From the very first day a kid picks up a baseball, the clock starts ticking. The hands go round and round. Round and round.
As a parent you can't help but nervously glance up at that imaginary yet very real clock. Your dream is for it to spin for decades. I wanted to see that damn clock die of old age. Keep on spinning, baby. Round and round.
For some the game ends after that first year of tee ball. We plant the seed, but for some kids the roots simply don't take hold. For a lucky few, the roots grow strong and deep, and it all ends at 40 years of age in the Major Leagues. That is the hope—a teary-eyed man at the podium, graying at the temples, announcing his baseball retirement on national TV. A man spending his life playing a beautiful game and ending it on his own terms is the ultimate dream. As Billy Beane asked in the film Moneyball, "How can you not be romantic about baseball?"
For the overwhelming majority of us, unfortunately, it ends somewhere in between those two extremes. That is where it ended for me. That is where it ended for my son.
The Cobra hung up his spikes on Wednesday.
He had been experiencing some pain in his biceps for a couple weeks. His first two fall ball outings at Folsom Lake College this season were great, but on Tuesday his velocity was down and he gave up some hits. Some of that was due to his coach calling everything but his best pitch, the two-seam fastball. It's unclear if Coach Gregory was setting him up for failure, or perhaps challenging him to use other pitches. Who knows with that guy. Gregory then left him off the travel roster for Friday's scrimmage in Butte. Spencer was stunned and disappointed.
After four years of struggling to get healthy after the first shoulder injury, he said it was just too much—too much pain, too much stress, too many lows and not enough highs.
For me the blow was crushing, and for my wife equally so. Maybe even more so. She is a mom, you know. After a few days had passed, she said, “It feels like someone died.” And it did. A friend. A very close friend.
If this sounds a bit overdramatic, so be it. I am not going to apologize for how I feel.
The feeling of loss wasn’t because of any selfish reasons, or any of that “living my life through my child” nonsense. I had my day in the sun as an athlete. I basked in the glow of victories, soaking in that sunshine like a desert iguana. I was a happy lizard.
I wanted him to experience that triumph at a higher level. Although I played baseball, my best sports experiences came after baseball in cycling. I had some good results while racing on some big stages. Those experiences and the resulting memories are priceless. The sunshine stays with you, sustaining you on life's darkest days. That’s all I wanted for him. More time in the sun. More good memories. A little more sunshine.
No, I wasn't living through him. We simply love the game. We attended the church of baseball year-round. Like any good cult members we not only participated in the game, we were (and still are) fans. We typically watch every single San Francisco Giants game. We go to minor league games. We keep a close eye on our minor league prospects. We get excited for free agency and the draft. The baseball gods smiled upon us. And it was good.
The excitement of upcoming tournaments and games fueled us and fed our souls. We practiced in freezing temperatures. I strapped on the catcher’s gear on the hottest of summer days. We played long toss in a hail storm. Spencer once played in fog so thick you couldn't see the infielders from the stands. It’s all part of the game, part of our history, part of our family folklore.
Then our calendar suddenly became a wide-open wasteland. In one single day I lost my religion.
The day I became a believer is still etched clearly in my mind. My parents took me to Candlestick Park for a Giants day game. There was a huge escalator on the back side of the stadium that carried you up to the top. As we slowly climbed, I felt the anticipation, like ascending on a rollercoaster knowing a thrill was coming soon. We crested the top and the field came into view: grass greener than any I had ever seen, perfect reddish-brown dirt, crisp white baselines. I felt a euphoria I had never felt before. This was my church. These were my people. And it was good.
I think we are all struggling to figure out what comes next. Our family life has revolved around the game of baseball for 13 years, almost year-round. That's well over two-thirds of Spencer's life, and a sizeable chunk of mine. There is a large void in my heart, an empty space that used to be filled with dirt and sweat and sunshine and the smells of leather and fresh-cut grass.
After the labrum surgery, the clock ticked unevenly—sometimes powerfully, other times so faintly you had to crane your neck to hear the barely detectable pulse. As baseball people we become very aware of injuries and surgeries and their success rates. It's an unfortunate but prevalent part of the game, especially for pitchers. And because of this we know the numbers. Surgery success rates are just another stat in a game that is built upon and revolves around statistics. So we know this: shoulder surgeries are a crap shoot.
Players can completely destroy an elbow or a knee and a competent surgeon can repair it with a high success rate. These are fairly simple hinge joints that only move in one plane. The shoulder and hip, on the other hand, are ball-and-socket joints which move in multiple directions. These joints are a marvel of evolution, but they are complex. A pitcher undergoing a labrum surgery can expect a 12-month recovery and only a 60% success rate.
Throughout the rehab process there are ups and downs, good days and bad, optimism and fear. He completed his physical therapy and we adhered to the throwing program religiously, down to the last letter. The whole time I kept glancing at the clock. Tick tock.
This game is difficult enough without dealing with an injury. For the position players you need three basic skills: to catch the ball, throw the ball, and hit the ball. Lacking any of those three skills will eventually end the game for you.
For pitchers it's a little more simple: get hitters out. Yet the complexity of this singular task can be daunting. There are a million ways to do it, and for the past 150 years pitchers have been coming up with new ways. The first guy credited with throwing a curveball, Candy Cummings, completely baffled hitters. But they adjusted. The arms race between hitter and pitcher has been escalating ever since, with both sides coming up with new ways to compete.
One short month ago, things were going well. Other than some timing issues, our bullpen sessions were good, but there is always room for improvement. We too were looking for new ways to compete, so we called an old coach.
We went to Hard 90, Spencer's old travel ball facility, and worked with one of the coaches named Hutch. It was probably a little weird for Spencer because everyone else in the facility was much younger, but Hutch and Spencer always clicked.
They spent the first 45 minutes in a back room working on different things with weighted balls. When they came out to the bullpen area, Hutch made him start his throws by standing on his front foot and hopping back onto his rear foot before throwing. He made him do it over and over again until he was satisfied. At first Spencer was throwing the ball into the ground or way over the target. By the end he was hitting the target dead center. It was slowing his upper body and syncing his timing. As his bullpen catcher I could see this problem, but it took a more experienced coach to correct it.
They finally progressed to the pitching mound. And it was good. I had never seen him throw so hard or so accurately. He was throwing the four-seam fastball right to the glove. Every single time. Then he threw a bunch of changeups and all but one dropped right on the outside of the plate where they are supposed to. Then he threw some curveballs, which were okay but still needed some work.
Then Hutch said, "Let's finish with a few more fastballs." Spencer asked if he could throw some two-seamers, and Hutch said sure, whatever. Spencer knows they can be challenging to catch, so he was trying to give him a heads-up. Standing behind Hutch, I said, "It breaks a lot." He looked back at me, and although he said nothing, his face told me, "Okay, old man."
He threw the first one and it was heading right for Hutch's inside (left) knee. He turned the glove over to the forehand side to catch it. Then it started breaking and ended up outside his right knee. He still had the glove turned the wrong way when he caught the pitch. It completely handcuffed him. He stood up and stared at Spencer for a few seconds and said, "That was NASTY."
He threw a few more and they all broke beautifully off the outside of the plate.
One thing we know about Hutch is he is big on negative reinforcement. If you go to a coaching session expecting praise, you will be very disappointed. Sessions typically end with 20 minutes of harsh critique. When Spencer was younger this was tough for him, yet he always wanted to go back. This time Hutch had very little feedback. He said, "If you throw like that you are going to be a problem. No righty is gonna like hitting that two-seam." Spencer quipped, "Lefties don't like it so much either."
We left there buzzing on a high. He made it. He was part of the lucky 60% to make it back.
The clock clicked strong and steady.
A short month later it was over. The baseball gods stopped the clock. I quickly realized these weren't the kind and benevolent gods I thought they were. We were so devoted to the church and this is how they treat us? It didn't feel fair. Because it isn't. Baseball is not fair. It's far less fair than life in general. It's a mean, heartless game.
On Thursday the three of us went out to dinner, something we couldn't do if he were still practicing. And it was good.
The next day he was in very great spirits, a mood we hadn't seen in a while. Shedding the weight we carry as athletes does feel good at first. The regret we feel later in life can feel much heavier, though. The sunshine of old success can indeed carry you, but only so far.
The day Spencer broke the news I was incredibly sad. Later that afternoon I went to the bike shop. Baseball fields and bike shops are the closest things I have to churches. I handed my drivers license over to a shop employee and test rode bikes for over an hour in an effort to to fill the void, I guess, leaning on my other lifelong love.
I probably won't totally leave the church of baseball, but the congregation will definitely see less of me. Unless, of course, there is a resurrection, and the clock clicks back to life, seeking one last ray of sunshine.
Later.
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