Wherever I Wind Up (21 page)

One start? Are you kidding me? I’ve been with the Rangers my whole career. It’s the only team I ever wanted to play for.

Now I’m thinking I may have worn a Rangers uniform for the last time.

Jon and Buck and Goose are quiet and are almost ghost-like in their pallor. I take a moment to collect myself.

Don’t lose it, hang on,
I tell myself.
Keep it together.

When I think I’ve collected myself, I stand up and look squarely at each of them in succession. My voice starts to crack.

I understand why you are doing this, but I just want to tell you one thing: that outing last night will not define me as a big-league pitcher. It won’t. I can promise you that.

I shake their hands and go to my locker and throw my stuff in a bag. I scan the room and wonder if I’ll ever be in a big-league clubhouse again.

When I walk out this door, will that be it?

I pack up the hotel room. I wonder how Rick Bauer is going to do. Anne flies home with her dad so I can drive the car to Oklahoma City. She wants to come to Oklahoma with me, but I want to be alone. I want to brood. I head north on Interstate 35, out of Texas and the big leagues, a stretch of road I know all too well. It is hot and quiet and the red earth just goes on and on. I cross into Oklahoma and pass through towns named Lone Grove and Springer and Joy. I pass a sign for Crazy Horse Municipal Airport and a place called Slaughterville.

Slaughterville. How perfect. It’s where I spent the night before, getting butchered by the Detroit Tigers.

It’s a place I never want to go back to again.

TWO DAYS
after I arrive back in Oklahoma City, Jon Daniels calls me. I am in the office of RedHawks manager Mike Boulanger, alone. Jon tells me that the club is taking me off the forty-man roster again, or designating me for assignment, as they say in baseballspeak. (I had been put back on the forty-man when I made the big club.) So I am a used resin bag again, completely expendable.

The Rangers figure there is no risk of losing me, because—let’s face it—what’s the market for a thirty-one-year-old knuckleballer who has just given up six home runs?

The Rangers are right. Not a single club in the major leagues claims me. So I stay a RedHawk, go right into the rotation, and perform miserably. In one twenty-three-inning stretch, I give up eight home runs. Through my first eight starts, my record is 2–5 and my ERA is over 7.00. My shoulder’s barking and we decide to give it a rest and I spend a few weeks on the disabled list. I am marginally better when I come back. I try to keep in mind that I am still a knuckleballing novice, but how can I not wonder where this is going—where my life is going?

This switch to knuckleballing was supposed to make things better, not worse. I have so many questions, so many worries. Baseball is the least of them.

Anne is pregnant with our third child that summer. It should be a joyful time, with our two healthy girls and a baby boy on the way, but it’s not. I am worried sick about money, for one thing. We’ve just bought a house in Nashville. Anne and the kids stay there so we can save on the cost of a rental house in Oklahoma City. I go back to my nomadic days, staying with a pastor friend, at a Red Roof Inn, or at an Econo Lodge for $70 a night. When we go on the road, I check out of the hotel and haul my stuff to the clubhouse, then haul it back to the hotel when we return. I spend hours poring over our bank accounts and credit card bills and mortgage payments, trying to make the numbers work. We may not be going under, but I have a hard time seeing beyond my financial fears. I didn’t grow up with money, and when you are not used to having it, you want to hold on to every penny. I will troll around the Internet for hours trying to save fifty bucks on an air conditioner. If you give me the choice between a label and a bargain, I’m going for the bargain. Anne grew up in a notable Nashville family, with money.

Guess what one of our biggest marital issues is?

Hint: it’s not my pitch selection.

One day that summer Anne goes to a flea market, looking for something to put on the front porch of our new house. She finds these beautiful decorative urns. In a typical store they would probably be $300 each. In the flea market they are $100 for the pair. She knows how concerned about money I am and does a great job finding a bargain for something that she wants for our home. She calls me to talk about it. I immediately step into the hallway of a hotel somewhere in Middle America; you never want to have an argument with your wife in front of your roommate.

What do we need decorative urns for? What’s the point of it, other than to clutter up the porch? I say.

I really like them, R.A. They will look so nice. They fit perfectly and they really don’t cost much when you compare it to getting them from a store.

I don’t give a crap what they cost in a store. A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. Our resources are not infinite. We can live without decorative urns for now, don’t you think?

I keep badgering her. I am being totally controlling. A complete jerk. It’s not as if Anne is being reckless. On the contrary, she is being careful. She wants our home to look nice. I keep trying to beat her down, with my harshness and criticism.

Go ahead and get your urns, I say. But don’t complain to me when the next check you write bounces. Anne gets the urns. They’re lovely, I hear. They get stolen off the porch a month later.

It’s one more thing to argue about, one more marital sparring session.

Between mounting financial pressure on one side and mounting baseball pressure on the other, I feel like Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, Han Solo, and Princess Leia from
Star Wars
: Episode IV when they fall into a trash compactor and the walls start closing in on them. It feels as if the trash is getting squeezed right up in my face. That seems about right.

Because I feel like trash. I feel like trash for lots of reasons, one much bigger than the rest.

I have strayed.

I have broken a vow I made to Anne and to God. I have become what I promised to myself I would never become: a caricature of a lustful ballplayer. I am not a serial offender, and do not sleep all over town, but the scope of it doesn’t matter. What matters is the breach of trust.

I look in the mirror and I hate what I see, what I have evolved into. I feel distant from Anne, distant from myself. Even more, I feel like a fraud, in that the R.A. the world knows is so different from the R.A. who
I
know. I feel scared and burdened, and those feelings are overpowering my wobbly faith. So I resort to my time-worn strategy: I run. I escape. I get lost in books and go to movies, sitting in the back and eating popcorn. I play baseball for a living, which is an escape in itself. It is a life that can make you a perennial adolescent, where your needs and whims are catered to, and narcissism is as prevalent as sunflower seeds, a life that is about as un-family-friendly as you can imagine. People see the glamour and the big money of being a ballplayer, but they may not see the dysfunction and profound stresses it puts on wives and children. You are away for six weeks in spring training, and then you flit in and out of your family’s life for the next six months. You say “good-bye” more than any other word in the English language, and even if you try to be a dedicated family man, you invariably miss things. Hugely important things.

You know where I was when our daughter, Lila, was born? In a Chick-fil-A in the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, trying to get a connection flight home.

You know where I was when our son, Elijah, was born? In the visitor’s clubhouse in Round Rock, Texas, right before a start, my mother-in-law holding up the phone as Anne Dickey was giving birth. (There was no such thing as paternity leave in the minor leagues in 2006.)

When you are away so much, almost every conversation back home seems to be conducted in a pressure cooker, where you talk about new tires for the car, kids’ ear infections, and the swelling cell phone bill, all in rapid order.

If you have any self-awareness at all, you realize how uneven the distribution of responsibilities is. Your wife is going to the pediatrician and calling the plumber and meeting with the teacher, and you are working on your knuckleball grip in a bullpen session.

Your wife is reading bedtime stories and checking for monsters in the closet and then getting up first thing for school, while you are hanging with the guys after a game and sleeping until eleven in the morning. Don’t get me wrong: I work hard at what I do. I want to make the most out of every appearance on a big-league mound. And I love my work, and feel blessed to be doing it. But at the top level, let’s face it, it’s an otherworldly existence in which there’s all this adulation and fanfare and you travel by charter jet and stay in $350-per-night hotels, and it’s as if the whole world is telling you, not very subtly: You are very, very special.

I know in my heart I am no more special than any other of God’s children. I know that the kid in the clubhouse and the attendant in the parking lot are just as important in the universe as I am, and maybe more so. Maybe they are doing more to make a difference and to help people. Maybe they are more faithful to their beliefs. I’m just a flawed human being with an unreliable knuckleball, and in the summer of 2006 those flaws feel as if they are overwhelming everything else in my life.

I feel inadequate in every way possible: in my walk with God and especially in my role as husband and life partner to the former Anne Bartholomew. I am not giving her what she needs—and what she deserves. I have a picture of what a good husband should be. He is loving and kind and patient and loyal and makes his wife feel as if she is the only woman in the world. He knows how to tend to her heart.

I have no idea how to tend to her heart. That is not close to who I am. I am aloof and not often physically affectionate. I don’t routinely grab her hand or tell her how much I love her or surprise her with flowers.

I retreat from intimacy. Intimacy terrifies me. I know, more unconsciously than consciously, that it has everything to do with my past and the horror of my sexual abuse. My experiences have obviously shaped me, but I don’t live in the past anymore. I live in the present. When am I going to have the courage to face the demons I’ve been hiding and fleeing from my whole life? I can’t help but feel that if Anne had to do it again, she would want no part of marrying me. I feel alone. So does she.

Sometimes I wonder if you even love me.
Do
you love me? she asks.

Of course I love you.

Then why don’t you show it? Why are you always getting angry at me and tearing me down? Why are you tender and loving with the kids and not with me?

Well, it’s different with the kids. They need that affection. They need to feel loved and secure.

Don’t you understand that I need it too? Why am I the last one on line?

You aren’t last. I don’t know. It’s just easier with the kids.

Why is it easier? Why can’t you show me that you love me too? Why is that so hard?

Anne is 100 percent right, of course. But I can’t admit it. I am too walled off, too defensive. I find excuses. I blame it on her and her spending habits. I blame it on my bad ERA. I blame it on anything but myself. I go into rages and I am ashamed of that, and even more ashamed that I have lied to Anne and deceived her.

Before we got married I told her I was a virgin, and I was not. I never told her that I was sexually abused and never told her that I was exposed to pornography at a young age, the same summer that the abuse happened. I never told her how physical touch had become something I associated with being violated and bullied and taken advantage of. She had a right to know all of that and I didn’t tell her because I was afraid I would lose her.

Or was the guilt and shame so powerful, there was no way to begin to even speak about it?

So I clammed up. Made stuff up. That was unfair and manipulative, and now she finds herself in a marriage with a guy who may be well-meaning but is doing everything possible to push her away. A guy who is damaged.

A guy who, like so many other sexually abused children, is tormented and shamed.

I am having a difficult year on the mound, and an even worse one in my marriage. Every time Anne and I talk, I hold out hope that it will be amiable, but most of the time we argue.

One afternoon in early August, eight and a half months pregnant, Anne calls me. In the clubhouse. She has never done that before. She never would.

I think the worst. Has something happened to one of the kids?

We need to talk. You need to come home now, Anne says. She’s hysterical.

What’s wrong?

Come home now, she says. If you want any chance at having this marriage work, you need to come home now.

I can barely swallow. My throat feels constricted. All around me, guys are getting ready for the game. I have an idea what I am getting ready for, and I deserve it.

I tell Mike Boulanger that I have to take a three-day personal leave. He sees the look on my face and says, Go. I get a six a.m. flight to Nashville. As the plane descends, I look out at the Nashville skyline, terrified about what is going to unfold with Anne.

Carter Crenshaw, our pastor, meets me at the airport.

I am praying for you and Anne, but the one thing I can tell you is that you have to be completely honest with her, Carter says.

Anne is at her parents’ house. When I see her for the first time, her eyes are red. She looks as if she’s been crying for days. I want to dissolve into the rug in her father’s office. The wood still looks three feet thick and I feel about three inches tall.

Jen, a family friend and therapist, is there to offer support and help us through the process.

I want you to tell me everything, Anne says.

I don’t know what to say, where to begin. I’m responsible for her pain. My guilt is overwhelming. The next two hours are excruciating. I leave the house not knowing if our marriage will survive. I leave wondering if I’ll be one of those fathers who can see his kids only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other weekend.