by Wayne Coffey
I’d throw it again and again, waiting for the gun reading to change or for someone to tell me the gun was busted and it was all a big mistake. The reading never budges. The gun isn’t the problem. I try to rationalize the predicament any way I can. I’d hurt my arm at the end of 2004; maybe it’s just taking longer than usual to get my strength back. Maybe I’d fallen into some bad mechanical habits that Orel and Goose and I can sort out. Lots of pitchers go through little dead-arm periods.
Don’t they?
It could be a lot of different things, I keep telling myself.
I want to run from the truth. I want to escape, the same way I did when I slept in empty houses. But in my heart I know what is going on. Know I am feeling good and throwing freely, and throwing slop.
I know my arm is spent.
As we break camp and the season starts, my fastball remains AWOL. Bleakness sweeps over me. Anne and I now have two little girls and I have no backup plan if the Rangers let me go. No family business. No standing job offer. Nothing. Worse still, I have lost all belief in my ability to get big-league hitters out. Every time Buck calls for me, I feel as if I’m showing up for battle without a single weapon, using a peashooter against guys carrying bazookas.
Baseball isn’t fun anymore, I think. I feel overmatched. I don’t even want to come to the ballpark. I imagine a future making widgets on an assembly line.
So I look at Buck and Orel and Goose from the sofa, and I tell them:
I’ll do it. I’ll go to Oklahoma City. I’ll become a full-time knuckleball pitcher and I promise you I’ll give it everything I’ve got.
I stand up and shake hands with all three of them, a life-changing, seven-minute meeting complete. I feel as if a weight has been lifted, as if they’re throwing a lifeline to me. Lightness doesn’t come easily to me, but I walk out of there feeling almost buoyant, reminded of a quote from Romans 5:3–4 in the New Testament: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope …”
Hope is good. Long-term hope is even better. Packing up for my trip to Surprise, Arizona, the Rangers’ winter home, to rehab my shoulder, I pause to Google every knuckleballer I can think of. I’m not looking for tips. I am looking to find out how many games they won after turning thirty years old. A few clicks yield the astounding truth:
Phil Niekro won 287 games after the age of thirty. Charlie Hough won 182. Phil’s brother, Joe, won 163. Tom Candiotti won 122 and Wilbur Wood 105. Tim Wakefield has 156 and he is still going.
Add them all up, and the best knuckleballers of the last three or so decades have won over one thousand games in their thirties and beyond. Phil and Charlie weren’t far from pitching with AARP cards in their pockets. It is one of the best perks about life in the knuckle world: because you don’t throw it hard and you do no twisting or contorting, the knuckleball puts almost no strain on your arm. It enables you to not only eat innings but inhale them.
The same week that Buck and Orel and Goose sit down with me to redirect my future, Tim Wakefield dominates the Yankees twice in five days. Not that I need any more convincing, but it’s good to know. I leave behind my career as a conventional pitcher with the paltry fifteen victories and the farcical 5.48 ERA, the precise reasons why the knuckleball is my only option.
I tell myself:
Who cares about throwing 90 miles per hour? I’m tired of being average, or worse. Tired of being lost, hiding on the margins of life and the Texas Rangers’ roster.
Tired of pretending that I am something that I am not. I have no idea how this experiment is going to go, but I can’t wait to find out.
TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2011 CITI FIELD
Tonight I am pitching against the world-champion Giants. I am eager to get my season on a better track after a 1–3 start. This turns out to be unlike any night of pitching I’ve ever had.
Anne and the kids have just arrived from Tennessee. We are settling into our rented house in Manhasset, a Long Island community about a half hour east of Citi Field, doing it on about two hours of sleep, because our six-week-old baby, Van, isn’t much interested in sleeping. Our oldest daughter, nine-year-old Gabriel, quickly makes friends with our neighbors, and in the late morning she is playing on one of those zip lines—where you hang on to a wheel as it slides along a clothesline-type wire—in their backyard. Gabriel is in mid-slide when she loses her grip. She falls hard. She braces herself with her right arm … and winds up fracturing it in two places.
I quickly put in a call to our trainer, Ray Ramirez, who recommends a hand specialist in Huntington, about twenty miles farther out on Long Island. Anne and the baby and Gabriel and I get in two separate cars and drive to the doctor’s office. It’s about 3:30 p.m.—about the time I usually get to the ballpark. The doctor sets Gabriel’s arm and she is in fierce pain and very scared, and crying a lot. I hold her hand, wipe her tears, and try to comfort her. She gets a cast that goes all the way up her arm, wrapped in Mets colors.
“Daddy, I know you have to be at the field. I am keeping you from practice,” Gabriel says to me. “You should go and get ready to pitch.”
“You are way more important than the field,” I tell her.
By the time we’re done at the doctor, it’s past 5 p.m. I walk Anne and Gabriel and baby Van out to the car. I kiss them good-bye. Gabriel is still in tears. As I drive to the ballpark, I am sad for Gabriel, sad I have to leave, but I also feel a strange sense of peace and God’s mercy. I am ridiculously late for the game, but I am not frantic. Even when I get stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway, I am not frantic. I am grateful that I got to show—not just tell—my daughter how important she is to me. I got to show her how much I love her. I take my job very seriously, but when it comes down to it, being on time for a start or being there for my daughter when she has her first traumatic injury … well, it’s not a tough call.
I get to the park about 6:10, an hour before game time. Nobody but Ray Ramirez knows what has gone on at this point. My routine is compressed, but I get into it, and get mentally ready to pitch. I set down six Giants in a row in the first two innings. I am off to a great start. I come off the mound thinking about how much I want to win the game for Gabriel. I fantasize about giving her the game ball, leaving it next to her bed when I get home. It is so sweet to think about it.
Alas, and ouch, the game doesn’t unfold that way. The Giants knock me around for four hits and four runs in the third inning and I am gone after six innings. I wind up with a no-decision and we lose, 7–6. It is not remotely the ending I want, and I am certainly not happy about it, but as I drive back home, the sting is not so sharp as it usually is after a defeat. I am filled with thanks that I had been able to be there for my daughter. Earlier in my career, I am sure I would’ve just gone to the ballpark and let Anne handle it. I would’ve been completely consumed with my start. This is a big switch for me. It doesn’t mean I care less about doing well as a big-league pitcher. It just means that I am able to have my priorities straight and be there for my daughter. When I walked in the door of our house after the game, I realized that this day was a special sort of gift from God—a day that centered much more on the importance of being a father than being a pitcher. It was a day when I was able to tell my daughter, “I’m going to be there for you, because you are more important than anything,” and know that it wasn’t a lie.
It was a day when I showed up. It was a day when I took a big step to break the dysfunctional cycle of my own experience as a kid. This is how families become healthier, how lives can change and children can be nourished. Moments such as this.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
REDHAWK REDUX
It’s hard to throw the ball slow. It doesn’t take long in my latest stint as an Oklahoma City RedHawk to learn that. After throwing thousands of pitches at 90 miles per hour or faster in my life, I am now floating some of them up there in the low sixties. It’s as if I’ve traded in a sports car for a tricycle.
My arm and my psyche are not wired for this. I have nobody coaching me, nobody holding my hand. On my own again, except now I yearn for help and it’s not there. My pitching coach, Lee Tunnell, is as nice a man as you could ever meet. He’ll talk pitching with me all day and half the night and would give me his own arm to help me if he could.
But he’s like most everybody else in baseball: he doesn’t know anything about the knuckleball.
I do some on-the-fly research. I go up and down the bench and ask the hitters: Have you ever faced a knuckleball pitcher? What was hard about it? What was easy about it? I start with Adrian Gonzalez, a kid first baseman and future superstar.
I hate hitting against knuckleball pitchers, he says. It messes up your balance, timing, everything.
Next up is Ian Kinsler, another star in waiting.
It’s no fun because every knuckleball is different, he says.
I am heartened by the responses, because everyone who had ever faced a knuckleball thought they were a pain in the butt to hit.
I can do this, I tell myself. I can make this pitch work for me. I do a quick checkup of my new reality:
I am a knuckleball pitcher. I am committed to being a knuckleball pitcher. This is my last chance. I don’t want to screw up my last chance.
My first start as a full-time knuckleballer is against the Iowa Cubs in Bricktown, the home ballpark of the RedHawks. This is my sixth year in Oklahoma City. I know the names of the vendors and the cleanup crew, am good friends with the cops, and have logged more miles up and down Mickey Mantle Drive, the main road outside the park, than any other RedHawk. I own more official team records, too, none of which I am in a rush to add to, because I don’t want to be here very long.
An hour before first pitch, I duck into a little room wedged between the players’ lounge and the kitchen.
I fall to my knees.
I clasp my hands.
I begin to pray. I don’t pray for a no-hitter or a shutout, or for the best knuckleball since Phil Niekro no-hit the Padres in 1973. That would be tantamount to me playing God, choosing the outcome I want and asking God to rubber-stamp it.
I just pray with what I am feeling.
Please give me the strength and courage to stay the course and do my best, and to trust in Your will for me, no matter what the outcome.
The night turns out to be an excellent test of my trust, because I am horrible. The game resembles one long BP session for the Iowa Cubs. Line drives rain all around me. Our outfielders look as if they are in the Olympic trials, running wind sprints to the wall in pursuit of my swatted knuckleballs. I am behind hitters all night, can’t throw a strike when I need it. Just before the Cubs’ run total hits double figures, I pause on the mound in the midst of the carnage.
I rub up the ball. I look off to the horizon. I feel wretched. So wretched, I think I might vomit right there on the mound—the same disgust I felt in the Olympic bullpen when we were getting clubbed by Japan in 1996. I am not just embarrassed. I feel naked, exposed, a retread getting strafed without mercy. I knew there would be a learning curve, but did I ever expect this?
No, I did not.
A heated debate commences in my head, with my old pals, the voices:
VOICE ONE: You need to go back to pitching conventionally. This is a disaster. You know it. The Cubs know it. Everybody in the park knows it.
VOICE TWO: You need to stick with the knuckleball. How can you even think about quitting on it so soon? What happened to being strong and staying the course? You need to stay with it.
VOICE ONE: You want to give up twenty runs? You want to be a complete laughingstock? This isn’t working. Can’t you see that? Go conventional.
VOICE TWO: You prayed for courage and I’m giving it to you. You have to think long-term, not about one outing. Stay with the knuckleball.
When my manager, Bobby Jones, finally comes and gets me in the sixth inning, my final pitching line is five and two-thirds innings, fourteen hits, twelve earned runs, five walks, no strikeouts. I depart to a hearty chorus of boos, all of them richly deserved. When Bobby gets back to the dugout, he finds me on the bench.
You are getting the ball again in five days, he says.
Okay, thanks. I’ll be ready. After a fierce battle, Voice Two wins.
I am staying with the knuckleball.
I go out to the movies after the game to forget what happened. Fat chance. I eat popcorn in the dark by myself—I don’t even remember the movie—and tell myself again that I have to give everything I have to embrace this experiment. I am still not being honest with myself, or Anne, or anyone, really. I am still trying to hide from all of my shame. But I am not a kid. I am completely honest with myself about one thing:
I am fighting for my professional baseball life. I need to turn the page, and turn it fast. I need to learn what I can from this disaster and make dang sure I am better next time. This is what athletes do: process information and use it to get better.
I still have no knuckleball coach and no clue, but I do get better. The next start, I give up six hits and four runs. I wind up winning seven of my last eight decisions. I am not very good, but I am a lot better than I was against the Iowa Cubs. The Rangers call me up to rejoin them in September. Buck tells me I am going to start against the Orioles. It is a hot Tuesday night.
I am petrified.
I am about to face major-league hitters for the first time throwing 60 or 70 miles per hour. I am thinking about survival, nothing more. I scan through the Orioles roster and look at their most dangerous hitters, guys like Miguel Tejada and Jay Gibbons. I go into the film room with Orel and study a video of Tim Wakefield pitching against the Orioles. I say a prayer, but I don’t know what to expect.
The Orioles’ leadoff hitter, Bernie Castro, hits a line-drive single to start the first. Melvin Mora, the number two hitter, follows with another lined single.
Two batters. Two hits.
Too much stress.
Then I walk Tejada. The game is three minutes old and I am in a bases-loaded, none-out jam.
Is this going to be the Iowa Cubs all over again? Can I handle it if it is?
Jay Gibbons steps up. All I can do is battle. That’s it. I fall behind two and one, but I don’t give in and get Gibbons to ground into a double play. I wind up giving up two runs, which is a lot better than where I thought the inning was going.
I settle down well enough to pitch seven innings of five-hit ball, giving up three runs. At this stage of my knuckleballing career, I will sign up for that every time. I am the most relieved man in Texas as I depart the mound.
Great job. Way to battle, Orel says. He waits a day or two to give me a more thorough review.
We want you to approach this more like Tim Wakefield, he says. We want you to throw more knuckleballs, and throw them slower.
About 65 percent of my pitches against the Orioles were knuckleballs. Orel wants that number at 80 percent or higher.
Your future is with the knuckleball. You’ve got to throw it more, he says.
The Rangers organization has been good to me. Orel has been good to me. I want to please them, so I do as they ask, even though I feel lost. I have no real feel or command for the pitch I’m throwing. I can’t rely on my sinker or changeup if I get in a jam, because they want me to be Tim. I am going to do my best.
I go against the Mariners in my second start. I am committed to following Orel’s instructions, throwing many more knuckleballs. I am full of fear. I try not to be, but my head isn’t budging. I am in a throw-the-ball-and-hope-for-the-best place. I hate that place. I have always been a fighter. I take pride in being a fighter. From the time scouts started looking at me when I was in high school, I always got high marks for being a competitor who would go at the opposition with all I had, even if it wasn’t much. I could grind out victories even when I didn’t have my best stuff.
Now?
Now I am ashamed because I’m standing on the mound thinking that I am not good enough.
&nb
sp; I try to convince myself that I am the same guy I was at Tennessee—the exact conversation I had with myself when I reported to the Rangers’ minor-league camp after I signed and met Reid Nichols.
Remember the pitcher who threw 183 pitches to get the team into the College World Series and who threatened to fight the coach when he tried to take him out? That is who you are still, I tell myself.
I am having a hard time believing that. Because I feel like a pale imitation of that guy.
Somehow I get the victory against the Mariners, even though I give up six hits and six runs in five-plus innings. I struggle through the rest of the year. I have little idea of where the ball is going. I put up very shaky numbers. It all seems very precarious—until I meet the man who will change my knuckleballing life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO CHARLIE
An old knuckleball pitcher named Charlie Hough is standing at my locker in the visitors’ clubhouse in Anaheim, and truth be told, you wouldn’t take him for a former ballplayer. He has the leathery look of a character from an old Western, a guy who has smoked too many cigarettes and used too little sunblock. He looks as if he’d spent most of his life squinting and the rest of it in a saloon. His shoulders are sloped, his hands weathered, his crow’s-feet all but carved into the corners of his eyes. I’d heard the stories about his bullpen sessions; how he’d drag on a cigarette, put it down at the end of the rubber, and throw a pitch. Then he’d pick the butt up and take another puff, and keep the pitch/puff routine up until his work was done or his pack was empty.
That would be funny to watch, I think.
No, Charlie Hough isn’t going to turn up on the cover of Men’s Journal or put George Clooney out of work, but then, a leading man is not what I am after. Expertise is what I am after, and Charlie Hough has that in abundance. He pitched twenty-five seasons in the big leagues and won 162 games after the age of thirty-four. He’d been an all-star, a workhorse, an indefatigable pitching force who once threw 285 innings and became an eighteen-game winner for the Rangers.
