Sunday, January 10, 1999
Fun and games with Denny Neagle
Pitcher plays a joker for four days, but on the fifth day he's all business
BY SCOTT MacGREGOR
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[neagle]](http://reds.enquirer.com/img/mugs/neagle.jpg)
Denny Neagle
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This is Denny Neagle:
He and some friends stop at a tourist bar in Cozumel, Mexico during a baseball-themed cruise. As often happens, the outrageous pitcher becomes the featured entertainment for the night, ending up on stage with a guy from Trinidad mocking the strip-tease of the movie The Full Monty.
Except in this case, Neagle ends up not just mocking it, but doing it. Wearing only his swim trunks from a day at the beach, Neagle is unwittingly “pantsed” from behind by Dodgers shortstop Mark Grudzilanek, exposing The Full Denny.
The audience at Carlos and Charlie's doesn't seem to mind, and neither does Neagle, who keeps right on dancing.
“There was a full moon in Carlos and Charlie's that night,” Neagle chortles, beaming and savoring the memory again a month later. “I'll just dust (Grudzilanek) once next year.”
Life moves pretty fast in Neagle's world, but only because time flies when you're having fun.
“He's a goofball. He's a big kid is what he is,” says younger brother and best friend Doug, 25, who says Denny could be considered the Ferris Bueller of the big leagues, hopping about from one quirky adventure to the next with his permanent wide, toothy, Jokerish grin. “I think he's getting goofier as he gets older.”
Indeed, Neagle has developed a reputation as one of baseball's quirkiest and nuttiest personalties. But it's not that he's a slacker; on the contrary, the paradox of his personality is that his more pensive side reveals how insightful he is and how seriously he takes his work on the mound.
It's just that for Neagle, having a good time is of the utmost importance — a lesson learned from that insight.
In his zany universe — which now includes the Cincinnati Reds, thanks to an off-season trade that sent Bret Boone packing to Atlanta and brought the talented 30-year old left-handed pitcher in return — there is no time for regrets, boredom or sanctimonious seriousness. There is only time to have as much fun as possible, which Neagle takes every opportunity to exploit.
As former Braves teammate and still good friend Alan Embree has said of Neagle, “As long as he can make people laugh in this game, I think that's what he wants. At anybody's expense.”
Or, as Neagle's above-mentioned motto from the classic movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off suggests, any given moment — with the noted exception of the three hours he spends on the pitching mound every five days — is a perfect time for a little laughter.
“That's totally my motto,” Neagle says. “This game flies by so quick, if you don't enjoy it, you're going to regret it in the end. And that's true in life too. You've got to enjoy every moment. Just laugh. Laughter is one of the best things you can do.”
Reds fans couldn't get a glimpse of Neagle's life-of-the-party personality at last weekend's Redsfest; he had a prior commitment scheduled with his wife, Jennifer, and couldn't make it. But the one-time 20-game winner still in the prime of his career will be traveling on part of the Reds Caravan this month, and beginning in April will provide the Reds their biggest reason for any hopes of staying competitive in the National League Central Division in 1999.
But first, there's fun to be had, jokes to be told and pranks to be pulled.
More Denny Neagle: On that same baseball cruise, Neagle heads out to Cancun one day and on the way back again finds himself the center of attention. During the 30-minute ferry back to the ship, he buys about 100 of his closest strangers a round of Coronas, bull-rushes the spotlight and proceeds to tell his repertoire of jokes.
“It's not like I always was that way,” Neagle says. “You get more comfortable, whether it's being around the cameras or pitching in front of 50,000 people. I just love to make people happy and make them laugh, and if you're going to do that, you can't be afraid to embarrass yourself. If I'm with a group of 15 or 20 people, I go out out of my way to make sure everybody has a good time. I want everybody to laugh.”
A few weeks after the cruise, at Embree's New Year's party, Neagle sneaks away with Embree's camera and, unbeknownst to Embree, snaps a few, shall we say, revealing photos of himself.
“A few of those pictures shocked my wife,” says a playfully rueful Embree. “I don't need to say any more.”
Learning to let loose
Neagle's penchant for prankishness didn't just develop in his current incarnation. This is a mischief who has always enjoyed a good time.
Neagle says he was the class clown while growing up in Gambrills, Md.. From there, it was on to the University of Minnesota, then to the Minnesota Twins' farm system after the 1989 draft. At the time, Neagle was already practicing his jokery; witness this caper from rookie ball in Elizabethton, Tenn.:
Neagle — a master of imitations — calls up two new teammates (who are looking for a place to live) in the team hotel at 2:30 a.m., convinces them with blearly-eyed verisimilitude he is slow-talking, Southern-drawling team owner Carmen Dugger and tells them “We got you boys a place to stay, but you gotta git your luggage and meet me in the lobby right now.”
So when the two unsuspecting youngsters walk out with bags packed under each arm, Neagle and a buddy let them wait for a while, then come down to the lobby, giggling and guffawing, and let them in on the joke.
“One guy thought it was funny,” Neagle says. “The
other guy was pretty P.O.ed.”
Despite Neagle's budding puckishness, it wasn't until after he got to the majors that fun became the mission of his life.
It was 1993, his second full year in the bigs with Pittsburgh. A more reserved Neagle was struggling both personally and professionally (he ended the season with a 3-5 record and a 5.31 ERA), and it all caught up to him when he was demoted to Triple-A for a week.
“It was a good wake-up call for me, to let me know I needed to get back on track pitching-wise but also because I needed to get back to enjoying the game,” he says. “I wasn't enjoying myself. I was putting too much pressure on myself to succeed, looking over my shoulder too much, thinking "I don't throw hard enough, I'm not putting up good enough numbers.'”
Around the time Neagle came back to the majors, he remembered seeing a TV clip from a press conference announcing Johnny Oates as manager of the Baltimore Orioles. What Oates said had a profound impact for a 24-year-old looking to regain his spark.
“He said "When I was a playing I never enjoyed myself. I'm not going to make that same mistake again.' That really struck me. It's one of the things I practice and preach. You still have to grind it to give 100 percent, but no matter what happens, enjoy yourself. You're playing a kids game and getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to do it. You should enjoy it and be thankful. If you're not there's something wrong with you.”
That's when Neagle began blooming into the Neagle of today — both in the laughs department and on the mound.
After another learning year in 1994 (9-10, 5.12 in his first season as a full-time starter), Neagle finally turned the corner in '95, going 13-8 with a 3.43 ERA. The next season he was an All-Star, was 14-6 with a 3.05 ERA entering the stretch run and happened to be one of the hottest commodities on the trade market in late August. The Braves, already boasting perhaps the most formidable pitching staff of this era, acquired him for two minor leaguers and pitcher Jason Schmidt.
“I saw a 20-game winner,” says Braves general manager John Schuerholz, “and that's what he became.”
This is more Denny Neagle: On a ho-hum summer day in '97, Neagle decides to prank some of his Braves teammates with an exploding Sharpie marker. First he gets Kenny Lofton, who nearly falls out of his clubhouse seat when he pulls the cap off, setting off a mouse trap-like contraption that grabs his finger and a gun-powder crackle that pops the beejeebers out of him. Next Neagle fools manager Bobby Cox, whose startled reaction and loud “Aaaaaagghh” is caught on film by a local photographer and makes its way into the newspaper the next day.
“Nobody thought he was going to do it to Bobby. Bobby's the head man,” Embree says. “But Denny wasn't afraid.”
But finally, Neagle finds ESPN broadcaster John Miller, who not only falls for the exploding pen trick but just a few seconds later also ends up being electricly shocked by a cigarette lighter as Neagle ruses him into thinking he is being shown a magic trick.
But Neagle isn't quite satisfied.
“In the big leagues, I haven't come up with one of those really great capers,” he says devilishly. “I want to come up with something where I can really set somebody up and frame them good. So far, it's just been a lot of shaving cream pies in the face, fake interviews, charging a $150 tab to somebody's room bill — a lot of little things you can get away with and nobody knows it's you.”
A Brave new world
While Neagle would distinguish himself quite impressively in Atlanta (going 20-5 with a 2.97 ERA in 1997 and finishing second in the Cy Young voting), he struggled some in his first days there and had to think back to the lesson he had learned three years earlier. The idea of joining a pitching staff of the ages — which included four-time Cy Young winner Greg Maddux, eventual two-time winner Tom Glavine and that year's winner, John Smoltz — also brought the expectations and pressure of living up to their reputations.
Neagle believed he was worthy, but tried too hard at first to prove it to himself and stumbled to a 2-3 mark with a 5.59 ERA after the trade.
“I really didn't think it was going to be that big a deal, but as I look back, when I first came (to the Braves), I put too much pressure on myself,” he says. “I felt I was 0-0 again. Everybody was saying "He won 14 games with Pittsburgh, he's liable to win 25 with the Braves.' I wanted to contribute right away and prove my worth.
“Finally, when I told myself, "Denny, just relax and go out and pitch your game, I was fine. I've been fine since I made that commitment.”
In Neagle's mind, the issue wasn't that he didn't belong, and the argument looked silly after he bested the other three aces in '97, losing the Cy Young only to Montreal's Pedro Martinez. If '96 had been his big break, '97 was his breakthrough into the ranks of the game's elite left-handers.
That '97 season, he says, just felt different. And extraordinary.
“I remember Smoltz told me when he was on his way to the Cy Young, it was like riding a wave,” Neagle says. “That's what it is. It keeps building and building and everything that happens goes your way. He told me, "You've got to ride that wave as long as you can.”'
Neagle's 1998 may not have been quite as masterful, but he still went 16-11 with a 3.55 ERA and started one of Atlanta's two wins in the National League Championship Series. But the Braves failed to win a World Series with Neagle on the staff, losing in the NLCS the last two seasons, and when Schuerholz needed to boost the team's sagging offense this winter, Neagle proved the most expendable.
It's a staff he'll greatly miss. He may have been fourth in line, but to him the chance to win a championship had become more important than individual ego.
“It was a great compliment and a great honor to be mentioned in the same breath with them,” he says. “And it was a hell of a lot of fun to be in the same rotation as them. It definitely lifted my game to another level. It's like running in a race with guys you know you can beat. You don't run as fast. But if you run with someone who's faster than you, you run faster.”
And more: Here is Neagle stealing an egg roll tray and acting as a waiter, serving them to guests at a Braves party at the All-Star Cafe in Orlando last spring; riding his Harley through the lobby of the Braves' minor league spring training hotel; riding the Space Mountain and Sky Coaster rollercoasters over and over and over at Disney World; getting goofy faces painted on baseballs tattooed on his body; and taking a fake tumble for a crowd-pleasing laugh at fan appreciation day. This, mind you, was all within the span of a few weeks last spring training.
And Neagle can always pull out the old standbys, his impressive imitations of sounds that include a train whistle, a microphone crackle, a robot, the beep of a truck backing up and a dog bark.
Neagle isn't pulling these pranks out of maliciousness, spite or perversity. He just wants to make everybody laugh — at his own expense or someone else's. But he knows where the line is, and says he's careful not to cross it.
“I respect the game of baseball too much, so much that I know I could never go overboard and go too far. I know when to be serious and when to have fun,” he says. “I've learned balance.”
Embree, who may know Neagle's whimsical side as well as anyone, says the joke itself isn't the appeal. It's the reaction.
“Denny just likes to see people's reactions in any situation,” Embree says, “especially when people wouldn't be expecting something.”
At the movies
If Neagle's baseball career peters out, he can always try flying or acting. Movies, it is well-known, are one of his favorite hobbies and part of his pitching-day ritual. Most guys see movies on the days they don't pitch; Neagle views them on days he does.
Though comedies are his specialty, the game-day flick has to be something with substantially more testosterone.
“I try to see a good action movie. Something to get me pumped up, like Con Air or Air Force One,” he says. “It's my way of relaxing. I get so worked up for a game, I don't like to think about it all day long, so I try to throw myself into this movie and get myself away from the game for a little while.”
But don't mistake that for nonchalance. In fact, Neagle says he's a different guy on game day than the rest of the week. Gone is the prankster, in its place the focused craftsman.
“The most important thing about him is how hard he works and how hard he cares, how serious he is about his profession,” Schuerholz says. “The fact that he can do a train whistle and a dog bark is fun, but the important thing is how much he wants to win.”
“Denny's going to keep people looser,” Embree says. “If a young guy is following Denny, he might get the wrong impression that he can do it on the field as well. But all and all, it makes for a better atmosphere. Smiling and laughing doesn't hurt anybody. And Denny works hard. He's a professional about it on the field.”
Says Neagle: “Everybody laughs at me because they say on my game day, "This isn't the same goofy weirdo guy we know,” he says. “That's my day to be locked in and go to work. Being focused one out of every five days isn't that much to ask.”
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