by Wayne Coffey
Draft day is the first Tuesday in June. I am living in a Navy barracks in Millington, Tennessee, in a Spartan cinder-block room with a bathroom at the end of the hall. A short walk down a linoleum floor takes me past the rooms of the best collegiate players in the country. Kris Benson of Clemson. Mark Kotsay of Cal State Fullerton. Braden Looper of Wichita State. Travis Lee of San Diego State. Jeff Weaver of Fresno State.
The crème de la crème.
This is my second go-round in the draft, actually. I was taken by the Detroit Tigers in the tenth round out of high school, but I talked with Uncle Ricky and he said that unless they blew me away with money, I should go to college (which is what I really wanted anyway). I wasn’t ready for pro ball and figured all along I’d be enrolling at the University of Tennessee, so I never seriously considered signing with the Tigers. Now it’s three years later and I am draft eligible again. Scouts have followed me the last couple of years, trying to gauge how I stack up against the other pitchers available. Start after start, I go out there and audition in front of these guys I’ve never met, guys who could have a massive impact on my future. They have their notebooks and radar guns and organizational shirts and hats, and their task is to determine if you are worth spending a first-round pick, and a pile of money, on. It’s the meat-market part of the business, and you find out about it early. If they like another cut of meat better than you, you are going to stay in the display case awhile longer. It all comes down to what they write up in their reports and how you grade out.
Literally.
Part of the package is a psychological-profile exam, something teams use to assess your makeup and character. I must’ve taken a dozen of them, forty-five minutes at a shot. You get multiple-choice questions like this:
If you are approaching an intersection and see the traffic light turn yellow, your response is to:
A. Speed up to get through the light before it turns red.
B. Gently but firmly apply the brake so you come to a safe stop.
C. Look around to see if there are any cops, and then gun it.
D. Think about your options, hit the gas, then slam on the brake just before you get to the intersection.
Or:
You take a two-hit shutout into the bottom of the ninth, only to lose when your second baseman boots two consecutive grounders. You deal with the situation by:
A. Taking a bat to the water cooler in the dugout.
B. Telling a reporter—off the record—that the manager screwed up by not putting in the backup second baseman, who has a better glove.
C. Brooding at your locker with a towel over your head, just to make sure everybody knows how heartbreaking the game was for you.
D. Making a point to go over to the second baseman and say, “Hey, you busted your butt out there today. Forget the ninth inning. You can play second base behind me anytime.”
I always make sure I give answers that I think will score me character points, not necessarily the truthful answers. In other words, I lie. So, with the first question, I circle B, even though in real life I would’ve definitely run the light (A). On the second question, I don’t have to fib: in good seasons and bad, I try hard to be a good teammate; no way would I bury a guy because he makes an error. In life and on the exam, I go for D:
You can play second base behind me anytime.
I know this probably sounds straight out of Cornball Central, but there’s nothing corny about loyalty to me. The day I don’t stand by my teammates is the day I don’t want to play anymore. The Bible says, “Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”
Besides, I like it when guys stand by me after I screw up.
I WAKE UP anxious in my barracks in Millington on draft day. How could I not be anxious? My life could soon be changing in a momentous way. The Oakland A’s seem to have the most interest. They have scouted me the most and have the tenth pick of the first round.
I imagine myself in green and gold, pitching for an organizationthat has been home to big-time pitchers for years, from Catfish Hunter to Vida Blue to Dave Stewart.
I hear the Bay Area is nice. I decide that this would be a great fit for me.
With the tenth pick in the first round, the A’s select a high school third baseman named Eric Chavez.
Oh, well. (The Bay Area is too cold, anyway.)
I wind up going to the Texas Rangers. (Let’s hear it for heat.) The Rangers take me with the eighteenth pick, right after the Cubs take a high school pitcher from Louisiana named Todd Noel. For some reason I find myself wondering about Todd, who he is and what his story is and how he got to be a first-round pick in the major leagues. I wonder how many of the top guys in the draft will wind up being stars and which ones will never be heard from again.
I wonder how I measure up against them. I wonder if I will ever be heard from again.
Every slot you drop in the first round costs you money—a bunch of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars of money—so it’s not good that I slip to eighteen. The word I get is that the scouts are concerned that I was overused at Tennessee and that my velocity has dropped from the mid-nineties to the low nineties over the last month or two. When a young pitcher loses velocity, he might as well have a contagious disease; it usually makes teams run in the other direction. In that sense, I am fortunate to still be in the first round.
So how can I be unhappy? The Rangers hardly scouted me because they didn’t think I’d still be around when they picked. Now I am in the same organization as Nolan Ryan, not to mention Jonathan Johnson, one of my best friends, whom the Rangers took on the first round a year earlier.
It’s all good.
With the draft complete, I dive back into my life as a pitcher for Team USA in the Atlanta Olympics. We have a lineup loaded with big bats, and a starting rotation that consists of five of the top collegiate pitchers in the country: Benson, Billy Koch, Looper, Seth Greisinger, and me. People are calling it one of the best pitching staffs Team USA has ever had. I am the least acclaimed of the five, but that’s okay. On July 22, 1996, Baseball America puts all of us on the cover before the Games begin. It’s a huge deal being showcased on the cover of the bible of amateur baseball. The headline reads, “Armed for Battle.” I make sure Anne and my mom save copies for the scrapbook.
This is a press clip I’m never going to forget, I tell myself.
My Olympic coach is J. Stanley “Skip” Bertman, of LSU, one of the best and most inspirational coaches I’ve ever been around. Skip is always showing us film clips or giving speeches, finding novel ways to fire us up. He calls us together one day in Millington in the locker room during the pre–Olympic tour.
Skip previously had given every one of us a crystal baseball paperweight as a keepsake. He is standing before us holding his own crystal baseball paperweight. He begins to talk, softly. He talks about the Olympics and the opportunity we have before us, and how important it is to put the team above all else. And then suddenly the quiet of the room is shattered, Skip purposely letting his ball drop out of his hand, onto the floor, the crystal shattering on impact, startling everybody.
Skip pauses and then pulls out another crystal ball paperweight. He holds it tightly in his hands.
A team is a very special thing, Skip says. It’s something to cherish, to preserve, but it’s also fragile, like the crystal ball I just dropped, because once it’s broken or fractured—once guys don’t stay together and start playing the blame game and splitting up—you can try to glue or patch it and reassemble it, but it’s never, ever the same. Never. So be a team. Stay together. If you do that you can do great things.
I love his message.
We believe we are capable of the greatest thing of all in the Olympic baseball orbit: beating Cuba for the gold medal. We played Cuba four times the year before, in 1995, and beat them in all four games. Teams comprising U.S. college kids are not supposed to do that against the Cubans, longtime kings of amateur ba
seball.
Before we go out to play the Netherlands in our first game in the Olympics, Skip tells us: Remember, you are playing for Your Maker, your family, and the United States of America. He says it before every game.
Our bats are on fire as the round-robin play begins. We hit five home runs in the first inning in a 15–5 blowout of Japan, one of the medal favorites. I start against Italy and we win, 15–3. Not exactly high drama, nor the 1927 Yankees as an opponent, but I feel good about how I perform after a rocky first inning. For the whole tournament we average four homers per game and play a tight preliminary-round game with the Cubans before losing, 10–8—our only loss against six victories as we head into the semifinals against Japan.
We believe we are the team to beat. We’ve handled Cuba and we’ve beaten Japan the last nine times we’ve played them, and I mean thrashed them most of the time.
How can we not be confident?
The Japanese score three in the second inning against Benson, our starter and the number one pick in the entire big-league draft that summer. They score three more in the fifth, and go on to hit five home runs against our pitching. Meanwhile, we somehow turn a pitcher named Masanori Sugiura into the Japanese Greg Maddux. Sugiura’s regular team is the Nippon Life Insurance Company, and his policy on this day seems to be to put every pitch just where he wants it.
We fall behind 6–0, then 8–2 and 10–2. I am in the bullpen while all this is going on, and I think I am going to throw up.
I mean it. I am physically nauseous—that’s how revolted I am by what is going on, as if I have food poisoning, my system emphatically rejecting the crap that’s being stuffed down my throat.
The final score is 11–2. Japan advances to the gold-medal game against the Cubans. Team USA goes for a consolation-game bronze against Nicaragua.
It hurts more than any defeat I’ve ever been involved in. The nausea takes the whole night to lift.
The next day we play for the bronze. Skip makes sure we are ready to play, tells us that even though this isn’t the game we want to be playing, we owe it to our Maker, families, and country to honor the game and play hard. We score four in the top of the first and win going away, 10–3. Cuba beats Japan, 13–9, for the gold. When the bronze medal is placed around my neck, it’s the most bittersweet moment of my sporting career. I am one of the top amateur ballplayers in the world. I finish my year with Team USA undefeated (7–0), with a 3.35 earned run average. I am proud to have won a medal in the Olympics for my country.
On the other hand, I am sick that the medal isn’t gold and the national anthem that’s being played isn’t “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I pack up my stuff and my swirling emotions and head back to Nashville, and wait for my agent to hammer out a deal with the Rangers so I can start my new life as a professional pitcher.
ACCORDING TO Lloyd’s of London, I have a million-dollar arm. That’s how much I have it insured for during my sophomore and junior year in college, just in case I get hurt and don’t have a pro career. I get the policy at the suggestion of the coaches at Tennessee, where guys like Peyton Manning and Todd Helton and other top athletes were buying themselves protection. The premium is roughly $30,000, but Lloyd’s is good about it and lets me defer the payments until some money comes in, which shouldn’t be long now. Mark Rodgers, my agent (recommended to me by a friend), and Doug Melvin, the general manager of the Texas Rangers, go back and forth in their negotiation, and Doug finally pushes his signing bonus offer to $810,000. I am not micromanaging this with Mark and don’t talk to him six times a day to get the updates. I want to do well, of course, but I never want to break the bank. I just want what is fair. He says it is, and I accept.
I say a prayer of thanks to God and begin planning my first expenditures—Anne’s ring, Lloyd’s premiums, and something special for my mother and sister, Jane.
The thought of the money is mind-boggling. I’m a guy who started life with cockroaches, my mom’s lemon of a Vega, and the Western Sizzlin flatware. Now I am on the verge of being 81 percent of the way to the millionaire club, less commission and expenses. I try to fathom what it’s going to be like to sign that contract with my name and that number on it, and I can’t, but the bigger thrill, honestly, is what is attached to the money. And what is attached to it is the beginning of my professional baseball career.
Mark and I fly down to Arlington so I can take the obligatory physical and sign the contract. The Rangers want me to meet Nolan Ryan and throw out the first pitch at the game that night. The whole flight down, I am mesmerized by the thought of standing on the mound in the Ballpark, with Ryan in the wings and tens of thousands of people cheering.
It’s going to be one of the greatest moments of my life. There is no other way to think about it.
When we get to Texas, I go straight to the office of the team orthopedist, Dr. John Conway. The doctor knows about me already, from the Olympics and Danny Wheat, the Rangers’ trainer. In the clubhouse one day, Wheat sees the Baseball America where I’m standing, sideways, with the other Team USA starters. Wheat points the photo out to Conway.
His arm kind of looks like it’s hanging at a weird angle, doesn’t it? Wheat says. This kid is our number one draft choice and he already looks like he’s got elbow problems.
The other pitchers’ right arms are hanging straighter than mine, which has more of a bend at the elbow.
Conway agrees it looks a bit odd. He files it away.
I am in his office for an hour, contorting my arm in various directions.
This guy’s being thorough, but I guess that’s what happens when this kind of money is involved.
Everything proceeds fine. As far as I know. The last test Conway administers is called the Valgus stress test. He places my arm in a snug-fitting apparatus, then has me twist my wrist back and forth as an X-ray machine above films what’s going on inside. When the test is finished, we go back to the doctor’s office. He puts the X-ray on an X-ray illuminator. I am looking at the infrastructure of my right elbow. It looks a lot like an elbow to me.
You have a couple of millimeters of extra laxity in there, Conway says.
What does that mean? I ask.
It means there is a little extra play in there that isn’t normal.
That doesn’t matter, does it? My arm doesn’t hurt. I’ve never missed a start. I throw the ball in the nineties. I don’t see how that could matter if I have no symptoms.
I don’t know, Conway says. It’s hard to say.
We shake hands and Mark and I head off to see Doug Melvin.
I don’t like what he said about the laxity, Mark says. I hope it’s not a problem.
It won’t be a problem, I say. I’m as healthy as I can be.
This isn’t bravado. This is gospel to me; I know my body better than anybody, and my arm feels great.
We get to the Ballpark and take the elevator up to Melvin’s office. It overlooks the field in left center and has a balcony adjacent to it. Doug pokes his head out and asks Mark if the two of them can speak for a moment. I walk out on the balcony to check out my future field. It looks spectacular: the richest, most verdant grass I’ve ever seen.
I want to be on it now. I want to be on that mound, facing a big-league hitter, now.
Right below me, in the bullpen, Roger Pavlik, a Rangers pitcher, is having a side session. He is wearing bright red cleats. They are as cool as anything I’ve ever seen on a ballplayer. Behind him is Dick Bosman, the Rangers’ pitching coach.
It would be awesome to wear red cleats, I think. I look up at the empty seats and take in the size of the place and imagine what it will be like to pitch in a park this big. I am in a place of immense gratitude and I say it out loud, on the balcony:
Thank you, Lord, for all your blessings and for helping me get this far.
My prayer is still in the air when I see Mark walking toward me. His face is whiter than home plate.
You need to come in to Doug’s office, he says.
I have no
idea what’s happening other than that it’s not good.
We sit down. Doug is a Canadian with a thick mustache and a solid middle-aged body, like a guy who might be a Mountie if he weren’t running a baseball team. He has a stern, distant look on his face.
We are going to retract our offer, he tells me. We think there’s something wrong with your elbow and we want to have further testing done.
Melvin’s face is stoical. No emotion whatsoever.
This is business. All business.
I sit there and try to take in those words for a second or two: We are going to retract our offer.
I take them in again:
We are going to retract our offer.
I don’t feel devastation, or even anger. I feel rage. Complete rage. It feels as if it starts in my toes and blasts upward through my body, like a tsunami, into my guts and right up through the top of my head.
I have an urge as primal as anything I have ever felt.
I want to reach across this desk and strangle this man who, very quietly, very dispassionately, has just taken everything I’ve worked for, taken my whole life’s dream, and crushed it as if it were a bug on the pavement. I want to cuss and tell this man exactly who he is stomping on. Part of me wants to tell him about all the ways my life is screwed up and how this is the one thing, the one thing above all else, that I can do right and that makes me somebody.
I can pitch. I can compete as hard as anybody you’ve ever seen. That’s why you made me the eighteenth pick in the whole stinkin’ draft. Don’t you remember that? Don’t you know how much more important what I have inside me is than a little laxity in the elbow?
I want to make sure he knows how it feels to be me right now, after he’s matter-of-factly dropped this atomic bomb on my baseball career. On my life.
But first I want to get on his side of the desk and let him know how it feels to be pummeled worse than he’s ever been pummeled in his life.
But I do not lift a finger. I do not leave my chair. It’s as if there’s a strong hand on my shoulder holding me back, giving me pause. In that instant I have a self-control that wasn’t there a moment earlier.
