108 Stitches

by Ron Darling

  Stan was just a stunning talent, who roamed centerfield like he’d been born there. He’d grown up in Co-Op City, in the Bronx, came from a real rough-and-tumble background, was tough as nails. I used to watch him chase down fly balls and think, Man, this kid can play! He bounced around the bigs for a couple years, but never managed to put it all together, and after his career was over he became a New York City cop. In fact, he was on duty on September 11, 2001, and ended up working at Ground Zero following the collapse of the Twin Towers, so I guess his ultimate contribution to the life of our city came away from the ball field.

  First time I saw Herm play was in Toledo, Ohio, when Darryl Strawberry got the call to the bigs and we brought Herm up to the Tides to replace him. I think he went five-for-five in his first game for us, with a double and triple and two stolen bases.

  I looked on and thought, Fuck that Strawberry guy. This guy can play!

  Herm Winningham ended up being a big part of another blockbuster trade—going to the Expos with Hubie Brooks, Mike Fitzgerald, and Floyd Youmans in the deal for Gary Carter. Hubie was the established star in that trade, while Herm was widely seen as the future star, but that big career never quite materialized.

  Far and away, he was the most beautiful runner I’ve ever seen in a baseball uniform. Such a perfect gait! He should’ve been an Olympian—a 200-meter man, or a 400-meter man. Oh my goodness, that young man could fly.

  * * *

  Doug Johns, the Oakland A’s left-hander, and Julio Valera, the New York Mets right-hander, are inextricably linked in the story of my career—at least, they’re linked in the story I tell myself of my career, and the story I tell myself is this: Doug Johns effectively put an end to my career in Oakland, while Julio Valera effectively put an end to my time in New York.

  I’ll tell Julio’s slice of the story first, because that’s how it came about. As a backdrop to Julio’s appearance in my life and on the Mets roster, I’ll note that from the time I was called up in September 1983, up until the last month of the 1990 season, I never spent any time on the disabled list. I took the ball every fifth day for seven full seasons—not a lot of pitchers can say that. However, there’s a teeny-tiny asterisk I need to append to that claim, because I did miss my last couple starts of the 1987 season after pulling all the ligaments in my thumb in an ill-advised play at first base against the St. Louis Cardinals, after which a hand surgeon fixed me up and put me in a cast. I was done for the season, but I was never placed on the disabled list because the injury happened in the second week of September, and with our expanded roster there was no need for Mets management to sideline me … therefore, the asterisk.

  I returned to form by the start of the 1988 season, and kept my self-styled streak going all the way to late in the 1990 season, and a game I might have started against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium. The race for the top spot in the National League East was tight—we trailed the Pirates by two and a half games, headed into the final few weeks of the season, so this was a big game for us. A big game (potentially!) for me. But I’d started shuttling back and forth to the bullpen toward the end of August. My spot in the rotation was skipped a couple times, owing to rainouts and holes in our schedule (and, admittedly, to various fallings-short in my performance), so I came on in relief a time or two. The “demotion” to the bullpen, if that’s what it was, was probably deserved. I’d struggled that season, was pitching to an ERA of around 5.00 for most of the year, but every time my turn came around in the rotation, I thought Davey would give me back the ball and I would fight my way back to whole.

  This game against the Pirates had loomed on the calendar for weeks, and in the back of my mind I believed I’d get my shot, but it was not to be—and the reason it was not to be was because my manager and coaching staff thought the team had a better chance to win behind Julio Valera than they did behind me. And the reason they thought that was because I hadn’t given them any reason to think otherwise.

  I thought, Julio Valera! How fucking bad am I that they’re starting this chunky, out-of-shape kid ahead of me? In a must-win situation? No disrespect to Julio, who’d done nothing but pitch his ass off to push himself into this conversation—but, at the same time, no disrespect to yours truly, who’d done nothing but pitch my ass off for the whole of my career, which may or may not have seen better days.

  It was the first indication from Mets management that I wasn’t figuring into their plans—and, got to say, I don’t think I took the news all that well. I watched the game from the bullpen, and poor Julio got hammered, and I’d like to think I’m a good person and that I wasn’t rooting for him to kick it—but then, here I am, all these years later, vengefully reporting his pitching line:

  I repeat, no disrespect to Julio—even as I’m disrespecting Julio.

  Somehow, I stuck around with the Mets through the start of the 1991 season, but this game in Pittsburgh marked the beginning of the end for me in a Mets uniform.

  The beginning of the end for me in an A’s uniform was also connected to the vainglorious pride I felt in never having been placed on the disabled list, asterisk or no. Here again, I was struggling. The 1995 season was winding down, and I was having trouble getting people out. In my own mind, for some reason, I chose to see this as a hiccup rather than a chronic condition. Throughout my career, I’d have a lousy start or two, but I was always given the ball and a chance to set things right. This time, though, I couldn’t seem to get out of my own way. In what would turn out to be my last start for the A’s—indeed, my last appearance on a major league mound—I gave up five earned runs in five and a third innings. In the start before that, I gave up three earned runs in five innings—a quality start in no one’s estimation, especially mine.

  Tony La Russa came to talk to me about it, as I most certainly knew he would, as I most certainly feared he would—although, to be honest, feared was not exactly the right word in this context. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I half-expected it, with the other half falling into the half-dreaded column. Sure, I’d known the time would come when I would have to hang it up as a ballplayer. I could see that day approaching, even as I would have wanted to put it off and find a way to leave the game on my own terms, on some kind of high note. But I’d pitched myself and my manager into a tough spot, and it was the time of year when a going-nowhere team looks to its developing pool of players and starts thinking about next year, and all the years to come.

  And so, Tony called me to his office—on my birthday, no less!—to recite his lines in the play that attaches to the life of every ballplayer, in one way or another, at one time or another. He said, “Ronnie, we’re gonna start this kid Doug Johns. We’re shutting you down for the rest of the season.”

  He was nice enough about it, professional enough about it … and yet there was something about it that rubbed me wrong. I mean, Doug Johns? I felt the same way I had when I was dropped from the rotation for Julio Valera. When you lose your job, you’d like it to be to a top prospect, at least. I’d seen these guys pitch. I could see there was a ceiling on what they’d achieve in the bigs. But the A’s wanted to see what this kid could do, and it had been a while since I’d been able to impress the club with what I could do … so this was what it had come to.

  We talked. It was a conversation I never wanted to have, but here it was. Tony laid it out for me, said he wanted me to stick around, thought I could be a helpful presence in the clubhouse, maybe drop some wisdom and game-won strategy on our young pitchers. It was a gratifying thing to hear, that he thought I could be of use as a mentor of sorts, but in order to do that the team would have to make some sort of move—meaning, I’d have to go on the disabled list. There would be no role for me coming out of the bullpen. The organization was crowded with young pitchers, and Tony wanted to give them a look. The roster wouldn’t expand for another couple weeks, and the team (rightly) wanted to give my spot to someone who might be able to contribute in the future.

  Tony was decen
t, and gracious, and kind. I was wounded, and stubborn, and proud. It had been a badge of honor to me that I’d never been on the disabled list, and I couldn’t see signing on for a stint on the DL over some roster maneuvering. I wasn’t hurt—I was just lousy, maybe even done.

  I said, “You realize I’ve never been on the disabled list.”

  He shook his head—said, “I didn’t know that.”

  I said, “You realize, too, that today’s my birthday.”

  He shook his head—said, “I didn’t know that, either. Tell me one of those things is wrong.”

  This time, I was the one shaking my head. I said, “Afraid not.”

  I thought back to one of the first meaningful conversations I ever had with Tony, about a month into the ’92 season. The A’s had traded for me in ’91, and I’d yet to give the club any indication that they’d made a sound move, so he called me over one day after I’d been shagging flies during batting practice. We were in Detroit, and he came out to short center field to meet me.

  He said, “Hey, Load. Got a minute?”

  Yep, he called me Load—I guess because I was the opposite of a load, an easy guy to manage.

  I said, “Sure, what’s up?”

  He asked how I was feeling, if there was something maybe going on at home.

  Turned out, there was … and I said as much. My first wife and I would end up getting divorced years later, but we were going through some hard times and I mentioned to Tony that there was some tension between us.

  He listened, let me finish, and then he turned and offered the best piece of advice I ever got from a manager. He said, “As a human being, I care. But as your manager, you’ve got to start winning some fucking games.”

  This was true enough, and for a while in there I was able to turn things around. I actually had some excellent years in Oakland, even pitched my way to a big contract … but now those excellent years seemed to be coming to an end, along with that big contract, and my time was up. In the end, I decided to swallow my stupid pride and accept that I’d be DFA’d—designated for assignment—because my other options were to force the team to release me, or to retire. I hated the idea of being released even more than I hated the idea of being disabled, and to retire meant I would forfeit that balance of my salary for the rest of the season—about $500,000.

  I did the math, and weighed my options, and blamed the dilemma on the emergence of Doug Johns as a viable piece of the A’s plans, same way I’d blamed my demotion from the Mets’ rotation on the emergence of Julio Vargas. But it wasn’t them! It was me! I was the bum, and I would have been shown the door either way.

  Stupid pride, huh?

  * * *

  The most meaningful exchange I had with one of my teammates after a game? That would have to be the time Ray Knight wrapped me in one of his great big bear hugs at the end of an 11-inning nail-biter in St. Louis. It was October 1, 1985, and we were up against John Tudor, who was absolutely untouchable. He’d gone 1–7 to start the season, and was now sitting at 20–8—one of the greatest pitching runs in recent memory.

  Tudor was untouchable on this night as well, shutting us out through 10 innings. Happily, I was a little untouchable as well, matching Tudor frame-for-frame through regulation, until Jesse Orosco took the ball from me in the 10th. Ken Dayley came on in relief of Tudor in the top of the 11th, and hung a 1–1 breaking ball to Darryl Strawberry, who broke the scoreless tie with a ginormous home run that hit the clock in the right field bleachers—one of the home runs Mets fans still talk about.

  Jesse retired the Cardinals in the bottom of the 11th to preserve the victory, and after the game Ray Knight ran over to me in the clubhouse, animated as hell. I could see he’d been crying, with joy and emotion. I said, “You all right, buddy?”

  He said, “R.J. We just won one of the biggest games we’ll ever play!”

  I guess he was right—it was a big win. It pulled us to within two games of St. Louis for National League East lead, with five games to play.

  And he kept on—said, “If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have had a shot.”

  By the way, like a lot of my teammates on those Mets teams of the 1980s, Ray called me R.J., a nickname I’d worn since I was a kid. As a “junior” to my father’s “senior,” I was known to friends and family as Ron Jr., or “R.J.” The handle followed me to Shea, where I was grateful for the way it helped me distinguish between shout-outs from those who knew me and those who didn’t. At the ballpark, if someone called out to me as “Ron” or “Ronnie” or “Darling,” I knew it was a fan, or maybe a reporter, or someone I’d only just met. What’s curious is that the name somehow traveled with me to Oakland, where my new teammates didn’t know me from Kirk Dressendorfer. And yet the name stuck all over again—thanks, in large part, to the shower shoes we all wore. Back then, ballplayers were in the habit of marking their shower shoes with their nicknames—a locker room version of the Players Weekend tradition started in 2017—and here I could only hope that as my new teammates were checking me out in the shower they were only looking at my shoes.

  Getting back to that Ray Knight moment, I appreciated the comment, and the tears and the bear hug that came along with it, and as it turned out there was a little more aftermath to this outing. The next night, before the second game of the series, Dwight Gooden going up against Joaquin Andujar, Mets public relations director Jay Horwitz came over to my locker and told me some reporters wanted to speak to me. He’d set up a mini press conference to handle the scrum. I must’ve made close to seventy starts in my big league career to this point, and no reporter had ever asked to interview me on the day after one of my appearances.

  I went with Jay to the small press room and faced the cameras and microphones. It felt to me like there were a couple hundred reporters jammed in there, but in truth there were maybe twenty or thirty. The questions came flying from every direction:

  How does it feel, to pitch such a big game?

  Was it intimidating, to go up against John Tudor, with how well he’s been pitching?

  Any advice for Doc?

  The underlying theme of the press conference was that the game the night before had been a kind of coming-out party for me. Davey Johnson had already held a press conference of his own, during which he allowed that I had somehow become a big league pitcher with those nine shutout innings against the Cardinals.

  I heard that and thought, Wait, I thought I was already a major leaguer. WTF?

  It’s worth noting here that there had been some controversy to Davey’s decision to start me in the first game of such a key series down the stretch. Doc had been having a lights-out season of his own in 1985—he was every bit as untouchable as John Tudor. In his press conference, Davey defended his decision, blowing just the right amount of smoke my way, saying how we wouldn’t be in this position to challenge for the division without my performance on the mound. He also pointed out that with the first game of the series in the plus column for us, we now had Doc to come in behind me and pitch the second game.

  “How great is that?” he said.

  Pretty great. And, pretty great that a guy like Ray Knight was able to see the moment for what it was and take the time out of his postgame celebration to seek me out and offer his heartfelt comments—they meant the world to this kid pitcher, who somehow became a major leaguer that night, at long last.

  * * *

  I mentioned earlier that I arrived to the Mets with Walt Terrell in a trade for Lee Mazzilli, who has become one of my closest friends in the game over the years. Lee had had an incredible run with the Mets, during one of the team’s fallow periods, when he emerged as the team’s marquee player—he made the All-Star team in 1979, and was a beloved figure at Shea for the all-out way he played the game (and, a little bit, for his movie star good looks and the way his uniform seemed to fit him like it had been painted on his body).

  Lee was the quintessential local boy made good, made a real connection with the fans, and when he was
traded to the Texas Rangers for the likes of me and Walt, he famously asked a reporter who he’d been traded for. When the answer came back that he’d been traded for two pitchers nobody had ever heard of, he said, “What, I was traded for two minor leaguers?”

  Like it was some kind of disgrace.

  I didn’t think it was so funny then. I do now.

  * * *

  I always thought Roger McDowell threw a spitter. He would never admit to it, though, and I never could get conclusive proof. Whatever he was throwing, whatever he wasn’t, he managed to put together one of the all-time great seasons out of the bullpen in 1986. He ended up winning 14 games and saving another 22—an amazing season.

  If you go back and look at the numbers from that year, at the ways Davey Johnson used his bullpen, you realize that Roger and Jesse Orosco did most of the heavy lifting. Most teams had a core of seven or eight relievers they relied on, similar to today’s game, but these were our go-to guys, in almost any situation. And our starting pitching had some serious length—at season’s end, 1,259.1 of the team’s 1,484 innings pitched were logged by Roger, Jesse, or our five primary starters. (That’s almost 85 percent of our innings, for those of you who need help with the math—an unusually high number to be shared by just seven pitchers.)

  If you’d have asked me back then if I thought Roger had the stuff to become one of the game’s preeminent pitching coaches, I’d have looked at you funny. Roger was a goofy clubhouse presence. He wasn’t just into fucking with our prima donna rookies and sawing their bats in half. He would also walk across the dugout or clubhouse on his hands and fill his pants with baseballs. He would sneak up behind you and pull a hot foot move, or start a rally cap movement out in the bullpen or on the bench.