Imperfect: An Improbable Life

by Jim Abbott

  “I don’t know Jim,” he told us. “But I know the ability.”

  While I was naive about the draft and what came after it, Boras was persuasive on the topics of a young player and his leverage. In that way, and given that the major leagues still seemed a distant reality, a signing bonus represented the only guaranteed money I’d make in baseball. And that was Boras’s specialty.

  On that perhaps thin requirement, I hired Boras, beginning a relationship that was not unlike a marriage, and that ultimately would disappoint both of us.

  ON JUNE 1, 1988, the day of baseball’s amateur draft, Bobby Fontaine, the scouting director for the California Angels, stood in a doorway in the executive offices at Anaheim Stadium and told Tim Mead, the Angels’ PR man, “We did it,” just like that.

  Mead knew immediately what Fontaine was saying. He’d overheard enough of the deliberations prior to the draft. After weeks of debate, analysis, debate, general agreement, and more debate, the club had taken the left-hander from Michigan, the Olympic hopeful, the Sullivan Award winner, the one-handed guy.

  Not in the second or third round, as many had projected, but in the first round, eighth overall.

  The phone rang in the living room on Maxine Street in Flint. A reporter wanted to know what it felt like to be a pro ballplayer and an Angel, the first I’d heard. I didn’t really know, actually. The Tigers, where my heart was and who carried the unimaginable dream of playing at Tiger Stadium, had the twenty-sixth pick, and speculation held that they might select me. In my neighborhood, they were professional baseball. The Angels weren’t one of those teams people in Michigan thought much about, but I was thrilled to go so high. Eventually the Angels’ general manager, Mike Port, called. It was true, I was going to get paid for playing baseball, which I’d only recently begun to consider. I’d been 26-8 with a 3.03 ERA in three seasons at Michigan, but the big leagues, any pro ball, seemed a long way off, until the phone rang, and then I was never so happy that the battery held up on that old remote receiver.

  George Bradley, one of the team’s scouting coordinators, had been around the Michigan team earlier that spring. In Austin, Texas, for one of my earlier starts, he’d run into Don Welke. He shook Welke’s hand, nodded toward the lefty on the mound, and said, “You knew what you were looking at three years ago, didn’t you?”—more a statement than a question, really. On draft day, Bradley told the newspapers that the club was not concerned with my condition.

  “We didn’t even look at it that way,” he said. “Over the years he has overcome that handicap. It’s like a guy with glasses. He uses glasses to correct his vision. Jim has overcome his problem. He won’t have a problem fielding. He’s mastered fielding.

  “Take a look around the big leagues and see where the left-handed pitching is. Our club needed left-handed pitching and there were only a few in the draft.”

  The Angels set up a conference call and the questions were predictable.

  “I always grew up playing baseball and liking it,” I told reporters. “I never thought about anything holding me back. I was going to play until someone grabbed my spikes away from me and told me to sit down, you’re not good enough anymore. As I look back on it, I guess it was a different situation and if I had any common sense, I probably would’ve stopped. But growing up, playing with one hand never entered my mind as holding me back.”

  It was mostly true.

  While Andy Benes, another Boras client and eventually an Olympic teammate, was chosen first overall by the San Diego Padres, the headlines the following day generally focused on the eighth pick.

  The New York Times was representative enough: ANGELS GET ABBOTT, ONE-HAND PITCHER.

  The rest would be left to Boras and the Angels, for two weeks later I was back in Millington, Tennessee, with USA Baseball, back in the same bunk with the same thin mattress, back for fifty-one more games that would lead to a medal stand on the first-base line at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul, South Korea. The summer of ’88 saw us tour from Tennessee to Japan to Boise, Idaho, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Battle Creek, Michigan, and many other U.S. stops, to seven cities in Italy, back to Japan, and then to Korea, with dozens of ballparks in between. Along the way, Cuba was lost as an Olympic antagonist because of its boycott for political purposes, but we played the Cubans nine times between a U.S. barnstorming series and the World Cup in Italy. We lost six of them, five by one run.

  By the time we reached South Korea, there were twenty of us. For most, the Olympics were the conclusion of a sixteen-month hardball odyssey. We’d done our college time, set ourselves up for the draft, been drafted, and, in many cases, signed. These last days of September and first of October, then, were our final hours of amateur baseball. Most of us would never again wear USA across our chests, or fall in with a team so singular in its objective. We’d won mostly, lost sometimes heartbreakingly, and kept showing up at the bus the next day, without regard for personal glory. We’d steeled ourselves on diamonds across the world, and under Fidel Castro’s gaze, and amid speculation we were built too young to stand against the Cubans or the Asians, and through political turmoil we had no time for.

  We wanted to play baseball and we were pretty good at it. When we’d bused to the outskirts of the Olympic Village in Seoul, then boarded the tram for our apartment and dragged our gear to our rooms, we believed in who we’d become. The grueling travel, unidentifiable food, and months of pressurized baseball had brought us to something like a crescendo, except at a time in our lives when everything seemed ahead of us. This was not to say we were entirely focused on baseball.

  We wandered the streets of the village, a bunch of jamokes gaping at the people who did this sort of thing for a living—swimmer Matt Biondi, diver Greg Louganis, sprinter Ben Johnson, tennis players Steffi Graf and Gabriela Sabatini, basketball player David Robinson. At the center of the sporting universe, we walked their hallways, shopped their shops, and ate in their cafeterias, and were amazed to be so close to them. There was a tartan track in the village, and we’d spend some of our early evenings along the straightaways watching the sprinters train. We wondered aloud if this could be real, if we really were intended to mix with such royalty.

  Most of us were just arriving into adulthood. The occasional lapses into mid-adolescence were unavoidable and, we were convinced, as humorous as they were harmless.

  There was the piece of lunch meat flung from a bus in Tokyo that landed randomly and indecorously on the lap of a woman in a passing car. Sadly, the woman wore a silk dress and was on her way to a wedding. Worse, her escort—a stern gentleman intent on avenging the bologna strafing—stopped the bus and demanded answers.

  There was the beautiful and expensive floor-to-ceiling glass partition that lost its life in a hotel tussle, also in Tokyo, leaving this world in shards and bleeding USA Baseball’s budget by another four thousand dollars.

  And there were the dozens of baseballs that would be found floating in the moat surrounding the Olympic Village, each ball having fallen woefully short of its intended target—that being a security tower manned with guards waving machine guns. On the field the following day, we had exactly seven baseballs left for batting practice.

  Each event—and there were plenty others like them—would conclude similarly, with head coach Mark Marquess standing over us, arms crossed, demanding the identity of the culprits. No one ever broke ranks. We’d lower our eyes and Marquess, a good man with the impossible job of maintaining order, would stare holes into the tops of our heads until the moment became uncomfortable for everyone, him included.

  We weren’t trying to be idiots. Sometimes we simply tired of the late-night raids on one another—pitchers attacking position players with soap bars, position players exacting their revenge with buckets of ice, grudges that extended to locales all over the globe.

  What it fostered was extreme trust on a team that didn’t feel thrown together for a single baseball tournament or even one extended summer. Just because you would return to your h
otel room and find the hotel ice machine had been emptied onto your bed didn’t mean you’d been bullied. It meant you’d been initiated. Or called to action. And it meant it was your turn for payback. Maybe it wouldn’t come in Tidewater, Virginia, or Quakertown, Pennsylvania, or Verona, Italy, or even Kobe, Japan, but it would come. I think, more than two decades later, there might still be contracts out.

  And what it furthered was a winning culture. There wasn’t a guy on that team who knew his statistics for the summer and then the Olympics. But each of us could tell you whom we beat, how often we beat them, and who was next. We could also tell you where the ice machine was in every hotel from here to Seoul. And that flying lunch meat in Japan is more likely than not to cause an international incident.

  As we reached mid-September, Marquess was mostly adhering to a lineup of Tom Goodwin in center field, Mike Fiore in left, Robin Ventura at third base, Tino Martinez at first, Ed Sprague as the designated hitter, Ted Wood in right, Ty Griffin at second, Doug Robbins at catcher, and Dave Silvestri at shortstop. The pitching staff was deep: Of Andy Benes, Ben McDonald, Charles Nagy, Joe Slusarski, and me, three were selected in the top seventeen picks of the amateur draft in 1988 (Slusarski went in the second round), and McDonald was taken first overall in 1989.

  Three games into the Olympics, Marquess chose to pitch McDonald in the semifinals against Puerto Rico and to pitch me in whatever followed—the consolation game or the gold medal game. Twenty-two years later, Marquess explained to Fiore over dinner, “The bigger the game, the more confidence I had in Jim.”

  McDonald beat Puerto Rico, which put me in line for Japan, who, without the Cubans around, was the team most likely to send us home without the gold medal. We had two days to prepare, one day to practice, and while waiting for the tram we came upon the U.S. boxing team training in a courtyard outside the apartments. A boom box accompanied their workout. Roy Jones was on that team, as were Michael Carbajal, Ray Mercer, Kelcie Banks, and Andrew Maynard. They were in a circle, working up a sweat under the constant banter of their trainer, who seemed most interested in the heavyweight, Riddick Bowe.

  “C’mon, Riddick, let’s go,” he shouted. “Or you’re gonna get yer ass kicked.”

  Bowe looked up, bemused. He was due to fight some big kid from Canada.

  “Aw,” he said, “I’m gonna give him a left cross, then a right cross, and he’s gonna need the Red Cross.”

  We thought that was hysterical.

  I remember reading a couple days later that Lennox Lewis beat Bowe in the second round by technical knockout for the gold medal. The line was still funny.

  The four other pitchers and I talked all summer about the Olympics, about getting to the gold medal game, who among us would start it, who would finish it, and how it would feel to pitch for our country, do or die. When it became real, when Marquess said I’d be the one, I was profoundly honored. The five of us were housed in the same apartment, which had a balcony that overlooked the Olympic Village. We sat on the balcony the night before the game, listening to Springsteen, talking about everything, but always returning to Japan, the game the next afternoon, and what it would bring.

  When everyone went to bed, I lay for hours with my eyes open. I imagined the stadium, the grass, the Japanese hitters—with whom, by now, I was pretty familiar. When doubt crept into my mind, I’d blink hard to chase it away. We had worked too hard to get there, having played the longest pre-Olympic schedule in Team USA history. Hadn’t we come too far to lose? I blinked hard again.

  Seoul felt so far from home. There were phone booths in the lobby of the apartments, but I hadn’t been able to reach anyone back in Michigan to tell them I’d be starting.

  Jamsil Stadium was about three-quarters full that afternoon. A large contingent of American servicemen was in the stands, many in the outfield corners. I guess you could say they were supportive.

  “Don’t dishonor the Stars and Stripes!” one yelled.

  “Tell your boy, throw strikes!” said another—meaning me, I supposed.

  I was not dominant in the early innings. But Tino Martinez hit a long home run, and then another. As the game went on, Japan was getting fewer runners on base. My cutter was finding the corners. Guys were making plays. We’d go a couple innings, Tino would hit a home run, and then we’d hold on for a couple more innings until he did it again.

  Then, sooner than I expected, it was the ninth inning. We led, 5–3. I walked to the mound needing three more outs. Tom Goodwin jogged toward the outfield alongside Mike Fiore. He turned to Fiore and said, “I’m too nervous.” We all were. We were on the brink of something so special.

  The first batter of the ninth inning hit a ground ball to Robin Ventura at third base.

  Ventura was an excellent fielder. He’d go on to win six Gold Gloves in the major leagues. In a ninth inning three weeks before, however, he’d thrown a ball slightly up the line against the Cubans in the gold medal game of the World Championships. Martinez had made a deft play and tagged the man before he crossed the bag. The umpire didn’t see it that way. The next batter homered (off me) to tie the score, and eventually we lost the game and the gold medal. I blamed myself. Ventura wasn’t happy, either.

  So it was with a sense of closure that the first ball of the ninth found Ventura. He threw high. Martinez leaped, snared the soaring throw, and came down on the bag for the first out.

  I took a breath, turned the ball in my hand, and went after the second out. On the first pitch, the ball bounced again toward Ventura.

  “Hit him in the chest!” the shortstop, Dave Silvestri, screamed. “Hit him in the chest!”

  Martinez jumped again and, on his way down, tagged the runner before he reached the base. We were an out from all we’d worked for. And Ventura’s throws were getting slightly better.

  I threw one last cutter. It produced one last grounder. To Ventura.

  Silvestri was screaming again. The crowd rose, expecting the final moment of the game, of the tournament. We stood with our mouths open, stared, and prepared to follow the ball across the infield.

  Ventura threw and hit Martinez in the chest.

  We’d won.

  If I hadn’t yet felt the weight of all those months, and bus trips, and bad food, and great baseball, and greater expectations, I felt it at that moment. That’s because nineteen guys were lying on top of me. We shouted things that made no sense. We laughed a lot and tried not to cry. We used up the last few ounces of our childhoods, whatever was left after pushing so hard for so long. I’d never been around a more cohesive group. There was not a single man in that pile who didn’t believe he deserved that victory, that we didn’t deserve it.

  Jim Schneider was correct and so was my dad. I’d come along during a fascinating and exceptional era in American baseball. With some of the most talented and decorated amateur players ever, we survived Cuba, won a silver medal in the 1987 Pan Am Games, and became the first U.S. baseball team to win Olympic gold. We’d had a great time doing it.

  While we caught our breaths and the Marines in the stands granted we’d done nothing to dishonor the flag and the coaching staff—Marquess, Skip Bertman from Louisiana State, Ron Polk from Mississippi State, Rich Alday from New Mexico, and Dave Bingham from Kansas—looked on proudly, I again was struck by my timing. There was nowhere else I’d rather be than with these guys, winning and losing with them, sharing their laughter and hardships. Over those two summers and then some, we’d become as close as people could be without sharing a bloodline. I wondered what I’d done to deserve this time and this place, 6,500 miles from home and a lifetime away.

  A dozen volunteers assembled risers on the first-base side. We stood to the side, smiling dumbly.

  Sometimes I felt Dad believed there was a plan to the arc of my life through baseball, beginning even before high school, then at Michigan, and in an opening ceremony in Indianapolis, and through a ballpark on the east side of Seoul, as though it were fate that so many people would see me play. The jou
rney would continue, of course, to other ballparks in other cities far beyond this. As it did, he’d see and hear of the mothers and fathers, their stricken children and their hope, and decide there was a plan for all of us. He had great faith—greater than mine—and searched for connections and meanings. I wasn’t sure of his conclusions, but I had questions that came with no clear answers. How did this all happen to me? How did I find myself in these amazing places, with these amazing people? Didn’t there have to be a reason?

  There would be times when I was critical of—or, perhaps, realistic about—my abilities, and it was then I’d come to understand what Dad was feeling. Not in a mystical sense, so much, but in the place where dumb luck meets opportunity and collides with the hopes of those who held some affection for me. I guess I was fortunate in that way. Further, perhaps, it went to the early teachings from my parents, who told me I was special for being born this way, and not cursed. When you are told all your life that something meaningful is waiting, maybe you start to believe it.

  We took our place on the podium, on the highest platform, Japan to our right and Puerto Rico to our left. The announcements were made first in Korean, then in English. They called our names, we stepped forward, received a bouquet of flowers, and then felt the weight of gold around our necks. I’d heard people say that the Olympic movement resides in the hearts of the athletes, and at that moment I understood. We held our caps to our chests, and then our anthem mingled with our admiration for one another and what we’d done together. I wished that song would never end.