Unlike my esteemed co-blogger, I do not give a rat’s butt about baseball. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the game. As a child, I played Little League quite seriously (only girl on my team; in 1979 my mom sewed an E.R.A. patch on my hat, which did NOT stand for Earned Run Average, which caused great discomfiture among the coaches and dads) and I attended PawSox games with much glee. These days, I go to Newport Gulls games whenever I visit mom in RI; while in labor with my second child in 2004, I listened to Game 7 of the 2004 playoffs — the blowout that clinched the Red Sox’s place in the World Series — right up until it was time to push. Nowadays I also revel in the retracting roof, fine Miller beverages and Jewishly identified left fielder at Milwaukee Brewers games; and I appreciate George Carlin’s monologue about the difference between baseball and football, the joys of playing softball in my in-laws’ backyard with my daughters and nephews, and the “William Blake?” “William Blake!” exchange in Bull Durham. (Hm, perhaps I’m more into baseball than I think I am.) All that said, I have no great fascination with any particular team. No, really.
I am, however, fascinated by former New York Met R.A. Dickey.
Before I read Dickey’s memoir, Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball
And OMG. I wound up being utterly fascinated by this guy. Lit major in college at Tennessee; signed in the first-round draft to a big contract that was withdrawn after a routine physical found that he was inexplicably missing a ligament in his pitching arm (he later was offered a deal for less than a tenth the original offer), bounced around various major- and minor-league teams for years, took public buses to games because he was so broke, absorbed humiliation after humiliation because he just wanted to play. The book addresses his various screw-ups and idiocies (such as betting teammates he could swim across the Missouri river — in flip-flops, no less — and nearly drowning) with humor and occasional self-laceration. It also discusses his work remaking himself as a knuckleball pitcher.
What a kooky pitch the knuckleball is! It has no spin, so it travels really slowly, and it’s damn near impossible to hit when thrown well. It puts less stress on the pitcher’s arm, so knuckleballers have much longer careers than most pitchers. There are so few guys in the fraternity of major league knuckleball, they’re all super-supportive of each other. (Dickey makes a pilgrimage to talk to Phil Niekro, who coaches him informally and refuses to accept any money.) The pitch involves placing one’s fingernails directly on the ball and sort of PUSHING it toward the plate (here’s a vid of Dickey explaining it). In one of my fave dramatic scenes, Dickey splits a nail just before a game and needs an emergency mani; he tells the coach, who finds a Mets team cook who is a lady, who tells Dickey about her fave salon, Pink Nails in Flushing, where Dickey races in full uniform, gets an acrylic for $7 and gets back to the stadium moments in the nick of time, sneaking in right behind team owner Jeff Wilpon. (“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.” Thankfully Wilpon continues facing forward.)
not dickey’s manicure
however, dickey makes similar faces while pitching
As you can tell by my raving, I really liked the book and the guy’s struggles to be a mensch. Everybody except the Wilpon family seems to think he’s the bee’s knees. He showed up at my neighborhood park to throw with kids, for no reason except to be nice, and when the Mets traded him to the Toronto Blue Jays earlier this year, Dickey bought ad space in all the local papers and wrote a letter thanking New Yorkers for being so supportive.
So what does all this have to do with SorryWatching? Well, a theme in Dickey’s book is the need to make amends when you mess up. Dickey loves the word “authenticity,” which he uses to mean “decency.” (He’s had a lot of therapy, which I respect him for talking about in a macho profession.) He writes about how he had an affair and needed to make it up to his wife and family. And he frequently gives others credit for their menschy behavior. In one 2009 scene, a manager for the Minnesota Twins (one of the many teams Dickey spent time with) puts Dickey in mid-game and tells him not to pitch knuckleballs, because this particular catcher has never played with him before, and the knuckleball is hard to catch. Dickey has misgivings, but does as he’s told, and the team loses. He writes:
I don’t get the loss, and I don’t even get the runs charged to me, since [Craig Breslow, the pitcher he replaced] put them on, but I feel plenty responsible for us losing the game. I am decompressing, unhappily, at my locker when [manager Ron Gardenhire] comes by.
“I’m sorry I put you in that position. It wasn’t fair to you, and I should’ve known better,” he says.
“Hey, Gardy, don’t worry about it. It happens. I appreciate your apology.”
I head off for the shower, impressed that Gardy would do this, own what he feels was his screwup. It’s a glimpse into why he’s such a good manager of people and why his players like to play for him so much. Gardy may have messed up tactically in this case, but he did something infinitely harder when he came over to take full responsibility for it. I wonder how many managers would be secure enough, and grounded enough, to do such a thing.
My guess is: not many.
I appreciate it even more because I have had to take ownership of far more serious things in my life. I know how hard it is to do, and I also know the redemptive power there is in being able to do it. The longer I live, the more I come to believe that the ability to say the words “I’m sorry” is one of the greatest healing agents in the world.
He’s right. And that’s why we do this blog.
I like this guy a lot; he even went to my alma mater. I saw him on Letterman, who asked him if a knuckleball was hard to catch. He quoted Bob Uecker who, when asked how you catch a knuckleball, said, “Wait til it stops rolling.” Never cared much about baseball until I saw the humor in it. Oh, and after I had lived with a rabid Yankees fan for 35 years.
Kim, I just LOVE that line!
My main reason for watching baseball died in 2010, but I’m willing to actually come up with a real interest in it that doesn’t involve listening to my Uncle Phil shout at the tv and eating ice cream in commiseration, for the sake of this memoir. It sounds fabulous. Also: MANICURE!!! I think that’s what clinches it for me. Hilarious.
I heard him on Fresh Air twice last year (he made the year-end rerun of Terry’s best, deservedly). I share your admiration for Dickey: an articulate and soulful guy. He used the Uecker quite in that interview, too, and did a great job of explaining how the knuckleball works. Great to read here that he is a man of character. Thank you.
I heard the same Fresh Air piece and came away just as impressed. The guy is articulate, and a mensch. And, apparently, another guy who finds acrylic nails a professional necessity.
R.A. Dickey is indeed a mensch. I heard a nice interview with him on Fresh Air: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/27/167819394/r-a-dickey-on-winding-up-as-a-knuckleballer
My mom’s a professor of education at the Jewish Theological Seminary who has done a lot of work about heroes and roles models. I sent her this bit of text by Dickey, who is a religious Christian: “To me prayer is not a me-driven, goal-driven endeavor, something I turn to when I really need to pitch a dominant game or get out of a tight spot or personal crisis. I’ve never prayed to God and said, ‘Lord, please let me strike out Albert Pujols four times tonight.’ Nor will I ever do that. God is not a genie in a bottle that you rub when you want something.” How different from the way most athletes invoke God!
Egg-zackly.
I think I’ll read the book. I caught the tail end of an interview, probably on NPR, probably Fresh Air, but I am not sure.
Nice. I’ve gotten the impression he’s a class act, now I want to read his book. Thanks.
I don’t wanna oversell the book — the writing’s sometimes flat, and there’s not much in the way of characterization of other people. He doesn’t do a ton of introspection. There’s no sense of the impact of the sexual abuse on his private life, for instance, and no sense of why he had an affair (or how his wife found out or how, specifically, they worked on their marriage afterward). But he’s had a fascinating career, and it’s nice to read about an athlete who’s neither dimwitted nor dickish, and I liked learning about the knuckleball as a pitch!
gosh, I think I would disagree about there being “no sense of the impact” that the sexual abuse had on his life — I think his whole world turned when he finally got counseling, talked to someone about the sexual abuse, and was then convinced to talk to his family, and others about it. In fact, I think Wherever I Wind Up is the result of him needing an outlet to process what happened to him when he was eight years old. And there’s a bit after the counseling begins (and he survives the Missouri River) where he says he thinks there’s a direct connection between having stopped hiding the sexual abuse and being able to be fully present when he was on the mound. His whole career reverses course, culminating with the Cy Young Award.
p.s. I wrote the young reader edition of WIWU. It was an awesome assignment.
Cool, Sue! Thanks so much for commenting.
Love him. He had a hard time as a Twin but was always a nice guy. I was very sad to see him traded from my beloved Mets…who still seem unable to recognize a good thing when they have it. Frankly, the Mets should have apologized.