Dontrelle makes his own rules

May 25, 200719 yr

It is pretty funny how unlike most pitchers Dontrelle is. Hopefully this latest stretch of games is the start of him getting back on track.

HYDE: Unwritten rules? Nah, Willis makes his own

Published May 25, 2007

MIAMI GARDENS ? You know the unwritten rules in sports. Suckers walk. Offense calls fouls in pick-up basketball games. Announcers can't say a no-hitter is happening. And a major league pitcher never, ever talks on the day he starts.

"Hey, look at my boat!" Dontrelle Willis is saying late Thursday afternoon, bounding across the Marlins clubhouse a few hours before the scheduled first pitch. He holds a magazine open to a powerboat pictured in the open water. "Look at this!"

"That's your boat?" pitcher Scott Olsen asks.

"I want it!" Willis says, showing the picture as teammates crowd around. "It's a tri-motor, so when two go out you're still going. Can you see me in that? Goes 110 mph! I don't want to be in it when it's going that fast, though!"

On the other side of Dolphin Stadium, in the Philadelphia clubhouse, Jon Lieber is the major league model of a pitcher on the day of his start. He's sitting alone at his locker. His back to the room. His head rests in both hands. He's thinking. Or meditating.

Where's Willis? He's pacing around the dugout now. The Marlins are taking batting practice, and he's jumping into a few reporters' conversation about the coverage of South Florida teams.

"Come on, everyone knows it's a Dolphins town," Willis says. "That's just how it is."

You might just as well ask grass not to be green or a redhead not to have freckles as Willis not to be in the middle of something even on the day he pitches. This is who he is. It's how he gets ready. It's what he does to ramp up the energy for a start.

Roger Clemens doesn't just stay publicly silent for one day before a start, but two days. Willis stay silent? Play the monk? Wall off himself from the world?

Why not ask him to slip into a coma?

.....

Of course an hour before the scheduled start, all prepared, he laughed with Reggie Abercrombie, went over to look inside Hanley Ramirez's locker and then called over a reporter to talk about some baseball gossip. "What're you hearing?" he asked.

What does this have to do with his pitching? Only everything. It speaks of the personality that fuels his game. Just as tapping his glove to his chest after walking a batter to say it was his fault.

Or coming off the mound after an inning, waiting in front of the dugout and high-gloving teammates as they run off the field.

Or, in Thursday's game, having to be restrained by the umpire from going after Philadelphia catcher Rod Barajas in what escalated into a bench-clearing near-brawl.

The Marlins still have test tubes across the roster to see who's real and who's not. But they're a fun team to watch in good part because a veteran like Willis makes them fun. No one's a better ticket to watch in baseball.

Marlins pitching coach Rick Kranitz comes from a generation of pitchers who closed down on the day they pitched. That's how they were taught to prepare.

Kranitz smiles. "That's not Dontrelle."

Here was Dontrelle on Thursday: 61/3 innings. Seven hits. Handing off a 4-3 lead. And, just like every fifth day, a loud ignoring of pitching's unwritten rule.

Quote