Just Tell Me I Can't

by Jamie Moyer

  That didn’t stop Amaro from signing free agent Pedro Martinez over the All-Star break. Manuel told Moyer he’d be moving to long relief. Martinez had once been a dominant starting pitcher, having won three Cy Young Awards for the Red Sox. But he was now a shadow of his former self, having been injured time and again. Moyer felt it was déjà vu all over again; that he was being judged and held to standards that don’t apply to pitchers who throw faster. It was as if he were still always one or two bad starts from demotion—something that didn’t exactly match his track record. He said as much in the press, even seeking out a second face-to-face with Manuel the day after being told of the decision. In that meeting, Moyer made his case: he was just starting to get back to the form he’d shown the previous year, when he’d led the staff in wins. Manuel didn’t say it, but Moyer had the impression the decision wasn’t his, that it came from Ruben.

  Control what you can control. That’s what Harvey would have said. So Moyer—one interview notwithstanding, in which he claimed that upon inking his new deal, Phils management had told him he wouldn’t be put in the pen—decided to go to the bullpen and do his job. And do it he did: over nearly the last two months of the season, he recorded a 3.26 ERA and opponents hit just .206 against him, which included six shutout innings and the win in relief of Martinez against the Diamondbacks on August 18 and four innings to beat Atlanta ten days later, also in relief of Martinez.

  He still preferred starting, for the security of knowing when he’d be pitching. But Jamie had fun in the bullpen, shooting the breeze with the other guys and the fans. He found that he laughed much more than in the ever-serious dugout.

  On September 29, in relief of starter J. A. Happ, Moyer faced four batters and retired them all. The last one flew out to centerfield as Moyer fell off the mound. He had to be helped off the field. He’d torn muscles in his groin and lower abdomen. He was done for the season, and—count ’em—three off-season surgeries awaited.

  Moyer watched the Phillies lose to the Yankees in the World Series. Before game four, he caught the ceremonial first pitch from his idol Steve Carlton, who showed Moyer the grip on his slider. Moyer knew that if you’re not moving forward, you’re standing still, and had already been asking himself, What can I do this off-season to reinvent myself? What can I do that will set me apart?

  Like Karen, Moyer believes things happen for a reason. He doesn’t do Godspeak, like so many athletes who would have you believe that God was pulling for them when they hit that home run or struck out that batter. But Moyer, thanks to Karen’s influence, believed in the mysticism of faith, and there had to be some reason why he and Steve Carlton, moments before that ceremonial first pitch, were limbering up by playing catch and Carlton’s ball was breaking all over the place. “Could you show me that?” Moyer asked. What a kick it would be if he were to come back next year reinvented as Lefty.

  But first came the three surgeries over the next three months. They treated, respectively: the groin, a postoperative infection, and a torn meniscus in his left knee. Come January, Karen watched as he started throwing his new cutter and began training to get prepared for 2010. “Oh my,” she said to herself. “I’m living with freakin’ Superman.” She made a commitment to herself, even though she was raising eight kids and running a foundation and spin studio: If he makes it back next season, I’m flying in for all his starts.

  It’s the worst feeling in the world. It’s like knowing you’re dreaming when you’re having a bad dream—you’re powerless to stop it, which makes it even worse. You want to snap out of it, but you can’t get out of your own way. You’re embarrassed, ashamed to look your teammates in the eyes. You’ve let them down.

  By 2010, Moyer had built a career on rescuing triumph from seeming failure. But sometimes failure would still happen, and it never got easier. To be shelled as a major league pitcher, to be unable to record a single out, to throw pitch after pitch and see them tagged to all corners of a ballpark, is to feel like you’re racing downhill with no stop in sight.

  June 11, 2010, at Fenway Park didn’t start out ominously. In fact, Moyer’s 2010 was off to a good start. The experiment with Martinez ended the previous season, and Cliff Lee had been (inexplicably) traded to Texas when Amaro signed ace free agent Roy Halladay. That meant the fifth starter job was there for Moyer’s taking, and his spring training performance cemented its capture.

  Moyer entered the game against the Red Sox with a 6–5 record and a 3.98 ERA. He was coming off a complete-game victory at San Diego and opponents were hitting just .234 against him. The pitcher whose changeup had defined him for so many years was now throwing far less of them; instead, he was using his newfangled cutter to keep hitters off balance.

  Before the game, Red Sox manager Terry Francona, who had played for the Cubs in Moyer’s 1986 debut, couldn’t believe his former teammate was still at it. “The thing that sets him apart is he just never gives in,” Francona said.

  While Moyer had been impressive in the season’s early going, his team hadn’t. Ever since Jimmy Rollins went down with a strained calf muscle, the Phillies had played listlessly, winning only five of 17 games and hitting an anemic .216. For the first time since his 2006 arrival in Philly, Moyer sensed a lack of passion in the clubhouse.

  On this night, he felt strong in the bullpen. The Red Sox leadoff hitter, Marco Scutaro, had owned Moyer in the past. Rereading his old notes on Scutaro, he decided to ignore them—because nothing had ever worked. Scutaro set the tone for what was to come, never taking the bat from his shoulder. After six pitches—at least two of which appeared to be strikes but were called balls—Scutaro worked a walk.

  Dustin Pedroia looked at an 82-mile-per-hour two-seamer on the outside corner for a strike. They’re not swinging. Next came a 76-mile-per-hour cutter, a jammer. Pedroia pulled it sharply on the ground to Polanco at third, who threw to second for the force but not quickly enough to turn a double play.

  Now it had been two batters and two breaks that hadn’t gone Moyer’s way: the strike calls against Scutaro and the seeming double play ball against Pedroia. Moyer took a deep breath, recognizing his negative thoughts, and tried to collect himself. Pitching from the stretch, he looked down at his hands holding the ball at his belt. Something was not right. He was not comfortable. Victor Martinez looked at three straight pitches; on the last of them, Moyer felt himself fading off to the left of the mound on his follow-through, instead of toward home plate. On a 2–1 pitch, Martinez clubbed an 82-mile-per-hour two-seamer off the Green Monster in left, just above the Granite City Supply advertisement.

  As slugger David “Big Papi” Ortiz settled into the batter’s box, with his .361 lifetime average against Moyer, Moyer noticed a powwow in the Sox dugout. Francona and four or five others were having an animated discussion on the dugout steps. Were they picking up signs? Where they plotting what was beginning to look like a purposeful strategy of not swinging the bat unless they were ahead in the count?

  Indeed, Papi looked at the first three pitches. On 2–2, Moyer threw an 82-mile-per-hour two-seamer inside that froze the power hitter; umpire Paul Emmel clenched his fist as if to call a strike, but held back. Papi then ripped the next pitch, a cutter up in the zone, waist high, off the wall in left. The score was 2–0, Sox.

  Adrian Beltre, true to form, took the first two pitches, before turning on a good cutter in tight, fighting it off down the leftfield line for yet another double: 3–0. When good pitches get turned into RBI base hits, it’s often a sign that you’re about to be in for a long night.

  The Beltre hit confirmed that it was happening, that rabbit hole feeling, when nothing works and you start replaying all the “what ifs” in your head: What if those pitches against Scutaro and that one against Big Papi had been called strikes? What if we’d turned that double play?

  The next hitter, Mike Lowell, looked at the first three pitches—no shocker there—and got ahead in the count 2–1. The defensive move would be for Moyer to give in and serve up a fastba
ll in order to avoid going 3–1. He’d refuse—just like Francona predicted, and was likely telling his players. Moyer threw a cutter low and in for a strike, followed by a 74-mile-per-hour changeup high in the strike zone. Lowell wasted no time, crushing a two-run homer to left.

  Moyer walked off the mound to curse himself: I’m getting what I deserve. Look where that pitch was. Freakin’ batting practice. At times like this, he’d search the stands for something—anything—outside of himself to focus on. He saw a hot dog vendor. His eyes followed the vendor for about fifteen seconds. Out came pitching coach Rich Dubee.

  “Awright, let’s refocus here,” Dubee said. “Concentrate on making quality pitches. Let’s get an out.”

  Billy Hall looked at a called third strike—They’re looking at everything!—and then a backdoor cutter induced a flyout from the number nine hitter, Darnell McDonald. Nine batters, five runs.

  After the Phillies failed to score in their half of the second, the descent continued. The Red Sox stayed patient, the umpire remained stingy, and Moyer’s response was to pitch angry, rejecting his own advice. Don’t try and get it all back with one pitch, he’d tell himself, only to rear back and throw harder—precisely what the Sox hitters were looking for. Back-to-back doubles by Martinez and Big Papi made it 8–0. Moyer hadn’t registered a single out in the second inning when Manuel took the ball and mercifully ended the carnage.

  Sixty-one pitches. Ultimately nine runs. One inning. In the dugout, Moyer put his red Phillies jacket on and took a long swig of water before staring off into the middle distance. Dubee walked by with an encouraging slap on the knee, Charlie came by with a fatherly tap to the shoulder. Hamels and Blanton sat nearby. Not a word was spoken. They’d all been there and they knew there was nothing to be said.

  Early in his career, the days between a performance like the shelling in Boston and Moyer’s next start would be interminable. The shame and embarrassment, the feeling of having let down his teammates, the sense that all eyes in the clubhouse were on him because he had failed would last until he got the chance to make it right again five days later.

  Ever since Seattle, though, Moyer had been able to lick his wounds overnight. As Harvey was fond of pointing out, other people aren’t thinking about us quite as much as we think they are. What made Moyer think his teammates weren’t as obsessed with their own challenges and failings, instead of fixating on his?

  That realization helped ease the morning-after transition. The secret to handling such a public flogging is to begin to devise a positive plan forward. So Moyer asked Dubee if he’d noticed anything in his follow-through; he’d felt like he was “landing heavy” toward the first base side, which could explain the heightened elevation of his pitches. Dubee hadn’t noticed it, but said they could look at it on tape. But Moyer didn’t need to see it—he felt it. Besides, in the past, when he’d gone wrong, that trail-off had been a familiar rut. He’d work on it in his bullpen session.

  Meantime, he’d start reviewing his notes on the Yankees. Yes, he was jumping from the frying pan into an all-out grease fire. But instead of shrinking from being on baseball’s biggest stage, Moyer welcomed the challenge of pitching in Yankee Stadium. He’d always hated the Yankees. Like Dorfman, he felt Steinbrenner’s team was too powerful, too arrogant, and too corporate. Years ago, they were the first team (of course) to have security cameras outside the clubhouse door. Moyer promptly dropped trou and mooned a hallway camera. When he shared the hijinx with Harvey, Dorfman’s laughter filled the phone line and morphed into a part laugh, part coughing fit.

  Gene Michael, the former Yankees general manager, had once told Moyer that though he was a good pitcher, he didn’t have the mental toughness to succeed in New York. The media, the fans, the city itself—they demanded a certain type of personality in their athletes. Like so many other high achievers, Moyer has long fueled off a sense of umbrage, collecting old slights in order to push himself to higher heights. How sweet it always was to win against the Yankees.

  In New York, Moyer often took the subway to games. He liked to be a fan, on his way to the ballpark, who just happened to pitch. On June 16, however, he took a cab to the Bronx from Midtown. Karen was flying in, but hadn’t landed yet; in Boston, while her husband was getting beat up on the mound, her father had been undergoing prostate surgery. Now Digger was officially cancer-free and Jamie had a chance to erase the memory of the Boston massacre.

  Moyer, meantime, wanted to be alone with his thoughts. For the first time since coming to Philly, his team was playing without fire. Was it that Jimmy was out? He didn’t know, but he knew the night’s big challenge was to somehow recapture the passion that had driven his team to the last two Fall Classics. Last night, they’d lost behind Halladay. In Seattle, and two years ago in Philly, Moyer had been the guy who took it upon himself to put an end to his team’s slide. Could he be that guy tonight?

  In their pregame meeting, Dubee conceded what Moyer had been feeling. “Look, I don’t know why, but we’re playing like crap,” the pitching coach said. “But you can’t let that get to you—”

  “Don’t you worry,” Moyer snapped. “It won’t. We’re turning this damn thing around tonight.” On his walk to the bullpen, he felt the anger coursing through his body: he was tired of the sluggish feeling, both in the dugout and on the field. if you can control this feeling, this might be good. Let’s be fed up. It might give us a little edge.

  When the game began, Moyer could sense the eagerness of the Yankees hitters. Many of them had long feasted on him: his old friend A-Rod averaged .389 with six homers against him; Jeter, .324; Jorge Posada, .333; Mark Teixeira, .306.

  It’s all good. Use their aggression. Jeter helped matters in the bottom of the first, grounding out to Utley on the first pitch, a fastball. Next up came Nick Swisher, who got ahead in the count 3–1. Rather than give in, Moyer placed an 81-mile-per-hour two-seamer on the outside corner that Swisher hit to centerfield for an out. Teixeira was next and Moyer could see his handwritten notes in his mind’s eye: Get in on him, make him speed up bat speed. He opened with a fastball for a strike on the inside corner. Then came a cutter, down and in, the same pitch Beltre had golfed for a double in Boston. This time, Teixeira grounded it foul. After a high fastball came three straight inside pitches: two cutters and one two-seamer. Teixeira kept fouling them off, wondering, no doubt, when the deviation would come. That would be the next pitch: a backdoor cutter on the outside corner that froze Teixeira for strike three. Thirteen pitches, three outs.

  In the dugout, Moyer uncharacteristically paced up and down, exhorting his teammates. “Let’s go, no letup,” he yelled. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth homered for the Phils. Yankees starter A. J. Burnett labored just as hard as Moyer had in his last start, and the Phils built a 6–1 lead after three. And Moyer just continued to coast on the mound, while not letting up on his teammates in the dugout.

  His tempo was quicker, his delivery quick and easy. He finished up square to home plate, ready to field a comebacker after each pitch, instead of falling off to the side after each release. The Yankees tried to do what the Sox had done—keep from swinging, wait him out—but Jamie kept the ball on the black and, critically, got those calls from the umpire. And he did the unexpected. The Yankees were sitting on his changeup, but that was the old Jamie Moyer. In this game, of 107 pitches, he would throw only two changeups and two curveballs. The rest were all two-seamers, straight fastballs, and—especially—cutters.

  In the sixth, he got Jeter to again weakly offer at a first-pitch two-seamer away, lining out, before setting up Nick Swisher with a succession of cutters in on his hands, inducing foul ball after foul ball. Just when Swisher was looking for another pitch in tight, Moyer dropped yet another cutter on the outside corner for a called third strike. Before a packed crowd that included aging rock duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Moyer lasted eight innings, giving up just two runs and earning an improbable win.

&
nbsp; Afterward, the New York media crowded around him—the same crew Gene Michael years ago said he wouldn’t be able to handle. “I don’t think that I’m old,” he said simply, when asked for the secret to his unlikely success.

  He’d continue his winning ways. Five days later, he’d go another eight innings against Cleveland, giving up one earned run. Five days after that, Toronto fell under his spell: seven innings, two runs. His only mistake was a two-run home run by Vernon Wells in the third inning, which made for some dubious history: it was the 506th home run allowed by Moyer, eclipsing the major league record held since 1957 by Phillies ace Robin Roberts.

  Moyer didn’t look at the new record as anything to be ashamed of; it was simply a testament to his longevity and resiliency. Had there ever been a pitcher better at taking punches? Karen promptly commissioned the printing of T-shirts that listed, on the front, the twenty-five players who had hit 500 or more home runs. On the back, it read, “But There’s Only Two Who Have Given Up 500 Home Runs Or More: Robin Roberts (505) And Jamie Moyer (506 And Counting…).”

  After the game, Moyer wouldn’t be dragged into a discussion about the home run record. “I have a desire to be here, and I won’t allow myself to get caught up in all the things that come with it,” he said. He’d learned to avoid anything that took his focus away “from playing with these guys in this room.” But there was a hint of the internal drive fueling his season thus far: “I really have to stay focused because whether it’s the media, the coaching staff, the front office, if I have a bad game, they say, ‘Well, you’re too old, you’re not going to do it.’”

  It was the end of June and Moyer was now 9–6—among the National League leaders in wins—with a 4.30 ERA.

  Some pundits called him the Phillies’ ace—preposterous on a team with Halladay and Hamels—and the Philadelphia Daily News asked, is “Cooperstown now on his itinerary?” The story, by Ed Barkowitz, pointed out that he’d passed Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Bob Feller in career wins. “Moyer is on pace to register the most wins he’s had in a season since winning 21 as a spry 40-year-old with the Mariners in 2003,” Barkowitz wrote.