That’s a good sign.
I appreciate the encouraging diagnosis, but it’s not an easy sell right now. After a few minutes I am able to sit up. Hark and Joe and Rafael carefully lift me up and put me on the back of a green John Deere cart. It has groundskeeping stuff in it. Now it is hauling baseball’s all-time saves leader. My leg is propped up on the bed of the cart.
I hope it’s okay, Mo, says a fan from just over the center-field fence.
I wave to the guy as the cart starts to pull away, following the track by the third-base dugout, all the way around. A few other fans yell encouraging things, shout my name. I wave again. The whole thing is completely surreal.
What on earth am I doing on the back of a John Deere cart right now? How could something I’ve done thousands of times, with no problem, result in this?
As the cart continues into a tunnel, I start to think that maybe it’s not all that serious. Couldn’t it be that it felt terrible when it happened but it’s just a sprain or something I can come back from in a week or two? I actually can walk on it, and it doesn’t feel so bad anymore. It’s not even swollen.
Maybe this is just a freak thing and I’m going to be fine. That’s what I tell myself.
I get into a waiting car with Mark Littlefield. It’s a little before six o’clock now and I am off to Kansas University MedWest Hospital for a magnetic resonance imaging test. It’s about a half-hour ride, which gives me time to run various scenarios through my head. I stay positive, because that is my default position, but I also am realistic. I am forty-two years old, and if the news is not good, well, what comes next?
Could my career actually end face-first on the Kauffman Stadium warning track? One of the writers asks Joe what it would mean if it turns out I need knee surgery.
If that’s the report, if that’s what it is, that’s as bad as it gets, Joe says.
We pull up to a boxy brick building and I get through the half hour of jackhammering. The tug of war in my head between optimism and realism keeps raging. When the MRI is finished, I ask the doctor how it looks.
He seems uncomfortable.
I haven’t seen the results yet. We’re going to get them as soon as we can, he says.
Something tells me he just doesn’t want to deliver bad news to me. I walk out to the car unaided, putting a good amount of weight on my knee.
It’s hard to believe it can really be that bad if I can stand and walk like this, I think.
Another doctor I’d seen inside approaches the car.
I’m sorry to hear about your injury, he says. I know you are a Christian. Would you be okay if I prayed with you?
Thank you. Sure, I’d like to pray with you.
We both clasp our hands.
Lord, You are in control of everything, the doctor begins. Sometimes You do different things, and life doesn’t go as we want or plan. Lord, please help Mariano heal and give him the strength and perseverance to recover from this injury and get back on the mound. Amen.
It’s short and heartfelt and I thank him, and soon we are heading back to the ballpark. It’s the fifth inning before I am back in the clubhouse. I am not going to be heading out to the pen. Somebody else will have to play gum tricks on Mike Harkey.
I meet with Dr. Vincent Key, the Royals’ team physician. He is a young African American guy with a goatee and a shaved head not unlike mine. We are in the trainer’s room of the visiting clubhouse.
How does it look, Doc? I ask.
Well, I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mariano, but the MRI shows that you have a torn ACL and a torn MCL in your knee, Dr. Key says. It is going to require surgery. This can have excellent results, but you will almost certainly be out for the rest of the year.
I let his words sink in for a moment:
Torn ACL.
Torn MCL.
Surgery.
Out for the year.
The year.
They are hard to take in. Three hours earlier, I am romping around the outfield, doing what I love most, maybe in the last season I’d ever play, taking in every moment. Now I have the first serious lower-body injury of my entire professional career. I am looking at major reconstructive knee surgery and a long and grinding rehab.
Now who really knows what my future is going to be?
I thank Dr. Key and wait in the clubhouse for the game to end. We lose, 4–3. I stand in front of the whole team. I am fighting tears and not winning the fight. I share my diagnosis with them, and my orthopedic horror story:
Shredded knee. Major surgery. Goodbye, 2012.
I don’t know what to say about it, really, so I just start.
I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve let you down, let the Yankees down, I say. I feel really bad about that. You count on me and now it looks like I will not be able to pitch for the rest of the year. I know this happened for a reason, though, even if I don’t understand what the reason is right now. And I will tell you this… I am glad this happened to me, near the end of my career, and not to one of you younger guys, with all your baseball in front of you. I’m not glad it happened, but I know that with the strength of the Lord I can handle this.
Derek comes over and gives me a hug. So does Andy. Lots of other guys do, too. This is why I love being on a team. You share your triumphs and your troubles. You share everything. You are all in it together. You will do anything for the guys on your team.
When I meet with the writers, one of the first questions they ask is whether I will definitely come back. I’ve been dropping hints about retirement since spring training—so they logically want to know:
Is this how it ends?
Almost instantly, I can feel all sorts of emotions welling up in me. I don’t know what to say, or think, and that’s pretty much what I tell them. I take a breath and remind myself I am not alone and that the Lord will give me whatever I need to get through this. I never ask, Why me?
I know that will not take me anywhere good.
I go back to the hotel and have a long talk with Clara. I cry on the phone with her for a long time. We pray together and she offers me the comforting words she often uses during difficult times. It is Clara’s balm, words that are almost as soothing as her hand on my back:
Tomorrow will be a better day.
The pain and swirling emotions make for a fitful night of sleep. I do not believe in agonizing over things. I cannot undo my knee injury, any more than I can undo the ninth inning of the 2001 World Series. When I wake up, my knee is as stiff as a piece of cement. Forget about walking unaided. I call Mark Littlefield and ask for crutches. It feels like a defeat, having to ask for them. But I am in a much better place, and have a completely refreshed outlook.
I am sitting at my locker in the visitors’ clubhouse, reporters all around me, my crutches propped nearby. It’s not even twenty-four hours since I lay writhing in the warning-track dirt, but a lot has happened in those hours. A lot has happened inside of me. I won’t be shagging, or saving games, any time soon, but I am not going anywhere.
I’m coming back. Write it down in big letters. I can’t go out this way, I tell the reporters. Miracles happen, I’m a positive man.
My surgery is delayed for a month because doctors find a blood clot in my leg that they need to break up. On June 12, Dr. David Altchek of the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York operates, and it goes well. He says the tear wasn’t as bad as it looked in the pictures. I spend the rest of the summer going through the pounding process of rehab, treating it as seriously as a World Series appearance. Four or five times a week, for three hours a day, I go through the array of torturous exercises I need to increase range of motion and strength, pushing, pulling, punishing myself. The pain on many days is as bad as, or worse than, the original injury, but I am dogged in my perseverance.
This is what I need to do if I want to make it all the way back.
If there’s one unforeseen positive in the whole ordeal, it is that I discover the joys of summer with my family. I haven’t been off for an extended t
ime during a summer since I was twenty years old.
We have a family barbecue on the Fourth of July while the Yankees are winning in Tampa.
I could get used to this, I think.
I can go to my boys’ ball games, and have more relaxed time with Clara. I am much more in sync with the daily rhythms of our family. Of course I’m not ready for retirement; I have a comeback season, 2013, ahead of me, Lord willing. But these feelings let me know that when the time comes to retire, I am going to be fine with it.
Just as I am getting set for surgery and beginning the rehab work, the Yankees take off in the East, winning twenty of twenty-seven games in June, a charge led mostly by Robinson Cano. Every time I tune in to a game it seems Robby is crushing another baseball. He has 11 homers for the month, hits .340, and maintains a 23-game hitting streak, all while playing world-class defense.
Without a doubt, Robby is one of the greatest players I’ve ever played with. He is also one of the most confounding players I’ve ever played with. Go back a few years to a game in Anaheim. The Angels have won two straight lopsided games, and we are in dire need of a victory if we want to stay in the pennant race.
Joe calls for me with one out and men on first and second, the score tied in the ninth. I either get two outs or we lose. The hitter is the leadoff man, Chone Figgins. On my first pitch, I get him to hit a six- or eight-hopper to second. Robby is shading a step or two toward second, but the ball is hit slowly enough that I know he has time to get there. Robby takes a couple of steps toward the ball. And then he stops.
No dive, no attempt to block it.
Nothing. He just stops.
The ball trickles into the outfield. The runner, Howie Kendrick, comes around from second to complete the sweep. Nobody can understand why Robby doesn’t dive or smother the ball somehow to save the game.
I definitely don’t understand. Even if you think the first baseman is going to catch the ball, how do you not get ready in case he doesn’t? How do you stand there like a department-store mannequin and watch the ball roll into the outfield?
How can you not give all you have in that moment to prevent our team from losing?
I do not talk to Robby after the game. Reporters are all around. Emotions are running high. That’s the worst time to have this conversation.
We fly to Minnesota that night, and the next day, I seek out Robby in the clubhouse in the Metrodome. Robby and I have had these discussions before. We are standing near his locker.
What happened on that ball Figgins hit yesterday? I say.
I don’t know. I thought Wilson [the first baseman] was taking it. I just didn’t read it right, Robby says.
When he didn’t make the play, why didn’t you go after it? I ask.
I didn’t think I could get there, he says.
Robby’s head is down, and it’s obvious he feels bad about what happened. He knows he doesn’t have a bigger fan than me on the club. I am not trying to drop a safe on him. I am trying to help him, the way an older brother helps a younger brother.
Robby, you are way better than what you showed yesterday, I say. In that situation you have to do whatever it takes to keep the ball in the infield.
Robby nods.
I know it wasn’t good. Next time it won’t happen.
Robinson Cano and I were teammates for nine years by the time I retired. This guy has so much talent I don’t know where to start. Sometimes I question if he knows how much talent he has—knows that he can be much better even than what he is, better than what anybody is. He is that gifted. I used to tell him, I don’t want to see you give up at-bats. Ever. I want to see you fight at every at-bat.
It would drive me crazy when I’d see Robby swing at balls at his eyes and basically get himself out. And how many times did I see him swing at the first pitch with the bases loaded? That’s what a guy without confidence does. Not what one of the best hitters in the game does.
Over and over, I tell him just that: Robby, you are too good to do that. On the first pitch, the pitcher often is going to throw something bad to see if he can get you to go fishing and hit a weak grounder or pop-up somewhere. Don’t help him. When you do that, it’s not just your at-bat that gets wasted. It’s a letdown for the whole team when the best hitter we’ve got gets himself out.
Why would you want to help the pitcher?
You’re right. I won’t do it.
His baserunning is another one of our topics. When he gets going, he’s a very good base runner. He gets a good secondary lead, reads the ball well. His instincts are solid. He just doesn’t always run hard out of the box, and then there are those times—way too many—when he doesn’t put pressure on the defense by running all-out on routine grounders. You never assume everything is going to be an out, because it isn’t always going to be.
You can ask Luis Castillo, the former Met, about that.
A month later in New York, Robby trots after a ball Cliff Floyd hits in a game at the Stadium against Tampa Bay. It allows Floyd to get to second base. At the end of the inning, Joe pulls Robby from the game.
You don’t want to hustle? Take a seat, Joe says.
I stay on top of Robby more than any other teammate, precisely because of the gifts the Lord has given him. If somebody else gets himself out or doesn’t hustle, it bothers me, but not in the same way. I hold him to a higher standard—and want him to have the same expectation of himself.
To his credit, Robby never makes excuses or tells me to back off when I approach him. Not one time. I think he trusts that I come to him in the spirit of helping. He is always very respectful—and he always says thank you.
Trust me, there are plenty of guys who can’t take that kind of honesty.
Robby has gotten better and better as he’s gotten older. He plays harder now, and I hope he keeps it going in his new home in Seattle. There’s no doubt he is a Hall of Fame–caliber talent. It’s just a question of whether he finds the drive that you need to get there. I don’t think Robby burns to be the best. I think he’s content to enjoy the game and help his team and go home. You don’t see the red-hot passion in him that you see in most elite players. He is a laid-back guy. Maybe because he came up surrounded by so many star players who were older, he just slipped into that role, but now that he is the leading man for the Mariners, it is his time.
How often do you see a player with this beautiful a swing, who can play this kind of defense, and hit for this kind of power? It’s amazing. He steps in the box and has those quiet hands and then uncoils and the hands come forward, so strong, so quick. You see him rip a ball into the gap, and you think: With a swing like this, you should hit .350 in your down years. That’s the kind of ability he has. It is all there for Robby Cano. I hope he goes and gets it.
After two months of painstaking rehab on my knee, I am feeling so good that I am convinced that I can come back and pitch this season. I meet with Dr. Altchek to give him the glowing report.
Doc, my knee feels great, I say. I really think that I can—
He cuts me off. He knows athletes, knows where this is going—that I am about to make a case for why I should get back to the mound this season. He tells me it would be foolish and risky to try to rush back. I am a runner barreling toward home, and he is a Molina-sized catcher blocking the plate.
I am not going to get close to scoring.
Your arm may feel fine, but isn’t being a major league pitcher more than that? he says. Can you field bunts? Can you sprint off the mound, plant, turn, and throw a guy out? Can you defend your position, and beat a runner to first on a 3–1 play?
I wish I had a counterargument, but I don’t. He is right.
I know how much you want to get back to the club for the playoffs, but you’re not ready to be on a big league mound yet, Dr. Altchek says. You want to give your knee all the time it needs. You should be in great shape for spring training.
Spring is next up for us, since we have another disappointing October, beating the Orioles in the divis
ion series before getting swept in the ALCS by the Tigers. A bunch of cold bats do us in. After a regular season in which he hit .312 with 33 homers and 94 RBIs, Robinson Cano goes 3 for 40 in the postseason. It turns out to be his final October in a New York Yankee uniform.
21
Exit Sandman
I AM ON A back field at our spring training complex in Tampa, having just spent an hour working on bunt defense and pickoff moves. Mike Harkey, our bullpen coach, is nearby. The year is 2008. Or 2010. Or 2012.
It could’ve been the odd years, too.
This is it, Hark, I’m done. I’m not going through another year of this.
You are full of it, Hark says.
No, this time I mean it, I say.
You’re like the little boy who cried wolf, Hark says. You will be back here next year and probably the year after and we’ll be having the same conversation. You will never retire.
Hark and I have this exchange six times, or is it ten? We have it often, because spring training is my least favorite time of the year. You hear people wax poetic about spring training being a metaphor for life, a symbolic rebirth that comes packed with hope. I never really get the rapture. I am a homebody at heart. Leaving Clara and the boys has never been easy for me. Home is where we pray and laugh. It’s where we nurture one another. I see my sons having fun in the family room right before it is time to leave one year, and I begin to cry.
The feelings are like a tsunami from nowhere.
I feel like I’ve failed these boys, because I leave them so often, I tell Clara.
Leaving home wasn’t easy when I was twenty-three and it is harder still when I am forty-three. I am a creature who finds comfort in routine, and it’s unsettling when the routine gets upended.
It’s not that I don’t want to prepare and do the work. I understand that there is rust to scrape off, fundamentals to lay down, but how many times can you cover first or work on cutoffs? To me, spring training is more boring than waiting for fish to bite. Give me a handful of innings, a couple of weeks, and I’m ready to go. There are so many monotonous drills and so little rush of competition.
The Closer Page 23