by Wayne Coffey
Then José hurt his hamstring and went on the DL, came back, and went on the DL again, and the air went totally out of the Mets balloon. He couldn’t run the same way, couldn’t dominate with his speed, wasn’t close to being the same player. He had only one more triple the rest of the season. About all he could still do was try to win the batting title, which brings us to the last day.
José and Ryan Braun of the Brewers battled it out right to game number 162. José led off that final game with a bunt single, raising his average to .337, then took himself out when he reached first, peeling off so quickly that latecomers or people who went to get a soda missed him altogether. José’s.337 average did, in fact, win him the first batting title in Mets history, but it came bundled with an avalanche of criticism and near hysteria that went on for days.
Was it selfish and cowardly to take himself out of the game, just so he wouldn’t risk the title by perhaps making a few outs? Didn’t he owe something more to Mets fans who paid good money to see him—in perhaps his final game as a Met, with his free agency pending?
The whole thing was very unfortunate, and to my mind, could’ve been handled better by everybody. At the very least, I would’ve loved to have seen José go out to short for the top of the second. Terry, who I believe did as great a job this year as any manager I’ve ever been around (our 77–85 record doesn’t come close to doing him justice), could’ve replaced him then and he would’ve gotten a huge ovation, I’m sure. If nothing else, his exit wouldn’t have been so sudden and jarring. It would’ve been a more fitting departure for a player who truly leaves it all out on the field.
Personally, I would’ve liked to have seen José play the whole game. He’s a guy who hates to sit—goes nuts when he has to sit—so to take himself out, even in a meaningless game, is contrary to his ethos as a ballplayer. I hate to see his stellar play all year sullied by the way it ended, to hear people say that he backed into the title. I appreciate the fact that the batting title was important to him, and don’t begrudge him that or judge him for it. We’re all entitled to our own goals. I know how hard he works and how much he punishes his body, every day. I also know how much it ate him to have his legs, the lifeblood of his game, break down again, as they have before. To see a man who gives so much of himself, who plays with such passion, being a spectator as the final innings of the season came and went just doesn’t seem to be the right image. I would’ve much preferred to see him flying around second with braids flapping and sliding head-first into third.
Now, that would’ve been a much more fitting ending for José Reyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
FINGERNAILS IN FLUSHING
I am on my way to Nationals Park, on the D.C. Metro. It’s Saturday on July Fourth weekend. The subway car is teeming with red-clad fans wearing Nationals T-shirts and jerseys, a smattering of Ryan Zimmerman’s number 11 shirts and a slew of Stephen Strasburg’s number 37 shirts. I sit in the middle of the car and listen to the fans banter. I hear a little boy, maybe eight years old, on his way to his first ball game, talking excitedly to his father, firing questions to his father about Strasburg—and why wouldn’t he? He is the most heralded pitching prospect in baseball in years, a kid who has single-handedly injected fascination into a long-moribund franchise, with his 100-mile-per-hour fastball and ridiculous curve.
I am eager to see him myself, because I am pitching against him today.
It is a matchup of almost absurd contrasts, young guy versus old guy, fireballer versus flutterballer, Anointed One versus Anonymous One. It is a match of an F-18 fighter jet against a butterfly. Every great story needs to have tension, and this baseball narrative should have it in abundance.
I am pretending to read Life of Pi by Yann Martel, but I am really listening to the talk in the subway car. Nobody has any idea who I am—one of the perks of journeyman stature. I hear my name a dozen or more times. It is a surreal experience, knowing I’ll be one of the protagonists in the drama in two hours or so, surrounded by people who will be attending the drama. I am not far from a guy who is reading the Wall Street Journal. I look closer and see an article and a cartoon on the sports page, under the heading “Rocket Boy vs. The Baffler.” It depicts Stephen Strasburg (aka Rocket Boy) as an airborne superhero in full costume, complete with chiseled physique and otherworldly powers and baseballs blazing out of his right hand. It depicts me (The Baffler) as a much less imposing figure, on the ground, with a question mark on my chest and baseballs floating all about.
I almost laugh out loud. The Baffler. I love it.
“It’s amazing that one guy can throw 100 [miles per hour] and the other can throw 75 and they can both be really good at what they do,” David Wright says in the article.
The crowd in Nationals Park is close to forty thousand, almost triple the size of the turnout in my first start with the Mets, five weeks earlier. They are not there to see The Baffler.
We score on Jason Bay’s RBI double in the top of the first, and as I take the mound I am enthralled by the moment, and the challenge ahead. I relish that there is all this buzz around Strasburg, and that I am no more relevant than the right-field peanut vendor. I don’t look like Stephen Strasburg. I don’t throw like Stephen Strasburg, and I am certainly not as wealthy as Stephen Strasburg, but I sure am ready to compete with him.
And I do precisely that.
Strasburg goes 5 innings and gives up 4 hits and 2 runs. I go 7 innings and give up 6 hits and 2 unearned runs. Neither of us gets a decision, and the Nationals rally for 4 runs in the final 2 innings to win, 6–5. I’ve done my job, and done it well. I wish I had kept the cartoon.
We are ten games over .500 (47–37) and just two games behind the Phillies in the National League East in early July, but we start to fade after the all-star break and we can never quite arrest it, though I still feel good about how hard I am competing and the results I’m getting. On August 13, the Phillies come to Citi Field, and to me it is our last and best chance to get back in the race. I am coming off my worst start of the year, against these same Phillies, in which I lasted just 3 innings and gave up 8 hits and 4 earned runs in Citizens Bank Park. I wasn’t quite as bad as the line sounds—there were some untimely bleeders and bloopers in there—but my team gave me a two-run lead against Roy Halladay in the first and I couldn’t take care of it, and that’s on me.
Now we have our rivals again, and when I get to the ballpark on Friday afternoon and start to get ready, I am in a surprisingly good place. I’m not panicky because I had a misstep the last time out. I am not losing any sort of faith in my knuckleball, or letting birds of prey even think about setting up their nest. Every year I’ve thrown the knuckleball, it has gotten better. It has gotten more consistent, with more finish, so consequently I have more confidence in it. In 2008 in Seattle, about 65 percent of my pitches were knuckleballs. In 2009, in Minnesota, about 75 percent were knuckleballs.
This year I am throwing knuckleballs 85 percent of the time, which is how it should be. It is, after all, my best pitch, my best chance to win. I’m also effectively changing speeds, throwing knuckleballs as slow as sixty-nine miles per hour and as hard as eighty-one. I choose to focus on my body of work with the Mets, and not one shabby start in Citizens Bank Park.
There is a blank canvas before me tonight, I tell myself. It’s up to me to paint it, to dab enough nasty knuckleballs in enough good spots to make it come together. If I work the brush with full conviction, maybe I can make it a masterpiece.
I thank God for where I am now, for this shift in perspective that is allowing me to purge the unhappy memories of my previous start and take the mound tonight as a free man. My opponent is Cole Hamels. It won’t be easy.
Hamels and I match zeroes through five. I am in one of my best places of the season, the best since the twenty-eight-up, twenty-seven-down game. I get through the fourth inning in nine pitches and have yet to give up a hit. In the fifth, Jayson Werth, the Phillies right-fielder, leads off. Werth has had some success agai
nst me and he’s a dangerous guy. The count runs full after I throw five straight knuckleballs. I look in for the sign and Henry Blanco, my catcher, calls for a fastball.
I work fast. I like to get the ball and get back on the rubber and fire away again. But now I take a step back and look in again at Henry. I don’t know why he has called for a fastball. I don’t agree with it. If Werth sits on it, the scoreless tie could be gone in a millisecond.
I shake him off, but Henry puts down the fastball sign again. In my typical start, there are only three or four times a game when a catcher’s pitch-calling skill comes into play and we deviate from the knuckleball-intensive game plan. This is one of them. Henry is an astute guy and he must see something in how Werth is holding his hands or how he has moved up in the box to try to get the knuckleball early. I trust him.
I wind up and deliver what Henry wants: a fastball on the outer half of the plate—a defrost pitch, as I call it, because you throw slow, slow, slow, slow, and then you heat it up in a hurry. Werth is completely defrosted. So surprised that he locks up and doesn’t move a muscle. Strike three.
One out.
Next I get Shane Victorino swinging on a knuckleball, and get Brian Schneider to ground out weakly. I am more than halfway through and still have a no-hitter, but we’re not doing anything against Hamels, either. I get the first out in the sixth and then Hamels steps in and I start him off with a knuckleball. He lines it into right for a single, and that’s the end of my no-hit fantasies. The Citi Field crowd recognizes me with a warm ovation. It’s a nice gesture, but I have much work yet to do. I get Jimmy Rollins to ground out and retire Placido Polanco on a long fly to center.
In the bottom of the sixth, Carlos Beltrán hits an RBI double to give us a 1–0 lead. I need to make it hold up. I am determined to make it hold up. I get through the middle of the order on eight pitches in the seventh, and need only nine more to get three fly-ball outs in the eighth. We go down so fast in the bottom of the eighth that I almost feel as though I never left the mound.
I have a strange epiphany as I warm up for the ninth, three outs away from a one-hit shutout. There’s something different about this start, and now I know what: for the first time in my big-league career, I feel dominant. The way I’m controlling the pitch, the consistency of my feel and my release point, the sharpness of its movement—it’s all making for a pitch that is just a beast to get a good piece of.
Domonic Brown is first up, pinch-hitting for Hamels. On an 0–1 pitch he grounds out to short. Rollins comes up and I go up a strike on him and then he grounds out to Ike Davis at first.
Now it’s Polanco, the last man between me and a shutout of the National League champions. The fans are standing and clapping. Polanco takes a knuckleball for a strike and I go up 0–1 again. I wind again and throw a knuckleball that darts away from him. He swings and hits it off the end of the bat, a harmless fly to right field. Jeff Francoeur squeezes it, and my day at the office—and my first shutout in seven years—is complete.
Henry Blanco and the rest of the team rush up to congratulate me, and the Citi Field crowd stands in appreciation. I don’t do well with being celebrated. I’ve always wanted to resist it or at least deflect it somehow, probably because of all the shame I’ve dragged around all these years, and not feeling entitled. But I’m getting better at it, and can at least take in some of the praise. More than anything, I feel grateful for the opportunity God gave me to shine and for feeling as though I just might belong here.
As I walk through the tunnel into the clubhouse, I have a flashback to my only other major-league shutout, in Comerica Park against the Tigers. I was pitching for the Rangers and Alex Rodriguez was the shortstop. When ARod came up to congratulate me afterward, he said, You have me to thank for that.
What do you mean? I asked.
I called every pitch from shortstop, ARod said, explaining that he relayed signs to our catcher that day, Einar Diaz.
Well, thank you, I told ARod.
The next time out, I gave up six hits and six earned runs in a 9–2 loss to the Royals.
I asked ARod after the game if I had him to thank for that too.
No, I didn’t call the pitches tonight, he said.
We stay over .500 until the middle of September before a 5–10 finish in the final fifteen games consigns us to fourth place in the National League East and a 79–83 record. Even without a pennant race, I am more intense with my starts than ever before, because I know I’m pitching for a contract—and my future. I’ve been a vagabond for a long time and I’m ready for it to stop. The only way that happens is if I prove to the Mets that I’m someone they need to bring back. And I accomplish that by finishing strong, and treating every start as if it were my own personal game seven, no matter what the standings say.
My last start of the year is against the Milwaukee Brewers, in the second game of a doubleheader at Citi Field. I go 7 strong innings, give up 6 hits and 1 run, and lose. I finish the year with an 11–9 record and a 2.84 ERA. It’s the most victories I’ve had in a season, and the lowest ERA I’ve had in a season by far. I want to believe it’s ample justification for the Mets to re-up me for a year through the arbitration process, but when talks begin between Bo McKinnis and the Mets, it quickly becomes clear that a two-year agreement is within reach. I wind up agreeing to a deal for $7.8 million over two years. There is only one downside to it.
It means I have to get a physical, my first full baseball physical since the one I had with Dr. Conway in 1996—the one that launched me on the road to orthopedic infamy, and cost me my first-round offer.
This time the physical is with Dr. Struan Coleman at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. I couldn’t have been more anxious that morning if I’d spent it dodging taxicabs in midtown.
I don’t like my history with physicals.
It’s going to be okay. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, Bo McKinnis reassures me. It’s going to be routine.
Bo joins me at the hospital and stays for the ninety minutes it takes Dr. Coleman to check out my arm. I have an MRI and a variety of other tests. I want to believe it’s going to be fine, but didn’t I think that in 1996?
Yes, I did.
I thank Dr. Coleman, and Bo and I go on our way. A few hours later, Sandy Alderson calls Bo.
Everything checked out fine, Sandy says, so I’ll get the contract out to you to sign.
Bo calls me right away.
You passed the physical and now it’s time to sign your contract, Bo tells me.
I feel immediate and immense relief. Finally, I can begin to appreciate the financial security I’m about to have. I may be well short of the Jeter/ARod income bracket, but the contract I’m about to sign is ten times the amount that I lost when the Rangers pulled their offer. It seems miraculous to me, the grace of God at work in my life again.
And with a fourth child on the way in spring training, the timing is propitious.
Still, for me, the greatest payoff of all is to be wanted. I don’t have to go shopping for a new club or go through a dog and pony show to convince somebody that I am better than my numbers. I don’t have to prove anything—because I’ve already done it, across 174 innings and 27 starts. And that means that, for the first time in fifteen years, I do not have to go to spring training to audition for a job.
I already have a job.
I belong.
For now, anyway, I’ve changed not only the perception that I am nothing but a 4A pitcher but also the perception that you can’t trust the knuckleball or the people who throw them. This is exactly what I’ve been praying for for years. I wouldn’t pretend to know how God works, why things happen the way they do. I just know that God is good, and He has blessed me abundantly.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2011
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
Toward the end of the 2011 season, as the batting race moved toward its conclusion, I wore a bold silk-screened workout T-shirt with José Reyes’s picture on the front. I want
ed to show José how much I was pulling for him. The shirt did its job well, but it must be retired now, because as sad as I am about it, José is no longer the New York Mets’ shortstop. He is now playing that position for the Miami Marlins, a club with a new name, a new ballpark, a new manager, a new $106 million leadoff hitter, and apparently new access to a pile of money.
It hurts a ton to lose a talent like José. It hurts even more to lose him to a division rival.
I can’t say that I am surprised about it, though. With the club’s financial issues and the money José figured to command, I thought all along that we were long shots to keep him. When I found out the Marlins started courting him at 12:01 a.m. on the first day he was officially on the market, I became less optimistic still. Everybody wants to feel wanted, and although I don’t doubt that Sandy Alderson would’ve loved to have held on to José, I also don’t doubt that the Marlins’ full-throttle courtship helped seal the deal.
As I write this, Ruben Tejada is slated to be our shortstop. He’s a promising young player who did a lot of good things last year, and I believe he’s going to be a solid big-league player. But I don’t expect him to be José Reyes, and nobody else should, either. That would be expecting me to be Roy Halladay.
A player with José’s talent comes along once every twenty-five years, if that often. There are legitimate questions about his durability and about the prudence of giving a six-year deal to a twenty-nine-year-old shortstop whose game is built around speed. Is there a chance that the Marlins will wind up regretting the deal? Sure there is. That takes nothing from the kind of player the Marlins are getting: a one-man energy plant and a breathtaking athlete.
I could give you fifty José Reyes highlights in the two years we were teammates, but one that comes to mind first occurred on my opening-day start at Citi Field last April, against the Nationals. In the top of the fifth, with the bases loaded, Rick Ankiel hit a missile up the middle that looked headed into center field for a two-run single. José moved quickly to his left, snared the ball, touched second, and threw to first for the double play. End of threat. End of inning. José made this play all the time, and made it look easy. He probably saved me ten runs last year all by himself.