The Closer (22 page)

Young swings through it. Jorge points his glove at me. Getting him has everything to do with working both sides of the plate, and then hitting that last spot. Some outs are more gratifying than others; this is a very good out.

One pitch later, I get Josh Hamilton in on the fists and he hits a slow bouncer to third for the final out, and a stirring comeback victory. But being three victories away from returning to the Series doesn’t mean anything, because we don’t come close to getting them. Almost every battle for the rest of the ALCS is won by the Rangers, who outpitch us, outhit us, and outplay us. They also outscore us, 38–19, winning in six games. Hamilton so terrorizes us with his four homers and seven RBIs in six games that we give him the Barry Bonds treatment and intentionally walk him three times in one game. He is named the ALCS Most Valuable Player, and deservedly so.

Some things change. In the World Series, Hamilton’s bat goes cold and the Rangers lose in five games to the Giants.

But some things don’t.

I don’t watch.

I turn forty-one a month after our season ends and am already well into my off-season routine, which includes lots of fitness work and little throwing, just enough playing catch to keep my arm loose. I make very few concessions to age. I eat properly and prepare properly and take care of my body, so I don’t think it’s a miracle that I am still doing what I am doing. I just try to listen to my body and give it what it needs.

If there is one thing I have changed, though, it is trying to be more economical about everything. Who knows how many rocks I have left to throw? If I can get a batter out with one or two pitches, why throw three or four? I throw 928 pitches in 2010, over 60 innings. They are both the lowest totals of any full season of my career, and for a reason: There is no reason to stress yourself unnecessarily.

In 2010, I threw seven innings in spring training and was ready to go. This year, I might not even throw that many. In my first game
action since I pitched the ninth inning of Game 6 against the Rangers, I face three Twins in the middle of March and strike them all out. One of them is Jason Kubel, who hit that grand slam the last time he faced me. This time he is caught looking at a 92-mile-per-hour two-seam fastball. It doesn’t take me long to get loose for a game, and it doesn’t take me long to get ready for the season. I don’t aim to be low-maintenance; I aim to be no-maintenance. My mechanics are simple, and, as with any machine, the fewer moving parts the better. I think again about my message to Jonathan Broxton and to Alex. Why complicate things?

On opening day of the 2011 season, at home, I keep up the economy and throw twelve pitches to three Detroit Tigers to save a victory for Joba. It’s an exhilarating way to start, but it still comes with mixed feelings, because my catcher is not Jorge Posada.

Nothing against Russell Martin, our new catcher, but when you grow up with a guy, and go to Applebee’s in Columbus with a guy, you have a different sort of connection. Jorge has caught more of my pitches than any man alive. That he’s not doing it anymore is sad for him, I know, and it’s sad for me, too. Apart from being a tremendous player and teammate, this man is like a brother to me, the two of us connected by one ball, two gloves, and a shared mission: Get outs, win games, and go home.

I go about my job with stoicism and calculated calm; he goes about his with fire and passion that spew like lava from a volcano. We complement each other perfectly and communicate so effortlessly after all these years that we barely need to use words. I can tell a lot just from being with him.

Jorge is thirty-nine, and in what will be the final season of a superb seventeen-year career. He is a full-time designated hitter now, and he’s having a difficult time adjusting to being a hitter and nothing else, to the point that he’s not hitting nearly the way he usually does. His frustration reaches a breaking point during a
weekend in Boston. Joe makes out his lineup and puts Jorge in the nine hole. An hour before the game, Jorge, in a fit of anger, pulls himself out of the lineup. Things only get worse when Brian Cashman goes on national television and details the reason for the late scratch.

Jorge and I have a long talk that night. His emotions run hot, sure, but Jorge is a man who can take an honest look at himself and make amends if he needs to.

I tell him, I know you feel disrespected, but this is not you—a guy who refuses to play. Sure, it hurts, but you need to make this right and do right by the team, because we need you and we need your bat.

You are right, he says. It was just the last straw, but you are right.

Jorge apologizes to Joe and Cashman and gets back to playing ball, and he shows what he is about on the most memorable day of the season, standing at home plate in the third inning of a game at Yankee Stadium against the Rays. It is July 9, a Saturday, and Derek Jeter has just belted a home run off of David Price for his 3,000th big league hit, another staggering achievement in a career that has been full of them. Jorge is the first to greet Derek, and he wraps him up in a massive bear hug, and I am next. Derek is on his way to a 5-for-5 day as we win, 5–4, and even for someone who supposedly doesn’t care about milestones, I am filled with joy at this whole experience, seeing a guy Jorge and I have played with for almost twenty years get to a place that even players such as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle never got to.

Jorge is there again just over two months later, this time to give the hug to me, on the day that I pass Trevor Hoffman and become baseball’s all-time saves leader with my 602nd career save. Martin is behind the plate for the occasion, and the Twins are the opponent, and when I catch Chris Parmelee looking at a cutter on the
outside corner, umpire John Hirschbeck comes up with his right arm and Jorge comes out of the dugout, already celebrating before “New York, New York” starts up, letting me know how happy he is for me, and what it means to him to be my friend. He and Derek push me out to the mound to soak up all the adulation from the crowd. He doesn’t want me going anywhere until I am properly feted, and not long after, Derek and I have a chance to celebrate Jorge, when he knocks in the go-ahead run in the victory that clinches another AL East title.

We do not defend our World Series title or even come close. We outhit and outpitch the Tigers in five games in the division series but fall in the fifth game at Yankee Stadium, 3–2. We get ten hits, but very few of them when we need it—the story of the series.

But the other story of our series is our leading hitter, who hits .429 and has an on-base percentage of .579, reaching base on ten of his eighteen trips. His name is Jorge Posada, and I am proud that he is my catcher, teammate, and friend.

T
HE OUTFIELD HAS ALWAYS
been my favorite playpen. It’s a place where you can roam free, chasing fly balls, trying to outrun them before they hit the ground, defeating gravity. It’s where I learned to love the game. If you ask me, there isn’t a better feeling in baseball than catching a fly ball on the dead run.

Even when the Yankees signed me as a pitcher, I still was a closet center fielder, harboring private fantasies of being an everyday player. In my heart, I knew I was going to make it as a pitcher or not at all, but I kept my little dream alive.

The next best thing to being an outfielder is playing there in batting practice. Or shagging, as it is known in baseball slang. A lot of pitchers shag, though for many of them it’s more of a social event than an athletic one. They hang out and talk, and if a fly ball happens to be in the neighborhood, they grab it. That’s not how it is for me. I am out there to catch every fly ball I can. I am out there to run hard. Loops around the warning track, running sprints from foul line to foul line, doesn’t do it for me. I want to run and sweat and get dirty. If batting practice is canceled because of rain or because it’s a day game after a night game, I am the most bummed-out guy in the ballpark.

A month into the 2012 season, we leave New York for Kansas City to start a four-game series with the Royals. The date is May 3,
our twenty-fifth game of the season. It is a Thursday. We get in late, so I sleep in and spend the day around the hotel, watching a little bit of the Animal Planet channel before going out to P. F. Chang’s for lunch. I eat by myself. I get to the park about four o’clock. I haven’t pitched since Monday, when I saved a game for Hiroki Kuroda against the Orioles. I don’t like to go so long without pitching; I’m hoping I get in the game tonight.

Before I head out to shag, I go over and greet my newest teammate, Jayson Nix, a utility guy who has just been called up from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to replace Eric Chavez, who suffered a concussion. Joe puts Nix right in the lineup, batting ninth and playing left field.

I change quickly and head out to the field. It is a beautiful spring night. I haven’t made any official announcement, but I am almost certain this is going to be my last season, and that makes me want to savor everything, every day, every pregame fly ball, even more.

I am standing in center field of Kauffman Stadium, wearing a navy blue Yankee Windbreaker and gray running shoes—my shagging uniform. It’s almost always windy in Kansas City, and today is no exception. Not far away are our bullpen coach, Mike Harkey, and David Robertson, my bullpen buddy.

Hark is a strapping man with a strapping son, Cory, who is a tight end for the St. Louis Rams. Hark is a good soul, a guy who helped launch my career, a fact I remind him of often. On the day I won my first major league game in Oakland, the losing pitcher was Big Mike Harkey, a former No. 1 draft choice of the Chicago Cubs who was taken fourth overall in 1987, just three picks after Ken Griffey Jr. My catcher that day was Jim Leyritz and my first baseman was Don Mattingly, and my shortstop, of course, was Robert Eenhoorn, a Dutchman. We raked Hark for seven hits and four runs, and I was the beneficiary.

Thanks for throwing all those cookies, Hark, I tell him.

No problem. Happy to help, he replies.

Hark is the perfect man to have in charge of a bullpen. He believes in keeping things loose and keeping guys relaxed, because he knows that when the time comes at the end of the game it’s often not relaxed at all. He once said that what he was going to miss most about me was the element of calm I brought to the pen. I do bring calm, but I also bring mischief. After I spend the first five-plus innings of games in the clubhouse, I typically arrive in the pen in the middle or end of the sixth. I fist-bump everybody and then start in, usually with my gum. It’s amazing how a bunch of grown men turn into a pack of adolescents when you throw them into a bullpen. I am at the head of the pack. The command I have with my cutter is nothing compared with what I can do with gum. An earlobe from ten feet away? I nail it almost every time. Either ear. When they are onto my gum heater, I change things up and stick the gum on somebody—Hark, ideally. On the seat of his pants, his back—there are plenty of good spots on Hark’s big body. My favorite is his jacket pocket, so when he jams his hand in there it gets good and gooey.

You got me again, he tells me.

You’re easy, I reply.

Batting practice is more than halfway finished when Jayson Nix, the new guy, gets into the cage. He swings and hits a long line drive toward the wall in left center and I am off, turning to the right, running hard, no mischief in mind now, only the ball, and getting it in my glove. Nix has tagged this ball, and it’s knuckling in the wind, but I am pretty sure I can catch up to it. I keep running on a diagonal line toward left center, eyes fixed on the ball the whole time. As I near the warning track, I notice the ball is drifting a bit back toward center. The KC wind is playing tricks again. The ball is on its descent now. I am almost there, about to make maybe
my best catch of the BP session. I feel the crunch of the track beneath my foot as I turn back slightly toward my left.

And before I take another step, a shot of pain blasts through my right knee.

It feels as if it’s ripped out of whatever is holding it in place, wobbling in and out. It’s the most pain I have ever felt. The ball bounces onto the track. My momentum takes me on a hop-step into the wall before I crumple in a heap in the dirt.

I try to scream, but no sound comes out. My teeth are clenched. Hark and David see my teeth and think I am laughing—just goofing around and pretending to be hurt. I am not pretending. My face is in the dirt and my knee is throbbing. I don’t know what happened, but I do know it’s not good. I can feel my knee moving around. You know me. I pray all the time. At home, behind the wheel of the car, behind the mound. I am not praying now. The pain is too fierce. I keep rubbing my knee, hoping that somehow takes the edge off of it.

In a second or two Hark and David and Rafael Soriano, who is also right there, realize that this is for real. Hark whistles to Joe Girardi and waves for him to come out.

Joe runs out to me and so does our assistant trainer, Mark Littlefield. Batting practice stops. I keep writhing.

Did you hear a pop? somebody asks.

No.

No sound at all?

No.

That’s a good sign.

I appreciate the encouraging diagnosis, but it’s not an easy sell right now. After a few minutes I am able to sit up. Hark and Joe and Rafael carefully lift me up and put me on the back of a green John Deere cart. It has groundskeeping stuff in it. Now it is hauling baseball’s all-time saves leader. My leg is propped up on the bed of the cart.

I hope it’s okay, Mo, says a fan from just over the center-field fence.

I wave to the guy as the cart starts to pull away, following the track by the third-base dugout, all the way around. A few other fans yell encouraging things, shout my name. I wave again. The whole thing is completely surreal.

What on earth am I doing on the back of a John Deere cart right now? How could something I’ve done thousands of times, with no problem, result in this?

As the cart continues into a tunnel, I start to think that maybe it’s not all that serious. Couldn’t it be that it felt terrible when it happened but it’s just a sprain or something I can come back from in a week or two? I actually can walk on it, and it doesn’t feel so bad anymore. It’s not even swollen.

Maybe this is just a freak thing and I’m going to be fine.
That’s what I tell myself.

I get into a waiting car with Mark Littlefield. It’s a little before six o’clock now and I am off to Kansas University MedWest Hospital for a magnetic resonance imaging test. It’s about a half-hour ride, which gives me time to run various scenarios through my head. I stay positive, because that is my default position, but I also am realistic. I am forty-two years old, and if the news is not good, well, what comes next?

Could my career actually end face-first on the Kauffman Stadium warning track? One of the writers asks Joe what it would mean if it turns out I need knee surgery.

If that’s the report, if that’s what it is, that’s as bad as it gets, Joe says.

We pull up to a boxy brick building and I get through the half hour of jackhammering. The tug of war in my head between optimism and realism keeps raging. When the MRI is finished, I ask the doctor how it looks.

He seems uncomfortable.

I haven’t seen the results yet. We’re going to get them as soon as we can, he says.

Something tells me he just doesn’t want to deliver bad news to me. I walk out to the car unaided, putting a good amount of weight on my knee.

It’s hard to believe it can really be that bad if I can stand and walk like this,
I think.

Another doctor I’d seen inside approaches the car.

I’m sorry to hear about your injury, he says. I know you are a Christian. Would you be okay if I prayed with you?

Thank you. Sure, I’d like to pray with you.

We both clasp our hands.

Lord, You are in control of everything,
the doctor begins.
Sometimes You do different things, and life doesn’t go as we want or plan. Lord, please help Mariano heal and give him the strength and perseverance to recover from this injury and get back on the mound. Amen.

It’s short and heartfelt and I thank him, and soon we are heading back to the ballpark. It’s the fifth inning before I am back in the clubhouse. I am not going to be heading out to the pen. Somebody else will have to play gum tricks on Mike Harkey.

I meet with Dr. Vincent Key, the Royals’ team physician. He is a young African American guy with a goatee and a shaved head not unlike mine. We are in the trainer’s room of the visiting clubhouse.

How does it look, Doc? I ask.

Well, I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mariano, but the MRI shows that you have a torn ACL and a torn MCL in your knee, Dr. Key says. It is going to require surgery. This can have excellent results, but you will almost certainly be out for the rest of the year.

I let his words sink in for a moment:

Torn ACL.

Torn MCL.

Surgery.

Out for the year.

The year.

They are hard to take in. Three hours earlier, I am romping around the outfield, doing what I love most, maybe in the last season I’d ever play, taking in every moment. Now I have the first serious lower-body injury of my entire professional career. I am looking at major reconstructive knee surgery and a long and grinding rehab.

Now who really knows what my future is going to be?

I thank Dr. Key and wait in the clubhouse for the game to end. We lose, 4–3. I stand in front of the whole team. I am fighting tears and not winning the fight. I share my diagnosis with them, and my orthopedic horror story:

Shredded knee. Major surgery. Goodbye, 2012.

I don’t know what to say about it, really, so I just start.

I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve let you down, let the Yankees down, I say. I feel really bad about that. You count on me and now it looks like I will not be able to pitch for the rest of the year. I know this happened for a reason, though, even if I don’t understand what the reason is right now. And I will tell you this… I am glad this happened to me, near the end of my career, and not to one of you younger guys, with all your baseball in front of you. I’m not glad it happened, but I know that with the strength of the Lord I can handle this.

Derek comes over and gives me a hug. So does Andy. Lots of other guys do, too. This is why I love being on a team. You share your triumphs and your troubles. You share everything. You are all in it together. You will do anything for the guys on your team.

When I meet with the writers, one of the first questions they ask is whether I will definitely come back. I’ve been dropping hints
about retirement since spring training—so they logically want to know:

Is this how it ends?

Almost instantly, I can feel all sorts of emotions welling up in me. I don’t know what to say, or think, and that’s pretty much what I tell them. I take a breath and remind myself I am not alone and that the Lord will give me whatever I need to get through this. I never ask, Why me?

I know that will not take me anywhere good.

I go back to the hotel and have a long talk with Clara. I cry on the phone with her for a long time. We pray together and she offers me the comforting words she often uses during difficult times. It is Clara’s balm, words that are almost as soothing as her hand on my back:

Tomorrow will be a better day.

The pain and swirling emotions make for a fitful night of sleep. I do not believe in agonizing over things. I cannot undo my knee injury, any more than I can undo the ninth inning of the 2001 World Series. When I wake up, my knee is as stiff as a piece of cement. Forget about walking unaided. I call Mark Littlefield and ask for crutches. It feels like a defeat, having to ask for them. But I am in a much better place, and have a completely refreshed outlook.

I am sitting at my locker in the visitors’ clubhouse, reporters all around me, my crutches propped nearby. It’s not even twenty-four hours since I lay writhing in the warning-track dirt, but a lot has happened in those hours. A lot has happened inside of me. I won’t be shagging, or saving games, any time soon, but I am not going anywhere.

I’m coming back. Write it down in big letters. I can’t go out this way, I tell the reporters. Miracles happen, I’m a positive man.

My surgery is delayed for a month because doctors find a blood clot in my leg that they need to break up. On June 12, Dr. David Altchek of the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York operates, and it goes well. He says the tear wasn’t as bad as it looked in the pictures. I spend the rest of the summer going through the pounding process of rehab, treating it as seriously as a World Series appearance. Four or five times a week, for three hours a day, I go through the array of torturous exercises I need to increase range of motion and strength, pushing, pulling, punishing myself. The pain on many days is as bad as, or worse than, the original injury, but I am dogged in my perseverance.