Glavine said. “It just wasn’t any fun.”
Maddux was quickly accepted into the circle but says he was never quite as competitive with Smoltz and Glavine as they were with each other. “Maybe it was because they’d been together so long,” he said. “Or maybe it was just personalities. I always wanted to win, always wanted to do well, but Tom and John would do just about anything to beat one another at everything. If John got two hits in a game, Tom had to get two hits the next game by hook or by crook. The golf thing never stopped. Sometimes I just sat back and watched the show.”
In 1997, Tiger Woods moved to Orlando’s Isleworth, an exclusive megabucks golf community not far from where the Braves had just relocated their spring-training camp. Isleworth was one of many places where the Braves trio went to play golf during the spring, and they struck up a friendship with Woods. On occasion, the three of them would play with Woods — their best ball against his one ball.
“One time he beat us pretty soundly, and I gave him five hundred-dollar bills that I stuck in an envelope to pay him off,” Smoltz said. “As it turned out, that was the last time that spring we got to play with him. Almost a year later, we played again, and this time we whipped him — for five hundred bucks. When we’re done, he reaches inside his golf bag and pulls out the envelope I’d given him a year earlier and just hands it to me. It had never made it out of the bag. He just shrugged and said, ‘I figured you guys would get me back someday.’ ”
Smoltz was always the golf organizer. Whenever the Braves arrived in town somewhere, he would get on the phone and set up a game, usually at the best-known golf course in the area. There weren’t many places — if any — where the three famous pitchers couldn’t get on.
“The thing I miss most about those days is the golf,” Maddux, now with the San Diego Padres, said. “The best thing was that Tom and I never had to do anything except show up. Smoltzie made all the arrangements.”
One of the culture shocks for Glavine years later, when he left Atlanta for New York, was not only finding new golf partners but often having to make arrangements himself. In 2007 he was the only Mets starter who played much golf, so he often played with relief pitchers like Aaron Heilman, Scott Schoeneweis, and Aaron Sele. “It’s different because those guys may have to pitch on any given day; they aren’t on a schedule the way a starter is, so they can’t play as regularly,” he said. “Plus, some of the time I have to make the phone call myself to get us in certain places.”
In fact, when the Mets were in Pittsburgh in the summer of 2007, Schoeneweis called Oakmont Country Club where the U.S. Open had been held in June to try to get the pitchers a tee time. No room at the inn — or on the golf course — he was told. Glavine made the same call a day later. “What time do you guys want to come out?” was the answer he got.
The rules of Oakmont are clear: relief pitchers can play as long as they are accompanied by at least one future Hall of Famer.
During the glory years in Atlanta, no one would go to greater lengths for a laugh than Smoltz. Once, when Glavine had gotten in the habit of hanging out in the clubhouse during games — starting pitchers will often do that when they aren’t pitching, especially if the weather isn’t good — Smoltz took masking tape and spent a good hour on his hands and knees putting it on the floor to create a trail from Glavine’s locker in the clubhouse to the dugout. When Glavine walked in that day, Smoltz presented him with a map and said if he ever did get lost to just follow the tape.
“It was a good laugh,” Glavine said. “Only Smoltzie could put in an hour on his hands and knees to get a good thirty-second laugh.”
Smoltz admits now that there were times when he felt like the third brother and that it constantly drove him to try to prove himself. “My sense is that I was the guy riding in the backseat most of the time,” he said. “As good as Greg was, Tom was definitely riding up there with him. He was the first of us to establish himself as a star. He was the World Series hero. The two of them shared turns at the steering wheel through the years. I was in the backseat kind of waiting my turn.”
Unlike Maddux and Glavine, who have been on the disabled list just once (Maddux for fifteen days), combined, in their careers, Smoltz has had his share of injuries. He has been on the disabled list nine times in his career, has had elbow surgery three times, and missed the entire 2000 season after having “Tommy John surgery” on his elbow. While Maddux was the winningest pitcher in baseball in the 1990s with 176 wins and Glavine was second with 164, Smoltz was fifth with 143.
The one area where Smoltz has clearly outshone the two guys in the front seat has been in the postseason. Glavine is 14–16 in postseason play; Maddux is 11–14. Smoltz is 15–4 and would probably have even more wins if he had not spent four seasons as the Braves closer after the Tommy John surgery.
Regardless of who was sitting where in the car, Glavine had no desire to pitch for anyone else after the ’97 season. The Braves certainly didn’t want to break up the staff or see Glavine leave, which is why they made sure to get him signed before free agency became a factor.
MUSSINA DIDN’T FILE for free agency either. Like Glavine, he was in a situation where he did not want to leave the team he was pitching for. He had been eligible for arbitration after the 1996 season. Arbitration is the first step a player takes before he reaches free agency, which comes after he has been in the major leagues for six years.
How much an arbitration-eligible player makes depends on how much other players with similar statistics are making at the time. The team will submit a proposed figure, and the player and his agent will submit a proposed figure. The arbitrator, after a hearing in which both sides present their case, chooses one figure or the other. There is no compromise.
Because of this, most teams and players try to make a deal before actually going to arbitration. If a player is asking for $7 million for one year and the team offering $5 million, they will frequently agree to compromise at $6 million. Another reason teams don’t want to go to arbitration is that arbitration hearings can get ugly. The team will point out — with the player sitting in the room — every flaw a player has. Players don’t like hearing all the weaknesses they allegedly have from their employer.
In the winter of 1996–97, Mussina and the Orioles agreed on a one-year contract worth $6.85 million. They continued to negotiate on a contract extension during spring training since Mussina would be a free agent at the end of that season. When they couldn’t make a deal, Mussina assumed he would simply file for free agency in the fall.
It never happened. Orioles owner Peter Angelos asked Mussina to have breakfast with him. He told him how much he wanted Mussina to stay in Baltimore. He said he didn’t want to give him a five-year contract because contracts that long were risky for pitchers, no matter how good and how healthy they were at the time. He told him he would pay him top dollar for a three-year contract.
By early May, the deal had been made. Mussina signed for three-years and almost $21 million, making him the fourth-highest-paid pitcher in baseball in terms of annual salary. As good as the money was, the case could certainly be made that Mussina would have gotten more money and more years on the contract had he elected to put himself on the open market at the end of the season. In that sense he had given the Orioles a hometown discount. Clearly, Mussina would not have signed with any other team in baseball for only three-years and probably would have commanded more money had he gone someplace else. But he didn’t.
Mussina had gotten engaged that spring to Jana McKissick, someone he had known since boyhood, and he very much wanted to stay in Baltimore since it was less than 200 miles from Montoursville. Jana had been married once before and had an eight-year-old daughter. That meant Mussina had an instant family. What’s more, both he and Jana wanted to have more children, so they were thinking about how far away Mussina might have to travel as a free agent.
“Even though my agent told me I could probably get more on the open market, what if the best offer was in Los Angeles or Texas or someplace far from home?” Mussina said. “I was about to get married, I had an eight-year-old daughter, and I didn’t want to be that far away for six or seven months of the year. I was comfortable in Baltimore, and we had a good team. It also crossed my mind that if I continued to pitch well, a three-year deal might work to my advantage because I would have the chance to be a free agent again in 2000.”
So, Mussina accepted the Orioles’ offer. It was a coup for the team because they had gotten a premier pitcher at the peak of his powers for a relatively cheap price. And it was the kind of contract that made all owners happy because they could point to Mussina’s contract when negotiating with other pitchers and say, “If Mike Mussina took a three-year deal, why shouldn’t you?” Which, naturally, didn’t make the union very happy, particularly since Mussina was not only visible for his pitching prowess but was the Orioles’ player representative.
“If a guy wants to give a team a hometown discount, I can understand that, if he thinks it is the best thing for him,” Glavine was quoted as saying after Mussina signed. “But it doesn’t help the rest of the guys for him to sign a contract like that.”
As is always the case in these situations, Glavine and Mussina never actually spoke. Glavine insists now that he wasn’t trying to put Mussina down, and he wasn’t angry with Mussina for signing the deal that he signed. He was simply trying to make a point.
“I did probably have my union hat on when I said it,” Glavine said. “But it really wasn’t personal at all. Would I have preferred that Mike hold out for four or five years or, if necessary, go on the open market? Yes. But did I understand him not wanting to move? Yes. I didn’t want to move either.”
But Glavine’s choice had been relatively easy. He had gotten four years plus an option and top money. If the Braves had offered only three-years, he probably would have gone to free agency.
“I think I would have felt obligated to do it given my involvement with the union,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I would have wanted to do it. I can certainly see Mike’s side of it.”
That wasn’t exactly how the quote came across when Mussina read it. He wasn’t angry about it, but he remembered it. Years later when the subject came up, he referred to Glavine having “ripped me” for giving the Orioles a hometown discount.
“Actually it turned out very well for me,” Mussina said. “Three years later, I was a free agent again when the market was about as flush as it’s ever been. Tom had to wait five years, and by then the market wasn’t as good. I probably ended up making more than Tom by taking the three-years, although, to be fair, I wasn’t that smart. That wasn’t why I signed when I did. I just didn’t see any reason to leave Baltimore.”
Three years later, that would no longer be the case.