by Wayne Coffey
The series wraps up on Sunday. Gord never calls. The Cardinals take their third in a row. My weekend in St. Louis consists of a lot of quality room service … and three days of crushed hopes. What a colossal waste. I never get inside Busch Stadium. I miss a start for the Sounds. I pack up and head back to Nashville.
The three-hundred-mile drive home is long and lonely. Just keep doing what you are doing. Keep making good starts. That’s the only thing you can control, I tell myself.
But would that be enough? What if I keep it up and nobody notices or cares? Then what? I’ve been sent back to the minors four times now. Whenever this happens—I don’t care who you are—you fear disappearing forever. You fear that once you are out of sight, you will be completely out of mind. I’ve seen it happen so often. People think that big-league ballplayers are at an entirely different level from Triple-A players. Some of them are, but the truth is that in many cases the line of demarcation is no bigger than the splinter of a bat. Joe Dillon is a Sounds teammate, a corner infielder with big muscles and a lunch-pail work ethic. Joe is a positive guy, a team-first fellow to the core. He hits .317 with 20 home runs and 75 RBIs in two-thirds of a season in 2007, following up other Triple-A years in which he hit .360 with 34 homers and .329 with 39 homers and 117 RBIs.
Joe Dillon’s big-league career consisted of 246 big-league at-bats with three different clubs—or about 200 more at-bats than Chris Barnwell got, even though Chris had a tremendous glove and could play anywhere and would do all the little things it takes to win games. Chris and Joe got typecast as journeymen who were good but not good enough. The label stuck.
All it did was cost them big-league careers, which I don’t doubt either one of them would’ve had.
I have a journeyman label of my own, and I hate it. I finish the year 13–6 and am voted the Pacific Coast League pitcher of the year, and still, the Brewers do not call me up to join the big club in September.
What more do they want me to do? How else can I prove my worth to them, beyond winning ten of my last eleven and being named the best pitcher in the league?
The Brewers say that they don’t have a roster spot for me but tell me to stay ready in case they need me for the pennant race in September. They are fighting for a divisional title and I am their top minor-league pitcher and they don’t want me. You try not to take it personally, but how can you not?
Is it age discrimination? Knuckleball discrimination? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s fair. I am sick about it.
So I stay home in Nashville but, for a switch, I let myself have my lousy feelings. All of them. Anne is one of the first to see the difference. She tells me about an upcoming dinner party, one that I am not at all keen on attending. Here’s how I would’ve reacted, pre–Stephen James:
I’m sick and tired of you roping me into these stupid outings with your friends when you know darn well I don’t want any part of going and having all these people I don’t know asking me a million questions about my baseball career. When are you going to stop trying to run my life?
Then I exit, slamming the door after me.
Here’s how I react this time:
I’m having a lot of anger about not being called up. It’s not about you, it’s about me. I don’t want to take it out on you, so forgive me if I’m short- or ill-tempered. I just really don’t feel like going to this party. I know it means a lot to you and that you just want to have fun. I’m just not into it.
“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates said. I’m not that much into ancient Greek philosophy, but I do know I’m a heck of a lot better human being for my ongoing self-examination. I’m baby stepping, but I am getting places.
Every day of my life, I repeat the mantra I’ve picked up from my work with Stephen: Don’t repress your feelings. Be honest with your feelings. If you are present with them now, they aren’t going to come back later in much more pernicious form.
It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I’ve spent years locking sadness and anger away, toughing it out alone, taking flight from fear and frustration and everything. I never wanted to look inside me because I was afraid of what I’d find. Then, inevitably, the pent-up emotions come up in an unhealthy and inappropriate way, like being impatient with the kids or verbally brutalizing Anne.
I don’t want to be that person anymore. I don’t want to hurt the people who I love the most anymore.
And I don’t want to take flight anymore. I want to start taking risks, letting people know how I feel.
Being authentic.
I’ve learned that when I hide or brood and play the role of victim, the first victim is always me.
The Brewers finish in second place, behind the Cardinals. I tell Anne: As angry as I am about not getting back to the big leagues this year—as much as I don’t think it’s fair—I am not going to let somebody else define who I am as a pitcher or what I’m capable of as a pitcher. I didn’t let it define me when I found out I had no ulnar collateral ligament. I didn’t let it define me when I gave up the six home runs.
Why start now?
After a short break, I go right back to Uncle Ricky’s gym wall and, for added convenience, to the walls at Lipscomb University, near our home in Nashville. I get my five-gallon pail and fill it up with baseballs and throw knuckleballs by the thousands, from my meticulously manicured nails into a long white wall of cement. I am a thirty-three-year-old free agent and I know more than ever that God has a plan for me. I am not worried about being an underdog. I love Rocky and Rudy and The Rookie and every overcoming-the-odds movie ever made.
Wouldn’t it be nice to join that club?
It doesn’t take long to get over the Brewers’ snub. Day after day I throw my knuckleballs, full of faith that something will open up; full of optimism that my success with the Nashville Sounds was not a fluke; full of conviction that my misadventure in the Missouri River has changed the narrative of my life.
I entered the Missouri with a 3–4 record and a 5.87 ERA. I came out of it with a 10–2 record and a 2.42 ERA. The Missouri may not be holy water and people may not go there to be baptized and seek absolution of their sins, but nobody can tell me that God didn’t use it to humble me and help me and recharge my faith and reset my focus. I jumped in to prove my worth and failed spectacularly, but wound up with one of the greatest gifts of my life. What a deal. What a day—the day God’s grace showed me how to stop clinging . . . and start living.
BEFORE I CAN get any clarity on where I’ll be playing ball in 2008, I need to get more clarity about myself. I need it in the worst way. I have been holding back from Stephen James. I am hanging on, desperately, to my last secret, the most painful boxed-away item of all. We are out in the country at the Bartholomews’ family farm, a half hour outside of Nashville, sitting in the living room of a rustic farmhouse, rich with wooden beams and plank floors and the comforting smell of God’s earth.
We came here for an intensive day of therapy—to get to the bottom of the story. But I’m still unsure if I’m ready to tell all. It’s a brisk autumn day, and the house is quiet and warm and safe. We set up in the living room. Baseball and my future are the furthest thing from my mind.
I look into Stephen’s eyes, and think: Do I tell him? Am I ready to tell him? Is he ready to hear it? What if what I need to say is as repulsive to him as it is to me? What if he decides he’s finally had it with me and all my crap and just bolts out the door and runs back to Nashville? What if he hates my story as much as I do?
That could happen, couldn’t it?
I am terribly afraid. I thought I was beyond this point. Stephen knows everything else about me, knows every failing and sinful thought and act and source of shame. If your secret is safe with anyone in this world, it is Stephen James.
I am quivering and sweating, much worse than I did at that first Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting all those years ago. Finally, I begin to talk.
Stephen, I need to share something with you. I have
n’t been completely forthright with you. I am so afraid to tell you this, but I know that I need to.
Remember the babysitter and the sexual-abuse stuff?
Of course I do, he says.
The babysitter was not the only one.
I didn’t think so. I’m glad you want to talk about it, Stephen says.
And so I begin. I tell him about the tennis ball and the garage and the teenage creep who forced himself on me and violated me, with power and with hate. I give him all the hideous details, moment by moment, feeling by feeling, violation by violation. Deeper and deeper into the story we go.
I tell him that even though the babysitter’s abuse was repeated, this secret felt darker, more shameful, more damaging.
You sound angry. Hateful, Stephen says.
Yes, I’m angry.
With whom? The guy who abused you?
Yes.
Who else?
God. I am furious at God. I hate Him too.
What are you angry with God about? Stephen asks.
How could a loving God let this happen to me? How? Can you tell me that? I was only eight! Why didn’t He do something? Why? I am shouting, and starting to cry.
The wound is raw and new again. I want to run. I want to die, but I know no matter what I do and how fast I run, I cannot escape. This kind of shame and pain no one can out run. It hunts you like a wolf. It’s unrelenting. I have nothing left to do but walk into the pain, take it on.
Who else did you hate? Stephen asks.
I hated everything. Myself, my life. Everything. I start to weep, and I cannot stop. I weep so hard I can barely get air and can’t stop shaking. I weep more than I have in the last twenty years combined—no lie.
Stephen does the best thing he can do for me:
He lets me grieve.
He reminds me that I’m not alone.
You know, R.A., your God might just be big enough, loving enough, to take your hate, Stephen says. He pauses. That’s yours to risk. That’s faith: stepping past what you know, the shame and hurt, and into the mystery that love might be there for you. You are giving yourself and your children the greatest gift you could ever give them, because letting yourself face your story and feel all the pain you’ve run from is the only way you are going to be the free man you want to be, with the life you want to live.
After three of the most wrenching and wonderful hours of my life, we drive back to Nashville, the waning sunlight shining on the russet-colored hills. The seasons are changing. I am changing. The last secret is out.
MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2011
SAN DIEGO
I walk back to the hotel after our 5–4 victory over the Padres tonight, a game that followed a yearlong pattern in which I pitch pretty well but not well enough to get the victory. I also continue my propensity to give up late home runs, in this case a two-run job to Will Venable in the seventh inning. I have eight starts left and my record is 5–11, my ERA 3.77. I aim to improve both before the year’s out.
My story line is hardly the point tonight, though. Jason Isringhausen picks up his 300th career save and I am so thankful to be a part of it in a small way. For weeks I’ve been telling him that I would get the win the night he got his landmark save, because the old guys have to stick together. He went ahead and did it without me, and that leaves me with a feeling that’s just a little bittersweet.
A part of me expects to come in tomorrow and see Izzy’s locker empty. He has been grinding through injuries for a while—“a while” is baseballese for years and years—and has continually joked that when he gets 300 saves, he’s out. However, the game holds a strange power over him, as it does for all of us. We think we can use it to an end of some sort and then walk away in peace. Baseball laughs at that notion, because it knows how hard it is to walk away from something you do well—knows how much we need the game, the lessons it teaches, the relationships it uncovers, and the truth it tells. Baseball also needs us, in a way, to pour into its history and its pedigree and to help create its lore, whether the names behind it are Ruth or Mays or Mantle or Koufax or … Isringhausen. Izzy would wince if he knew I was putting him in that sentence, but his legacy is special in its own right, for it’s a legacy of enduring pursuit of consistent contribution through a labyrinth of adversity. It has been fun to be his teammate and watch him interact with a game, watch him playfully dog all of us and wait for us to dog him back. When I walk to Petco Park tomorrow, I hope I’ll see Izzy in his familiar place on the training table, getting his big, old, falling-apart body worked on, headphones on, iPad in hand. Either way, I know the game is better off having had him, and he is better off having had the game. And that is exactly the way it should be.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RULE FIVE SURPRISE
Three hundred thousand dollars is a great salary. It’s more than I’ve made in my previous five years combined, and almost a quarter of a million dollars more than I made as a Nashville Sound in 2007.
It might even be enough to stop me from getting on Anne’s case if she buys another set of urns.
I’ve never been one to chase the almighty dollar, but with three kids and no guarantees I’ll ever see the big leagues again, how can this salary not be seductive? So when I get a call from a man named Sebastian (John) Esposito in October 2007, I find myself in a muddle as wide as the Missouri.
John is a liaison to the Korean baseball league, a guy who assists Korean teams in finding American ballplayers who can help them win. He tells me that the Samsung Lions, based in Daegu, have made a $300K offer to me, and that another club, the Daejeon-based Hanwha Eagles, are also interested. I know nothing about Korean baseball, other than that it’s on the upswing. I know nothing about either team except that I had a Samsung DVD player once and it worked well.
What I do know is that I’ve just had my best minor-league season. When will my leverage ever be better?
A few years earlier I wouldn’t have even considered the idea of playing in the Far East. But I am a different man, a more open man, a man who has been humbled by his mistakes and strengthened by his willingness to stand up and tell the truth. I have a rekindled relationship with a merciful God, and more love and appreciation for my wife than ever.
Anne and I talk it over. Baseball, and her husband, have dragged her all over the place. I want her input. I value her input.
What do you think about spending five months of the year in Korea? I ask. It means packing up the kids again and making the biggest transition we’ve ever had to make as a family. Most of it will fall on you, the way it always does.
Anne grew up traveling and grew up with three brothers. She is adventurous and tough.
I’m open to it if you think it’s the best career move, she says. I’m sure the kids will adjust. It will probably be good for them, being exposed to a whole different culture.
I begin to grow excited about the opportunity to make some real money. I am leaning strongly to go to Daegu. I call Bo McKinnis, who isn’t just my friend and agent but somebody with a great gift for taking emotions out of decisions and carefully assessing the pros and cons. It’s not commonplace for players to have as close a relationship as Bo and I have. I tell him about the offer.
I think I want to take it, Bo.
There is a long silence on the other end of the line.
I don’t think that is a good idea. You are coming off a great year. I anticipate you having some good interest here.
I know, Bo, but there aren’t any guarantees over here. I was the PCL pitcher of the year and didn’t even get a call-up. If that wasn’t good enough, what is?
I realize that, but you have something very unique, and you are starting to figure it out. Korea, Taiwan, even Japan—those are places pitchers go to die. You need to realize if you take this money now and go play for the Samsung Lions or the Hanwha Eagles, the chances of you ever coming back here and playing in the big leagues are about zero.
I’ll support you in whatever you decide is best, but I want
you to think through all the ramifications.
Bo makes a good point: there will probably be no making it back to the majors. But I am not thinking about the future anymore. I’ll be in my mid-thirties by next season. I am thinking about making as much money as I can make. And $300K this year—and probably another $300K next year if I do well and they re-up me—is probably not going to happen in the western hemisphere.
How can I turn my back on a possible $600K in Korea when I’m a $60,000 pitcher at home?
Bo and I decide to give it a day and talk again, but the meter is running; Esposito is asking that I give him an answer in forty-eight hours. Anne and I pray for God’s will as we sort out the pros and cons. I am 80 percent sure I am heading for Daegu. I wonder if Rosetta Stone has a program in Korean. A day passes with no news. My cell phone vibrates and I see that it’s Bo. I quickly pick up. I think about saying hello in Korean (An-nyeong-ha-se-yo) but I’m not sure Bo will appreciate my joke.
I’ve got some news for you. The Minnesota Twins, the Seattle Mariners, and the New York Mets are all interested in you. I don’t have the particulars of their offers yet, but I will soon.
That’s good news—very good, but I’m still praying on it, Bo. I have to give the Korean team my answer today, and I’ll be honest: the guaranteed $300,000 is a nice financial blessing to have in a time when I need a nice financial blessing.
This is not what Bo wants to hear.
R.A., please trust me on this. You have gotten better every year with the knuckleball. There is real interest in you. Korea will be there whenever you want, but if you take it now, you will regret it. You are this close to busting through and making it. I’d hate to see you do something that you’ll regret.
We hang up and I know decision time is at hand. I don’t want to string Esposito along. The word “regret” keeps playing in my mind on an endless loop:
