by John Smoltz
So, in a very literal sense, that’s how I came to be seated in front of my locker. What my mind was really busy chewing on was the bigger picture: What had it all been for? The surgery, the entire last year spent on the disabled list, all the rehab, all the hours and hours of preparing to pitch again. How in the world was I here, nursing my elbow after another poor start in my fifth time out this season? Not only had I not yet regained my usual form, it seemed like I was regressing every time I picked up a ball. And the icing on this cake of self-pity was that my elbow hurt worse right now than it ever had before. It was just unbelievable. And I just thought, Well, that’s it. Obviously, the surgery and all the work had been for nothing. As far as I was concerned, you could stick a fork in me: I was done.
The trainers and coaching staff had wisely kept their distance while I did my best Happy Gilmore impression. Now, as I calmed down and regained my senses, they began to approach me. I honestly wasn’t in the mood to listen to anybody, but somehow they managed to talk me out of retiring on the spot. Everyone agreed that I should just take some time and head down to Birmingham to see Dr. Andrews again. The more I listened, the more the fog of anger seemed to lift and I started to think a little less emotionally. By the time the game ended, I was ready to run everything by Bobby. He was immediately on board with the plan. Everyone seemed to agree that the best course of action was to let the experts take another look at my right elbow before any decisions were made about how many innings were left in it. For once, I wasn’t holding my breath.
Of course, as the story goes, it was not the end for me. I got down to Birmingham, went through all the exams, and—sure enough—Dr. Andrews told me I just had severe tendonitis. The surgically repaired ligament was still intact, but it was inflamed and irritated. He told me, “You’re fine, just wait it out.” All the staff members agreed, telling me essentially that with enough rest and therapy, my elbow should be back to normal soon. Whatever normal was, at this point.
As I boarded the plane back home, I was grateful but sullen. I was certainly relieved that my career was not yet over, but I was brooding over the additional delays now forecasted before my eventual return. I didn’t want to wait anymore. I don’t wait well under any circumstance, let alone coming off an entire year of waiting. My idle meter was already pegged and here I was flying back to Atlanta to go hurry up and sit on the bench.
I did try to wait it out for a while. I went to the park every day, did my physical therapy, got my treatment, and then sat on the bench and tried to be the best teammate I could be. I tried to be okay with it, to make peace with my situation, but the longer I sat there in the dugout, the more worthless I felt. Watching all the guys go out and bust their butts every day—hustling down to first just in case the shortstop bobbled their routine line drive, backing up throws, and diving into the bleachers to try to snag foul balls—it just ate at me. Especially as I sat there with the modern-day buffet of dugout eats—an array of sunflower seeds, bubble gum, and peanuts—at arm’s reach: I felt like such a slug, and my appetite for all of it, especially the sweet and salty snacks, quickly waned.
Ultimately, I would sit there staring out at the field and brainstorming my situation. Was there any way to get back on the mound sooner rather than later? Was there any way to contribute to the team in a meaningful way this year instead of spending another season on the bench? Finally, I worked out a plan in my head and I went to see my manager.
“Bobby,” I said as I sat down in his office. “I want to go to the minor leagues and start rehabbing as a reliever.”
Bobby sort of smirked and then just shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “I’m going to wait for you as a starter.”
I had expected this reaction. For years, I had been offering to help out in the bullpen, especially in the postseason, but Bobby was always against it. He had only taken me up on my offer twice, and with mixed results. I made my first two relief appearances in 1999. The first time I came out for the ninth inning of Game Two of the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets. I pitched well, retiring three batters in succession, and earned my first save. But when Bobby called on me again in Game Six, I got lit up. I surrendered four runs on four hits—two doubles, a single, and a two-run homer to Mike Piazza—in one-third of an inning. I was in and out of the game so fast that fans who happened to be up hitting the restroom or grabbing another beer at the time probably didn’t even realize I had come in at all.
Undeterred by one shaky past performance, I continued to sell my plan, laying out my case like a lawyer presenting his evidence to the judge. “Bobby, I can’t start right now. There is just nothing. I just don’t have it back yet,” I said. “But I can help you guys as a reliever, I’m telling you.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he was still not convinced this was a good idea, and my hopes were sinking by the second. I seriously felt almost physically ill as I sat there visualizing myself riding the bench for the foreseeable future, when he finally broke the silence. “Well, look, you can go give it a try,” he said. “But,” he quickly added, “I’d rather wait on you to come back and start.”
That’s the eternal optimist in Bobby. But I knew that if I was going to help this team this year, it would have to be out of the bullpen.
I sat there for a second, sort of taking in the irony of the moment. There I was sitting in my manager’s office, thanking God that I had convinced him to send me down to the minors. Here I was at another point in my career that I could never have foreseen or imagined. But all I knew to do was to try to make the best of things and I knew going down to the minors presented me with the best chance of contributing to the team this season. And really anything at this point, even the minors, beat sitting on the bench.
So with Bobby’s reluctant endorsement, I went to the minor leagues. It was a completely different experience for me, and I am not even talking about getting back on the buses after more than a decade in the bigs. I’m talking about coming out of the bullpen. It was so different from starting, but the limited work—one to two innings at a shot—was perfect for where I was in my recovery. It really helped me ease back into throwing hard while still facing real batters.
My arm still wasn’t ready to go six or seven innings, but I could certainly put in one or two innings of work every other day. Eventually I could pitch on back-to-back nights. As my arm began to strengthen and shore up, my confidence followed. Soon I got to the point where I could throw three days in a row. After that, it wasn’t long before I got called back up and was on a flight bound for Atlanta. I was eager to get back to business and prove to my team and myself that I still had something to contribute this season.
The first time I got a chance to talk to Bobby, he was as noncommittal about using me as a reliever as he’d been before. He just said, “Look, I don’t know when I’m going to use you, but the first chance I can, I’ll work you into the game.” That was certainly good enough for me.
The first chance came on July 22. We were up 8–2 at home against the Montreal Expos and Greg Maddux had pitched eight solid innings. Right after he recorded his twenty-fourth out, the phone rang in the bullpen: Bobby was calling for me. I was pumped. I jumped up and started warming up to come out for the ninth. As I stepped out the door, the place went nuts. I came in and pitched a perfect inning, recording three outs in only nine pitches. I had good stuff and my fastball was whistling in at 98 mph. I struck out left fielder Brad Wilkerson to end the game and got mobbed by my teammates. It was awesome. I still remember the look on Bobby’s face when I shook hands with him after the game. He just sort of shook his head and said, “Whoa.” I think it was right about then that Bobby started to warm up to the idea of having me in the bullpen.
It was just one inning and just one part of the process of figuring out how to pitch effectively in relief, but I did take the time to stop and savor the moment. For the first time in more than a year, I sat in front of my locker after a game completely satisfied with my
performance on the field. For the first time that season, I had a game in the books that I could draw confidence from. For the first time in a long time, it felt like things were getting back to normal, even if it was a new normal.
My outings continued to be strong through the remainder of the season, and after bouncing around from working the sixth, seventh, or eighth inning, I finally settled into the closer spot. I ended up saving ten games down the stretch and two more in the postseason. Things went better than even I had expected and I was really proud of the fact that I had taken the risk and found a way to make it work for the betterment of my team.
The problem with my newfound success in the bullpen was that it seemed to be a double-edged sword—everyone seemed to fall in love with it and just started assuming that was where I needed to stay. It seemed as if my career as a starter was almost completely forgotten overnight. Some people were even saying I should have been closing all along. I couldn’t believe it. In less than one full season in the bullpen, people had forgotten about the more than two thousand innings I had pitched as a starter, not to mention the 159 regular-season wins and the Cy Young Award I had earned. It was really depressing. As I look back now, all the comments about my future as a closer should have served as a harbinger of things for me, especially as I entered the off-season on the final days of my current contract. Little did I know that I was embarking on what I now fondly refer to as the Off-Season from Hell.
My mom always used to tell me, “John, be careful what you ask for.” When it comes to closing, let me tell you, it would have been best for me to listen to Mom. The closing experiment was obviously my idea—I mean, to the point that I had to sell my manager on it at first. But for me, it was just something I was doing to help contribute in the short term. What started out innocently enough ended up sealing my fate as a starter, though, as the Braves front office must have decided somewhere along the line that it was also a very advantageous move for the club’s bottom line.
I was about to find out, as we began the process of negotiating my new contract, that General Manager John Schuerholz and I were not on the same page with regard to where I best fit into the Braves’ future plans: in the bullpen or in the rotation. The million-dollar question—quite literally in this case—would soon be raised. Did I want to be an Atlanta Brave or did I want to be a starting pitcher? I was about to find out I couldn’t have both.
Baseball is a business, no bones about it. For a player, as soon as we sign any contract—for the minors or the majors—we are liable to get traded, released, or otherwise scuttled off to another team, to another league, to another city in another state, with just a moment’s notice. When making personnel decisions, baseball GMs don’t see us as guys married to wives with good jobs in the area or with kids with their best friends next door and good schools down the street. Admittedly, they really can’t if they are going to be as effective as possible. Yet however you look at it, we are really more like pieces on a big chessboard that get shifted to and fro to try to elicit the desired effect: the right pieces in the right places at the right time to make a championship run. Now, I knew all that; I understood it and had come to expect this reality, but I also thought at this point in my career that there would be some… I don’t even know the best word here … consideration, I guess, for the fourteen years in which I had literally sacrificed myself for the good of the Atlanta Braves.
I had naively thought my next contract would be easy. I still wanted to be a Brave and I was coming off a season in which I had proven I still had good stuff. I wasn’t coming in with a laundry list of unreasonable demands. All I was asking for was a contract that would allow me to resume my real job with the Braves: starting.
As much as a part of me would like to go through and detail all the things that were said to me throughout the negotiations with the Braves, I’m just not going to do it, and for a host of reasons. Not the least of which is that I don’t think it accomplishes much to drag out all the things that were said by either party. These types of discussions are best done behind closed doors and kept behind closed doors.
I also want to be clear that while it’s safe to say that I have never quite understood or in many cases agreed with John Schuerholz over the years, when it comes down to it, as a player I always respected his position as general manager of the Braves. I respected the hard decisions he had to make every year about who was staying, who was going, and what he could get in return. When it comes down to it, John Schuerholz was paid to make shrewd business decisions, not decisions that made everybody—including me—feel good.
The only part of this negotiation that I think is instructive to bring up is that John told me from the very beginning of the negotiations that “our starting rotation is set, but we want you as closer.” It was as shocking to me then as it is even now. He was saying there was no room for me as a starter in Atlanta—it wasn’t even an option. If I didn’t agree to be a closer, our relationship was over. It was comments along this line that effectively stalled negotiations with the Braves and led to my becoming a free agent.
There were two things that really made this negotiation difficult for me. First, the New York Yankees offered me a five-year deal as a starter for $23 million more than the two-year deal the Braves were offering me to close. And second, while it seemed like the Braves were saying that closing would be better for my arm and health, I was suspicious that there was a little more to the story. My sense was that maybe I was really being asked to sign a deal that would only send me to the bullpen for a year.
You see, the next year Greg Maddux’s contract would be up. With the way he was pitching, it was going to take a lot of money to keep him in Atlanta. I had a feeling that the Braves were already anticipating the possibility of not being able to re-sign Greg, and if that did happen, they could just ask me to start again since they knew I would always do whatever the team asked me to do. But therein lay the rub: they would then have the luxury of having me in the starting rotation on a closer’s (much smaller) salary.
This time, the negotiations came down to the wire. I was literally moments away from signing with the Yankees when the Braves came through with a last-minute adjustment and I became a Brave again. In the end, I signed a three-year deal as a closer with a clause that said that if I did start again, I would get a certain incentive per start. I knew the clause would effectively lock me into closing, but I had decided during the negotiation process that this was probably for the best, at least at that stage anyway. When it came down to it, above all else, it was far more important for me to remain in Atlanta … and everyone, including the Braves front office, knew that. Clearly I lost leverage by being so open about my feelings. But at least now I would have a contract that offered incentives if the opportunity did arise for me to rejoin the rotation.
One thing I really want to point out is that I was never trying to get the Braves to make me the highest-paid pitcher in baseball. If it was all about the money, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and just donned the pinstripes. This was really about wanting to stay with the Braves and wanting to sign a contract that made sense for what they were asking me to do.
Ultimately I made the decision, and not begrudgingly, to stay in Atlanta. Once I signed the contract, the tension was over for me. The process, though it had thrown me for a loop, was now over and my focus was now on embracing this change, on embracing what my team was asking me to do. It was bittersweet because my first love was always starting, but when it came down to it, it wasn’t about me. It was about doing whatever it took to help my team win.
So off to the bullpen I went for the next three years.
I figured once the contract had been ironed out, surely the worst of my problems were over for the off-season. Now I could kick back a bit, relax, and start getting ready to throw again. Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was merely beginning part two of the Off-Season from Hell, starring one of the worst injuries of my entire career. It wasn’t my elbow again, or my s
houlder, and I hadn’t even been doing any ironing. Instead it was nothing more dramatic than that little piece of anatomy that separates us humans and primates from the rest of the species on the planet: my opposable thumb. To be more specific, my right thumb, which had been helping me grip and release a baseball since I was old enough to pick one up.
For as long as I can remember, I have always had this ridge on the right side of my right thumb, where the fleshy-meaty part meets my nail. It never was an issue and it never bothered me. I always had a normal-looking nail and everything, so I just assumed it was nothing to worry about. But as the years went on, that little ridge started to hurt every once in a while. And now, in 2002, I had enough with the nagging pain and wanted to do something about it.
So I went to see the docs and everyone decided it was time to cut it open and see what was going on in there. They just used a local anesthetic, so I was wide-awake for the whole procedure, including the part where everyone gasped and the doctor said, “Oh my gosh! Look what’s in there!”
Now, this was one of those times when you have to stop and think for a second: Do I really want to look? It’s like when one of your kids yells from the bathroom, “Hey, Dad! Come take a look at this!” You really have to take a moment and ask yourself, Do I really want to know?