Imperfect: An Improbable Life

by Jim Abbott

  Aunt Katie turned first to Dad. She saw defeat on his face and in his shoulders. He was sure right then that this was his fault. God had punished him for this whole mess, for Mom getting pregnant and her having to move away and them not being married, all of it.

  A nurse arrived holding James Anthony Abbott, cleaned up and wrapped in a blue blanket. Wordlessly, she lifted one corner of the blanket and revealed the place where my right hand should have been. Mom raised her arms, accepting this tiny child.

  She refitted the blanket around my right arm and held me tight.

  DAD SAT THAT night at the kitchen table in Bloomfield Township. Aunt Katie sat across from him. Mom and I were together in the hospital room. Dad was inconsolable. He couldn’t be this little boy’s father. He was barely responsible enough to provide for himself and Mom. He had six months to serve with the National Guard. Who would take care of Mom and the baby then? It was all his fault, he kept saying. Maybe they should put up the baby for adoption, give him to people who could do this. Aunt Katie told him he was wrong, that no one was to blame, that the family would pitch in and help, that Dad was man enough to raise the boy.

  Dad returned to Flint and to his mother, still emotionally spent, still unsure of what he should do. His mother grabbed him by the shirtsleeve. This time there would be no trip to his father’s portrait.

  “Michael,” she nearly shouted, “you remember this: God takes away once, he gives back twice.”

  Dad shook his head. Just words, he thought. This wasn’t what he wanted. He should be off in college, playing ball like his friends, being eighteen. He shouldn’t have a girlfriend in a hospital bed, a disabled child to raise, bills starting to come, a report date for the National Guard looming. The weight was unbearable. He turned away from his mother, who wouldn’t let go.

  “You listen to me!” she shouted this time. “You can do this!”

  He turned back and she said, quietly, confidently, reassuringly, “You have to.”

  It was true. Dad nodded. He’d have to.

  Mom and I were in the hospital for four days. In that time, doctors came, asked a few questions, and went. No, Mom told them, she hadn’t taken any medication, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. There were no accidents. There was no history of it in either family. The doctors nodded grimly. Mom didn’t have a lot of questions, which was fine, because the doctors had no answers anyway. During the pregnancy there’d been no complications, and no indications of complications. The doctors shrugged and shook their heads. They didn’t know why.

  Really, it wouldn’t much matter why anymore. It just was.

  CHAPTER 4

  Albert Belle missed a curveball by eight inches and I knew I might be on to something. Matt Nokes thrust his mitt toward me and whipped strike three to Wade Boggs at third.

  The second inning brought Belle, Randy Milligan, Manny Ramirez, and Candy Maldonado, all right-handed hitters, all protecting against my cut fastball. But, here I was, changing speeds, flipping a curveball that dove short of and under Belle’s swing, and on a full count.

  Nokes knew we were on to something, too. I could tell by the way he sprang from his crouch after that breaking ball carried him toward Belle’s back leg. I was only four outs in, and I was throwing a lot of pitches, but getting Belle—one of the most ferocious hitters in the American League, he would hit 38 home runs and lead the league in RBIs that season—on his front foot, looking for something else, thinking he’d measured the cutter, was important.

  I’d shown the Indians’ lineup, which had hammered me earlier that week, not just a second pitch, but an effective second pitch. And better than them knowing I had a curveball that day and would throw it for a strike, I knew I had it. Nokes could ask for it. I could throw it, if not always for a strike, then so it looked for a long time like a strike, or so it looked like a ball and became a strike. At a time when I needed it, that pitch gave me the confidence to breathe a little. I asked for it, and it was there, almost perfectly so.

  Also, I was counting on something to go well. I was getting outs, but they were a lot of effort. The ball had life, but I couldn’t establish enough command to really get rolling. Some of it was self-inflicted; I knew I had to change speeds more than I had in Cleveland, and the results at times were choppy. Part of it was just the natural process of me getting acquainted with the game. The feel of the ball in my hand. The feel of the mound under my feet. And part of it was trying to pitch back from failure, which was becoming more familiar to me than I would have liked.

  I could see Nokes was enjoying this. The curveball was like a fun, new toy, and he wanted to pull it around the block a couple times, particularly against the Indians’ sluggers. After getting only 11 outs against the Indians in Cleveland, maybe I now had the stuff to get through the order a couple times, and not have the offense work so hard, and get me and the team to win a ballgame again. So, as the ball toured the infield after the strikeout of Belle, I pounded my glove, eager to get the ball back, happy to get after Milligan.

  I walked him on a 3-and-1 curveball. Yes, the game rises and falls and rises again. Then Ramirez, a skinny rookie with close-cropped hair, took ball one and ball two. Nokes stood, asked the umpire for a moment, and in a few seconds arrived at the mound. I knew what he was going to say. The enthusiasm from a few minutes before hadn’t dissipated, but I was going to have to throw a strike for any of this to work. The night before, Ramirez had homered off right-hander Melido Perez and again off lefty Paul Gibson. Not only had Ramirez’s three hits—he’d also doubled—and three RBIs helped beat us, but they had set off George Steinbrenner, who’d demanded to know from his baseball people how Ramirez had managed to grow up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium and somehow elude all of his well-compensated scouts. As the game progressed, Yankees brass was of course pleased at the result, and even more so because it temporarily distracted the Boss.

  Nokes never took off his mask. He showed up to let me know he was back there waiting on strikes, and to be sure a handful of pitches wasn’t going to change our strategy. Mike Stanley was our regular catcher, and was mine twenty-four times that season. Nokes caught me eight times, most toward the end of the season, and I loved his passion. I appreciated the extra nod after a clever pitch, the extra emphasis with the target, the all-for-one kind of attitude. He showed a good low target, and he glided around easily behind the plate. Looking in, getting the sign, and then believing in it, I trusted Matt. As the innings passed, that relationship would become critical.

  Before the game, he’d admitted to being baffled by my recent results. I’d won once since the end of July and Matt was the kind of guy, the kind of teammate, who’d take that personally, even if it wouldn’t reflect in any of his stats. He wanted to be the catcher pitchers wanted to throw to. As desperate as I was to perform well, I knew Matt felt at least that strongly about it. In fact, it was Matt who first suggested we “pitch backwards”—by that, meaning we’d set up the cutter with the curveball and changeup rather than the other way around, which is how I’d pitched most of my career. Somehow we needed to get the Indians off my cutter and get into their heads a little. So Matt arrived at the mound and we stood there only briefly as the occasional raindrop bounced off his helmet. He said nothing more than, “Hey, the stuff is good. Let’s go after the strike zone a little more aggressively here,” then returned to the plate.

  Ramirez, whose stance was closed and therefore—I hoped—more vulnerable to the cutter, took one of them for a strike on the inside corner and another for a strike on the outside corner, a pitch I figured might get a double-play grounder. No such luck, but I’d take the strike, and then bounced a curveball for ball three. Though he’d been in the league about seventy-two hours, Ramirez had shown himself in the scouting reports to be a free-swinger, and with great bat speed, so he’d bite on anything around the plate, and maybe hit it a long way. Nokes wanted cutters under Ramirez’s hands, and with a full count I threw a pretty good one. Ramirez fouled it off and spent a few sec
onds examining his bat handle for cracks. He’d seen plenty of cutters so far and I hoped he figured on another. He flied to center field on a changeup he hit off the end of the bat but pretty well, which brought more good news: The ball wasn’t carrying well to center or right-center, opening up more possibilities. In Yankee Stadium, pitchers survived by pitching to left-center, which kept the ball out of the right-field bleachers.

  Two outs, Milligan on first, and Nokes, I knew, was worried about Candy Maldonado, a veteran guy who could handle the off-speed stuff and still catch up to a fastball if he guessed right. He wanted to stay firm with Maldonado, maybe set him up for the hard, inside cutter, because Maldonado was guarding against anything there. After falling behind 2 and 0, I rediscovered the strike zone, got a couple foul balls, and then convinced Maldonado to swing over a cutter. Six outs in, I was okay. I felt good. Nothing disastrous had happened.

  I headed for the dugout.

  CHAPTER 5

  I daydreamed a lot, so that childhood was in there somewhere, tucked between the things I could do and the things I couldn’t, the friends I had and the loneliness I felt, the inspiration and the doubt. While Mom and Dad found their paths, we moved from neighborhood to neighborhood; four times I’d become familiar with an elementary school—those friends, those teachers, those ends of town—then pick up and settle into the next. Before any of us knew it, we’d traipsed through our early years together, my younger brother, Chad, following four years behind. I never traveled alone, of course. At times it propelled me along, other times I dragged it; my condition was a relentless companion.

  Not that the relationship didn’t change.

  Initially, as we were becoming acquainted, my thoughts were, “Oh, I’m missing a hand.”

  After several years, that developed into, “Hmmm, this makes me different.”

  Then, to, “Well, I can play ball, so I must be okay.”

  Maybe the last part was a little unsteady as far as a life philosophy, given my self-esteem balanced on those words. But if I could keep my head up, if I could make it to recess and win often enough, if I could laugh along at jokes pointed at my hand, if I could bury that hand in my pocket and wish it gone—or whole—then I must be okay.

  When it didn’t seem fair and I wondered why I must bear such a burden, I was always and immediately ashamed, like I’d given in. Like I’d quit. I couldn’t quit. Not on my parents. Not on myself.

  FIFTEEN DAYS AFTER I was born, Mom and Dad married.

  She wore a gray wool suit instead of the silver dress—which would have required tailoring—and with it a pale lace chapel veil required by the church. She held a bouquet of white roses. Dad wore a dark gray suit. Mom had pinned a white carnation to his left lapel. The eighteen-dollar rings were in his left front pocket. I was with a babysitter.

  St. Agnes’s chapel was empty when they arrived. When Mom half-shouted an elongated hello, there was no response other than the ohhh that returned to her from the walls and high ceiling.

  Her sister Maureen and Dad’s friend, Steve Manville, stood behind them. Maureen, who’d shared a bedroom with Mom until the pregnancy, was maid of honor. Steve, the best man and a point guard at St. Matt’s rival St. Michael’s, tugged at a light gray suit that had fit him better a year or two before.

  It was a Wednesday morning, about the time Fenway Park would roll up its gates for Game 1 of the 1967 World Series. Bob Gibson was pitching for the Cardinals. Dad’s beloved Tigers had finished a game behind the Red Sox for the American League pennant. The Tigers had fallen out of first place for good the day I was born, which probably only helped to further stir up those hours. Like most of the guys in the neighborhood, Dad liked Willie Horton and Norm Cash and Bill Freehan and the pitchers Denny McLain and Mickey Lolich. But he loved Al Kaline, No. 6, the Tigers’ powerful and elegant right fielder.

  For those two weeks, however, Dad hardly had given baseball a thought, and then he was only vaguely aware the World Series should be starting any day. Instead, he was standing in the church, ready to be married, except there was no priest. They’d scheduled for ten o’clock in the morning so Dad could get to the Chevrolet plant on time, but ten had passed and still the room was quiet except for the hollow sighs. The doors to the church opened and when everyone turned, expecting the priest to walk in, Mom’s parents entered, and then Dad’s mother with Ed, one of Dad’s brothers. Cheri, Mom’s younger sister, arrived. She was still in high school, attending St. Agnes, and so was in the neighborhood.

  The marriage having been put off once because of my premature arrival, the wedding party spread across the St. Agnes campus in the hopes of finding someone in a stiff white collar to perform the ceremony. Since it was a Catholic school, the odds seemed good. Father Maurice Olk, a big man whom Mom adored for his warmth and spirit, was on the football field, pacing between the 20s, breviary in hand, waving his free arm, rehearsing the day’s services. He’d forgotten the ceremony. Flushed, he led Mom back to the chapel. Dad had a job to get to, Mom a baby to feed, Cheri an English class to get to, so they’d barely gotten everyone together when Father Maurice was introducing Mr. and Mrs. Michael Abbott. The walk from the chapel’s front steps to the parking lot wasn’t especially long or scenic or romantic, but it would have to pass for the honeymoon.

  Dad had quit his job putting the roof on the GM plant. Actually, he’d been asked to leave and he’d surrendered. As was sometimes the case with Dad, it was complicated. While slopping around tar, he’d witnessed a coworker fall from the roof, then be taken away by ambulance. Dad kept reporting for work, but found it gradually more difficult to screw up the courage to get up on that roof and keep his legs under him. The job foreman grew weary of talking Dad up the ladder and suggested a new line of work. A couple weeks later, Dad was on the Chevy assembly line. He stood by as the engines crept past; if there was a yellow mark on an engine, he’d put a yellow part in it. That was the whole job. Later in life he would learn it was a crankshaft, but at the time he had no idea what the part was. If the part fit, great, he’d done his job. If not, he’d wait for the next engine to roll past and examine it for a yellow mark. The work was dirty; the shop smelled bad; he was dirty and smelled bad. He lasted thirty days before returning to a less hazardous position at GM.

  On the day he was married and for that month, he worked the second shift on the assembly line, clocking in at two, clocking out at eleven, putting in his time. Sometime after Dad left for work, Mom would report with me to a second-floor bedroom of the big family house in downtown Flint, lock the heavy wooden door behind her, and wait for Dad to get home sometime before midnight. Up there, we were safe from the neighborhood, from what Flint was becoming, and from Mom’s imagination, which had been roused by Dad’s protective instincts. When the three of us had moved in, Dad had walked Mom through the house, pointing out the door that had been broken down during a burglary, then the door a stranger had burst through one night while the whole family was in the living room watching The Donna Reed Show, and the windows that faced the busy road where people and cars passed. “You’ve got to be careful,” he told her. “Lock all these doors and windows behind me.” Instead, she scooped me up, went to the bedroom, locked that door, and read me stories and sang me songs.

  When Dad returned, the rest of the house was in play again. We went more than three months like that, killing hours in the Flint panic room. When Dad, as part of his National Guard commitment, reported to Fort Polk in Louisiana, Mom and I lived in her parents’ house. He was gone six months—the first two were infantry training, the second four medical training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. They spoke often and Mom sent envelopes stuffed with photos, many of them of me staring blankly into the camera.

  In the months that led to his time away and then while he was in the service, Dad yearned to be home. He hoped not to be called to Vietnam, but that wasn’t the reason for his petition to return to Flint before his required six months were over. From the afternoon in the maternity ward when
he was sure he was being punished for confusing the church’s preferred order of marriage, then conception and childbirth, Dad had grappled with the new uncertainty in his life. School, basketball practice, and work had been replaced by family and job, by paying bills, protecting his wife and son, and making a future for them all. The questions that chased him out of bed in the morning and kept him from sleep for hours at night seemingly had no answers.

  How would he take care of this little boy? And who would fix him? What would happen when he found out he was different? What’s a boy’s life without a hand? Without sports? How would he defend himself against all the cruelty out there?

  The worries that his son would grow up vulnerable, frightened, and alone hounded him. He’d carry those grinding insecurities for years, but never were they more relentless than in these first months, when he, too, was vulnerable and frightened. Dad became determined to make it all right, starting with moving us into the house he grew up in, where he was comfortable, and then holding a job. Six months later, upon his return from the National Guard, we became a family. If you didn’t look too close, I was enough like most babies. Dad chose to be the provider and the doting father. Where he once carried apprehension and could see only obstructions, he smiled when I did, and when Mom did. It was a start, Dad’s first move toward searching for hope and recognizing opportunity. As downtown Flint teetered toward unpredictability, we soon moved into an apartment on Flint’s north side, and a year later Dad bought our first house. Through the usual baby stuff, all the while we were creeping up on the greater problem of my right arm, which was small and weak and wouldn’t do much. Worse, of course, it ended at about the wrist. As I grew older, the structural condition of that arm and hand became less important—as far as my parents were concerned—than the condition of my self-esteem, particularly as I came to realize all the other boys and girls had two fully developed hands. Then we’d deal with what I was going to do about it. There would be daily physical dilemmas, daily obstacles and daily triumphs and failures, which never did disappear. But there was always tomorrow.