Wherever I Wind Up by R. A. Dickey

Author:R. A. Dickey [Dickey, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101561140
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2012-03-29T07:00:00+00:00

SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011

MINUTE MAID PARK, HOUSTON

Thank you, Aaron Harang, wherever you are. I don’t mean this flippantly, or obnoxiously. I mean it sincerely. I’ve never met Aaron Harang, a pitcher for the Padres, but he gives me a lift today and doesn’t even know it. Whenever I have a rough outing—and I had a brutal one here today—I have a strange custom: I go on my laptop and surf baseball websites until I find somebody who had an even worse day than me. It’s not that I delight in other people’s misfortune; it’s just that misery does like company, and after my eighth start of the year I am definitely looking for somebody to point to and say, “Hey, this guy’s a respectable pitcher and he got lit up too.” Harang gave up nine hits and seven runs in four and a third innings against the Rockies. Today he supplies the comfort.

I feel less miserable for knowing this.

Against the last-place Astros, I give up six hits in the first inning, get myself into a four-run hole, and wind up seeing my record fall to 1–5 and my ERA climb to 5.08. Man, is that a stink bomb of an ERA. A complete embarrassment. I settle down after the first and use a lot of fastballs and changeups for a few innings to get back into the game, but then in the sixth I get taken out of the park by Bill Hall and a pinch hitter named Matt Downs on an 0–2 pitch. My final line is 6 innings, 11 hits, 6 runs. My worst start of the year, by far.

If there is good news, it’s what I feel now, in my hotel room. Though I feel lonely and almost grief-stricken about the start, I can tell the feelings don’t consume me the way they once did. That is a big switch for me. It used to be that after a bad outing I’d take it out on everybody: I’d be a bad father and a bad husband and not a very good teammate, either. Now, thanks to the grace of God, I am able to keep my gaze fixed on things above. I do not get all worked up over critical media reports or bad statistics or lost games the way I once did. I passionately want to turn this season around and do well, but I truly believe that if this year doesn’t go as I’d hoped, it only means that God has something even better in store for me. What a peace of mind that knowledge gives me. I don’t know how Aaron Harang is holding up after his debacle, but after mine I am doing okay. I really am. I am already thinking about how I can’t wait for my next start. I remain unshaken in my conviction that I am better than this—much better.

I know some people in the organization who are getting mighty nervous—and maybe even panicking—thinking I am reverting back to the pitcher I was before I came to the Mets.

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