A Book of Walks (2 page)

—Steve Kettmann

CHAPTER 1

TAKING MY DOG FOR A WALK

I still miss my black lab Jessie. We got her when she was a puppy, just six weeks old. We were living down near San Diego when I was managing the Padres and Elizabeth McNamara, a girl in the neighborhood, knew I wanted a lab puppy. I had two boys and I wanted them to grow up with a dog. Elizabeth was out in the countryside east of Poway, where we were living, when she saw a sign announcing that someone was looking to part ways with some lab puppies, actually they were three-quarters lab and one-quarter golden retriever. She called to tell us about those puppies, and it didn't take much urging. We hopped in my Ford Bronco and
drove out there to take a look. You know how it is: Once you pick up a puppy, you're done. Jessie was part of the family after that.

That was really how I got into going for long walks. As a former catcher, I had to accept years ago that I could forget trying to do much running to stay fit as the years added up since my playing days. I'd go in for workouts whenever I could, maybe lift some weights and try to work up a sweat on the treadmill, but I can't say it was much fun. Jessie loved nothing more than being with me, and she needed her exercise. So it became our routine: I'd take her for long walks. She was my partner. We walked everywhere together all over Poway, which is about twenty miles north of San Diego up the 15. It's beautiful country, with rolling hills and great views and all kinds of different trails. Jessie and I explored just about every route there was to explore in the vicinity. She'd walk right near me and I'll tell you what, that dog never needed a leash. I remember one time someone from Animal Control stopped me about half a mile from my house in Poway and gave me a hard time. This Animal Control officer reminded me a lot of Barney Fife from
The Andy Griffith Show
. I thought he was going to arrest me for letting my dog run free.

“You've gotta get that dog on a leash,” this officer told me.

The whole time, Jessie was just staring at him, like:
C'mon, give me a break! I don't need no leash!

What did this guy think, I had a pit bull here? Jeez, that dog never got more than two feet away from me. I'd have a leash along with me, just in case I ran into a Barney Fife character, but usually I just had that in my hand. Another dog might approach us, or a whole group of dogs, and it didn't matter. Jessie would never leave my side. That was where she wanted to be.

Jessie couldn't wait for those walks. She'd bring her leash over to me, bless her heart, and drop it at my feet and wait for me. Dogs are just beautiful. They don't care if you win or lose. They don't care what's happening when you're not with them. They're always glad to see you. It's a great way
to go through life. Jessie just enjoyed walking with me so much, and I took great pleasure out of watching how much she was enjoying herself. She just loved it.

That was a very special connection I felt with her when we'd be out for a walk. She'd look up at me and I always knew just what she was thinking or feeling. You can have somebody close to you and it doesn't have to be your wife, or another human, but your dog. I was thinking about her and what she wanted. She loved those walks for the feeling of freedom they gave her. If we were by a lake, it always made me smile to see her run and jump in the lake. It made you feel good that you were doing something that she loved, and of course you're getting benefit out of being there for a walk. It just gets you away from yourself to be out there walking with your dog. It clears your head. When you're done, you feel so much better. You get somewhat of a workout, but most important, mentally you get a break, and of course your dog is ready to lay down by you afterward and it's like she's telling you:
Thank you
.

I'd drive her over to the beach some days, which she loved, running along the sand and plunging into the surf. We were lucky, living in Poway, to have a popular dog beach less than twenty miles away, due west from us, next to where the San Dieguito River flows into the Pacific in Del Mar. That was an ideal spot for dogs, half a mile of beach for your dog to run around and play with other dogs. Technically it's known as North Beach, but everyone calls it Dog Beach — and it even earned a mention in
The Dog Lover's Companion to California
. “Dogs have so much fun here that they usually collapse in ecstatic exhaustion when they get back to the car,” author Maria Goodavage writes.

Other times I'd take Jessie on camping and fishing trips with me. People don't realize, but San Diego's got some country to it. I'd put Jessie in the Bronco and we'd drive away from the coast, picking up Highway 78 around Ramona and heading back into the wilderness there. You pass by Swartz Canyon County Park and once you drive past the little town
of Santa Ysabel, known for Dudley's Bakery and Julian Apple Pie Factory, you're almost up into the mountains. There's a historic town there, Julian, that didn't have much more than about 1,500 people living there. I'd take Jessie and my boys up there and we'd go fishing and camping, sometimes at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. We camped out there, right by the lake. I had a cattle rancher friend up in Santa Ysabel, Norm Feigel, whose family had moved to California from an Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. We'd go up and visit his ranch whenever we could. Jessie would run around his property and swim in the ponds, having the time of her life. Norm was a special friend, a man who lived an amazing life, working on the ranch starting at age five and serving as an Army medic in Okinawa after the war. He passed away in January 2015 and I sure do miss him.

I remember one time my wife and I took a three-week trip to Europe. We were there at the Louvre in Paris, looking at all this famous art, when we got a call from our son Greg, who was house-sitting the Poway house for us while we were gone. He was calling to alert us that a huge fire was raging in the area and we might lose the house. I was as concerned about Jessie as anything else, but Greg told me she was fine, if a little jumpy. The fire got so close, Greg was evacuated, and he did the best he could, grabbing some memorabilia and papers and whatnot and packing that into his car, along with Jessie, and heading a safe distance away to his home in Pacific Beach to wait out the fire. My wife, Kim, and I were going nuts over there in France, watching all these updates on CNN that made it look like the whole state of California was on fire. I'd call the house phone sometimes, just to hear the outgoing message on the machine. I figured if it was still playing, probably it hadn't been burned up just yet. We sure were distracted on that vacation. But when we got back, we found the fire had missed our street by a quarter-mile. Our house was fine. Jessie was fine. Soon we were taking our long walks again.

For more than ten years Jessie was my partner. Then one
time when I was walking her she just stopped and looked up at me, like:
Hey, you know. I can't do this any more
. The next day, she wanted to try again, but we made it one block from the house and that was it. She was hurting too much to go farther than one block. That was the end of our walks. She held on until May 2010 — she was sixteen years old by then and had lived a great life. She never cared whether we won or lost, but I still think she'd have liked to be around later that year for the first of our Giants' World Series championships. As much as she loved walking with me, I bet ol' Jessie would have loved riding in the car with me during the victory parade through downtown San Francisco.

CHAPTER 2

BACK TO THE PFISTER IN MILWAUKEE AFTER A TOUGH ROAD LOSS

It's well known in baseball that Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel, which first opened back in the 1890s, is haunted. I'm not going to tell you I've seen any ghosts there myself, because I haven't, but there are plenty of people who will tell you stories about seeing some crazy stuff there and I'm not about to call them liars. Pablo Sandoval refused to stay in the hotel with the team after an incident in 2009 when he said his iPod turned itself on and started playing music on its own — but he gave in after a while and decided he was going to stay there anyway.
As for me, my scariest story relating to the Pfister is about making my way back to the hotel one time after a game.

This was June 2009, my third season managing the Giants. We came into Milwaukee for a three-game series and dropped the opener, 5–1, Matt Cain picking up only his second loss of the season to go with nine wins. On Saturday, Barry Zito had a shutout going through five and we put up some runs to take a 4–0 lead. But then Milwaukee tied it up in the sixth on homers from Prince Fielder and Casey McGehee and that's how it stood in the ninth inning, knotted up 4–4. Trevor Hoffman, who had been my closer for many years in San Diego, came out for the Brewers in the top of the ninth to face the top of our order and we strung together three singles and picked up a coupla runs on sac flies. You never assume a game is over until the umpire signals the last out, but with a two-run lead going into the bottom of the ninth, we liked our chances. Brian Wilson struck out Mike Rivera for the first out, then Craig Counsell legged out an infield single and Mat Gamel worked a walk to bring the winning run to the plate. I was finding it hard to watch by then. That was a win we had to have. But after two singles to tie it, Prince Fielder poked a game-winning double and it was one of those games where you just stared out at the field afterward, blinking, trying to hit the rewind button, because you can't quite believe it slipped away so fast. That was a tough one to swallow. I was still half in a trance when I talked to reporters after the game.

“When you have a chance to put a dagger in them, you have to do it,” I told them. “We've had a hard time doing that this season. That's as tough a game as you can have — especially after we got two off Trevor and then we couldn't close it out.”

It's a funny thing. Over the course of the season there are certain losses that just stick in your craw. They bug you. You can't stop thinking about them. As a manager you fall into the old trap of second-guessing yourself, thinking through all your choices again, wondering if you'd missed something
or forgotten to consider something. There's no avoiding that. It's part of the job. What you have to learn how to do is avoid second-guessing yourself about the second-guessing. You have to keep yourself from riding yourself for riding yourself. I knew I had my hands full with the challenge of getting past that loss in Milwaukee.

The team bus back to the Pfister had left and I was about to get a cab when I stopped myself.
You know what?
I said to myself.
The heck with that. I'm puttin' some shorts on and I'm gonna walk
.