Wherever I Wind Up (23 page)

FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2011

Rangers Ballpark, Arlington, Texas

It’s 2:02 on the scoreboard clock and I am in the visitors’ dugout, being flooded with a Texas-size torrent of memories. The field is peaceful and exquisitely manicured, the quiet before batting practice almost surreal. But inside I have so much going on, being back in a place where I have some of my greatest memories—and some of my worst. I look out at the office suites beyond center field and think of Doug Melvin’s face the day he retracted my $810,000 contract offer in the summer of 1996. I look on the mound and see the place where I gave up six home runs to the Detroit Tigers and tied a modern-day record for gopher balling as a neophyte knuckleball pitcher.

But on that mound I also see the place where I also made my big-league debut in 2001, and where I won my first game, in relief, two years later. I see a club that Anne and I were a part of when we had our first three children, Gabriel, Lila and Eli, and where I became friends with quality people like Mark Teixeira, Michael Young, Jeff Brantley, Rusty Greer, and Jay Powell, among others.

I see the place where I underwent a complete metamorphosis—from conventional pitcher to knuckleballer—and dealt with a wild ride of emotions and results in the process.

Through my time in Texas, I played briefly for Johnny Oates and Jerry Narron, and then for Buck Showalter, who was the first manager to really give me a chance. I had fantastic coaches in Orel Hershiser, Mark Connor, Rudy Jaramillo, Bucky Dent, Lee Tunnell, and Andy Hawkins.

Being here reminds me of one of the enduring challenges of living on this side of eternity: how to live fully in the pain of a moment as well as the joy of a moment. Learning to walk through this world holding both has been one of the real gifts my God has given me.

My life here was not always easy, but it was rich, and I have much to be thankful for about it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

INTO THE MISSOURI

H
ow many times have I been here, at this window, in this exact place? Ten? Twenty? How many times have I told myself that one day I will stop with the excuse making and take the plunge?

That one day I will prove to everybody and myself that I mean it—that this isn’t just the usual testosterone-fueled ballplayer bravado?

I don’t know why—or maybe I do—but as I look out the window again at this moment on June 9, 2007, I decide.

It is time.

It is finally time.

The window I’m looking out of is in the Ameristar Casino Hotel in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It is about as nice a hotel as you will ever stay at in minor-league baseball, spacious and well-appointed and even equipped with a gift shop. You know you are in the big time when you’ve got a hotel gift shop. Even though I dislike everything about casinos, from the recycled oxygen, to the sad sound track of the slots and the craps tables, to the desperate-looking people who don’t know when to stop, I actually like staying in the Ameristar, mostly because it has a good bakery, with killer chocolate cake. I make the rounds on the casino floor, trying not to gag on the cigarette smoke and the stale smell of alcohol, and playing the role of elder statesman, making sure my younger teammates are not being foolhardy with their twenty-dollar per diem. I always root for my guys to win, and not just because I’m a good teammate: when somebody hits the jackpot, it often means a big upgrade on the postgame spread, maybe barbecue and cornbread instead of the Sam’s Club chicken and Van Camp’s baked beans that have been on simmer since the second inning. Call me an altruist in progress.

When you take the elevator to your room in the Ameristar, you get an unimpeded view of the Missouri River. It is big and brown, probably 250 yards across, swift of current and sludgy of texture. The first time I saw the Missouri from this elevator was in 2002 as an Oklahoma City RedHawk coming into town to play the Omaha Royals. Now I am a member of the Nashville Sounds, still in town to play the Royals. The uniform changes, but not the fixation with the Missouri.

The absolute first thought I had when I saw the mighty Missouri?
Boy, would it be cool to swim across that.
The second thought I had was:
One day I’m going to do it. One day I’m going to swim across this river.

I’m not sure why the Missouri has this pull on me, but it calls to me every time I stay in the Ameristar, almost taunting me to take it on. Washington crossing the Delaware, Joshua crossing the Jordan, Perseus crossing the river Styx—I think of all these epic feats as I look at the river. I am no general and I’m certainly no figure from Greek mythology. I’m a knuckleballer in desperate straits, a bad outing or two away from being finished with professional baseball. I’m a husband and father who feels terribly inadequate, a damaged person who is trying to convince the world—and myself—that I’m fine.

Maybe if I can get across the Missouri it will say something about me and my courage.

Maybe it will prove my worth somehow—be a metaphorical baptism, a renewal, a chance to start fresh.

Maybe if I somehow get across, swim like a madman through the turbidity, God will help me close the prodigious gap between the man I am and the man I want to be.

Or maybe I’m just a reckless fool, the way I was when I once jumped eighty feet off Foster Falls, near Sequatchie, Tennessee, or went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean during a hurricane. You could say—and some have—that I have a death wish. Not sure. I believe it’s more accurate to say I have a risk wish, somehow clinging to the notion that achieving these audacious feats will somehow make me worthy, make me special, as if I’d taken some magical, esteem-enhancing drug.

The reasoning of a child? I can’t really argue with you there.

In the elevator, I float my plan by Chris Barnwell, my roommate.

Are you out of your mind? Chris says. Do you know how big that river is and how strong the currents are? That is one of the most idiotic ideas I have ever heard. It’s completely idiotic. You can’t do this. You can’t.

Chris, of course, is 100 percent right. I must’ve been wild-eyed enough that Chris knew he wasn’t getting through. So he calls Anne to let her know what is going on with his badly deluded teammate and see if she can drive sense into me.

He’s a grown man. He knows his limitations, Anne tells him. Thank you for calling, but I know R.A. wouldn’t do anything that he wasn’t sure he could handle.

Anne is, in some ways, a traditional southern woman, a woman who will stand by her man, and looking back I think her response to Chris’s call was almost autonomic. One of the things I love most about my wife is that she respects me as a man even though I’m still a boy in so many ways.

Word about my impending swim spreads through the team like a rash. Outfielder Laynce Nix, one of my best friends on the team, asks me if I’m serious and I assure him that I am. He emphatically joins Chris in the incredulity chorus.

Get off it, man. That’s a crazy, stupid idea, he says.

Other teammates aren’t so worried. They’re more interested in doing some wagering on my proposed feat, because if there’s anything ballplayers love more than a spectacle, it’s action. Some people pick me to make it, others don’t. I quietly do some half-baked reconnaissance, asking the bellhop and the front desk people if the river is okay to swim in.

Oh, God, no, you don’t want to swim in the Missouri. It’s dirty and the currents are strong, a half-alarmed, half-amused bellhop says.

If I had any common sense, this would give me pause. But I have no sense. My idea of precaution is buying a pair of flip-flops in the gift shop so my feet don’t get cut up on the rocky, steeply sloping banks.

At eleven-thirty in the morning the next day, I get into the elevator and stare at the Missouri the whole ride down. I follow the course of a big log as it flows along and note how fast it is moving. In a room adjacent to the lobby, people are finishing up their continental breakfasts. I pass on the powdered donuts, and get down on the floor and start stretching my back, my hamstrings, my shoulders. Chris is by my side. He’s given up trying to talk me out of it. Now he’s my cornerman, pumping me up and trying to make sure I’ve got everything I need.

Warmed and stretched out, donut-less, I head out to the river. I’m wearing white shorts and a tank top and have the flip-flops taped to my feet, and a gaggle of teammates, probably fifteen, is traipsing along behind me. I’ve studied the river and have a good plan in place. (I actually believe this.) I am going to start upstream about a hundred yards or so. This way, when I get across, I should be directly opposite the hotel, ready to wave triumphantly to my adoring fans. There are small orange buoys bobbing in the middle of the river, about a hundred yards from shore. The current is much more placid near the banks. My plan is to swim furiously to the buoys, then throttle it back for the second half, when I’ll be more tired. I’m a strong swimmer. I used to swim the two-hundred-meter freestyle for the Seven Hills Swim and Tennis Club swim team.

I have no doubt that I can do this.

We walk around the back of the hotel. Inside the casino it’s not even lunchtime, and people are already busy gambling their day away. It doesn’t occur to me that I am walking down to the river to do my own gambling. I climb over a chain-link fence and snake through a few backyards. I descend the rocky bank to the water’s edge and peel off my tank top and shorts. I stand alone at the river’s edge in all my glory—a thirty-two-year-old minor-league pitcher, husband, and father of three, in his boxer briefs and taped-on flip-flops. Most of my teammates are on the bank, some of them hooting; the guys who aren’t there are up in the hotel, faces pressed against the windows. Laynce has the video camera, recording it all for posterity. My own lens shifts to the water, which, up close, doesn’t just look brown but almost inky, with the viscosity of motor oil.

It also looks a lot wider and a lot faster than it does from the eighth floor of the Ameristar. For an instant I wish Anne had bailed me out by joining Chris Barnwell’s vigorous protests. I take a hard look at the river. I see a few branches go by in front of me and they are
flying
. I’m struck by how loud the rushing sound of the water is. It’s getting noisy in my head too. I say a silent prayer.

I can’t back out now. Well, I guess I can, but I am not going to, and who knows why? Ego? Pride? Mulish, juvenile stubbornness? Probably all of the above. Whatever. I’m not backing out. Something else for Stephen James and me to talk about.

I take my first tentative steps into the water, up to my knees, just to get acclimated to the temperature. It’s tepid, with a cool edge to it. I don’t turn around, don’t wave, don’t say anything more to my teammates on the bank and in the windows. It’s game time. I push off hard and dive in. The adrenaline surge is so strong, it’s as if it’s rushing into me intravenously. My strokes are powerful as I cut through the first twenty or thirty yards or so.

It’s a long way but it’s not going to be all that hard,
I’m thinking.
Just keep wheeling those arms.

I keep wheeling, and wheeling. I start to feel the current intensify. I can feel it beating against the right side of my body. I concentrate on my cadence … one, two, three, breathe … one, two, three, breathe. I am moving along at a good clip, but it’s getting harder.

Sixty yards in, I have new respect for the river. I’m pretty sure I can get across, but I am not thinking this is going to be easy anymore. I dig harder.

Just keep going forward,
I tell myself.
Keep powering through the water and you’ll get there.

I can feel my strokes starting to lose power and efficiency. I’m not moving through the water the way I was even ten or twenty seconds earlier. With each weakening stroke, it becomes clearer that I have greatly underestimated the power of the rushing water.

As I approach the buoys and the midway point, I begin to feel an undertow tugging me downward. The current is stronger still. I am starting to get seriously fatigued. I pause and pick my head up for a second, treading water, and can’t believe where I am: a quarter mile downriver. The buoys in the middle are bobbing ahead of me, an orange tease. The other side seems hopelessly far away. A wave of panic overtakes me. It feels as real as the waves in the water.

You are in trouble. It’s too far to go. You need to turn around,
I tell myself.

I put my head back down. I keep going.

I’m not quitting.

I swim as hard as I ever have in my life for the next two minutes. I am not in the Seven Hills pool anymore. If I get to the buoys, beyond the halfway point, I know I can get across. I also know I can’t last much longer. The undertow is getting stronger and the force of it begins to pull the flip-flops off my feet. I stop and wrestle with the things, trying to pull them off. All it does is waste some of my rapidly dwindling energy.