Culture
How MLB players cope with — and grow from — playing on a terrible team: ‘You find ways’
CHICAGO — A mere mention of the year 1991 elicited a pained groan from Sandy Alomar Jr. as he leaned against a railing in the Cleveland Guardians’ dugout.
Three decades have passed. Alomar played for seven teams across 20 seasons, appeared in 49 playoff games, won an All-Star Game MVP award and supplied a slew of unforgettable moments in a big-league uniform. He has coached for a consistent contender in Cleveland for 15 years.
And yet, he still can’t shake memories of that miserable ’91 season. That’s what losing can do — not the sort of losing that leaves players, coaches and fanbases disgruntled, but the degree of losing that beats the soul out of someone who can’t escape it.
“It hits you in the face every day,” said Cleveland pitcher Alex Cobb, a member of the 115-loss Baltimore Orioles of 2018. “Wake up, do it again. Wake up, do it again.”
Scanning the dugout of the historically inept Chicago White Sox during an early-September series at a mostly empty Guaranteed Rate Field triggered some flashbacks for Cobb.
He signed with the Orioles in late March 2018 and played catch-up for much of the year. By the time Cobb felt like himself, the Orioles were 40 games out of first place and he still had another dozen starts to make. He focused on sharpening his mechanics for the next season.
“You’re just trying to get through the day,” Cobb said. “You find ways.”
Of course, no one’s going to pity a big-leaguer who earns a seven-figure salary, enjoys ample leg room on charter flights, gorges on infinite servings of red meat at Brazilian steakhouses on road trip off days and throws a ball around for a couple of hours every five days.
“I don’t recall anyone feeling sorry for us,” said Orioles outfielder Cedric Mullins, who blossomed in 2021, when Baltimore lost 110 games. “In fact, it felt like it was blood in the water at that point.”
Still, it takes a mental toll on those completing nine fruitless innings night after night. No one knows it better than the White Sox, who broke the 1962 New York Mets’ record of 120 losses on Friday. Chicago was eliminated from playoff contention in mid-August. They sit more than 40 games out of fourth place in their division, a situation so bleak it’d test anyone’s drive.
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“It’s definitely challenging to stay locked in and motivated,” said Ryan O’Hearn, a member of a pair of Royals teams that lost more than 100 games.
In 2021, Mullins became the first player since the franchise moved to Baltimore in 1954 to tally 30 homers and 30 stolen bases in a season. But he admits “it just wasn’t as fun” because the team was dreadful. His production dipped over the past three seasons, but he said he has enjoyed the experiences more.
“It’s funny,” he said, “when we go through stints like (the club’s recent funk), it feels like we’re losing. And I’m like, ‘You all have no idea.’”
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Baltimore outfielder Cedric Mullins was a lone bright spot for the 2021 Orioles, who lost 110 games. (Rich Schultz / Getty Images)
When Torey Lovullo steered the Arizona Diamondbacks through a 52-110 season in 2021, his 25-minute commutes home from Chase Field were “dark.” He would sing along to Supertramp or Led Zeppelin to decompress and distract himself from whatever daunting matchup awaited his club the following day.
“I tried to go home and just be present at home,” Lovullo said, “and that became harder and harder throughout the course of the season.”
Several players said they would linger at home longer before heading to the ballpark, preferring not to spend an extra nanosecond in the monotonous misery.
“It can feel like a project to get to the stadium itself,” said Cincinnati Reds reliever Buck Farmer.
Farmer led the 2019 Detroit Tigers in appearances, with 73. The Tigers were 29-44 when he pitched and 18-70 when he didn’t.
“We lost a lot,” he said. “In my entire tenure there, we lost a lot.”
One hundred and fourteen games in 2019, to be precise. Enough to draw comparisons to the 2003 Tigers, who rallied during the final week of the season to avoid joining the ’62 Mets in the pantheon of futility.
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“September was really hard,” said Matthew Boyd, who made a team-high 32 starts for the 2019 Tigers.
Both ex-Tigers pitchers, however, agreed there’s not much difference between 114 losses and, say, 98, the number of games Detroit dropped the previous two years.
“It’s all hard,” Boyd said.
“Either way sucks,” Farmer said. “Either way you draw it up, not having a winning season is tough. It sucks to lose.”
The clubhouse culture “can dictate how much that sucks,” Farmer said. In 2019, for instance, “it was like showing up for a 9-to-5, which sucks.” Sensing a theme here, or at least noticing a particular word that encapsulates the effects of perpetual losing on the psyche?
“It could have been a lot better,” said catcher Jake Rogers, another member of the 2019 Tigers. “It’s like the (2024) White Sox. You get to a point where everyone is like, ‘We’ve lost how many?’ That part sucks sometimes, but we weren’t thinking that (in) the moment. But you look back at it and it’s like, ‘Man, 114 is a lot.’”
In 2022, the Reds started the season 3-22, but Farmer insists no one would know based on the energy in the clubhouse. That can depend on the composition of the roster. When winning proves impractical, team goals tend to slip down players’ priority lists.
“I will never be OK with losing,” said Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas.
Late in the Miami Marlins’ march to 105 losses in 2019, the players held a meeting after a series in Arizona. Rojas asked his teammates “to look themselves in the mirror and look up (other) rosters (to determine) how many more teams you could play for today,” a method of motivation he said he was taught when he broke into the big leagues.
“Being eliminated a month before the season’s over,” Rojas said, “it’s hard, because the fans feed off that, too. … It’s really hard to ask people to come to the ballpark. So it’s really hard to come to the ballpark every day. It’s really low-energy. You’re finding your own motivation to play the game. But you have to be professional. You have to show up every single day because you’re getting paid.”
“Everybody’s in a certain spot in their career,” Cobb said. “If you’re going to arbitration, you’re trying to fluff as many numbers or trying to prevent bad numbers from happening. If you’re older, you’re on a contract, you’re probably just trying not to get hurt, trying to work on stuff for the next year.”
And if you’re new to the major leagues?
“On a team like that, there are a lot of guys who are super excited to be here,” Cobb said. “You don’t get to ruin that for anyone. You don’t get to take other peoples’ joy away from being in the locker room.”
As the 2018 trade deadline approached, the Orioles dealt away Manny Machado, Zack Britton, Kevin Gausman, Darren O’Day, Jonathan Schoop and Brad Brach. In the second half, Cobb looked around the room and wondered who everyone was. He said the influx of young players ultimately “helped the mood.”
That youthful exuberance can help to dispel feelings of nihilism. As Cobb described, “You’re putting the X over the days on the calendar, just trying to get through it.”
“It’s hard to find those bright spots,” Mullins said. “And those bright spots aren’t going to be looked at too often, just because (of) the team. You want to see the team perform. Individuals can’t do that on their own.”
Outfielder Austin Hays, like Mullins, broke out for the Orioles in 2021.
“You really have to dig into why you’re playing when you’re down 8-0 in the third inning,” said Hays, who credited the birth of his son for giving him proper perspective.
During a 102-loss season with the Oakland Athletics in 2022, catcher Stephen Vogt — now the Guardians’ manager — would encourage veteran players to be “an extension of the coaching staff,” said pitcher Cole Irvin. Vogt would engage the team’s young players about pitchers’ tendencies or reading hitters’ swings.
The most reassuring reminder Vogt provided?
“You’re what the 12-year-old version of yourself wanted to be,” Irvin said.
That 12-year-old self couldn’t wait to get to the field, no matter the team’s results of the previous day or week or month.
“It’s really hard,” Boyd said, “but it’s a balancing act. You have to have awareness. You’re going to fall out of line, and when you do, you have to give yourself grace to gently get back in.”
Those trudges to the finish line can be scarring, though.
As Alomar shook his head, reflecting on that 105-loss Cleveland season in 1991, his former teammate, Carlos Baerga, approached. Alomar stopped him and mentioned the infamous year. Baerga shouted like he was suffering from appendicitis and then recalled the most valuable bit of advice he received in his career. Hitting instructor Jose Morales told him: “Don’t get used to losing, because when you get used to losing, you get lazy.”
Alomar and Baerga came up together with the Padres and won minor-league championships in two of their final three years in the farm system. Then they were shipped to Cleveland, where the Indians lost so much they became a baseball punchline and played in front of small gatherings in a cavernous dungeon on the shores of Lake Erie.
They never sunk lower than in 1991. Cleveland went four decades without a playoff appearance after a trip to the World Series in 1954, but no iteration of the Indians lost more than that ’91 team did.
Alomar tore his groin partially off his pubic bone, which ended his season in late July when the club was sitting at 33-63. He still showed up to the ballpark every day, like a wounded animal slogging toward the slaughterhouse. All he needed to see in the opposing dugout were a few veteran players, and he knew.
“They’re probably gonna kick our butt,” Alomar said.
— The Athletic’s Sam Blum, Chad Jennings, C. Trent Rosecrans and Cody Stavenhagen contributed to this reporting.
(Top illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photo of Torey Lovullo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images; Alex Cobb: Rick Madonik / Toronto Star via Getty Images; Luis Robert Jr.: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images; Sandy Alomar Jr.: Focus on Sport / Getty Images; Miguel Rojas: Mitchell Layton / Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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