Wherever I Wind Up (20 page)

After a few weeks, I notice he’s not catching the ball as often. I am hitting him in the knee, the groin, the stomach.

I’m going to have to start wearing armor, he says.

I’ve never been happier about hurting someone.

I start a game against the Japanese national team, which is getting ready for the World Baseball Classic. I pitch well and strike out Ichiro Suzuki twice. In another start I shut down the Cubs for five innings. When I started throwing the knuckleball, I threw maybe two good ones out of ten. Now I am throwing five or six good ones out of ten.

One afternoon, after throwing on a back field at the Rangers complex, I ride back to the clubhouse with Goose Connor, who has replaced Orel Hershiser as pitching coach. Goose is behind the wheel of a golf cart, with me riding shotgun. Like Charlie, he is not inclined to gush or give you a football-style pep talk. His encouragement is much more measured. He’s like a background vocalist: never flashy, but you sure like listening, because he’s always solid and steady.

Keep doing what you’re doing, Goose says.

It’s getting to be the end of camp. The Rangers of that era are not known for pitching. They’re known for having a completely stacked lineup that tries to outscore the opposition. When one of the projected starters, Adam Eaton, gets hurt in spring training, it looks as though there are at least one or two starting spots that Buck and Goose are looking to fill.

Am I ready to be a starting pitcher as a knuckleballer? Can I help the Rangers win? My anxiety about making the club builds by the day. In my heart, I know I’m not yet where I want to be with the pitch. I also know I am getting close. The thought of going back to the RedHawks for a seventh season and hearing more chatter about running for mayor is not anything I want to dwell on. I pray for calmness and for the strength to keep working on my craft. Whatever the Rangers decide, I know God will not present me with anything I cannot handle.

On a late March afternoon, a clubhouse guy comes over to my locker.

Buck wants to see you in his office, he says.

Okay, thanks. I swallow hard. The moment of truth has arrived.

Have I shown them enough? Am I big leaguer again?

I’m not sure what to expect.

I walk across the clubhouse into Buck’s little office in the back of the room. Goose is there with him. I try to read their faces as I walk in the room, but they’re giving nothing away. I think again about Bird and how I have nothing to be ashamed of even if the news isn’t good.

Buck’s blue eyes fix on me. He wastes no time with preambles.

Congratulations, R.A., he says. You’ve worked your tail off and you’ve made the club. You are going to be in the rotation.

I pause a minute and let it sink in. I’m not stunned, but it’s still a life-changing thing to hear.

Thanks, Buck, I say. I really appreciate your faith in me and all the ways the club has supported me. I shake his hand and Goose’s hand and walk/float back across the clubhouse. I call Anne and my new agent, Bo McKinnis, and then I call the man who made it all possible.

Charlie Hough.

Hey, Charlie, this is R.A. I made the club. I just wanted to thank you again for all your help.

Woo-hoo, Charlie says. This is Charlie’s all-purpose exclamation. Whenever I throw a good knuckleball in front of him, that’s what he always says: Woo-hoo. It’s as good as it gets from Charlie. Woo-hoo.

We open the season against the Red Sox, at home. I am starting the fourth game of the year, against the Detroit Tigers. It is not only a new season. It is a fresh start, a whole new career.

I say a prayer of thanks. I can’t wait to get on the mound.

SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011

MINUTE MAID PARK, HOUSTON

Thank you, Aaron Harang, wherever you are. I don’t mean this flippantly, or obnoxiously. I mean it sincerely. I’ve never met Aaron Harang, a pitcher for the Padres, but he gives me a lift today and doesn’t even know it. Whenever I have a rough outing—and I had a brutal one here today—I have a strange custom: I go on my laptop and surf baseball websites until I find somebody who had an even worse day than me. It’s not that I delight in other people’s misfortune; it’s just that misery does like company, and after my eighth start of the year I am definitely looking for somebody to point to and say, “Hey, this guy’s a respectable pitcher and he got lit up too.” Harang gave up nine hits and seven runs in four and a third innings against the Rockies. Today he supplies the comfort.

I feel less miserable for knowing this.

Against the last-place Astros, I give up six hits in the first inning, get myself into a four-run hole, and wind up seeing my record fall to 1–5 and my ERA climb to 5.08. Man, is that a stink bomb of an ERA. A complete embarrassment. I settle down after the first and use a lot of fastballs and changeups for a few innings to get back into the game, but then in the sixth I get taken out of the park by Bill Hall and a pinch hitter named Matt Downs on an 0–2 pitch. My final line is 6 innings, 11 hits, 6 runs. My worst start of the year, by far.

If there is good news, it’s what I feel now, in my hotel room. Though I feel lonely and almost grief-stricken about the start, I can tell the feelings don’t consume me the way they once did. That is a big switch for me. It used to be that after a bad outing I’d take it out on everybody: I’d be a bad father and a bad husband and not a very good teammate, either. Now, thanks to the grace of God, I am able to keep my gaze fixed on things above. I do not get all worked up over critical media reports or bad statistics or lost games the way I once did. I passionately want to turn this season around and do well, but I truly believe that if this year doesn’t go as I’d hoped, it only means that God has something even better in store for me. What a peace of mind that knowledge gives me. I don’t know how Aaron Harang is holding up after his debacle, but after mine I am doing okay. I really am. I am already thinking about how I can’t wait for my next start. I remain unshaken in my conviction that I am better than this—much better.

I know some people in the organization who are getting mighty nervous—and maybe even panicking—thinking I am reverting back to the pitcher I was before I came to the Mets. But I honestly don’t feel too far away from where I was last year. I truly feel like I just need to stay the course and continue to work as hard as I normally do and this poor beginning will turn. The problem is that, like most folks, I am not judged in my occupation based on my feelings but rather my output, and my performance thus far—let’s be honest—has been shoddy. The dichotomy between what you believe you can do and what you actually are doing can wreak all sorts of havoc on your confidence. Being able to walk that tightrope well is something that separates good from great. To lament a bad outing is healthy, but to let it take you to a place of despair is competitive death. I am thankful that my frustration is motivating me to work harder, and trust that the hard work will pay off and that my knuckleball can—and will—get big-league hitters out consistently.

I have to believe that. If I don’t, why am I even here?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

KNUCKLEBALLER NON GRATA

I
am pedaling a ten-speed bicycle through the darkness, getting out of Dodge before any more baseballs fly over the fence. Baseball has records for everything. There’s probably a record for most doubles by a second baseman on an overcast Tuesday. Now I am two-wheeling on a back road toward a T.G.I. Friday’s, about the last place I want to be, thinking about my newest historical claim to fame:

Shortest-lived euphoria to start a season.

How could it get any shorter, really? One minute I am heady with the news that I am in the Rangers’ rotation, starting what I am thinking will be my thriving second career, as a knuckleballer. The next I am joining my fellow knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield, in long-ball lore, giving up six home runs to the Detroit Tigers.

One minute my wife is in town with my father-in-law to celebrate my new beginning and to look for a nice rental home to live in for the season. The next I am thinking that I may not need a house in Texas after all.

I park the bike outside the restaurant and find Anne and her father, Sam, at a table in the back. The back always suits me fine. I really want no part of dinner or the ersatz T.G.I.F. nostalgia, but I had told Anne I would join them after the game, never imagining that I would be doing so after making one of the worst starts in the last hundred years.

So I honor the commitment. I sit down and order my usual beverage: sweet tea. Anne comes from a long line of problem solvers, successful people who bore into troubles like miners drilling into bedrock. And so it begins again, she and her father launching their fact-finding mission before I’ve even chosen an appetizer: What was wrong with your knuckleball tonight? What can you do to correct it? Should you be throwing more of your conventional pitches?

The questions are well-meaning. They don’t know what to say, so I think they figure they’ll help me analyze things and find a solution. I do not want to analyze anything in that moment—not the game, not my career.

Nothing.

I just want to get through my Jack Daniel’s chicken and bike back to the Hyatt. A few times I shoot Anne a vaguely dirty look, a Do-we-really-need-to-do-this-now? look. I am terrible company. I give them terse, disinterested answers and mope and pick at my chicken. I am still half in shock, and that’s how I behave.

Back in the hotel later that night, Anne and I pray together before we go to bed, holding hands, asking God for comfort, peace, and another opportunity. I have a crappy night of sleep. I just hope that tomorrow is better. Early the next morning, I open the curtains to a perfect Texas morning, the sky deep blue. I say out loud, for Anne and myself, “Let’s remember, God’s mercies are new every morning.”

I barely finish saying “Amen” when I look down and see a white Hummer pull up to the hotel. A strapping young man gets out of the car. When he turns around I get a look at his face.

It is Rick Bauer.

I had met him in spring training. He is a former Orioles draft pick whom the Rangers signed after the 2005 season. He was slated to start the season in Oklahoma City. Now he’s checking into the Hyatt. You don’t have to be a sabermetrician to connect the dots. Bauer, a six-foot-six-inch right-hander, is here to join the big club, which means that somebody will be leaving the big club.

That somebody is going to me, I am pretty sure.

A shiny new Hummer delivering my shiny new replacement. Not exactly the answer to my prayer I was looking for.

When I get to the clubhouse that afternoon, Buck calls me into his office right away. It’s the same office where my knuckleballing career began almost a year earlier. Buck closes the door. General manager Jon Daniels and Goose Connor are in the office too. Buck has always been a big supporter of mine. He played the game, had some good years, but never got out of the minors. I know he doesn’t want to be doing this.

I am positive of it. But business is business.

We need a fresh arm for the bullpen. We had to use a lot of arms last night and we’re short. We’re going to send you out to Oklahoma City, he says.

I look at him and don’t say anything for a minute, for a good reason. I am crushed.

This will be my seventh season as an Oklahoma City RedHawk. It’s a town I’ve grown very fond of, but nonetheless a place that I associate totally with my mediocrity as a pitcher. I already own all the RedHawk pitching records. Is this going to be the top line of my baseball résumé: a RedHawk immortal? Is this how it’s going to end for me: another sad-eyed prospect playing out the string on the prairie in front of a thousand fans and a mascot?

It’s not quite how I envisioned it as a little kid.

Of course, I was brutal the night before. Nobody needs to tell me that. I just never thought I’d get only one start to prove myself.