by Jim Abbott
“His agent,” Steinbrenner snapped, “has to lay off for a while. So do other people to allow him to reach what he knows he can do.” He later added, “I must demand total dedication to the task.”
The back pages of the tabloids gave that big play, of course. Fortunately for me, the tone of the news stories and columns was, “Boss Rips Abbott for Being a Decent Human Being.” As Brian Cashman, who would become general manager of the Yankees four years later, wryly observed, “If you’re going to get ripped for something, you want to get ripped for that, I guess.”
I would have loved to use that as an excuse. It seemed to me a few minutes on a day I wasn’t pitching had little bearing on the fastball that stayed up in the zone two days later. I never felt encumbered by the meetings with families. There were days and situations when I wished I could blend in a little more, maybe not walk away from the guys in the clubhouse, or get through a hotel lobby to my room without stopping. But it never affected the way the ball came out of my hand. In fact it may have helped it, providing a drive and inspiration, a need to seize this opportunity that may not have been there otherwise.
Years after we were both retired, Doug Rader would say, “From the time Jimmy was up in the morning, he was carrying the banner for somebody—all day long, every game he pitched, every pitch he made, the whole time he was in the big leagues, and well before that. This was something he’s been burdened with, and truly it is a burden. Anytime you have that much of an obligation and you have so many people pulling for you so hard and you represent a group to that extent, it has got to be very, very difficult. And I understood what Jimmy was going through. Every time he failed, he failed for everyone.”
He was wrong. I did it for myself. I was driven only to be the best pitcher I could be. If there was something to be gained from that by others, then that was a fortunate—yet accidental—consequence of my efforts, which were minimal beside theirs. I did come to see there were peripheral benefits to what I tried to do, but they never drove me, and never impaired me, either. Instead, what I learned was that there will be another like me, another like them. And they won’t owe themselves to anyone for it, either. They will advance in their lives unencumbered by responsibility to anything but their own inspiration. They, too, will achieve for the love of the achievement, and let the cause come along for the ride.
Those children were not burdens. Besides, what difference would it make? Would I have changed anything? Could I have? The baseball was temporary. And I raged against its impermanence. When it left me, I feared that which would remain. Just me. Imperfect me. My career would be done, but not my life. Not my hand. And not those children’s lives.
I still think of Cormac McCarthy’s words,
Those that have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they will wither in bitterness.
There was, if I’d chosen to shrink away, a very good chance of “withering in bitterness.” I could not hide from it, hard as I might have tried.
I do not know if I ever came to be a person of value, but ultimately hope that I held up reasonably well in times where I was tested. I wasn’t a great major-league pitcher. I experienced moments I considered great. I had a few seasons that were satisfying, and many more that were not. But, in some ways, the struggle was more important to my understanding of my hand and who I was than had I had a career with fewer obstacles. Baseball—and success in it—was so important it brought upon me a distorted view of winning and losing. The games’ outcomes became personal. The perception of myself rode with the outcomes. And it wasn’t until I struggled that I came to understand its destructiveness.
The examination of my faults on a baseball field in turn led me to look at my right hand differently. Instead of hiding it, I tried to develop a strength that was independent of the circumstances around me. That awkward second glance at my right arm from a passerby on the street, or that insensitive comment by a stranger, those were theirs to own, not mine.
It wasn’t easy and it never ended. At forty-four, I battle it every day. I put my hand in my pocket. I recoil when a child blurts, “What happened to your hand?” Not long ago, I was a guest in a suite at Angel Stadium. Between innings of the ballgame, I went to the back of the room, got a plate of food and a cup of coffee, and returned with the saucer and cup balanced on the end of my right arm, like I’d always done. Another guest turned to an acquaintance and said, a bit too loud, “What is this, the circus?” But I can catch myself succumbing to the influences that, right then and there, once changed the way I felt about myself.
Baseball gave me many great blessings—the people I met, the places I saw, the incomparable feeling of winning a major-league baseball game. But maybe the greatest gift was that it helped me come to peace with the burden of being different. The lesson had to be learned through losing, painful as it was.
So I played on, and I helped a little where I thought I could. And when Tim Mead with the Angels or Jeff Idelson or Rob Butcher with the Yankees came along and said, “Excuse me, Jim,” I knew it was time and from the moment I’d lay eyes on those children I would not regret it for a second.
And, heck, I still got to pitch.
The no-hitter was terrific. I loved it, looking around, feeling the ballpark and the fans close in, feeling teammates who wanted it at least as much as I did. But, you know, I always had looked back on it and thought about all the great plays behind me, and the five walks, and figured it was fine. Just fine. I had remembered it the way Manny Ramirez had—pitches hit hard, a few walks, some great plays behind me, and a game that happened to end with no hits.
That’s where I had it, too, almost. A thrilling afternoon with my teammates, a really fun night on the town with my wife, something to talk about for a half century or so, another way to bore my daughters, and maybe that was all.
But, you know, much of a lifetime later, I wonder if it wasn’t a microcosm of the way I looked at my career, maybe a little more negatively than I ought to have. Maybe there were more good things about it, that it wasn’t all eighteen-loss seasons and declining fastballs and long, hard runs through the Cleveland afternoon.
At the end of every scarred road—even one as traveled as FDR Drive—there was a ballgame. There were plenty of cloudy mornings and chances for rain, but the weather held out, or someone turned on the lights, or we simply played through the rain.
September 4, 1993, was special for its collision of right time and right place, a habit of mine. The day was special for what it meant for twenty-five guys who happened to be there, and for the 27,000 or so others who were there, too, because we all left the ballpark feeling good about ourselves and our place in our corners of the world.
That wasn’t just a day for me. But, taken in stages, I lived a good part of my life in those hours, and in the days preceding it, and in the afterglow of it.
From the seeds of doubt, from a place where there could have been little, along came something out of the ordinary. Along came a little something different. It wasn’t even pretty. It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was quite imperfect. But a few of us believed in the notion of the story and in the idea of a happy ending, even if we weren’t sure of it. We’d played enough ball to know the outcomes weren’t usually as good as the stories themselves.
We showed up the next day anyway, gluttons for the game, convinced that belief begets satisfaction.
So I beat myself up over some failure, questioned it all, traversed that same stretch of uneven road, and returned to the game. It wasn’t so different from my childhood, when my father ordered me back to the playground. And the people who decided I wasn’t good enough, hadn’t they always been there?
For one day, I was as close to perfect as I’d ever be on a baseball field, but not because of me. I was there because Tony Cloninger was there, and Matt Nokes, a
nd Don Mattingly, and Wade Boggs, and Mike Gallego.
I was there because Dad wouldn’t let me whine and quit, and because Mom was inspirational in her work ethic and resilience, and because they, too, lived together and returned to each other through their imperfections, and because Mr. Clarkson had come along, saving Buck Showalter from having to tie my shoes before the game. I was there because Mark Conover’s dad issued me a uniform and a position, and Bob Holec insisted I play varsity in spite of my misgivings, and Joe Eufinger taught me how to take a snap, and Don Welke and Bud Middaugh refused to believe in absolutes. Their faith sent me to the feet of Doug Rader, Marcel Lachemann, Kirk McCaskill, and Bob McClure, to uncommon men who viewed me as physically common.
I was there because this thing wasn’t going to defeat me. I’d let everyone else be surprised. Me? I’d go to Yankee Stadium on a day it was supposed to rain, and pitch for my job if that’s what was called for, and believe in who I was and what I was capable of, and maybe win a ballgame.
I don’t know why I lost my fastball, any more than I understood why I had it. Maybe I’d lifted too many weights and lost the flexibility of my youth, as Middaugh believed. Maybe it was all the cutters, as Michael thought. The human arm has only so much in it. Maybe mine was just done. That left arm had carried me an awfully long way.
Through it all, I never did dread taking the ball. Not late in that second season with the Yankees, when I was struggling again at Yankee Stadium and an infield grounder elicited a cry from a fan, “Run, gimpy, run!” as Dana and Chad sat nearby.
Not when I was 2-18 for the Angels, or when I spent five months in the minor leagues in 1998, or when I won five starts for the White Sox at the end of that season only to learn it was a mirage, or when I got kicked around the season after that in Milwaukee.
I was always hopeful, and almost always optimistic. Every time they took the ball I wanted it back again. Every time an inning ended I wanted another. No matter how bad it got—or looked—I always figured I’d overcome more, that I’d will and pitch my way out of it. I’d always want one more hitter. So, I’d hold up my glove, expecting someone to give me a baseball.
It had happened before. A month into the 1993 season, not five months after I’d been traded from the Angels to New York, I returned to Anaheim Stadium with the Yankees. I started against Mark Langston on a Wednesday night, both clubs having come out hot, the crowd pretty big, the usual energy pulsing through a ballpark hosting the Yankees. The Angels led, 2–0, until the top of the ninth inning, when we scored two runs against Langston. Handed a fresh game, I would face Tim Salmon, Chili Davis, and J. T. Snow in the bottom of the ninth, only I never did see Davis or Snow. Salmon hit a long home run into the left-field bleachers, ending the game. Except—out of instinct, familiarity with the ballpark, shock, regret, forgetting which team I played for, I don’t know—I lifted my glove as a target for the umpire to toss me another baseball, even as the Angels celebrated and the rest of the Yankees trudged off the field. I wanted to keep pitching. I wanted to win. I wanted a chance.
We flew through that night to New York. In the morning, I didn’t bother going to bed. I left the apartment and walked to Carnegie Deli, ordered a plate of food, and sat alone, then could hardly eat.
Four days later, I pitched again. That was what was important to me.
I took the ball on a patch of dirt in Flint, some would say improbably. I gave it back on a major-league diamond twenty-five years later, reluctantly. In between, I did like my career. I’m proud of it. The fact that the last few years were so filled with struggle and unending fights and disappointment, perhaps it all shaded some of the really fulfilling moments that preceded them. But still.
For me, the satisfaction of victory was never quite as intense—or lasting—as the ache of defeat. I hated losing and I fought against that more than I fought for the winning. And as much as I loved to win, my career—like my life—was always more about fending off those demons. If anything, I sometimes look back and wonder if I made the most out of it, if I got all I could out of myself. I wonder, “What more could I have done with my left hand?”
Then, maybe I could be a little more generous with what I did and how I did it. You know, maybe I did what I could.
I think about little Ella in the schoolroom. Like Maddy, like her mom, she’s growing up tall and lanky and beautiful. I think about her question: “Dad, do you like your little hand?”
Really, it’s not much to look at. Was I less for it? Or was I more for it? Maybe in the times I wasn’t carrying it, it was carrying me. What couldn’t I like about that?
Maybe I lived up to the responsibility of my little hand. I hope I did.
Grandma Abbott had told Dad, “God takes away once, he gives back twice.” Family photo
Mom and Dad outside St. Agnes church on their wedding day. That afternoon, she would go home to me and he would report for work. Family photo
May, 1969: Me and Mom’s parents—Grandma and Grandpa Adams, with whom I spent much of my childhood. Kathy Abbott
Along the way, Dad and I figured out how to do most things. Once in a while, I’d need a little push. Family photo
I didn’t want to be different. Family photo
New shirt, check. Toughskins, check. Right arm, check. My first day of kindergarten. Family photo
Dad taught me how to fish with a Zebco reel, which led to the first and last big fish I ever caught. Mike Abbott
Dad, as a promising freshman for St. Matthew’s football team. The Flint Journal
The day Flint Central beat Midland in the state playoffs. That’s Danny Nathan on the left, Andy Turpen hoisting me on his shoulder, and Stuart Kale on the right. The Flint Journal
I loved everything about the University of Michigan, including Ray Fisher Stadium. University of Michigan
My Connie Mack coach, Ted Mahan, wore number 5 at Michigan. My number 5 was a tribute to him. Family photo
Wearing the Olympic-issued warm-ups and gold medal, and I more proud of my city than it was of me. Family photo
Tiger Stadium, my rookie year. I’d grown up dreaming about playing on that field. Still Perfection © 1990 D. Sell
Gene Autry, as kind a gentleman as I ever met, never said a harsh word about anyone. Getty Images
My brother, Chad, takes in my big-league debut at Anaheim Stadium. I’m glad he was okay. I was a little nervous. Mike Abbott
Dana and I at the White House to receive a 1991 Victory Award. Family photo
Hiding my grip on the baseball was a challenge. This is a fastball, which the first-base coach and everyone in the first-base dugout could have told you. Getty Images
The Freeway Series at Dodger Stadium, 1990. Sometimes, swinging the bat was the easy part. Getty Images
They came with baseball cards, balls, and photos. Some came with stories a lot like mine. Getty Images
While the rhythms of the big leagues were becoming familiar at the start of my second season, the attention could still be overwhelming. I’m glad the mullet didn’t scare off the younger fans. Mike Proebsting
Lach once told Angels management, “You send this kid out, you send me with him.” Courtesy of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
First spring training with Marcel Lachemann, my first professional pitching coach. I made the team. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
About the only thing Doug Rader enjoyed more than a good ballgame was a good laugh, and he had plenty of both. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Rader used to say that Jimmie Reese and I were put on the earth to meet each other. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
A no-hitter is not a solitary effort, as Mike Gallego (top), Wade Boggs (left), and Matt Nokes would attest. Getty Images
Groundskeeper Frank Albohn, in the white shirt, and his crew the morning after the no-hitter. They must have worked all night getting that pitching rubber out of the ground. Courtesy of the New York Yankees
On June 30, 199
9, at Wrigley Field, this is how a career .095 hitter handles the bat. An inning later, I singled home two runs, accounting for two of the three RBIs in my career. Getty Images
On my way back to the big leagues in 1998. First I’d have to be a (Winston-Salem) Warthog, among other things. Bill Setliff Photography
My first Old-Timer’s Day at Yankee Stadium, with Don Larsen and Robin Ventura, in 2003. I was thirty-five, feeling a bit young to be an old-timer. Courtesy of the New York Yankees
Maddy and Ella on the day Michigan retired my number. They made a wonderful day better. Dana Abbott
To Maddy and Ella, so they may know the courage
and sacrifice of their grandparents;
and to Dana, my best friend.
— JIM
To Kelly, my strength; and to Connor and Timmy,
may you always know my pride.
— TIM
Acknowledgments
I didn’t want to turn on a tape recorder and simply tell my story.
Whenever—and wherever—possible, I asked others for their assistance with the details so that I could re-create the past forty-some years through their eyes, as well.
First, I’d like to thank my parents, Mike and Kathy, for who they are, what they stand for, and what they tried to make of me; and my brother, Chad, for always getting back up; and my aunt Katie Norris, for being a wonderful person.