Just Tell Me I Can't (20 page)

A couple of other pitchers are banged up as well. Pomeranz's next start is postponed due to a strained glute, and Chacin has a blister on his right index finger that limited him to 44 pitches in his last outing. But they're not forty-nine years old. Moyer worries that any malady, no matter how minor, will scare management off from making a commitment to him.

He knows he has no control over that. So he decides to control what he can, to live in the training room and to do Liba's exercises. Day by day, the tightness and soreness begin to dissipate.

Finally, eight days after his win over the White Sox, Moyer is given the go-ahead to try it out and pitch a couple of innings against the Diamondbacks' Triple A squad on a practice field. He gets banged around—four runs on six hits in less than two full innings—so the beat reporters can't figure out why he's positively joyous afterwards.

The groin feels much better, that's why. That is the real test. As for the results, Moyer felt too strong, having not pitched in over a week. When he's not a little fatigued, his ball tends to elevate. By the second inning, he was rediscovering his rhythm and the lower part of the zone, and he punched out the last two batters he faced.

“I think it was a step forward,” he says to the press.

Manager Jim Tracy seems to agree. “What I'm looking for over the course of the next couple of weeks is the question, ‘How does he bounce back?'” Tracy says. “More important, as we get in a position of stretching him out, how does his body respond from one outing to the next?”

Meantime, the other pitchers vying for a spot in the rotation haven't used Moyer's downtime to pull away. Chatwood has a start in which he records only 14 outs on 61 pitches. Pomeranz comes back from the glute injury and gives up three runs on six hits in four innings against the Angels' Triple A team. Righthander Guillermo Moscoso gives up five runs on seven hits in three innings against the Padres. Moyer is scheduled to start against the Giants on Thursday night, March 23. Karen flies in. A good start will help to ease any fears about his body's ability to recover and likely make him a frontrunner for the rotation. A bad start probably means retirement finally looms.

He sees the text when he wakes up. I've been immersed in Harvey Dorfman research, and I've sent Moyer a Dorfman quote: “To aspire to great achievement is to risk failure.” He reads it over and over again. Karen walks into the bedroom; her husband, on the verge of tears, looks up at her.

“What is it?”

He holds out the phone. “It's like I just heard from Harvey,” Moyer says wistfully, suddenly reminded of the impact Harvey had, and continues to have, on his life, even though Dorfman is gone.

Later, at the ballpark, Moyer has a very comfortable bullpen session. His mechanics are free and easy, his mind strangely clear and calm. The first batter of the game, Angel Pagan, smokes a sinker to centerfield, where Dexter Fowler, retreating, snares it. It turns out it will be the one and only time a Giant will get solid wood on the ball.

Four days ago, Moyer wondered if the pain in his groin would permit him to return to this spot. And he worried that even if it did, the setback would have spooked Rockies management. Now here he is, easily mowing down the Giants lineup. But that's baseball. And that's Moyer's career. Every time onlookers think he's done—every time
he
wonders if he's done—there seems to be a surprise waiting. Part of the answer to the question “Why does he do it?” has to do with the game's wonderfully unscripted nature. You just never know.

Moyer pitches four perfect innings. Twelve up, twelve down, including four strikeouts. Only twice does he go to three-ball counts. Of 45 pitches, 30 are strikes. The
Denver Post
calls it a “mini-masterpiece.” He added the cutter tonight, and, true to Harvey's quote, he was extra aggressive with the changeup.

The media wants to know if his performance stakes his claim to a starting spot. “You'll have to ask the guy down the hall [manager Tracy] about that,” he replies.

The pack dutifully goes to Tracy, who is effusive. “As I have said many times this spring, he looks like Jamie Moyer,” he says. “It certainly doesn't look like he missed any time last year.”

Before meeting Karen outside the clubhouse, Moyer texts me: “I achieved & took the risk tonight. I love these quotes. Keep 'em coming. Ur motivating me even more.”

It isn't exactly Moyermania, but the story of his comeback has become national news. After the win over the Giants,
The Today Show
calls. Moyer gets to the ballpark at 5 a.m. so Matt Lauer can interview him via satellite. The
New York Times
comes in and
MLB Tonight
sends a camera crew for a feature.

The White Sox are also back for one more shot at him. Moyer battles through four innings, after lobbying Tracy to send him out for the fourth. He accumulates his highest pitch count of the spring: 92, 53 for strikes. He gives up three runs, striking out four, and keeps his team in the ball game. He is 2–0 with a staff-leading 2.77 ERA through 13 innings.

After the game, Moyer heads back to Fassero's guesthouse. He is stretching out on the floor when the MLB Network feature on him airs. There's footage of him running in the outfield, playing long toss, fielding bunts.

“Is that what I look like?” he mutters to himself, a surprised lilt to his voice. “Holy crap. That guy looks pretty stiff.”

Moyer laughs when, on air, MLB Network analyst Mitch Williams, who is two years younger than Moyer but has been out of baseball since 1997, marvels at Moyer's comeback. “I like Mitch,” Moyer says. “We have a history.” It's a dubious history from Williams's perspective: in 1988, Moyer and Rafael Palmeiro were traded by the Cubs to Texas for Williams, thereby giving up 544 future home runs and 239 future wins from Moyer in exchange for 52 saves and five wins from Williams.

Meantime, the phone won't stop ringing. Rockies PR reminds him of an ESPN radio call-in tomorrow morning, where they'll play audio of his father-in-law's maniacal laugh for him.

Dillon calls to talk over his at-bats at Cal-Irvine. “Just concentrate on hitting the fastball,” his father says. “Don't worry about anything but making solid contact with the fastball.”

Jill returns her brother's earlier call. Jim and Joan are visiting with Karen in San Diego, and Jim got dehydrated and was taken to the hospital for fluids. “At some point, we're going to have to talk about Mom and Dad coming out and living with us,” Moyer says.

As he absentmindedly flicks channels while on the phone, Moyer's eyes widen when he sees that one of his favorite movies is on. When he's done talking to Jill, he turns up the volume. “I must have seen this twelve times,” he says.

It's called
Despicable Me
, and it's animated. “Wait till I tell Yeni, Kati, Mac, and Grady I watched this,” he says.

It's a safe bet that few other major leaguers are spending this evening talking to a college-aged son about hitting, a sibling about how to handle the aging of their parents, and watching—and loving—an animated children's film on cable.

“I've never been in this position before, Jamie,” general manager Dan O'Dowd begins. Moyer has called him to find out where his head is at—if the Rockies aren't going to make him part of the rotation, he wants to be released in time to hook on with another team.

“I've never had to make a decision on a forty-nine-year-old before,” O'Dowd says. “This is totally new territory.”

“Well, I was forty-nine when you brought me here,” Moyer says.

“You've done great, which is why I'm really struggling with this,” O'Dowd says. “We're thinking of signing you to a forty-five-day contract, to see how this goes, how your body holds up.”

“That wasn't the deal,” Moyer says. The deal was a one-year contract for $1.1 million if he makes the team.

They agree to meet in person the next morning. A flurry of phone calls ensues, Moyer to Karen, Moyer to his agent, Jim Bronner. It's going to be a stressful night. Meantime, Tracy is telling the media horde that Moyer in the rotation “feels like the right thing to do,” but that the front office was still deliberating over the pitcher's ability to recover every five days. Tracy goes so far as to speculate that Moyer would start the second game of the season, at Houston. That way, he'd be sandwiched between Guthrie and Nicasio in the rotation, two hard throwers and two innings eaters.

The next morning, prepared to ask for his outright release rather than accept a provisional forty-five-day contract, Moyer finds a contrite O'Dowd. “I prayed on this all night,” O'Dowd, a spiritual man, says. “You've done everything we've asked. You made this team. It's the right thing to do. If for some reason it doesn't work out, I want you to know that we'll find something for you in the organization.”

They shake hands. Moyer is a big leaguer again, though it's something of a bittersweet feeling. O'Dowd means well, but hearing him talk about it not working out is like a dagger, an announcement of the team's lack of confidence in him. It reminds him of when Don Zimmer came out to the mound that time in the '80s. “Get this guy out or you're going back to the minors,” he said. Zimmer may have been aiming for tough love, but the message Moyer took from him was,
I'm not on your side
. Now, over two decades later, Moyer has made the team, but he hears a similar—even if unintended—vote of no confidence.

In the clubhouse, Moyer approaches Tracy.

“I want to thank you for this opportunity,” he says.

“No need to thank me,” Tracy says. “You earned this. This isn't some handout, which is what I'm going to say to the press.”

On March 30, Tracy announces that forty-nine-year-old Jamie Moyer has made the team and will start the second game of the season against Houston. It's the twentieth anniversary of Moyer's release from the Chicago Cubs, when the offer to become a pitching coach was made.

Now it's two decades later and Moyer has one more start in the Cactus League, going five innings and giving up one earned run against Seattle. He finishes the spring with a 2.50 ERA in 18 innings. But, in a harbinger of things to come, the Rockies boot two ground balls behind him, leading to two runs and the loss.

Karen makes arrangements to look at rentals in Denver. Jamie Moyer starts thinking about the Astros' lineup.

O
n the day before his first ever World Series start, Jamie Moyer awoke in his penthouse apartment on Philly's posh Washington Square and made his usual trek up Walnut Street to Starbucks. On the street, despite what was being said on the radio call-in shows about his 0–2 record and 13.50 ERA thus far in the postseason, there was nothing but good vibes being sent his way. “We love you, Jamie!” yelled a college-aged girl walking a yellow Lab. “Don't take no crap, Moyer!” the driver of a plumber's van spat out his window, thumbs-up, the audio of one of those radio stations blaring through the window.

On those shows, fans fearful that yet another inevitable Phillies collapse was on deck were already preemptively lining up their scapegoats. “Moyer's great, but he's done,” one caller lamented. Another wasn't so diplomatic. “Put a fork in him!” he wailed.

The irony behind all the panic was that, though young Cole Hamels was commonly thought of as the Phils' ace—given the combination of his fastball in the mid-90s with a world-class changeup—Moyer had been the team's most consistent starter all year. He compiled a team-high 16 wins (against only seven losses) and a 3.71 ERA. Not only that, he'd been the Phillies' ace down the stretch, going 9–1 the last three months of the season with a 3.28 ERA, and winning the pennant-clinching game against the Nationals.

But the playoffs thus far hadn't gone nearly as well. In the first round, against wild card Milwaukee, Moyer ran into his kryptonite, something that seems to derail him a couple of times each year and send his ERA skyward: a shrunken strike zone. In those instances, when his precision on the corners goes unrewarded, Moyer finds himself consistently behind in counts, and ultimately has no choice but to throw fastballs over the meat of the plate. Against Milwaukee, home plate umpire Brian Runge consistently squeezed him, seeming to call every close pitch a ball.

Moyer keeps mental notes on the umpires in the same way that he logs his experiences with hitters (though he doesn't like to know who the ump will be until he gets on the mound, lest that information detract from his focus). He knew he had always done well with Runge behind the plate.

Always looking for an edge, Moyer would ride the umps in a good-natured way—it was his way of being friendly
and
, ever cognizant of the mental game, of taking up space in their heads. Runge would give as good as he got. They'd jokingly tell each other to “F off” before games; sometimes, Runge would write “F” and “U” on two baseballs and have the bat boy deliver them to Moyer in the dugout prior to a game. On this night, though, Runge wasn't giving his partner-in-joking any calls—and when Moyer peered at him, as if to say,
What the hell?
the ump removed his mask and made a subtle shoulder-shrugging motion. Moyer took the gesture to mean that things were out of Runge's control, that he'd been told to tighten the strike zone. Moyer wasn't surprised. Through the years, he'd had umps essentially apologize to him, explaining that they'd been warned or put on probation by the league and were under orders not to expand the plate. Consistently pitching behind in the count, Moyer lasted four innings and took the loss. Then, in the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers teed off on Moyer, chasing him in the second inning.

After that game, a reporter asked manager Charlie Manuel if Moyer was going to get another start. “I think he deserves it,” Manuel had said.

Walking back from Starbucks, Moyer's thoughts turned to his only other World Series experience: as a fan, in 1980. His idolization of Carlton culminated in that triumphant 1980 season, which followed so many heartbreaks, so many times the Phillies had come tantalizingly close to winning it all, only to fail.

The day after Tug McGraw struck out Willie Wilson to bring the hometown team its first ever Series win, Moyer and two buddies ditched school for the big city, taking a subway for the first time and joining the throng of crazed fans celebrating the big win at JFK Stadium, where the day's parade would culminate in a series of speeches.

When the team started making its way into the stadium on a procession of flatbed trucks, the loudspeaker blared the Philly Sound song “Ain't No Stopping Us Now” by McFadden and Whitehead, and Moyer was overcome by the emotional outpouring all around him.

Not only had Philly never won before, it had also suffered one of the worst collapses in pro sports history when in 1964 the Phils were up six and one-half games with 12 to play—only to blow the pennant. It was a crushing civic scar, as if the baseball gods had confirmed for a city that lived in New York's shadow that, indeed, it would never be quite good enough.

But now here were McFadden and Whitehead blaring and grown men crying and strangers hugging, hundreds of thousands lining the city streets and packed together in an ancient stadium, united in a common cause. Down on the field, Moyer saw Carlton, famous for his long-standing refusal to speak to the press, smiling and waving to the ecstatic crowd.

Amid all the emotion, Moyer felt the pull of his own World Series dream.
I want this someday
, he thought. And here he was, twenty-eight years later. He'd be facing the upstart Tampa Bay Rays, winners of 97 regular-season games, led by slugger Evan Longoria (or Eva, as the Phillies fans would derisively chant) and speedy centerfielder B. J. Upton. The teams had split the first two games in Tampa; game three just might determine the momentum, and ultimately the outcome, of the Series.

A few hours later, it dawned on Moyer that although the dream was becoming reality, it wasn't exactly as he'd fantasized.

Because he'd never imagined the diarrhea.

The Moyers are nothing if not clan-oriented; Karen's favorite phrase is “the Moyer, the Merrier.” So on the eve of Jamie's World Series debut a full eighteen of them dined at the Saloon in South Philly, a dark, wood-paneled Old World Italian restaurant. Talk about baseball karma: the Saloon used to be Steve Carlton's favorite haunt. While the adults drank red wine and dined on tender osso buco, Moyer, his stomach rumbling ominously, nibbled on some bland pasta. “I've got to get home,” he told Karen, before leaving the group and walking back to their condo.

Those in attendance suspected he may have been nervous, given that tomorrow would be the realization of a lifelong dream. The pressure was indeed on, but Moyer knew his newfound stomach woes had nothing to do with that. By the time he got undressed and was about to get into bed, the diarrhea started. Then the chills and fever came.

By morning, he'd sweated through his sweats. When he wasn't struggling to get to the bathroom, he lay motionless and weak-limbed. Karen forced him to take a few spoonfuls of soup and a bite of a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

“You better call Charlie and tell him you can't pitch,” Karen said at around 11 a.m., referring to manager Charlie Manuel, thinking that the manager might switch him and Blanton in the rotation.

Moyer was stunned. He'd always referred to baseball as his job—and he'd never called in sick. Karen didn't know it, but her expression of doubt was precisely what he needed to hear. After all, when Moyer hears someone say he can't do something, it's like he's been given a gift: now there was a goal, and it was to prove his wife wrong. “That ain't happening,” he said. “This is the biggest game of my life.” Ever since he first hooked up with Harvey, he'd been practicing problem solving; now here was the mother of all problems. He decided to shower and get back in bed for a couple more hours of sleep. And then he was going to work, where he'd, in his words, “gut it out.”

After his nap, Karen tried once more, telling her husband that he might be dehydrated and needed to go to the hospital. He burst out the door without a word, though, and was off into an overcast day with a forecast of rain. It was close to two o'clock, which, even though the game wasn't scheduled to begin until 8:30 p.m., meant he was late. Not by any standard other than his own; the Phillies didn't prescribe a certain time of arrival. No, Moyer had his own timetable for his elaborate set of pregame rituals.

On his way to the ballpark, he mapped out his gutting-through strategy. It was to focus on the minute-by-minute detail of his routine. He remembered Harvey telling him that so many—fans, media, even coaches—erroneously view an athlete's game-day routine as merely the manifestation of superstition. In the same way that athletes repeat physical acts so as to burn motion into their muscle memory—each ground ball scooped or high heater bunted a subtle signal to the body to get used to performing the function
by rote
—Harvey taught him that the same principle applied to the athletic
psyche
. You had to practice focus and being in the present tense so that on game day, you just
are
.

Everything Moyer does on game day is timed and planned to achieve laserlike focus by the time the umpire yells “Play ball.” Now here he was, confronting a potential mammoth distraction: a stomach in revolt, a fever, the cold sweats. What to do? Nothing but what he'd done since that Old-Timers' Game experience at Camden Yards in 1993, when the presence of Tom Selleck distracted him from his job. (
Really? Tom Freakin' Selleck?
he'll say now, years later, tragedy plus time amounting to comedy.) When Moyer steps out of his routine, as he did on that day in Baltimore, he feels like something is missing, like he's playing without his glove or without a shoe. He feels incomplete, and it takes him away from the task at hand. When that happens, he consciously returns to his routine, in the same way a Zen Buddhist blots all else out by returning to his own breathing, hoping that all the years of working on his concentration and focus will kick in, like muscle memory.

After scoring some Imodium from the team trainer, Moyer changed into shorts and made his way to the team's hydro room, which is filled with whirlpools and a hot tub. Moyer jogged on the underwater treadmill to get his muscles loose.

Every pitching coach and team doctor will tell you the same thing: for someone who has thrown as many pitches and logged as many innings as Moyer, his ability to recover in time to make his next start is astounding. Many mornings after a start, he says, his left shoulder feels as raw as a piece of meat hanging in a butcher shop. The layperson might take that as a sign to be still, to rest, to heal. Moyer learned early on that the best response to bone-crushing soreness is to get the blood flowing through the stiff spots. He devised a different running program for each day between starts (long-distance the morning after; foul-pole-to-foul-pole sprints on day two), and combined that with lightweight arm exercises to promote healing.

After fracturing his kneecap in Seattle, however, the running led to chronic knee soreness. So he looked for other cardio outlets; with Karen, he became a devotee of spinning. But then he met the HydroWorx 2000 and he was smitten. There was no pounding on his back, hips, knees, or ankle joints. Exiting the tub the morning after the most hellacious of starts, he'd feel the soothing, calming sensation of his body recovering.

Now, emerging from the water, the farthest thing from his mind was his growling stomach. Next came a visit to the weight room, which is always fun for a starting pitcher on game day, because that's where he gets treated like a kid on his birthday; it's considered
his
day, so he gets to select the radio station. Moyer's teammate, big ol' boy Joe Blanton, likes to blare honky-tonk music. Moyer, the game's last baby boomer, opts for classic rock—usually prompting his hip-hop shortstop Jimmy Rollins to mutter something under his breath along the lines of, “Led
who
?”

While younger teammates no doubt cringed to “Stairway to Heaven,” Moyer punched at the air, using three-pound dumbbells, working and stretching the serratus and rotator cuff muscles. A good twenty-minute stretch followed.

As he worked out, teammates would come in, chat, wish him well. Moyer is happy to be spoken to on the day of his start, unlike Roy Halladay and Randy Johnson, two of his most successful teammates over the years. “I want to be part of the group, I don't want to be excluded,” Moyer explains. “But Roy and Randy do things a little differently, and it works for them. You create who you want to be, and your teammates respect who you are.”

Next, at 5 p.m., Moyer changed into his Lycra pitching shorts and “sleeves,” the undershirt of his uniform. Because he's beginning to don the clothes he will wear on the mound, the adrenaline starts to pump—just a little. Meantime, he gathered his mental cards from his shaving kit—the concentration grid, the Dorfman-inspired problem-solving tips—and made his way to the same back storage closet as so many times before. Behind its closed door, he studied his cards, literally concentrating on his concentration, making sure to breathe deeply. Earlier, in the HydroWorx 2000 or the weight room, he was getting comfortable, clearing his mind and stretching his limbs. Now it was getting real. By the time he was saying the numbers on his concentration grid aloud (without pointing to them), he was beginning the process of narrowing his focus to the point that when on the mound he won't actually hear 46,000 screaming fans.

By 6:30, Moyer was hearing rumblings in the clubhouse that there would be a delay due to weather. He ignored the chatter, again concentrating on what he could control. So he sat at his locker and reviewed his many notes hand-scrawled throughout the years on every batter in the opposing lineup. Before the Series, the Phils' scouts had distributed their scouting report on the opposition. Moyer read the report, as did catcher Carlos Ruiz. But Moyer always trusted his own notes, and his own experiences, more. So, stack of old lineup cards on his lap, he went back in time, discovering the sequence and location of pitches that had worked for him in the past against the guys he'd need to get out tonight. Then he sought out Ruiz, and the two huddled over the lineup card and compared notes on every hitter.