The debate over whether Mookie Betts can play shortstop was settled long ago.
The debate now is whether Mookie Betts can play shortstop better than anyone in baseball. That discussion may soon be drawing to a close, too.
Because a day after being named a finalist for a Gold Glove, Betts put a huge exclamation point on Thursday’s 3-1 playoff win over the Milwaukee Brewers with a spectacular play to start the ninth inning.
The victory leaves the Dodgers a win away from advancing to their second straight World Series, a journey they could complete Friday in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series. And a big reason they’re there is the steady defense of Betts, a six-time Gold Glove winner in the outfield who has made the difficult move to the middle of the infield seem easy.
“I think the only person on this planet that believed that Mookie Betts would be in this conversation was Mookie Betts,” Dodger manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s just something that has never been done. I can’t even — it’s incredible. Obviously I’m at a loss for words.”
Betts tried the position last year but Roberts said the confidence wasn’t there, so he moved Betts back to the outfield. There was no chance that would happen this fall.
Few understand the difficulty of what Betts has done more than those who have played the position. Yet Miguel Rojas, the man Betts replaced at shortstop — and a Gold Glove finalist himself this season as a utility player — said he’s not surprised because he has seen how hard Betts works.
“He doesn’t take days off,” Rojas said of Betts, who is frequently among the first players on the field for pregame drills and among the last to leave. “Even when we have an off day, he’ll still go out there and is asking ways to get better. I think it’s a product of being a relentless worker every single day. He’s never satisfied. He’s always trying to get better.
“For me to be there every single day to watch him perform and watch his work ethic, it’s been impressive.”
Part of that work, Betts said, involves watching video of every fielding play he makes. That includes the brilliant ones, like the ninth-inning play Thursday in which he ranged in the hole to backhand Andrew Vaughn’s grounder, then rose up and delivered a strong one-hop jump throw across his body to first baseman Freddie Freeman to get Vaughn easily.
“I go back and watch all my plays, even the routine ones, just to learn what I can do better,” he said.
Asked if he’s ever surprised by what he sees, Betts, who has yet to make an error in the playoffs, shrugged.
Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts makes a leaping, cross-body throw to retire Andrew Vaughn at first base during the ninth inning of Game 3 of the NLCS on Thursday at Dodger Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I’m just doing my job. I’m just doing my job going out there and playing short, that’s all.
“Once I get to the ball, I believe and trust in my athletic ability to make a play.”
Rojas, who has played six positions in the majors, said shortstop is such a hard place to play because of the mental focus it demands. An outfielder might be able to think about his hitting for a few pitches, but the shortstop, who quarterbacks the infield, doesn’t have that luxury.
“In the middle of the year he was in a slump offensively. But he never let the defense down. And that’s really impressive,” Rojas said. “He always said it to me, ‘Even though I’m sucking right now at hitting, I’m never going to be bad at defense. And I’m going to catch every single ball.’
“That’s the mentality that you have to have to be a really good shortstop.”
In the postseason, he’s become a really good offensive shortstop as well. After slumping to a career-low .258 average in the regular season, Betts is slashing .297/.381/.459 and shares the team lead with 11 hits and five extra-base hits in the postseason.
However, the numbers and the awards mean little to him, he said; Betts cares far more about winning. And as for proving himself at shortstop? Others, including his manager, may be surprised, but he isn’t.
“I know I could do it. I believed in myself. I always have belief in myself,” he said. “It was a goal to be the best I could be. If it came with a Gold Glove, cool. If it didn’t come with a Gold Glove, cool.
“I can go to bed at night knowing that I did everything I could. That’s all I care about.”
Just a season ago there were mornings when he’d get out of that bed wishing he could go back to right field. That doesn’t happen anymore.
“I would say the best athletes are the guys in the dirt,” he said. “It was fun while it lasted. I enjoy being in the dirt now.”
An outstanding outfielder in his first three major league seasons, Russell moved to the infield full time in his fourth year. It was a disaster.
“It was something I lost a lot of sleep over,” said Russell, who led the majors with 34 errors that year. “After the season, I just collapsed for a few weeks.”
Then he picked himself up and went to work on getting better and in his second year as a shortstop he led the majors with 560 assists, led the National League in defensive WAR and made the first of three all-star teams.
He went on to play more games for the Dodgers than any player in Los Angeles history.
It was a remarkable career, one that hardly needed a second act. But even after he left the stage, Russell never left the theater. Six months after his last at-bat — he struck out as a pinch hitter in the final week of the 1986 season — Russell was back in uniform as the team’s bench coach.
He later managed in the Dodgers’ minor league system, replaced Tommy Lasorda in that job at the major league level and, for the past 13 years, has worked in the team’s community relations department, coaching youth camps and appearing at schools, fan fests and other events. Since 2002 he’s also served as an umpire observer, partly because the job gets him a good seat behind the plate at Dodger Stadium.
If the team were to a pick a Mr. L.A. Dodger, someone emblematic of the team’s history and values since moving to Southern California, the soft-spoken, humble Russell, a Dodger for nearly half a century, would have to be in that conversation.
But it was his dedication to mastering the switch from the outfield to shortstop — becoming the first prominent player since Honus Wagner to make the move — that literally changed the direction of the franchise. If he hadn’t made it work, the Dodgers may never have had the courage to turn a minor league outfielder named Davey Lopes into a second baseman, where he became Russell’s double-play partner.
If he hadn’t made it work, the Dodgers may never have tried pushing a scatter-armed third baseman named Steve Garvey across the diamond to first, opening up the position to Russell’s right for Ron Cey. The resulting infield of Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey played together for 8 ½ seasons, longer than any quartet in baseball history, winning four pennants and a World Series.
“Each one of us had different talents,” Russell said. “It was tough at first but all of a sudden we started having success. It’s four brothers.”
From left, Ron Cey, Bill Russell, Davey Lopes and Steve Garvey pose before an old-timers game at Dodger Stadium in 2013. The infield quartet won four pennants and a World Series together.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Now Betts, a six-time Gold Glove-winning outfielder, has mastered the move too, helping the Dodgers to the cusp of their 12th division title in 13 seasons. However if Betts perfected the shift, Russell pioneered it.
“He was a great athlete,” said Steve Sax, Russell’s double-play partner his last five seasons. “He was maybe the fastest guy in the organization. The whole genesis of being able to move guys around was the thought they’re so athletic, why can’t they make the transition?
“And he proved that to be true.”
At 76, Russell is nearly four decades removed from his last of his 2,181 big-league games, all with the Dodgers. But he’s still fit, not far off his playing weight of 175 pounds. And while he was once among the fastest players in the majors, he now moves at a purposeful saunter rather than a sprint. Wire-rim glasses crease his once-boyish face and the mop of straw-blond hair he once tucked under his cap has gone white, leaving him looking more like a college English professor than a once-iconic athlete.
“I just enjoyed going to the park and being with the guys. They just make you feel young again,” said Bill Russell, who turns 77 in October.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
What hasn’t changed is his love for a game that has been his life and for a team that has become his family.
“I just enjoyed going to the park and being with the guys. They just make you feel young again,” said Russell, who often wears a wry smile that suggests he’s in on a joke no one else knows about.
“Billy’s very special,” said Peter O’Malley, the Dodgers’ owner and president throughout much of Russell’s career.
“He was stable. Popular with the fans for sure. He deserves more credit that he’s received.”
Russell grew up a short drive from both the Missouri and Oklahoma state lines in the kind of nondescript Kansas town where everybody knew their neighbors and hard work wasn’t a virtue, it was an expectation.
The middle child in a family of five children, he attended a high school so small it didn’t have a baseball team. So he played basketball during the winter and baseball on sandlots and with American Legion teams during the summer. He was the kind of player scouts once described as “an athlete,” meaning he was smart enough and talented enough to excel at any position, though the Dodgers listed him as an outfielder when they selected him in the ninth round of the second amateur draft in 1966.
He gave most of his $14,000 signing bonus to his parents, minus the money he needed to buy a second-hand Chevy like the one his best friend drove.
Russell shot up the minor-league ladder, playing just 221 games before making the jump from Class A Bakersfield to the majors in 1969, doubling in his first big-league at-bat.
The adjustment from the minors to the majors was far easier than the change from the tiny mining town of Pittsburg, Kan., to the technicolor sprawl of Southern California.
“Coming to Los Angeles, you’ve got to be kidding me. A big city like this?” said Russell, who had rarely traveled more than 30 miles from Pittsburg before signing with the Dodgers. “My town was only 10,000 people so I had to grow up fast.
“I’m 20 years old, I’m in the major leagues and the minimum salary is $10,000. It wasn’t even $1,000 a month. But that was more money than I’d ever thought of. And I’m playing in Hollywood.”
After playing 18 seasons with the Dodgers, Bill Russell managed the ballclub from 1996-98.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Playing exclusively in the outfield, too, although Monty Basgall, a fellow Kansan and the former minor league infield instructor who scouted Russell as an athlete, was already plotting the move to shortstop, the most challenging defensive position after catcher.
“Shortstop is a difficult position,” said Derrel Thomas, a former teammate who played everywhere but pitcher during a 16-year big-league career. “A lot of people don’t give Monty Basgall any credit for what he did helping with the infielders.”
After some preparation in the instructional league and the minors, Russell made his major league debut at shortstop on the final day of the 1970 season, then played 47 games as a middle infielder a year later. But the move didn’t become permanent until Russell’s fourth season when he replaced an aging Maury Wills.
“I wasn’t in a position to say anything, really,” said Russell, who still speaks with a noticeable Midwestern accent.
“I had doubts about it, no question. But I figured my longevity in the big leagues, if I had [any], would come with moving to the infield.”
In fact, the move nearly ended his career. Russell made his first poor throw seven games into the season and by the all-star break he had as almost as many errors as extra-base hits. By then, he was also looking over his shoulder, expecting the Dodgers to put an end to the experiment.
“I’m surprised they didn’t,” he says now. “The fans got involved too. It wasn’t a standing ovation when I was coming back to the dugout after making some errors.
“At that time people brought transistor radios to the stadium. You could hear [Vin Scully] doing the game. I could hear him say something about me at shortstop. Talk radio was just coming on board and they were on me. It was a lot of negative stuff.”
Quitting, however, wasn’t an option.
“Maybe I was too dumb, I don’t know,” Russell said with a shrug. “I never thought about giving up or going back home. What am I going to do back home? I did say to myself, ‘I’m going to show these people I can play this position.’
“And I did. For 13 years.”
Through hard work and determination, Russell turned his fielding from a liability into an asset and the Dodgers began to win, reaching the World Series four times over the next nine seasons. And while Russell never won a Gold Glove — he twice led the majors in errors — he finished in the top five in fielding percentage by an NL shortstop three times, was in the top five for putouts four times and in the top three for assists six times.
He was understatedly brilliant, so much so that Cincinnati Reds’ shortstop Dave Concepcion once mocked Russell’s critics saying he didn’t know who the best fielder was “but I sure watch Bill Russell in the playoffs a lot.”
“He would never quit. Never,” O’Malley said. “Making that transition at the major league level, he deserves extraordinary credit for that.”
Almost lost in the focus on his defense was the fact Russell was a tough out, hitting better than .271 six times and excelling in clutch situations.
“That went all the way back to high school,” said Russell, who hit the shot that took his underdog team to the final of the Kansas state tournament. “It’s just a calmness. You can’t describe it. You can’t teach it. It is something that comes over you and you get a calm feeling that you’re going to succeed.”
As a high school infielder at Arroyo High in El Monte, James Baker was given his choice of uniform numbers. He didn’t have to think long before selecting one.
“I wore No. 18,” he said. “Because of Bill.”
It was the same number he had worn in Little League and American Legion ball.
“He was Mr. Clutch,” Baker, 61, said of Russell. “He was the dean of the infield.”
“The great thing about Bill Russell,” added Rick Zubiate, 57, Baker’s brother-in-law “is he wasn’t flashy. He made all the plays he was supposed to. Not only that, he had a presence and he commanded everybody around him to be better and expect more of themselves.”
Russell may be little more than a face on an old baseball card to Generation Z. But for children of the ‘60s like Baker and Zubiate, he remains the archetypal Dodger, one with a Dodger Blue resume that is unassailable. Which is why Baker and Zubiate braved rush-hour traffic last week to drive to Ontario, where Russell was appearing at an event for the Dodgers’ newest minor league affiliate.
“I loved him,” Baker said after asking Russell for an autograph.
And what’s not to love? He played more games and has more World Series at-bats than any player in L.A. Dodger history. He trails only Willie Davis and Garvey in hits and only Clayton Kershaw has matched Russell’s 18 seasons at Dodger Stadium.
Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, right, hugs Bill Russell in the dressing room after the Dodgers beat the Phillies, 6-5, in Game 3 of the 1977 NLCS.
(Associated Press)
But he also managed in the team’s minor league system, was the bench coach under Lasorda for seven years, then managed the big-league team for parts of three seasons, posting the fourth-best winning percentage by a manager since the franchise left Brooklyn. And he still pulls on his old uniform — with the bright red 18 over his Dodger blue heart — several times a year to join former teammates including Garvey, Sax and Steve Yeager in reminiscing with fans at fantasy camps and clinics.
“We have fun out there,” he said. “People come from all over the country. [It’s] like you’re still involved in the whole scene of being a major league player.”
If the speed and power of Willie Mays is synonymous with the San Francisco Giants and the style and grace of Ted Williams is emblematic of the Boston Red Sox, Russell’s blue-collar work ethic and country-boy humility is the embodiment of the Dodgers since they moved to Southern California.
“Quintessential Dodger?” O’Malley said. “Absolutely right. From start to end, he deserves the credit. He was respected and liked by everybody.”
Russell stood out, O’Malley said, partly because he blended in.
“He was quiet,” he said. “But keen sense of humor. If he wanted to make a point or be heard, he could nail it with a comment. It was pretty darn funny.”
Yet Russell’s silent excellence often went unappreciated. A .263 lifetime hitter who had fewer home runs in his career than Shohei Ohtani has this year alone, he received just three Hall of Fame votes the only time his name appeared on the ballot. For a time, even his loyalty to the Dodgers went unrequited; for years after his last game as manager Russell felt unwelcome at Dodger Stadium, the result of a toxic stew of bruised egos, Machiavellian maneuvering and corporate mismanagement.
It began midway through the 1996 season when Lasorda, the manager who had groomed Russell in the minors then won with him in the majors, had a heart attack. A month later Lasorda stepped down and Russell took over on an interim basis, guiding the Dodgers to a playoff berth.
That earned him the job full time but it didn’t earn him unquestioned support throughout the organization. The low-key Russell was a striking contrast to the colorful and bombastic Lasorda, more Mr. Rogers than Bobby Knight.
“He’s named the manager following Tommy. That’s not easy,” O’Malley said. “And he did it in his own way.
“But things didn’t work out. Following Tommy was not an easy task.”
Critics who had preferred hitting coach Reggie Smith, Mets manager Bobby Valentine or triple A manager Mike Scioscia — all former Lasorda pupils — over Russell quietly worked to undermine him and 74 games into his second full season as manager, Russell was fired by the team’s new overlords at Fox, who also sacked general manager Fred Claire, replacing him with Lasorda.
By then a major rift had developed between Russell and his former manager, who privately questioned Russell’s performance to management and publicly questioned his qualifications to manage. As a result many pointed fingers for the firings at Lasorda, who strongly denied being involved.
Bill Russell observed umpires on behalf of MLB during Sunday’s Dodgers-Giants game at Dodger Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Either way, the relationship was irrevocably broken.
Russell left with a .537 winning percentage over parts of three seasons, a better mark — albeit over a far shorter span — than the one that took Lasorda to the Hall of Fame. After firing Russell, the Dodgers never made the playoffs under Fox, with the seven-season postseason drought matching the team’s longest since the late 1960s-early 1970s.
The hard feelings have softened some with the passing of both time and Lasorda, who died in 2021. (Russell, pointedly, was not invited to the funeral; Scioscia, Valentine, Garvey and Cey were.)
“I knew him better than anybody. I was like his son,” Russell said earlier this month, sitting at a patio table near the neat two-bedroom Valencia house where he’s lived for 20 years.
“I don’t want to bad mouth him but he wanted to keep managing. He just couldn’t accept not being there. That’s just the way it was.”
The slight wounded Russell, who took off his Dodger uniform for what he thought would be the final time. O’Malley, who was in the room when Bob Graziano, the former banker Fox put in charge of the team, fired the manager, invited Russell back to the stadium later that season. But the place where he had grown from a boy to man wasn’t the same.
So he went on to work as an advisor with a team in Taiwan, spent a season as bench coach in Tampa Bay and managed in the minors for both the Rays and Giants.
None of it felt comfortable.
“I was in the Dodger organization 30 years,” he said. “To go somewhere else, it wasn’t right.”
After managing the Shreveport Swamp Dragons to a last-place finish in the Texas League in 2001, he returned to Southern California — and Dodger Stadium — as an umpire observer for Major League Baseball, a job that lets him sit behind the plate and watch games.
As if he could imagine doing anything else.
“He’s brought a different perspective because he played at the highest level and he managed,” said Matt McKendry, MLB’s vice-president of umpire operations. “But, you know, Bill loves being at the ballpark and if he wasn’t doing what he’s doing for us, I think he’d be at Dodger Stadium almost every night anyway.”
Because for Russell it’s never been a stadium. It’s home.
DENVER — Mookie Betts was back at shortstop and Teoscar Hernández remained in right field for the Dodgers on Tuesday, a day after two questionable fielding plays in the outfield led to two runs in a 4-3 walk-off loss to the last-place Colorado Rockies.
Hernández’s defense has increasingly become a matter of concern for manager Dave Roberts and Monday’s loss was followed by a meeting involving Roberts; Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers president of baseball operations; and Betts, who has expressed a willingness to move back to right field where he was a six-time Gold Glove winner.
Hernández is ranked 64th among National League right fielders with a defensive WAR of -0.4 and his two errors are tied for fourth-most in the league.
“He’s got to get better out there. There’s just no way to put it,” Roberts said after Monday’s game of Hernández. “It’s not a lack of effort. But, you know, we’ve just got to kind of get better. We do.”
Betts, meanwhile, twice led the American League in fielding average and putouts as the Boston Red Sox’s right fielder. But he’s played shortstop full-time this season.
“Defense is a big part of postseason baseball and winning baseball,” Roberts said.
Betts’ move to the infield has arguably weakened the Dodgers in two ways: Hernández’s defense and Betts’ offense. Playing the infield, especially shortstop, is far more taxing mentally than playing in the outfield and Betts is slashing a career-low .242/.312/.370 this season.
Moving Betts back to right field would likely mean using Alex Freeland or Miguel Rojas at shortstop, at least in the short term. Freeland played nearly 300 games at shortstop in the minors while Rojas has played more than 940 games there in the majors.
Hernández, second on the team with 74 RBIs and tied for second with 20 home runs, would then move to left field — a less-demanding position defensively than right field — in place of Michael Conforto, whose .190 batting average is the worst in the majors among players with at least 300 at-bats.
Moving Betts back to the outfield could be easier for Roberts when utility players Tommy Edman, Hyeseong Kim and Kiké Hernández return from the injured list, giving the manager more depth and flexibility. Kim, who will begin a rehab assignment this week, is the furthest along and could be back by early next week.
MILWAUKEE — The game plan, manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday afternoon, was simple.
As the Dodgers prepared to face Milwaukee Brewers phenom Jacob Misiorowski, a hard-throwing and supremely talented right-hander making just his fifth career MLB start, the club’s manager repeated one key multiple times during his pregame address with reporters:
“Stress him as much as we can.”
Given Misiorowski’s inexperience, the idea was to work long at-bats, drive up his pitch count and “be mindful of [making] quick outs,” Roberts said.
The Brewers’ Jacob Misiorowski shouts during the sixth inning of a game against the Dodgers Tuesday in Milwaukee.
(Aaron Gash / Associated Press)
“If he’s got to keep repeating pitches, there might be a way for some base hits, some walks,” he added. “Again, create stress, and hopefully get a couple big hits.”
A big hit came early, with Shohei Ohtani leading off the game with his 31st home run of the season. But after that, the only stress evident at American Family Field on Tuesday came from the Dodgers’ lineup, which struck out 12 times against Misiorowski during a 3-1 loss to the Brewers. It was the Dodgers’ fifth straight loss.
The Ks came quickly following Ohtani’s early blast (his ninth leadoff home run of the season, and one that set a new Dodgers record for total home runs before the All-Star break).
Mookie Betts fanned on a slider in the next at-bat. Freddie Freeman whiffed on a curveball after him. Andy Pages froze on a 100.8 mph fastball, one of 21 triple-digit pitches Misiorowski uncorked from his wiry 6-foot-7, 197-pound frame.
Misiorowski struck out three more batters in the second to strand a two-out Dalton Rushing single. He worked around Miguel Rojas’ leadoff double in the third with two more punchouts, getting Ohtani with a curveball this time and Freeman with the same pitch after a generous strike call got the count full.
From there, the Dodgers didn’t stress Misorowski again until the sixth, when Ohtani drew a leadoff walk and Betts slapped a single through the infield. With one out, however, Ohtani was thrown at the plate trying to score from third on Pages’ chopper up the line. Then Michael Conforto grounded out to first to retire the side, sending Misorowski skipping back to the dugout with a few thumps of his chest at the end of a six-inning, one-run start that saw all 12 strikeouts come the first five frames (tying the most strikeouts by any MLB pitcher in the first five innings of a game since 2008).
Opposite Misiorowski, Dodgers veteran Clayton Kershaw produced a solid six-inning, two-run start in a vastly different way. With his fastball still topping out at 90 mph, and the 37-year-old managing only three strikeouts in his first start since joining the 3,000 club last week, Kershaw instead navigated the Brewers with a string of soft contact.
The only problem: The Brewers still found a way to build a rally in the bottom of the fourth.
After singling on a swinging bunt up the third-base line his first time up, Milwaukee catcher William Contreras did the same thing to lead off the inning. Then Jackson Chourio beat the shift on a ground ball the other way.
That set up Andrew Vaughn for a line-drive RBI single to center, tying the score. In the next at-bat, Isaac Collins also found a hole in the infield, sneaking another ground-ball single between Betts and Rojas on the left side of the infield to give Milwaukee a 2-1 lead.
Even after Misiorowski departed, a shorthanded Dodgers lineup (which was once again without injured veterans Teoscar Hernández and Tommy Edman, as well as primary catcher Will Smith on a scheduled off day) couldn’t claw its way back.
The Brewers’ bullpen retired all nine batters it faced. Sal Frelick took Kirby Yates deep for an insurance run in the eighth. And on a day the Dodgers intended to create stress, they were instead dealing with the headache of a season-long five-game losing streak.
UCLA softball is heading to its 33rd Women’s College World Series after rallying from a game down to win the Columbia Super Regional, defeating South Carolina 5-0 in the series decider at Beckham Field on Sunday.
After Jordan Woolery kept UCLA’s (54-11) season alive with a walk-off home run in Game 2, she picked up right where she left off with a first-inning RBI single off South Carolina (44-17) starting pitcher Sam Gress. The Bruins failed to tack on runs with the bases loaded, but Kaitlyn Terry made sure the early tally was enough.
Terry threw 5 ⅔ innings of two-hit shutout ball with four strikeouts before giving way to Saturday’s starting pitcher, Taylor Tinsley.
Woolery delivered a critical insurance run in the fifth inning when she poked an infield single through the right side of South Carolina’s infield shift to bring Jessica Clements around after her one-out double.
After Tinsley pitched out of a jam with the tying runs on base in the sixth, UCLA added three runs in the seventh to put the game out of reach thanks to back-to-back RBIs from Rylee Slimp and Alexis Ramirez.
UCLA will play fellow Big Ten school Oregon on Thursday in Oklahoma City.
