The Rotation (17 page)

Ultimately, an elbow strain knocked Blanton from The Rotation in May. The fifth spot was eventually plugged by the unlikely tandem of an embattled veteran and a rookie sensation.

Kyle Kendrick is the beloved little brother, the perpetual rookie, in the Phillies' clubhouse.

His teammates swiped his clothes and replaced them with a St. Pauli Girl-style costume at RFK Stadium in September 2007. Of course, he joined Chris Coste (Superman), Michael Bourn (Wonder Woman), Chris Roberson (beauty queen), J. D. Durbin (baby), Fabio Castro (clown), and John Ennis

(beer keg) as part of a rookie hazing stunt. Kendrick suffered the indignity of a plunging neckline and sexy skirt for one night of laughs and fun, understanding that next year he would be one of the guys laughing at the rookies.

Except his teammates swiped his clothes again in September 2008. And this time he found black chaps, a cod piece, eye patch, leather cap, leather whip, and chains hanging in his locker. Again? Seriously? Several months earlier,
Kendrick became a victim of a famous spring training prank. It started with just a few conspirators, but soon included teammates, coaches, and the front office. After a workout, Phillies assistant General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr. called Kendrick into Charlie Manuel's office at Bright House Field in Clearwater, Florida, where Manuel told him he had been traded to the Yomiuri Giants for Kobayashi Iwamura.

“You were one of the guys in the deal,” Manuel said glumly.

“I appreciate what you did last year,” said Amaro, referring to Kendrick's unlikely rise from Double-A. “You had a hell of a year for us.You're a classy kid, but I think this is a great opportunity for you to make a hell of a lot of money.”

“All right,” said an utterly stunned Kendrick while signing some paperwork.

Of course, Iwamura didn't exist. The name was a combination of the hot-dog eating champion Takeru Kobayashi and Tampa Bay Rays second baseman Akinori Iwamura. Amaro handed Kendrick a letter on official Phillies letterhead, while Frank Coppenbarger, the director of team travel and clubhouse services, gave him his itinerary for the flight to Japan, which was leaving at 7:05 the next morning.

Everything looked and sounded official.

“Do you have anything in Philly?” Coppenbarger said, asking about belongings that needed to be shipped.

“Uh, in Philly?” Kendrick stumbled. “No.”

Kendrick called his agent, Joe Urbon, who confirmed the news. Amaro then announced the trade to reporters while standing next to the stunned Kendrick at his locker. If Kendrick had not been so shocked, he might have wondered why a Comcast SportsNet cameraman was taping everything from the conversation in Manuel's office, to Kendrick breaking the news to teammates, to Amaro announcing a trade in such an unusually casual manner. But the dazed young pitcher wasn't thinking clearly, so when reporters started to ask him questions, like if he had the necessary shots to travel overseas, he answered them.

Finally, Brett Myers, one of the ringleaders, let everybody's kid brother off the hook.

“You know what I say?” he announced. “You just got punked!”

The clubhouse erupted in cheers and laughter as Kendrick breathed a sigh of relief. He took the joke well, which is why he is one of the most well-liked players in the clubhouse. He is a good spirit, and a good sport. There is an innocence about him, a naïveté. His ego hasn't soared from being in the
big leagues. He is still the buddy you call to help you move or pick you up at the airport. He hasn't changed.

The Phillies selected Kendrick in the seventh round of the 2003 draft. He had been recruited as a quarterback at Washington State University, but baseball was his first love and a $130,000 signing bonus, plus college tuition, convinced him to sign with the Phillies to begin his professional career. He replaced one of the Phillies' all-time biggest busts, Freddy Garcia, in the rotation in June 2007, despite not being on the 40-man roster or making an appearance with the team in spring training. He went 10-4 with a 3.87 ERA in 20 starts, earning a start in Game 2 of the National League Division Series against the Colorado Rockies. Not bad for a kid who thought he was coming from Double-A for one fill-in start that June.

Kendrick's career has been in flux since. His ERA ballooned to 5.49 in 2008 and he failed to make the postseason roster. He spent most of the 2009 season in Triple-A Lehigh Valley, where the Phillies ordered him to work on his secondary pitches. He went 11-10 with a 4.73 ERA in 2010, but again did not make the postseason roster. He always seemed to be fighting to stay in the rotation, trying to convince Phillies Pitching Coach Rich Dubee he was worthy, but entering this season he knew he had no shot. Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, Cole Hamels, and Joe Blanton had the rotation locked up. He would be pitching in the bullpen as a long man, unless somebody got hurt.

If that happened—and somebody always got hurt—he would be ready, and his teammates would be pulling for him. Everybody loves Kid Brother Kyle. They just show it in unusual ways.

Vance Worley probably had 40 scouts watching him pitch his final regular-season game at Sacramento's C. K. McClatchy High School in 2005. He knew what it meant. He would be selected in the first few rounds of that June's draft.

But then he felt a pop in his right elbow. He finished the inning, but his velocity had plummeted. The gaggle of scouts had seen enough. They packed up their radar guns and headed home.

“Everybody just booked,” he said. “They knew.”

Worley's chances of getting drafted in the first few rounds ended the
moment he sprained his elbow. He followed the first few rounds of the draft on the Internet, but no calls came. The next day he and his girlfriend decided to hit Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in nearby Vallejo. Right before he headed out the door, he randomly put on his Phillies cap. The phone rang. It was Phillies area scout Joey Davis.

“We just picked you,” Davis said.

Worley took off his Phillies cap—he had a collection of several different ones—and looked at it.

“I'll come by your house tomorrow to talk about what you want to do,” Davis said. “If you want to sign, I'll try to get a dollar figure for you.”

Worley talked with Davis the next day. The Phillies wanted him to try to pitch summer ball. If his elbow improved and his velocity returned, they would offer him second-round money, despite Worley being a 20
^th
-round selection. But Worley, who was just 17, wasn't sure. He had a scholarship to Long Beach State. If he tried to pitch in the summer and blew out his elbow, the Phillies would not pay him and he would jeopardize his college career. Worley decided to try college.

“You guys can try to pick me up again in three years,” Worley told Davis.

Worley had a nondescript freshman season and strained his elbow twice as a sophomore, which he blamed on the coaching staff for shuttling him from the rotation to the bullpen. He was upset, ready to leave the school, and prepared to tell off his coaches. But in his end-of-the-year meeting the coaching staff surprised him and spoke glowingly about his future.

He stayed, but knew he needed to make changes.

It was the birth of the Vanimal.

Worley had been a quiet kid, meek. He knew he needed to improve physically and mentally. First, he began to work out like he had never done before. Then he made an attitude adjustment. He decided to get mean and nasty on the mound, treating hitters like they had no business standing in the batter's box against him.

As a reminder, he took a Sharpie and wrote, “Fuck you!” inside his cap.

The changes worked.

“Sit down!” he told hitters after striking them out.

If he walked a hitter, he followed them up the first-base line.

“Why aren't you swinging?” he barked. “I'm giving you fastballs. I'm giving you something to hit.”

He pitched well enough for the Phillies to select him in the third round of the 2008 draft. He signed and went 3-2 with a 2.66 ERA in 11 starts for Class A Lakewood, bringing the Vanimal into the South Atlantic League. But he struggled in 2009, going 7-12 with a 5.34 ERA with Double-A Reading, while jumping up two levels. The Phillies almost traded him that July. They had a deal in place to send Worley and right-hander Heitor Correa to the San Diego Padres for Scott Hairston, but the Padres backed out at the last second and sent Hairston to Oakland instead.

Worley reported to Clearwater the next spring, looking to rebound and get his inner Vanimal back. But first Phillies minor-league instructors convinced him to get into better shape. They thought he had gotten too soft and put on too much weight the previous season, and that if he tightened up a bit, it would translate to improved success on the mound. He dropped the weight and went 9-4 with a 3.20 ERA in 19 starts with Reading before making his big-league debut on July 21. He went 1-1 with a 1.38 ERA in five appearances with the Phillies, including two starts.

He had gotten a taste of the big leagues, and he wasn't intimidated. The Vanimal wouldn't let him be.

He would become a fan favorite, in part because of his distinctive look. He is half-white, half-Chinese and Taiwanese. He has a Mohawk. His ears are pierced, something he did after his sophomore year at Long Beach State as a way to rebel after he couldn't bring himself to tell off his college coaches like he had planned. He has a dab of facial hair on his chin, which was against the rules in college, but biologically a challenge in high school as well.

“Obviously, being an Asian kid . . .” he joked.

But Worley's most distinctive feature is his prescription Oakley glasses, which he wears whenever he pitches. Worley has tried to wear contact lenses, but the man that scribbled the f-bomb in his cap and barked at hitters in college can't get the dang things to stay in his eyes. So instead of contacts, he has footed the bill for glasses.

“You pay for those?” Cliff Lee asked him early in the 2011 season. “You've got to call your agent. He'll get you hooked up.”

“I've tried,” Worley replied.

Worley would need to get some wins under his belt before the Oakley rep started coming by and outfitting him with glasses.

Those wins would come quicker than he expected.

A
couple of months after the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, Carlos Ruiz was relaxing at home in Panama.

His telephone rang.

The man on the other end wanted to know why Ruiz wasn't going to play for his country in the World Baseball Classic in March 2009.

Ruiz' answer was not a surprise to anyone who knows how dedicated he is to his pitching staff. And that's just the way he looks at it—as
his pitching staff
.

“I think I need to stay in camp and work with my pitchers,” the Phillies catcher told the man in Spanish.

The man on the other end of the telephone said he understood Ruiz' reasoning, but before saying
adios
asked Ruiz to give it a little more thought.

“This is for your country,” Martin Torrijos told Ruiz before hanging up.

Ruiz reconsidered and ended up playing in the WBC.

Why?

“Because I love Panama,” he said.

“And how could I say no to our president?”

No starting pitching rotation can stand alone. Even the best of pitchers need to be backed by firm defense, solid run support, and good bullpen work. A slipup in any one of these areas can unravel even the best of starts. It could be argued that above all, a starting pitcher needs a soul mate, someone to team with mentally, physically, and sometimes emotionally, from the late-afternoon game-planning session, to the bullpen warm-up, to the final pitch of the night, and, if all has gone well, to the postgame victory beverage, be it a cold beer or a protein shake.