Cliff Notes
August 20, 2001 - Sports Illustrated
by Michael Bamberger

The ballplayer's mother and former wife were talking on the phone the other day, repeating a familiar conversation. "He's doing it again," said Alex Floyd, the ex-wife.

"I know he is, baby," said the mother, Olivia Floyd. "I hate it too."

Alex, a model, lives in South Florida, where Cliff Floyd plays leftfield for the Marlins. Olivia, a retired factory worker, lives outside Chicago. When the two women watch their favorite ballplayer on TV, they see what the rest of us do not: the inner workings of the mind of a man who has been batting in the ritzy neighborhood of .340 this season. He doesn't go hitless often - through Sunday he'd hit in all but 21 of his 105 starts this year - but when he does, the mother and the ex-wife are analyzing the problem before the earpieces on their phones are even warm.

"Why does he do that, Ma?" Alex asked rhetorically. "I've told him and I'll tell him again: 'Clifford, you're thinking too much,'" Olivia said. "But does he listen? No."

Actually, he does. Floyd talks to his mother and former wife several times a week, and "they pick up on things I don't," he says. "I'm always trying to get my mind at peace. I know that I hit my best when everything is chill."

On Aug. 3 Floyd played both games of a Friday doubleheader in St. Louis against the Cardinals and went 1 for 8. The lefthanded hitter's right Achilles tendon, always tender, was particulary bothersome that evening. His eight-year career has been impeded by injuries, one after another. Now everyone was talking about his health again. His manager, Tony Perez, didn't let him bat during the next two games against the Cardinals. Floyd was deeply frustrated. The following Monday, when the Marlins were playing in the Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown, the 28-year-old Floyd was at a medical facility in Fort Lauderdale enduring the loud hammering of yet another MRI, this one on his right foot and ankle.

The news, on this occasion, was good: The doctors found tendinitis in his right heel, but nothing more. The inflammation could be surgically repaired with relative ease in the off-season. In the meantime, Floyd was told, he had nothing to worry about. He has told to run as hard as he likes (and he runs very hard and very fast; he has 13 steals in 16 attempts). The next day Floyd went 3 for 3 against the Arizona Diamondbacks. His mind was at peace. Everything was chill.

You would be hard-pressed to find another ballplayer who uses the counseling services of his mother and his ex-wife. A divorced woman who describes her ex-husband as her closest friend, as Alex Floyd does, is a rare thing too. "There's something special about Cliff," Alex says. "Everyone who knows him feels the same way. I know we will be in each other's lives for as long we live," Their two-year marriage ended last October, but someday they might remarry. They both say that.

If it happens, it won't be in the near future. "Right now, I'm not ready to be married," says Floyd. "I'm not mature enough to be married. I'm too comfortable being alone, and I'm too focused on baseball to be married." Part of Floyd's considerable charm is his boyish candor. "I don't want to be like, 'Let me fake sleeping so she'll leave me alone,' " he says. "My wife deserves better than that. My wife deserves the kind of devotion I see in my parents."

Cliff's father, Cornelius Clifford (C.C.) Floyd, played high school baseball in Chicago in the 1960s and in the Marines. He's retired, but for years he worked a double shift at the U.S. Steel plant in Chicago so that his family could afford to live in a working-class suburb, Markham, where schoolboy baseball was taken more seriously than in the city. The father's understanding of the game is considerable. Olivia Floyd is in charge of Cliff's metaphysical state. C.C. is in charge of the boy's stroke.

This season, after consulting with his hitting-coach father, Floyd has switched from a 34-ounce bat to one that's 31 ounces. He has also narrowed his batting stance by four or five inches and has raised his hands about four inches, to create a feeling of tension and anticipation. Then as the pitcher releases the ball, Floyd drops his hands dramatically, exhales and relaxes. At that moment Floyd achieves a state of hitting nirvana he calls chill. "He used to say 'chill out,' but now he just talks about 'chill,' " says Olivia. In that state of relaxation, Floyd can bash lefties and righties both (at week's end he was hitting .331 against southpaws and .341 against righthanders), smoke curveballs and fastballs on an equal opportunity basis, and wallop high pitches nearly as well as low ones, looking smooth all the while.

But then Floyd could always hit. In 1991, coming out of Thornwood High, near Markham, he was drafted in the first round by the Montreal Expos. Dave Dombrowski was the Expos' boy general manager at the time. In 1997, as the Marlins' G.M., he engineered the trade that brought Floyd to Florida. "We loved him 10 years ago," says Dombrowski, now one of baseball's wise old men at 45. "We thought he was going to be a star. He's reaching the heights we always thought he would. The only thing that's held him back is his health." Says Perez, "What he needs now is at bats. The more at bats he gets, the better he'll get."

Since being called up for the first time, in 1993, Floyd has had only one season with more than 500 at bats - 1998, when he had .588 and hit .282 with 22 homers and 90 RBIs. Last year, despite a month on the disabled list with a torn medial meniscus in his left knee, Floyd batted .300 with 22 homers and 91 RBIs in only 420 at bats. This year he is finally showing what he can do when his body is sound and his mind is clear. Through Sunday, Floyd was batting .338, with 28 home runs and 90 RBIs. More important, he's a big part of the success of the Marlins, who were still hanging around in the National League East pennant race, six games behind the first place Philadelphia Phillies. Says C.C., "I've always told him, 'Barry Bonds plays every day. When you finally get to play every day, you might not be right in his league, but you'll be in his room.' "

When he's with his parents, Cliff is Cliffie, or Clifford, or Baby or Big Boy. (He's 6'4" and weighs 235 pounds.) In the Marlins' clubhouse, where he is beloved, his teammates sometimes call him Glass, because his body, though immense and powerful, is fragile. There's his chronically inflamed right Achilles tendon. There's his left harmstring, which is prone to pulls. There's his on twice. Then there's his left wrist. The fact that Floyd even has a working left wrist is a miracle of modern medicine.

On May 15, 1995, the Expos were playing the New York Mets at Shea Stadium. Floyd, who throws with his right hand, was playing first, As he attempted to make a sweeping tag on Mets catcher Todd Hundley, who was bearing down on first, Floyd shattered his left wrist, breaking or dislocating six bones and tearing ligaments. Bones were sticking out of him like pins in a voodoo doll. The sight was so gruesome that when replays were shown on TV, they came with a warning.

Floyd may be fragile, but he's tough: Surgeons put his hand back together, and four months later he was playing baseball again. Since then, two significant things have happened. Floyd has moved to the outfield pretty much full time, and Hundley has become a close friend. The catcher, who shares an agent with Floyd, was in Floyd's wedding party. "Clifford's always been like that," Olivia says, "He makes friends wherever he goes."

Well, almost everywhere. In late May, Floyd, a line drive hitter and a line drive talker, called Bobby Valentine of the Mets the "stupidest manager in baseball." They were squabbling over such fine points of baseball protocol as beanballs (the Mets had plunked Floyd) and evil-eye dugout stares (Floyd's retaliation against Valentine). The two exchanged a volley of pithy quotes in the newspapers. Their tiff even spilled over to the All-Star Game, because Valentine managed the National League team. The skipper left Floyd dangling for a while but finally selected him for his squad after righthander Rick Reed, then with the Mets, bowed out with an injury.

"Mike Piazza says to me at the All-Star Game, 'Bobby doesn't mean any harm,' " says Floyd. "I accept that. I forgive stuff. I go on - as long as things work out in life." (They did: Valentine sent Floyd a framed lineup card from the game, a gesture that indicated the two had buried that hatchet.)

Floyd flew his parents to Seattle for the All-Star Game, where, as his father had more or less predicted, he found himself in the same room as Barry Bonds. At least, they shared a clubhouse for a night. "I'm looking at Barry Bonds's numbers and I'm thinking, I ain't done nothing in this game, not yet," Floyd says. "I read this story where Barry says you've got to learn to play with injuries, and that's what I'm learning to do."

In early August, when the Marlins had a day off between a series in Cincinnati and a series against the Brewers, Floyd spent two nights at his parents' house. Later this month, when the Marlins play the Cubs at Wrigley, Floyd will visit again. He lives in South Florida and owns a house there, but Chicago remains the center of his universe. His boyhood team was the White Sox, and his hero was Harold Baines. "Hey, BAIN-ZEE!" Floyd would yell during batting practice. Baines would casually lift his left hand and toss off a little wave. Little Cliff thought Baines was the coolest thing going. He's been emulating him ever since.

Floyd's parents no longer live in Markham. Shortly after signing a four-year, $19 million contract with the cash-strapped Marlins before the start of the 1999 season, Cliff was visiting his folks when they all heard gunfire. Floyd immediately told his parents, "It's time for you to move out."

"But there's no return fire," his mother said. "Probably somebody just firing into the air." Then they smelled gun smoke. It was close. "You're moving out," Cliff said.

He bought his parents a sparkling new $300,000 home - big enough for his 16-year-old brother, Julius, and his 16-year-old sister, Shanta, as well - in Hazel Crest, a few miles and a world away from Markham. He moved his mother's mother, too, into a house in Lynwood, a suburb of Chicago.

When the Marlins play in the Midwest, the Floyds go on the road with their Clifford. One night in Milwaukee, after a poor at bat by her son, Olivia said to the folks in her row, "He's thinking too much tonight." The way his mother saw it, Clifford was thinking about the pitcher, the umpire, the score, Alex, his parents, a teammate who'd failed to run the bases hard the previous night, all manner of things. She expects her son to get a hit every time up.

His father takes a more realistic view. He knows for a hitter to fail only two times in three is a huge accomplishment. As Olivia was examining the mental health of her son from the second deck of Miller Park, C.C. was dispensing his life philosophy between bites of nachos smothered in cheese and a big swig from a cold one: "This is what I like to do: eat, look at the ball game, drink beer. You cannot have a better life than that."

For himself Cliff would alter his father's vision of perfection only slightly: eat, play ball, drink beer and don't think too much. When you're healthy and your mind is clear, chill is attainable. In his first 23 at bats after that Aug. 6 MRI, Floyd had eight hits, a .348 average. You cannot have a better hitting life than that. (go to list)