The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey With Asperger's Syndrome (8 page)

Then came Gabby. She was the princess. All she had to do to get her daddy’s love was climb in Curt’s lap. Curt was seemingly incapable of yelling at her, or saying no to her. She knew that even though Curt didn’t crawl on the floor and wrestle with her the way he did with Gehrig, he still worshipped her. Gabby never really needed much from anyone anyway. She loved everyone, and didn’t worry about how much time any one person spent with her.

When Grant came along, it was a different story. Curt was good with Grant as a baby, but Grant was the third. It was the classic birth order story: You take tons of pictures with the first, a few with the second, and barely any with the third. Curt and I didn’t love Grant any less, of course, but the novelty of parenthood had been eclipsed by the daytoday realities of having three kids and a crazy baseballcentric family life.

The other kids played with Grant, so there was plenty of attention to go around for him—even if there wasn’t as much coming from his dad—and when Grant was about three, it became clear that he didn’t care whether he
had Curt’s approval or not. A relationship with Grant meant you had to work. He argued constantly, pouted a lot, and had big, loud, messy meltdowns. He was a different kind of child than the other two had been, for sure. It required more effort on Curt’s part, and sadly there wasn’t much payoff for his effort. Grant seemed aloof no matter what Curt did, and Curt’s time was limited.

Part of the problem with Grant was that he didn’t always seem to have respect for adults—and that included Curt and me. Because of Curt’s relationship with his father, respect was critically important to him, and this complicated his interactions with Grant. Curt thought like I did—old school. When our parents yelled, they had our attention and we respected them. We figured it would be the same with our kids, so when they weren’t behaving, we yelled. For the most part, the others responded to that. But not Grant. He wouldn’t listen, and then we’d have to resort to measures that would make him melt down. If Curt grabbed him by the arm, Grant would scream as if Curt were killing him. We had no idea what to make of it. It was a big mess. Grant couldn’t see that Curt was angry. Meanwhile, Curt was hellbent on getting control of his kid, no matter what. To make matters worse, Grant would get nervous when being scolded, and he would let out this nervous giggle that could make you twice as mad.

When Grant was hurt, he wanted nothing to do with Curt. I can imagine that was painful for Curt. It was tough on me, too. I was exhausted from being the one Grant wanted all day. I was the constant in Grant’s life. I was safe. I wasn’t going anywhere, unlike Curt, who was away so much.

By the time we got to Boston, it was very clear to me that Curt and Grant weren’t close, and it bothered me. Not knowing any better at the time, I thought Curt wasn’t trying. I knew that it couldn’t be easy, but I thought that if he would only put time into Grant, they would eventually click the way he and Gehrig did. I leaned on Curt a little to try and get him to make the first moves. I wanted him to take Grant to the ballpark with him. But when I finally managed to convince Curt to take Grant to the ballpark, Grant refused
to go, which of course frustrated me no end. Here I was fighting for him and he didn’t care. I wanted them to spend time together, but it was so much work that Curt would yell loudly at him and Grant would completely shut down.

Occasionally, Grant would agree to go with Curt to the clubhouse, but it didn’t go too well. Grant elicited mixed feelings from the other players there. They all loved him because he was so adult when he spoke with them, but they were also wary of him because his behavior was so random and unpredictable.

Since Grant had no interest in going to the batting cage or on the field, Curt would take him into the room where the players relaxed, which was offlimits to anyone besides players and their kids. They’d hang out and play Xbox for a while, which was okay. Then when it came time for Curt to go to the training room or get ready for batting practice, he would walk Grant through the rules: no running around, no wandering, no touching other people’s stuff. Sure enough, thirty minutes later Curt would find him wandering around the training room, touching people’s things. Curt had always found it disrespectful when other players and their wives brought their kids to the clubhouse and let them roam and do whatever they wanted. He didn’t want to be that guy, or have Grant be that kid, but with Grant it felt like they were, which understandably made Curt more reluctant to take him there.

W
ATCHING YOUR TEAM PLAY
again and again is not a hard thing to do when the team is winning, and that season we were winning. It was thrilling to be there. Curt made the AllStar team that year, and we went off to Houston. Then, before I knew it, the kids were heading back to school.

We made it to the playoffs. The first round was against the California Angels. Not a lot of wives went on the road trip. I guess that’s what happens when you make it to the playoffs often—it’s not such a big deal. After two quick wins, we were back home. Next stop: the Yankees.

Now it’s one thing to imagine that legendary, almost onehundredyear
old rivalry from afar. It’s another to witness it with your own eyes. After the tragic 2003 American League Championship when the Yankees won in the bottom of the fourteenth inning on a home run, the Red Sox fans begged for the rematch. Me, I would rather have gone an easier route. Not to mention that the odds were not in our favor. It had been eightysix years since the Red Sox won a World Series. What was the chance that we’d come out on top?

It was an exciting time to be in Boston, and it was fun to see my kids get swept up in the excitement generated by the Red Sox Nation. The playoffs, and the possibility of going to the World Series, were all they could talk about. Grant didn’t really know what to make of it all. He was just very concerned about making sure he had a Red Sox shirt to wear to school on Red Sox Spirit Day, like his teachers told him to. He was very glad he had something to wear for it. Of course, he didn’t realize that half his wardrobe was Red Sox gear. For him, the playoffs had another upside: They meant that he didn’t have to say goodbye for the winter to all his friends in the Red Sox playroom.

The first three games did not get off to a good start, and just like that we were in the hole three games to none in the bestofseven series. Curt didn’t have a good start in the first game. He was having trouble with his ankle. One of his tendons was torn. By the time we went to New York, where he would pitch game six, his doctors had the crazy idea of sewing the tendon down to keep it from dislocating. No one had any idea whether or not it would work. He came back to our hotel room the night before he pitched, and I honestly thought I would throw up. He had these four big stitches on his ankle, and lord knows what they were attached to. The whole thing was puffy and had fresh wounds on it.

“How in the world are you going to pitch?” I asked him.

He just looked at me. Clearly, in his mind, there was no other choice. I couldn’t imagine any part of the body not being sore after it was cut open. Still, wounded foot or not, we both somehow felt incredibly calm when Curt left for the ballpark the next day. It was the calmest either of us had ever felt
before a game. It was a sense of being in the zone, and knowing that when things are going well, anything can happen.

Needless to say, Curt and the team delivered a magical night, but because I was up in the stands, it wasn’t until my sisterinlaw Allison called that I knew what everyone had been watching all night.

“His foot is bleeding!” she said. “They keep showing his foot on television.” I had horrible visions of those stitches being ripped out and that ankle swollen something fierce. But there was too much excitement for Curt to worry about his foot. Something special was in the air.

Even though we were winning by a lot, the wives from last year knew better than to relax. They had been in the same exact situation the year before when the Yankees had won. There would be no such fate for our rivals from New York this year. We went on to win game six, which Curt had pitched, as well as the decisive game seven the following day.

When the last out was made the celebration began, but it didn’t last long, because we had to get on a plane and go home. Later that night I asked Curt, “Hey, where’s the sock?”

“I threw it in the garbage!” He hadn’t realized that the whole world had been focused on that sock.

Next stop: the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. The first two games were at home. The Sox went ahead the first game and were up in the series 1–0. Everyone around us was thrilled. I had never seen so much excitement over a team in all my years in baseball. People put up signs all over our driveway and actually set up lawn chairs at the end of it. Homemade signs were posted by locals along the entire route Curt would travel to the ballpark—signs that read, “Bring us a ring, we will make you king!” The kids’ playground at school was a sea of Red Sox shirts.

Curt decided to do the surgery one more time. He was in pain and uncomfortable, which was to be expected considering that the procedure was performed on a table in the clubhouse, but the night before he was to pitch again,
Curt and I stuck to his routine so that he could get into game mode. Mostly that meant him going to bed late, then reading reports in the morning and getting his game face ready. I put the kids to bed and went to bed myself. No matter how much fun the World Series might be, I still had to get enough sleep because the kids had to be at school in the morning.

I woke up at 6
A.M.
that morning to find Curt wide awake and staring at me, which was very unusual for him on the morning of a game.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m in so much pain,” he replied, “I can’t walk. I was up the whole night. My ankle is swollen and it’s killing me.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?” I begged.

“I didn’t want you to not sleep either,” he said.

It was frightening enough to see Curt up before noon on a day when he was pitching. But to see him in sheer agony left me feeling helpless.

“Who can I call?” I offered. “What do you need me to do?”

I had been with this man for fifteen years. I knew two things for certain: one, he wanted more than anything to pitch, and two, he must really be in pain if he was up this early. I got him some pain medicine and put an ice pack on his ankle. He called the trainer, told him there was no way he would be able to pitch that night, and went back to sleep. When he woke at one in the afternoon, he was still in agony.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked him.

“I just have to go to the ballpark,” he said. “I’m so uncomfortable, there’s no way I’m going to pitch. I can’t even walk.”

I carried his stuff to the car and he left. There were none of the usual goodluck kisses, none of the silly, rhymie little poems I liked to give him to make him laugh. He looked like a kid who’d been waiting all week to go to the carnival and got sick on the day. I tried to think of something to lift his spirits, but I knew deep down that there was nothing I could do. I knew it was going to kill him to go down the driveway and come across the fans holding
their signs, waiting to wave him goodbye. It was cool for me to see them, and I wasn’t even pitching, but in Curt’s state that day, he probably felt like he was about to let them all down, and that must have hurt.

I worried about him all day. I went to the ballpark that night and called over to the clubhouse. “I’m just checking on Curt,” I said. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s doing great!” said Jack McCormick, the traveling secretary. “He’s in the bull pen warming up.”

What?
I swear, World Series or not, I wanted to choke Curt. The first two innings, I was furious that he couldn’t find a minute to call and say he was okay. But then there was so much excitement, I forgot I was angry at him. It was freezing at the ballpark that night, but that didn’t dampen the energy in the stands. Curt pitched a gem, and we were up 2–0 in the series. He was told the camera had been fixed on his ankle the last game, so he decided that if he bled again, which he probably would, he would write “K ALS” on his sock so the ALS patients would know he was thinking of them. (“K” stands for “strikeout.”)

It happened, and he did it. I think it’s one of the smartest things he has ever done. The awareness he raised for ALS was unbelievable. And he managed to hang on to that sock. It now resides in the Baseball Hall of Fame. My parents had to drive it there because no one would insure it in transit. The stains are really not that big, but the story is.

After the game, Curt walked into the wives’ room. I started crying, and he teared up, too.

“We did it!” he said to me. “We did it!”

It was a great moment and I was relieved and happy, but then I looked at him sternly. “You couldn’t find one minute to call me?” I said. “I’ve been sick over you all day.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said plaintively. But two seconds later he was back to ecstatic. “We did it!”

We said goodbye to our kids and boarded the plane to St. Louis. In St. Louis we won the next game to go up 3–0 on the Cardinals. All we needed
now was one more victory to be World Series champions. And so it was that with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, Keith Foulke tossed the ball to first and it was all over. Boston had waited eightysix years for this. I could only begin to imagine what joy this would bring to that city. We celebrated in the clubhouse for a couple of hours, and once again we were on a flight back to Boston. No one could sleep, even though it was five in the morning.

Apparently no one in Boston slept either. They lined the streets of our bus route, from the airport to the stadium. Being on the field in St. Louis had been nothing like seeing the Red Sox fans’ reaction to this memorable series. Everyone was exhausted—teachers, kids, parents. People had woken their kids up to see history being made. I’d seen Curt play a lot of ball in a lot of different places since we’d first met, but I’d never seen anything like this.