Starting and Closing Read online

  That game defined what I always believed. Even if we’d had a pitcher on our staff who was 20–0 in the regular season and I was 14–6 or something, I would have gone to my manager and said, “Give me the ball.” It’s just an inner desire, not a cockiness. I want to be the guy. And if I fail, then I’ll learn from it.

  In real life, I fared pretty well with my postseason record, but it was no comparison to my career brick-wall win-loss record, which stands at 99–1. I threw that one loss in there just to keep it real… I mean who goes undefeated their whole life? That’s just not probable.

  My ability to dream and follow through with hard work was only one part of my childhood that helped me big-time in the big leagues. There were many other things that growing up in Michigan with my family taught me, but the one that played out time and time again was pretty simple: never forgetting to have fun and never forgetting the sheer joy that can come from mixing it up with your teammates. And more often than not, this works to bring everyone together. It certainly did for my friends and family and it’s something I still value to this day. I guess looking back, I really should be grateful for Michigan winters.

  I love to compete, I love a good challenge, and I love to have fun, and that’s pretty much all I did as a kid. And I’m telling you, I had a blast. If it was warm enough to be outside and I wasn’t playing baseball, I was probably playing basketball or football. I would organize teams and rules to make things interesting and I was usually angling for a way to set up my side as underdog. I just have always wanted to beat other people at their best and I would actually go out of my way to help my opponents and make them better, even if it could end up costing me when I was competing against them. Winning is never sweeter than when no one expects you to win.

  The thing about growing up in Michigan, though, was there were only certain months of the year that the weather allowed for hours upon hours of outdoor fun. There was always winter to contend with.

  When winter came and forced our activities inside, it forced us to be creative. Sure we watched some TV and played some video games (for the record, Baseball Stars is the best Nintendo game ever made to this day), but mostly we would play games that didn’t involve electronics. I think all of those winters we spent in the basement contributed to the uncanny ability I have to think up games; they sort of made me into this MacGyver of impromptu ways to kill time and have some fun.

  One of the all-time-favorite basement games that I came up with was Ping-Pong baseball. This game involved a plastic oar (the type you’d use for a little canoe) for a bat, a Ping-Pong ball, and our Ping-Pong table. We didn’t have that much room in the basement, maybe twenty or thirty feet, so the hitter would stand on one side of the room near the stairs, where we had a strike zone taped up to the wall, and the pitcher would stand behind the table. You could pitch it straight to the hitter, or you could skip it off the table first. If you didn’t hit the ball in the air, you were out. If you did get a hold of one, wherever it impacted the wall determined the outcome. So, for example, if you drove one into the curtains over the windows: home run. If you cleared the curtains and tagged the space between the windows and the ceiling: grand-slam home run.

  Over the years I perfected this nasty pitch that my opponents would only let me throw once per at-bat. I’d put the ball between my fingers and flick it in a way where it would go straight up and straight down, like a big, huge curveball. I’m telling you I had the meanest Ping-Pong breaking ball of all time.

  We took our games pretty seriously—my best friend, Chuck Cascarilla, and I would keep a log for all our stats for Ping-Pong all year—but we kept it fair and we kept it fun. There was always schmack-talk and perhaps some disputes over calls—like my brother, Mike, swears to this day that he beat me at Ping-Pong baseball one time with a walk off grand slam, but it was a triple, I assure you. For as competitive as we were, we were good sports about it.

  Much to my parents’ chagrin, all of their children ended up playing sports. I played baseball and basketball. Mike played football and Bernadette played softball and basketball. But sports and playing games and competing fairly helped us all grow and have fun together. And it has been a common thread throughout our lives.

  For example, I endured years of good-natured garbage dished up by my little sister, Bernadette, while she was playing softball for Michigan State. She loved nothing more than to call me after a game and say, “Hey Smoltzy, I went two-for-three with a home run today. What did you do?” I finally got a reprieve on May 3, 1989, when I hit my first career home run.

  I never lost the feeling of being a kid. I never lost the youthful desire of playing games and getting after it even today, and I have found light in some of the darkest moments of my life and baseball career by never forgetting to have fun. And in 2008, it was no different. Take it from me, rehab is a grind. It’s getting up every day and pushing yourself, willing yourself to move that one degree farther than you could the day before. I’m not sure if I would have been able to embrace the process with as much patience if I hadn’t been finding ways to make it a game or make it fun for myself. That’s just who I am. In a lot of ways, I’m a big goofy kid trapped in this aging, adult body.

  I wasn’t born to play baseball, I wasn’t made to play baseball, but Dr. Andrews had given this seemingly ordinary kid from Michigan the chance to keep doing the thing he loved most for just a little while longer.

  Chapter Four

  ONCE A TIGER

  Shoulder surgery was really always an inevitable reality in my career, but one that I willfully fought, delayed, and postponed until the bitter end. I didn’t know it coming into the year, but 2008 would prove to be that bitter end.

  In 2008, I was coming off a great year, and I actually went into spring training fairly healthy. But then one day in camp, my left foot slipped just slightly as I threw a pitch in the bullpen and it was just enough to overextend my arm as it came over the top and tweak my shoulder. It turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  Here’s the thing, though, I’m not the kind of guy who just stops when the camel buckles under the weight of that last straw. I must explore all options, every last resort, before I call it. In this case, it took me five more starts and one forgettable appearance as a closer to convince me that the camel, or rather my shoulder, was officially done.

  April 2008 turned out to be my own version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. My shoulder had gotten to the point where I couldn’t bear to throw between starts and it would take a much longer time than normal in the bullpen before games just to get it moving and warmed up. Once I got it moving, there were two things that helped sustain my effort: the natural rush I would experience while pitching a major league game—and Novocain.

  In the early innings, my shoulder was not an issue, as far as being able to do what I needed to do on the mound. But by the time I got to the fifth or sixth inning, it would start feeling heavy. The painkiller would be wearing off and my shoulder would get harder and harder to manipulate. On only one occasion in the month of April did I pitch into the seventh inning—that was on April 22, and adrenaline had a little something to do with it.

  Coming into 2008, the public relations guys were tracking my strikeouts like a countdown to the New Year. Every game I pitched inched me closer to the three-thousand-strikeout plateau. It was a big deal, in part because if I could make it, I would be the first pitcher in franchise history to do it. To tell the truth, though, I was far more concerned with my shoulder at the time than my statistic for career strikeouts. I was so frustrated with how it felt that I spent practically no time thinking about the pending milestone. And I really didn’t stop to think about it, or even grasp the magnitude of it, until I found myself in the moment.

  We were at home against the Washington Nationals that day and I remember from the very start of the game, whenever I got two strikes on a hitter, the crowd went nuts. Everybody was anticipating a strikeout, and in that first inning, I caught myself trying
a little too hard to deliver. I didn’t actually strike anyone out until the top of the second, but once I got that first one, it really helped me relax. The crowd was still into it, but in my mind I had broken free of the pressure of the moment and got into a groove. The magic number soon stood at one.

  When Felípe López came up as the second batter in the top of the third and I worked the count to 2–2, Turner Field was on fire. I just tried to ignore the noise and the anticipation and make my pitch. Felípe was batting left-handed, and if you threw a slider or a curveball down and in, you could sometimes get him to swing over the top of it. From the moment I released the ball, I knew I had executed my pitch—I could see it start to tail in toward him. When he swung through it and the ball landed in Brian McCann’s glove, the emotion I felt was more relief than elation. Okay, good. That part is over, I thought. Now I can focus on getting the win.

  But everybody was standing up and going nuts. I mean it was really something, for a regular-season game in April. That’s when it really started to hit me that it was such a big deal. I had been so focused on the condition of my shoulder that when the moment finally came I really didn’t know what to do. I remember hugging Brian and shaking some guys’ hands, and that’s about it. And of course I remember the crowd. But stuff like this, numbers and statistics and records, it truly wasn’t anything I ever paid attention to.

  Now, I’d be lying if I told you I don’t remember my first strikeout, against Darryl Strawberry, but I couldn’t tell you anything about my one-thousandth strikeout unless I looked it up. I don’t remember my two-thousandth strikeout either, but I do remember that particular game because I hit a three-run homer off Dave Eiland that night. I do remember my two-hundredth win, because I was pitching against Tom Glavine and the New York Mets. But that’s just the way I am; I didn’t ever get too caught up in my own stats.

  As I stood there on the mound, what I really wanted was everybody to just sit down so I could get back to pitching. If there was one thought going through my head or one prayer going through my mind, it was something like Please Lord, don’t let my shoulder fall off right now.

  Maybe if I had been healthier, I would have been able to enjoy it more. It’s just hard to describe the way the year was going. It was filled with these moments of Wow, I’m pitching well early on, but I don’t know if I can continue. I was throwing some of my best stuff, but only when my shoulder was, let’s just say, Novacained up. When the painkiller wore down, it was torturous, wanting to keep pitching so badly, knowing that I had a lot left in the tank, but also knowing realistically that the end was near for that year.

  After the adrenaline wore off on April 22, I was like, wow. It literally felt like I had been run over by a truck. I attempted to make one more start against the Mets, which was ironic because I started my career pitching against the Mets at Shea Stadium, and here I was, quite possibly ending my career as a Braves starter there twenty years later. There’s a lot of history between me and the Mets, but there wasn’t much to remember about that day. I limped through four innings then just sort of knew I was finally done.

  I went on the DL shortly after and spent the next month or so weighing my options and seeing how my shoulder responded to a little rest. I remember being down-and-out for a little while mentally, just trying to deal with the decision I knew I had to make. I attempted to make one last-ditch comeback in the bullpen, but all that amounted to was notching one last miserable inning in 2008, on June 2 against the Florida Marlins, in which I gave up not only the tying run, but the go-ahead run. Those runs proved to be the final nails in my coffin.

  During the month of May, in between my last start against the Mets and my first blown save in three years against the Marlins, I was weighing all the pros and cons of my situation. I talked with everyone I could about what was best for me: my manager, my pitching coach, my doctors, my trainers, you name it. I was truly interested in hearing all sides and perspectives. I have made it a habit in life to surround myself with people who don’t just tell me what they think I want to hear. I could always count on the people who were in my corner to tell me the truth, whether I had realized it yet myself or not.

  Many people told me things that helped push me in the right direction, but it was the Braves team chaplain at the time, Tim Cash, whose words really hit home. “John, who are you kidding?” he said bluntly.

  After listening to what all the experts had to say and trying to remove all my emotions from the decision, I ultimately made a solid decision based on prayer. I knew in my heart that I had gone as far as I could go and I decided I didn’t want to limp my way through an entire season like I was. It would have been a grind and it would have had a horrible ending, so I decided to have surgery.

  I think a lot of people at this point really thought this was the end for me. Fans, the media, maybe even the Braves. But in my mind, the situation could not have been more different. My decision to have surgery was an acknowledgment that I still wasn’t done pitching. I wasn’t ready to retire. Everything about surgery, down to the push to get it done as soon as physically possible—which turned out to be eight days after my last appearance—was planned with one single thought in my mind: how to set myself up in the best position to be able to rehab and play the following year.

  I truly believed I could come back and pitch, but there were doubts in my mind that involved the Braves and how they fit into this picture. I wanted so badly to have the opportunity to finish my career in Atlanta, but at the same time I fully realized that this was one part of the equation I couldn’t completely control. Where I would be in 2009 I didn’t know, but if there was one thing I did put my trust in, it was that the Lord had a plan for me. It might not work out the way I wanted—my will and God’s will might not be aligned in this case—but I was willing to walk the path and see what happened. And I knew if I followed my heart and I trusted in the Lord, He would not lead me astray.

  I knew this because I had been down this path before. All I had to do was remind myself of 1987, when I had been devastated to find out I was headed to Atlanta. I learned way back then to trust that everything happens for a reason, even if we ourselves are not always capable of realizing it or appreciating it at the time.

  We’ve already covered that it was my dream to play professional baseball. The ultimate dream come true, the version that came with nuts, whipped cream, and a cherry on top, was to play professional baseball for the Detroit Tigers.

  Growing up in Michigan, I naturally gravitated to the Tigers for obvious reasons. It was the hometown team and we could listen to broadcasts of their games on the radio, but there was also a unique family tie that really sealed it for me. I had the amazing opportunity to grow up with a grandfather who worked for the Tigers.

  My late grandfather, John Frank Smoltz, my dad’s father, worked for the Tigers in various roles over the course of nearly thirty years. He’d been an usher, he’d worked on the grounds crew, and he’d even worked the press room, checking media credentials and so forth. Practically my favorite thing to do in life was to just hang out with him at the stadium and walk in his shadow while he worked. To be able to get that little sneak peak, that little taste or vision of what my life could be like, was unbelievable. To be on the field, at times practically within reach of all these players who I absolutely idolized, like Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Jack Morris, Kirk Gibson, and Lance Parrish, was really something. I never called attention to myself or bothered players for autographs. I just stayed in the background, watching, listening, and observing everything that was going on around me.

  We lived almost two hours away from Tiger Stadium, but it never really felt that far, and I seized practically every opportunity that arose to go there and just hang out with my grandfather. Thankfully my parents have always been up for road trips.

  The other obvious benefit to having a grandfather who worked for the Tigers was tickets. I definitely had the extraordinary opportunity to watch a lot of games and from some really great
seats. And this was never truer than during the 1984 World Series.

  I was a junior in high school when the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series that year. It was incredible; the entire state was infected with Tigermania and it was the one time in my life that my parents allowed baseball to take slightly more precedence than school; at least temporarily. Maybe if the Tigers made it all the time it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but the Tigers in the World Series, even these days, is only likely to happen once every twenty-or-so odd years. So I skipped everything at school that week—including homecoming—to go to the home games with my brother and my dad. I was only seventeen years old at the time, but it was an experience I will never forget.

  The most memorable moments came from Game Five. We were sitting about twenty-one rows up, thanks to Grandpa, of course, and in the bottom of the eighth we were so close to the field that I could literally read the lips of Rich “Goose” Gossage, the pitcher for the San Diego Padres, when his manager, Dick Williams, came out to the mound to talk about what to do about Kirk Gibson. Gibson, due up next, was coming up to bat with runners on second and third and one out, and he had already homered earlier in the game. With the Padres down 4–5 to the Tigers, Williams, I suspected, was probably coming out to discuss intentionally walking Gibson.

  “I want to pitch to him,” I watched Goose tell his manager.

  As the story goes, Goose did pitch to him. Gibson took the first pitch for a ball, but he sent the second pitch over the right-field wall for a three-run home run! The Tigers went on to win not only the game but the Series that night. It was so unbelievable to have been there and seen it all unfold before my very eyes. I have had the chance since to make a few baseball memories of my own, but I will never forget the pure, sweet sound of Kirk Gibson’s bat making contact in the bottom of the eighth as long as I live.