McLemore just gets faster with age
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, June 23, 2001
By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
Check his birth certificate.
There’s either a fluke of nature running around Safeco Field, or Mark McLemore has been lying about his age all these years.
How else can you explain the phenomenon in a Seattle Mariners uniform that has taken place on the basepaths this season.
McLemore, 36 3/4, has stolen 23 consecutive bases. He hasn’t been thrown out yet, and if he swipes nine more bags in a row he’ll tie Julio Cruz’s 20-year-old team record.
Already he’s a cinch to shatter his personal record of 30 steals in a season, set last year with the Mariners.
A man who was born on October 4, 1964, is supposed to slow down by now. Guys that age playing beer-league softball are wheezing just looking at the distance from first to second base.
McLemore looks like he’s speeding up, although he says he isn’t as fast or as quick as he was when he was a 30-year-old with the Rangers.
“Not even close,” McLemore said. “I was quicker then.”
Mariners first base coach John Moses begs to differ.
“I’ve seen McLemore since Day One in the big leagues, and I don’t think he’s lost very much speed at all,” Moses said. “He’s just as quick as he was when he was 24.”
The years, Moses says, actually have helped McLemore.
“Mac has great intellect on the basepaths,” he said. “That has a lot to do with it. He’s a veteran guy who knows when he can run and when he can’t run. He’s patient and he has a plan. He’s very good at reading the pitches. Sometimes you can feel when a pitch is going to be thrown. He runs a lot on breaking balls and he knows the counts to run on. He just has a feel for when the right time to go is.”
Quickness, and not sheer speed, may be the key, Moses said.
“Sometimes you have to do something a little bit different,” he said. “You might have to get a little bit bigger lead. You might have lost a half-step, but you’ve got to find a half-step somewhere so you’re going to have to make adjustments.”
The first three steps, both Moses and McLemore agree, are the most important in a stolen base attempt.
“Be as explosive as possible. Get into full stride as quick as possible,” McLemore said.
McLemore’s first three steps have been flawless in a season when the Mariners, a team that thrives on speed, need them most.
“My speed hasn’t just arrived,” he said. “The team I was on before didn’t use the stolen base as a part of our offense. What means more to me now is that a great number of the times I’ve gotten into scoring position, I have scored.
“You can’t run every single time you get on base. Well, I guess you can, but that’s not what is important here. With the offense we have, it is my job to get into scoring position.”
If stolen bases were so important, one daily fact would never elude McLemore. He says he isn’t infatuated with the number of steals he has.
“I don’t look at that,” he said. “The only reason I know is because people keep telling me.”
John Moses refers to an old baseball saying – speed never slumps – when asked if the makeup of this Mariners team will prevent it from a prolonged losing streak.
“You look at our aggressiveness on the bases and it really puts the defense out of whack,” Moses said. “You force guys to play out of position. Sometimes you get the wrong guy covering the bag. They’ve got to play a little bit more closely to the bag and it leaves an area open, which I think really helps open up the field for our 3-4-5 hitters.”
Ichiro Suzuki has given the Mariners a spark at the top of the lineup that they’ve never had, and his speed has forced opposing teams into bad throws and wrong decisions.
“Speed kills,” Moses said. “It really puts a lot of pressure on the defense. I think that keeps people out of slumps. One reason you don’t see Ichiro in a hitting slump is because he beats out the infield hits.
“But we’ve got other guys in the lineup who put pressure on. (Mike) Cameron and McLemore, too. It especially throws a pitcher out of whack. I’ve seen many times when Ichiro or McLemore is on base and all of a sudden the pitcher has to use his slide step. When he does that, he doesn’t get his maximum speed on his fastball. It may go from 92 to 88 and the ball seems to straighten out a little bit more because a pitcher wants to be a little finer, and boom, before you know it, the ball’s out of the ballpark.”
Just watching him walk, you’d never know Mariners outfielder Jay Buhner is slightly more than a week removed from surgery to release the plantar fascia tissue in his left foot. He gets around the clubhouse without a limp, leading anyone who doesn’t know about the rigors of the game to believe he will return by Aug. 1.
That’s the date his doctors figure Buhner will be ready to play again.
Don’t hold them to it.
“Aug. 1 is what the doctor said,” trainer Rick Griffin said. “He’s very optimistic. The only caution is that I don’t know if the physician understands the concept of Jay going from not having played any spring training to all of a sudden taking batting practice and playing in the games. He may be ready to play in a game then, but whether he can play because he hasn’t had any spring training, that remains to be seen.”
Buhner, who injured the foot early in spring training, knew surgery was a likely outcome, but he tried the rehab route for months before finally submitting to the knife.
“Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” he said with a resigned smile Saturday in the Mariners clubhouse. “I just want to play again.”
Buhner truly believes he can help the Mariners, but realizes a longer-than-hoped-for recovery could disrupt the team near the end of the season.
“I don’t want to take away anybody’s roster spot,” he said.
For now, he needs to do the right thing and get healthy.
He will get the stitches out of his foot this week, and the training staff will determine a therapy plan after that.
“We need to wait for the incisions to heal up before we can start doing anything,” Griffin said.
Mariners left-hander John Halama seemed to have gotten his stuff together after a series of poor outings in May, then fell back into the hole on Thursday when he allowed six runs in less than three innings at Oakland.
Mariners pitching coach Bryan Price wasn’t singing any praises for Halama after that one, but he didn’t show a lot of concern, either.
“It started with a chopper for a base hit and that got the ball rolling,” Price said. “Then you get a ground ball base hit through the left side; you get a roller by (Jason) Giambi right down the first-base line, right out of the reach of (John) Olerud. And now things are going for them. You’ve got a run in, men are on second and third. And now (John) Jaha hits a ground-out, RBI.
“It was a series of ground-ball base hits or soft line drives. A sacrifice, ground ball, sacrifice fly. The next thing you know the kid has given up six runs and really hasn’t shot himself in the foot with 2-0, 3-1 counts. They were just putting the ball in play.”
So there’s nothing to be worried about?
“It concerns me that he has success,” Price said. “Success is a contributor to a winning ballclub. We need him to be successful and I want him taking the mound not worrying about what happened in the last game.”
