20
THE OUTFIELD HAS ALWAYS been my favorite playpen. It’s a place where you can roam free, chasing fly balls, trying to outrun them before they hit the ground, defeating gravity. It’s where I learned to love the game. If you ask me, there isn’t a better feeling in baseball than catching a fly ball on the dead run.
Even when the Yankees signed me as a pitcher, I still was a closet center fielder, harboring private fantasies of being an everyday player. In my heart, I knew I was going to make it as a pitcher or not at all, but I kept my little dream alive.
The next best thing to being an outfielder is playing there in batting practice. Or shagging, as it is known in baseball slang. A lot of pitchers shag, though for many of them it’s more of a social event than an athletic one. They hang out and talk, and if a fly ball happens to be in the neighborhood, they grab it. That’s not how it is for me. I am out there to catch every fly ball I can. I am out there to run hard. Loops around the warning track, running sprints from foul line to foul line, doesn’t do it for me. I want to run and sweat and get dirty. If batting practice is canceled because of rain or because it’s a day game after a night game, I am the most bummed-out guy in the ballpark.
A month into the 2012 season, we leave New York for Kansas City to start a four-game series with the Royals. The date is May 3, our twenty-fifth game of the season. It is a Thursday. We get in late, so I sleep in and spend the day around the hotel, watching a little bit of the Animal Planet channel before going out to P. F. Chang’s for lunch. I eat by myself. I get to the park about four o’clock. I haven’t pitched since Monday, when I saved a game for Hiroki Kuroda against the Orioles. I don’t like to go so long without pitching; I’m hoping I get in the game tonight.
Before I head out to shag, I go over and greet my newest teammate, Jayson Nix, a utility guy who has just been called up from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to replace Eric Chavez, who suffered a concussion. Joe puts Nix right in the lineup, batting ninth and playing left field.
I change quickly and head out to the field. It is a beautiful spring night. I haven’t made any official announcement, but I am almost certain this is going to be my last season, and that makes me want to savor everything, every day, every pregame fly ball, even more.
I am standing in center field of Kauffman Stadium, wearing a navy blue Yankee Windbreaker and gray running shoes—my shagging uniform. It’s almost always windy in Kansas City, and today is no exception. Not far away are our bullpen coach, Mike Harkey, and David Robertson, my bullpen buddy.
Hark is a strapping man with a strapping son, Cory, who is a tight end for the St. Louis Rams. Hark is a good soul, a guy who helped launch my career, a fact I remind him of often. On the day I won my first major league game in Oakland, the losing pitcher was Big Mike Harkey, a former No. 1 draft choice of the Chicago Cubs who was taken fourth overall in 1987, just three picks after Ken Griffey Jr. My catcher that day was Jim Leyritz and my first baseman was Don Mattingly, and my shortstop, of course, was Robert Eenhoorn, a Dutchman. We raked Hark for seven hits and four runs, and I was the beneficiary.
Thanks for throwing all those cookies, Hark, I tell him.
No problem. Happy to help, he replies.
Hark is the perfect man to have in charge of a bullpen. He believes in keeping things loose and keeping guys relaxed, because he knows that when the time comes at the end of the game it’s often not relaxed at all. He once said that what he was going to miss most about me was the element of calm I brought to the pen. I do bring calm, but I also bring mischief. After I spend the first five-plus innings of games in the clubhouse, I typically arrive in the pen in the middle or end of the sixth. I fist-bump everybody and then start in, usually with my gum. It’s amazing how a bunch of grown men turn into a pack of adolescents when you throw them into a bullpen. I am at the head of the pack. The command I have with my cutter is nothing compared with what I can do with gum. An earlobe from ten feet away? I nail it almost every time. Either ear. When they are onto my gum heater, I change things up and stick the gum on somebody—Hark, ideally. On the seat of his pants, his back—there are plenty of good spots on Hark’s big body. My favorite is his jacket pocket, so when he jams his hand in there it gets good and gooey.
You got me again, he tells me.
You’re easy, I reply.
Batting practice is more than halfway finished when Jayson Nix, the new guy, gets into the cage. He swings and hits a long line drive toward the wall in left center and I am off, turning to the right, running hard, no mischief in mind now, only the ball, and getting it in my glove. Nix has tagged this ball, and it’s knuckling in the wind, but I am pretty sure I can catch up to it. I keep running on a diagonal line toward left center, eyes fixed on the ball the whole time. As I near the warning track, I notice the ball is drifting a bit back toward center. The KC wind is playing tricks again. The ball is on its descent now. I am almost there, about to make maybe my best catch of the BP session. I feel the crunch of the track beneath my foot as I turn back slightly toward my left.
And before I take another step, a shot of pain blasts through my right knee.
It feels as if it’s ripped out of whatever is holding it in place, wobbling in and out. It’s the most pain I have ever felt. The ball bounces onto the track. My momentum takes me on a hop-step into the wall before I crumple in a heap in the dirt.
I try to scream, but no sound comes out. My teeth are clenched. Hark and David see my teeth and think I am laughing—just goofing around and pretending to be hurt. I am not pretending. My face is in the dirt and my knee is throbbing. I don’t know what happened, but I do know it’s not good. I can feel my knee moving around. You know me. I pray all the time. At home, behind the wheel of the car, behind the mound. I am not praying now. The pain is too fierce. I keep rubbing my knee, hoping that somehow takes the edge off of it.
In a second or two Hark and David and Rafael Soriano, who is also right there, realize that this is for real. Hark whistles to Joe Girardi and waves for him to come out.
Joe runs out to me and so does our assistant trainer, Mark Littlefield. Batting practice stops. I keep writhing.
Did you hear a pop? somebody asks.
No.
No sound at all?
No.
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 time 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 division 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.