Home Game

by Bret Boone

  Rehab cleared my head. I got clean, got back in shape, and got antsy.

  Watching baseball on TV, I couldn’t help thinking a pitch or two or three ahead. Sometimes my hands would clench when a fat pitch crossed the plate on TV. But I wasn’t a hitter anymore, just a viewer.

  That gets old. As the 2007 season went by, I quit watching.

  The Mariners finished second in the AL West that year. Bonds passed Hank Aaron on the all-time home run list. My buddy Trevor Hoffman became the first pitcher ever to rack up 500 saves. Schilling went 4-0 in the postseason as the Red Sox swept the Rockies in the World Series to win Boston’s second championship in four years, the same four years it took me to go from 24 homers and a Gold Glove to house-husband duties and a golf glove.

  I kept thinking, What if I had twenty more homers in me? Or ten? Or one?

  After two years off, I kicked another off-season into high gear. Running. Pumping iron. Hitting thousands of line drives in local batting cages. Eating perfectly. Drinking water. I’d like to say I never touched a drop of alcohol after my weeks at Promises, but I’m not that strong. I got buzzed a time or two, but nothing like the bad old days. I believe there are millions of people who can drink in moderation; I just don’t happen to be one of them.

  Jim Bowden, the Reds’ general manager who’d hired and fired Dad and traded me, was now running the Washington Nationals, with Dad as one of his executives. Bowden liked Boone-style leadership. The Nats were rebuilding, so he signed thirty-four-year-old Aaron to support youngsters like Ryan Zimmerman. Then Bowden phoned thirty-eight-year-old me. He offered a nonguaranteed contract. If I signed, I’d have to prove myself like a rookie. Me, a three-time All-Star! Of course I said yes.

  The oldest kid in camp batted .184 in thirteen spring games for the Nationals. Still it felt great to be a hitter again, slumping or not. But they couldn’t take me north with the big club with an average like that.

  Late in March, a couple of weeks before my thirty-ninth birthday, Bowden gave me a choice: I could give up on my comeback, or I could report to the Columbus Clippers of the Triple-A International League. If I hit in the minors, he might bring me up in April or May. “No promises,” Bowden said, “but it’s a chance.”

  Of course I said yes.

  The oldest Columbus Clipper was twelve years older than the typical Triple-A player. I spent the rest of the spring pumping iron and hitting line drives in the Clippers’ batting cages. Skipping the cold cuts and potato chips in the clubhouse, making my own food. Drinking water. Signing autographs for teammates who said I used to be their favorite player. Taking long hot showers to ease the aches in my joints, and loving it all, not because it was glamorous or cool but because it was baseball. Along the way I proved I could still pick it at second and hit enough to help the parent club.

  I was batting .261 for Columbus when Bowden called. “You can help the Nationals,” he said.

  I said, “Jim, I’ve worked my butt off, but I’m a shell of my old self. I could give you four days a week and hit about .260 with ten or twelve home runs.”

  He said, “I’ll take it.”

  Last question: How much could I help the Nationals? They were going nowhere. I thought they’d lose 100 games in 2008 (102 as it turned out), and I hated losing even more than I hated striking out. I couldn’t help thinking that even in my heyday, when I was healthy, the game was hard. Except for my slump-free 2001 season, every year of my career had been a battle. Six or seven days a week, four or five times a game, you fight a do-or-die mental and physical war with the pitcher. You fight to survive—to get a hit or two and field your position—and even if you’re Ted Williams or Barry Bonds or Ken Griffey or Greg Maddux or Mike Trout, the game is going to humble you. If you’re me, you reach an All-Star level for a while, then come back to earth for another bite of humble pie.

  Had I walked away too soon the first time? Maybe. But now, in the spring of 2008, I knew I’d given the game all I had. After a long night weighing Bowden’s offer, I called him back. “Jim, I want to thank you for your offer. Let’s announce my retirement. This time it’s for keeps.”

  I retired for the second and last time with a .266 career average, 252 home runs, 1,021 RBIs, 3 All-Star appearances, 4 Gold Gloves, 2 Silver Slugger Awards, and a new chapter ahead. For almost forty years I’d been Bret Boone, the ballplayer. That was over.

  So who was I now?

  After retiring from baseball for the second and last time, I enjoyed golf with no regrets. Most mornings you could find me with my buddies on my home course, the Bridges at Rancho Santa Fe, half an hour from San Diego. Phil Mickelson’s a member there, too. Other guys who play there ooh and aah at Phil’s swing and they wince at my grip. It’s a baseball grip. I’ve had purists tell me that the last good golfer with a baseball grip was Old Tom Morris back in the 1870s, but nobody argues with my length off the tee. Distance isn’t the problem, since I often knock the ball more than 300 yards on the fly. Counting bounce and roll, I’ve hit a few 400-yarders.

  The Boone boys play together when we can. Dad’s long off the tee for a man of sixty-eight, but that’s short in our group. He thinks his way around the course, waiting for the rest of us to make mistakes. Aaron does everything pretty well and keeps up an expert running commentary while we play. Matt’s a good stick for a businessman. When we play as two-man teams it’s usually Matt and me against Dad and Aaron, who are so alike they’re basically twins born twenty-five years apart. After twenty years of golf I’m still waiting for one of them to get mad.

  They pretend not to notice when I outdrive them. I’m the one giving everybody strokes and strutting like a rooster when I win. Still, I’m just a 5-handicapper—no golfer at all compared to the scratch golfers I play with at the Bridges, and light-years from guys who play the game for a living. I’ve got a chance in a long-drive contest, but none in the club championship. Maybe I should try working on my short game….

  No sports cliché is truer than “Drive for show, putt for dough.” Gramps once told me about a round Ted Williams played with golf great Sam Snead. Williams said baseball was tougher: “I have to hit a ball moving ninety miles an hour, while your ball sits on a tee.” Snead said, “Yeah, but I have to play my foul balls.”

  To me, the big difference between the two sports is that baseball rewards the long ball most of all, while golf rewards the best putters. You can reach a par-5 hole in two shots, but if you three-putt you’ll lose to a plinker who takes three to reach the green and sinks a putt. When you think about it, golf’s mainly about bunting.

  I still enjoy my time on the links. Some of my favorite post-retirement days were golf outings with Dad, Aaron, and Matt. We’d spend eighteen holes needling each other, laughing it up, doubling bets until the last putt, which I usually missed, but who cares about a golf bet? I would have paid more to spend a day with the Boone boys.

  In 2009 I cared about family more than ever. That was the year Aaron’s heart went under the knife.

  That off-season Aaron, thirty-six, was coming down an off year with the Nationals. After he signed a one-year, $750,000 contract with the Houston Astros, a team physical showed that the heart condition he’d had since college was getting worse. Aaron had been born with a defect in one of the valves in his heart. Doctors said he’d be risking his life unless they replaced the valve.

  In March 2009, the Astros called a press conference, and General Manager Ed Wade announced the news. The room was so quiet you could hear my brother clear his throat. “It definitely hits home, but I’m doing well,” Aaron said. “I have a strong faith in God, a great family, friends, and teammates. I’m ready to tackle this thing and get on with life.”

  A week later he checked into Stanford University Medical Center, at Dad’s alma mater. I talked to his doctors, who called the operation “a straightforward aortic valve replacement.” One surgeon said it was “like changing a flat tire.” But I was still scared. Aaron wasn’t a car. He was a husband and father with a care
er ahead of him, and a long life after that. I told the surgeon that my brother’s heart was nothing like a flat tire. They were about to open Aaron’s ribs and cut into his aorta, the body’s main artery, to keep him alive for another twenty or thirty or forty years.

  Shaking the surgeon’s hand, I winked and said, “Don’t screw up.”

  The night before his open-heart operation, Aaron wrote a letter to his son. Brandon couldn’t read yet, but Aaron wanted to make sure he had a note from his dad, saying how much he loved him, in case he never woke up. I’ll never tell what Aaron wrote, but I will tell you one thing. That letter was more impressive than the homer he hit to beat Boston.

  After the operation he gave Laura a woozy hug. Their son came next. I was fourth or fifth in the hugging order. “You look horrible,” I told Aaron. I also said I was proud to be his brother.

  Against all odds, he got his knees and his heart back in game shape and played in ten games for the 2009 Astros. Aaron went hitless in 13 at-bats, but put the ball in play 11 times like the gamer he was, and retired after the season with a .263 lifetime average, 126 homers, and 555 RBIs.

  His ordeal reminded me to tell my own kids how much I loved them. Savannah was almost thirteen, with a name as beautiful and rare as she is. Before she was born I suggested, with my usual humility, that we should call the baby Bret. “It’s a perfectly good name for a boy or girl.” Her mom looked at me like I had three eyes. So she was and is Savannah, a dean’s list student and volleyball star. I promised her a car on her sixteenth birthday if she got straight A’s in high school. She did it, so I leased her a VW Beetle. Her younger brother Jake got the same deal a few years later and cashed in his A’s for a Nissan Rogue. They think it’s a family tradition. I never had the heart to tell them that I never got straight A’s or even B’s.

  I try to help Jake as a ballplayer. I don’t give him technical advice on his grip, stride, weight shift, or anything else. That’s my dad’s department. If Jake has a technical question I still tell him, “Ask your grandpa.” They’ll hang on the phone for an hour, talking technique. The way I see it, my job’s simple: when it comes to baseball, I’m Jake’s support system.

  It’s the same with Isaiah and Judah. They should enjoy being kids, and part of that—not even the biggest part—is enjoying Little League baseball. They need to know their dad would love them just as much if they played soccer, or played with dolls, for that matter. Their big brother Jake may have spent more time on baseball diamonds, but the twins are just as big-league in my book.

  I’ve never managed one of my kids’ teams. You’ll find me coaching third base in my Hawaiian shirt and bucket hat while Trevor Hoffman coaches first. Sure, my buddy Trevor and I may have ten All-Star Game rings between us, but we stay in the background while Kevin Carnell, a longtime coach who played college ball, runs Jake’s team. He’s prepared, upbeat, hardworking, not crazy—just what you want in a youth baseball coach. He fills out lineup cards and argues with umps while Trevor and I clap and yell, “Good cut, Timmy,” or “Get ’em next time, Johnny!”

  There’s one thing that always really bothered me about Little League. Trophies for everybody. Along with rules that let everybody bat and games where nobody keeps score, that’s modern PC bullcrap at its worst. In sports, in school, or in the business world, it matters whether you win or lose. Kids should want to kick ass every game, every at-bat, every pitch, or why play?

  Another thing that chaps my ass is how we accept showboating. This is driven by TV. When a Little Leaguer stands at the plate admiring his homer, it’s because he saw his heroes do that on SportsCenter or YouTube. Pretty soon we’ll probably see home run hitters mooning the pitcher.

  Maybe I’m partly to blame. I never forgot the Philly fans’ cheers when I caught fly balls behind my back in batting practice. I liked entertaining the crowd. So when I smacked a no-doubter in the big leagues, I’d let the bat fly. Goodbye! My trademark move was releasing my Louisville Slugger at the top of my follow-through, flipping it like it was too hot to handle. Today they call me the inventor of the bat flip.

  Pitchers didn’t always appreciate my stylings. In 2002, I flipped my bat after a homer in Colorado. Next time up, the Rockies’ Todd Jones beaned me. “Tell Jones I don’t care what he likes,” I said after the game. “If he wants to hit me, hit me. I’ll go to first and if I hit another one I’ll flip it farther. So don’t give me this Todd Jones tough-guy act, how about that?”

  Have I mentioned that Todd Jones wouldn’t scare me if he had a bazooka? As a hitter, you’ve got to laugh at pitchers who try to intimidate you. You’ve got to say You can hit me, but you can’t scare me. And you’ve got to mean it, because talent and attitude are the only weapons you’ve got. Pitchers can hit you in the head with a 95-mph missile and that’s “part of the game.” But if a hitter retaliates with his fists, he gets ejected and suspended.

  Baseball has always favored pitchers. Why is there a mound in the first place? To give pitchers an advantage. Hitters aren’t supposed to watch their homers or flip their bats—that’s showboating—but nobody minds when pitchers celebrate by dancing and punching the air when they strike you out—or when they point at the sky (because God’s on their side!). Dennis Eckersley, for instance, is remembered as an elite starter who became the best closer of his time. Nobody mentions what a show-off he was. Eckersley would strike you out and pretend his hand was a gun. He’d blow on his finger like he’d shot you dead. And it didn’t piss me off—that’s how Eck fired himself up.

  Today, Eckersley’s in the Hall of Fame. I’m not. I understand that he had a longer career, with more years at the top of his game. At the same time, his job was easier. Getting three outs forty or even fifty times a year is easier than playing nine innings 150 or more times, fielding your position on defense, hitting against elite starters and ever-better relievers like him. As much as I love baseball fans, that’s one thing most of them don’t understand: baseball gets tougher every year, but it gets more tougher for hitters.

  Watching TV games after I retired, I found myself muting the sound. Aaron’s one of the few announcers I like listening to. You wouldn’t believe the homework he does before every game, including calling and texting Dad and me. But I can’t watch him for long. It’s plain old sibling rivalry. Whatever my little brother Arnie says makes me think, Could I say it better?

  He knows what I mean. I was always his big brother, the top dog. When we’re together and his famous homer for the Yankees comes up, as it usually does wherever he goes, Aaron likes to mention my postgame toast—when I said “for one night only” I was proud to be known as Aaron Boone’s brother.

  “One night only?” he says.

  “I was joking!”

  “And reminding me that you were better.”

  “Well, maybe a little bit. And anyway, I was.”

  While sibling rivalry kept me from watching Aaron, plain old baseball intelligence keeps me from listening to most of his TV colleagues, who don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re not dumb, just ignorant. Some announcers, especially the play-by-play guys who were never ballplayers, have a hard time seeing the subtleties of the game going on in front of them. So they fill airtime with numbers, graphics, and clichés. Don’t misunderstand me here—there are knowledgeable announcers who know their stuff, guys I enjoy listening to—but too many will say something like, “Clayton Kershaw can match a record set by Cy Young” when there’s really no comparison. In Cy Young’s day, more than a hundred years ago, there were basically no relief pitchers. The starter stayed in the game until he won, lost, or passed out.

  Fifty years later, nothing much had changed. If you watch grainy film of baseball in the 1950s and ’60s, you’ll see the starter throwing 82 or 83 mph in the first inning. Then he wears down. His idea of fitness was probably skipping hot dogs and whiskey between innings. That was just the culture of the time. I’d like to face that guy in the eighth inning, when he’s throwing 75 or 76. Batting-practice ve
locity.

  Now flash forward to 2016. You knock the starter out of the game and who comes in? A six-foot-four seventh-inning specialist throwing 100 mph, followed by an eighth-inning specialist and a shut-down closer who throw just as hard, only their stuff darts down or left or right even more. Hitters used to say, “Let’s get into their bullpen!” Today you almost want to go easy on the other team’s starter so you don’t get into their bullpen. My dad loves to talk about the great Steve Carlton, and Carlton was one of the best lefties ever, but I faced half a dozen guys with breaking balls as good as his: Randy Johnson, John Smoltz, Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez, Darryl Kile, Brad Lidge, Al Leiter. Leiter’s left-handed cutter still gives me nightmares. Carlton had impeccable control (286 strikeouts and 90 walks in 304 innings in 1980), but eight years later Clemens struck out 291 and walked 62. Today there are dozens of pitchers with Carltonesque stuff: Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez, Madison Bumgarner, Zack Greinke, Jake Arrieta, and Cole Hamels, for starters. Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel, for relievers.

  My point isn’t that I played in baseball’s golden age. It’s that every age is a new golden age, when baseball’s being played at the highest level ever. You may not like the DH, wild-card playoffs, defensive shifts, or other aspects of the modern game, but you can still see that. The challenge teams and players face is how to succeed at a game that keeps getting better—and harder and more international—than ever before. Instead of comparing Clayton Kershaw to Cy Young, which is like comparing Tom Brady to Jim Thorpe, announcers should help fans understand how fast the game is changing.