Baseball’s biggest black star loses duel to Carpenter
When you meet Dontrelle Willis in person, you instantly realize that he could have excelled at the sport of his choice.
He’s solid enough to play pro football. He’s tall and athletic enough to play professional basketball. And, without insulting other professional athletes, he was smart enough to play professional baseball.
A national TV audience tuned in Tuesday night to watch the possible Cy Young Award showdown between the 23-year-old Willis and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter.
Carpenter won the duel hands-down, but the youthful Willis won the respect of reporters after the game.
“He’s a great pitcher,” Willis said of Carpenter in the Marlins clubhouse.
“He’s got great confidence, and he’s got a great team behind him. This can do nothing but help me. I watched him pitch the rest of the game.’
Willis watched from the dugout with manager Jack McKeon before leaving for the clubhouse. He pitched five innings. “I was ready to go more,” Willis said, but McKeon thought his 103 pitches were enough on a muggy St. Louis evening.
“I wish I had went deeper into the game,” Willis said.
Willis might have pitched much deeper into the game had third baseman Mike Lowell not botched a third-inning grounder by Albert Pujols. Willis, who was a tad-bit wild throughout the game, got a foul popout from Jim Edmonds. But he then walked Mark Grudzielanek to bring rookie John Gall to the plate.
Willis got two strikes on Gall, but couldn’t put him away. A sinking line drive, which should have been caught by right fielder Juan Encarnacion, eluded him, and the Cardinals took a 2-1 lead. Both runs were unearned.
Willis would leave trailing 3-1 after the fifth inning, and would watch his record fall to 14-7 from the clubhouse. Carpenter would move to 16-4 and take a stranglehold on the National League Cy Young balloting.
Then, some late fireworks involving Marlins reliever Ron Villone happened in the eighth inning.
Villlone was high-and-tight on two pitches to Edmonds and then hit John Rodriguez. Manager Tony La Russa rushed to the field to further agitate the situation, but after the game, Willis calmly called the incident “unfortunate.”
“Ron wasn’t trying to hit anybody. We were down two runs; why would he do that?” Willis asked rhetorically.
Willis nipped the Cards’ first two batters, David Eckstein and So Taguchi, and was told that the Cardinals thought that was a problem.
“I hope that wasn’t the cause of all that. It was the first two batters of the game. I wasn’t trying to hit anybody. That’s simple.”
Willis, who is probably Major League Baseball’s biggest bargain with his 2005 salary of $378,500, is wise beyond his years in many ways.
In just his third season with the Marlins, he realizes the importance of marketing the game of baseball to African Americans. Being from Southern California, he said he grew up “playing baseball, watching baseball.”
“There is no shortage of black players where I’m from. I grew up with (baseball).”
However, there is a diminishing number of black Major Leaguers, a trend that Willis said can be slowed if not halted.
“I guess they have to market us more,” Willis said of himself and black stars.
“They do it in the NFL. They market LeBron James in the NBA. We are not marketed as much.”
He added, “We have to do well. We have to be in marquis matchups (like Tuesday’s game.”
Willis can also rattle off a list of the game’s current young black stars, which includes himself, Cleveland pitcher C.C Sabathia, outfielder Carl Crawford of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and injured Minnesota outfielder Torii Hunter.
As for marketing himself, that’s not Dontrelle Willis.
“I wish I could have pitched better for my teammates,” he said. “It’s not about me. We need to get it going.”
