Rays

Game beneath the game

Under the stands the Rays stay in shape, work on their swings and study tape to try to get an often crucial edge.

ST. PETERSBURG - Baseball games can be won or lost back here in this secret world, a world where high-tech machinery blends with good old-fashioned elbow grease.

Fans, even those with the best seats money can buy, never see this place. Most don't even know it exists. They figure players spend a game in one of three places: the field, the dugout or the bullpen. They have no idea what lies right underneath them.

Here in these cramped, windowless, one-door rooms in the bowels of Tropicana Field is where the players can be found during a game, searching for the slightest edge that can turn defeat into victory.

"This is the behind-the-scenes part no one knows about," Devil Rays pitching coach Chris Bosio said. "Look around. What you see here wins ballgames."

Bosio is standing just inside the Rays clubhouse. In the far corner is a room crammed with television monitors, tapes and video equipment.

In the opposite corner is a room full of weight machines and stationary bikes that don't rest even when the game starts.

In the distance, a faint echoing sound of thwack, thwack, thwack can be heard. Follow the sound. Walk out of the clubhouse and down a hallway. Turn left into a tunnel and go down a series of steps toward the Rays dugout. The sound is louder now. If it weren't for the crack of ball hitting bat over and over again, one might not realize there's a room just off the steps, only a few yards from the field. Step inside.

Here, in a room too small to turn around a compact car, a machine tirelessly feeds one ball after another to players looking to keep rust from setting into their swings.

"Most people don't have any idea of what we're doing when the game is being played," the Rays' Terry Shumpert said. "They think if we're not playing we're just sitting on the bench clapping our hands and yelling, "Yeah.' No, we're back here working. We might be the one called upon to a win a ballgame."

Something like that happened this week. Jared Sandberg wasn't in the starting lineup Monday, but he ended up winning a game.

For the first five innings, he sat on the bench.

"If you're not playing, you like to watch the first few innings just to get into the mood of the game," said the Rays' Al Martin, who often is used as a pinch-hitter late in games. "Then, in about the fifth, you hit the batting cage."

That's what Sandberg did. Starting in the fifth and in the top of every inning when the Rays were in the field, Sandberg went to work. In the fifth, he rode a stationary bike to get a sweat going. In the sixth and seventh, he went into the cage and hit baseballs, some off a machine and some off a batting tee. In the eighth, he did a little running in the halls.

"You can watch the game and start to figure out when the manager might call on you to pinch hit," Martin said. "You see who the other team is pitching, you figure out who is coming up for your team and you can almost pick out the spot you might be used. Then you start gearing up for it. Some nights, you never get in. But on the night the manager calls your name, you want to be ready."

Sandberg was ready. After putting in four innings of work, Sandberg was tabbed to pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth. He drove in the winning run.

Pinch-hitters aren't the only ones who keep the pitching machine humming during games. Designated hitters, who don't play defense, stay sharp in the cage between at-bats.

"I'll go back and maybe take 20 to 30 swings, just enough to keep my body loose," said Aubrey Huff, who often is a DH. "I'll do it when we're out the field. When we're up, I like to stay in the dugout so I can watch the (opposing) pitcher and see what he's doing."

If Huff or any other player, though, needs extra clues, he can call on technology so advanced it can tell if a pitcher missed a belt loop.

Located in the corner of the clubhouse is a mini-Best Buy, a room run by the Rays' video coordinator Chris Fernandez, nicknamed "Chico." In here, Chico is the Man.

Fernandez's office, no bigger than your standard living room, is incredibly neat considering everything it holds. There are 17 VCRs, five DVD players, five convertor boxes hooked to satellite dishes, four personal computers, two televisions and hundreds upon hundreds of videotapes holding every game played in the majors for the past three years and broken down by team and even player.

So say the Rays are about to face Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens. In a matter of minutes, a Rays hitter can look at every pitch Clemens has thrown for the past three years. During the game, it gets even more detailed.

Fernandez, using a computer and specially designed software, records the details of every pitch with a few mouse clicks. For example, Fernandez will click boxes marked: fastball, batter swings, singles up the middle. The software records the details, and at any point from then on players can review it. Many do during the game.

"If I had a nickel for every time (rookie) Rocco (Baldelli) checked the video during a game," Bosio said, "we'd all be millionaires."

Some games, Baldelli checks his every at-bat, often seconds after it's completed, breaking down his swing frame-by-frame looking to see what he did right. Or wrong.

Some players, such as Huff, wait until after games to look at video. "I don't want to get overloaded with too much information," he said.

Shumpert looks at only successful at-bats during a game as positive reinforcement.

Then there are the pitchers. They sometimes check the tape early in a game to gauge an umpire's strike zone or figure out why a breaking ball isn't breaking. Is my arm too high? Is my stride too long?

In seconds, Fernandez can call up all of Baldelli's swings for the night from three different angles. Or every 2-and-1 pitch by either pitcher. Or all sliders. Pick a situation and Fernandez can run it back for you. He can do it for that game. Or yesterday's game. Or a game two months ago.

This gives players a hint at tendencies or tactics. Remembering a pitcher likes to throw a changeup on 3-and-1 because of something seen on a computer six weeks ago might be the narrow gap that separates a missed swing from a winning three-run homer.

"Some players can't live without it, some rarely check it," Fernandez said. "But it's there."

It's there no matter where the Rays go. Fernandez brings a smaller version of the video room on the road.

So, home or away, day or night, nine players are in a game at one time, but the rest of the 25-man roster is on the clock, studying the game, riding a bike, reviewing video or swinging a bat.

"The guys who are not playing just aren't sitting around," Shumpert said. "We're working. Even if we're not playing, we're always working."