The Arm (21 page)

Hudson stopped going to every home game; the clubhouse, where he always felt most at home, turned claustrophobic. When the Diamondbacks were on the road, he didn't always watch. He didn't want to fall back in love too quickly with the thing that had twice now crushed him. “I don't know what my mental state will be like when it's like, oh, shit, let's play catch,” Hudson said. “What if it pops on the first throw?”

T
ODD COFFEY SAVED THE GOOD
shit for days like this. From a toiletry travel bag he pulled a tongue depressor and a small plastic container with a fading label written in all-capital letters with no concern for punctuation:

MAY DILUTE 1:1 WITH COLD CREAM IF COMPLAINT OF “TOO HOT” RECOMMEND WEARING GLOVES WHEN APPLYING KEEP HOT MIX AND HANDS AWAY FROM EYES, NOSE, MOUTH MUCOUS MEMBRANES & PRIVATE PARTS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Inside the container was the scion of Sandy Koufax's Capsolin, a balm so potent it scared the heartiest pitchers today. “I don't touch that,” said Detroit Tigers starter Justin Verlander, and that was the kindest thing anyone aside from Coffey had to say about the Special Mix Hot Salve from Grubb's Care Pharmacy in Washington, DC.

Coffey called it Hot Cheese, and he loved the stuff. When he twisted off the cap of the container, a nostril-burning odor
assaulted him. The Cheese itself was a bright orange-yellow, like coagulated nacho gloop, and when Coffey really wanted a loose arm, he found someone willing to strap on rubber gloves, plunge the tongue depressor into the container, scoop out a thick dab, and massage it in from his shoulder to his wrist.

January 17, 2014, qualified as a Cheese-worthy day. Coffey sat shirtless in the bathroom at Physiotherapy Associates, a rehabilitation center in Tempe, Arizona. At 2:00 p.m., he was scheduled to ascend a portable mound in back of the facility and throw for scouts. One day shy of the eighteen-month anniversary of his surgery—exactly when Neal ElAttrache said he'd be back—Todd Coffey was finally having his showcase.

He took a couple of months off after ElAttrache removed the bone chip; he cranked back into form after Thanksgiving, slogging through Christmas and all the way to January 7 before he declared himself ready. The vital sign for Coffey was the movement of his sinker, and poor David Mendez—who didn't have time to put on a jockstrap and cup when he rushed to catch Coffey during school—needed an ice pack because of it.

“He couldn't catch me,” Coffey said. “He wore one right off the nuts. Seriously. Sinker. Off the nuts. He said it was the best one he's ever seen. I beat the shit out of him.”

Convinced he was ready to throw for teams, Coffey called Rick Thurman, his agent, and told him to schedule the showcase. “Once we have the showcase, he should be up around ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six,” Thurman said. “He's got to be there before I put the showcase on. I'd rather push it off for a week or two if you're not a hundred percent.” Coffey assured Thurman he was ready.

That morning, he woke up about 9:30, shook off his Ambien fog—Coffey had taken it for years and couldn't sleep without it—and arrived at Physiotherapy Associates about two hours before the showcase was scheduled. Michael Melton, his trainer, Cheesed up his right arm and got a good burn going. For the first
thirty minutes, it felt like his arm was self-immolating. It settled into a comfortable warmth, perfect for an arm that needed every bit of help loosening up.

Around 12:30 p.m., scouts started to show up. Coffey didn't expect them that early. Scott Reid, in charge of professional scouting for the Detroit Tigers, introduced himself to Coffey. Others poked their heads inside Physiotherapy to make sure Coffey was there and see if he looked the same as he did a year and a half earlier.

His arm lit up, the rest of his body warm from a quick treadmill run, Coffey asked Melton for the time. It was 1:15. “It's very nerve-racking,” Coffey said. “I'm very anxious. I just want to get out there and get it started. Get it over with.” He asked Melton to check the time again. It was 1:25.

Coffey decided to go outside and start warming up his arm. “My game plan is just to throw,” he said. “Show I'm healthy. Show that I have ninety-one, ninety-two in the tank. To be honest, it's ridiculous to think I'm going to go out there and throw ninety-five.” He unlocked a gate, which opened to an alcove with a mound surrounded by netting and a 120-foot diagonal area to warm up. The scouts followed him in to watch his preparation. They chitchatted with one another while sneaking glances at Coffey playing catch with Melton.

He rolled his shoulders in between throws, the heavy sun unlike anything cast during the winter in North Carolina. He started to sweat, at which point he asked Melton to look at his watch.

“It's 1:35,” Melton said.

“Only 1:35?” Coffey said.

He couldn't wait much longer. Coffey didn't want to run the risk of his arm tightening up. Thurman had a previous commitment, so he wasn't around to talk with the scouts and map out every step of Coffey's day. The catcher squatted in the practice area to get a sense of the movement on Coffey's throws. He
planned on throwing twenty-five pitches if things were good, thirty to thirty-five if they weren't going as planned.

“It's 1:45,” Melton said.

Coffey had a secret. He obsessed over the time because the showcase was probably going to be a disaster. A few days after telling Thurman to schedule it, Coffey woke up with soreness in his elbow. He threw again three days before the showcase, and it felt tight. Coffey knew he should have canceled it before flying to Phoenix. He instead trusted his arm and its capacity to recover and respond when it mattered. Five minutes into his warm-ups with Melton, Coffey realized it wouldn't. His range of motion gradually had receded back to more than 20 degrees.

He lifted the netting, walked onto the mound, stood on the right side of the rubber, took a deep breath. As Coffey stood on the mound, ready to throw his first pitch, he couldn't rid himself of one thought: “I'm fucked.” His first pitch that mattered in almost a year and a half came at 1:48, twelve minutes ahead of schedule. Every scout trained his radar gun on Coffey, and all but one spit out the same number: 88. The other said 89.

Coffey's sinker settled at 87 to 89. He popped a 90. Only one of his sliders tilted as expected. Coffey lost his footing during one pitch and fell down. Some of the scouts holstered their radar guns and took notes. “Still got bad body,” one wrote. The scout didn't know that in 1999, Cincinnati had told Coffey to report to spring training in better shape. He showed up minus fifty pounds. His elbow blew out later that year. Now whenever anyone suggests he lose weight, he says he'd rather not get hurt, thank you, and anyway, Jennifer likes him exactly how he is.

During the final few pitches, Coffey spent more time thinking about how to spin his subpar stuff than the slider he was about to throw. “I was like, ‘I've got to do some damage control,'” he said. “When they asked how I felt, I had to tell them I didn't want to peak too soon. You can't show weakness. You show weakness, they're like, ‘This guy's a pussy.'”

Jennifer stood behind the scouts, stealing looks at their radar-gun readings, a Louis Vuitton bag slung over her shoulder. On Coffey's twenty-seventh pitch, one scout arrived and wondered what was going on. After two more pitches, Coffey walked toward the catcher and shook his hand. The showcase was over. It was 1:58, two minutes before it was scheduled to begin.

Coffey introduced himself to each of the scouts and thanked them for coming. The scouts stood around, seeming to invite Coffey to converse more with them and give an update on his status. “This is awkward,” Jennifer said. She nudged Coffey to gather a few scouts and explain how he was rehabbing from his second Tommy John and expected his velocity to return in full when the adrenaline of facing live batters kicked in. They wondered about his plan, and he said he wanted to sign sometime in the next ten days and head to spring training with the rest of the pitchers and catchers. They nodded and told him they appreciated him traveling to the Phoenix area. And then it was over.

“What was I?” Coffey asked.

Eighty-seven to eighty-nine, with a ninety somewhere in there.

“I think you can throw a lot harder than that,” Jennifer said.

“I know I can, too,” Coffey said.

Coffey forced a smile. Something wasn't right. He wouldn't admit that now, not in the immediate aftermath of a chance he'd blown in spectacular fashion. This would be just a setback, another good story to tell his donor's family when he made it. Coffey changed out of his workout clothes, fled to his hotel, and showed up a few hours later at Oregano's, an Arizona pizza chain. He wondered what the scouts were telling their bosses, whether the lack of velocity posed a problem.

“I couldn't move,” Jennifer said over dinner. “I felt so sick. I thought something was wrong. This was not his level. You can throw so much harder. Is something going wrong with his arm?
I thought you were feeling pain or something. I was surprised his velocity was as low as it was.”

Coffey lied and said his arm felt fine. Admitting otherwise—that eighteen months and two surgeries still hadn't fixed him—wasn't easy. He wanted to hear feedback before he assessed the next move. One of the teams, he figured, would sign him on track record alone. He was eager to find out which.

“It's not like, ‘This is it, I'm done,'” Coffey said.

“You didn't say that two hours ago,” Jennifer said. “You said you were done.”

“Noooooo,” Coffey said.

“Yes,” Jennifer said.

“Done for the day,” Coffey said.

T
HE FIRST PITCHER TO RETURN
from back-to-back Tommy John surgeries was named Doug Brocail. To give you a sense of how hard it was, here is the type of thing he says on a regular basis: “Everything went smooth until I had the heart attacks in '06, and that was just a minor setback.”

Brocail lounged in a chair in the Houston Astros' bullpen before a June 2013 game, survivor not just of the elbow surgeries but a pair of heart scares that required an angioplasty. He was the pitching coach for the 111-loss Astros, a job he inherited when they fired Brad Arnsberg two years earlier. Daniel Hudson had undergone his second Tommy John surgery three days earlier, and Brocail knew all about it.

“I'd kill to have the kid,” Brocail said. “I'm not one of those guys that hears, ‘Oh, well, he's had surgery.' So what? I give two shits. I had thirteen of them. Three wrists, seven cleanouts. Eleven, twelve”—he pointed to his elbow—“and a shoulder. That's thirteen. That's just on the arm. I had the two hearts. Friggin' made my comeback, been in the league a month. Bend over to tie my shoe in Tampa Bay and my friggin' appendix explodes.”

Brocail is a walking scar, but it did little to stop him from playing fifteen years in the major leagues. The only break he took was from the end of the 2000 season to the beginning of 2004, a three-year sabbatical to mend his UCL. The first time Brocail blew out, he was like Hudson and so many others: stubborn, impatient, problematic.

“I followed the book at the ballpark,” Brocail said. “Away from the ballpark, I did a lot of stupid shit I shouldn't have done. Started throwing at three and a half months. And it was my fault. But when you see a guy go through this, I think the biggest recommendation would be: Listen, if you're achy at all, listen to your body. I'm a big advocate of ‘nobody knows my body better than me'—until the dumbass sets in. I had a lot of that at the time, and I figured, ‘Well, they don't know. I know my body.' Well, I don't know my body as well as I thought I did.”

At the sixteen-month mark, on the cusp of his return to the major leagues, Brocail blew out again. He was thirty-five and could have retired with more than $7 million earned. He refused. Players don't let go of the game that easily. You don't quit it; it quits you.

And that's what Brocail faced. Other pitchers had torn their UCLs back-to-back. None had returned from the second. Being a pioneer took patience. He didn't touch a ball for a year. Literally. He loved picking up baseballs, twirling them in the oversized paws that matched his six-foot-five, 250-pound frame, dreaming up new grips and different finger pressures, all the tinkering that makes pitchers pitchers. His willpower won out, and at twelve months, one day, he knew what the leather and seams felt like again.

Hudson wanted to return in half the time of Brocail. He first played catch on December 2, 2013, a little less than six months after his second surgery. He wanted to land in the fourteen- to sixteen-month range that
Hardball Times
writer Jon Roegele found correlated with more successful returns—Hudson penciled
in September 3 or 4 as his goal—and five minutes of throwing from forty-five feet that first day marked a familiar baby step. “The first couple throws I was kind of tentative,” he said. “After the first couple throws, I remembered how to do this.”

Hudson's reward for the milestone: unemployment. The Diamondbacks cut him that day. Hudson knew it was coming. Arizona needed room on its forty-man roster, and Hudson was going on two years' dead weight. He was a free agent, able to escape the clubhouse that felt like a sarcophagus and sign with whoever wanted him. Within the first twenty-four hours of Hudson's free agency, multiple teams reached out to his agent, Andrew Lowenthal, to gauge Hudson's interest.

“I don't want to go anywhere else,” Hudson said. “They've been loyal to me. I want to do the same for them. If I make it back, I don't want it to be anywhere else.”

Arizona wanted him back as well, and GM Kevin Towers struck a secret deal with Hudson: he would sign a minor league contract, and the Diamondbacks would put him on the major league roster at the end of spring training. The deal would include a team option for the 2015 season, so the Diamondbacks could secure Hudson at a cost-effective price if his rehabilitation went better this time than last. It was almost exactly the deal Todd Coffey dreamt of before his bone chip ended his first comeback attempt.