ATLANTA – Standing inside a jubilant Atlanta Braves clubhouse eight days ago, reliever Billy Wagner said, “We want to win the World Series. Bobby [Cox] deserves it.”
On Sunday, the Braves about to take the field against the San Francisco Giants in game three of their best-of-five National League Divisional Series, Wagner’s goal became a bit more personal.
“It depends on my teammates now,” said the 38-year-old closer after he was scratched from the rest of the NLDS due to a strained oblique muscle in his left side suffered during Friday’s road win.
“If they continue doing what they’ve been doing all year and get to the World Series, maybe I haven’t [pitched my last game].”
Wagner has long planned to retire at the end of this season, whenever it arrives. One of the game’s top relievers, he currently stands fifth in career saves with 421 and second among lefties in that category behind John Franco’s 424. He already owns the record for most strikeouts by a lefty reliever with 1,169.
So would the injury and the prospect of never reaching the World Series possibly cause him to rethink his retirement plans?
“No,” Wagner said emphatically. “I’ve had a great career and I don’t need to define my career by having a successful season. We would all like to draw it up as winning a World Series and having everybody dog-pile on us, but that doesn’t happen all the time. Maybe it’s not going to happen the way I wanted it to, and that’s just life.”
Life for retiring skipper Cox got a little trickier with Wagner’s injury. Forced to request permission from the league to switch Takashi Saito (2-3 record, 2.83 ERA in 56 games) for Wagner (7-2, 1.43 in 71 games), Cox would return the righty to the relief rotation for first time since mid-September, when he was sidelined with soreness in his right shoulder.
“We’d like to get him in any type of game, I guess,” said Cox of Saito. “But we have to pitch him in a real important spot.”
Wagner joked on Sunday that he didn’t think he could injure himself in the spot he did.
“I didn’t know you could pull fat,” he said. “I’ve never hurt an oblique. I thought only hitters got that stuff.”
But hurt it he did against the Giants, somehow throwing a bunted ball to first to get a key out in the bottom of the 10th.
Said Wagner of that throw, “I didn’t know where it went. I had no idea. All I know is when I threw it, somebody shot me in the side.”
Whatever happens from now until the Braves’ playoff run ends, Wagner’s attitude is a shot of fresh air.
“We’re only playing baseball,” he said. “We’re not changing anybody’s lives.”
At least not anybody’s lives save, perhaps, the postseason life of his teammates.