by Wayne Coffey
I don’t know why—or maybe I do—but as I look out the window again at this moment on June 9, 2007, I decide.
It is time.
It is finally time.
The window I’m looking out of is in the Ameristar Casino Hotel in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It is about as nice a hotel as you will ever stay at in minor-league baseball, spacious and well-appointed and even equipped with a gift shop. You know you are in the big time when you’ve got a hotel gift shop. Even though I dislike everything about casinos, from the recycled oxygen, to the sad sound track of the slots and the craps tables, to the desperate-looking people who don’t know when to stop, I actually like staying in the Ameristar, mostly because it has a good bakery, with killer chocolate cake. I make the rounds on the casino floor, trying not to gag on the cigarette smoke and the stale smell of alcohol, and playing the role of elder statesman, making sure my younger teammates are not being foolhardy with their twenty-dollar per diem. I always root for my guys to win, and not just because I’m a good teammate: when somebody hits the jackpot, it often means a big upgrade on the postgame spread, maybe barbecue and cornbread instead of the Sam’s Club chicken and Van Camp’s baked beans that have been on simmer since the second inning. Call me an altruist in progress.
When you take the elevator to your room in the Ameristar, you get an unimpeded view of the Missouri River. It is big and brown, probably 250 yards across, swift of current and sludgy of texture. The first time I saw the Missouri from this elevator was in 2002 as an Oklahoma City RedHawk coming into town to play the Omaha Royals. Now I am a member of the Nashville Sounds, still in town to play the Royals. The uniform changes, but not the fixation with the Missouri.
The absolute first thought I had when I saw the mighty Missouri? Boy, would it be cool to swim across that. The second thought I had was: One day I’m going to do it. One day I’m going to swim across this river.
I’m not sure why the Missouri has this pull on me, but it calls to me every time I stay in the Ameristar, almost taunting me to take it on. Washington crossing the Delaware, Joshua crossing the Jordan, Perseus crossing the river Styx—I think of all these epic feats as I look at the river. I am no general and I’m certainly no figure from Greek mythology. I’m a knuckleballer in desperate straits, a bad outing or two away from being finished with professional baseball. I’m a husband and father who feels terribly inadequate, a damaged person who is trying to convince the world—and myself—that I’m fine.
Maybe if I can get across the Missouri it will say something about me and my courage.
Maybe it will prove my worth somehow—be a metaphorical baptism, a renewal, a chance to start fresh.
Maybe if I somehow get across, swim like a madman through the turbidity, God will help me close the prodigious gap between the man I am and the man I want to be.
Or maybe I’m just a reckless fool, the way I was when I once jumped eighty feet off Foster Falls, near Sequatchie, Tennessee, or went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean during a hurricane. You could say—and some have—that I have a death wish. Not sure. I believe it’s more accurate to say I have a risk wish, somehow clinging to the notion that achieving these audacious feats will somehow make me worthy, make me special, as if I’d taken some magical, esteem-enhancing drug.
The reasoning of a child? I can’t really argue with you there.
In the elevator, I float my plan by Chris Barnwell, my roommate.
Are you out of your mind? Chris says. Do you know how big that river is and how strong the currents are? That is one of the most idiotic ideas I have ever heard. It’s completely idiotic. You can’t do this. You can’t.
Chris, of course, is 100 percent right. I must’ve been wild-eyed enough that Chris knew he wasn’t getting through. So he calls Anne to let her know what is going on with his badly deluded teammate and see if she can drive sense into me.
He’s a grown man. He knows his limitations, Anne tells him. Thank you for calling, but I know R.A. wouldn’t do anything that he wasn’t sure he could handle.
Anne is, in some ways, a traditional southern woman, a woman who will stand by her man, and looking back I think her response to Chris’s call was almost autonomic. One of the things I love most about my wife is that she respects me as a man even though I’m still a boy in so many ways.
Word about my impending swim spreads through the team like a rash. Outfielder Laynce Nix, one of my best friends on the team, asks me if I’m serious and I assure him that I am. He emphatically joins Chris in the incredulity chorus.
Get off it, man. That’s a crazy, stupid idea, he says.
Other teammates aren’t so worried. They’re more interested in doing some wagering on my proposed feat, because if there’s anything ballplayers love more than a spectacle, it’s action. Some people pick me to make it, others don’t. I quietly do some half-baked reconnaissance, asking the bellhop and the front desk people if the river is okay to swim in.
Oh, God, no, you don’t want to swim in the Missouri. It’s dirty and the currents are strong, a half-alarmed, half-amused bellhop says.
If I had any common sense, this would give me pause. But I have no sense. My idea of precaution is buying a pair of flip-flops in the gift shop so my feet don’t get cut up on the rocky, steeply sloping banks.
At eleven-thirty in the morning the next day, I get into the elevator and stare at the Missouri the whole ride down. I follow the course of a big log as it flows along and note how fast it is moving. In a room adjacent to the lobby, people are finishing up their continental breakfasts. I pass on the powdered donuts, and get down on the floor and start stretching my back, my hamstrings, my shoulders. Chris is by my side. He’s given up trying to talk me out of it. Now he’s my cornerman, pumping me up and trying to make sure I’ve got everything I need.
Warmed and stretched out, donut-less, I head out to the river. I’m wearing white shorts and a tank top and have the flip-flops taped to my feet, and a gaggle of teammates, probably fifteen, is traipsing along behind me. I’ve studied the river and have a good plan in place. (I actually believe this.) I am going to start upstream about a hundred yards or so. This way, when I get across, I should be directly opposite the hotel, ready to wave triumphantly to my adoring fans. There are small orange buoys bobbing in the middle of the river, about a hundred yards from shore. The current is much more placid near the banks. My plan is to swim furiously to the buoys, then throttle it back for the second half, when I’ll be more tired. I’m a strong swimmer. I used to swim the two-hundred-meter freestyle for the Seven Hills Swim and Tennis Club swim team.
I have no doubt that I can do this.
We walk around the back of the hotel. Inside the casino it’s not even lunchtime, and people are already busy gambling their day away. It doesn’t occur to me that I am walking down to the river to do my own gambling. I climb over a chain-link fence and snake through a few backyards. I descend the rocky bank to the water’s edge and peel off my tank top and shorts. I stand alone at the river’s edge in all my glory—a thirty-two-year-old minor-league pitcher, husband, and father of three, in his boxer briefs and taped-on flip-flops. Most of my teammates are on the bank, some of them hooting; the guys who aren’t there are up in the hotel, faces pressed against the windows. Laynce has the video camera, recording it all for posterity. My own lens shifts to the water, which, up close, doesn’t just look brown but almost inky, with the viscosity of motor oil.
It also looks a lot wider and a lot faster than it does from the eighth floor of the Ameristar. For an instant I wish Anne had bailed me out by joining Chris Barnwell’s vigorous protests. I take a hard look at the river. I see a few branches go by in front of me and they are flying. I’m struck by how loud the rushing sound of the water is. It’s getting noisy in my head too. I say a silent prayer.
I can’t back out now. Well, I guess I can, but I am not going to, and who knows why? Ego? Pride? Mulish, juvenile stubbornness? Probably all of the above. Whatever. I’m not backing out. Something
else for Stephen James and me to talk about.
I take my first tentative steps into the water, up to my knees, just to get acclimated to the temperature. It’s tepid, with a cool edge to it. I don’t turn around, don’t wave, don’t say anything more to my teammates on the bank and in the windows. It’s game time. I push off hard and dive in. The adrenaline surge is so strong, it’s as if it’s rushing into me intravenously. My strokes are powerful as I cut through the first twenty or thirty yards or so.
It’s a long way but it’s not going to be all that hard, I’m thinking. Just keep wheeling those arms.
I keep wheeling, and wheeling. I start to feel the current intensify. I can feel it beating against the right side of my body. I concentrate on my cadence … one, two, three, breathe … one, two, three, breathe. I am moving along at a good clip, but it’s getting harder.
Sixty yards in, I have new respect for the river. I’m pretty sure I can get across, but I am not thinking this is going to be easy anymore. I dig harder.
Just keep going forward, I tell myself. Keep powering through the water and you’ll get there.
I can feel my strokes starting to lose power and efficiency. I’m not moving through the water the way I was even ten or twenty seconds earlier. With each weakening stroke, it becomes clearer that I have greatly underestimated the power of the rushing water.
As I approach the buoys and the midway point, I begin to feel an undertow tugging me downward. The current is stronger still. I am starting to get seriously fatigued. I pause and pick my head up for a second, treading water, and can’t believe where I am: a quarter mile downriver. The buoys in the middle are bobbing ahead of me, an orange tease. The other side seems hopelessly far away. A wave of panic overtakes me. It feels as real as the waves in the water.
You are in trouble. It’s too far to go. You need to turn around, I tell myself.
I put my head back down. I keep going.
I’m not quitting.
I swim as hard as I ever have in my life for the next two minutes. I am not in the Seven Hills pool anymore. If I get to the buoys, beyond the halfway point, I know I can get across. I also know I can’t last much longer. The undertow is getting stronger and the force of it begins to pull the flip-flops off my feet. I stop and wrestle with the things, trying to pull them off. All it does is waste some of my rapidly dwindling energy.
Meanwhile, the undertow is making it hard to keep my head above water. I am not brave or cocksure anymore. My fantasies about a heroic crossing are as spent as I am.
I do a quick athlete-systems check and assess my plight. My lactic acid is building up fast, my muscles shutting down at the same rate. Later I learn that Laynce Nix puts down the camcorder to say a quiet prayer, fearing he has seen the last of me.
I have one more push in me. But which direction should I go in?
Do I keep going forward, hoping it’s enough to get across? Or do I turn around and try to make it back to the bank I started from? Either way, I know there is a good chance I won’t be getting out of the Missouri River alive. I am positive of that. In a microsecond I feel a deep hopelessness, and brokenness, sweep over me, a man completely humbled by his vast limitations, flailing about in a polluted river, adrift and alone again, this time entirely because of his own flawed character.
I decide to swim back toward my teammates, who are now hundreds of yards upriver from me. I power out fifteen strokes and have to stop because I’m so exhausted. When I stop, the undertow pulls me down. I crank out another set of strokes, but don’t make it to fifteen this time before I lock up, the painful, wrenching cycle getting me not far enough, not fast enough.
From somewhere, I have no idea where, I get the idea to swim underwater. I think of Michael Phelps in the Olympic pool in Athens in 2004, the way he’d push off the wall and swim underwater as long as possible before surfacing. Maybe it’ll work for me, too, and get me there faster, because Lord knows the current at the top is as choppy as all get out.
I last for twenty seconds and come up for air. When I go back down for another swim, I open my eyes and can see absolutely nothing. It’s as if I am swimming in a black hole. I come back up and look toward the bank. I am about fifty or sixty yards away.
I can’t believe it’s still that far. I start to see gigantic spots everywhere. I am getting delirious.
I can’t swim anymore, my stroke reduced to a pathetic dog paddle. My muscles have completely shut down. My lungs are burning and my throat feels as if I’ve swallowed a thousand lit matches. I feel tears start welling behind my eyes. I am sinking. I accept that I am not going to get out of this river. I am underwater and I begin to cry. It’s a very odd sensation, weeping in water. I am filled with contrition. I know I’m not getting to the surface again.
It is time to say good-bye and to make amends.
Anne, I am so sorry that I am leaving you and the kids alone. I am so sorry about my stupidity and recklessness, that I’d allow an asinine attempt to prove something—I don’t even know what—to take me away. I am so, so sorry.
God, please forgive me. Forgive all my trespasses and all the ways I’ve fallen short. Please give me peace. Please, when You take me, make it not so painful.
It occurs to me that if I just open my mouth underwater, I can apologize to God in person.
I am sinking fast now, well below the surface. I am ready to die, and as I spend the final moments of my life engulfed in sorrow and regret, I feel solid ground beneath my flip-flops.
I have hit bottom. Literally. Normally the bottom isn’t good when you are drowning, but it does give me something to push off from. I haven’t felt any spurt of adrenaline for what seems like hours. Now, suddenly, I have one. I use it to coil my legs and push hard off the riverbed floor and power up, power up with strength I had no idea I still had, through probably eight feet of water.
I break through the surface, my head finally out of the river. I can’t remember when my last breath was. The air is delicious. I’m only the distance from home to first away now. I don’t really know how I got so close. I don’t care. I swim with utter fury, with my last bit of energy, I’m sure.
One more stroke. One more stroke, I keep telling myself.
I am completely done. I don’t have another stroke in me. I stroke again. I lift up my head and see Grant Balfour, a friend and teammate, lying on his stomach on a little platform jutting out into the river. Grant is from Brisbane, Australia, the guy who I have cut my hair to save a few bucks. “Give me the Brisbane,” I always say, and he gets out his scissors and has at it. He gives a pretty good haircut. He’s also good at scrambling over fences and navigating riverbanks, which is how he gets to the platform.
Grant is a reliever, and this is definitely a save situation.
He extends his right arm to me as far as it will stretch.
C’mon, R.A. You are almost there. Grab my hand, he says.
His hand is maybe eight feet away. I make a few more floundering strokes and reach out. I dog-paddle and flail. Five feet now. I keep looking at Grant’s hand. Grant’s hand is the most important thing in my world now. I am two feet away and I paddle a little more and reach and finally I feel Grant’s hand, feel it clasping mine, good and strong. He hauls me in toward the bank as if he were a tugboat. At river’s edge, he wraps his arm around me and guides me toward a small clearing, where I collapse and stay on the ground, sprawled on my back.
You okay? Grant asks.
I nod. I stay sprawled out for a few minutes. Eventually I clamber onto all fours. Grant helps me to my feet. I turn and look at the Missouri. I half expect to see a flying fish emerge, giving some biblical meaning to the ordeal I’ve just been through.
No fish emerges.
Finally I trudge up the bank toward the hotel, Grant guiding me the whole way. When we get to where the rest of the team is, they make sure I’m still breathing, and then the razzing begins about my oil-colored boxers, my bravado, my failed crossing.
Today’s score: Missouri
1, Dickey 0.
Hey, R.A., you do a heck of a dog paddle. You ever think about the Olympics?
If you were going to soil yourself, you should’ve worn a Depends.
They are ballplayers. I expect nothing less.
A few of my closer friends—Chris and Laynce—make sure I’m okay and quietly ask me questions and are quick to appreciate how close a call I’d just had. Back in the hotel, utterly exhausted, I throw out the boxers and tank top and take a scalding hot shower for about forty-five minutes, hoping to rinse off the contaminants before I sprout a third arm.
I lie on the bed and don’t have anything to say—not a common occurrence. I fall asleep for an hour. Chris makes sure I’m up so I get to the ballpark on time. We have a game against the Omaha Royals that night. I am not pitching, of course.
For the rest of the day and night, I reflect on my swim and thank God not just for sparing me but for teaching me. I began this crossing looking to be a hero, to use my strength and my will to forge some sort of epic transformation. I ended it as humbled as a man can be, nearly crushed in body and spirit on the banks of the mighty Missouri, left on all fours, in a posture where God could do His most significant work with me.
I jumped in the water thinking I was in charge. I found out He was in charge.
As I throw in the outfield before the game that night, swells of gratitude and humility keep washing over me. I don’t have a grand epiphany in Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium on June 9, 2007. It’s more subtle than that. God has already given me a second chance as a husband and father. He’s already given me a second chance as a pitcher. Now He has given me a second chance as a human being. When I was weeping underwater in the big brown currents of the longest river in North America, I was sure my time was over. God, it turned out, had other ideas, giving me a chance to see if a man who had spent a lifetime running away from the present could possibly find a way to embrace it.
