Wherever I Wind Up (35 page)

But there’s an extra overlay this year, and that is feeling the pressure of proving myself worthy of my new contract. I warned myself not to do this, but here I am doing it anyway, feeling the need to justify the Mets’ investment. While I’m at it, I also feel pressure to stuff socks in the mouths of all the baseball pundits who think my success in 2010 was a fluke and that I am destined to go back to my proper journeyman place.

I sit on my hotel bed in Miami and do some self-directed therapy, reminding myself that fears do not rule me and only have power over me if I let them. I’m done with locking fear away, running from it as if I were a fugitive. All that does is feed the monster and make me more fearful. Once you can accept that everybody has fear and realize that you are not alone with it, it takes the venom right out of it. You stop thinking there is something horribly wrong with you. So as I prepare to face the Marlins at Sun Life Stadium, I am not looking to eliminate the fear so much as look at it honestly and walk well with it.

I pray before I go to bed, thanking God again for His steadfastness:

When I take the mound tomorrow, God, please let me compete as a man with the faith and self-awareness to rise above whatever fear I might have and put everything I have into every pitch I throw.

I take the mound in a good place. The noise in my head is a nonfactor. I pitch six innings, give up no earned runs, and strike out seven. The wind swirls for most of the game, so I use my hard knuckleball more than usual, because it doesn’t get blown around so much. We win, 9–2, and after I meet with the press, I take some time to decompress by thanking God for giving me the faculties and gifts to be able to do what I do, for I truly love it, and thanking Him for providing me with the wisdom to not give my fears any voice or power, freeing me up to embrace this moment fully.

I wanted a sense of belonging, and I couldn’t ask for more of it: the Mets have configured the rotation so that I start the home opener at Citi Field against the Nationals, an incredible honor. When I am introduced before the game, I get one of the loudest ovations of any player. When you’ve had more boos than cheers in your career, you notice big ovations, believe me. It’s forty-five degrees and raw, but my knuckleball is moving all over the place as I warm up. It’s a beautiful day for baseball.

After getting two quick outs in the top of the first, I throw an 80-mile-per-hour knuckleball to Ryan Zimmerman, and the moment it leaves my hand I know there is a problem. I have broken the nail of my right index finger. The pressure of the nail against the horsehide causes the nail to split. This is not a good thing to happen to a knuckleball pitcher. It is, in fact, a horrible thing to happen to a knuckleball pitcher. Everything I do starts with the nails that grip the ball. If the nails aren’t right, I can’t grip the ball right, and bad things ensue. The count is 2–2, and I don’t want to risk breaking the nail worse, so I come back and throw one of my new, superslow, 59-mile-per-hour numbers up there.

Zimmerman is ahead of it by a half hour. He misses by so much, he laughs.

I do not laugh.

I go in the dugout and work feverishly on my nail. Mike Herbst, our assistant trainer, keeps my nail-repair kit in his trainers’ box. He hands me my glass nail file and I try to even it out. I apply a hardening agent called Trind Nail Repair that my mother-in-law gave me. I can dab on Trind until Bernie Madoff gets out of jail and it’s not going to address the central issue: the broken nail is too short to allow me to grip my knuckleball.

Trouble, big.

I go back out for the second and get two fly-ball outs, but Rick Ankiel singles and then I walk the next two hitters on five pitches apiece. I’ve never broken a nail during a game before. I have almost no clue where the ball is going. I am trying to gut through it but I have that old familiar feeling that I am going out there with a pea shooter. For me to throw a knuckleball without the nail on my index finger is like a quarterback trying to throw a pass without his pinkie. The bases are loaded and I go up 0–2 on the opposing pitcher, Jordan Zimmermann. One pitch away from getting out of it, I throw a mediocre knuckleball and Zimmermann drives it into right for a two-run single. I am furious at myself, at the situation. When I get to the bench at the end of the inning, I slam my glove into the dugout wall.

I have such high expectations for this start, and can’t believe what is happening to it. I walk three more guys, one with the bases loaded, and leave the game after five. We lose, 6–2, and I am completely humbled and deflated.

Opening day. Check.

Huge ovation. Check.

Broken nail. Checkmate.

I don’t even make it into the sixth inning. It makes me sick.

I spend the days ahead obsessing over my busted nail. I take calcium supplements. I apply Trind frequently with a little applicator brush. Two days before my next start, the nail is growing nicely and I do my scheduled bullpen. About halfway through a seventy-pitch session, I throw a knuckleball and the nail splits again. Blood spurts all over my right hand.

This time the split is all the way down into the nail bed.

Now I am in a real bind. I’ve got basically no nail and know if I go out there against the Rockies in such a condition, I’m going to get raked. I tell Dan Warthen that I need to get to a nail salon ASAP. The words aren’t out of my mouth when I think about how ridiculous they sound. I try to imagine Clayton Kershaw or Justin Verlander rushing up to their pitching coaches and saying, “I got an emergency. I need to make an emergency run to a nail joint.”

I try to imagine them asking their trainers to keep a nail kit with them at all times, one that includes all of the indispensable tools of the knuckleballing trade: a glass file (metal files can leave jagged edges), Trind, superglue, a tube of acrylic, and a buffer.

I can’t.

What are you waiting for? Dan says.

I ask Dan not to tell Terry or anybody else, because I don’t want people getting worked up about it.

A few minutes later I am heading to the parking lot with Theresa Corderi, one of our cooks. She knows the neighborhood and she knows nails. She takes me to a little place on College Point Boulevard called Pink Nails. It’s run by Korean ladies and I am the only ballplayer on the premises. For seven bucks (tip included), a guy applies acrylic to my one busted nail. I do not get a discount for being in full uniform. The acrylic seems to take well. Theresa and I hustle back to the ballpark. As we pull in, Jeff Wilpon, the Mets’ chief operating officer, is walking in just ahead of me. I pray that he doesn’t turn around and see me arriving at the ballpark ten minutes before game time. I wonder if I can get a note from the people at Pink Nails if I need backup. It doesn’t come to that. Jeff keeps walking.

So do I.

My nail holds up okay against the Rockies two days later, but that’s about all that holds up. Every time out, it seems, something gets fouled up. Balls find gaps. I surrender home runs at terrible times. The games when I pitch well and the team plays well never seem to align.

I go into my ninth start of the year, in Houston, with a 1–5 record and a 4.50 ERA. I am embarrassed by the numbers next to my name. Here’s my chance to do something about it. Domed stadiums are usually good for knuckleballs. I feel good warming up, though often the bullpen warm-up doesn’t correlate at all to how you fare throwing real pitches to real hitters. I had a great knuckleball in the pen the night I gave up six homers to the Tigers, after all.

Michael Bourn leads off for the Astros. He mashes the third pitch of the game, a 2–0 fastball, for a triple to right center. It is not the start I want, and it swiftly gets much worse. With one out, Hunter Pence singles. Carlos Lee singles. I give up three more hits to the next three hitters. The Astros are being smart, shortening up and taking me the other way. I feel like I’m in the center of a merry-go-round, and it feels awful.

I’m down four runs after an inning, and the only good that comes of the outing is that I plead with Terry Collins to keep me in the game, let me at least eat some innings and save the bullpen. I wind up pitching into the sixth, and by game’s end I am the not-very-proud owner of a 1–5 record and a 5.08 ERA.

I walk off thinking of the pitching wisdom I once heard from Greg Maddux, who said, “The best pitchers have a short-term memory and a bulletproof confidence.”

I am trying to keep mine short. It is not easy. I am frustrated beyond belief, not just because of my horrible record, but because I know I’m close to being effective, because my knuckleball is moving well. It just seems that there a few bad pitches at inopportune times, and a few too many counts where I’m falling behind. Close, unfortunately, doesn’t count.

A few minutes after I walk into the clubhouse following the game, I turn on my phone and see a text from Anne. “Hey, babe,” she begins. She goes on to write lovingly about her faith in me. She attaches two adorable photos of Van, our seven-week-old boy. He is wearing a baseball hat in one of them. The media is waiting to talk to me about my debacle, and no doubt a raft of stories are forthcoming about my fairy dust running out. Let them write whatever they want and skewer me in a hundred different ways. Anne and I continue to work on our marriage but I am overcome with gratitude for her and for all the ways God has blessed us. Somehow, even as I stand at my locker after a wretched performance, I feel stronger and more real and more centered than I ever have, my roots reaching farther and farther into the earth. I trust that I am close to turning things around on the mound. Life is good. Life is rich. And God is so merciful. A rocky start in a baseball game cannot change any of that.

BASEBALL CAN BE
a brutal, bottom-line business. Your failures are right there on the scoreboard, illuminated, in-your-face proof of what a slug you are, whether it’s a .182 batting average or, say, a 5.08 ERA. Then the numbers go viral on the Internet, making for more fun, giving everybody and their aunt Bessie a chance to weigh in on your epic deficiencies. I’m pretty good at not taking it personally and not paying attention to the dirges. Much worse for me is what those shabby numbers mean: that I haven’t been someone my team can count on. Say whatever else you want about an ERA of 5.08, but to me it drills down to not giving my team much of a chance to win. Of course, there are variables beyond my control that might inflate the number of runs I give up, like outfield misadventures and bloops that fall in, but all that stuff tends to even out. More even than my won-lost record, I care about my ERA; if you gave me a choice between being 12–10 with a 4.25 ERA and 10–12 with a 2.75 ERA, I’ll take the latter, not because I don’t want my team to win as many games as possible, but because if I have an ERA of under 3.00 it means in the long run we’re going to win a lot more games than if I’m giving up an extra run and a half.

So I’m in ERA-reduction mode, trying to get back to respectability even as we try to recover from a brutal April and scrap our way into contention with the Phillies and Braves. My next time out after Houston, I beat the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, giving up four hits and a run over six innings, and then we go to Chicago to play the Cubs. I am ready to turn my season around right here, right now, and I rack up two quick scoreless innings to start.

Pitching to Kosuke Fukudome with two outs and two on in the third inning of a scoreless game, I get him to hit a roller toward second. I break off the mound to cover first. I am halfway there when it feels as if somebody drove a railroad spike through my right arch. I do a face plant on the Wrigley infield. I am in major pain, the most I’ve ever felt on a ball field. I know my day is done. The question is, how much worse is it than that? I fear the worst but try to put a good face on it for Sandy Alderson, who has made the trip with us.

Don’t count me out for my next start. I’m a quick healer, I tell him.

It’s getaway day, so we fly home to New York that night. I don’t even bother going home or to a hotel; I just put down my crutch and grab a cot in the Citi Field trainer’s room and sleep there. I have an appointment to see a foot specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in the morning. His name is Dr. Jonathan Deland, chief of the hospital’s foot and ankle center. He has deep-set eyes and thin lips and a direct, agreeable manner. I go for an MRI and then we meet in his examining room.

How does it look?

You’ve got a partial tear of the plantar fascia, a band of tissue that runs along the bottom of your foot, he explains.

How do you treat it? When can I get back and pitch with it?

We treat this symptomatically. It depends on the severity and your tolerance for pain, he says.

When Jonathon Niese or Dillon Gee or any other young guy asks me for advice, one of the first things I always say is: Don’t ever go on the disabled list if you can avoid it. I’ve seen people get Wally Pipped more times than I can count. Don’t give them a chance to Wally Pipp you.

As I sit on the examining table, I am remembering my own advice. The last thing I want is to give the Mets any reason to look someplace else for a starting pitcher, or to put me on the DL. Pain I can deal with. I’m not going to do anything idiotic, but I am good with pain. The doctor pokes and prods.

Does this hurt? he asks. I shake my head. Then he moves down my foot a bit and presses hard. How about this?

No, not much, I say every time he asks. I am lying. I am an accomplished liar when it comes to staying on the field. In a game against the Cardinals a bit later in the season, David Freese hits me in the neck with a line drive. I pick the ball up and throw him out at first to end the inning. In the dugout tunnel, Ray Ramirez, our trainer, checks me out and asks me: Did that get you? I am positive I will be out of the game if he knows I took a line drive in the neck.

No, it got a piece of my glove. I’m fine, I say.

Ray goes and checks the replay, but it’s not definitive; it looks as if I did get my glove up. I skate, and stay in the game.

Dr. Deland keeps probing. I keep telling him it doesn’t hurt. I am thinking about my next start. It is all I am thinking about. Pain? What pain?