by Mike Murphey
That only backfired once.
A member of the Mariners public relations staff, an enthusiastic woman in her twenties, found herself attracted to Baze. She asked around about him, and a clubbie told her he was my cousin.
She made it a point to chat Baze up the next time she saw him in a hallway outside the locker room. By then, Baze had acquired this mesmerizing power over women, and things took their normal course.
We left the next day on a road trip. When we got back, the PR woman found me during pre-game workouts and said, “When’s your cousin coming back?”
I didn’t know about the liaison, so I drew a blank. The only cousin I could think of was cousin Pete who lived in Bellingham.
“You know my cousin?” I asked.
“Yeah. I met him last homestand. I think he’s pretty hot.”
My confusion multiplied. Why would Pete have come to a game without calling ahead to ask me for tickets? And I supposed, by some strange standards, Pete could be mistaken for someone, well, not hot, but lukewarm?
“Maybe so,” I told her, “but he’s married. He’s got three kids.”
She stared at me with disbelief, then simmered to a low boil. She turned and stomped away.
I remained puzzled until the next day when I heard a commotion outside the locker room.
“You asshole!” she screamed at Baze. “You didn’t tell me you were married.”
“I’m not married. Who said I’m married?”
I’d just stepped through the door. She pointed to me. “Your cousin!”
“But I’m not—”
I grabbed Baze’s arm and gave him a warning look. The PR office handled players’ requests for tickets and clubhouse passes for relatives. The major league has rules I didn’t want to trifle with for the sake of Baze’s libido.
Yeah. Major Leagues
Had it just been the minors, Rita, maybe this ending wouldn’t be so hard. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’d blown it, not only for me, but for my friends and family. Finally giving a hungry man a seat at the banquet and then snatching it all away borders on cruelty.
And believe me, the Major Leagues are a feast.
Or were you even present for that final insult? I guess I always took it for granted that an angel would be all-seeing. But maybe not. Maybe you’re just some wandering spirit with a shitty sense of humor. Ducking in and out of my life every so often to set me up for the punchline.
July 1991
Conor sat in a sterile waiting room, the one to which a bubbly assistant guides you, then leaves you alone. He’d spent a claustrophobic hour listening to klinks and clanks from the magnetic resonance imager.
His doctor entered with a flourish, as if anxious to be somewhere else, slapped two images against the lighted wall panel, and spoke without preamble. “Both labrum and rotator cuff are torn. These injuries require major reconstructive surgery.”
“What about, just, rehab—”
“Not if you ever want to throw a baseball again.”
“And the chances of recovery? How long until I can pitch?”
The doctor sighed. “Odds are pretty long. Your damage is significant.”
Conor heard the only part of that statement he wanted to hear. He’d been battling long odds all his life.
The first surgery took place a week later. With his arm constrained tightly to his chest by ace bandages and a sling, his doctor ordered him not to move the shoulder for six weeks. Beyond that, the only instruction given was don’t push it. Your shoulder will let you know when it’s ready. Conor kept waiting for his shoulder to let him know. Apparently, they didn’t speak the same language.
“How’s the shoulder?” a Mariners trainer asked during Conor’s 1992 spring training physical.
“Good,” Conor said. He’d been careful over the winter, finally beginning to throw in December. His arm felt okay, although he hadn’t cut loose yet.
In only a few years, pitchers with reconstructed shoulders would be treated like newborns. Every step of rehabilitation carefully controlled and monitored for six months before they indulged in any throwing at all. These lessons were learned at the expense of guys like Conor Nash. He threw too hard, too soon. When the season began, the Mariners left him behind at extended spring training. Two weeks later, searing pain returned. An MRI showed new tears in both labrum and rotator cuff. Conor’s second surgery occurred at the end of April.
A.J. had negotiated an excellent contract for 1992. The contract wasn’t guaranteed, though. To collect, Conor had to be healthy. Because teams couldn’t release players who are on the disabled list, Conor earned the major league minimum as he rehabbed through 1992.
The tedium of pain and rehabilitation dragged on. When he finally picked up a baseball again, nothing felt right. The pain returned, his arm unimproved. He became sullen. Depression and anger so foreign to his nature settled in. The Mariners executed their buyout clause at season end and cut him loose.
On the day following his release, he reached for a beer and saw the champagne at the back of his garage fridge. He slammed the door. He didn’t even consider the possibility. Opening that bottle would be acceptance of the unacceptable.
He tried a different surgeon the third time around.
“We can do this again,” the doctor said. “Honestly, though, I can’t say you’ll regain enough strength to pitch. So, what are your goals if we undertake this procedure?”
Conor shook his head, closed his eyes, and said, “All I want is my arm back. I’m thirty-seven years old. I just want to play catch without it hurting so bad.”
“Well, if you’re careful, we can do that.”
In truth, he wanted some shred of hope he wasn’t done. He needed hope. And as hope ebbed, and he saw that damned champagne bottle every time he opened his refrigerator, the distance between Kate and Conor grew a little more pronounced.
Camelback Mountain
October 1992
Who is Conor Nash if he can’t pitch?
He considered the bottle at arm’s length. By shutting one eye, he hid the sun. Dark glass diffused light into soft ripples that seemed to skate through the liquid. He shook the bottle, and light glinted through each bubble as it swam a straight line from the depths to the surface, displaying a gentle persistence along their path.
Gentle persistence brought him to Kate.
She’s pissed at me.
She’s been here each step of the way, Rita, endured everything without complaint. For the first time, though, Kate doesn’t understand.
Look, I know I’ve been a different person these past few months, brooding over this damned bottle. Given the circumstances, don’t I get a pass? I mean, she watched me pitch at Candlestick Park and Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium. She heard the cheers. She claims she feels the same sizzle I feel when I’m taking that walk to the mound with a game on the line.
It all came to a head a few days ago. She was blunt. I’d been hard to be around for months. She said she understood to a point. “But when will you come back to us?”
She trotted out my ten-year rule.
See, whenever one of the kids—one of those with the physical talent who couldn’t cope with pressure and disappointment and failure—said they’d decided to retire, I got all over them. You can’t call it retiring until you’ve given at least ten years to the game—to the dream. Be honest and call it what it is. You’re quitting.
“You’ve given it sixteen years,” she told me. She said I didn’t fail. “You climbed to the top. You showed everyone. You were good.”
“I’ve been on this path three decades,” I told her. “It’s my body that won’t let me do it. Not my mind or my heart. It still feels like quitting—like dying.”
When we were young, I told her how scary the pressure felt, standing before thousands of people, half of them hoping I’d fail. But you know what? I love that pressure. Me and that guy holding a bat. Think you can beat me? Okay, let’s go.
Pressure makes it all mean so
mething.
Over all my years of professional baseball, I avoided the trap of alcohol and drugs because baseball was my drug. She doesn’t understand how it feels when an addict realizes he’ll never be that high again.
The sofa they usually shared sat empty. They faced each other in two chairs typically reserved for kids or guests. The television droned but neither heard it. The coffee table marked the distance between them.
Conor broke his brooding silence and tried to explain.
“By any standard other than professional sports,” he said, “I’m a young man. But it’s like my life is over. Once you’ve lived in that spotlight, you never forget it.”
“Maybe it feels that way,” Kate said. “In your heart, though, you must know it’s not true. We have so much. Now you get to be a husband and a father.”
Conor answered without thinking. “Yeah? Where’s the spotlight in being a husband and father?”
He knew how wrong he was the moment those words left his mouth. He saw Kate fight back tears. He would never forget what she said next.
“I know how much you’ve dreaded this ending. But have you ever considered how much I’ve looked forward to it? I’ve lived through the failure, too. Every time they said you weren’t good enough. I’ve seen you rise above every disappointment, and I’m proud to say I think I’ve helped. For fifteen years, though, I haven’t been your wife. Since the moment we met, you’ve been married to baseball. I’ve been the mistress. And I’ve so looked forward to a day when it would finally be my turn.”
He didn’t trust himself to answer. She endured his silence for a long moment.
“Conor, it’s up to you now. Your sense of self-worth, your success or failure, no longer bends to the whim of some manager or baseball executive or pitching coach. We have a whole lifetime ahead of us.”
Right, he thought. Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field. Candlestick Park. Forget the sound of 40,000 people. Banish the memory of being better than anyone expected when I was a decade too old; the embrace and respect of teammates—that clubhouse family who knows exactly what life’s about on this damned treadmill.
Still, he didn’t speak. He sat smoldering inside, while she wore a look of helpless desperation. Again, it fell to Kate to break the silence. “I’ve never told you this. But there were times I wished you would have quit. When we were beyond broke. When I faced another moving van alone. When you felt so betrayed by the game, and I knew how badly you were hurting.”
“Well, why didn’t you say something?” he barked back to her.
“Because,” she said softly, “if I had forced you to choose, I was never quite sure you’d choose us.”
Conor’s heart stopped. Not once had he doubted Kate. It hadn’t occurred that she might have doubted him.
Her quiet statement drove him to mountain.
five
Conor drank and considered his angel.
I will never cease to be amazed at how many things had to fall into place along this twisted path. And I’ve always wondered, Rita, if that’s a matter of your design, or your neglect.
When my brothers and I were little, Dad instilled the sacred rite of the tunnel. On the east side of the bay, the Caldecott Tunnel bores through the Berkeley Hills between Oakland and Orinda along California State Route 24. Dad told us if we closed our eyes, licked one finger, held our breath, and touched the roof while we passed through the tunnel, we could make a wish.
My wish never varied. Please, let me pitch for the Giants. Until high school, when A.J. and Baze added power and strength and speed, while I didn’t budge a scale past a hundred and thirty pounds. That’s when I added: and please let me throw harder.
A bridge was necessary, though, between the freshman third string pitcher and the professional prospect, something to get hitters out while a mediocre fastball had time to develop an afterburner, something that earned me a starting spot during the last two years of high school.
Thank God, or maybe Rita, for Fat Brad Grady’s knuckle curve.
In fairness, Fat Brad wasn’t all that fat. Tall and slight, a minor paunch overhung his waistline. Picture a pregnant woman starting her second trimester—if she had hair on her stomach. As an adult, he cultivated his paunch into a serious beer gut. During high school, though, he earned the nickname because he suffered by comparison to me, A.J. and Basil. As a high school junior, Basil surpassed six feet with signs of impressive musculature. While A.J. would never be tall, he, too, packed on muscle. I raced A.J. toward the five-foot-five mark but remained slender as a fungo. I’d willingly have sold my youngest brother to Gypsies for real, honest-to-god biceps.
In my earlier description of Fat Brad, I may have erroneously created the image of an overly serious young man. Nothing could be further from the truth. Brad cracked us up all the time. We gave each other all kinds of crap and were brutal in attacking each other’s vulnerabilities. I suffered barbs for my stuttering. We didn’t give Basil a pass on his buck teeth and braces. As early as our senior year, A.J.’s hairline began to recede. “You don’t have a forehead anymore,” Brad told him. “You have a fivehead, or a sixhead.” And with Brad, of course, we made all kinds of comments about his stomach.
He turned our barbs around, though, by making his growing pot belly a point of pride. He cultivated his stomach as one might cultivate a taste for fine wine. He became adept at pooching it out, exaggerating the effect. As he aged, his belly grew more prodigious and hairier.
He’d place golf bets with A.J., then walk the course with his stomach exposed, A.J. laughing so hard at other peoples’ reactions he couldn’t concentrate on his game.
Brad was dead serious about baseball, though.
He had one athletic gift—he could bend the flight of a ball. While mediocre hitters crushed any fastball, he managed to get over the plate, even accomplished batters flailed at his yakker.
As our freshman season moved along, we gradually accepted Brad into our company. Finally, he showed up in my backyard one Saturday afternoon.
Basil read somewhere that Stan Musial honed his batting eye by hitting bottle caps. So Conor sailed soft drink lids for him and A.J. They stopped their game when Brad appeared.
He got right to the point.
“Ya gotta learn to throw a curveball,” he told Conor.
“I already throw a curveball.”
“Yeah, but it sucks.”
Conor looked to his compatriots for support. He faced an awkward silence until A.J. said, “It really does kind of suck.”
Eager to hear any more salient instruction than throw strikes, Conor did not respond defensively.
“They call it a knuckle curve, because you put the tips of your first two fingers on the seam and push with those fingers when you throw it,” Brad said.
“Hold it like this?”
“Yeah, then spin it by pushing it.”
“Push it?”
Brad took the ball and offered a half-speed demonstration of the pushing action, tossing it easily to Basil a few feet away.
A few minutes later, standing sixty feet apart, Brad wore Conor’s baseball glove.
“Don’t worry if it doesn’t do much at first,” Brad called. “Getting the feel of it takes a lot of practice.”
“Okay. Sure you don’t want a catcher’s mask or something?”
“No, I can catch it.”
“Should I throw it hard or soft?” Conor asked.
“Throw it hard. And remember, push it.”
Conor wound up, paused at the peak of his balance point, kicked, drove, snapped and pushed. As the ball spun from his hand, he felt a tighter rotation than anything he’d thrown before.
Sixty feet away, Brad assumed a half squat, glove extended and ready. The pitch’s velocity caught him by surprise, as did the ball’s elevation out of Conor’s hand. He raised the glove as compensation. At the last second, the ball darted down, missing the glove entirely and catching Brad square in the mouth.
Basil reached him first.
“Brad! Man, you’re bleeding.”
Brad got to his feet, displaying a rapidly swelling upper lip, and spit a series of red globs onto the ground.
He was ebullient, though, with praise.
“That wath the beth fuckin’ curve ball I ever thaw, man!”
He spit again.
“You really puthed the thit outta’ that one!”
Then, he realized he was bleeding.
He bent, hands on knees, and gasped as he saw blood pooling around two white objects gleaming under the afternoon sun.
“Thit! Thoth are my theeth!”
And he fainted.
six
The sun settled lower and cumulus towers filling the western sky became washed with color. This was a fat, more friendly sun than the one hanging white and smoldering over the Phoenix landscape at mid-day. While these cloud bases remained pure white and contrasted sharply with a deepening blue of evening, their tops showed splashes of red and yellow.
I remained center fielder and third pitcher in a two-man rotation through our sophomore high school season. I kept working at the knuckle curve, though, throwing it at my square chalked onto the elementary school brick wall. The work paid off. During my junior season, I became San Carlos High’s ace.
Though we still hung together on weekends, A.J. wasn’t with us. His dad sent him to Mount Zion, a private high school for boys.
I grew to five-and-a-half feet, but our bathroom scale remained stuck at a hundred and thirty. The knuckle curve, though, converted my fastball from mediocre to sneaky, the distinction being that a mediocre fastball gets pummeled, while a sneaky fastball—set up by an off-speed curve—gets people out.
And, I could throw strikes.
I struck out so many, a scout from the Texas Rangers showed up. Brad and Hugh always sat together, watching me and Baze play. And on this day, I wondered about the guy sitting with them.