by Wayne Coffey
You’ve pitched well. You left it all out there, I tell myself. Don’t jump to conclusions.
I walk down the hallway to Gardy’s office. It feels like one of those horror movies where the hallway seems like it’s on a treadmill: you keep walking and you never get there.
I finally get there.
Have a seat, Gardy says.
I sit.
We all love the way you’ve thrown the ball this spring.
Oh, no.
Thanks, I say.
You’ve been solid or better than that in every appearance.
Not again.
I keep waiting for the “but.” But it never comes.
You’re on the team, R.A. Congratulations. Scott Baker is going to start the season on the DL, and we want you to start the fifth game of the year against the White Sox.
Thank you, Gardy. I do not jump up and down. I want to.
I stay behind in Fort Myers while the team flies to Minnesota, and pitch six innings in a minor-league game. Then I fly north to join the team. It’s April 5 and opening day is tomorrow. It will be my fourth time on an opening-day roster, but my first since 2006. I feel euphoric, but I also feel dizzy from the unending ebb and flow of my career: I’m up. I’m down. Up. Down. Up and down again. Now I am up again, and I say a prayer to thank God for being such a real presence in my life and for giving me the strength to persevere. God knows me, hears me, disciplines me, and gives me over to my wicked self only to bring me back in a way that our relationship becomes more rich and robust.
Dear God, I am so grateful for the chance to live in the present unhindered by a past that has once haunted me. I am scared, but I am excited about my start on Friday. Thank You for this opportunity.
I want to add a postscript. I want to ask God for stability, to give me whatever I need to stay in the big leagues for a while … to allow me to have the one thing I have never had: a sustained run of success, a chance to be a truly valued member of a big-league pitching staff. I think of Hemingway and the final line of The Sun Also Rises:
“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
I don’t pray for this. I don’t want to be greedy.
THE START goes well in Chicago. It’s thirty-nine degrees and the wind is gusting up to about twenty-five miles per hour, and it feels like I’m pitching in the Arctic Circle. But I get through five and get the victory over José Contreras, and the best part of it is that Anne and our daughters are in the stands (Eli is still too young to spend a night in the Arctic Circle). Anne is with me in this as never before, and even though our marriage is a work in progress and we have our issues to resolve, I am so grateful for her love and forgiveness, for knowing my secrets and shame and still loving me steadfastly. Gabriel and Lila look at me with such love in their eyes that I just keep praying to be a father worthy of this love. When I started the work with Stephen James, he told me something I’ve never forgotten.
If you aren’t willing to face your demons—if you can’t find the courage to take on your fear and hurt and anger—you might as well wrap them up with a bow and give them to your children. Because they will be carrying the same thing … unless you are willing to do the work.
So I do the work. Every day, I do the work, and I am beginning to see big payoffs. Rich payoffs. Since I joined the Twins I have become close to Kevin Slowey, a fellow pitcher and Christian. We talk openly about our lives. I savor his friendship and I trust him with my thoughts and feelings. This is so completely new for me, being able to trust and open up to another man. The work is working. I know there is a long way to go yet, but experiencing the benefits of it gives me fresh fuel to get there, and seeing my children’s faces is the greatest motivation of all. They didn’t ask for my baggage and I am doing all I can to make sure they don’t have to carry my baggage. They don’t deserve to feel like they are a burden or a nuisance. Too often in the past I would be short with them and act put-upon around them, particularly before I had a start. They deserve to get my best, to be nurtured and to have their feelings validated. The work I am doing is helping me get beyond myself in ways I never have before, and to be a better father, a more joyful father.
I am a very grateful man for that.
Thank you for the blessing of my wife and children, Lord.
SCOTT BAKER returns from the DL and I go to the pen, which was the plan all along. I am pitching creditably, and if my knuckleball is not quite as sharp as it was in the spring, it is still coming out of my hand well. The Royals come to town to play a weekend series in early May. The big news for the Twins is that our all-star catcher, Joe Mauer, is coming off the disabled list and is ready to start the season.
The Saturday game is a wild affair, 7–7 in the top of the eleventh. Craig Breslow walks the bases loaded and Gardy comes out to get him and calls for me. It’s a tough spot, made tougher because Joe has not caught me before. Honestly, I’m not sure if he has ever caught a knuckleball.
Gardy hands me the ball and says, Don’t throw your knuckler in this situation. Work with your fastball and slider. We don’t want Joe chasing it to the backstop and runners scoring, okay?
I am dumbfounded. Don’t throw my knuckler? That’s how I get people out. Throw my slider? Um, I don’t even throw a slider. I look at Joe. He shrugs and runs back behind the plate. I am a little unsettled at this turn of events. I should know better at this stage of my career, but I let it get into my head. I go up 1–2 on the Royals’ designated hitter, John Buck, but I am thinking way too much, feeling acute pressure to put my fastball in precise spots.
On the eighth pitch of the at-bat—all fastballs—I walk Buck, forcing in the go-ahead run. I want to scream. The one thing I couldn’t do in that situation, walk the guy, I do. The Royals have the lead now without even getting a hit.
I get the next hitter, Alberto Collaspo, to ground out on a sinker, but David DeJesus singles in a run on another fastball and I have had enough. I call Joe out to the mound. Listen, Joe, I know you haven’t caught me before, but I’ve got to throw my knuckleball. That’s the reason I’m here.
Let it rip, Joe says. I’ll be fine.
I hit Miguel Olivo with a knuckleball, and then get Tony Peña to ground out meekly to second to get out of the inning.
I don’t get the loss, and don’t even get the runs charged to me, since Breslow put them on, but I feel plenty responsible for us losing the game. I am decompressing, unhappily, at my locker when Gardy comes by.
I’m sorry I put you in that position. It wasn’t fair to you, and I should’ve known better, he says.
Hey, Gardy, don’t worry about it. It happens. I appreciate your apology.
I head off for the shower, impressed that Gardy would do this, own what he feels was his screwup. It’s a glimpse into why he’s such a good manager of people and why his players like to play for him so much. Gardy may have messed up tactically in this case, but did something infinitely harder when he came over to take full responsibility for it. I wonder how many managers would be secure enough, and grounded enough, to do such a thing.
My guess is: not many.
I appreciate it even more because I have had to take ownership of far more serious things in my life. I know how hard it is to do, and I also know the redemptive power there is in being able to do it. The longer I live, the more I come to believe that the ability to say the words “I’m sorry” is one of the greatest healing agents in the world.
I RECOVER well from my Royals outing and pitch well for the rest of the first half. In ten appearances in the month of June, I give up only eight hits and one run, lowering my season ERA to 2.36 at the beginning of July. I am on one of the best rolls of my life as a knuckleballer, with a pitch that is more consistent than ever, and that has great finish. I feel as though I am really starting to synthesize all that I’ve learned from Charlie, Phil, and Tim, and developing my own personality with the pitch as well. Beyond that, I am getting so many repetitions throwing it that it is becoming instinctual and organic, with a repeatab
le delivery, which makes for a much higher percentage of strikes.
I play catch virtually every day with either Kevin Slowey, my best friend on the team, or Nate Dammann, the bullpen catcher. They wind up chasing a bunch of knuckleballs that they can’t catch, affirmation to me that I am reaching a new level.
After I get back from the All-Star break, Kevin develops a wrist injury and can’t be a catch partner anymore. Nate gets other duties assigned to him, so in the span of days I am stripped of my catchers. The only guy who is left without a partner on the team is Joe Nathan, our star closer, whose catch partner has gotten claimed off waivers.
Joe and I are friends, with an easy, cordial bond. We partner up after the break. The only problem for me is that it is Joe Nathan. Not that I’m intimidated. I just don’t want our all-star closer to take a knuckleball on the knee or have to chase the thing into the far-flung crevasses of the Metrodome. So I start backing off my repetitions. I start worrying more about Joe’s work than my own. I want to make sure he gets what he needs. I reduce the number of knuckleballs I throw by half during our pre-batting-practice catch time. I gradually start to lose my feel. I need my repetitions and I am not getting them. It’s not Joe’s fault. It’s my own fault for not finding a way to get what I need.
Faster than you can say Wilbur Wood, I have regressed into the R.A. of a year or two before: a vastly worse pitcher. After the break, I get knocked around so badly, my ERA jumps to the fours, the low point probably coming in Anaheim against the Angels, who pummel me for 4 hits and 3 runs in ⅓ of an inning. In early August, the Twins acquire Carl Pavano and need a spot on the roster.
Guess who gets elected to provide it?
I can’t fathom it after the way I pitched in June and the run of success I had, but I am back in the minor leagues. I am a member of the Rochester Red Wings, one of the few minor-league teams I haven’t played for, or so it feels. I go into the rotation and I get spanked around. I do not get a September call-up. It’s my own doing, I know that, but it still feels as though the knuckleball naysayers out there—no small club—are much quicker to bury a knuckleballer compared with a regular pitcher. It’s the same old refrain: How can you trust that pitch, or the people who throw it? It’s too flaky, too flighty.
Too unreliable.
Am I making excuses? Am I ever going to get there?
Am I deluding myself?
I am so much more self-aware, so much healthier, than I’ve ever been before, with the work I’ve done on myself. Am I not seeing something here? Is this a great big blind spot I have, a mental blot as big as the mound itself? Am I in denial, like a drunk whose life is being ruined by alcohol but who insists the problem is everything but alcohol?
No, I do not think I am in denial. In my heart and soul, I believe I am getting progressively better as a knuckleball pitcher. I believe I can be a positive, contributing member of a big-league pitching staff. If you want to look at my history and argue otherwise, that’s your prerogative. Go ahead. But I know my pitch and I know myself and I know I am getting better.
I just need one more chance. Will any team give me a chance?
My agent’s phone rings. The caller is Omar Minaya from New York.
We’re interested in talking to you about R. A. Dickey, Omar says.
SEPTEMBER 17, 2011
atlanta, georgia
Surrounded by crumpled water cups, wads of sunflower seeds, and jubilant Atlanta Braves, I sit in the dugout of Turner Field with one question: Why is this game so freakin’ painful? It seems ludicrous that a simple game can make you hurt so much. It’s not a hurt that comes from throwing 115 pitches, but the kind that comes when you pour your heart into a piece of work and then watch somebody come along and spray-paint it.
The Braves just beat me, 1–0, and are hugging and high-fiving everywhere I look. Soon the Braves will be gone and Styx will arrive for a postgame concert. The way I feel, I may stay in the dugout for the whole show, catatonic. I have just pitched three-hit ball and shut out the Braves into the eighth.
It earns me a pat on the backside from my manager and my thirteenth loss of the year. My ERA is 3.35.
I lose the game on a bouncing RBI single up the middle by the great Chipper Jones. I almost caught it. That makes the hurt even worse, and so does the fact that twice I failed to get a bunt down in key at-bats, a screwup that could’ve cost us the game. (I’m proud of being a competitive hitter and a dependable bunter. This failure is deeply frustrating.) But maybe the most irksome thing is that I missed on a 3–2 pitch and walked Martin Prado just ahead of Chipper. You can’t walk a guy there. You just can’t.
And I did, because I threw him a full-count knuckleball that stayed up.
There’s an old baseball adage that you can’t let yourself get beaten by anything but your best pitch—that you have to dance with the girl you bring. I bring Ms. Knuckleball to every party. Today she is a thing of beauty, dancing and sliding and flowing, the Brave men wanting her but not being able to catch her. Today she is also fickle. Earlier in my career I wouldn’t have trusted my knuckleball in a 3–2 count and I would’ve thrown Prado a sinker, a much easier pitch to control. I can’t do that now. I have to go at them with my best stuff or why even be out there at all? Maybe 90 percent of the time throwing the game I did will get you a win. Tonight it doesn’t, because Tim Hudson was just a little better than me.
So I sit in the dugout with the cups and seeds and my regrets, thinking about my feeble bunts and my three strikeouts—the first time I have struck out three times in a game since eighth grade. I think about the strike I couldn’t throw to Prado, and the strikes I couldn’t throw to Jason Heyward, a .220 hitter, to lead off the same inning.
I am deep into this unhappy recap, watching workers set things up for Styx, when I look up to see Phil Niekro walking toward me. I haven’t seen Phil since the offseason after 2008, when I went down to Atlanta to work with him. He was incredibly kind and helpful to me, and wouldn’t accept a penny for his time. Just one knuckleballer helping another, big time.
I get up and shake his hand.
You had a great one today, Phil says. I’m sorry for you that it ended the way it did.
Thanks, Phil. There was a lot of you in that pitcher you saw out there today.
We talk for a few minutes about the day, the knuckleball, the Braves. He is so affirming it can’t help but take the edge off my ache. I begin to feel lighter, gladdened by the opportunities I’ve been given, the people like Phil and Charlie Hough who have invested in me, and the grace of God that has brought me to this place—a place where I can hold the disappointment of a moment along with the blessing of another chance.
Phil smiles as he turns to leave.
You need to come back down to see me so I can help you with your bunting, he says.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CITI DWELLER
The Dickey Baseball Tour Across America arrives at its latest destination—Buffalo, New York—in April 2010. I don’t want to count my number of stops, but I do know they’ve included the Dust Belt (Oklahoma City), the Coffee Belt (Seattle), and now the Snow Belt (Buffalo). And that’s not even counting the Shuffleboard Belt (Port Charlotte, Florida). I find a two-bedroom apartment over a garage, a short ways out of town. I set up a card table for our kitchen table and go to Wal-Mart for our bedding—three inflatable mattresses that will be distributed thusly: a double for Anne and me, another double for our girls, Gabriel and Lila, and a single raft for Eli.
I have no idea how long we will be sleeping on these mattresses; I just blow them up and hope for the best.
I want to believe this is going to lead somewhere, but my new team—the New York Mets—is not making it easy. I signed with the Mets over the winter, mostly because I know Omar Minaya from our days in Texas and I felt his interest was sincere. He’s tried to sign me for the past two years, so that has to mean something. Omar tells me the fib that every team tells its free-agent pitchers—“You’re going to have a chance to ma
ke the rotation”—but that doesn’t do much to allay my anxiety when I get to camp and see all the pitchers, squadrons of them, trying to make the team. Well, it seems like squadrons of them; maybe two dozen. It’s hard not to be insecure about your chances of beating out everyone when you’ve bounced around to as many Belts as I have. I am trying to forget the body count and working on throwing the best knuckleball I can throw when Dan Warthen, the pitching coach, stops by my locker and, yes, taps me on the shoulder, a month into camp. I, of course, know instantly that there are two scenarios that can play out here.
This could be a good, Gardenhire shoulder tap. Or it could be a bad, John McLaren shoulder tap. I am rooting for the former.
Jerry wants to see you in his office, Dan tells me. Jerry is Jerry Manuel, the Mets manager—the same Jerry Manuel who basically called me the twelfth best pitcher on a twelve-man staff when I came on in relief against his White Sox in 2001.
It is March 15. I’ve unpacked my bags in Port St. Lucie, but the spring still has a while to run. Jerry doesn’t waste any time, or emotion.
We’re sending you out to the minor-league side, he says. Go down there and get your work in. We know you will be a professional.
I am the first player cut that spring. Not the second, or the third.
The first.
I console myself at the end of the day by filling up a little goody bag from the ready supply of snacks and beverages that are in the big-league clubhouse, heading home with pouches of trail mix and a few bottles of chocolate milk and Gatorade. I may not be a major-league pitcher in the Mets’ eyes, but I am making sure I eat like one.
When I report to the minor-league complex, Terry Collins, who is running that department at the time, gives me more bad news.
There’s a rule for all minor leaguers in the organization that no beards are allowed, Terry says.
