Imperfect: An Improbable Life

by Jim Abbott

  Probably the same I’d give.

  Five days before I’d felt like I’d lost, and lost badly. The start had come at the old ballpark in Cleveland and I hadn’t gotten out of the fourth inning. I’d hit just about every bat in the Indians’ lineup, a few twice, always on the barrel, and trudged off the mound having allowed ten hits, four walks, and seven runs. While Dion James and Paul O’Neill and Don Mattingly rallied for 14 runs and a win in spite of me, I returned to the clubhouse, tore off my road grays, and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Without a thought, I went for a get-it-all-out run, straight through the Municipal Stadium parking lot and into the streets of Cleveland, which seemed a good idea at the time and only ended up further annoying our manager, Buck Showalter, a by-the-book baseball man who hadn’t read the chapter on get-it-all-out runs.

  Still, rather than stew in the clubhouse, gauging the relative flight-and-crash capabilities of folding chairs, I dashed into the steamy afternoon toward the blinking lights of what looked like an airport, away from the anger and frustration, away from the expectations. All of which, it turned out, tailed me out of the clubhouse.

  In the dugout I’d left behind, Showalter turned to an assistant trainer who’d returned from the clubhouse.

  “How’s Jim doing?” Showalter asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

  “Just, ‘gone.’ ”

  I hadn’t exactly been Ron Guidry in my first season as a Yankee. To that point, I’d won nine games and lost eleven, and was about to be bailed out of a twelfth that was pretty well deserved. My arm felt fine, though I’d gnawingly lost some velocity on my fastball. My signature pitch—a cut fastball, which ran inside on right-handed hitters and had always left my hand reliably—seemed in the throes of a mid-life crisis. Sometimes it darted in on the right-handers, hard and late. Other times, it dawdled across the plate, practically begging to get hit, and, generally, major-league hitters don’t have to be asked twice. I was inconsistent, pitching well at times and winning, pitching well and losing, pitching poorly and losing, and making all the in-between stops, leaving me right at mediocre. So, I stomped across the pavement, killing the five-plus innings I’d left to the bullpen, sweating out the disappointment, full of anger and having nowhere to put it. It’s funny: As a starting pitcher, you’d spend four and a half days training your body and your mind for those three hours, and when it ended abruptly and ingloriously, the preparation, adrenaline, and made-up images of pushing onward just sort of hung there while the game went on without you. What were you supposed to do with all that stuff? Put it in a sandwich bag and carry it around for another four and a half days? Some of the most grounded pitchers I ever knew had the toughest time assimilating back into the team model for those fifteen or thirty minutes after they were out of that competition mode. I was one of the worst at it. Instead, I’d throw things and yell and hope not to harm anyone.

  By the time I’d circled back to the ballpark, composed myself, and fell back into a folding chair, the rest of the guys had the Indians whipped. They were happy. I was trying to be. I felt like I’d personally spit the bit. I felt like they—okay, we—deserved to be satisfied with the win, but damn if it wasn’t hard to screw on that smile. The good news was the Indians on Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. I’d have another shot at them. They probably viewed it as another shot at me.

  A couple days later, back in New York, Showalter informed me I had been out of line for leaving the clubhouse in Cleveland. First, I had no idea how he found out. Second, I was surprised it was an issue, though I guess I shouldn’t have been. Steinbrenner didn’t always treat his players as adults—you’ll wear your wool cap running in the outfield before games, whether it’s April in Chicago or August in Texas, and take your heat exhaustion like a man—and Showalter minded those dictates. I’m not sure the Yankees’ playbook specifically bans mid-afternoon jogs in Cleveland, but, honestly, I hadn’t read the whole thing. Additionally, my start in Cleveland was getting a pretty good run in the papers, complete with speculation I’d be removed from the rotation if I didn’t pitch any better, and spend the rest of the season in the bullpen. These are the trials of playing in New York, of course, and for the Yankees, in September, in a division race. The new guys, of whom I was one, found it a bit more trying, so my disposition darkened.

  I’d actually get five days between Indians starts because of a day off in the schedule, just in case I needed another twenty-four hours thinking about how important the game was to me. What I really needed was a cold beer with some good friends. Fortunately, the Chicago White Sox came through New York, splitting up the Indians series. Kirk McCaskill, primarily a reliever for the White Sox, had been a young starter for the Angels when I had come up with them in 1989. Robin Ventura had played at Oklahoma State when I was at Michigan, had been the third baseman on the Olympic team when we won gold medals in 1988, then had spent the last four years as the White Sox’s third baseman. The White Sox were on their way to winning the American League West, so the boys were in good spirits, and one night after a game we took off for Elaine’s, the Upper East Side saloon, where I was struck by one thought and dragged into another. Sitting with two trusted friends, it occurred to me that I had few—if any—of those kinds of relationships with the Yankees, where an every-man-for-himself climate precluded much in the way of deep alliances. There were guys I respected, guys I liked, and guys I wanted to befriend—it just hadn’t happened. Considering my last start in Cleveland had been so brutal, and that the end of the season was only weeks away, leaving little time to save it, the dearth of friends felt especially sharp. Anyway, it was good to be with a couple of them, particularly those who remembered when the baseball was good. Then, the bartender at Elaine’s, whom I knew a little, politely interrupted our stories and laughter to request an autograph. I accepted the baseball he offered and turned it in my hand. It had been signed by one other player, in faded ink. The name: Pete Gray. I sighed.

  Gray played seventy-seven games in the outfield for the St. Louis Browns in 1945, a war year. I’d heard about him since I was very young and admired him greatly, though quite independently from my own disability. Gray played despite having no right arm. Respectfully, I’m reasonably sure, I declined to sign the bartender’s ball. I had endeavored to uphold a life above brands that began “one-armed” or “one-handed,” and detested the notion of someone displaying or hawking the Jim Abbott/Pete Gray Two Good Arms Between ’Em ball. How awful. With Ventura and McCaskill watching stiffly, I told the bartender I’d be happy to sign anything else, which he refused in a huff. I wondered if Pete Gray would have gone along.

  These were the encounters that embodied my relationship with my hand: personal until it wasn’t, forgotten until it couldn’t be. When I was most comfortable, presumably most vulnerable, there it had been. Sir, your hand. Mr. Abbott, your hand. Jimmy, your hand.

  All in all, it was turning out to be quite a week.

  THE TRAFFIC NEAR the ballpark picked up. As the cabbie slid to the right, cars streamed past on the left, heading north into Westchester County and Connecticut or west over the George Washington Bridge and into New Jersey. Looking through the window, I found myself envious of the men and women in their cars, as I often did, the people who worked their jobs and were able to go home at night and leave that part behind. I daydreamed of jobs in which you worked hard and the reward followed. I mean, I wouldn’t have traded who I was or what I did. But, in so many ways, their lives looked so appealing. My parents’ lives. My brother’s life. Nobody kept score, at least not in the newspaper, not where a man might as well have his ERA stamped on his forehead, so he’d walk into Gracie’s and know everybody was thinking about how he had gotten knocked around in Cleveland six days ago. Mostly, maybe, I just wanted the ache to go away. It was fine when I won. When we won. But success didn’t swing nearly as high as failure arced low, when the explanations were seemingly beyond extra laps or l
onger bullpen sessions or more time studying hitters. Two years before, I’d won 18 games and was third in the American League Cy Young Award balloting, behind Roger Clemens and Scott Erickson. A year before, though I lost 15 games, I was fifth in the American League in ERA. I didn’t feel that different. I’d changed uniforms, changed ballparks, changed coasts. But, this was still the same arm, and those were still the same hitters. It made no sense. And it hurt. It really did.

  The driver made his left, casting Yankee Stadium massively on the passenger side, his car clattering on the narrow, pocked road. Setting up my exit, I noted the square red numbers on the meter, organized the bills, stuffed the unnecessary ones into my pocket, and pulled the duffel bag closer. A book—Lincoln by Gore Vidal—and a couple Billie Holiday CDs clunked together inside my game-day survival kit. I liked calm before I pitched. Yankee Stadium generally didn’t dispense tranquility, so you had to bring your own.

  Already, hours before the first pitch, people lined the steel barricades that formed a broad path from the cab door to the players’ and media entrance. Dressed in their navy blue caps and jerseys and windbreakers, holding out balls and cards and photos to be autographed, they shouted, and I smiled the best I could and waved, conscious that I might need a few supporters out there today. Depending on how you were going, the walk through that gauntlet could feel like the stroll of affirmation or the trudge of shame. NYPD officers and Yankees security stood casually nearby, an eye on the gathering crowd and another at the sky, which couldn’t seem to decide whether or not to let loose with the rain. I hoped it wouldn’t, but its color was beginning to match those dark Mattingly road jerseys outside the gate.

  For such an old ballpark, The Stadium—as every Yankees fan in New York referred to it—felt fresh every day. The sight and smell of the place on the morning after a night game was especially remarkable, given how it bounced back, no matter what, win or lose. The trash was gone, along with the people, and any lingering regrets. Workers in galoshes hosed it all away, from one end of the stadium to the other. Aided by my own game-day regimen of an anti-inflammatory pill and a few Advils, fending off the normal late-season wear, I felt a bit like the ballpark must have: scrubbed and ready for another day.

  Just inside the building, a narrow staircase descended from the main concourse two flights to a dark, low-ceilinged hallway. A left led to the visitors’ clubhouse. Straight ahead were two doors—one to a room where news photographers and radio broadcasters worked, the other to the media dining room and, beyond that, the writers’ workroom. My route took me past those rooms, a door to the manager’s office and eventually, after another right, the clubhouse.

  When the door swung shut behind me, I dragged a finger down the batting order: Boggs 3B, James LF, Mattingly 1B, Tartabull DH, O’Neill RF, Williams CF, Nokes C, Gallego 2B, Velarde SS, Abbott P. The Indians’ lineup would arrive by clubhouse attendant later, but I knew it well enough anyway.

  It was ten o’clock. The clubhouse smelled clean, insomuch as any clubhouse can. My locker was on the right side of the room, not far from the short hallway that led to Showalter’s office, and across from the bathroom and showers. Don Mattingly was in the corner locker, the one reserved for Yankees royalty. And, yes, he could have been in it. The locker was large enough to pull a folding chair into, allowing Mattingly to sit almost completely out of view, a handy thing when the clubhouse was at capacity. Downtown, people were paying thousands a month for studio apartments only slightly larger and with less of a view. Fellow pitchers Jimmy Key, Rich Monteleone, and Bob Wickman occupied the same wall.

  Then it was 10:10. I was constantly checking the clock. I’ll grow old waking up to the same dream, I’m sure, the one where it’s time to pitch and I’m madly searching for my glove while a tight-faced pitching coach is screaming my name and then, huffily, asking for volunteers to take my place.

  I got comfortable in a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and shower shoes, CD player in my hand, Billie in my ears. I listened for the emotion in her voice, the crackle when she really meant it, the patience she had for the song. I tapped in to her pace, the tempo I’d seek on the mound. Lined end-to-end, every note became the song, like every pitch could become a game. A win.

  She sang:

  Might as well get used to you hanging around,

  Good morning, heartache, sit down.

  Yes, yes.

  The trainers’ room was homey and clean, but without the sterile feeling of a doctor’s office. The guys in there—Gene Monahan and Steve Donohue—kept it that way. The mood was soft lights, the aroma was strong coffee, and the conversations were friendly but muted, unlike the clubhouse, where the loudest wins. We’d chat, but I’d be there for the comfort and the quiet, to clear my head and body for the day, and soon I’d again don the headphones. The trainers would go about their routines, patching the wounded and bringing old bodies back to life. My routine was about visualization. I’d lay a towel over my eyes and begin the sequence, gently flexing and relaxing my feet, working upward until I reached my shoulders and neck. I saw only darkness and felt only awareness. So few times would players actually focus on how, say, their calves felt, unless one hurt.

  My eyes closed and my body awakened, I’d see my warm-up in the bullpen, my fastball hitting the corners, staying down, the baseball jumping out of my hand, the ball pulled toward the catcher’s mitt. I’d experience the walk from beneath the dugout roof to the mound, something loud on the stadium speakers, the crowd getting excited, breathing strength. I’d pitch the first inning, Matt Nokes lowering his mask from the top of his head, plate umpire Ted Hendry jabbing a finger at me, Kenny Lofton, Felix Fermin, and Carlos Baerga taking their turns, then nothing but the mitt.

  By then, the clubhouse had first cleared out and then was filling again with teammates, those in the starting lineup coming in from batting practice. Pitching coach Tony Cloninger, Nokes, and I met as a group for the first time that day. There was some gravity to this, a strategy meeting when the last start went so poorly, and against the same team. On the bright side, Indians manager Mike Hargrove swapped out a third of the lineup that had hit me so hard, including three guys—Paul Sorrento, Alvaro Espinoza, and Sandy Alomar Jr.—who’d combined for six hits and four RBIs against me in those 3 2/3 innings.

  Sometimes these discussions were about how to attack the hitters, other times they were about how to stay away from the hitters. That was always the philosophical debate, and it varied from pitching coach to pitching coach, from catcher to catcher. I didn’t really have enough different pitches to have a say. At some point—and this definitely was one of those times—I had to let go of all that and trust what it was I did best. Albert Belle’s strength might indeed have been an inside fastball. And, by “strength” I meant he might hit it five hundred feet or line it off my forehead. But, I was most effective throwing inside fastballs. In fact, to right-handed hitters, that was about all I threw.

  I was asking myself, as I often did, to trust it. When the world started spinning and wobbling, when the newspapers speculated about my job security and the ballpark leaned in to gauge the fight in me, I had to remember to trust what I did, to simplify when the game sped up, to throw every pitch with something even more than conviction. I’d fallen at times into a spiral of hoping for a result I had no control over, though that understanding wouldn’t come free until the result was long over and settled. It was a career-long struggle, actually, forgetting the immediate past and concentrating on the immediate future—that course existing only in the ball in my hand, thinking of only the next pitch. But on that dreary Saturday in the Bronx I was not going to get beaten trying something different, or get beaten throwing a pitch the catcher wanted but I wasn’t sure of. I was going to carry the game or get carried off, either way, because of me.

  It made sense at the time.

  The T-shirt I’d worn beneath my road grays in Cleveland had been sacrificed to the baseball gods, left in a trash can at Municipal Stadium. Others had paid th
e same price over the years, so it was not a particularly solemn occasion. The new one went on under the Yankees pinstripes. I wore old-style stirrups, but only on the days I pitched. They felt like baseball, the way the uniform was supposed to be worn.

  Cloninger, one of the most genuine men I’d ever met, who always was squarely in my corner, accompanied me to the bullpen. Directly across from the clubhouse door, a narrow, sloping tunnel led to the dugout and then the field. That walk, from the moment I cleared the dugout and stepped onto the pebbly warning track, was the symbolic start of my game. That walk was a daily renewal. It stopped me every time, in fact. It was magical. I ran some in the outfield, enough to get my legs under me, then picked up my glove and found Nokes waiting in the bullpen. He was in full gear, set up on the inside part of the plate to an invisible right-handed hitter, my right side as I faced the hitter. That was my foundation, pitching inside, and the act of generating the arm and full-body mechanics to reach out and deliver the ball to that spot. If I could get there with the fastball, everything else—curveball, slider—would follow. I felt good. My body felt good. My head was pretty clear.

  When I walked from the bullpen across the field, flanked by Cloninger and Nokes, I vaguely heard my name shouted from the stands, vaguely took the tone as encouraging, vaguely understood that Yankees fans felt the urgency of the pennant race. In my head, the drumbeat of the start began.