Wherever I Wind Up (16 page)

Bobby Cuellar, the bullpen coach, answers it. The conversation lasts about five seconds.

Cuellar looks at me.

You got the ninth, kid, he says.

I get off the bench and stretch a little and get on the mound. I start throwing easily and gradually increase velocity. I feel good. I feel strong. The bottom of the eighth ends and now it is time. No fooling.

It is time.

When I first met Anne in seventh grade, I told her three things were going to happen:

She and I would get married.

U2 would play at our wedding.

I would one day become a big-league ballplayer.

I am about to increase my batting average to .667.

I RUN IN
from the pen and try not to look up at the crowd or the size of the stadium around me. I steal a quick look at the family section, where Anne and my parents and everybody are sitting, but I don’t want to get caught up in it. On my first warm-up pitch to Pudge, my left leg, my front leg, is quivering, shaking like a bowl of jelly. It won’t stop. I throw several more pitches and it’s still quivering. I’m getting worried.

What if it doesn’t stop? What if I have to pitch from the stretch? I’m going to balk on every pitch. I wonder if any pitcher in history has ever had to bail out of a game because of leg tremors.

The first batter is Mark Bellhorn, the A’s third baseman. I look in and get Pudge’s sign. Fastball.

The quivering continues.

I wind up and fire and it’s over the plate, the inner half. Bellhorn swings and lifts a fly ball to left. One out.

Whoa. I feel better now, more relaxed. The quivering, mercifully, has subsided.

Sal Fasano, the A’s catcher, steps in. I throw two more fastballs. He pops up a 1–0 pitch behind the plate. Two out.

The next hitter is Mario Valdez, who has replaced Jason Giambi at first in the blowout. I miss with two fastballs and then throw another on 2–0. Valdez swings and pops it up behind third. Alex Rodriguez gets a good break from shortstop and races into foul territory and makes the catch not too far from the seats. The ball game is over.

As I watch the third out of my first inning in the big leagues, a perfect inning, settle into ARod’s glove, I feel a pure, sweet surge of elation. It’s one inning, a mop-up inning at that, but I’ve just set down three big-league hitters. It’s a good way to get it all started. I keep my eyes fixed on ARod and can’t wait to get the ball from him and hold it and smell it and give it to Anne.

It’s the only first ball I will ever have.

With my eyes still riveted on the scene by the third-base railing, I watch Alex Rodriguez take the ball out of his glove. I watch him put it in his right hand. Then I watch him flip the ball—my ball—into the stands. It all unfolds in agonizingly slow motion, the giving away of my precious keepsake, from glove to palm to a fan I will never see again. ARod trots off the field.

Did I really see this happen? Did he just throw the ball from my first big-league game into the stands?

I am in disbelief. I am deflated beyond measure. I watch the fan head up the aisle, and as I stand in the infield, accepting congratulations, I am half-numb. I feel great about what I’d done, but what about my ball?

I want my ball.

The handshakes are done. I walk to the dugout and go to the bucket where the batboy keeps game balls to give to the ump. I reach in and fish a ball out of the bucket. I put it into my glove.

I’ll pretend this is the game ball.
Nobody will ever know,
I tell myself.

I NEVER TALK
to ARod about what happened. He’s one of the greatest players ever and I am three days removed from Oklahoma City, so what am I going to do, cop an attitude with him? No. I’m sure he just got caught up in the moment and didn’t even realize it was my first big-league appearance.

But I have bigger items on the agenda, such as staying in the big leagues, and for a fringe prospect, that is by no means certain. We head out to Toronto for my first road trip. Jeff Brantley, veteran reliever and fellow Southeastern Conference guy—he went to Mississippi State—invites me to join him for lunch at a nearby mall.

That would be great. I need to get some clothes, anyway, since I didn’t get home before I was called up.

Okay, no problem, Jeff says. I’ll tag along with you.

At the store, I pick out a pair of slacks and a couple of collared shirts and a blazer. Jeff is with me as I comb the aisles, not saying much. I try a few things on and go back to the dressing room to change before I pay for the four items I want. After I get dressed and emerge from the changing room, I see Jeff standing at the register, signing a credit card receipt. Next to him are two large bags stuffed with clothes, shoes, belts—the works.

I glance at the receipt. What?!! The total is more than $1,200.

What are you doing? I ask him.

Don’t worry about it.

No, Jeff, what are you doing? I want to pay for the things I picked out.

You needed a few clothes, so we got you a few clothes. I’m happy to help you out.

I don’t know what to say, Jeff. This has got to be the most generous thing anybody has ever done for me. How can I ever thank you?

You know how you can thank me? Someday you do it for a rookie, he says.

We go to lunch and have a great talk about pitching in the big leagues and he won’t let me pay there, either. His unsolicited kindness just blows me away. The grouchy pitcher kicks my shoes, then Jeff Brantley buys me shoes, and a whole lot more. It’s a 180-degree turnabout in four days, and I’ll take it.

I make two more appearances over the next ten days or so, one good, one not so good. I’m throwing the ball pretty well, starting to believe that I can get big-league hitters out, slowly settling into the daily rhythms of life in the big leagues.

In the bathroom one day before a game, I turn to get a towel after washing my hands and notice something underneath one of the stall partitions. I take a step closer.

It is a syringe.

The sight of it makes me cringe, the shiny thin needle lying randomly on the tile floor. My mind races with thoughts about how and why it got there. I know as much about needles as I do about jewelry, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t a sewing needle. I don’t know if this syringe injected a Texas Ranger with insulin or cortisone or B
₁₂
or anabolic steroids, though you can hazard a guess when you run through the roster of my muscle-laden teammates. I’d never seen a syringe in a baseball clubhouse before. I’ve not seen one since. It may have been used for the most benign of purposes, but the mere sight of it makes me feel as though I am looking straight at Evil—like seeing a weapon somebody left behind at a crime scene.

I walk out of the bathroom and never tell anybody about what I saw. I want to think the best, try hard to think the best, but whatever chemical residue is in that particular syringe, there’s no denying the scope of the wreckage caused by needles around baseball, by the so-called steroid era, and by all the artificially fueled feats that came with them. I know two things about performance-enhancing drugs: they are pervasive, and I hate them, because they have hurt the game, and hurt me too. How many long balls hit by juicers would’ve died on the track and gotten me out of an inning if not for the extra muscle? How many balls muscled over the infield would’ve wound up in guys’ gloves? Of course, I will never know. Nobody will know. I don’t stay up nights thinking about it. I don’t forget the sight of the syringe on the bathroom floor, either.

The bottom line for me on performance-enhancing drugs is simple: guys who used them cheated. Cheated their opponents, their fans, the game. But it’s more personal than that: they cheated me too. Cheated all of us who didn’t succumb to the temptation. So, yeah, I don’t stay up thinking about it. But when I do think about it, I get angry, because cheating is cheating. The guys who did it robbed me of the opportunity for fair play and fair competition.

WE’RE ABOUT TO START
a weekend series with the White Sox at home when I find out that Johnny Oates has resigned as manager with an 11–17 record. His replacement is Jerry Narron. I’m sorry to see Johnny go. He’s not just a nice man who has been more than fair with me in my short time with the club; he’s a devout believer who balances his faith and the rigors of his job masterfully. Johnny used to joke that he had no idea how he made it to the majors as a catcher, because he couldn’t really hit and couldn’t throw a lick. He’s a man who was always willing to give an underdog a chance. The news gets much sorrier still six months later, when word comes that Johnny has brain cancer.

As for Jerry Narron, another ex-catcher, I don’t know him well—I haven’t had the chance to talk to him much—but I just hope he sees something he likes in me. That can be as important as anything. Baseball, I am learning, is a maddeningly capricious game. Sometimes whether a ballplayer gets a chance hinges on a coach or manager looking his way when he rips a home run in spring training or throws a nasty cut fastball on the black, or on a manager just liking the action on a pitcher’s ball or the liveliness of a player’s bat. I’ve seen fates be kind, and cruel. You can’t dwell on it, either way.

I believe Johnny saw something in me. Jerry, I have no clue about.

On the final day of the series, Darren Oliver is our starter. The first batter in the bottom of the first is Tony Graffanino, the Sox second baseman, who drills a ball up the middle that rockets into Oliver’s left hand, his pitching hand. It swells up immediately and Oliver can’t continue. Narron scans the relief corps and selects me to come in to take over. I get all the time I need to warm up, and proceed to get lit up like a gas can. Carlos Lee and Chris Singleton hit two-run doubles, and Lee and Paul Konerko hit back-to-back homers. My line is hideous—four and two-thirds, seven hits, six runs. I wind up with my first major-league defeat. My mood doesn’t improve much when I hear White Sox manager Jerry Manuel in a postgame interview saying that the Sox knew they had a good chance after Oliver got hurt because teams usually bring in one of their worst relievers in such a situation.

I file it away. You never know when you might need some extra motivation.

After the game, Doug Melvin asks me to come into Jerry Narron’s office. Dick Bosman is there too. It’s the Texas trinity, but they have not gathered to bless me.

We need another arm for tomorrow, since we had to use you for so long today, Doug says. We’re sending you back down.

The words send a chill through me, but I can’t say I’m shocked. I didn’t think I was a lock to stay up for the year. I don’t have a real high opinion of myself as a pitcher right now. Maybe they even picked up on that. After four appearances, twelve innings, and eighteen days, my first trip to the big leagues is over. I’m sad, but I’m not borderline homicidal, the way I was on the day of The Retraction.

Okay, I understand you need to do what you think is best for the club, I say. I thank them for the opportunity and shake their hands and walk out. I guess my gut feeling that Jerry may not be sold on me is not far wrong. He doesn’t owe me an explanation, and neither does Doug. It’s up to me to change their opinion.

I go back to Oklahoma City, to the apartment by the Dumpster, and Anne and I find out the best news: she is pregnant again. We thank God for this gift and make a decision not to tell anyone for at least three months; with the child we lost, we told everybody and that made it much harder when Anne had the miscarriage.

I wind up having one of my best years, going 11–7 with a 3.75 ERA in a notorious hitters’ league, using a fastball, a cutter, a changeup, and an occasional knuckleball—a pitch I’ve messed around with for years, ever since Granddaddy told me that he threw it. I wait for the call up to the Rangers when the rosters expand to forty players, but it never comes. This is a much bigger blow than being sent down in May. In September, clubs usually call up everybody who is remotely on the radar.

The Rangers not only don’t call. When I’m back in Nashville at the end of the year, playing for the RedHawks against the Sounds, Lee Tunnell calls me over in the outfield—I’m R.A. in this conversation, not Dewclaw—and tells me they have taken me off the forty-man roster, leaving me completely unprotected, free to get picked up by anybody. Lee breaks it to me as gently as he can. But he knows what it means.

We both know.

It means the Rangers think I’m worth about as much as a used resin bag. It means, one month from my twenty-seventh birthday, I am looking at an extremely murky future.

Or none at all.

Money is tight and getting tighter, so I take a job in the offseason working for a place called STAR Physical Therapy, doing ultrasound treatments. I work on middle-aged businessmen with balky hamstrings and eighty-year-old women with frozen shoulders, trying to convince myself I am something other than a 4A player. It is not an easy argument to win. By the time I start 2002 in Oklahoma City—and don’t even get a look at big-league camp—I am six years beyond the draft and doing a lot of wheel spinning. I look at the big picture of my career and it’s hard to see anything that resembles progress. When other RedHawks get a call-up that year, I find myself turning into one of those jealous types who thinks he should be the one getting the call.

I don’t like where my career is going—or not going. I do a lot of praying about it. I decide that I really need to start thinking ahead—and outside the baseball box. The fact is that at my age, with my track record, the end could be imminent.

I have to make plans for that contingency. In the middle of the season, I call my friends Trigg and Darlene Wilkes. I went to Trigg’s YMCA camps in Nashville for years as a kid, and he’s always been kind to me, a good-hearted soul who you could always count on. Now he’s based in Jacksonville, overseeing operations of some eight YMCAs along the east coast of Florida.

I think I’d have something to offer the YMCA, I tell Trigg. I grew up in the Y. I know the difference it can make in kids’ lives. Can we talk about any job possibilities there might be in case baseball doesn’t go anywhere?