by Wayne Coffey
I first saw him pitch on a sultry summer day in Memphis in 1999. I was in my first full year with the Oklahoma City RedHawks. Ankiel was a twenty-year-old left-hander with this easy, flowing windup and a fastball that just exploded out of his hand. I watched him and thought, How can someone look so effortless and throw the ball that hard? His curveball didn’t just fall off the proverbial table; it looked as if it might fall off the earth.
He gave up one hit and struck out seven in seven innings, a low total for him. He made our hitters look so bad, they might as well have gone up to the plate with a noodle. His command was ridiculous. On the best day of my life, I couldn’t throw the ball like Rick Ankiel.
Ankiel was in the majors at the end of that season, and in 2000 went 11–7 for the Cardinals and averaged almost ten strikeouts per game, and was on his way, until Tony La Russa named him the game one starter in the National League Divisional Series against the Braves. Ankiel pitched two scoreless innings, and then walked four guys and threw five wild pitches in the third inning. A complete meltdown. In game two of the National League Championship Series against the Mets, he lasted twenty pitches, each seemingly wilder than the next. The next year he was back in the minors, throwing balls everywhere but over the plate.
I saw Ankiel again in Triple-A in May 2001, when Memphis was in town to play us in Oklahoma City. He threw a half dozen pitches up on the screen. My heart ached for him: a lost soul at age twenty-one, trying desperately to recapture the gift that once came so naturally.
Ankiel spent several years trying to find his command, the plate, but he was never close to the same pitcher again, a victim of the dreaded Steve Blass disease, named after the Pirates’ all-star pitcher and World Series star who mysteriously lost his command and within two years found himself out of baseball. (In 1972, Blass won 19 and had a 2.49 ERA; the next year he was 3–9 with a 9.85 ERA.) Watching Rick Ankiel’s decline was one of the saddest and most inexplicable falls I’ve ever seen in baseball.
As a pitcher who once gave up 6 homers in 3 1⁄3 innings, I know how it feels to be on the mound with no place to hide. This game can humble you in a heartbeat, or faster.
Rick Ankiel went on to reinvent himself as an outfielder, a conversion that makes my switch from conventional pitcher to a knuckleballer seem puny by comparison. He has been one of the great defensive center fielders in the National League for a number of years. I’ve seen him throw guys out at third base from the warning track. He doesn’t need anybody’s sympathy, and I’m sure he doesn’t want it, but whenever I see him, I can’t help harkening back to his days as a teenage wunderkind who seemed destined to be one of the greatest pitchers in baseball.
CHAPTER NINE
SHOW TIME
The timing is terrible, but right after the miscarriage I have to go on the road to Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs. I hate to leave Anne alone in the apartment where we lost our baby, but I don’t have much choice. We pray together before I leave and I ask God to keep my wife safe and to be faithful in my trust in His plan for us.
On our first day in Colorado Springs, I am at my locker getting changed when a familiar voice calls out, “Dewclaw Dickey.”
The speaker is Lee Tunnell, the RedHawks’ pitching coach and the originator of the nickname. Lee, one of the best pitchers ever to come out of Tyler, Texas, has been calling me Dewclaw since the latter stages of 2000. He promotes his creation at every opportunity:
Way to battle tonight, Dewclaw.
Go up the ladder, Dewclaw.
Don’t give him anything too good to hit, Dewclaw.
How I came to be Dewclaw Dickey is a story that promises to be told, and retold, for generations. Or not. The RedHawks play in the Pacific Coast League (PCL), where one of the most popular fan promotions is called Dog Day, or Bark in the Park, depending on where it is. Fans are allowed to bring their dogs to the game, and get treated to an exhibition of dogs that can catch Frisbees, send text messages, and perform other stunning tricks. I heard that in one ballpark, Dog Day included chef pooches whipping up frittatas, but I have never been able to confirm that. Anyway, in the 2000 season, there were a bunch of Dog Days at various parks around the PCL, and I seemed to be the pitcher for every one.
If dogs were in the house, Dickey was on the mound.
Lee could’ve called me Dog Day Dickey, or 3-D, but for some reason he latches onto Dewclaw, the term used to describe the claw on a dog’s vestigial thumb. I show up at a park to pitch at that week’s Bark in the Park event, and Lee says, Go get ’em today, Dewclaw. And that’s how it begins.
As tragically as the season starts for Anne and me as a couple, my pitching life is going okay. I win my first two games and we head to Colorado Springs to play the Sky Sox in a ballpark that makes Coors Field seem like a pitcher’s paradise. Balls don’t just fly out of the thin air of Colorado Springs. They get launched. From a pitcher’s perspective, it’s the worst place on the planet to start a baseball game.
I get to the park early to do my running and long tossing.
Hey, Dewclaw, come on over here for a second, Lee says.
I walk over to Lee’s locker.
They’re calling you up, he says.
No they’re not.
Yeah they are. They want you there ASAP, so you better get your collar and your chew toys and get your tail to Texas. He reaches out and shakes my hand.
You deserve it, Dewclaw. Now, don’t come back.
I have no idea what to say. I’ve never been called up to the major leagues before. I’m twenty-six years old. In dog years, I’m ancient. In baseball, I’m getting there.
I let Lee’s news sink in for a minute.
Thank you, Lee. I appreciate all you’ve done for me, friend. I have a smile on my face and it won’t leave and I think that I must look like some caricature of a minor leaguer after he gets the call. The first thing I do is call Anne.
Guess what, honey? I’m going to the big leagues.
Oh, my God. You’re kidding? Anne says.
I am not kidding.
I would never say to Anne, or even think, that a call-up to the big leagues can make up for the loss of a child, but isn’t God’s timing remarkable? Isn’t it nice to have wonderful news even as we continue to grieve for our baby?
I’ve got to catch a flight to Texas. I hope you can be there.
I’ll be there. I am not missing this.
Good, I say, because this is happening. I don’t know how long it will last, but your husband is going to be a big-league ballplayer.
I reach my parents and Anne’s parents, and Uncle Ricky, and start gathering up my gear, and by now word has spread through the shoe box of a clubhouse that I’m going to the big club. Right away I sense a dichotomy as big as Pike’s Peak in my teammates’ reactions. Some guys, most of them, are genuinely happy for me and wish me well. A few, though, can barely conceal their bitterness that they are not the ones going to the majors. You can tell by their insincere congratulations or evasive glances. I don’t blame them. I’ve been in this position, watching other guys get the call. It’s no fun being left behind. It’s the dream we all share, but there are only so many spots in the big leagues, so it’s a zero-sum game we are playing: If you get called up, it means that I’m not. If I get called up, it means you’re not. I get that, totally.
I’m not letting somebody’s dour expression rob me of one of the best days of my life.
I hustle back to the hotel, check out, and hop the first shuttle to the airport. At the airline counter, the ticket agent says, “You will be traveling first-class, Mr. Dickey.” I’ve never flown first-class before.
Real glassware, here we come.
When I get to the ballpark, the guard directs me to the Rangers clubhouse. At the door I stop and remind myself not to act like some doofus from Dixie on his first trip to the big city.
Cool, that’s what I’m going to be, I tell myself. It’s only a room in a ballpark. A place where guys pull on their jerseys and jockstraps, not s
ome mythical lair populated by supermen. I’m going to act as though I’ve been in big-league clubhouses a thousand times before, even though I’ve never spent one second in a big-league clubhouse.
Yes sir. I’m going to take coolness to new heights.
I walk in.
I am there about two seconds when goose bumps start popping and my jaw starts dropping. I am spellbound. I am deep in Doofus City.
How bad an actor am I?
I am a very bad actor.
The sheer size and wood-grain splendor of the clubhouse—at least, compared to the frayed carpets and cubbyhole lockers I’m used to—is mind-blowing. The trainer’s room looks like a high-end health club. The lounge is the size of a small house. The clubhouse guy directs me to my locker. I pass lockers that belong to Alex Rodriguez and Pudge Rodríguez and Ken Caminiti. I walk a little farther and pass Rafael Palmeiro and Rusty Greer territory, and see the locker of a promising shortstop, Michael Young, who is just twenty-four years old. I look around for my fellow golf-ball retriever, Jonathan Johnson.
I finally get to my locker. It says DICKEY on the nameplate up top already, as if I’d been around as long as any of them. A white number 51 jersey hangs in my locker with my name on the back. Not iron-on. Stitched. It looks almost too perfect to get sweaty in.
Manager Johnny Oates comes out of his office.
Happy to have you, R.A., he says. Pitching coach Dick Bosman shakes my hand and asks when I last threw.
A nameplate tells me my next-door neighbor in the clubhouse is a veteran right-handed pitcher. He hasn’t arrived for the game yet. I am curious about what sort of guy he is. Getting settled in, I put my stuff in the locker and start to get changed. I take off my shoes and put them on the floor where my space adjoins his. I’m sitting on the little stool pulling on my socks when my neighbor arrives. He looks down, looks at my shoes, and then kicks them to the center of the room. I guess my shoes were trespassing on his territory by a few inches. I look at him, stunned. His face is angry and hard, about what you’d expect.
He doesn’t say, Hello, welcome to the big leagues, or remark on the supple brown leather of my shoes. He says absolutely nothing. I go and retrieve my shoes and don’t say anything, either. I don’t know if anybody else sees his kick, but if they did, they don’t say anything.
I am a rookie, but I’ve been around the game long enough to know about baseball’s caste system, where the time-honored custom is for rookies to keep quiet unless spoken to and to be as invisible as cellophane. I don’t get this, and never have. Why do you need to have a certain amount of big-league time or a particular set of credentials to be treated like a human being? How is that to anybody’s benefit? Why not make a young guy comfortable? Apart from being the nice thing to do, don’t you think he might even play better if he has a sense of belonging?
Some baseball customs are just plain absurd. And downright dumb.
Respect is earned over time; I understand that. It doesn’t mean that the people like this veteran have the right to degrade somebody just because he is getting his first shot. The pitcher would get released—and his career would end—a short time after he kicked my shoes. My schadenfreude is brief. Really. I don’t think about him ever again, until now.
The Oakland A’s are in town for a four-game series. I get dressed and walk up the dugout steps out onto the field, and can’t comprehend where I am. Before the game I head to the bullpen and suddenly I stop. I am nearing the exact spot where I saw red-shoed Roger Pavlik throwing a bullpen session five years earlier, before Doug Melvin retracted my offer.
I feel powerful and exhilarated. I feel profoundly grateful. Nobody thought I’d ever be heard of again. I was, after all, damaged goods, Baseball America cover boy turned nonprospect.
The Pitcher Without a UCL.
And now here I am. A major leaguer. For at least a day.
A big day. I want to believe it might last a lot longer than that, but optimism doesn’t come naturally to me.
Anne, my mom, and a dozen or so other family and friends make the seven-hundred-mile drive from Nashville for the series; Susan and my father drive down too. I don’t get in the first three games, and now it’s Sunday. I’m dying to get on the mound, but it’s not as though I can ask Johnny to put me in because my wife and family are in town. I’m in the bullpen, keeping to myself, noting what a horrible view of the field you have from the lower tier of the Rangers’ bullpen. We score four in the third and four in the seventh and go up, 11–2. Pudge and Palmeiro homer and ARod goes three for four. In the top of the eighth, the bullpen phone rings.
Bobby Cuellar, the bullpen coach, answers it. The conversation lasts about five seconds.
Cuellar looks at me.
You got the ninth, kid, he says.
I get off the bench and stretch a little and get on the mound. I start throwing easily and gradually increase velocity. I feel good. I feel strong. The bottom of the eighth ends and now it is time. No fooling.
It is time.
When I first met Anne in seventh grade, I told her three things were going to happen:
She and I would get married.
U2 would play at our wedding.
I would one day become a big-league ballplayer.
I am about to increase my batting average to .667.
I RUN IN from the pen and try not to look up at the crowd or the size of the stadium around me. I steal a quick look at the family section, where Anne and my parents and everybody are sitting, but I don’t want to get caught up in it. On my first warm-up pitch to Pudge, my left leg, my front leg, is quivering, shaking like a bowl of jelly. It won’t stop. I throw several more pitches and it’s still quivering. I’m getting worried.
What if it doesn’t stop? What if I have to pitch from the stretch? I’m going to balk on every pitch. I wonder if any pitcher in history has ever had to bail out of a game because of leg tremors.
The first batter is Mark Bellhorn, the A’s third baseman. I look in and get Pudge’s sign. Fastball.
The quivering continues.
I wind up and fire and it’s over the plate, the inner half. Bellhorn swings and lifts a fly ball to left. One out.
Whoa. I feel better now, more relaxed. The quivering, mercifully, has subsided.
Sal Fasano, the A’s catcher, steps in. I throw two more fastballs. He pops up a 1–0 pitch behind the plate. Two out.
The next hitter is Mario Valdez, who has replaced Jason Giambi at first in the blowout. I miss with two fastballs and then throw another on 2–0. Valdez swings and pops it up behind third. Alex Rodriguez gets a good break from shortstop and races into foul territory and makes the catch not too far from the seats. The ball game is over.
As I watch the third out of my first inning in the big leagues, a perfect inning, settle into ARod’s glove, I feel a pure, sweet surge of elation. It’s one inning, a mop-up inning at that, but I’ve just set down three big-league hitters. It’s a good way to get it all started. I keep my eyes fixed on ARod and can’t wait to get the ball from him and hold it and smell it and give it to Anne.
It’s the only first ball I will ever have.
With my eyes still riveted on the scene by the third-base railing, I watch Alex Rodriguez take the ball out of his glove. I watch him put it in his right hand. Then I watch him flip the ball—my ball—into the stands. It all unfolds in agonizingly slow motion, the giving away of my precious keepsake, from glove to palm to a fan I will never see again. ARod trots off the field.
Did I really see this happen? Did he just throw the ball from my first big-league game into the stands?
I am in disbelief. I am deflated beyond measure. I watch the fan head up the aisle, and as I stand in the infield, accepting congratulations, I am half-numb. I feel great about what I’d done, but what about my ball?
I want my ball.
The handshakes are done. I walk to the dugout and go to the bucket where the batboy keeps game balls to give to the ump. I reach in and fish a ball out of the
bucket. I put it into my glove.
I’ll pretend this is the game ball. Nobody will ever know, I tell myself.
I NEVER TALK to ARod about what happened. He’s one of the greatest players ever and I am three days removed from Oklahoma City, so what am I going to do, cop an attitude with him? No. I’m sure he just got caught up in the moment and didn’t even realize it was my first big-league appearance.
But I have bigger items on the agenda, such as staying in the big leagues, and for a fringe prospect, that is by no means certain. We head out to Toronto for my first road trip. Jeff Brantley, veteran reliever and fellow Southeastern Conference guy—he went to Mississippi State—invites me to join him for lunch at a nearby mall.
That would be great. I need to get some clothes, anyway, since I didn’t get home before I was called up.
Okay, no problem, Jeff says. I’ll tag along with you.
At the store, I pick out a pair of slacks and a couple of collared shirts and a blazer. Jeff is with me as I comb the aisles, not saying much. I try a few things on and go back to the dressing room to change before I pay for the four items I want. After I get dressed and emerge from the changing room, I see Jeff standing at the register, signing a credit card receipt. Next to him are two large bags stuffed with clothes, shoes, belts—the works.
I glance at the receipt. What?!! The total is more than $1,200.
What are you doing? I ask him.
Don’t worry about it.
No, Jeff, what are you doing? I want to pay for the things I picked out.
You needed a few clothes, so we got you a few clothes. I’m happy to help you out.
I don’t know what to say, Jeff. This has got to be the most generous thing anybody has ever done for me. How can I ever thank you?
You know how you can thank me? Someday you do it for a rookie, he says.
We go to lunch and have a great talk about pitching in the big leagues and he won’t let me pay there, either. His unsolicited kindness just blows me away. The grouchy pitcher kicks my shoes, then Jeff Brantley buys me shoes, and a whole lot more. It’s a 180-degree turnabout in four days, and I’ll take it.
