Imperfect: An Improbable Life (35 page)

The examination of my faults on a baseball field in turn led me to look at my right hand differently. Instead of hiding it, I tried to develop a strength that was independent of the circumstances around me. That awkward second glance at my right arm from a passerby on
the street, or that insensitive comment by a stranger, those were theirs to own, not mine.

It wasn’t easy and it never ended. At forty-four, I battle it every day. I put my hand in my pocket. I recoil when a child blurts, “What happened to your hand?” Not long ago, I was a guest in a suite at Angel Stadium. Between innings of the ballgame, I went to the back of the room, got a plate of food and a cup of coffee, and returned with the saucer and cup balanced on the end of my right arm, like I’d always done. Another guest turned to an acquaintance and said, a bit too loud, “What is this, the circus?” But I can catch myself succumbing to the influences that, right then and there, once changed the way I felt about myself.

Baseball gave me many great blessings—the people I met, the places I saw, the incomparable feeling of winning a major-league baseball game. But maybe the greatest gift was that it helped me come to peace with the burden of being different. The lesson had to be learned through losing, painful as it was.

So I played on, and I helped a little where I thought I could. And when Tim Mead with the Angels or Jeff Idelson or Rob Butcher with the Yankees came along and said, “Excuse me, Jim,” I knew it was time and from the moment I’d lay eyes on those children I would not regret it for a second.

And, heck, I still got to pitch.

The no-hitter was terrific. I loved it, looking around, feeling the ballpark and the fans close in, feeling teammates who wanted it at least as much as I did. But, you know, I always had looked back on it and thought about all the great plays behind me, and the five walks, and figured it was fine. Just fine. I had remembered it the way Manny Ramirez had—pitches hit hard, a few walks, some great plays behind me, and a game that happened to end with no hits.

That’s where I had it, too, almost. A thrilling afternoon with my teammates, a really fun night on the town with my wife, something to talk about for a half century or so, another way to bore my daughters, and maybe that was all.

But, you know, much of a lifetime later, I wonder if it wasn’t a microcosm of the way I looked at my career, maybe a little more negatively than I ought to have. Maybe there were more good things about it, that it wasn’t all eighteen-loss seasons and declining fastballs and long, hard runs through the Cleveland afternoon.

At the end of every scarred road—even one as traveled as FDR Drive—there was a ballgame. There were plenty of cloudy mornings and chances for rain, but the weather held out, or someone turned on the lights, or we simply played through the rain.

September 4, 1993, was special for its collision of right time and right place, a habit of mine. The day was special for what it meant for twenty-five guys who happened to be there, and for the 27,000 or so others who were there, too, because we all left the ballpark feeling good about ourselves and our place in our corners of the world.

That wasn’t just a day for me. But, taken in stages, I lived a good part of my life in those hours, and in the days preceding it, and in the afterglow of it.

From the seeds of doubt, from a place where there could have been little, along came something out of the ordinary. Along came a little something different. It wasn’t even pretty. It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was quite imperfect. But a few of us believed in the notion of the story and in the idea of a happy ending, even if we weren’t sure of it. We’d played enough ball to know the outcomes weren’t usually as good as the stories themselves.

We showed up the next day anyway, gluttons for the game, convinced that belief begets satisfaction.

So I beat myself up over some failure, questioned it all, traversed that same stretch of uneven road, and returned to the game. It wasn’t so different from my childhood, when my father ordered me back to the playground. And the people who decided I wasn’t good enough, hadn’t they always been there?

For one day, I was as close to perfect as I’d ever be on a baseball field, but not because of me. I was there because Tony Cloninger was there, and Matt Nokes, and Don Mattingly, and Wade Boggs, and Mike Gallego.

I was there because Dad wouldn’t let me whine and quit, and because Mom was inspirational in her work ethic and resilience, and because they, too, lived together and returned to each other through their imperfections, and because Mr. Clarkson had come along, saving Buck Showalter from having to tie my shoes before the game. I was there because Mark Conover’s dad issued me a uniform and a position, and Bob Holec insisted I play varsity in spite of my misgivings, and Joe Eufinger taught me how to take a snap, and Don Welke and Bud Middaugh refused to believe in absolutes. Their faith sent me to the feet of Doug Rader, Marcel Lachemann, Kirk McCaskill, and Bob McClure, to uncommon men who viewed me as physically common.

I was there because this thing wasn’t going to defeat me. I’d let everyone else be surprised. Me? I’d go to Yankee Stadium on a day it was supposed to rain, and pitch for my job if that’s what was called for, and believe in who I was and what I was capable of, and maybe win a ballgame.

I don’t know why I lost my fastball, any more than I understood why I had it. Maybe I’d lifted too many weights and lost the flexibility of my youth, as Middaugh believed. Maybe it was all the cutters, as Michael thought. The human arm has only so much in it. Maybe
mine was just done. That left arm had carried me an awfully long way.

Through it all, I never did dread taking the ball. Not late in that second season with the Yankees, when I was struggling again at Yankee Stadium and an infield grounder elicited a cry from a fan, “Run, gimpy, run!” as Dana and Chad sat nearby.

Not when I was 2-18 for the Angels, or when I spent five months in the minor leagues in 1998, or when I won five starts for the White Sox at the end of that season only to learn it was a mirage, or when I got kicked around the season after that in Milwaukee.

I was always hopeful, and almost always optimistic. Every time they took the ball I wanted it back again. Every time an inning ended I wanted another. No matter how bad it got—or looked—I always figured I’d overcome more, that I’d will and pitch my way out of it. I’d always want one more hitter. So, I’d hold up my glove, expecting someone to give me a baseball.

It had happened before. A month into the 1993 season, not five months after I’d been traded from the Angels to New York, I returned to Anaheim Stadium with the Yankees. I started against Mark Langston on a Wednesday night, both clubs having come out hot, the crowd pretty big, the usual energy pulsing through a ballpark hosting the Yankees. The Angels led, 2–0, until the top of the ninth inning, when we scored two runs against Langston. Handed a fresh game, I would face Tim Salmon, Chili Davis, and J. T. Snow in the bottom of the ninth, only I never did see Davis or Snow. Salmon hit a long home run into the left-field bleachers, ending the game. Except—out of instinct, familiarity with the ballpark, shock, regret, forgetting which team I played for, I don’t know—I lifted my glove as a target for the umpire to toss me another baseball, even as the Angels celebrated and the rest of the Yankees trudged
off the field. I wanted to keep pitching. I wanted to win. I wanted a chance.

We flew through that night to New York. In the morning, I didn’t bother going to bed. I left the apartment and walked to Carnegie Deli, ordered a plate of food, and sat alone, then could hardly eat.

Four days later, I pitched again. That was what was important to me.

I took the ball on a patch of dirt in Flint, some would say improbably. I gave it back on a major-league diamond twenty-five years later, reluctantly. In between, I did like my career. I’m proud of it. The fact that the last few years were so filled with struggle and unending fights and disappointment, perhaps it all shaded some of the really fulfilling moments that preceded them. But still.

For me, the satisfaction of victory was never quite as intense—or lasting—as the ache of defeat. I hated losing and I fought against that more than I fought for the winning. And as much as I loved to win, my career—like my life—was always more about fending off those demons. If anything, I sometimes look back and wonder if I made the most out of it, if I got all I could out of myself. I wonder, “What more could I have done with my left hand?”

Then, maybe I could be a little more generous with what I did and how I did it. You know, maybe I did what I could.

I think about little Ella in the schoolroom. Like Maddy, like her mom, she’s growing up tall and lanky and beautiful. I think about her question: “Dad, do you like your little hand?”

Really, it’s not much to look at. Was I less for it? Or was I more for it? Maybe in the times I wasn’t carrying it, it was carrying me. What couldn’t I like about that?

Maybe I lived up to the responsibility of my little hand. I hope I did.

Grandma Abbott had told Dad, “God takes away once, he gives back twice.”
Family photo

Mom and Dad outside St. Agnes church on their wedding day. That afternoon, she would go home to me and he would report for work.
Family photo

May, 1969: Me and Mom’s parents—Grandma and Grandpa Adams, with whom I spent much of my childhood.
Kathy Abbott

Along the way, Dad and I figured out how to do most things. Once in a while, I’d need a little push.
Family photo