Wherever I Wind Up (33 page)

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

CITI FIELD

Our season ends with a 3–0 victory over the Reds. What a ride it has been. Not quite a peaceful trip through the countryside. More like a turbulent spin aboard an old, rickety roller coaster straight out of the state fairgrounds, circa 1949.

When you look at it in its totality, the New York Mets’ 2011 season was really more like a miniseries than 162 games worth of baseball. We were brutal early, good for a nice stretch in the middle, and then fell off late. With a slew of injuries to key players, we brought kids like Lucas Duda and Justin Turner up from Buffalo and everybody battled hard, and in doing so honored our manager, Terry Collins, who never lost his intensity and never let us use injuries as an excuse. We were scrappy overachievers who hung around the periphery of the wild-card race much longer than most people figured. And then at the very end, the final game, the whole drama was entirely wrapped around our best and most dynamic player, José Reyes.

I want to tell you a few things about José. He’s not only a terrific teammate and one of the most gifted players I’ve ever been around, he’s also probably the game’s greatest single energy source. His exuberance and energy are unmatched, and so is his ability to win games with his glove, his bat, and his legs. In the first 81 games, he hits .352 with 30 stolen bases and 15 triples, and plays superbly at shortstop. It is as supernatural a performance over time as I’ve ever seen.

Then José hurt his hamstring and went on the DL, came back, and went on the DL again, and the air went totally out of the Mets balloon. He couldn’t run the same way, couldn’t dominate with his speed, wasn’t close to being the same player. He had only one more triple the rest of the season. About all he could still do was try to win the batting title, which brings us to the last day.

José and Ryan Braun of the Brewers battled it out right to game number 162. José led off that final game with a bunt single, raising his average to .337, then took himself out when he reached first, peeling off so quickly that latecomers or people who went to get a soda missed him altogether. José’s.337 average did, in fact, win him the first batting title in Mets history, but it came bundled with an avalanche of criticism and near hysteria that went on for days.

Was it selfish and cowardly to take himself out of the game, just so he wouldn’t risk the title by perhaps making a few outs? Didn’t he owe something more to Mets fans who paid good money to see him—in perhaps his final game as a Met, with his free agency pending?

The whole thing was very unfortunate, and to my mind, could’ve been handled better by everybody. At the very least, I would’ve loved to have seen José go out to short for the top of the second. Terry, who I believe did as great a job this year as any manager I’ve ever been around (our 77–85 record doesn’t come close to doing him justice), could’ve replaced him then and he would’ve gotten a huge ovation, I’m sure. If nothing else, his exit wouldn’t have been so sudden and jarring. It would’ve been a more fitting departure for a player who truly leaves it all out on the field.

Personally, I would’ve liked to have seen José play the whole game. He’s a guy who hates to sit—goes nuts when he has to sit—so to take himself out, even in a meaningless game, is contrary to his ethos as a ballplayer. I hate to see his stellar play all year sullied by the way it ended, to hear people say that he backed into the title. I appreciate the fact that the batting title was important to him, and don’t begrudge him that or judge him for it. We’re all entitled to our own goals. I know how hard he works and how much he punishes his body, every day. I also know how much it ate him to have his legs, the lifeblood of his game, break down again, as they have before. To see a man who gives so much of himself, who plays with such passion, being a spectator as the final innings of the season came and went just doesn’t seem to be the right image. I would’ve much preferred to see him flying around second with braids flapping and sliding head-first into third.

Now, that would’ve been a much more fitting ending for José Reyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY

FINGERNAILS IN FLUSHING

I
am on my way to Nationals Park, on the D.C. Metro. It’s Saturday on July Fourth weekend. The subway car is teeming with red-clad fans wearing Nationals T-shirts and jerseys, a smattering of Ryan Zimmerman’s number 11 shirts and a slew of Stephen Strasburg’s number 37 shirts. I sit in the middle of the car and listen to the fans banter. I hear a little boy, maybe eight years old, on his way to his first ball game, talking excitedly to his father, firing questions to his father about Strasburg—and why wouldn’t he? He is the most heralded pitching prospect in baseball in years, a kid who has single-handedly injected fascination into a long-moribund franchise, with his 100-mile-per-hour fastball and ridiculous curve.

I am eager to see him myself, because I am pitching against him today.

It is a matchup of almost absurd contrasts, young guy versus old guy, fireballer versus flutterballer, Anointed One versus Anonymous One. It is a match of an F-18 fighter jet against a butterfly. Every great story needs to have tension, and this baseball narrative should have it in abundance.

I am pretending to read
Life of Pi
by Yann Martel, but I am really listening to the talk in the subway car. Nobody has any idea who I am—one of the perks of journeyman stature. I hear my name a dozen or more times. It is a surreal experience, knowing I’ll be one of the protagonists in the drama in two hours or so, surrounded by people who will be attending the drama. I am not far from a guy who is reading the
Wall Street Journal
. I look closer and see an article and a cartoon on the sports page, under the heading “Rocket Boy vs. The Baffler.” It depicts Stephen Strasburg (aka Rocket Boy) as an airborne superhero in full costume, complete with chiseled physique and otherworldly powers and baseballs blazing out of his right hand. It depicts me (The Baffler) as a much less imposing figure, on the ground, with a question mark on my chest and baseballs floating all about.

I almost laugh out loud.
The Baffler.
I love it.

“It’s amazing that one guy can throw 100 [miles per hour] and the other can throw 75 and they can both be really good at what they do,” David Wright says in the article.

The crowd in Nationals Park is close to forty thousand, almost triple the size of the turnout in my first start with the Mets, five weeks earlier. They are not there to see The Baffler.

We score on Jason Bay’s RBI double in the top of the first, and as I take the mound I am enthralled by the moment, and the challenge ahead. I relish that there is all this buzz around Strasburg, and that I am no more relevant than the right-field peanut vendor. I don’t look like Stephen Strasburg. I don’t throw like Stephen Strasburg, and I am certainly not as wealthy as Stephen Strasburg, but I sure am ready to compete with him.

And I do precisely that.

Strasburg goes 5 innings and gives up 4 hits and 2 runs. I go 7 innings and give up 6 hits and 2 unearned runs. Neither of us gets a decision, and the Nationals rally for 4 runs in the final 2 innings to win, 6–5. I’ve done my job, and done it well. I wish I had kept the cartoon.

We are ten games over .500 (47–37) and just two games behind the Phillies in the National League East in early July, but we start to fade after the all-star break and we can never quite arrest it, though I still feel good about how hard I am competing and the results I’m getting. On August 13, the Phillies come to Citi Field, and to me it is our last and best chance to get back in the race. I am coming off my worst start of the year, against these same Phillies, in which I lasted just 3 innings and gave up 8 hits and 4 earned runs in Citizens Bank Park. I wasn’t quite as bad as the line sounds—there were some untimely bleeders and bloopers in there—but my team gave me a two-run lead against Roy Halladay in the first and I couldn’t take care of it, and that’s on me.

Now we have our rivals again, and when I get to the ballpark on Friday afternoon and start to get ready, I am in a surprisingly good place. I’m not panicky because I had a misstep the last time out. I am not losing any sort of faith in my knuckleball, or letting birds of prey even think about setting up their nest. Every year I’ve thrown the knuckleball, it has gotten better. It has gotten more consistent, with more finish, so consequently I have more confidence in it. In 2008 in Seattle, about 65 percent of my pitches were knuckleballs. In 2009, in Minnesota, about 75 percent were knuckleballs.

This year I am throwing knuckleballs 85 percent of the time, which is how it should be. It is, after all, my best pitch, my best chance to win. I’m also effectively changing speeds, throwing knuckleballs as slow as sixty-nine miles per hour and as hard as eighty-one. I choose to focus on my body of work with the Mets, and not one shabby start in Citizens Bank Park.

There is a blank canvas before me tonight,
I tell myself.
It’s up to me to paint it, to dab enough nasty knuckleballs in enough good spots to make it come together. If I work the brush with full conviction, maybe I can make it a masterpiece.

I thank God for where I am now, for this shift in perspective that is allowing me to purge the unhappy memories of my previous start and take the mound tonight as a free man. My opponent is Cole Hamels. It won’t be easy.

Hamels and I match zeroes through five. I am in one of my best places of the season, the best since the twenty-eight-up, twenty-seven-down game. I get through the fourth inning in nine pitches and have yet to give up a hit. In the fifth, Jayson Werth, the Phillies right-fielder, leads off. Werth has had some success against me and he’s a dangerous guy. The count runs full after I throw five straight knuckleballs. I look in for the sign and Henry Blanco, my catcher, calls for a fastball.

I work fast. I like to get the ball and get back on the rubber and fire away again. But now I take a step back and look in again at Henry. I don’t know why he has called for a fastball. I don’t agree with it. If Werth sits on it, the scoreless tie could be gone in a millisecond.

I shake him off, but Henry puts down the fastball sign again. In my typical start, there are only three or four times a game when a catcher’s pitch-calling skill comes into play and we deviate from the knuckleball-intensive game plan. This is one of them. Henry is an astute guy and he must see something in how Werth is holding his hands or how he has moved up in the box to try to get the knuckleball early. I trust him.

I wind up and deliver what Henry wants: a fastball on the outer half of the plate—a defrost pitch, as I call it, because you throw slow, slow, slow, slow, and then you heat it up in a hurry. Werth is completely defrosted. So surprised that he locks up and doesn’t move a muscle. Strike three.

One out.

Next I get Shane Victorino swinging on a knuckleball, and get Brian Schneider to ground out weakly. I am more than halfway through and still have a no-hitter, but we’re not doing anything against Hamels, either. I get the first out in the sixth and then Hamels steps in and I start him off with a knuckleball. He lines it into right for a single, and that’s the end of my no-hit fantasies. The Citi Field crowd recognizes me with a warm ovation. It’s a nice gesture, but I have much work yet to do. I get Jimmy Rollins to ground out and retire Placido Polanco on a long fly to center.

In the bottom of the sixth, Carlos Beltrán hits an RBI double to give us a 1–0 lead. I need to make it hold up. I am determined to make it hold up. I get through the middle of the order on eight pitches in the seventh, and need only nine more to get three fly-ball outs in the eighth. We go down so fast in the bottom of the eighth that I almost feel as though I never left the mound.

I have a strange epiphany as I warm up for the ninth, three outs away from a one-hit shutout. There’s something different about this start, and now I know what: for the first time in my big-league career, I feel dominant. The way I’m controlling the pitch, the consistency of my feel and my release point, the sharpness of its movement—it’s all making for a pitch that is just a beast to get a good piece of.

Domonic Brown is first up, pinch-hitting for Hamels. On an 0–1 pitch he grounds out to short. Rollins comes up and I go up a strike on him and then he grounds out to Ike Davis at first.

Now it’s Polanco, the last man between me and a shutout of the National League champions. The fans are standing and clapping. Polanco takes a knuckleball for a strike and I go up 0–1 again. I wind again and throw a knuckleball that darts away from him. He swings and hits it off the end of the bat, a harmless fly to right field. Jeff Francoeur squeezes it, and my day at the office—and my first shutout in seven years—is complete.