I get the arm question a lot, and I totally know why. There are a slew of friends and family, not to mention readers and tweeters, who’ve been pulling for me to get well. Believe me, I’m thankful for every one of them. But, I’m getting tired of answering the same question, so, lets call this my official arm query answer page and take a moment to review what it’s like to get chopped open in the prime of your career.
Today, when asked the status of my arm, my reply is, “feels good, like I’m back to the Dirk of the good old days when I could throw till the cows come home.” But, there were times not so many months ago when I could only say I felt good and hope my words would hold water next catch session. A few months before that I wanted to avoid the question altogether. Turn the clock back full year and I was on the phone to the trainer freaking out because I had no idea what was wrong with the pain filled appendage responsible for my livley hood. Thus began the days the cows came home. They put their muddy feet on my furniture, broke out cards to play poker, and looked over at me, sitting in the corner with a bag of ice on my shoulder, and casually asked, “so, kid, what are ya gonna do if your career is over?”
The thing about getting injured as a player is how your entire identity implodes. It’s like each pang of pain is a sledge hammer slamming into the foundation you’ve built for yourself and your future. Sure, we know it’s a possibility, that we could get injured and that, statistically speaking, we WILL get injured, but we refuse to accept it. Like a car crash or a sickness or anything else we think we’re not going to be a part of in our life, it broadsides us and makes us ask hard questions like, “what if my life is never the same?”
It’s not the pain that makes an injury difficult. You expect things to hurt and you suck it up. There are injections and pills and creams for such pain. It’s the mental gymnastics. The mapping out of plans for your dissolving future. The thud of falling dominos as you realize your pay check will change, the insurance will go, the house payment is tighter, the utilities, the shopping habits, and the food choices- so many things you never think of. You tell yourself that it’s okay, that you’ll over come. You remember that none of it is set in stone. You could still bounce back and look upon this time of uncertainty as a bump in the road to an amazing career. Then you remember that baseball careers are the poster children of uncertainty and all you can really do is wait and see how the arm feels tomorrow, hoping that no healthy young contender strikes out your memory in the minds of the brass in the meantime.
I got depressed from it all. I hated my arm. I hated that such a small surgery on paper made such a big ripple in my existence. It’s not that I didn’t believe in myself or that I could recover. I just didn’t believe that way all the time. I felt like a boat on this raging sea of good days and bad days. I was alone and afraid. The dream I’d worked so hard to reach might end before it really got started.
I had to put a support mechanism in place to keep my spirits aloft. Most of my rehab time was spent in a hotel someplace away from my wife and family. I burned up cell minutes, but it never satisfied. I would get my arm cranked on, try to content myself with small gains, push through the set backs, then go to a sterile hotel room and work on book pages that never spoke back to me. I spent hours in silence, typing away about teammates who were playing and laughing about farts and exploits and all the stuff that makes you feel like you never have to grow up.
Well, I was growing up. It may be more apt to say I was being stretched up, wrenched toward the sky by cold hands holding onto my right arm. Yet, there, high above it all and dangling, I saw baseball from the outside— the way a gambler must see his life in those fleeting moments before the dice finally settle. Baseball… an institution that appears in a man’s life like dew on the morning grass and then disappears. There would be life beyond this, wether I liked it or not. Wether I recovered or not.
I know there is more to me than baseball and I thank God for that. There have been times when people have asked me if I will take the game seriously since I’ve done so much stuff outside the game. My answer is no. I wont take it as seriously. I can’t. Oh reader, believe me, I take my craft seriously and when I’m on the mound I’m as serious as a heart attack. I am a competitor. I exert myself in the gym in a way that would make The Great Roy Halladay proud. But, when I’m off the field, I put baseball in it’s place. Two times in my life have I let it topple me, like some fish thrown from it’s bowl to thrash on the floor gasping, only to realize I can breath with out water. I will not let it happen again. I enjoy this game but I am not a slave to it. There is no correlation to being successful in a system and being dependent on it. I know this because when the dice settle, they do not ask you how you feel about their outcome.
My arm feels great. Moreover, I feel great. I’ve had a lot of success in other areas and I will not apologize for them, but rest assured they have not tempered my zest to be great at the game I’ve come of age in. If anything, they’ve made me better. I am a baseball player, among other things, and at all things I strive to do my best. So, if anyone asking, I’m ready to compete.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h9N6ZqU9Ss[/youtube]