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I loved it, and I don’t know that I’d want it any other way.
Chapter Two
BURN NOTICE
Look, I’ve got to be honest here: I never wanted to write a book. Perhaps that isn’t the best thing to admit right off the bat here, but it’s true. My impression is that a lot of people write books just to pat themselves on the back and remind themselves of how great they are, and that’s just not who I am or something I ever envisioned myself doing.
Now that I’ve had a couple years away from baseball to reflect, I finally realize there could be a bigger reason for me to write a book—one that is actually meaningful to others and not just gratifying to myself. And after much thought and much prayer, it became evident to me that despite my own misgivings, this is not only the right thing to do, but what I am being called to do: I feel a burden to write this book.
You see, it’s hard for me to ignore all the things the good Lord has shown me and not make an attempt to try to show other people how to overcome and deal with failure in their own lives. I feel obligated in my heart to do what I can to pass on a little nugget of wisdom here or there. At the same time I realize nothing I have is of my own; whatever I have, God has put it in my heart and given me the desire to pursue it and think the way I think.
This book is not so much about finding a measure of success in baseball; it’s about growing and learning how to be successful in life. Whether you’re eight or eighty-eight, a baseball fan or foe, practically anyone who shares this human existence can relate to this book, because when you boil it down to one sentence, this book is really about a kid following an improbable dream.
In these pages I am going to talk about persevering through hard times, overcoming obstacles, and rallying from the uncomfortable depths of failure—since a life lived in pursuit of dreams is destined to involve a ton of failure—but I am also going to talk about faith.
The fact is, the things that I have accomplished in my life that are viewed as “great” mostly have to do with the peace that I have in my heart today; the peace that I never knew before I truly accepted Jesus Christ as my savior in 1995. Now, I’m not going to get into all the philosophical conversations, and I’m not going to cast judgment on those who don’t believe. I simply want to make it very clear that my faith in God has been the primary thing that has sustained me all these years. All the glory and honor belongs not to me, but to Him.
Now, higher purposes aside, there are, admittedly, a few gratuitous things that go along with writing a book. One of these is the opportunity to set the record straight on a few things, especially one ridiculously false story that has followed me like a shadow my entire career. Before we get into this business of telling my side of the story, though, I want to be clear about my motives. I am not fishing for sympathy here or indicting the media either. I am simply presenting evidence that what you have read or heard about me before may or may not be true.
At the same time, if there’s one thing I am delivering in this book, it’s the truth. This is how things happened. And the truth is, never would I have imagined some of the things I have done, some of the things I didn’t get to do, or some of the things that have happened to me. This is my life: it’s real, it’s authentic, and it’s decidedly not perfect. It is what it is. I have made my fair share of mistakes in this journey and I’m not afraid to talk about them; I’m not afraid to use my life as an example to help others.
That’s what this book is all about.
For reasons I’d like to forget, I will never forget spring training in 1990. Before I headed to the ballpark one morning, I had used a portable steamer to get a few wrinkles out of my shirt. I had it sitting on the bathroom counter at one point, and when I lifted up the steamer, it spit out some water and burned me on my neck. What began as an innocent, ho-hum scrape with domesticity literally changed my life.
At the time I didn’t think much of it, but once I stepped foot into the clubhouse—with this burned spot on my neck, of all places—it became the topic of conversation. The guys immediately teed off on it. They were riding me and reincarnating every stupid hickey joke or story they had ever heard. I had no better story of my own to chip in but the truth, which unfortunately for me involved only a hot portable steamer, and not a hot young woman.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, a reporter was lurking about, literally loitering in the clubhouse. I never saw him, he never asked any questions—certainly never asked me about my “hickey”—but he went and wrote an article claiming that I had burned myself while attempting to iron my shirt … while wearing it!
I had no idea he had even written the story. Like a lot of other guys in spring training, I was completely consumed by and immersed in baseball: I was either at practice, driving to or from practice, thinking about my next practice, eating, or sleeping. It was just another day until I turned on the TV for a few minutes before I went to bed. The Arsenio Hall Show happened to be on and Arsenio was doing his monologue. He was going on about politics and whatnot, when he suddenly segued into baseball. Much to my horror, the next thing I heard him say was, “Well, no wonder the Braves can’t win; this guy Joe Schmoltz”—he didn’t even get my name right—“irons his shirt while wearing it!”
Have you ever had a moment in your life when you cannot believe what just happened? It’s almost like an out-of-body experience. You desperately hope that you’re just having a nightmare and soon you will wake up and things will go right back to normal. This was one of those moments for me. I just sat there, stunned.
Soon after, the phone calls started coming in; the first one from my dad. I knew he had already heard the story because he had the whole parent-who-is-currently-freaked-out tone in his voice when I answered.
“Hey Johnny, what happened?!” he said. “The news says you have third-degree burns!”
I guess, looking back, I should consider myself fortunate that it was only 1990, and thankfully nobody had Facebook, Twitter, or blogs back in those days. But even without the endless reach of today’s social media platforms, the story took on a life of its own and basically cemented itself as an urban legend overnight. Thanks to one careless reporter, I have been forever tagged as the schmuck baseball player who burned himself while trying to iron a shirt while wearing it.
You might remember that even Sports Illustrated got in on the act and printed a cartoon of me with an iron on my chest. As soon as the issue hit the stands, I contacted them. I thought surely once SI heard my side of the story, they would do something about it, but my efforts were about as effective as standing at home and talking to my wall: It didn’t change a thing. As far as I know, they never printed a retraction or anything. Nobody, not even a respected publication like Sports Illustrated, was interested in letting something like the truth get in the way of a good story.
The whole experience was just surreal and it left me, frankly, disillusioned. If you can imagine my room while I was growing up, it was literally wallpapered with SI covers. Every stitch of my wall was covered by a picture, or a graphic, or something from the magazine. I don’t think I can adequately explain how it felt to see myself later actually in the magazine, made out to be the butt of this joke. Now look, I have a sense of humor and I can take a joke. If you want to roast me for something silly I have done, go ahead. I’m a big boy. But there’s a difference here. I was being made fun of for something I never even did. It just wasn’t funny anymore. That cartoon is the reason why I refuse to read Sports Illustrated, even to this day.
From the moment I first heard it on Arsenio to today, I have attempted to set things straight every time the question was raised. But it never made a difference. To this day, my burn story lives on like a Roundup-resistant weed: it just won’t die. I seriously doubt it will die now even after this book. This story will be linked to me forever because it’s already been written too many times. And I guess I get it now. The truth just wasn’t the best story and people had a good time with it. It makes me wonder what it would have been like
if I had just embraced it and tried to make the best of it. Maybe it could even have led to an endorsement deal. I can just see the commercial now: “Check out Rowenta’s new portable steamer. It’s so safe and easy, even John Smoltz can use it without worrying about missing his next start.”
The truly ironic thing is that one of my teammates actually did this one time. He tried to use a hot iron to smooth out a wrinkle on his sleeve and burned his triceps. I know because he told us the story in the clubhouse one day. I just looked at him and the telltale singed outline of an iron on his upper arm and could only laugh. Here it was, probably ten years after the story, and this time it had actually happened. And I knew that this version would probably never get into the papers. (Which, of course, it didn’t.)
Prior to this experience, I had been going about my business in pro baseball, doing my part to answer questions from reporters and assuming naively that things would be handled legitimately. This story basically served as a crash course in media awareness for me, quite literally my own “burn notice”: I learned the hard way that you can’t assume anything with the media.
From this point on, I was much more mindful of the tactics reporters employ on occasion to “get” their stories. You can’t always prevent things like this from happening, but knowing what reporters are liable to do (namely, write a story without asking a lot of questions) makes you look twice at a guy standing silently in the corner of the clubhouse with press credentials hanging from his neck and a notepad in his hands writing feverishly. Especially right after someone has just played a prank on someone, or other, similar situations that can be widely misinterpreted. It can pay to engage these guys and ensure that they at least have their facts straight before they walk out with the wrong idea and something stupid ends up in the newspapers.
This is a side of pro sports that the general public has little sympathy for, in my opinion. It’s as if most people figure, “Hey, athletes are making millions of dollars so public scrutiny is just the price they have to pay.” Fans get a kick at laughing at us “overpaid bozos” (a phrase used to describe me and other athletes on the Bleacher Report’s list of the Ten Dumbest Sports Injuries Ever; I’m number seven). I get it, but what a lot of people overlook, I think—and probably because they don’t have to deal with it themselves—is that it can be incredibly painful to have your life played out in public. Especially when about half the time the stuff that’s reported isn’t even true and there’s usually not much you can do about it. Sure, you can always hire a lawyer and take somebody to court, but at the end of the day it really doesn’t change anything. People generally only remember the original story they heard. Who was right, who was wrong, and what the real story was in the first place often ends up buried in the small print and is largely ignored.
This is unfortunately just one of the many stories that have been printed about me over the course of my career that I feel wholly justified to take issue with. In the early days, I didn’t handle these situations very well at all.
I’ll never forget happening to run into the reporter who wrote the original burn story outside Holman Stadium in Vero Beach, Florida, the day after the story first broke. It was probably the maddest I have ever been and I took it out on him. I really aired him out. (For the record, he did apologize, but obviously that did little to alter the course of this story.) It wasn’t my proudest moment, but that’s how I handled that situation.
When it came to dealing with reporters and inaccurate stories, my natural inclination was to confront them, with the exception of this one time. I tried to do it in a respectful manner. It just went against every fiber in my body to know something was being said or written about me that was not true and to just ignore it. All I could think about was how hard I had worked to get to where I was, while on the other hand these reporters could spend a few minutes writing an untrue story—many times without even asking me about it directly—and seemingly undo it all. It was galling.
Thankfully, over time I did learn to temper my frustration and develop better methods of media engagement.
I remember one time I was riding home from the ballpark with Greg Olson, our catcher at the time, and we had the radio tuned in to one of the sports talk shows in Atlanta. The host was talking about the Braves’ season thus far and discussing why we were struggling that particular year to gain the lead in our division. Now, I’m fine with the armchair quarterbacking and “what if?” scenarios and all. That’s just part of it—everybody thinks they can manage a baseball team better than the guys who are actually getting paid to do it. Sometimes players think so, too, believe me. Anyway, Greg and I were just sitting there listening to the fans’ perspectives when all of a sudden, I guess to add some credibility to his comments, the host started talking as if he hung out in our clubhouse all the time and talked to players on a daily basis. Now, some reporters do this, but the problem was, this guy wasn’t one of those guys. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d never seem him in the clubhouse before. So the longer we drove and the longer we listened, the more I got riled up.
Well, of course the next thing you know, somebody calls in and says something like “You know, John Smoltz is just not the same this year. Something’s not right; it seems like he cares more about golf than pitching.”
My mind immediately clicked into “Oh, here we go” mode. It was like I was bracing for impact, just waiting to hear what the host was going to say next. And I’ll never forget this; he goes, “Yeah, you know, you’re right. I’ve seen him in the clubhouse and noticed the same thing. It’s like he doesn’t seem engaged.”
I looked over at Oly and I’m like, “Can you believe this?!” I could hardly contain myself as the conversation continued between the caller and the host, with the gist being that I wasn’t the same pitcher this year and there was more to it than just not pitching well. Finally I just told Oly, “I’m calling him; I’m not going to let this guy get away with this. He’s never been in our clubhouse, how can he make that comment?”
I started rifling through my bag for my cell phone, my mind buzzing with what I was going to say. Oly just shook his head and laughed at me. “You’ll never get in!”
I just looked at him and said, “Trust me, when they hear who it is, I’ll be the first one on.”
So I called in, and sure enough, I went on the air with the guy. Now, thankfully I had the chance to calm down a bit before I actually went on and think about what I was going to say. Obviously an athlete calling in to a radio show all fired up is about as safe as swimming in shark-infested waters with an open wound. At the end of the day, you’re lucky to survive without being eaten alive.
So I get on and say, “Hey this is John Smoltz. You know, hey, the fans are entitled to their opinions and I know a lot of them don’t think we are going to be able to come back from this nine-and-a-half, ten-game lead of the Giants, but I’m telling you, we are going to catch them. We believe we are, and we are going to catch them. And while I’m on, I know you mentioned about my golf and this and that. I just wanted to tell you I’ve got a putting green in my backyard and anytime you want to come over and work on your putting stroke, you’re more than welcome.” And then I just added nonchalantly, “And as far as baseball goes, why is it that we’ve never seen you in our clubhouse?”
He said something like “Oh, I gotta get up early, you know, and …”—basically just fumbling around on air for an answer. As you might imagine, I didn’t have to say much after that. Just to call him on the two or three things he had suggested he knew, I was able to—without getting nasty—just say, “Hey, when are we going to see you around the clubhouse?”
And then, literally the next day, he showed up. And we have been fine ever since.
Thankfully, that was one of the few times I chanced swimming with the sharks. As the years went by, I eventually learned that you just had to tune a lot of it out. People are going to write what they are going to write and say what they are going to say—whether it is accurate, slanted, biased, or j
ust categorically false—and there’s really not much you can do about it. For me, I finally came to a point where I was able to separate my own feelings of self-worth from whatever the papers were saying. I’d like to say life got a lot easier for me at this point, and I guess in some ways it did, but I don’t think you are ever immune to letting it all get to you on occasion. I think the best you can hope for is a feeling somewhere between numb and disinterested.
Despite living with this reality that anything you say or do (or in some cases don’t say or do) can and will be used against you in the court of public perception, I really tried to make an effort to put my best foot forward when it came to dealing with reporters. I was definitely cautious and wary at times, but I tried to avoid being guarded, and none of these experiences ever stopped me from making time for interviews. Regardless of whether I had just thrown a complete-game shutout or had just given up eight runs in two-thirds of an inning, I would face the questions. If I stank, I owned it. I didn’t speak in clichés, I didn’t give pat answers, and I always had something to say. I understood the role the media played and I grew accustomed to taking some shots and dealing with the aftertaste of an unfortunate story from time to time. It’s just part of being in the spotlight of pro ball.
As I look back on my career today, I really wouldn’t change my approach. I think it was best to be myself and take my lumps along the way, rather than just avoiding reporters and never engaging them. And really there’s a serendipitous side to all of this, as I think my natural tendency to be open and forthright is really one of the reasons I was given the chance to get into broadcasting today.
I truly enjoy broadcasting and the opportunity it affords me to stay connected to the game I love. And I also know that dealing with all the not-so-pleasant criticism I faced throughout my own career helps make me a better broadcaster today. Because, believe me, I still remember what it was like to be picked apart by the guys sitting up in the booth.