Mark Prior's Early Brilliance Recounted And Downfall Prophesied By Tony La Russa

On August 1st it was quietly reported that Mark Prior had been released by the Padres. His comeback from serious shoulder injuries thwarted at age 28.

This afternoon I delved back into a book I began reading a few weeks ago, Three Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger. This story recounts a series between the Cardinals and Cubs seen through both the eyes of the author and Tony La Russa courtesy of the unlimited access Bissinger was provided to the manager during the 2003 season. Today, I picked up in the bottom of the first inning of game 1 with Mark Prior on the hill during his breakout 18-6 season......(the whole excerpt is worth reading but I'll bold the most prophetic commentary)...

La Russa watches Prior with professional admiration. But in emotional terms, Prior gets under his skin. It isn't Prior personally that bothers him but what Prior represents: the young player with the big talent who instead of being circumspect his first few years in the league routinely rises to the media bait so prevalent today and gives answers to everything, when he hasn't been around long enough to have the answer to anything. He doesn't like the intemperate out-of-the-blue comments Prior makes about the Cardinals, how he hates them. He doesn't think he needs to make comments about Barry Bonds, how he isn't afraid of him, when this is Prior's first full year in the league and this is Bond's eighteenth. I think he needs to be doing this a while is the way La Russa thinks about it when he watches him pitch. It's an old-fashioned comment, said by a manager who believes in circumspection among young players because that's the way he came up: Your first couple of seasons, no matter how good you are, you should be in the corner, shutting up and soaking it in.

Prior can rank right up there with Schilling and Maddux and Johnson by the time he's through. With his rare mix of stuff and smarts, he is that dominant. But he's also that young. He has the swagger that is the hubris of youth, taking his invincibility for granted when nobody ever should, receiving too much early attention and slathering in it.

La Russa has seen a procession of pitchers over the years who have broken down and busted out because of arm problems and high expectation problems and personal problems and, perhaps most of all, problems making the distinction between being a thrower and being a pitcher. He has seen young pitchers done in by their need for speed.......

And even when you do make it -- even when the world seems sun-kissed, as Prior's world seems sun-kissed at this very moment as he mows down the Cardinals through two -- something can happen, something you don't expect or could ever imagine. And La Russa knows it vividly.

The commentary on Prior and his mortality as a pitcher is given in the context of the Rick Ankiel story (he of the yipps). It was three years before that La Russa had seen what he believed to be the second coming of Sandy Koufax.......and then Ankiel's pitching career collapsed.

Interesting to see La Russa point out the precarious nature of a pitcher's career, have it included in the book, and then to see the prophecy ring true just a few years later.

Man, Mark Prior was good. Going into game 6 of the NLCS in 2003 with Prior on the bump and Wood scheduled for game 7 if necessary, I'd have bet just about anything on the Cubs getting to the World Series. It's too bad Prior didn't catch on in his hometown.

Good Luck MP.

Editor's Note:
Three Nights in August is dope. You should buy it or I'll let you borrow.