MILWAUKEE — To those who see him only in glimpses, through their televisions or beside his locker at the far end of the Miller Park clubhouse, Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Rickie Weeks is a mental and emotional fortress.
He is as steady as they come in this game — never carrying himself too high or too low. Rarely does his face show anything besides a calm sense of brute confidence. It's hard not to wonder, at times, whether the second baseman is chiseled out of stone.
"Confidence," said Roger Cador, Weeks' former college coach at Southern, "that's what makes him Rickie Weeks."
And through two months of the 2012 season, deep in the midst of one of the worst slumps of his career, Weeks seemed, to the untrained eye, to remain that fortress of steady emotion, carrying himself much the same as he had through the previous season — a year that included an All-Star invite and an NL Central title.
His steadiness in the face of unnerving struggles gave his team and his coaches little reason to worry about him. Others would voice their frustrations, at least to their coaches.
But never Weeks. He would figure it out.
Back in Baton Rouge, his friend and former teammate was one of the few who could see through the cracks in that fortress.
Fernando Puebla doesn't talk to his friend very often during baseball season. He doesn't want to bother him when he knows Weeks' time is so valuable. And this season, Puebla has tried to stay away from the phone.
But in his downtime as an assistant at Southern, the school where he and Weeks met as college teammates, Puebla will watch a Brewers game every now and again to check in on Weeks.
This year, he noticed something different about his friend. Game after game, he saw the subtle signals, signs that would go unnoticed by those who know Rickie Weeks only as a baseball player. The way Weeks walked to second base, the way he stared down pitchers, the way he looked as he walked away from the plate — all of those things seemed different to Puebla, different from what he had seen last year or in their time at Southern, when Weeks became the best hitter in college baseball.
Detecting these slight differences and noticing the negative body language is a skill Puebla has picked up over time as a coach, learning under Cador. Just as he can spot changes his players, Puebla quickly discovered not everything was right with Weeks.
"Absolutely, he's frustrated," Puebla said last week. "You can see it in his face. You can see it in the way he walks. I thought that to myself, just watching him, ‘There's something going on with Rickie.' You can see it in his face. Something is bothering him. … He's not producing the way he should and the way he's capable of. It's been getting to him at times this season; he's frustrated."
To Puebla, Weeks has always been a beacon of confidence, a player who refused to settle for being anything less than the best. Even when the two would relax and play video games — a rare chance for Puebla to beat Weeks — the second baseman refused to quit until he could defeat his friend.
"He doesn't give up," Puebla said. "He's not going to ask for anything. He's going to keep working and sooner than later, he's going to figure it out."
But that didn't hold true when Weeks batted .186 in April. Or when he hit .132 in May. This was a player who hit 17 home runs and batted .278 before the All-Star break last season.
Weeks' manager, Ron Roenicke, knew the frustrations had been building within his second baseman. He knew the slump had been getting to Weeks. He knew the fact that the endless time in the batting cage and the slight adjustments, which hadn't worked out, had worn on the second baseman's otherwise impenetrable psyche.
"It gets to him," Roenicke said. "No matter how mentally tough you are, it still gets to you. But he's a professional, he goes about his job the right way. … It's in there. It's in there, and the longer it goes, the longer it's in there.
"But he's not going to let on to anything. Even behind closed doors he doesn't let on."
Roenicke smiled when he said those last few words. He knows Weeks has been frustrated, but he also knows the second overall pick in the 2003 draft will never admit to it, never request a day off and never ask for help.
Those unique qualities have been ingrained in him for what seems like forever, according to those who know him best. Cador could tell right from the beginning that Weeks had a stubborn brand of confidence and mental strength about him. And he knew shortly after Weeks had committed to Southern that those characteristics had come primarily from his mother, Valeria.
She was tough as nails and had raised Weeks and his siblings (Weeks' brother, Jemile, currently plays for Oakland), Cador said, to always be responsible for themselves and their actions.
"She didn't believe in foolishness," Cador said. "She was serious about them taking care of business and being responsible. That's what she was all about."
And at the heart of Weeks' stoicism is the foundation his mother had built from the beginning. Even in the midst of the worst slump of his career, he was determined to come to work and do his job, even when that meant repeated 0-for-4 outings and multi-strikeout games. He showed no signs of wavering, while he held those frustrations below the surface. That's what he had been taught to do. If he was tough enough, he thought, he could snap out of it.
"I think I've always had that toughness," Weeks said. "But it's something that came more with maturity and growing up. You play the game long enough, you fail enough — it's a game of failure — then it gets to be built in you. You just have to keep going out there and working hard, regardless of your situation."
And in the month of June, that consistent work and that confidence — which had carried him through the worst of times in the prior two months — have started to pay off.
Since June 9, Weeks is hitting .283, having tallied at least one hit in nine of the Brewers' last 14 games. The confidence Puebla and Cador had remembered him best for slowly seems to be coming back.
"He's a lot better," Roenicke said last week of Weeks' recent surge. "He's on that path to being the guy we saw last year … the guy that we've seen for a long time."
But Weeks remains stoic and unchanging as always. He recognizes his recent success. But his mother taught him to never get too high or too low.
"It's one of those things that's a process," Weeks said. "I'm definitely still working on some things. At the same time, I'm grateful for the at-bats that I've been putting together. Other than that, it's still baseball — still grinding."
And on Friday night, as the Brewers remained scoreless heading into the top of the 10th inning, Weeks — confident and resolved — stepped to the plate against White Sox pitcher Jesse Crain. As Crain delivered the sixth pitch of the at-bat, with Weeks stuck at a 2-2 count, the frustrations that had plagued his first few months had taken a backseat. It didn't matter that Weeks, an All-Star just a season ago, had the worst batting average in baseball. It didn't matter that he had almost twice as many strikeouts as hits. As Weeks swung at Crain's 2-2 pitch, he drove the ball up the middle, pushing home the game's only run. All the hard work and frustrations under the surface seemed to float away — at least for one night.
His greatest struggles seemingly behind him and his greatest triumph of the season just minutes before, Weeks remained stoic, steadfast in his mother's teachings.
"I'm good," Weeks said after the game, asked about his recent slumps. "I can care less. As long as we win games, I'm good."
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