ARLINGTON -- Back in the days when the Rangers employed Larry Hardy as bullpen coach, he could count on a call from the dugout inquiring as to the mental and physical preparedness of one John Wetteland.
“You want me,” Hardy would say, “to ask him how he’s doing?”
The best closer the Rangers ever had, Wetteland was what you might call “spiritually committed” to the role. Like the shark in Jaws was committed to eating Robert Shaw’s boat. Such is the mentality the job requires, if not necessarily the body count.