Imperfect: An Improbable Life (14 page)

The old Yankee Stadium’s infield was crowned, presumably to promote drainage, and the grass was pretty long. From the dugout you couldn’t see infielders’ feet, ankles, or most of their shins. In moments like this, in order to see everything, everyone would slide off the bench, try not to slam their heads on the roof, and scale a step or two.

Gallego scored. Boggs dragged his sore back around second base and made for third, taking a chance on Kenny Lofton’s arm. Lofton threw a two-hopper that skipped past third baseman Jim Thome while James trailed into second base, and Boggs scored while Thome fetched the ball in foul territory, over by the Indians’ dugout. When Thome threw to the plate—a one-hopper through Ortiz’s legs—James advanced to third. Then—when the ball rolled into the Yankees’ dugout—he was awarded home. In the end: a three-run, two-error single that gave us a 3–0 lead.

Just to revisit, it’s September, I’ve made twenty-six previous starts for the Yankees, and I’ve got nine wins. I’d won once since July. Now I’m ahead 3–0 going into the fourth inning, I haven’t given up a hit,
my stuff feels pretty good, and I’m trying to force thoughts of a win out of my head. My battle between innings was to quiet my mind, let go of what had already happened and the anxiety of what might happen. The time in between innings was used to reboot, clear my thoughts, rest my mind. Sometimes I’d listen to a song in my head, play it over and over, to escape the din and slow the game. To symbolize another fresh start, I’d gently swing my foot back and forth across the dugout floor, sweeping away the sunflower seeds and balled-up cups and gum wrappers. In Anaheim the floor was rubber matting, in New York it was that green carpet that reminded me of artificial turf, in Chicago—the old Comiskey Park—it was weathered wooden planks. I wiped away the past inning, watched the game, hoped for runs.

Scoring some runs—especially like we had—allowed me to believe that maybe things were going to go right today.

Man, I wanted to win a game. I won eighteen times in 1991, pitched better in 1992 and won only seven. It would be hard to exaggerate how hard it seemed to win a game by the end of 1993. After my first start that season—I pitched a complete game and beat David Cone and the Kansas City Royals in front of 57,000 people in the home opener—a writer asked if I wasn’t a bit too happy about it, considering it was April 12 and there were five and a half months still to play. I was just damned happy to win a ballgame, and always was. I tried not to make it a focus during a game, but it wasn’t ever far from my mind.

By the conclusion of that inning—Mattingly struck out, Danny Tartabull, the DH, popped to second base—I’d left those thoughts behind. I returned to the process of pitching, of tuning out the world and tuning in Nokes and the Indians, of trusting that I was good enough to do this, pitch by pitch.

Ten pitches later—Fermin grounded to Gallego, who made a great backhanded play on a well-hit ball, while Baerga also hit a grounder to Gallego and Belle pounded a cutter away to Boggs—I returned to the dugout, and went to add another cup to the stack. I was twelve outs in.

CHAPTER 9

T
he drive from Berrien Springs, near the southern tip of Lake Michigan, to Flint took almost three hours—longer, perhaps, in a worn Chrysler K car, which Don Welke preferred. The older baseball scouts told Welke he’d wreck his back running around the Midwest in that little thing, but he would laugh, say it suited him just fine, put another 200,000 miles on it, and go buy another. When Welke believed in something, there wasn’t much talking him out of it.

In the summer of 1985, some two thousand miles on that odometer were dedicated to trips to Flint.

Among the first scouts hired by the expansion Toronto Blue Jays almost eight years before, Welke had been drawn east across the state by a phone call from Walt Head, a coach in Flint who had once scouted for the Baltimore Orioles and Blue Jays. Head told Welke there was a left-handed pitcher in town he might want to take a look at. The kid was in deep with the college guys down at Ann Arbor, Head said, but he threw hard and competed like few he’d ever coached, so it might be worth the drive. “Don,” Head said before
saying good-bye, “he doesn’t have a right hand, but you’d never know it.”

Intrigued, Welke pointed his K car toward Flint just as the high school baseball season was starting, when Michigan hadn’t yet shaken winter. The baseball field at Central was only just thawing out. Welke came early and didn’t say much. He wasn’t one for announcing his presence, handing out cards, inflating the hopes of boys who’d probably be disappointed come draft day. There was, however, no mistaking what Welke was. His broad shoulders, barrel chest, close-cropped hair, steady stare, and binder outed him as a scout.

That first afternoon, Welke introduced himself to no one. During the game, he’d drift from the stands to the backstop to the edge of the dugout, watching and listening. This was how he’d measured Dave Stieb, how he’d one day look over Pat Hentgen and John Olerud—from the shadows. Few ever called him about a guy who couldn’t play. They could all play, at least a little. What Welke wanted to see were facial expressions. He wanted to hear a prospect talk to his teammates. He wanted to see his eyes, then decide what was behind them.

Was this kid selfish? Was he a team guy? Did he know how to win? Minor-league ball was a meat grinder: Did he want it bad enough?

Head, Welke thought, was right about this left-hander. He had a good, loose arm that ran it up there from 88 to 90, sometimes 91. The velocity was effortless. He’d get more out of a body that was six foot three, too, as he had plenty of filling out to do. He commanded his pitches from a delivery that, in spite of his length, was rather compact. Welke couldn’t take his eyes off him. He believed this lefty had nothing short of a golden arm, one that projected even more velocity as it matured.

Of the thousands of high school ballplayers Welke had seen, few
jumped off a baseball diamond because of their competitiveness. The sport didn’t always allow it. In a team game wrapped in individual moments, sometimes the game just never gets around to one player. But a pitcher could drag a game along with him through will alone, and Welke looked out at this lefty and thought how easy he made it look.

If there were two things Welke had learned scouting over the years—and, really, there were more like a million—they were: Anytime you see a guy do something easy, you better pay attention; and, there are no absolutes in baseball.

This lefty, Welke believed, carried desire that was bigger than his talent. He carried himself genuinely. He liked his teammates. They liked him. And, dang, if he couldn’t hit, too.

Welke often took special interest in the young men other scouts left behind. He was curious about the troublemakers, the attitude problems, the boys with the tainted backgrounds. He took longer looks at players who clearly were injured but playing through the pain for the good of the team. He scouted deaf kids and fat kids and kids whose growth spurts had temporarily rendered them clumsy. He watched their hands and their feet, wondering if they were windows to their baseball futures, their baseball souls.

The only absolute, Welke thought again as he leaned against the backstop and watched the lefty, is there are no absolutes.

When the game ended, Welke walked to the K car waiting in the parking lot. He had three hours to cover on the ride home. He had spoken to no one and hadn’t ever broken his poker face, hadn’t even raised an eyebrow as the lefty overwhelmed an overmatched lineup. He had, however, filled a few pages in a notebook, some of it from memory while the car idled in the parking lot. In a life filled with highway rest-stop food and fool’s gold, Welke mused that days like
this were the reward. In a gritty neighborhood on Flint’s East Side, he’d witnessed a can’t-miss arm attached to a can’t-miss fighter. He was sure of it.

He closed his notebook, laid it on the passenger side of the front bench seat, and put the K car in drive. He would not return, he decided, for many weeks. In a matter of two hours, he’d come to believe this lefty was special. Hanging around through the season, getting friendly with the kid and his family, would only signal to other area scouts and their big-league teams that the Blue Jays were on him. Welke wouldn’t draw their attention. He wasn’t in the business of doing other people’s work for them. The other scouts, those who maybe believed in absolutes, would have to make up their own minds.

Back in Berrien Springs, Welke started his report for the Blue Jays and their scouting director, Bob Engle. The draft was more than two months away, but he did the paperwork before his thoughts drifted into the next long stretch of road, the next kid.

Under the heading
ABBOTT, JIM
, he wrote: “Left-handed pitcher. 6-3, 180. Great arm. Good changeup. Makings of a breaking ball. Natural cutter. Big competitor. Good athlete. Plays football. Good hitter.”

Over the final line, his pen hung over the paper for a moment before adding four words: “Has no right hand.”

Then he walked across the room and powered up the fax machine.

S
OME COLLEGE COACHES
had their assistants handle much of the recruiting, and that meant covering most of the miles. Some employed pitching coaches.

Bud Middaugh traveled, and Bud Middaugh was his own pitching coach.

When he drove up to Flint from Ann Arbor in the summer of 1984, he’d been the head coach at Michigan for five years. He was in his mid-forties then, and you knew by the way he held his eyes on you that he expected ballplayers to be ballplayers. For Middaugh, you could play or you couldn’t, you did things right or you didn’t, and there wasn’t much in between.

In Michigan and the surrounding Midwest, a college coach could drive for weeks and not find exactly what he was looking for, not like in California and Florida where the ground never froze, the gloves never toughened in the cold, and the kids played year round. Middaugh, like a pro scout, had to look across a field and calculate what a boy might look like in a twelve-month program such as Michigan’s. He called it “projecting,” which is what pro area scouts and cross-checkers did all the time, except Middaugh forecast a boy of seventeen into a young man of nineteen and twenty, which wasn’t a lot of time.

Middaugh was in Flint on a tip from a Michigan booster who lived in town, who’d called to rave about this lefty on a local Connie Mack team. Sometimes you can trust a booster, and sometimes he’s somebody’s overzealous uncle. Mid-morning, Middaugh had put everything aside to haul that straight shot up US 23 to watch a game of summer ball. He’d first called Central’s counseling office to check on the lefty’s grades; there’d be no sense making even an hour’s drive if the boy couldn’t hack it in school. The lady there told him the lefty was a fine student and that she heard he’d be on the football team this fall.
Football, too
, Middaugh thought, and then he just had to see what this kid was all about. He’d never seen a ballplayer like
the one the booster had described. Heck, he’d never even
heard
of one.

Middaugh sat in the bleachers and watched the lefty pitch. He was a big, tall kid with solid arm action, Middaugh thought. He wandered along the chain-link fence on the first-base line when there was a runner on first, to see how the lefty looked out of the stretch. Could he hold a runner? He wandered up the third-base line for another angle on his mechanics. The lefty was throwing hard, he could see, but his stride took him across his body. Middaugh decided he’d get another three or four miles per hour on that fastball if he’d come cleaner to the plate. He wondered how coachable he’d be. As he watched, one thought did nag at him: Could I protect him? Those were big kids in the Big Ten and they swung aluminum bats. Then: Would they bunt him all day? Could he
compete
there?

Middaugh didn’t take a note. He didn’t even carry a pencil. There was no sense letting on to other programs, to the pro scouts, that he was around. It was the game they all played and nobody had to know anybody else’s notions, least of all his. On a veteran Michigan team, he needed a freshman to walk onto campus and give him innings. A left-hander—a big, rangy left-hander with a hard fastball—well, that would be even better.

On the hour back to Ann Arbor, Middaugh stirred in his mind what he’d seen. The big fastball, so overpowering Middaugh had not had a chance to analyze any of the breaking stuff. The kid hadn’t needed it. The slightly skewed mechanics. The composure. As he drove, he realized the lefty hadn’t even thrown an inning before he’d made up his mind. He knew he wanted him at Michigan. And he’d all but forgotten the kid didn’t have a right hand.