The Closer (24 page)

Alex appeals the suspension on the same day he gets hit with it, making him eligible to play—and turning the clubhouse in Chicago into a full-blown nuthouse. I’ve seen World Series games where there wasn’t so much commotion, or so many reporters. I don’t care. I am happy to have him back. This is not a regular guy. This is a superstar guy. In his prime, he is one of the greatest ballplayers I’ve ever seen. He is not that anymore, but he is still a good player who can help get us out of our funk.

There is plenty about Alex that I can’t say I understand, but he has every right to appeal his suspension, and every right to pursue every legal avenue he wants to. He is my friend and my teammate, and, as I’ve said, to me that makes him like family. And you don’t cast aside a family member because he has made a mistake, or even many mistakes.

When I see Alex at his locker, I go right over and give him a hug.

Welcome back. What took you so long? I say.

Thanks, Mo. It’s great to be back. I’m ready to play some baseball, he says.

Let’s get this thing moving forward, I say.

Alex Rodriguez may love baseball more than anybody I’ve ever known. Baseball is everything to him. I love to play and compete, but after a game, I want to go home or go back to my hotel and not even think about baseball until the next day. He’ll watch another game, and then another game, and search for replays of the games he’s already watched. He’s as smart a ballplayer as I’ve ever played with. It’s why it’s so hard to understand some of the decisions he has made, not just with performance-enhancing drugs but in his spotlight-seeking ways. It’s not enough to be an all-time great
player, it seems. He wants to be at the top of everything. He wants to be the best, look the best, get the most attention, and all it does is make him baseball’s No. 1 whipping boy.

And this is exactly what I tell him, starting in 2009, when
Sports Illustrated
came out with its story that he had tested positive.

I think it’s wrong what you did, I say. I don’t like what you did. But I still am going to be there for you, pushing you forward, not dragging you down.

Alex’s return to the lineup doesn’t make much of a difference. We get pounded in the opener of the White Sox series when Andy has one of the worst starts of his career, and we lose the second game, too. We’re now just two games over .500 and have dropped two straight to a club that was out of the pennant race before Memorial Day, which makes the final game of the series that much more important. We need to get righted, and fast, because we’re ten and a half games out of first.

CC Sabathia delivers a big effort and we go up, 4–0, early, before the White Sox narrow it to 4–3. I get the ball for the ninth. The fans at U.S. Cellular Field give me a standing ovation on my final visit. I appreciate the sentiment and tip my hat, but I am pretty good by now at getting right down to business. I say my prayer behind the mound. The White Sox’s two most dangerous hitters, Alex Rios and Paul Konerko, are the first two guys I have to face. I get Rios on a foul pop-up to first. Konerko steps in, and on an 0–1 pitch he lifts a short fly to center. Two outs on five pitches, all of them strikes. I like it.

One more and we’re out of here,
I think.

Gordon Beckham, the second baseman, is at the plate. He has never gotten a hit off of me. I fall behind, 2–1, and leave the next pitch a little too far out over the plate. Beckham gets good wood on it and drives a double to right center. Now the tying run is at second.

I have thirty-five saves for the year and have blown only two. Adam Dunn is the pinch hitter. I have faced him four times and he has never hit a fair ball off me, striking out four times. I throw two cutters, down and away, and he takes them both for strikes. Doesn’t even budge. From the start of my big league career, John Wetteland, the Yankee closer before me, always stressed one thing above all else: Never let yourself get beat with your second-best pitch. When you absolutely need an out, you bring your best. Nothing else.

I need an out. Dunn, a big left-handed power hitter, is going to get another cutter. Dunn’s reaction to the first two pitches tells me he is looking inside, so I figure I will stay outside. Austin Romine, the catcher, sets up outside. The pitch isn’t quite on the corner, gets too much of the plate. Long known as a dead-pull hitter, Dunn has spent the last couple months of the season staying back and hitting to all fields. He swings and hits the ball sharply on the ground toward third. I wheel around, just in time to see the ball elude a diving Alex. Beckham comes around to score and tie the game.

I am incensed at myself for staying outside with the cutter again. He was so obviously waiting for an inside pitch he’d probably have jumped at it. I should’ve come inside, off the plate, and seen if I could get him to chase. But I never tried that. I stayed outside, missed my spot, and the game is now tied.

I strike out Carlos Wells to end the inning, but the save has already been blown. I have one more out to get in a game we really need, and I don’t get it. After the Wells strikeout, I make the walk that every closer hates: back to the dugout after you’ve lost the lead, if not the game. It’s the longest walk there is.

I can’t dwell on the failure, though. I have another inning to pitch, and I set them down in order, and when Robby crushes a homer in the top of the eleventh, I feel much better. When the
White Sox score two in the bottom of the eleventh, I feel much worse.

We head home to face the Tigers, and it’s another supercharged night in The Rodriguez Chronicles—Alex’s first game back in the Bronx since his return and since all the uproar about his suspension and appeal. Thousands of people boo him. Thousands cheer him, too. I wonder how the whole thing is going to play out, and if he can stay focused throughout the saga. We take a 3–1 lead into the ninth, and it’s my time again.

After I get the first out, Austin Jackson hits a double to left center. I get Torii Hunter on a comebacker. Now Miguel Cabrera, hulking Venezuelan ball crusher, the best hitter in baseball, walks to the plate. It’s down to the two of us. Cabrera is hitting .358 with thirty-three home runs (it’s early August, mind you), and as usual, he’s hitting the ball to every part of every ballpark. I approach him the same way I approach every hitter; it doesn’t change because of who he is. Sometimes I might pitch to a particular weakness a guy might have, but in the case of Cabrera, there really is no weakness, so I just go after him.

The Stadium crowd is on its feet. My first pitch is a cutter up in the zone, out over the plate, and his swing is not his best. He lofts a fly ball toward the first-base dugout. Lyle Overbay, our first baseman, goes over to the railing of the camera well but overruns the ball a bit and has to lean back. He stretches for the ball, but it falls probably an inch from his glove. Cabrera gets a big break and he knows it. I get another foul ball to go up, 0–2.

One strike away again.

One strike.

Finish the job. Close this thing,
I tell myself.

I throw a ball high out of the zone, but he won’t chase. The next pitch is in and Cabrera fights it off, grazes a foul ball off his knee and hobbles around, gets attended to by the trainer and Jim Leyland.
After a few minutes he limps back in the box, and I fire again on the inner half, and this time he fouls it off his shin. Now he is limping even more.

All I want is to get this game over with. I try to get him to go after a pitch that breaks off the outside corner. He doesn’t bite. The seventh pitch of the at-bat is coming. The way he is swinging at my cutter tells me he could be vulnerable to a two-seam fastball; it’s a hard sinker and if I hit the right spot down and in I think it will get him. It is my best shot, I believe, because it’s a given that he is expecting another cutter. I make my deep forward-bend and come set, then fire a two-seam fastball, violating Wetteland’s gospel, because I believe I can fool Cabrera by throwing what he’s not expecting. I might’ve, too, except that the ball goes over the heart of the plate, and just sits there. Now he rips away and the minute he makes contact I drop my head on the mound. I know where it’s going to land.

In the black.

Over the center-field fence.

No need to watch Brett Gardner give chase.

Wow, I say, as Cabrera hobbles around the bases. The wow is as much about what just happened as it is about the gift of hitting Miguel Cabrera has been blessed with. He handled two pitches that usually would’ve ended the game. He extended his at-bat.

And then he beat me.

For the second time in two games, one strike away from locking down a victory, I make the long walk to the dugout, mission not accomplished, feeling almost dazed, as if I’d taken a punch to the jaw. I have let the guys down.

We win in ten innings on a clutch single by Gardner, so that helps soften the blow, but the hurt just can’t get airbrushed out of the picture by a happy ending.

Somebody is going to pay,
I tell myself again, same as I did sixteen
years earlier in Cleveland, when Sandy Alomar Jr. hit that homer off me in the division series. Somebody is going to pay. How or when they are specifically going to pay, I can’t tell you. It’s the voice I give to my determination.

What happened tonight is going to make me smarter, stronger, better. It’s not going to shake my faith in myself. If anything, it’s going to deepen it. It’s going to make me redouble my resolve to get the next one.

When I get home that night, Clara rubs my back and says what I know is true:

Tomorrow will be a better day.

They are just about my favorite words on earth.

We get drilled on Saturday, so if we want to start turning things around we better get after Justin Verlander on Sunday. Alex hits his first homer of the season into the seats in left in the second inning, and we have a two-run lead as I take over in the ninth.

The first batter I face is somebody I know. Miguel Cabrera. I bring a sharp cutter that he swings through for 0–1, and after a ball, I put another cutter right on the inside corner. It’s 1–2. I go away with a cutter and he takes it for a ball, and on 2–2, I am not going the two-seam route, the way I did Friday night.

I am going with Wetteland, and my best. The pitch is up a bit, and it is over the plate. It is not where I wanted it—not at all. I know it before Cabrera even swings. He knocks it over the fence in right and now it is 4–3, and I am on the mound, talking to myself.

How could this happen again? I know he’s a great hitter, but I felt in charge of that whole at-bat.

And then, boom—he takes me over the wall again.

I get Prince Fielder on a line drive to third base, and now Victor Martinez steps in. At 0–1, I come in with a cutter, but again, I miss my spot, and Martinez takes a rip, and there goes another ball into
outer space, into the seats in right, tying the game and clinching a history I want no part of: For the first time in my big league career, I’ve blown three consecutive saves.

I stand on the mound and try to take this in. It is not easy. For the third time in five days, I have failed to do my job. Gardner is the hero again, hitting a game-winning home run off Jose Veras with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. We take two out of three, no thanks to me. I have seven weeks left in my career. I am not having a crisis in confidence. I believe as much as ever that I can do all things through Him. Somebody did not pay today, though, and that really bothers me.

It means everything to me to be dependable, trustworthy.

And I have not been either this week at all.

A week later, we are in Fenway against the Red Sox, and Sox starter Ryan Dempster decides he’s going to drill Alex. After a couple of awkward misses, he finally gets him. I can’t believe Dempster is so blatant about it, nor can I believe the way the fans cheer in delight. The venom coming from the stands—what people are screaming at Alex, and the looks on their faces—is ugly. Benches empty. Alex gets his revenge when he homers against Dempster in the sixth, and I wind up with my thirty-sixth save. I am hoping that this is just the spirited victory that will get us going.

Five games out of the wild-card spot with five weeks to play, we struggle through an up-and-down September, and it becomes clear that my final days are not going to include a pennant race. But what a memorable month. On September 22, the Yankees host Mariano Rivera Day. Clara and my kids and parents are there, and former teammates are there, and so is Rachel Robinson and her daughter, Sharon. And my dear friend Geno, too. They retire my number—Jackie Robinson’s number—and mount it on the Monument Park wall, and Metallica even plays “Enter Sandman” live.

It is beyond what I could’ve imagined, and leaves me filled with
so much gratitude and warmth, I don’t know what to do with it all. I pitch a scoreless inning and two-thirds in the game that day, and the perfect ending would’ve been a victory, but we fall, 2–1.

And now, four days later, we are there… the 1,115th and final appearance of my New York Yankees career. It comes against the Tampa Bay Rays. The gate opens and I make my last run in from the pen, the crowd standing and cheering. I enter with two on and one out in the top of the eighth, doing my best not to think about the weight of the moment, or saying goodbye. It is not easy. I quickly retire two batters, and then I walk back to the dugout and head into the trainer’s room in the clubhouse. My forearm is tight. I ask Mark Littlefield, the trainer, to put some hot stuff on it. He is working on my arm when Andy Pettitte walks in.

What are you doing here? I ask.

Jeet and I want to come and get you before you finish the ninth. What do you think?

Don’t do that, I say. Please don’t do it. You guys know me. I want to finish the game. That’s my job.

Okay, Andy says, and off he goes. With my forearm loosened, I get back to the dugout and sit on the bench. I don’t move right away even after our at-bat is over. I just sit for a moment and look at the mound and the field, before I go out there for the last time.

I have no idea how I am going to get through this. I’ve been good at holding off the torrent of emotions so far, but I pray to the Lord for strength, since I can feel the dam starting to weaken.