21
I AM ON A back field at our spring training complex in Tampa, having just spent an hour working on bunt defense and pickoff moves. Mike Harkey, our bullpen coach, is nearby. The year is 2008. Or 2010. Or 2012.
It could’ve been the odd years, too.
This is it, Hark, I’m done. I’m not going through another year of this.
You are full of it, Hark says.
No, this time I mean it, I say.
You’re like the little boy who cried wolf, Hark says. You will be back here next year and probably the year after and we’ll be having the same conversation. You will never retire.
Hark and I have this exchange six times, or is it ten? We have it often, because spring training is my least favorite time of the year. You hear people wax poetic about spring training being a metaphor for life, a symbolic rebirth that comes packed with hope. I never really get the rapture. I am a homebody at heart. Leaving Clara and the boys has never been easy for me. Home is where we pray and laugh. It’s where we nurture one another. I see my sons having fun in the family room right before it is time to leave one year, and I begin to cry.
The feelings are like a tsunami from nowhere.
I feel like I’ve failed these boys, because I leave them so often, I tell Clara.
Leaving home wasn’t easy when I was twenty-three and it is harder still when I am forty-three. I am a creature who finds comfort in routine, and it’s unsettling when the routine gets upended.
It’s not that I don’t want to prepare and do the work. I understand that there is rust to scrape off, fundamentals to lay down, but how many times can you cover first or work on cutoffs? To me, spring training is more boring than waiting for fish to bite. Give me a handful of innings, a couple of weeks, and I’m ready to go. There are so many monotonous drills and so little rush of competition.
In my twenty-fourth and final spring training, though, my attitude is completely different. It’s not because I know this will be the last one. It’s because I am able-bodied. Nine months removed from the pain and tears of Kansas City, my knee feels strong. My whole body feels strong. To be running in the outfield and taking ground balls and practicing with the guys—I am so grateful to the Lord for the opportunity to play again.
When I throw twenty pitches in live batting practice, my old catcher and friend Jorge Posada teases me.
Twenty pitches is a lot for you, he says.
Let him tease. Let anybody say whatever he wants. I am back in uniform, throwing baseballs. It is a blessing that I am not taking for granted.
I throw a couple of bullpen sessions in the following days, and it’s all good, and then I make my spring debut on the afternoon of March 9, a few hours after I officially announce my retirement at a press conference. Our opponent is the Atlanta Braves. I get Dan Uggla to pop up to second for the first out, then strike out Juan Francisco and Chris Johnson looking, to wrap up a quick inning. As first outings go, it couldn’t have been better. I am overflowing with optimism.
I wish I had the same feeling about Derek Jeter.
Derek also makes his spring debut against the Braves. It’s the first time he has played for the Yankees since the twelfth inning of Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, when he snapped his ankle as he moved to his left fielding a ground ball. In a strange way it reminded me of what happened to me in Kansas City, because it’s a play I’ve seen him make ten thousand times. It’s so completely normal, and then in a flash it isn’t. Derek has surgery a week later and says over and over that his goal is to be back by opening day.
Playing as a DH for his first game, Derek rips the first live pitch he’s seen in five months into left field for a single. It is vintage Derek Jeter. The fans go berserk. He plays shortstop for the first time a day or two later and insists that all systems are go for starting opening day.
The only trouble is that I don’t believe it. I have been around Derek so long that I know his movements, the anatomy of his game, as well as I know my own. And he does not look right to me. He’s not moving freely. Doesn’t have the same burst, or quickness. I know it’s extremely early in the spring, but I’m concerned about what I’m seeing and his insistence that everything is on course.
I watch him closely as camp continues. Derek had a devastating injury to his left ankle. No matter how well the surgery went, sometimes you just need more time to heal. I think he wants to be in the lineup so bad that it might be clouding his judgment.
I know how much you want to start the season, but you need to be careful and not rush back, I tell him one day in the trainer’s room. It’s not worth it. You should wait until you are one hundred percent healed, because if you push it too much too soon, it could backfire.
I’m fine, Mo. I feel good. I understand your point, but I am not going to do anything reckless, don’t worry, he says.
He says the doctors are telling him it’s getting better every day. A little stiffness and swelling are to be expected. He insists it’s all good.
Of course medical professionals know what is going on inside that ankle much better than I do. I just know what I see. In late March, Derek has some extra stiffness and inflammation and has to get some cortisone shots. He insists it’s a minor setback. Then word comes out that he is going to start the season on the disabled list, and basically the bad news never stops coming. He doesn’t play his first game until July 11. Soon he gets hurt again, his body breaking down all over the place.
Derek is one of the most driven people I have ever known. It’s what makes him great. But I also think in this case his drive just blinded him, and maybe everybody else, too. To me it was obvious he wasn’t ready, and yet somehow he kept pushing and pushing and nobody stopped him—or protected him from himself—the way that Dr. Altchek protected me from myself. I believe it was an organizational mistake—a big one—not proceeding more deliberately.
Nobody had anything but his best interests at heart, no doubt, but sometimes you have to forget what the diagnostic tests say and trust your eyes. Derek plays in a total of seventeen games in 2013. If he doesn’t rush it and plays even fifty or seventy-five games, the whole season plays out differently. We have our captain, our Hall of Fame–bound shortstop. With a healthy Derek Jeter, I can’t see our season ending in September.
Six weeks into the season, with thirteen saves in thirteen chances, I am standing on the mound of Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. I am not a patient this time around. I am a closer. I like this much better.
It is a day of deep emotion for me, in all kinds of ways. Five hours before the game, I meet with eighteen people from the Kansas City community. All season long, at every stop, I make it a point to do this, meeting people whom I might not ordinarily get to connect with. They might be fans, or ushers at the stadium, or cafeteria workers, or ticket takers, folks who work behind the scenes to make ball games happen, folks who in many ways are the lifeblood of the game. In Cleveland, I even get an audience with the legendary drummer John Adams, who has been banging on his drums at the top of the bleachers, trying to start Indians rallies, almost since the time I was born. Jason Zillo, the Yankees PR director, does a phenomenal job taking care of the logistics, and these intimate meetings are truly as memorable as anything in my last year. I’m not trying to be noble or heroic; I’m simply taking an opportunity to thank people for their contributions and their steadfastness, to join them in their world, not mine. Or, in the case of visiting with people who are facing adversity or tragedy, it’s just a way to offer whatever I can that might make a difficult time just a little better.
I connect with wonderful people all over the country, and the memories of all of them will stay with me forever, though none are more poignant than my visits with the Bresette family and with a young pitcher named Jonas Borchert before our May 11 game in Kansas City. The Bresettes, of Overland Park, Kansas, had just suffered an unimaginable loss while traveling home from Florida. Their ten-year-old son, Luke, was killed when a huge display board in the Birmingham, Alabama, airport landed on him. Heather Bresette, his mother, was seriously injured as well, and so were sons Sam and Tyler. When I hug Ryan Bresette, the boys’ father, I don’t know what to say or do, other than to express my sorrow and tell him I will be praying for his family.
You are giving us a special gift in a time of a lot of tears, Ryan says.
You are giving me a gift, too, by sharing your family and your time with me, I say through tears of my own.
We all have a laugh when another young Bresette, thirteen-year-old Joe, lets it be known that Luke loved baseball but hated the Yankees.
The power, and the inspiration, go on and on as I meet so many special people that day. I am uplifted by the Bresettes’ strength in the face of such a devastating loss, just as I am uplifted by fifteen-year-old Jonas Borchert, a dominant closer from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, who has a form of cancer but is fighting it with all he has, and by Ricky Hernandez, a young man in a wheelchair who built a place in his backyard for children with disabilities to play.
Everybody wants to make a big deal out of how nice it is for me to take an hour or so out of my day, but I try to tell them that they are the ones who should be thanked, for what they’ve given me. Even in a room that is overstuffed with pain and adversity, the Lord’s blessings, and people’s goodness, are everywhere, and I am so much richer for having been there.
Returning to the scene of the accident isn’t traumatic at all. It is a joy. I shag before the game (though I admit I am not going at it as hard as I did before the knee surgery), and I laugh when I see the big “No ‘Mo’ Zone” sign my teammates have hung on the outfield wall, right at the spot where I collapsed. I can’t wait to get out there and pitch. In the bullpen, the phone rings in the eighth inning. Hark picks up.
Mo, you got the ninth, he says.
I come on to try to save a victory for Andy, who has a fine duel with James Shields of the Royals. I get two outs on grounders to short. Salvador Perez, the Royals’ catcher, hits a double to right and now the hitter is Mike Moustakas, a left-handed-hitting third baseman. He battles hard, fouls off four pitches. With the count full, I throw a cutter up and away and he hits it to left center, fairly deep. The ball is going right toward the spot where I got hurt. I turn and watch left fielder Vernon Wells run into the gap and haul it in. It’s our fourth straight victory, and we make it five a day later when I save a victory for Kuroda, getting Moustakas again, this time on a short fly to right.
I save twenty-nine games in my first thirty chances and am feeling as good as I ever have. We’re up and down as a team, and the barrage of injuries—suffered not just by Derek but by Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson, Francisco Cervelli, and Alex Rodriguez (still recovering from hip surgery)—is like nothing I’ve ever seen.
We keep trying to find our way and head out west, and at our stop in Oakland I get to visit an old friend and language teacher, Tim Cooper. It’s been twenty years since we were teammates, but Coop is somebody I won’t ever forget. He was there when I needed him, teaching me English and helping me escape my loneliness. I leave him tickets and have him and his family in the dugout before the game. It is great to see him.
You look good, I tell him.
I’d cut your hair, but you don’t have any, he tells me.
We’re six games back as I head for my final All-Star Game, another game I’m thankful I can drive to, since it’s just across the bridge in Queens. Jim Leyland, the American League manager, calls for me in the bottom of the eighth. When I walk through the bullpen door and begin to run across the Citi Field outfield, “Enter Sandman” starts to play and the fans are standing and cheering. Everything feels the same, normal, and it’s not until I am almost at the mound that I realize something.
I am all alone on the field.
Completely alone.
My American League teammates stay back in the dugout to salute me. They are all at the railing, clapping. The National League players are doing the same thing on the first-base side of the field. I am so humbled, so blown away, by the outpouring that I am barely conscious of what I am doing. I bow my head and blow a kiss. I wave my hat and touch my heart, and all I can think is:
How blessed can one man be?
I wish I could go all around Citi Field and thank every single person there.
Before the game, I had stood in the middle of a room full of All-Stars and told them how proud they should be of their accomplishments, and what an honor and privilege it was to be among them. Torii Hunter got up and implored the AL stars to win it for me, getting a rousing cheer as he did a rap-star impersonation.
And now here I am, three hours later, trying to help win it for them, for us. I throw my warm-up pitches to Salvador Perez and have a three-run lead to protect. I retire Jean Segura, Allen Craig, and Carlos Gomez in order. After Gomez grounds to short, I walk slowly toward the third-base dugout. The fans are standing again. This whole season is full of lasts… a last visit to this park, and that park, to all these places. It is winding down now. This is my last All-Star team. It’s the best imaginable way to go out.
After the break, we are in Chicago for a three-game series with the reeling White Sox—and not in a good place. We are stuck in fourth in the American League East, 6–9 in our first fifteen games after the All-Star Game, and now we have The Greatest Sideshow on Earth changing into his uniform just across the clubhouse. The story of the night isn’t our sluggish and inconsistent play or the White Sox’s ten-game losing streak. It is the return of our third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, who is finally making his season debut following hip surgery. The hip is the least of Alex’s problems, though. He has just been suspended for 211 games for his alleged role in the Biogenesis scandal, getting performance drugs and then trying to block baseball’s investigation of the case, according to Major League Baseball. It’s the heaviest drug suspension ever handed out. A bunch of other players accepted 50-game bans for their involvement with Biogenesis, which used to bill itself as an anti-aging clinic but turns out to have been more of an anti-playing clinic, for the way its customers got hammered.
Alex appeals the suspension on the same day he gets hit with it, making him eligible to play—and turning the clubhouse in Chicago into a full-blown nuthouse. I’ve seen World Series games where there wasn’t so much commotion, or so many reporters. I don’t care. I am happy to have him back. This is not a regular guy. This is a superstar guy. In his prime, he is one of the greatest ballplayers I’ve ever seen. He is not that anymore, but he is still a good player who can help get us out of our funk.
There is plenty about Alex that I can’t say I understand, but he has every right to appeal his suspension, and every right to pursue every legal avenue he wants to. He is my friend and my teammate, and, as I’ve said, to me that makes him like family. And you don’t cast aside a family member because he has made a mistake, or even many mistakes.
When I see Alex at his locker, I go right over and give him a hug.
Welcome back. What took you so long? I say.
Thanks, Mo. It’s great to be back. I’m ready to play some baseball, he says.
Let’s get this thing moving forward, I say.
Alex Rodriguez may love baseball more than anybody I’ve ever known. Baseball is everything to him. I love to play and compete, but after a game, I want to go home or go back to my hotel and not even think about baseball until the next day. He’ll watch another game, and then another game, and search for replays of the games he’s already watched. He’s as smart a ballplayer as I’ve ever played with. It’s why it’s so hard to understand some of the decisions he has made, not just with performance-enhancing drugs but in his spotlight-seeking ways. It’s not enough to be an all-time great player, it seems. He wants to be at the top of everything. He wants to be the best, look the best, get the most attention, and all it does is make him baseball’s No. 1 whipping boy.
And this is exactly what I tell him, starting in 2009, when Sports Illustrated came out with its story that he had tested positive.
I think it’s wrong what you did, I say. I don’t like what you did. But I still am going to be there for you, pushing you forward, not dragging you down.
Alex’s return to the lineup doesn’t make much of a difference. We get pounded in the opener of the White Sox series when Andy has one of the worst starts of his career, and we lose the second game, too. We’re now just two games over .500 and have dropped two straight to a club that was out of the pennant race before Memorial Day, which makes the final game of the series that much more important. We need to get righted, and fast, because we’re ten and a half games out of first.
CC Sabathia delivers a big effort and we go up, 4–0, early, before the White Sox narrow it to 4–3. I get the ball for the ninth. The fans at U.S. Cellular Field give me a standing ovation on my final visit. I appreciate the sentiment and tip my hat, but I am pretty good by now at getting right down to business. I say my prayer behind the mound. The White Sox’s two most dangerous hitters, Alex Rios and Paul Konerko, are the first two guys I have to face. I get Rios on a foul pop-up to first. Konerko steps in, and on an 0–1 pitch he lifts a short fly to center. Two outs on five pitches, all of them strikes. I like it.
One more and we’re out of here, I think.
Gordon Beckham, the second baseman, is at the plate. He has never gotten a hit off of me. I fall behind, 2–1, and leave the next pitch a little too far out over the plate. Beckham gets good wood on it and drives a double to right center. Now the tying run is at second.
I have thirty-five saves for the year and have blown only two. Adam Dunn is the pinch hitter. I have faced him four times and he has never hit a fair ball off me, striking out four times. I throw two cutters, down and away, and he takes them both for strikes. Doesn’t even budge. From the start of my big league career, John Wetteland, the Yankee closer before me, always stressed one thing above all else: Never let yourself get beat with your second-best pitch. When you absolutely need an out, you bring your best. Nothing else.
I need an out. Dunn, a big left-handed power hitter, is going to get another cutter. Dunn’s reaction to the first two pitches tells me he is looking inside, so I figure I will stay outside. Austin Romine, the catcher, sets up outside. The pitch isn’t quite on the corner, gets too much of the plate. Long known as a dead-pull hitter, Dunn has spent the last couple months of the season staying back and hitting to all fields. He swings and hits the ball sharply on the ground toward third. I wheel around, just in time to see the ball elude a diving Alex. Beckham comes around to score and tie the game.
I am incensed at myself for staying outside with the cutter again. He was so obviously waiting for an inside pitch he’d probably have jumped at it. I should’ve come inside, off the plate, and seen if I could get him to chase. But I never tried that. I stayed outside, missed my spot, and the game is now tied.
I strike out Carlos Wells to end the inning, but the save has already been blown. I have one more out to get in a game we really need, and I don’t get it. After the Wells strikeout, I make the walk that every closer hates: back to the dugout after you’ve lost the lead, if not the game. It’s the longest walk there is.
I can’t dwell on the failure, though. I have another inning to pitch, and I set them down in order, and when Robby crushes a homer in the top of the eleventh, I feel much better. When the White Sox score two in the bottom of the eleventh, I feel much worse.
We head home to face the Tigers, and it’s another supercharged night in The Rodriguez Chronicles—Alex’s first game back in the Bronx since his return and since all the uproar about his suspension and appeal. Thousands of people boo him. Thousands cheer him, too. I wonder how the whole thing is going to play out, and if he can stay focused throughout the saga. We take a 3–1 lead into the ninth, and it’s my time again.
After I get the first out, Austin Jackson hits a double to left center. I get Torii Hunter on a comebacker. Now Miguel Cabrera, hulking Venezuelan ball crusher, the best hitter in baseball, walks to the plate. It’s down to the two of us. Cabrera is hitting .358 with thirty-three home runs (it’s early August, mind you), and as usual, he’s hitting the ball to every part of every ballpark. I approach him the same way I approach every hitter; it doesn’t change because of who he is. Sometimes I might pitch to a particular weakness a guy might have, but in the case of Cabrera, there really is no weakness, so I just go after him.
The Stadium crowd is on its feet. My first pitch is a cutter up in the zone, out over the plate, and his swing is not his best. He lofts a fly ball toward the first-base dugout. Lyle Overbay, our first baseman, goes over to the railing of the camera well but overruns the ball a bit and has to lean back. He stretches for the ball, but it falls probably an inch from his glove. Cabrera gets a big break and he knows it. I get another foul ball to go up, 0–2.
One strike away again.
One strike.
Finish the job. Close this thing, I tell myself.
I throw a ball high out of the zone, but he won’t chase. The next pitch is in and Cabrera fights it off, grazes a foul ball off his knee and hobbles around, gets attended to by the trainer and Jim Leyland. After a few minutes he limps back in the box, and I fire again on the inner half, and this time he fouls it off his shin. Now he is limping even more.
All I want is to get this game over with. I try to get him to go after a pitch that breaks off the outside corner. He doesn’t bite. The seventh pitch of the at-bat is coming. The way he is swinging at my cutter tells me he could be vulnerable to a two-seam fastball; it’s a hard sinker and if I hit the right spot down and in I think it will get him. It is my best shot, I believe, because it’s a given that he is expecting another cutter. I make my deep forward-bend and come set, then fire a two-seam fastball, violating Wetteland’s gospel, because I believe I can fool Cabrera by throwing what he’s not expecting. I might’ve, too, except that the ball goes over the heart of the plate, and just sits there. Now he rips away and the minute he makes contact I drop my head on the mound. I know where it’s going to land.
In the black.
Over the center-field fence.
No need to watch Brett Gardner give chase.
Wow, I say, as Cabrera hobbles around the bases. The wow is as much about what just happened as it is about the gift of hitting Miguel Cabrera has been blessed with. He handled two pitches that usually would’ve ended the game. He extended his at-bat.
And then he beat me.
For the second time in two games, one strike away from locking down a victory, I make the long walk to the dugout, mission not accomplished, feeling almost dazed, as if I’d taken a punch to the jaw. I have let the guys down.
We win in ten innings on a clutch single by Gardner, so that helps soften the blow, but the hurt just can’t get airbrushed out of the picture by a happy ending.
Somebody is going to pay, I tell myself again, same as I did sixteen years earlier in Cleveland, when Sandy Alomar Jr. hit that homer off me in the division series. Somebody is going to pay. How or when they are specifically going to pay, I can’t tell you. It’s the voice I give to my determination.
What happened tonight is going to make me smarter, stronger, better. It’s not going to shake my faith in myself. If anything, it’s going to deepen it. It’s going to make me redouble my resolve to get the next one.
When I get home that night, Clara rubs my back and says what I know is true:
Tomorrow will be a better day.
They are just about my favorite words on earth.
We get drilled on Saturday, so if we want to start turning things around we better get after Justin Verlander on Sunday. Alex hits his first homer of the season into the seats in left in the second inning, and we have a two-run lead as I take over in the ninth.
The first batter I face is somebody I know. Miguel Cabrera. I bring a sharp cutter that he swings through for 0–1, and after a ball, I put another cutter right on the inside corner. It’s 1–2. I go away with a cutter and he takes it for a ball, and on 2–2, I am not going the two-seam route, the way I did Friday night.
I am going with Wetteland, and my best. The pitch is up a bit, and it is over the plate. It is not where I wanted it—not at all. I know it before Cabrera even swings. He knocks it over the fence in right and now it is 4–3, and I am on the mound, talking to myself.
How could this happen again? I know he’s a great hitter, but I felt in charge of that whole at-bat.
And then, boom—he takes me over the wall again.
I get Prince Fielder on a line drive to third base, and now Victor Martinez steps in. At 0–1, I come in with a cutter, but again, I miss my spot, and Martinez takes a rip, and there goes another ball into outer space, into the seats in right, tying the game and clinching a history I want no part of: For the first time in my big league career, I’ve blown three consecutive saves.
I stand on the mound and try to take this in. It is not easy. For the third time in five days, I have failed to do my job. Gardner is the hero again, hitting a game-winning home run off Jose Veras with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. We take two out of three, no thanks to me. I have seven weeks left in my career. I am not having a crisis in confidence. I believe as much as ever that I can do all things through Him. Somebody did not pay today, though, and that really bothers me.
It means everything to me to be dependable, trustworthy.
And I have not been either this week at all.
A week later, we are in Fenway against the Red Sox, and Sox starter Ryan Dempster decides he’s going to drill Alex. After a couple of awkward misses, he finally gets him. I can’t believe Dempster is so blatant about it, nor can I believe the way the fans cheer in delight. The venom coming from the stands—what people are screaming at Alex, and the looks on their faces—is ugly. Benches empty. Alex gets his revenge when he homers against Dempster in the sixth, and I wind up with my thirty-sixth save. I am hoping that this is just the spirited victory that will get us going.
Five games out of the wild-card spot with five weeks to play, we struggle through an up-and-down September, and it becomes clear that my final days are not going to include a pennant race. But what a memorable month. On September 22, the Yankees host Mariano Rivera Day. Clara and my kids and parents are there, and former teammates are there, and so is Rachel Robinson and her daughter, Sharon. And my dear friend Geno, too. They retire my number—Jackie Robinson’s number—and mount it on the Monument Park wall, and Metallica even plays “Enter Sandman” live.
It is beyond what I could’ve imagined, and leaves me filled with so much gratitude and warmth, I don’t know what to do with it all. I pitch a scoreless inning and two-thirds in the game that day, and the perfect ending would’ve been a victory, but we fall, 2–1.
And now, four days later, we are there… the 1,115th and final appearance of my New York Yankees career. It comes against the Tampa Bay Rays. The gate opens and I make my last run in from the pen, the crowd standing and cheering. I enter with two on and one out in the top of the eighth, doing my best not to think about the weight of the moment, or saying goodbye. It is not easy. I quickly retire two batters, and then I walk back to the dugout and head into the trainer’s room in the clubhouse. My forearm is tight. I ask Mark Littlefield, the trainer, to put some hot stuff on it. He is working on my arm when Andy Pettitte walks in.
What are you doing here? I ask.
Jeet and I want to come and get you before you finish the ninth. What do you think?
Don’t do that, I say. Please don’t do it. You guys know me. I want to finish the game. That’s my job.
Okay, Andy says, and off he goes. With my forearm loosened, I get back to the dugout and sit on the bench. I don’t move right away even after our at-bat is over. I just sit for a moment and look at the mound and the field, before I go out there for the last time.
I have no idea how I am going to get through this. I’ve been good at holding off the torrent of emotions so far, but I pray to the Lord for strength, since I can feel the dam starting to weaken.
Finally, I get off the bench and go out to the mound. I throw my warm-ups. The crowd is once more standing and cheering. The first hitter, catcher Jose Lobaton, hits a cutter away right back to me on a high hop. I jump to grab it and make the play.
One out.
The next hitter is Yunel Escobar, the shortstop. He takes a cutter away for 1–0. I come back again with a cutter that is up a bit, over the plate, not the best spot by any means, but Escobar swings and lifts a pop-up to Robby Cano.
Two outs.
The next hitter is Ben Zobrist, one of my All-Star teammates at Citi Field. I take a deep breath, hoping I can finish this up without losing it, hoping I can do my job one last time. I am about to get back on the rubber when I look to my left and see Andy and Derek walking out of the Yankee dugout toward the mound.
I thought I told you not to do this, I think.
Andy and Derek are both smiling at me. I am smiling, too.
Andy’s face says, I know you told us not to do it, but we’re doing it anyway, because this is the way you need to go out.
Andy motions to the home plate umpire, Laz Diaz, that he wants the right-hander, and he and Derek keep walking, and now they are on the mound.
Andy holds out his left hand and I put the ball in it. I won’t be needing it anymore.
Andy wraps his arms around me and I put mine around him and now the dam finally bursts, the emotions flooding me, overwhelming me, the finality of it all descending on me like an anchor. I weep like a child in his arms. Andy holds the back of my head and the sobs keep coming, deep heaves of joy and sadness and everything, all at once.
It’s okay, Derek says. It’s okay.
The embrace lasts a long time, and then I hug Derek, and I don’t want any of this to end, with the Stadium drenching me in applause, the two teams doing the same.
I walk off the mound and wave my hat to the crowd, to my teammates, to the Rays. When the game ends I sit in the dugout by myself, just trying to be still, to drink up the glory of the Lord and the power of the moment. The crowd files out. Everybody gives me space. A few minutes pass.
I don’t want to leave. But I am ready. I decide I need to go back to the mound, my office for the last nineteen years, one more time.
I toe the rubber a couple of times and then bend down and scoop up a handful of dirt and pack it into my right hand. It makes sense to me. I started playing in dirt so I might as well finish playing in dirt, the perfect keepsake for a simple man.