The Closer (18 page)

As a friend, I just want to help him see that. Help him think through the consequences of things. Help him understand that, probably more than any other player in baseball, he needs to exercise discretion or it’s going to blow up on him.

But I also think that people come after him much harder
because he is Alex Rodriguez. If Jorge or Derek had yelled at a fielder the way Alex did, I don’t think it would have become nearly as big a deal. You know how many times hitters and base runners have pulled similar stunts to try to distract me? You know what I hear when I go to field a bunt?

Third! one guy yells.

Second! another guy yells.

People are screaming at me from everywhere, trying to confuse me and get me flustered so that I will throw to the wrong base. It doesn’t work, because I keep my focus on what I have to do. If you are listening to what other people are yelling, then you aren’t as professional as you need to be. How is that different from what Alex does in this case?

And what about when infielders pretend to be fielding a throw from an outfielder to trick a runner? Is that okay, even though it’s outright deceit and could even result in a base runner getting injured pulling up at a base to slide?

I thought the whole brouhaha between the A’s pitcher Dallas Braden and Alex was also ridiculous. Braden had a fit a few years back when Alex ran across the mound to return to first base from third after a foul ball. Braden cursed him out and made Alex out to be the most evil person this side of Whitey Bulger.

Running across a mound? Are you serious? You are really going to worry about that, as if it were some kind of holy land? You think I’m going to get upset if you run across the mound after I get an out? You can do whatever you want. You can roll on the mound. You can dance on it. I don’t care. Because I’m going to get right back on it and go back to work, trying to get you.

I get the save in the “Ha!” game and just hope this is the start of a turnaround. It is my first save in almost a month, and only my fourth in a season that has had many more lowlights than highlights. Four weeks into the season, I have an ERA of 10-something,
and there is the annual chorus of doubters starting up, suggesting that I have lost it and that my days as a dominant closer are done. The doubters do not include me, so I honestly am not worried. I know how I feel and what my cutter is doing. I know things will come around and I will get sharper. The day I go out there feeling overmatched, or ill-equipped to get guys out, I will be out of there, and I won’t need anybody else to tell me.

The worst moment for me is probably a game at home against the Mariners when we start a rookie pitcher, Matt DeSalvo, who arrives from the minors and pitches a wonderful game in his big league debut, giving up three hits and one run to the Mariners, without striking out even one guy, a seven-inning effort straight out of soft-toss heaven. In the eighth, an ump blows a call when Willie Bloomquist tries to steal second, calling him safe even though Willie is out by the length of a fishing pole, and the Mariners wind up tying the game. In the ninth, I blow the game when Adrian Beltre mashes a misplaced cutter—supposed to be up and in, but it is out over the plate—for a home run, and we lose. The sting is always bad when you lose that way, but for me to shortchange young Matt DeSalvo, who spoke afterward about the “majesty” of the moment when he was about to throw his first big league pitch to Ichiro, really eats at me. The poor kid has nothing to show for his phenomenal debut.

In the clubhouse afterward, I seek him out.

You pitched a great game. I am sorry about the ending, I say.

That’s okay, Mo. It happens. I know you did your best, Matt says.

We head to Fenway for three games, and one of the tougher weekends Alex has probably ever had. He doesn’t know what the fallout will be from the photograph and how he is going to handle it with Cynthia, his wife and the mother of their young daughter, who is going to meet us in Boston.

It is not for me to judge Alex or lecture him on what to do. I am my own man with my own shortcomings. I know that he and Cynthia have a lot of talking to do, and the last thing I would ever do is inject myself into that process. I just always think that the best thing is to be honest and direct. Look inside yourself. Ask the Lord to purify your heart and share His strength with you. Humble yourself and try to set yourself on a better path, a righteous path, and know that the Lord’s forgiveness is boundless.

At the ballpark, to nobody’s surprise, the Fenway fans find great humor in the whole thing, wearing masks with the face of a blond woman and riding Alex unmercifully. With the score tied with two out in the ninth on Sunday night, Alex rips an 0–2 pitch from Jonathan Papelbon into the Red Sox bullpen. He has never had a happier trip around the bases, I guarantee you that. It’s the biggest hit of our season. I get the save. We take two out of three in Fenway. It is something to build on.

A few weeks later, we have a scheduled trip to Colorado. Our oldest son, Mariano Jr., is graduating from middle school. It is our first graduation as a family. I walk into Mr. T’s office.

You got a minute?

Sure, Mo. What’s up?

I know this is a lot to ask, but would you be okay if I didn’t make the Colorado trip so I can attend my son’s graduation? It means so much to me, and to our family.

I can’t recall ever asking Mr. T for a favor before. I’ve definitely never asked out of a road trip. He looks surprised. He pauses for a long while before he answers.

Mo, I would love to accommodate you. I really would. I understand how important it is to you and Clara, and to your son, but it would be really hard for me to do that. It sends the wrong message.
It wouldn’t be fair to let you do this and then not extend the same courtesy to others.

I hear him out, and I know that even asking this is putting him in an awkward spot. But for once, I am not my compliant, team-first self. I don’t think Mr. T understands the significance of this to me. I dropped out of school when I was just a little older than my son. My father dropped out even earlier. This day is something that needs to be celebrated properly, in my mind.

I am sorry, but I am going to go whether I have permission or not. It’s very important that I be there, I say.

I can’t stop you from going, Mr. T says, but if it comes to the eighth or ninth inning and we have a lead and we need you and you’re not there, what do I say to people? You tell me what I’m supposed to say. That you are gone without permission? I don’t know what you want me to say, but I can’t tell people I gave you permission when there are twenty-four other guys counting on you. I can’t do that.

Okay, I reply. I need to think about it. I leave his office and talk it over with Clara. I explain the conversation to her, and the more I reflect on it, the more I realize I cannot defy my manager and go to the graduation. It’s just not how I operate. When it comes down to it, I’d feel that I really let everybody down.

Next time I see Mr. T, I let him know I’ve reconsidered.

I will be on the trip to Colorado, I say. It wouldn’t be right not to be with the team.

I explain to my son: I want to be at your graduation more than anything, but the Yankees won’t give me permission to miss the trip. I love you and I’m proud of you, and I wish I could share this moment with you, but it’s not possible for me to be there.

Mariano Jr. is very understanding. The sad truth is that he, Jafet, and Jaziel are very accustomed to my being away and missing
occasions and events. Baseball has given our family an awful lot, but the schedule is not very forgiving.

We get swept in Colorado and I don’t even pitch. It’s pretty much how the season is going. Every time I think it’s going to turn around, we backslide again. We manage to get to .500 (43–43) for the All-Star break, so, psychologically speaking, it’s a new season. We forget the mess we made in the first half and start resembling the New York Yankees. In back-to-back games against the Rays, we outscore them, 38–9, pound out 45 hits, and wind up scoring the most runs in the majors again. We go 24–8 out of the break and suddenly are within four games of the Red Sox. A big part of the surge is our new secret weapon out of the bullpen, a hulking kid from Nebraska named Joba Chamberlain, who is twenty-one years old and overpowering the world. Joba throws 99-mile-per-hour fastballs, and his slider is an even better pitch. In his first twelve games, he doesn’t give up an earned run and strikes out way more than a man per inning, pumping his fist after every punch-out. By the end of the regular season, he has 34 strikeouts and 6 walks in 24 innings, and an ERA of 0.38. Of the 19 games in which he has pitched, we’ve won 17 of them. It’s fun to see a kid who has so much belief in himself, attacking from the first pitch to the last. I’m not one to get carried away and anoint someone as a future star after such a short sample of games, because to me that status is only achieved over time, but he’s been the next best thing to unhittable, and it is something to behold.

We’re in the playoffs for the thirteenth straight year, but for the first time in ten years, we are not the AL East champions. As the wild-card team, we open on the road against the Cleveland Indians. Johnny Damon drives a CC Sabathia pitch over the fence to start the game, and then Chien-Ming Wang takes the mound, a steady sinkerballer who won nineteen games for us in each of the last two years. There is no reason not to have a ton of faith in Wang.
He has won six of his last seven starts and handled the playoff pressure well the previous two seasons.

Then the game starts, and Wang is all over the place. In the first inning alone, he walks two, hits one, and gives up three singles and three runs. His sinkerball not only isn’t sinking; it is flying all over the park. By the time he leaves in the fifth, his line says nine hits and eight runs, and even though Sabathia is wild and we’re hitting him, it doesn’t matter. We lose, 12–3, and that makes Game 2 a must-have, and we’ve got just the guy we need on the mound: Andy Pettitte. He needs to go deep in the game, and hand the ball to Joba, who will hand the ball to me. It’s worked almost flawlessly from the day Joba arrived.

Andy proves yet again that his competitive makeup ranks with anybody’s. He has base runners on in every inning and gets out every time. In the sixth, Grady Sizemore hits a leadoff triple, and never budges; Andy gets Asdrubal Cabrera on a bouncer back to the mound, then strikes out Travis Hafner and Victor Martinez.

The game moves to the seventh, the only run coming on Melky Cabrera’s homer off of Indians starter Roberto Hernandez in the third. With one out in the bottom of the seventh, Jhonny Peralta doubles and Kenny Lofton walks, and Mr. T calls for Joba, who makes his postseason debut by striking out Franklin Gutierrez and getting Casey Blake on a fly to right.

The kid is amazing and without fear.

It’s still 1–0 as Joba comes out for the eighth and I warm up in the bullpen for the ninth. As Joba prepares to face Sizemore, he begins swatting and waving his arms around on the mound. It is not a stray mosquito or two. It is a swarm of little bugs called midges, and in the heat of an unseasonably warm fall night (it’s 81 degrees when the game starts), they are descending on Joba and his sweat-soaked neck and face by the hundreds, if not thousands. They are covering his neck. They are in his ears. Flying around his
mouth and nose and eyes. He keeps flailing and it does no good, and neither does the insect spray Gene Monahan brings out.

The bullpen is completely midge-free. I am not bothered once. Seeing Joba’s reaction, I can’t believe the umpires aren’t stopping the game. They stop it for a torrential rainstorm. Why not stop it for a torrential bug storm? Maybe because the midges aren’t nearly as bad by the dugout, Mr. T doesn’t fully grasp what Joba is going through and doesn’t push the umps to halt play. So it continues, and for the first time since he got to the majors two months before, Joba Chamberlain, strike machine, turns from a smoking-hot sports car into a wild and sputtering jalopy. He walks Sizemore on four pitches—a first in his big league career. He wild-pitches him to second, and two batters later, he wild-pitches him home to tie the game. The poor kid is doing all he can to keep his composure, but with the midges continuing the attack, he hits one guy and walks another, before finally getting Peralta on a slider away to end the inning.

Joba leaves the game. And the midges leave the field as mysteriously as they came.

We have a man on second in the top of the ninth, but Alex strikes out. I get the Indians in order and it goes to extra innings. After I get through a bumpy tenth—I strike out Peralta with the bases loaded—we do nothing in the top of the eleventh, our all-world offense so weak it has produced just two singles since the fourth inning.

When Hafner lines a single with the bases loaded off Luis Vizcaino, the Indians have a 2–1 victory, and we have another serious divisional hole to escape from.

Back in the midge-free Bronx, Mr. T starts forty-four-year-old Roger Clemens, who was lured out of retirement to help stabilize our rotation; but he has battled injuries and inconsistency, and tonight is no different.

Phil Hughes is stellar in relief, Damon and Cano sock big hits, and I save an 8–4 victory. So we need one more to take the series back to Cleveland for a fifth game. It’s Wang’s turn again, and, pitching on three days’ rest, his fortunes do not change, the Indians smacking him around for five hits and four runs in one-plus innings. We fall behind, 6–1, and though Alex homers and Abreu homers, it’s another game where we don’t pitch, or hit, well enough to win.

Our season ends with a 6–4 loss.

When I go into the off-season, I am like a fisherman going out to sea. I’m going to be gone awhile, and I don’t look back. I don’t think about baseball, and I don’t watch baseball. As much as I love the game, if I am not playing in the World Series, I don’t want to watch the World Series. It is no different this year, when the Red Sox are playing the Rockies, but it doesn’t take me long to find out that my friend Alex Rodriguez is back in the news. In the top of the eighth inning of the fourth and final game of the Series, FOX reporter Ken Rosenthal apparently reports that Alex is going to opt out of his contract with the Yankees.