Wherever I Wind Up (30 page)

I can’t thank you enough, Phil. This has just been a tremendous help. To have the chance to learn from someone like you is just priceless.

I have five hundred dollars in my pocket and try to give it to Phil. He looks insulted.

It’s been my pleasure, R.A., he says. You are a good athlete, I can see that. Remember to be one on the mound as well. If you keep working on being an athlete and getting your hips involved, I think you’re going to get where you want to go.

I will, Phil, thank you.

I drive north out of Atlanta on Interstate 75, feeling as if I’ve got an IV drip of adrenaline. I want to stop at every rest area and throw knuckleballs to Jeff. I want to stop at the Tennessee state line and throw more knuckleballs. I feel as if I’ve just been given the last big piece of a complicated puzzle, and now it all fits. Thanks to Charlie, I have the proper grip and the awareness of coming straight through the doorframe. Thanks to Tim Wakefield, I have the right arm path, releasing the ball and bringing my arm through toward my cup. Thanks to Phil, I’m firing my hips and exploding toward the plate, an action that is giving my ball a devastating finish before it gets to the plate.

You have an angry knuckleball, Phil says. It comes in so much harder than the way guys have historically thrown the pitch. That’s a tremendous asset if you can harness it.

I spend the remaining days before spring training in the Lipscomb gymnasium, refining my delivery, doing all I can to make sure the puzzle pieces fit snugly together. The difference in the quality of my knuckleball is striking; I used to throw maybe three out of ten that had a big late break; now it is happening with almost everyone I throw properly. The only downside is nobody wants to catch me. Jeff is beaten up and doesn’t want to do it anymore. A few college kids take turns, but lately when I show up with a glove and a bucket of balls, they suddenly have pressing commitments.

As I prepare to go to camp with my third organization in three years, the adrenaline drip is stronger than ever, and so is my belief that I can be something other than a mediocre major-league pitcher.

IN MY FIRST OFFICIAL
minute as a member of the Minnesota Twins, I slip into an old habit. I walk in the clubhouse of their spring-training complex in Fort Myers, Florida, and immediately begin to scan the place for my locker and number. It’s not because I want to know where to go. It’s because I want to know what they think of me.

If you are lockering next to veteran guys—Joe Mauer or Justin Morneau, for instance—and have a number in the thirties or forties, that is the best possible news. If you are in a neighborhood with the bullpen catcher and the second-string batboy with a number 81 shirt in your locker, you’re probably not going to need to shop for real estate.

It takes a little time, but I finally find my space—in a row with Joe Nathan and Francisco Liriano. My number is 39. This is welcome news, and spring unfolds auspiciously. In outing after outing, I am filling up the strike zone with as fierce a knuckleball as I have ever had. The puzzle is getting solved. I face the Orioles one afternoon in Sarasota, Florida. Brian Roberts, the Orioles second baseman is up. I throw him three knuckleballs and he misses all three—the last one so badly that the bat flies into the stands and he looks at the catcher and starts to giggle. (When knuckleballers get the giggle response—which really means
I am completely flummoxed and utterly embarrassed
—you know you’re having a good day.) I start some games, and throw out of the pen some games, all with good results. I am hoping to show my versatility with the pitch. I finish the spring with 18 strikeouts in 17 innings, 4 walks, and a 2.02 ERA.

Camp is almost over and I still haven’t heard anything. At my locker one morning, I get a tap on the shoulder from Rick Anderson, the Twins’ pitching coach.

Gardy wants to see you in his office, Rick says. Gardy is Ron Gardenhire, the manager.

My heart shudders. Shoulder taps are not good this time of year. Skip-wants-to-see-you-in-his-office messages are even less good this time of year. I don’t want to think about 2008, when I pitched my tail off for the Mariners and got sent to Tacoma, but how can I not? I want to hope for the best, but I’m not very good at that. Given my history of failure and disappointment, you can understand why.

You’ve pitched well. You left it all out there,
I tell myself.
Don’t jump to conclusions.

I walk down the hallway to Gardy’s office. It feels like one of those horror movies where the hallway seems like it’s on a treadmill: you keep walking and you never get there.

I finally get there.

Have a seat, Gardy says.

I sit.

We all love the way you’ve thrown the ball this spring.

Oh, no.

Thanks, I say.

You’ve been solid or better than that in every appearance.

Not again.

I keep waiting for the “but.” But it never comes.

You’re on the team, R.A. Congratulations. Scott Baker is going to start the season on the DL, and we want you to start the fifth game of the year against the White Sox.

Thank you, Gardy. I do not jump up and down. I want to.

I stay behind in Fort Myers while the team flies to Minnesota, and pitch six innings in a minor-league game. Then I fly north to join the team. It’s April 5 and opening day is tomorrow. It will be my fourth time on an opening-day roster, but my first since 2006. I feel euphoric, but I also feel dizzy from the unending ebb and flow of my career: I’m up. I’m down. Up. Down. Up and down again. Now I am up again, and I say a prayer to thank God for being such a real presence in my life and for giving me the strength to persevere. God knows me, hears me, disciplines me, and gives me over to my wicked self only to bring me back in a way that our relationship becomes more rich and robust.

Dear God, I am so grateful for the chance to live in the present unhindered by a past that has once haunted me. I am scared, but I am excited about my start on Friday. Thank You for this opportunity.

I want to add a postscript. I want to ask God for stability, to give me whatever I need to stay in the big leagues for a while … to allow me to have the one thing I have never had: a sustained run of success, a chance to be a truly valued member of a big-league pitching staff. I think of Hemingway and the final line of
The Sun Also Rises
:

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

I don’t pray for this. I don’t want to be greedy.

THE START
goes well in Chicago. It’s thirty-nine degrees and the wind is gusting up to about twenty-five miles per hour, and it feels like I’m pitching in the Arctic Circle. But I get through five and get the victory over José Contreras, and the best part of it is that Anne and our daughters are in the stands (Eli is still too young to spend a night in the Arctic Circle). Anne is with me in this as never before, and even though our marriage is a work in progress and we have our issues to resolve, I am so grateful for her love and forgiveness, for knowing my secrets and shame and still loving me steadfastly. Gabriel and Lila look at me with such love in their eyes that I just keep praying to be a father worthy of this love. When I started the work with Stephen James, he told me something I’ve never forgotten.

If you aren’t willing to face your demons—if you can’t find the courage to take on your fear and hurt and anger—you might as well wrap them up with a bow and give them to your children. Because they will be carrying the same thing … unless you are willing to do the work.

So I do the work. Every day, I do the work, and I am beginning to see big payoffs. Rich payoffs. Since I joined the Twins I have become close to Kevin Slowey, a fellow pitcher and Christian. We talk openly about our lives. I savor his friendship and I trust him with my thoughts and feelings. This is so completely new for me, being able to trust and open up to another man. The work is working. I know there is a long way to go yet, but experiencing the benefits of it gives me fresh fuel to get there, and seeing my children’s faces is the greatest motivation of all. They didn’t ask for my baggage and I am doing all I can to make sure they don’t have to carry my baggage. They don’t deserve to feel like they are a burden or a nuisance. Too often in the past I would be short with them and act put-upon around them, particularly before I had a start. They deserve to get my best, to be nurtured and to have their feelings validated. The work I am doing is helping me get beyond myself in ways I never have before, and to be a better father, a more joyful father.

I am a very grateful man for that.

Thank you for the blessing of my wife and children, Lord.

SCOTT BAKER
returns from the DL and I go to the pen, which was the plan all along. I am pitching creditably, and if my knuckleball is not quite as sharp as it was in the spring, it is still coming out of my hand well. The Royals come to town to play a weekend series in early May. The big news for the Twins is that our all-star catcher, Joe Mauer, is coming off the disabled list and is ready to start the season.

The Saturday game is a wild affair, 7–7 in the top of the eleventh. Craig Breslow walks the bases loaded and Gardy comes out to get him and calls for me. It’s a tough spot, made tougher because Joe has not caught me before. Honestly, I’m not sure if he has ever caught a knuckleball.

Gardy hands me the ball and says, Don’t throw your knuckler in this situation. Work with your fastball and slider. We don’t want Joe chasing it to the backstop and runners scoring, okay?

I am dumbfounded. Don’t throw my knuckler? That’s how I get people out. Throw my slider? Um, I don’t even throw a slider. I look at Joe. He shrugs and runs back behind the plate. I am a little unsettled at this turn of events. I should know better at this stage of my career, but I let it get into my head. I go up 1–2 on the Royals’ designated hitter, John Buck, but I am thinking way too much, feeling acute pressure to put my fastball in precise spots.

On the eighth pitch of the at-bat—all fastballs—I walk Buck, forcing in the go-ahead run. I want to scream. The one thing I couldn’t do in that situation, walk the guy, I do. The Royals have the lead now without even getting a hit.

I get the next hitter, Alberto Collaspo, to ground out on a sinker, but David DeJesus singles in a run on another fastball and I have had enough. I call Joe out to the mound. Listen, Joe, I know you haven’t caught me before, but I’ve got to throw my knuckleball. That’s the reason I’m here.

Let it rip, Joe says. I’ll be fine.

I hit Miguel Olivo with a knuckleball, and then get Tony Peña to ground out meekly to second to get out of the inning.

I don’t get the loss, and don’t even get the runs charged to me, since Breslow put them on, but I feel plenty responsible for us losing the game. I am decompressing, unhappily, at my locker when Gardy comes by.

I’m sorry I put you in that position. It wasn’t fair to you, and I should’ve known better, he says.

Hey, Gardy, don’t worry about it. It happens. I appreciate your apology.

I head off for the shower, impressed that Gardy would do this, own what he feels was his screwup. It’s a glimpse into why he’s such a good manager of people and why his players like to play for him so much. Gardy may have messed up tactically in this case, but did something infinitely harder when he came over to take full responsibility for it. I wonder how many managers would be secure enough, and grounded enough, to do such a thing.

My guess is: not many.

I appreciate it even more because I have had to take ownership of far more serious things in my life. I know how hard it is to do, and I also know the redemptive power there is in being able to do it. The longer I live, the more I come to believe that the ability to say the words “I’m sorry” is one of the greatest healing agents in the world.

I RECOVER
well from my Royals outing and pitch well for the rest of the first half. In ten appearances in the month of June, I give up only eight hits and one run, lowering my season ERA to 2.36 at the beginning of July. I am on one of the best rolls of my life as a knuckleballer, with a pitch that is more consistent than ever, and that has great finish. I feel as though I am really starting to synthesize all that I’ve learned from Charlie, Phil, and Tim, and developing my own personality with the pitch as well. Beyond that, I am getting so many repetitions throwing it that it is becoming instinctual and organic, with a repeatable delivery, which makes for a much higher percentage of strikes.

I play catch virtually every day with either Kevin Slowey, my best friend on the team, or Nate Dammann, the bullpen catcher. They wind up chasing a bunch of knuckleballs that they can’t catch, affirmation to me that I am reaching a new level.

After I get back from the All-Star break, Kevin develops a wrist injury and can’t be a catch partner anymore. Nate gets other duties assigned to him, so in the span of days I am stripped of my catchers. The only guy who is left without a partner on the team is Joe Nathan, our star closer, whose catch partner has gotten claimed off waivers.

Joe and I are friends, with an easy, cordial bond. We partner up after the break. The only problem for me is that it is Joe Nathan. Not that I’m intimidated. I just don’t want our all-star closer to take a knuckleball on the knee or have to chase the thing into the far-flung crevasses of the Metrodome. So I start backing off my repetitions. I start worrying more about Joe’s work than my own. I want to make sure he gets what he needs. I reduce the number of knuckleballs I throw by half during our pre-batting-practice catch time. I gradually start to lose my feel. I need my repetitions and I am not getting them. It’s not Joe’s fault. It’s my own fault for not finding a way to get what I need.

Faster than you can say Wilbur Wood, I have regressed into the R.A. of a year or two before: a vastly worse pitcher. After the break, I get knocked around so badly, my ERA jumps to the fours, the low point probably coming in Anaheim against the Angels, who pummel me for 4 hits and 3 runs in ⅓ of an inning. In early August, the Twins acquire Carl Pavano and need a spot on the roster.