The Closer Read online

  Put the ball exactly where I want.

  With most pitchers in rookie ball, the coaches tell them to just throw strikes, even if they are over the middle of the plate. Once you can do that, you can expand the strike zone and work on fine-tuning your command. But I am not like that. The Lord has blessed me with the gift of control. If I want to throw the ball knee-high on the black, I do it. If I want to paint the black on the other side, I can do that, too. I still have my one-pitch repertoire—fastball—with a pretty lame slider and a mediocre changeup mixed in. I will work on the changeup for years, and it never gets any better. The rookie hitters watch me warm up and probably think, This is going to be easy.

  Tim Cooper, our third baseman, sometimes catches me in the bullpen. Coop, as we all call him, studied Spanish in high school and becomes my language instructor. I throw my fastball and he smiles, shakes his head, and says, How are guys not whacking these pitches out of the park every time?

  My manager is Glenn Sherlock, and my pitching coach is Hoyt Wilhelm, the old knuckleballer. They are both good guys, though I understand little of what they say. They put me in the bullpen to start the year. Wilhelm is doing what he can to help, but basically I know nothing about the nuances of pitching. All around me are guys who have been groomed to do this for a decade or more, and here I am, a guy who got here because one Sunday afternoon the Panama Oeste Cowboys needed somebody to finish a game.

  But when I get in the game, I am usually ahead of the hitter, 1–2 or 0–2, by the time the announcer finishes saying my name. It goes that way pretty much the whole year. I pitch a total of 52 innings and give up 17 hits and one earned run. I strike out 58 and walk 7 and have an ERA of 0.17. Tim Rumer is the club’s pitching star, one of the best guys in the Gulf Coast League, but with my very average fastball I have quite a run of success.

  This doesn’t surprise me.

  It shocks me.

  All around I see guys who are stronger than me and throw harder than me, and I am outperforming nearly all of them. It is almost an out-of-body experience. I get guy after guy out and think the same thing every time:

  How on earth am I doing this?

  The way everything is falling together is almost incomprehensible. First, I am supposed to be in the Dominican Republic, not Tampa, but the Yankees decided to bring me to extended spring training because I am already twenty. Now, in the first few weeks, they see how raw I am as a pitcher and start talking again about moving me to the Dominican Republic to get in extra work, but Herb intervenes.

  Yes, he’s raw, but look at the command he has, Herb tells his scouting bosses. Let’s let him pitch in games and see what we’ve got.

  It has to be the work of the Lord. I am getting results that are way beyond my physical abilities. I don’t fully understand what is going on, but it feels much bigger than me.

  Rookie ball is unlike any other level of pro baseball, because it is all so new and different for everybody. For foreign guys like me and American guys who bypass college, it’s not just our first time away from home, it’s our first time playing this many games—more than sixty—in a season. There is so much to get accustomed to, and performance can be totally skewed. The top pick in the entire big league draft in 1990, Chipper Jones, is in our league. He plays for the Gulf Coast Braves. He hits .229 that year. The premier pitching prospect in the league, Jose Martinez of the Mets, winds up appearing in a total of four big league games. The top reliever, Anthony Bouton of the Gulf Coast Rangers, piles up seventeen saves and two years later is out of baseball altogether. Tim Rumer never pitches in the big leagues. I am the twenty-sixth-rated pitcher in the Gulf Coast League. I do not make the All-Star team. I am as anonymous as you can get. I take home $310 every two weeks, after taxes, and save it to give to my parents when I get back to Panama.

  Tim Cooper and I get closer and closer as the season goes on. I even let him cut my hair. He does a good job, and instructs me on ballplayer humor, too. I can’t do anything about your face, he says. We travel the Gulf Coast by bus, to Dunedin and Clearwater and Bradenton, and we make up a rule: Coop is only allowed to speak Spanish, and I am only allowed to speak English. Some people go with Berlitz to learn a language. Others go with Rosetta Stone. I go with Tim Cooper, of Chico, California. I start to pick up some words, even some sentences, and I pick up even more when we go out to play pool after dinner. We bet $1 a game, and I take a lot of Coop’s money. (I got pretty good at pool hanging out in the clubs in Chorrera.) I learn how to say, This is like taking candy from a baby.

  We also go fishing a lot. Behind the Bay Harbor, there’s a wooden pier, and we buy some fishing poles and put the lines in the water. If the fish aren’t biting off the pier, we’ll wade into the Gulf. Mostly we reel in catfish, and then we release them and catch some more. I can’t get away from fish no matter where I go.

  On a bus trip to Sarasota one day, Coop decides to raise the bar on my English.

  Okay, we’re going to do a little role play right now, Coop says. You just won Game 7 of the World Series, and Tim McCarver wants to talk to you. You can’t call in a translator. That’ll kill the moment. You have to be able to speak English, so you might as well start learning now.

  Ready?

  And Coop channels his best Tim McCarver:

  Mariano, could you ever have imagined this when you were growing up in Panama—pitching in the World Series for the Yankees?

  Not really. It’s amazing. Thanks to the Lord, I was able to get those last outs.

  You had to face three strong hitters at the end. What was your approach?

  I just want to make good pitches and get ahead.

  You used to work on your father’s fishing boat, and now you are a world champion. What have you learned along the way?

  I think if you have the help of the Lord, you can do anything. You can dream big things.

  Coop ends the interview there.

  Muy bueno, he says.

  Thank you, I say.

  The Gulf Coast Yankees are barely a .500 team, but I keep getting people out. With one day left in the season, I have pitched a total of 45 innings—5 innings short of qualifying for the league ERA title. Sherlock consults with Yankee player-development people and asks them if I can start against the Pirates so I can get the innings I need, even though I had pitched a couple of innings the day before. The Yankees okay it. I haven’t gone five innings the whole season, but I figure I can do it if I am economical.

  It is August 31, 1990, a Friday. The game is at home, in Tampa. I cruise through three scoreless innings, then a fourth. We take a 3–0 lead. I have not given up a hit as I take the mound in the top of the fifth. A Pirate hitter rips a ball toward third base. Coop makes a diving grab on the backhand side, and fires to first to get him. Minutes later in the outfield, Carl Everett, the Yankees’ No. 1 draft choice that year, runs down a ball in the gap.

  Going into the seventh, the Pirates are still without a hit. They have had one base runner; he got on when our second baseman booted a grounder. I get the first two outs in the seventh and have only one out to go (we’re playing a doubleheader; in the minors, that means that the games are shortened to seven innings). All I am thinking about is hitting the glove of my catcher, Mike Figga, and making a good pitch. I don’t let my mind go anywhere else. I get the guy on a fastball on the corner and an instant later I am engulfed by teammates.

  There may be fifty people in the stands, but this moment—and sharing it with my teammates—is one of the best feelings I’ve ever had on a ball field. It’s the first no-hitter I’ve ever thrown. By the terms of my contract, it is also supposed to earn me $500 and a watch from the Yankees, but I’m not sure if those bonuses are in play for a seven-inning game.

  So I call the head of the whole player-development operation for the Yankees, Mark Newman, who is traveling in Washington, and make my case in my best broken English.

  You’ve had a great season, Mariano. We’ll give you your bonuses, happily.

  In the cl
ubhouse after the game, the Yankees reward our rousing finish by ordering in wings from Hooters. Speaking in Spanish, Coop says: I think you owe me a cut of the bonus for saving your no-hitter.

  Speaking in English, I reply: I no understand.

  I fly back to Panama the next day with a profoundly different outlook than I had only five months earlier. I am a pitcher now. A pitcher who wants to compete at the highest level I can. A door has opened to a world of larger possibilities than I have ever imagined. I am not a wannabe mechanic anymore. I am definitely not a fisherman anymore.

  I am a professional baseball player.

  For the whole off-season, I train with Chico Heron at a gym in Panama City. I get up at 5:00 a.m. and take the same two buses I took to the Yankee tryouts at Juan Demóstenes Arosemena, spending the same 45 cents and 65 cents on fare, only now I don’t have to ask for credit. I do this five days a week. I lift and run and go through exercise regimens to build up my strength and overall fitness. I throw to build up my arm strength. I’ve seen the competition now, and I’ve seen how long the odds are for a player to get out of rookie ball. We had thirty-three guys on that Gulf Coast Yankee team. Only seven would make it to the majors, and only five would have careers of any substance: Shane Spencer, Carl Everett, Ricky Ledee, Russ Springer, and me.

  If I don’t make it to the top, it isn’t going to be because somebody outworked me.

  I move up to Single-A ball in 1991, pitching for the Greensboro Hornets in the South Atlantic League, splitting time between starting and relieving. It makes no difference to me at all. I will rake the mound if they want me to. The bigger challenge for me is off the field. I’ve gotten off to a good start learning English, thanks to Coop, but unlike Tampa, Greensboro, North Carolina, is a place where almost nobody speaks my native language. It is tremendously isolating. In restaurants and malls and convenience stores, my English shortcomings keep slamming into me.

  I try to ask somebody for directions after a game one day.

  Excuse me, my English no good, you can tell me how…

  I stammer and wobble all over the place, and can’t manage to say anything. I thought I was way beyond this, but now my English seems to be getting worse. Another time, I ask a clerk in a store a question about merchandise and again come up with nothing. I return to my apartment feeling so alone, more defeated than I have on the field the whole season. I don’t know why it hits me in that moment, but it does. I feel like a sardine out of water, tangled in a net with no chance for escape. It feels really bad, completely overwhelming. I start to cry. I go to the bathroom and wash my face and look in the mirror. I turn out the light and go to bed.

  I am still crying.

  My linguistic pity party doesn’t last long. I find Coop the next day.

  I need to work on English, Coop. I am not doing good with it. I have to be able to talk when I win the World Series, right?

  Coop smiles. We’ve got a lot of road trips left this year, he says. You are going to be giving speeches by the time we’re done.

  I don’t give too many speeches, and don’t give up too many runs, either. My elbow doesn’t feel right all season, honestly, but I don’t say anything because I don’t want anybody to know. No sense jeopardizing anything by speaking up about pain that I can manage. So I just keep pitching. Thanks to the much longer road trips in the South Atlantic League, Coop and I have four- and six- and eight- hour bus rides to speak English and Spanish. The extra hours make all the difference. I get comfortable speaking English at last. I am not lost anymore. I am not alone. Tim Cooper is some teammate. Cuts hair, gives language lessons, saves no-hitters. He and I learn an awful lot on those long trips, and not just language.

  If we ever make it to the top, let’s make a deal that we’re never going to big-league anybody, Coop says. We’re never going to act better than anybody or look down on anybody, because that’s not what real big leaguers do.

  That’s right, I say. We don’t big-league anybody. We stay humble. We remember where we came from.

  What’s important is how you treat people. That’s what really matters, right? Coop says.

  Amen, Coop.

  This simple truth becomes a beacon for how to live life for me, in baseball and out of baseball. The Lord doesn’t care about wealth or fame or the number of saves somebody has. We are all the children of God, and the Lord cares about the goodness and love in our hearts. That’s all.

  My faith in what’s important helps me appreciate the moment. Players in the minor leagues always curse the marathon bus rides, the fume-filled hours that are supposed to be the dreary essence of life in the bush leagues. Me, I can’t see it the same way. Without those bus rides, I don’t learn the language I have to learn. I don’t reaffirm the values I want to live by.

  I finish the year with a 2.75 ERA and more than a strikeout per inning, even though my record stinks (4–9). I remain a complete nobody in the orbit of prospects, but you know what attention I pay to Baseball America and all this ranking nonsense?

  None.

  I don’t care what some ranking list says, what arbitrary judgment a computer spits out based on a bunch of data. When they give me the ball, I take it. I pitch. Most of the time I get people out.

  Simple is best.

  My trip home after the season lasts only four days, because I have to go back for instructional ball. All I want to do is see Clara. We have been together for six years now. She meets me at the airport and I give her a hug and a kiss. I know that it is time. Three years before I signed, Clara and I went for a walk and sat down on a bench at a little park near the water. It was a beautiful, starlit night, and we looked at the sky and decided that if either of us saw a shooting star we would make a wish but had to wish out loud before it disappeared.

  Suddenly a star shot across the sky.

  To get married to Clara, I said, as fast as I could get the words out. Clara laughed. We both knew we were not getting married at seventeen, but now it is a different time, the right time.

  The next night, I invite Clara to go to a Chinese restaurant in Panama City called Don Lee. We take the two buses, the usual involved trip. Don Lee is not fancy, but we like it. And it is all we can afford. It’s in the banking district, with the name written in neon in big script. As we approach the restaurant, there is a guy selling roses.

  I buy one and give it to Clara.

  We sit down at the restaurant.

  I love you so much and I missed you so much when I was away, I say.

  I love you and missed you, too, Clara says.

  We get the menus and the water. I know why we are here but just don’t know how to get the words out. I keep looking across the table at Clara. How much do I love this woman? How much do I want to spend my life with her?

  The words still have not come. The noodles have, but not the words.

  Finally, Clara says, We’ve been going together all these years. Where is this going?

  I smile and grab her hand. I feel foolish that Clara takes the lead, but this is just one of the reasons I love her. Her strength. Her conviction. Her sense of the moment.

  Where is this going? I say. I want to get married, Clara. I don’t want to be away from you anymore. I will be back in a little over a month. It is crazy, I know. I will be gone, so you will have to arrange everything. All the work, all the planning. But I want to get married and I would love to do it when I come back.

  Okay, Clara says. I don’t know what took you so long.

  I fly back to instructional ball, and Clara takes care of everything—the invitations, the reception, the food, the music, the photographer, you name it. We get married before a judge on November 6, 1991, and then have the public wedding, and the party, November 9. The celebration is held in the Fisherman’s Hall in Puerto Caimito. I am a fisherman’s boy from a fishing village. You were expecting the Ritz-Carlton? The Fisherman’s Hall is a pavilion with a roof and no walls. Clara cooks. My mother cooks. I even cook. We all spend the final days preparing arroz con
pollo (chicken with rice), puerco asado (roast pork), empanadas, tamales, all kinds of stuff. We have ceviches (marinated fish) for an appetizer. Clara’s cousin is our photographer.

  We eat and laugh and dance. It is as simple as it can be, with the smell of fish in the air, and it is the happiest day of my life because it is exactly what a wedding day should be about: a celebration of how blessed we are to each be the other’s true love.

  5

  Worst Cut

  IF I HAVE HAD a better year in my life than 1991, I can’t remember when. I marry Clara, progress as a pitcher, and learn to speak reasonable English. There is just one problem in the midst of all the good. The pain in my elbow never gets any better. In fact, despite my determined efforts to ignore it and pray for it to disappear, it gets worse. Our trainer, Greg Spratt, and I manage it as best we can. I ice it all the time. I make sure to warm up properly. But the pain never relents, and I just hope the off-season rest will get it to stop barking.

  With the wedding behind us, Clara and I start our life together in a puny room inside her mother’s house in Puerto Caimito, a space that is a little bigger than a coaching box, with room for a double bed and not much more. Our closet consists of two nails and a broomstick. Fortunately, we have very few clothes. The living is humble even by Puerto Caimito standards, but I have a plan, and that is to save every penny so we can build our own home. We live with her mother, and the broomstick, for four years, even after I make the big leagues.

  You do what you need to do.

  I spend the winter training with Chico again, a 5:00 a.m. regular on the Puerto Caimito/Chorrera/Panama City bus loop, and even as I put in the work, I am so grateful for this man’s loyalty and kindness. He just gives and gives. His reward is seeing me do well. That’s it. He takes me places, arranges workouts, helps with mechanics, teaches me how to be a professional—his contributions know no bounds. Whatever I need, Chico Heron is there. You do not forget people like this.

  It pays off—all of the work, and all of Chico’s help. In the spring of 1992 I get promoted to high Single-A ball, and the Fort Lauderdale Yankees of the Florida State League. It’s not Yankee Stadium, but if you keep moving forward, even a level at a time, it usually means you are still in the mix. The way I see it, if I put all my concentration into making every pitch a good one, can I possibly go wrong? I don’t have a timetable. My timetable is the next pitch.