by Wayne Coffey
I have had my beard for six years. I am fond of my beard. I’m not going to let it interfere with my livelihood, but the rule seems inane.
Are you serious? I ask.
Yes, I am.
There’s no exemption for a thirty-five-year-old man with a wife and three kids?
No, I’m sorry, R.A. There’s not.
So I gather Gabriel, Lila, and Eli around, and we go on the porch of my Port St. Lucie rental house, and we make a family project out of shaving Daddy’s beard. Everybody gets a turn with the clippers and gets to take a whack out of my lovely, luxurious growth. I’m fit to be a Met organizational player now, but as I rub my bare chin for the first time since 2004, I am wondering anew what the heck I am doing and where this is all going. How long am I going to keep dragging Anne and the kids around the country so I can chase this increasingly far-fetched dream? I know I’ve asked this question before. More than once. But really, where does it stop? No horn is going to sound, and no clock is going to tick down to zero. It’s on me to decide, and I just don’t have any clarity about it.
Is it fair to keep doing this? Is it financially foolish? Perseverance is fine and all, but isn’t there a time when you have to stop messing around with your grip and be a grown-up?
Yes there is. One morning, I find myself making a call to Lipscomb University and get a nice admissions officer on the phone.
I tell her my name is R. A. Dickey and I am hoping she can answer a few questions for me. I tell her I attended the University of Tennessee some years ago and left school about a year short of getting my degree in English literature. My GPA was over 3.0, so I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. I think I may want to transfer to Lipscomb so I can finish my studies. I ask her how we can set this in motion.
It’s really quite a simple process, the admissions officer says. We just need to get a copy of your transcript from Tennessee and, assuming all the credits are transferrable, we can see where you stand and then get things moving. Depending on departmental requirements, you may not even need a full year of credits.
I thank her for her time and make a note to call Tennessee to get my transcript. My emergent plan is to be an English teacher, but obviously I am not getting hired without a college degree, at least. I remember what a positive impact Miss Brewer at MBA had on me. It’s exciting to imagine myself in a high school classroom, teaching English. With a beard.
I think about what it would be like to be an undergraduate again, fourteen years after I stopped my studies to be a pro ballplayer. I wonder what it will be like to be buying books by Tolstoy instead of throwing knuckleballs by Tulowitzki.
I love literature. But it’s hard to even comprehend.
So the classroom is not for now—not yet. The mound is still my office, and I know how the business in the office is conducted. If I get my work done and done well in Buffalo, maybe I’ll get a shot at working at company headquarters in New York City. But will I? Will I really get a fair shot if I do well? From what I hear, Omar and Jerry need the club to have a strong showing to keep their jobs; are they going to entrust their futures to a geriatric knuckleballer who has twenty-two career victories and seems to have been knocking around baseball since the Eisenhower administration?
I pray about it, often, and keep working on fitting the puzzle pieces together and being as consistent as I can. In some ways getting sent out early is a blessing, because it means I am going to get lots of work—which is exactly what I need.
After having a bit of a rough go against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees in my first start in Buffalo, I pitch into the eighth inning or beyond in my next three starts and am feeling very good. My next start is against the Durham Bulls, the best-hitting team in the International League. It’s a brutally cold night, the wind whipping furiously off of Lake Erie. Only three hundred people are in the stands.
Fernando Perez, a switch-hitting outfielder, leads off the game for Durham. I go up 0–2 and float a knuckleball toward the plate. He gets under it and pops it weakly over second base. It plops in for a single.
I retire the next twenty-seven hitters in order. A perfect game, with one mulligan.
I’ve never had another game quite like it, and not many others have, either. Whoever heard of twenty-eight up, twenty-seven down? I throw only three or four fastballs out of ninety pitches. The knuckleballs have some crazy finish to them, dropping like rocks in a pond. I strike out six, walk nobody, missing the strike zone only twenty-two times over nine innings. Ken Oberkfell, the Buffalo Bisons manager who has been around baseball for more than three decades, tells the press afterward that it may have been the most dominant pitching performance he has ever seen. He played on teams with guys like Mike Scott and a young Tom Glavine, so that is saying something. The club owners reward us with a steak dinner the following night, but the prize I really want is a one-way ticket to Citi Field.
Five weeks into the season, my record is 4–2, my ERA 2.23. I have struck out thirty-seven and walked eight. I wonder if the Mets are paying attention. I’m in the apartment on the air mattress when Oberkfell calls my cell phone. Anne and the kids haven’t arrived from Nashville yet because school is still in session. Stephen James has just come up for a visit, and I’m eager to engage him in long talks about God, fatherhood, and living well in the moment.
Sit tight, the Mets might be making a move, Oberkfell says.
Okay, I will. Thanks. I tell Stephen the good news, though it might mean our visit will be cut short.
Ten hours later, I don’t have to sit tight anymore, because the Mets want me to join them in Atlanta. The next thing I know, I am throwing in the outfield of Turner Field to Dave Racaniello, the bullpen catcher, with Dan Warthen observing. I am not pitching a game in Atlanta; the Mets just want to see me throw and figure out what they’ve got. I don’t need any more than that for the hope to kick in in a big way. I want more than anything to share it with Anne, and I get to, because she arranges for the kids to stay with her parents and she drives down to Atlanta for a night to meet me and to celebrate this opportunity. Who knows how many more of these will be coming? Who’s to say I won’t be in a Lipscomb University classroom three months from now? Anne and I both know I am running out of road, and we want to embrace it with all we have. It’s a tender time we share, praying together with thanks for the possibilities ahead as we sit on the edge of a bed in a hotel room.
I fly ahead of the team to Washington so I can get a full night’s rest. Dan Warthen apparently liked what he saw, because I am starting the first game of our series against the Nationals in Nationals Park. I walk into the visitor’s clubhouse and the equipment manager hands me a gray road jersey with number 43 on the back. All I want to do is pitch and find a baseball home. Three hours before my first game as a New York Met, I am acutely aware of how much I yearn for stability, to put down roots in a team and be a completely trustworthy performer, not a 4A guy who can pitch like Mr. Dependable one night and Lady Gaga the next.
After eating my pregame turkey sandwich in the players’ lounge, I look at video of the Nationals with Dan, then spend some quiet time in prayer at my locker. I contemplate the fresh start ahead of me and suddenly all the old doubts and fears are coming at me, sweeping in like a storm on the prairie. They are coming hard, pelting me with familiar negativity:
Do you know how much pressure there is on you tonight? You know that if you stink, you are right back in Buffalo, don’t you? What if you are as brutal as you were that night against the Tigers? How many more teams are going to give you a chance? Why don’t you just admit that this is your fifth organization in five years and nothing is going to change just because your uniform does?
It is an insidious assault, but here’s the switch: I don’t let it rock me anymore or rule me anymore. Because of the work I’ve done in counseling, I know that just because a bird of prey may fly into my head, I don’t have to let it build a nest. I can look at it and say, “There’s that bird again,” and not give it any power.
I can recognize that every athlete in the world has these fears and doubts, and those that say they don’t are liars. The trick that the best athletes have mastered is that they don’t let the birds set up nests. They have the anxious thoughts and feelings and let them go, brushing them off the way an umpire brushes off home plate.
One thing I know for sure is that when I take the mound in Nationals Park, I want none of this noise. I want to be fully present with my pitch, the way I learned to be after I came out of the Missouri.
Thanks be to You, God, for giving me another opportunity. I do not take it for granted. Thank You for letting me hold on to hope and to keep pursuing what I believe is within my reach: the chance to be a trustworthy big-league pitcher at last. Please, Lord, let this time be different. Let my family and me flourish here, and belong here. I want to belong so badly, Lord. Please let me perform the way I know that I can. Whatever Your plans are for me, I know that You will care for me and love me and provide me with the strength I need to do Your will. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
When I pray, I am not just talking to God. I am deepening my relationship with Him. To me, prayer is not a me-driven, goal-driven endeavor, something I turn to when I really need to pitch a dominant game or get out of a tight spot or a personal crisis. I’ve never prayed to God and said, “Lord, please let me strike out Albert Pujols four times tonight.” Nor will I ever do that. God is not a genie in a bottle that you rub when you want something. He is the ever-present, ever-loving Father, the guiding Spirit of my life, my Light and my Truth. He has a plan for me; I believe that as much as I believe anything in my whole life, and even if I don’t end up flourishing in New York or proving myself to be a trustworthy big-league pitcher, I know that’s because He has something else in store for me, and whatever that is, I know that I will be at peace.
THE FIRST BATTER I face in my Mets career is Nyjer Morgan, the Nationals’ left-handed center fielder. I go up 1–2 on him and throw a knuckleball away and he tries to surprise me, squaring around and bunting, lofting a little pop by the third-base line. I never figured he’d bunt with two strikes to lead off the game, but I get a good break on the ball and sprint off the mound. It’s dropping fast and I don’t know if I can get there. I know the only shot I have is a headlong dive. So that’s what I do, leaving my feet and laying myself out.
I make a sprawling catch by the third-base line. One out.
It is the perfect way to start. I love to field my position. I love being an athlete. I’d rather make a play like that than strike a guy out on three pitches.
After setting down the Nationals without a hit through three innings, I get a lead when Angel Pagan hits an inside-the-park home run in the top of the fourth, but the Nationals break through on three singles, a walk, and a sacrifice fly to score twice in the bottom of the inning.
In the fifth now, I make an ill-advised 2–2 pitch to Livan Hernandez, a very good hitting pitcher, throwing a fastball that he slaps into left for a single, and then I walk Morgan. With two on and nobody out, I am faced with the most pivotal at-bat of the game. A hit or two here and the floodgates open, and I probably don’t get out of the fifth—and may be back on the inflatable mattresses in the Snow Belt.
Cristian Guzmán, Washington’s second baseman, steps in. I expect him to bunt. We all expect him to bunt, so the corners are playing in tight. I get ahead 0–1 and, surprisingly, he doesn’t square. Maybe he doesn’t think he can get a bunt down on my knuckleball; I don’t know. On my second pitch I throw a good, spinless knuckleball that is up a bit but packs some late drop. Guzmán swings away and loops it into center. It looks for sure like it’s going to fall. Pagan charges hard, keeps charging, and reaches down. He makes a gorgeous shoestring catch. Both runners think the ball is going to drop and take off. Angel hurries to get the ball to second but in his haste he launches it way over José Reyes’s head, beyond the mound, which I have vacated to back up the plate. Catcher Henry Blanco alertly charges the rolling ball and fires to Reyes at second. Reyes throws to Ike Davis at first for one of the oddest triple plays ever recorded.
An inning later, I get Pudge Rodríguez, my former Texas teammate, to hit into a weak, 6–4–3 double play. I come off the mound fired up, and Dan pats my back and says, “Good job.” My night is done. I wind up with a no-decision in a 5–3 loss, but I’m heartened that I’d given the Mets a quality start my first time out: two runs in six innings.
My first start at home comes six days later, against the Phillies. Anne and the kids come up to New York for the occasion, and we are all shoehorned into a hotel room near Times Square. I am thrilled to have them with me, but I am also very conscious of getting rest and being completely focused, and having three kids who are under nine in a hotel room, while fun, is not necessarily conducive to concentration. I am too cheap to spring for another room at $250 a night. So we stay crammed in. The morning of the game, Anne wants to go tourist on me and take the kids to Rockefeller Center and take in the view from the top.
I am completely against it. But I am outvoted.
We’ll walk around a bit and come right back, Anne says. It will be easy and fun and won’t take away from your preparation, she says. It turns out not to be too much fun, and definitely not easy. There are lines everywhere. We can’t get a cab. The kids get squirmy and cranky. I am the crankiest of all. I carry our four-year-old son, Eli, back to the hotel on my shoulders, worried that I may be ticketed back to the minors in Buffalo because of a sightseeing outing.
I say good-bye to the troops and catch the number seven subway line to Citi Field. The train trip helps me decompress from our relaxing day in New York. I gradually get fully into my game mind-set, and by the time I am at the park, I am tunneled in. I go out and deliver again, pitching six shutout innings for my first National League victory. For the next month I pitch better than I have in my entire big-league career. I pitch from ahead, and pitch aggressively, bringing the best knuckleball I can muster on every pitch. In an almost surreal groove, I am so concentrated on each pitch that it’s as if it is going to be the last pitch of my life. Nothing can faze me.
After almost a week in the Times Square hotel, I find out that Shawn Green, the former Met, has a condo in Greenwich, Connecticut, that we can stay in. We move in but nobody tells the management company, I guess, because not long after we arrive, the power is cut. We live in the dark, and the midsummer swelter, for five days. We buy a Styrofoam cooler and load it with ice for the perishables, and get by with flashlights and candles. We could’ve moved somewhere else, gotten a hotel, but we just stick it out. I don’t conduct a poll, but I figure I’m probably the only pitcher in all of baseball who goes home to a dark house and reads by candlelight after ball games. What can I tell you? I like adventure. Maybe I subconsciously wanted to relive my nomadic days when I slept in vacant houses, I don’t know. Whatever the draw is, the powerless interlude has no impact on my pitching. I remain locked in. After I shut down the Tigers on 4 hits over 8 innings to run my record to 6–0 in late June, I become, in my own quirky way, a New York story—an old knuckleballing guy with a Tennessee twang and a missing body part.
Who is this weirdo?
People keep waiting for me to revert to my retread form, for the league to catch up to me. They view me as a trick-pitch purveyor who can’t truly be counted upon. I’ve got a career ERA of almost 5.00, after all. Wait until he finds his true level again, and get ready to duck.
None of this surprises me, and none of it offends me. All it does do is make me want to change people’s minds. I want to change their minds about how they think about the knuckleball . . . and how they think about me. Without being preachy or pedantic about it, I want to show them the degree to which change is possible. I mean, just take a look at me. Once I was a hypercompetitive kid who threw in the mid-nineties and made muscular pitching his modus operandi. Now I am a hypercompetitive grown-up who maxes out in the mid-eighties and dares you to get a good piece of a flaky, fluttering ball I’m throwing with my finge
rnails.
Once I kept secrets and hid and ran from the truth and ran from intimacy. Now I am about as close as you can get to being an open book, feeling called by God to tell the truth and be authentic and love my wife and children with everything this imperfect man can summon.
Once I lived in almost terminal shame, knowing why but never wanting to unpack it. Now I live in God’s mercy and I want to unpack everything, no matter how messy and hurtful it can be. (The unpacking, ultimately, includes this book.)
Do you think that it’s a coincidence that when I was finally able to stop hiding as a human being, I also stopped hiding as a pitcher?
I don’t.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
CITI FIELD
Our season ends with a 3–0 victory over the Reds. What a ride it has been. Not quite a peaceful trip through the countryside. More like a turbulent spin aboard an old, rickety roller coaster straight out of the state fairgrounds, circa 1949.
When you look at it in its totality, the New York Mets’ 2011 season was really more like a miniseries than 162 games worth of baseball. We were brutal early, good for a nice stretch in the middle, and then fell off late. With a slew of injuries to key players, we brought kids like Lucas Duda and Justin Turner up from Buffalo and everybody battled hard, and in doing so honored our manager, Terry Collins, who never lost his intensity and never let us use injuries as an excuse. We were scrappy overachievers who hung around the periphery of the wild-card race much longer than most people figured. And then at the very end, the final game, the whole drama was entirely wrapped around our best and most dynamic player, José Reyes.
I want to tell you a few things about José. He’s not only a terrific teammate and one of the most gifted players I’ve ever been around, he’s also probably the game’s greatest single energy source. His exuberance and energy are unmatched, and so is his ability to win games with his glove, his bat, and his legs. In the first 81 games, he hits .352 with 30 stolen bases and 15 triples, and plays superbly at shortstop. It is as supernatural a performance over time as I’ve ever seen.
