Chapter 9

I liked living and playing ball in Memphis and it was something of a shame really that I wasn’t there long enough to really relax and just enjoy the experience and take everything in properly. At the end of July I had just arrived in the clubhouse and was putting my stuff up in what was the locker at the furthest end from anyone else’s, with just my last name ‘Spacey’ written at the top on a strip of blue painter’s tape. Clearly, they weren’t expecting me to be around here for very long. That feeling only grew about an hour before game time when I was called into the manager’s office.

Everyone knows there are only two reasons to get called into the skipper’s office – both are bad: benched... 0r worse. It’s never to tell you how well you’re playing or even ‘welcome to the club’.

The skipper wasn’t alone and this was my first introduction to my new pitching coach. They weren’t smiling or acting pleased at all to be making my acquaintance. The clubhouse manager made the introductions and then left us, shutting the door behind him. Frankly, that was the highlight of our meeting. The skipper never said a word to me and let his pitching coach do all the talking. He wasn’t particularly complimentary.

“We’ve watched the film report that scouting sent us before the trade, and frankly we advised against it. Furthermore, now that you are here, we’re confused about how to utilize you ... and not in any particularly good way.”

And well, it sort of went downhill from there. Phillip, my new ‘boss’ admitted that I had a pretty respectable WHIP (Walks+Hits/Innings Pitched) ratio, but he was much more concerned my low K/9 (Strikeout per 9 Innings) ratio. This meant that I ‘wasn’t fooling anyone’ out there on the mound, in his opinion. Batters adapt – they always do, he insisted ... and when they did I would be dead meat - of this he was certain. This suggested to them that I was best suited to sit at the end of bullpen, strictly for use in emergency situations.

I then countered, reasonably politely, that ‘Once upon a time’ in baseball it wasn’t uncommon at all for a left-handed finesse pitcher to enjoy a long and successful career without striking hardly anyone out. In the 1970s and early 1980s, guys like Jerry Reuss and Jim Kaat were on their way to each winning well more than 200 career games each while striking out barely a batter every other inning ... like me. Slow and steady really can still win the race, I explained. They disagreed ... and they sent me off to the back end of the bullpen.

It was two full weeks before I appeared in my first AAA game, as a situational leftie reliever in the bottom of the eighth inning. Fuck Face wasn’t starting today, as he was part of a three catcher rotation currently, so I held a brief pow-wow with my battery mate to briefly explain everything was going to be delivered low and breaking lower – the tying run was on second and the go-head runner was on first. I wanted to induce an infield grounder, so we could make a play at any base ... and it worked. I placed a forkball surgically right at the middle of the plate but it broke nicely down to the knees and the batter knobbled it, sending a slow two-hopper right back to me in plenty of time to make the force-out at third for the second out of the inning.

One pitch – one out, with no runner able to advance to third. Perfect! So of course the skipper comes out to the mound and immediately signaled to the pen for a right hander, Jeff, to relieve me. I thought about arguing but I knew it would accomplish nothing so I just handed him the ball and walked off of the field, my outing done after just one batter.

So, the new right handed reliever Jeff came on and he pooched it ... giving up two walks and three hits and we lose the game. Come to find out, there was someone lower here on the pitching totem pole than me ... and Jeff got his complete release from the organization the next day. Jeff was in his early 30’s and his stats pretty clearly showed that he wasn’t even ‘organizational player’ caliber any longer and was now just dead wood. I think I was the only pitcher that even bothered to say ‘goodbye’ to him, as he packed up his scanty locker. He’d seen the writing on the wall for a while and his release wasn’t any big surprise. His brother was holding a job for him locally, he said, and he’d given his dream of reaching the majors his best shot and knew that it wouldn’t ever happen for him.

Since he was staying local, as his home was now permanently in Memphis, we kept in touch and did burgers and beer together a few times before the end of the season and since he was now (happily) out of the game, Jeff let me pick his brain for dozens of bits of trivial that no one else on the club would bother to tell any newcomer. Here are just a few of the more valuable tidbits.

When you’re playing AAA ball, you’re competing against all the other twenty-five guys in the same room who all believe that they should be next to be called up to the majors and not you. What do they think they need to do/improve enough to get there? Usually they know ... but most won’t or can’t do it, usually for ego reasons, but sometimes there’s a physical limitation. Most players believe the minors are an escalator or elevator that only goes up to the top and when they start falling downwards it zaps their brain and then many of them can’t cope afterwards. It’s a part of the game and you need to know how to deal with that - If you get sent down, the reason is that you aren’t good enough. All of the 99 other rationalizations and fears in your head are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the words are or how they phrase it – you’ve been fired. Get better, fix what’s broken or STFU and go home ... or become another invisible organizational player who exists solely for the purpose of letting the three to six actual prospects on the team play ball every day so they can get better.

Really, he explained to me, the only meaningful difference between an AAA and a MLB player is confidence; having a positive attitude or work ethic. The long season is about grinding – helping the team in small ways every day. The guys who grind every day are usually the ones who make it, since the coaches/personnel guys do notice the small things. The guy who comes to play every day, even when it doesn’t matter, is the guy they want to keep around. Not the guy who has already mentally packed it in and doesn’t hustle 100% of the time out on the field. The guys that just do what the coaches ask of him – that’s the type of guy they want around, if for no other reason than to be an example to the younger players.

All of this was excellent advice and frankly it helped to keep me sane after I was released at the end of the season!

Dumb Shit Wade got one of the treasured September 1^st call-ups to the Big Club and I was at least willing to pretend to be happy for him. I was still his roommate on the road, but really we hardly saw each other much that month after our promotions to AAA together. He was on top of the world, happy with life, baseball, and his new weather bunny girlfriend, and didn’t seem to need or want me babysitting in his life. Fine with me.

Wade had the talent of a first round draft pick alright, no one had ever doubted his raw ability ... just his mental ability to steer some sort of middle course in his life. That was the biggest issue I’d had when dealing with him, and why he’d been sent down to the Banzai Brothers in the first place. When he was playing well, he was fine – loaded with bravado and self-confidence. Then, when the hitting streak was over and the game started to get hard for him, he’d panic and lose his confidence entirely and start to make ‘adjustments’. Adjustments are your mortal enemy: you make a small change, it doesn’t work, so you make another ... then more. Soon you’ve made a dozen adjustments and then nothing works. He’d tinker with his batting swing until it was completely screwed up and then I’d have to make him undo all of his changes to put his swing back to the way it was before.

Never fuck with your mechanics on your own without a coach standing right next to you, either batting or pitching – otherwise it will all end in tears. With mechanics, even the small changes you don’t notice can be big. Pitchers (and hitters) need a keep good stock of prior film on hand from when things were perfect to refer back to and study, so you can undo those stupid small adjustments that creep in over time.

I just never could get it into Wade’s head that hot streaks are rare (and not the norm), and when they happened it was ok to enjoy them, but grind on anyway just as hard during the times when you aren’t hot. He should hustle even harder during the games when things aren’t going your way! You don’t always have your best stuff – how you adjust on those nights can determine your entire season or career. As Churchill once said, ‘Keep buggering on!’

For that one month of August in AAA, Wade rode that ongoing hot streak, hitting over .330 with a bit of power, right up until he was called up to the majors and it seemed that he’d made it, until he suddenly went hitless there for the last two weeks of the season. The club didn’t worry much about it then, as the kid had amply shown off (finally) his potential ... and he’d be just fine in the spring, they all thought. But Shit For Brains had zapped his brain again and now I wasn’t around to help fix the building confidence problem all over again. After a bad spring training, Wade started the next year in AAA Memphis again for a ‘brief rehab assignment’ and stayed there. By summer he’d taken the escalator ride downwards again, back to AA. By that fall he’d been given an outright release and dropped from the sacred organizational 40 man roster. Not a single team picked him up and Fuck Face was out of baseball. Word from the scouts was that Wade was a terminal headcase that no club wanted to deal with.

Nope, not my problem anymore! Besides, I had more than my own share of problems of my own, now that I was unemployed myself in this new year!

Late in February, right before the start of spring training when pitchers and catchers report early at the start of March, I was alone at home tending to what had been my father’s desert ranch in West Texas. Truth be told, since I had no cattle, no horses, and not even any chickens, it wasn’t all that much of an actual ranch, so fuck-all really needed to be tended to. Everything but the lot the ranch house was built on had been leased out to other ranchers for grazing. Hell, that annual rental income paid me more than my minor league salary! A winter back home just convinced me even more that I could make it all the way – and succeed. The grass outside is not always greener ... but it’s much nicer inside the ballpark than standing outside it wistfully looking in.

I could tell you that I wasn’t really bitter at all about my release from AAA at the end of last season, but that would be a fib ... I was actually pretty pissed off – then and now. The last two weeks of the season I’d actually been given a few more outings to prove myself and I thought I’d nailed my audition. Eleven and a third innings of work with just two earned runs charged to me. Also logging a more than respectable WHIP ratio of .71 – the best of any pitcher on their staff! I only had one start, but it was statistically marked as a ‘quality’ one, giving up only two earned runs in six innings pitched, and getting the win in a late season meaningless game.

Again, it was the low K/9 ratio that they singled out when the issued my walking papers. “You’re just not fooling anyone out there and sooner or later batters are going to tear you apart.” Etc ... all because I didn’t (wouldn’t) throw 90+ heat!

So bright and early one morning I was having a beer for breakfast while sitting on the front porch waiting, earnestly, for another day where absolutely nothing fucking ever happened, when my cell phone rang. It was Randy, and for a brief happy moment I was wondering if he wanted me for an assistant coaching job, but he had other business in mind.

“Space, I’m glad to finally get ahold of you. That new girl who replaced Leah has the files in such a mess now that I couldn’t even find your cell phone number for the better part of three months now. Hell, I can’t find anything around here now anymore!”

“Yeah, I miss her too. Any word of where she’s gone to roost?”

“Not a word,” he replied, “I just got a postcard from her mailed from Vegas at around New Year’s ... said nothing but ‘XOXO Leah’ on it. I wish she’d never left ... her replacement is a clueless moron and I’d double Leah’s old pay to get her back here again. I’d fire this new idiot, yesterday even, but the gals I’ve interviewed so far this spring are even worse than her, if it’s even possible. That, and also Earnest is now banging her, so that’s going to make it hard to impossible to get rid of her until they break up.”

“I know exactly how you feel ... anyway, what’s the dope? Did Craig get that better job offer with a farm club and now you’re wanting me to come back there and fill his shoes?”

“Nope, that offer sort of fell through, so he’s still my assistant coach again for this season. Next year ... who knows? You like this other offer I’ve got a bit better, though ... Todd Jordan is the Director of Minor League Operations for New England, the head of their scouting and player development groups, and he called me in late November asking about your availability and whereabouts. He’s only been with that organization for a year now, but he’s already got the reputation for being hardcore into sabermetrics, with more computers evaluating players rather than grizzled old scouts, and he’s starting to slowly turn things around there. He ‘expressed an interest’, pretty clearly I thought, in having you sign a minor league contract with their organization this coming season.”