The ego must get out of the body’s way.
—Harvey Dorfman
On the day before his first ever World Series start, Jamie Moyer awoke in his penthouse apartment on Philly’s posh Washington Square and made his usual trek up Walnut Street to Starbucks. On the street, despite what was being said on the radio call-in shows about his 0–2 record and 13.50 ERA thus far in the postseason, there was nothing but good vibes being sent his way. “We love you, Jamie!” yelled a college-aged girl walking a yellow Lab. “Don’t take no crap, Moyer!” the driver of a plumber’s van spat out his window, thumbs-up, the audio of one of those radio stations blaring through the window.
On those shows, fans fearful that yet another inevitable Phillies collapse was on deck were already preemptively lining up their scapegoats. “Moyer’s great, but he’s done,” one caller lamented. Another wasn’t so diplomatic. “Put a fork in him!” he wailed.
The irony behind all the panic was that, though young Cole Hamels was commonly thought of as the Phils’ ace—given the combination of his fastball in the mid-90s with a world-class changeup—Moyer had been the team’s most consistent starter all year. He compiled a team-high 16 wins (against only seven losses) and a 3.71 ERA. Not only that, he’d been the Phillies’ ace down the stretch, going 9–1 the last three months of the season with a 3.28 ERA, and winning the pennant-clinching game against the Nationals.
But the playoffs thus far hadn’t gone nearly as well. In the first round, against wild card Milwaukee, Moyer ran into his kryptonite, something that seems to derail him a couple of times each year and send his ERA skyward: a shrunken strike zone. In those instances, when his precision on the corners goes unrewarded, Moyer finds himself consistently behind in counts, and ultimately has no choice but to throw fastballs over the meat of the plate. Against Milwaukee, home plate umpire Brian Runge consistently squeezed him, seeming to call every close pitch a ball.
Moyer keeps mental notes on the umpires in the same way that he logs his experiences with hitters (though he doesn’t like to know who the ump will be until he gets on the mound, lest that information detract from his focus). He knew he had always done well with Runge behind the plate.
Always looking for an edge, Moyer would ride the umps in a good-natured way—it was his way of being friendly and, ever cognizant of the mental game, of taking up space in their heads. Runge would give as good as he got. They’d jokingly tell each other to “F off” before games; sometimes, Runge would write “F” and “U” on two baseballs and have the bat boy deliver them to Moyer in the dugout prior to a game. On this night, though, Runge wasn’t giving his partner-in-joking any calls—and when Moyer peered at him, as if to say, What the hell? the ump removed his mask and made a subtle shoulder-shrugging motion. Moyer took the gesture to mean that things were out of Runge’s control, that he’d been told to tighten the strike zone. Moyer wasn’t surprised. Through the years, he’d had umps essentially apologize to him, explaining that they’d been warned or put on probation by the league and were under orders not to expand the plate. Consistently pitching behind in the count, Moyer lasted four innings and took the loss. Then, in the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers teed off on Moyer, chasing him in the second inning.
After that game, a reporter asked manager Charlie Manuel if Moyer was going to get another start. “I think he deserves it,” Manuel had said.
Walking back from Starbucks, Moyer’s thoughts turned to his only other World Series experience: as a fan, in 1980. His idolization of Carlton culminated in that triumphant 1980 season, which followed so many heartbreaks, so many times the Phillies had come tantalizingly close to winning it all, only to fail.
The day after Tug McGraw struck out Willie Wilson to bring the hometown team its first ever Series win, Moyer and two buddies ditched school for the big city, taking a subway for the first time and joining the throng of crazed fans celebrating the big win at JFK Stadium, where the day’s parade would culminate in a series of speeches.
When the team started making its way into the stadium on a procession of flatbed trucks, the loudspeaker blared the Philly Sound song “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” by McFadden and Whitehead, and Moyer was overcome by the emotional outpouring all around him.
Not only had Philly never won before, it had also suffered one of the worst collapses in pro sports history when in 1964 the Phils were up six and one-half games with 12 to play—only to blow the pennant. It was a crushing civic scar, as if the baseball gods had confirmed for a city that lived in New York’s shadow that, indeed, it would never be quite good enough.
But now here were McFadden and Whitehead blaring and grown men crying and strangers hugging, hundreds of thousands lining the city streets and packed together in an ancient stadium, united in a common cause. Down on the field, Moyer saw Carlton, famous for his long-standing refusal to speak to the press, smiling and waving to the ecstatic crowd.
Amid all the emotion, Moyer felt the pull of his own World Series dream. I want this someday, he thought. And here he was, twenty-eight years later. He’d be facing the upstart Tampa Bay Rays, winners of 97 regular-season games, led by slugger Evan Longoria (or Eva, as the Phillies fans would derisively chant) and speedy centerfielder B. J. Upton. The teams had split the first two games in Tampa; game three just might determine the momentum, and ultimately the outcome, of the Series.
A few hours later, it dawned on Moyer that although the dream was becoming reality, it wasn’t exactly as he’d fantasized.
Because he’d never imagined the diarrhea.
The Moyers are nothing if not clan-oriented; Karen’s favorite phrase is “the Moyer, the Merrier.” So on the eve of Jamie’s World Series debut a full eighteen of them dined at the Saloon in South Philly, a dark, wood-paneled Old World Italian restaurant. Talk about baseball karma: the Saloon used to be Steve Carlton’s favorite haunt. While the adults drank red wine and dined on tender osso buco, Moyer, his stomach rumbling ominously, nibbled on some bland pasta. “I’ve got to get home,” he told Karen, before leaving the group and walking back to their condo.
Those in attendance suspected he may have been nervous, given that tomorrow would be the realization of a lifelong dream. The pressure was indeed on, but Moyer knew his newfound stomach woes had nothing to do with that. By the time he got undressed and was about to get into bed, the diarrhea started. Then the chills and fever came.
By morning, he’d sweated through his sweats. When he wasn’t struggling to get to the bathroom, he lay motionless and weak-limbed. Karen forced him to take a few spoonfuls of soup and a bite of a peanut butter and banana sandwich.
“You better call Charlie and tell him you can’t pitch,” Karen said at around 11 a.m., referring to manager Charlie Manuel, thinking that the manager might switch him and Blanton in the rotation.
Moyer was stunned. He’d always referred to baseball as his job—and he’d never called in sick. Karen didn’t know it, but her expression of doubt was precisely what he needed to hear. After all, when Moyer hears someone say he can’t do something, it’s like he’s been given a gift: now there was a goal, and it was to prove his wife wrong. “That ain’t happening,” he said. “This is the biggest game of my life.” Ever since he first hooked up with Harvey, he’d been practicing problem solving; now here was the mother of all problems. He decided to shower and get back in bed for a couple more hours of sleep. And then he was going to work, where he’d, in his words, “gut it out.”
After his nap, Karen tried once more, telling her husband that he might be dehydrated and needed to go to the hospital. He burst out the door without a word, though, and was off into an overcast day with a forecast of rain. It was close to two o’clock, which, even though the game wasn’t scheduled to begin until 8:30 p.m., meant he was late. Not by any standard other than his own; the Phillies didn’t prescribe a certain time of arrival. No, Moyer had his own timetable for his elaborate set of pregame rituals.
On his way to the ballpark, he mapped out his gutting-through strategy. It was to focus on the minute-by-minute detail of his routine. He remembered Harvey telling him that so many—fans, media, even coaches—erroneously view an athlete’s game-day routine as merely the manifestation of superstition. In the same way that athletes repeat physical acts so as to burn motion into their muscle memory—each ground ball scooped or high heater bunted a subtle signal to the body to get used to performing the function by rote—Harvey taught him that the same principle applied to the athletic psyche. You had to practice focus and being in the present tense so that on game day, you just are.
Everything Moyer does on game day is timed and planned to achieve laserlike focus by the time the umpire yells “Play ball.” Now here he was, confronting a potential mammoth distraction: a stomach in revolt, a fever, the cold sweats. What to do? Nothing but what he’d done since that Old-Timers’ Game experience at Camden Yards in 1993, when the presence of Tom Selleck distracted him from his job. (Really? Tom Freakin’ Selleck? he’ll say now, years later, tragedy plus time amounting to comedy.) When Moyer steps out of his routine, as he did on that day in Baltimore, he feels like something is missing, like he’s playing without his glove or without a shoe. He feels incomplete, and it takes him away from the task at hand. When that happens, he consciously returns to his routine, in the same way a Zen Buddhist blots all else out by returning to his own breathing, hoping that all the years of working on his concentration and focus will kick in, like muscle memory.
After scoring some Imodium from the team trainer, Moyer changed into shorts and made his way to the team’s hydro room, which is filled with whirlpools and a hot tub. Moyer jogged on the underwater treadmill to get his muscles loose.
Every pitching coach and team doctor will tell you the same thing: for someone who has thrown as many pitches and logged as many innings as Moyer, his ability to recover in time to make his next start is astounding. Many mornings after a start, he says, his left shoulder feels as raw as a piece of meat hanging in a butcher shop. The layperson might take that as a sign to be still, to rest, to heal. Moyer learned early on that the best response to bone-crushing soreness is to get the blood flowing through the stiff spots. He devised a different running program for each day between starts (long-distance the morning after; foul-pole-to-foul-pole sprints on day two), and combined that with lightweight arm exercises to promote healing.
After fracturing his kneecap in Seattle, however, the running led to chronic knee soreness. So he looked for other cardio outlets; with Karen, he became a devotee of spinning. But then he met the HydroWorx 2000 and he was smitten. There was no pounding on his back, hips, knees, or ankle joints. Exiting the tub the morning after the most hellacious of starts, he’d feel the soothing, calming sensation of his body recovering.
Now, emerging from the water, the farthest thing from his mind was his growling stomach. Next came a visit to the weight room, which is always fun for a starting pitcher on game day, because that’s where he gets treated like a kid on his birthday; it’s considered his day, so he gets to select the radio station. Moyer’s teammate, big ol’ boy Joe Blanton, likes to blare honky-tonk music. Moyer, the game’s last baby boomer, opts for classic rock—usually prompting his hip-hop shortstop Jimmy Rollins to mutter something under his breath along the lines of, “Led who?”
While younger teammates no doubt cringed to “Stairway to Heaven,” Moyer punched at the air, using three-pound dumbbells, working and stretching the serratus and rotator cuff muscles. A good twenty-minute stretch followed.
As he worked out, teammates would come in, chat, wish him well. Moyer is happy to be spoken to on the day of his start, unlike Roy Halladay and Randy Johnson, two of his most successful teammates over the years. “I want to be part of the group, I don’t want to be excluded,” Moyer explains. “But Roy and Randy do things a little differently, and it works for them. You create who you want to be, and your teammates respect who you are.”
Next, at 5 p.m., Moyer changed into his Lycra pitching shorts and “sleeves,” the undershirt of his uniform. Because he’s beginning to don the clothes he will wear on the mound, the adrenaline starts to pump—just a little. Meantime, he gathered his mental cards from his shaving kit—the concentration grid, the Dorfman-inspired problem-solving tips—and made his way to the same back storage closet as so many times before. Behind its closed door, he studied his cards, literally concentrating on his concentration, making sure to breathe deeply. Earlier, in the HydroWorx 2000 or the weight room, he was getting comfortable, clearing his mind and stretching his limbs. Now it was getting real. By the time he was saying the numbers on his concentration grid aloud (without pointing to them), he was beginning the process of narrowing his focus to the point that when on the mound he won’t actually hear 46,000 screaming fans.
By 6:30, Moyer was hearing rumblings in the clubhouse that there would be a delay due to weather. He ignored the chatter, again concentrating on what he could control. So he sat at his locker and reviewed his many notes hand-scrawled throughout the years on every batter in the opposing lineup. Before the Series, the Phils’ scouts had distributed their scouting report on the opposition. Moyer read the report, as did catcher Carlos Ruiz. But Moyer always trusted his own notes, and his own experiences, more. So, stack of old lineup cards on his lap, he went back in time, discovering the sequence and location of pitches that had worked for him in the past against the guys he’d need to get out tonight. Then he sought out Ruiz, and the two huddled over the lineup card and compared notes on every hitter.
When Moyer came to Philadelphia from Seattle in August of 2006, Carlos Ruiz was recalled from the minor leagues just two weeks later. They’d been teammates and batterymates ever since. Ruiz arrived in the major leagues speaking broken English and lacking confidence, and has since matured into a .300 hitter and one of the best catchers in the game. Moyer played no small role in the catcher’s development, sharing insights and anecdotes with the impressionable Latino in hotel lobbies, dugouts, and luncheonettes for years. Early on in their relationship, he talked to Ruiz about taking charge behind the plate, sharing with him an interaction he’d had with one of his first catchers, Jim Sundberg.
One afternoon in 1986, long before he’d found his zonelike comfort level in his pregame rituals, rookie Jamie Moyer was nervous as hell. He’d be facing Houston’s Nolan Ryan on NBC’s Game of the Week in a matter of hours. In the trainer’s room, Moyer was on the table while a trainer stretched his arm every which way. Sundberg, a veteran, ambled in and, without a word, placed his hand firmly on the young pitcher’s chest. “Hey, kid,” he said. “You just pitch today. I’ll call the game.”
Instantly, Moyer felt a wave of relief. Suddenly, his gruff catcher had made him feel not so alone. All he had to do was throw the ball—something he’d been doing his whole life. Sharing this with Ruiz was as if to say, You have no idea the impact you can have.
Once, during an intra-squad spring training game, Moyer found himself facing Sundberg. In the middle of the count, Moyer’s catcher called a fastball in. Sundberg saw his usual batterymate shake his head yes, and then no. When the pitch came, Sundberg timed it flawlessly, as if he knew what was coming, and parked it deep in the outfield bleachers.
As he ran around the bases Sundberg laughed at his friend. After the game, he caught up to Moyer. “Look, I knew what was coming,” he said.
How? Moyer wanted to know. When Sundberg saw the young pitcher shake his head yes and then no, he knew Moyer was saying yes to the type of pitch, followed by no to its location. He also knew that usually a pitcher doesn’t shake off a breaking ball’s location. So it was simple deduction: a fastball was on its way. Since he was so familiar with Moyer’s fastball—he knew it would be around 84 miles per hour, and that it would probably be low in the zone—he sat back, awaiting his big fat gift.
Leaving the ballpark that day, Moyer realized: Catchers know all. The game always takes place in front of them and they don’t have the luxury of relaxing and being mentally out of a single play.
So it was that seeking out Ruiz’s take on the opposing team’s lineup had become a critical part of Moyer’s game-day prep. By now in his career, he had become much more in control on the mound. He decided what pitches to throw and when, but he was always mining his catcher for information.
Now, going over the Rays’ lineup, Moyer told Ruiz how he’d want to approach certain guys, while peppering his teammate with questions: Has so-and-so changed anything at the plate? Does he shorten up with two strikes?
Rookie power hitter Evan Longoria posed a challenge. “He’s one of those guys who can do a lot of damage if I elevate the ball,” Moyer told Ruiz, affectionately nicknamed “Chooch” by his teammates and the entire city of Philadelphia, almost all of whom were unaware that the moniker referred to a woman’s private parts. “Longoria gets those arms extended and he’s tough. But if you make a mistake on the inner part of the plate, he can hurt you, too.”
They spent a lot of time discussing outfielder Carl Crawford. Moyer had long said that if he were a general manager, he’d build a team around Crawford because of his versatility. He could change the game in so many ways. “Carl’s a down and away guy,” Moyer said. “If I don’t get it away, he’ll pull it. If it’s away and not down, he’ll hit it to leftfield. And if it’s outer third and slightly elevated, he’ll kill it.”
“You gotta get in on him,” Ruiz said.
“Either that or challenge him by making a good pitch down and away,” Moyer said, meaning make a pitch that led Crawford to think he was getting his pitch—only to find out after it was too late that the pitch was just slightly too down or just slightly too away.
Before they moved on to the next hitter, Moyer added an afterthought. “At some point, Carl may try to bunt,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because he’s got great speed and he thinks he can beat me down the first base line,” Moyer explained. “And he’s lefthanded. He can drag a bunt down the line and get it past me into that no-man’s-land. Let’s be sure to watch for that.”
“I’ll tell Ryan,” Ruiz said, referring to first baseman Ryan Howard.
Finally, after numerous rain delays, it was time to get in full uniform and make his way onto the rain-soaked field. Fans were starting to enter the ballpark and the night was already alive and buzzing. Walking to the outfield, Moyer kept his head down, watching puddles of water splash over his cleats with every step. As he had all season, he placed his glove on the warning track and ran sprints in the outfield. In the bullpen, he threw well. The Imodium had quelled his stomach, but the more he threw, the more he broke into a cold sweat, and the more he told himself to ignore it. This is just another game, just another game, just another game, he repeated to himself over and over.
By now the fans were in full force, bellowing, waving white rally towels. They’d reached a crescendo when country music star Tim McGraw approached the mound. McGraw, son of the late Phillie legend Tug, who was on the mound when the Phils last won a World Series twenty-eight years earlier, secretly took out a small box and sprinkled his father’s ashes precisely where Moyer would be pitching. Though baseball is full of gruff, chaw-chewing men, sentiment abounds. To Moyer, McGraw’s moving act was another in a series of emotional connections—his own presence at the 1980 parade, his lifelong fixation on Carlton—that made tonight feel like a night of destiny, diarrhea be damned.
In an uncharacteristic nod to the emotion of the evening, Moyer made a conscious decision to look up on his walk in from the bullpen. It would be the one singular break in his routine. He wanted to take it all in. The stadium he’d pitched in for more than the last two years seemed brighter than it ever had. The noise was deafening. But now, approaching the dugout, as the fans behind first base stood and cheered the old warrior, Moyer looked down, not wanting to risk being taken out of his zone. This game was too important.
As Moyer predicted, Crawford was proving to be Moyer’s biggest challenge. In the second inning, the outfielder doubled and stole third, scoring on a groundout. The Phils led 2–1 until sluggers Ryan Howard and Chase Utley gave Moyer a cushion with back-to-back home runs in the sixth.
Actually, pitching in the World Series turned out to be easy; sitting in the dugout, with a burbling stomach and the chills, was the real challenge. On the mound, Moyer was so focused that he forgot his stomach woes, and that he hadn’t eaten all day. He didn’t hear the fans, so intent was he on the mesmerizing sounds of the game—the hiss of the ball off the bat, the thwack of it into a glove—and on his own thoughts, an amalgam of self-pep-talk and strategic thinking. In a career that stood as a testament to the proposition that mind really can overcome matter, Moyer’s valiant performance may have qualified as exhibit A.
Leading off the seventh with the Phils up 4–1, Crawford came to bat and made even more of a prophet out of Moyer. Just as the pitcher had predicted in his pregame meeting with Ruiz, Crawford dragged a bunt down the first base line, thinking he could beat the old man to the bag. But Moyer got a good jump off the mound and dove through the air for the ball as it nearly dribbled past him, fielding it and tossing it from his glove in one motion, ending up prone on the wet grass. First baseman Ryan Howard fielded it cleanly, and to all eyes both watching live and seeing the replays, Crawford was indisputably out by a fraction of a step. The crowd erupted with a roar, but first base umpire Tom Hallion was shielded by Howard’s big body and didn’t see the first baseman barehand the toss. He called Crawford safe. Even after the blown call, the fans wouldn’t quiet, standing and applauding Moyer’s all-out effort.
After giving up a double, Moyer got Gabe Gross to ground out, scoring Crawford. That was it for Moyer, who received a standing ovation on his way to the dugout. Relievers Chad Durbin and Ryan Madson, however, couldn’t protect the lead, and by inning’s end the game was tied at 4.
It would have been nice to have been the winning pitcher of record, and had it not been for Hallion’s blown call, chances are that would have been the case. (To his credit, Hallion said after the game, “We’re human beings and sometimes we get them wrong.”) But Moyer was uttering his favorite phrase throughout the clubhouse after the game—“It’s all good”—because Ruiz delivered the game winner in the ninth and Moyer had done what had seemed vastly improbable earlier in the day: he’d produced a quality start, especially after having been smoked in the National League Championship Series by the Dodgers. As had happened so many other times throughout his career, Moyer had proven something to his doubters. From all those talking heads who’d been clamoring for a change in the pitching rotation after the Dodgers had clobbered him, to even his own wife, who’d earlier thought he should be in a hospital room instead of on a pitching mound, he’d again embodied the sheer power of belief.
Two nights later, Jamie Moyer was a world champion. After reliever Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske to end the 2008 baseball season, after the champagne corks popped, after Moyer’s dad and his two eldest boys—Dillon and Hutton, both in the clubhouse and in uniform for the game—came charging into the postgame celebration, Moyer embraced the man who had given him the dual gift of baseball and work ethic.
Seventy-seven-year-old Jim Moyer ambled into the clubhouse and his son’s embrace. “This makes all those pepper games in our yard worthwhile,” Jamie told his dad. Under his arm, Jim clutched the game program—like every other one he’d ever attended, he’d scored the game in real time.
While his teammates donned goggles and giddily doused each other with champagne, Moyer stood in the corner, surveying the scene. He joined in the celebration—shooting some champagne, taking some incoming—but as he watched his teammates, he saw a bunch of young kids celebrating without stopping to wonder just how fleeting this exhilaration would be.
That was as it should be. They were young and invincible, and to them this moment of triumph would now become the norm—for a time, at least. Moyer knew, however, that as moments go, it would need to be documented. Baseball is a game that has alternately broken his heart and sustained his spirits—sometimes at almost the exact same time—and he’s learned that he needs tangible proof in front of him to accurately revisit its old emotions.
So, wading through a pack of jumping, screaming, soaked teammates, Moyer gathered his whole family and led them out to the Citizens Bank Park field, where they posed for photos near first base. The ballpark was still packed, the crowd still frenzied, when Moyer, eyeing the mound, got an idea. He grabbed a member of the grounds crew.
“Can I get a shovel or a pick to get the rubber?” he asked, motioning toward the pitching rubber.
“Let me ask my boss.” Moments later, the worker returned, shaking his head.
“Major League Baseball wants it,” he said.
“Awww, c’mon. Forget that,” Moyer said. “I want it. I’ve got your back with the league. Please?”
The worker smiled. “Ah, what the hell,” he said, before jogging off. He came back with a pick and shovel and started digging. “That’s okay, let me do it,” Moyer said, taking over. Now the crowd noticed—and the cheers started to pick up, gradually sweeping the stadium, as more and more fans noticed the spectacle in front of them. Moyer, grunting, head down, just went about his excavation. He started to run out of gas, and the grounds crew stepped in to help. When they’d dug enough and Moyer could wrangle the pitching rubber free, he flung it over his shoulder—it was nearly thirty pounds, owing to the cement-filled interior—and the crowd erupted as he jogged back into the clubhouse to chants of Jamie! Jamie! ringing through the air. He’d gotten the ultimate keepsake—something he’d place on the mantel in his bedroom in Bradenton, and in San Diego, after the Moyers would move there in 2011. Upon rising every morning, the first thing he’d look at would be his World Series pitching rubber.
The next day, Philadelphia came to a standstill as some two million fans came out to honor the world champions. The whole Moyer clan was on the float that slowly made its way down Broad Street, the city streets a sea of red Phillies jerseys and caps. On the floor of the flatbed truck, Yeni, just two years old, laid on her back, covered in confetti. Among the throng, one youngster held aloft a sign: “Jamie Moyer, I Skipped School To See YOUR Parade!”
Of the players who spoke to the crowd at Citizens Bank Park, second baseman Chase Utley would make headlines by exclaiming, “World F’ing Champions!” But it was Moyer’s thoughtful comments that struck the most moving chord. He spoke at the end of the parade, referencing his own local childhood and the day twenty-eight years prior when he’d skipped school to attend the last Phillies World Series parade. “Twenty-eight years ago, I sat where you’re sitting,” he said to thunderous applause. “I was you. And I feel so fortunate to share this with you, my hometown.”
As he spoke, and as the crowd cheered—here was one of their own, a fan, with a fan’s work ethic—he looked at the man who had given him the game. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Jim Moyer was tearing up, as were his own sons, Dillon and Hutton. Like so many men in America, sports had long been an emotional proxy for the Moyer men, who rarely told each other “I love you.” They never had to: baseball, which they shared so lovingly through the years, had said it all for them.
If the Seattle teams of the late ’90s and early 2000s represented the last gasp of the game’s era of camaraderie, then the Phillies of the late 2000s reflected something entirely new in Moyer’s experience. While the team wasn’t particularly close-knit in the way Seattle, or even Baltimore in the early ’90s, had been—there were no group dinners out, for example—it nonetheless bonded over one common ethic: work.
Moyer had never been on a team that was more serious about its preparation. He’d get to the ballpark early to do his work and find twenty others there, doing the same. There was no Kangaroo Court, and there were hardly any clubhouse hijinks (save the comedy stylings of reliever Ryan Madson, who took it upon himself to try and keep things light). It was a deadly serious team of hard-edged competitors.
Despite what Billy Beane and some sabermetricians have held—that a player is what he is, early on—Moyer saw teammates push and prod and, yes, intimidate one another to get better. He saw players improve in all facets, and it all flowed from a group mind-set. “If you didn’t work, you didn’t fit in,” he recalls today.
Home run hitter Ryan Howard was a subpar first baseman who made himself into a good one through countless extra hours of fielding practice. Chase Utley was a suspect second baseman who morphed into one of the game’s best, and grew to become perhaps the greatest leader by example Moyer had ever seen. Utley was immensely quiet, but eventually his personality took over the team. He wasn’t shy so much as silent in the placid, icy way of an assassin. He’d do whatever it took to win: lean his shoulder in front of 95-mile-per-hour fastballs to get on base, break up double plays either with cleats up or going for the body.
To Moyer, the ultimate gentleman away from the game, winning teams had to have an edge. As Harvey used to say, you have to be a bit of an asshole to succeed. The Phillies were just that—in the best sense of the word.
Unlike in Seattle, it was the players who dictated the team’s personality, not necessarily the manager. Charlie Manuel was a good ol’ country boy in his sixties, someone who upon his arrival in Philadelphia encountered ridicule for his malapropisms and his butchering of the King’s English. But he was also a hitting savant—he’d once compared notes on the science of hitting with Ted Williams—and had a keen sense about people. Behind his amiable, duncelike demeanor, there lay a type of baseball psychologist in his own right. Cholly, as he was called, knew that a manager’s first job is to create a culture where every player would, as the common sports parlance went, “run through brick walls” for his manager. He created a grandfatherly persona, someone players didn’t want to disappoint. It was a stark contrast to the in-your-face intensity of Piniella, but it was the right demeanor for this group. Cold-blooded types like Chase Utley didn’t need anyone in their face; they needed someone to have their back.
Moyer consistently took it upon himself to mentor the young pitchers on staff. Hamels was an early pupil; Moyer recommended Dorfman’s The Mental ABC’s of Pitching to him, which Hamels would page through before starts. When Hamels followed his breakout 2008 season with a lackluster one in 2009, it sent him seeking. He had learned the importance of the mental game by watching Moyer, and he set out on his own path, picking the brain of pitching coach Tom House and ultimately hooking up with a mental coach in his hometown of San Diego, Jim Brogan, who tutored Hamels in concentration exercises and visualization.
Moyer introduced Kyle Kendrick, a young up-and-down sinkerballer, to Dorfman, recognizing in Kyle something quite familiar: the need to accept who he was. Once, he and Kendrick were seated next to one another in the dugout as the Phillies took on Atlanta. Braves pitcher Tim Hudson, who has won nearly 200 games over 14 seasons, was on the mound.
“You know, you can have the same results as Hudson,” Moyer leaned over and said.
Kendrick, at the time not a particular favorite of the hometown Philly less-than-faithful, looked dubious. “You’re a sinker/slider pitcher, like him, I don’t care what ballpark you pitch in,” Moyer explained. “Now look at your walk to strikeout ratio. It’s about two to one. What happens if you cut out fifteen or twenty walks a year? That’s something you can control.”
Kendrick thought for a moment. “Yeah, I walked two guys Friday night and both of them scored,” he said.
“A sinker/slider guy has to force contact by working the bottom of the zone, like Hudson does,” Moyer said. “Yeah, you’re going to get hit, but they’re going to have to hit four singles to score a run. Unless you make a mistake and get the ball up in the zone.”
Kendrick, who had given up 80 home runs in his first five seasons, nodded. Then, as if on cue, Hudson did just that—hanging a breaking pitch to their teammate John Mayberry Jr., who hit it out of the park. Kendrick smiled. “Nice to see Hudson make the same mistake I make,” he said.
After the World Series win in 2008, the Phillies rewarded the forty-six-year-old Moyer with a two-year, $13.5 million deal. On the call-in shows, there was some scratching of heads: why wouldn’t Moyer now retire and go “out on top”? To Moyer, the media call for aging athletes to hang ’em up prematurely always seemed to have more to do with the media mavens making the argument than with anything having to do with baseball. It wasn’t lost on him that many of those wondering if, at age forty-six, he ought to retire a World Series champ were themselves aging columnists and talking heads who wouldn’t for a moment consider giving up their livelihoods—their passion—until they were damn good and ready. But Jamie wasn’t ready yet. He’d just had a stellar season. If the batters weren’t telling him to pack it in, why should anyone else?
Besides, everywhere he went in Philly, men and women his own age approached to thank him for getting them to join a gym, or start going for walks, or start watching what they eat. He’d inspired many of his generation-mates, it seemed, and in truth, he felt good about that.
Meantime, the Phils had some front-office change of their own. General manager Pat Gillick, who had brought Moyer to Philly from Seattle, retired, staying on in a consultant’s role. The new general manager would either be Gillick’s assistant, Ruben Amaro Jr., a former Phil who was young, good-looking, and charismatic, or Mike Arbuckle, the baseball lifer who was responsible for drafting many of the players who had ultimately led the Phillies to the World Series title, including Utley, Howard, and Rollins.
It was a tough call, but the Phillies went with Amaro Jr., with whom Moyer had a long history. Moyer had roomed with Ruben’s older brother, David, on the Geneva Cubs in the New York Penn League in the mid-’80s. Ruben was the skinny Stanford freshman who would visit and sleep on their floor.
Just after signing his new deal, the Moyers celebrated like only the Moyers can. Karen and Jamie gathered the brood, chartered a plane, and, instead of exchanging gifts themselves, spent a week in Guatemala. The plane was packed with presents for the kids at the orphanage where Karen had found Yeni. As a group, they went back to Yeni’s old orphanage in a van stuffed with gifts for youngsters who had never experienced a real Christmas, who were living in total squalor, some of whom were stricken with AIDS. Ever aware of his own psychology now, Moyer found it the perfect cap to the year. “I was totally humbled,” he recalls. “And just felt so fortunate and proud of my kids. It was out best Christmas ever.”
Moyer, now forty-seven, got off to a terrible start in 2009. His command was shaky as was his control: balls that once were down were suddenly up in the zone. In April and May, he was 4–5 with a 6.75 ERA. But as was so often the case, he gradually started to figure it out. After six and two-thirds innings of shutout ball against the Diamondbacks in late July, he’d gone 6–2 with a 4.05 ERA in his next ten starts.
That didn’t stop Amaro from signing free agent Pedro Martinez over the All-Star break. Manuel told Moyer he’d be moving to long relief. Martinez had once been a dominant starting pitcher, having won three Cy Young Awards for the Red Sox. But he was now a shadow of his former self, having been injured time and again. Moyer felt it was déjà vu all over again; that he was being judged and held to standards that don’t apply to pitchers who throw faster. It was as if he were still always one or two bad starts from demotion—something that didn’t exactly match his track record. He said as much in the press, even seeking out a second face-to-face with Manuel the day after being told of the decision. In that meeting, Moyer made his case: he was just starting to get back to the form he’d shown the previous year, when he’d led the staff in wins. Manuel didn’t say it, but Moyer had the impression the decision wasn’t his, that it came from Ruben.
Control what you can control. That’s what Harvey would have said. So Moyer—one interview notwithstanding, in which he claimed that upon inking his new deal, Phils management had told him he wouldn’t be put in the pen—decided to go to the bullpen and do his job. And do it he did: over nearly the last two months of the season, he recorded a 3.26 ERA and opponents hit just .206 against him, which included six shutout innings and the win in relief of Martinez against the Diamondbacks on August 18 and four innings to beat Atlanta ten days later, also in relief of Martinez.
He still preferred starting, for the security of knowing when he’d be pitching. But Jamie had fun in the bullpen, shooting the breeze with the other guys and the fans. He found that he laughed much more than in the ever-serious dugout.
On September 29, in relief of starter J. A. Happ, Moyer faced four batters and retired them all. The last one flew out to centerfield as Moyer fell off the mound. He had to be helped off the field. He’d torn muscles in his groin and lower abdomen. He was done for the season, and—count ’em—three off-season surgeries awaited.
Moyer watched the Phillies lose to the Yankees in the World Series. Before game four, he caught the ceremonial first pitch from his idol Steve Carlton, who showed Moyer the grip on his slider. Moyer knew that if you’re not moving forward, you’re standing still, and had already been asking himself, What can I do this off-season to reinvent myself? What can I do that will set me apart?
Like Karen, Moyer believes things happen for a reason. He doesn’t do Godspeak, like so many athletes who would have you believe that God was pulling for them when they hit that home run or struck out that batter. But Moyer, thanks to Karen’s influence, believed in the mysticism of faith, and there had to be some reason why he and Steve Carlton, moments before that ceremonial first pitch, were limbering up by playing catch and Carlton’s ball was breaking all over the place. “Could you show me that?” Moyer asked. What a kick it would be if he were to come back next year reinvented as Lefty.
But first came the three surgeries over the next three months. They treated, respectively: the groin, a postoperative infection, and a torn meniscus in his left knee. Come January, Karen watched as he started throwing his new cutter and began training to get prepared for 2010. “Oh my,” she said to herself. “I’m living with freakin’ Superman.” She made a commitment to herself, even though she was raising eight kids and running a foundation and spin studio: If he makes it back next season, I’m flying in for all his starts.
It’s the worst feeling in the world. It’s like knowing you’re dreaming when you’re having a bad dream—you’re powerless to stop it, which makes it even worse. You want to snap out of it, but you can’t get out of your own way. You’re embarrassed, ashamed to look your teammates in the eyes. You’ve let them down.
By 2010, Moyer had built a career on rescuing triumph from seeming failure. But sometimes failure would still happen, and it never got easier. To be shelled as a major league pitcher, to be unable to record a single out, to throw pitch after pitch and see them tagged to all corners of a ballpark, is to feel like you’re racing downhill with no stop in sight.
June 11, 2010, at Fenway Park didn’t start out ominously. In fact, Moyer’s 2010 was off to a good start. The experiment with Martinez ended the previous season, and Cliff Lee had been (inexplicably) traded to Texas when Amaro signed ace free agent Roy Halladay. That meant the fifth starter job was there for Moyer’s taking, and his spring training performance cemented its capture.
Moyer entered the game against the Red Sox with a 6–5 record and a 3.98 ERA. He was coming off a complete-game victory at San Diego and opponents were hitting just .234 against him. The pitcher whose changeup had defined him for so many years was now throwing far less of them; instead, he was using his newfangled cutter to keep hitters off balance.
Before the game, Red Sox manager Terry Francona, who had played for the Cubs in Moyer’s 1986 debut, couldn’t believe his former teammate was still at it. “The thing that sets him apart is he just never gives in,” Francona said.
While Moyer had been impressive in the season’s early going, his team hadn’t. Ever since Jimmy Rollins went down with a strained calf muscle, the Phillies had played listlessly, winning only five of 17 games and hitting an anemic .216. For the first time since his 2006 arrival in Philly, Moyer sensed a lack of passion in the clubhouse.
On this night, he felt strong in the bullpen. The Red Sox leadoff hitter, Marco Scutaro, had owned Moyer in the past. Rereading his old notes on Scutaro, he decided to ignore them—because nothing had ever worked. Scutaro set the tone for what was to come, never taking the bat from his shoulder. After six pitches—at least two of which appeared to be strikes but were called balls—Scutaro worked a walk.
Dustin Pedroia looked at an 82-mile-per-hour two-seamer on the outside corner for a strike. They’re not swinging. Next came a 76-mile-per-hour cutter, a jammer. Pedroia pulled it sharply on the ground to Polanco at third, who threw to second for the force but not quickly enough to turn a double play.
Now it had been two batters and two breaks that hadn’t gone Moyer’s way: the strike calls against Scutaro and the seeming double play ball against Pedroia. Moyer took a deep breath, recognizing his negative thoughts, and tried to collect himself. Pitching from the stretch, he looked down at his hands holding the ball at his belt. Something was not right. He was not comfortable. Victor Martinez looked at three straight pitches; on the last of them, Moyer felt himself fading off to the left of the mound on his follow-through, instead of toward home plate. On a 2–1 pitch, Martinez clubbed an 82-mile-per-hour two-seamer off the Green Monster in left, just above the Granite City Supply advertisement.
As slugger David “Big Papi” Ortiz settled into the batter’s box, with his .361 lifetime average against Moyer, Moyer noticed a powwow in the Sox dugout. Francona and four or five others were having an animated discussion on the dugout steps. Were they picking up signs? Where they plotting what was beginning to look like a purposeful strategy of not swinging the bat unless they were ahead in the count?
Indeed, Papi looked at the first three pitches. On 2–2, Moyer threw an 82-mile-per-hour two-seamer inside that froze the power hitter; umpire Paul Emmel clenched his fist as if to call a strike, but held back. Papi then ripped the next pitch, a cutter up in the zone, waist high, off the wall in left. The score was 2–0, Sox.
Adrian Beltre, true to form, took the first two pitches, before turning on a good cutter in tight, fighting it off down the leftfield line for yet another double: 3–0. When good pitches get turned into RBI base hits, it’s often a sign that you’re about to be in for a long night.
The Beltre hit confirmed that it was happening, that rabbit hole feeling, when nothing works and you start replaying all the “what ifs” in your head: What if those pitches against Scutaro and that one against Big Papi had been called strikes? What if we’d turned that double play?
The next hitter, Mike Lowell, looked at the first three pitches—no shocker there—and got ahead in the count 2–1. The defensive move would be for Moyer to give in and serve up a fastball in order to avoid going 3–1. He’d refuse—just like Francona predicted, and was likely telling his players. Moyer threw a cutter low and in for a strike, followed by a 74-mile-per-hour changeup high in the strike zone. Lowell wasted no time, crushing a two-run homer to left.
Moyer walked off the mound to curse himself: I’m getting what I deserve. Look where that pitch was. Freakin’ batting practice. At times like this, he’d search the stands for something—anything—outside of himself to focus on. He saw a hot dog vendor. His eyes followed the vendor for about fifteen seconds. Out came pitching coach Rich Dubee.
“Awright, let’s refocus here,” Dubee said. “Concentrate on making quality pitches. Let’s get an out.”
Billy Hall looked at a called third strike—They’re looking at everything!—and then a backdoor cutter induced a flyout from the number nine hitter, Darnell McDonald. Nine batters, five runs.
After the Phillies failed to score in their half of the second, the descent continued. The Red Sox stayed patient, the umpire remained stingy, and Moyer’s response was to pitch angry, rejecting his own advice. Don’t try and get it all back with one pitch, he’d tell himself, only to rear back and throw harder—precisely what the Sox hitters were looking for. Back-to-back doubles by Martinez and Big Papi made it 8–0. Moyer hadn’t registered a single out in the second inning when Manuel took the ball and mercifully ended the carnage.
Sixty-one pitches. Ultimately nine runs. One inning. In the dugout, Moyer put his red Phillies jacket on and took a long swig of water before staring off into the middle distance. Dubee walked by with an encouraging slap on the knee, Charlie came by with a fatherly tap to the shoulder. Hamels and Blanton sat nearby. Not a word was spoken. They’d all been there and they knew there was nothing to be said.
Early in his career, the days between a performance like the shelling in Boston and Moyer’s next start would be interminable. The shame and embarrassment, the feeling of having let down his teammates, the sense that all eyes in the clubhouse were on him because he had failed would last until he got the chance to make it right again five days later.
Ever since Seattle, though, Moyer had been able to lick his wounds overnight. As Harvey was fond of pointing out, other people aren’t thinking about us quite as much as we think they are. What made Moyer think his teammates weren’t as obsessed with their own challenges and failings, instead of fixating on his?
That realization helped ease the morning-after transition. The secret to handling such a public flogging is to begin to devise a positive plan forward. So Moyer asked Dubee if he’d noticed anything in his follow-through; he’d felt like he was “landing heavy” toward the first base side, which could explain the heightened elevation of his pitches. Dubee hadn’t noticed it, but said they could look at it on tape. But Moyer didn’t need to see it—he felt it. Besides, in the past, when he’d gone wrong, that trail-off had been a familiar rut. He’d work on it in his bullpen session.
Meantime, he’d start reviewing his notes on the Yankees. Yes, he was jumping from the frying pan into an all-out grease fire. But instead of shrinking from being on baseball’s biggest stage, Moyer welcomed the challenge of pitching in Yankee Stadium. He’d always hated the Yankees. Like Dorfman, he felt Steinbrenner’s team was too powerful, too arrogant, and too corporate. Years ago, they were the first team (of course) to have security cameras outside the clubhouse door. Moyer promptly dropped trou and mooned a hallway camera. When he shared the hijinx with Harvey, Dorfman’s laughter filled the phone line and morphed into a part laugh, part coughing fit.
Gene Michael, the former Yankees general manager, had once told Moyer that though he was a good pitcher, he didn’t have the mental toughness to succeed in New York. The media, the fans, the city itself—they demanded a certain type of personality in their athletes. Like so many other high achievers, Moyer has long fueled off a sense of umbrage, collecting old slights in order to push himself to higher heights. How sweet it always was to win against the Yankees.
In New York, Moyer often took the subway to games. He liked to be a fan, on his way to the ballpark, who just happened to pitch. On June 16, however, he took a cab to the Bronx from Midtown. Karen was flying in, but hadn’t landed yet; in Boston, while her husband was getting beat up on the mound, her father had been undergoing prostate surgery. Now Digger was officially cancer-free and Jamie had a chance to erase the memory of the Boston massacre.
Moyer, meantime, wanted to be alone with his thoughts. For the first time since coming to Philly, his team was playing without fire. Was it that Jimmy was out? He didn’t know, but he knew the night’s big challenge was to somehow recapture the passion that had driven his team to the last two Fall Classics. Last night, they’d lost behind Halladay. In Seattle, and two years ago in Philly, Moyer had been the guy who took it upon himself to put an end to his team’s slide. Could he be that guy tonight?
In their pregame meeting, Dubee conceded what Moyer had been feeling. “Look, I don’t know why, but we’re playing like crap,” the pitching coach said. “But you can’t let that get to you—”
“Don’t you worry,” Moyer snapped. “It won’t. We’re turning this damn thing around tonight.” On his walk to the bullpen, he felt the anger coursing through his body: he was tired of the sluggish feeling, both in the dugout and on the field. if you can control this feeling, this might be good. Let’s be fed up. It might give us a little edge.
When the game began, Moyer could sense the eagerness of the Yankees hitters. Many of them had long feasted on him: his old friend A-Rod averaged .389 with six homers against him; Jeter, .324; Jorge Posada, .333; Mark Teixeira, .306.
It’s all good. Use their aggression. Jeter helped matters in the bottom of the first, grounding out to Utley on the first pitch, a fastball. Next up came Nick Swisher, who got ahead in the count 3–1. Rather than give in, Moyer placed an 81-mile-per-hour two-seamer on the outside corner that Swisher hit to centerfield for an out. Teixeira was next and Moyer could see his handwritten notes in his mind’s eye: Get in on him, make him speed up bat speed. He opened with a fastball for a strike on the inside corner. Then came a cutter, down and in, the same pitch Beltre had golfed for a double in Boston. This time, Teixeira grounded it foul. After a high fastball came three straight inside pitches: two cutters and one two-seamer. Teixeira kept fouling them off, wondering, no doubt, when the deviation would come. That would be the next pitch: a backdoor cutter on the outside corner that froze Teixeira for strike three. Thirteen pitches, three outs.
In the dugout, Moyer uncharacteristically paced up and down, exhorting his teammates. “Let’s go, no letup,” he yelled. “Let’s go, let’s go!”
Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth homered for the Phils. Yankees starter A. J. Burnett labored just as hard as Moyer had in his last start, and the Phils built a 6–1 lead after three. And Moyer just continued to coast on the mound, while not letting up on his teammates in the dugout.
His tempo was quicker, his delivery quick and easy. He finished up square to home plate, ready to field a comebacker after each pitch, instead of falling off to the side after each release. The Yankees tried to do what the Sox had done—keep from swinging, wait him out—but Jamie kept the ball on the black and, critically, got those calls from the umpire. And he did the unexpected. The Yankees were sitting on his changeup, but that was the old Jamie Moyer. In this game, of 107 pitches, he would throw only two changeups and two curveballs. The rest were all two-seamers, straight fastballs, and—especially—cutters.
In the sixth, he got Jeter to again weakly offer at a first-pitch two-seamer away, lining out, before setting up Nick Swisher with a succession of cutters in on his hands, inducing foul ball after foul ball. Just when Swisher was looking for another pitch in tight, Moyer dropped yet another cutter on the outside corner for a called third strike. Before a packed crowd that included aging rock duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Moyer lasted eight innings, giving up just two runs and earning an improbable win.
Afterward, the New York media crowded around him—the same crew Gene Michael years ago said he wouldn’t be able to handle. “I don’t think that I’m old,” he said simply, when asked for the secret to his unlikely success.
He’d continue his winning ways. Five days later, he’d go another eight innings against Cleveland, giving up one earned run. Five days after that, Toronto fell under his spell: seven innings, two runs. His only mistake was a two-run home run by Vernon Wells in the third inning, which made for some dubious history: it was the 506th home run allowed by Moyer, eclipsing the major league record held since 1957 by Phillies ace Robin Roberts.
Moyer didn’t look at the new record as anything to be ashamed of; it was simply a testament to his longevity and resiliency. Had there ever been a pitcher better at taking punches? Karen promptly commissioned the printing of T-shirts that listed, on the front, the twenty-five players who had hit 500 or more home runs. On the back, it read, “But There’s Only Two Who Have Given Up 500 Home Runs Or More: Robin Roberts (505) And Jamie Moyer (506 And Counting…).”
After the game, Moyer wouldn’t be dragged into a discussion about the home run record. “I have a desire to be here, and I won’t allow myself to get caught up in all the things that come with it,” he said. He’d learned to avoid anything that took his focus away “from playing with these guys in this room.” But there was a hint of the internal drive fueling his season thus far: “I really have to stay focused because whether it’s the media, the coaching staff, the front office, if I have a bad game, they say, ‘Well, you’re too old, you’re not going to do it.’”
It was the end of June and Moyer was now 9–6—among the National League leaders in wins—with a 4.30 ERA.
Some pundits called him the Phillies’ ace—preposterous on a team with Halladay and Hamels—and the Philadelphia Daily News asked, is “Cooperstown now on his itinerary?” The story, by Ed Barkowitz, pointed out that he’d passed Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Bob Feller in career wins. “Moyer is on pace to register the most wins he’s had in a season since winning 21 as a spry 40-year-old with the Mariners in 2003,” Barkowitz wrote.
But what Barkowitz didn’t know was that Moyer was starting to feel a weird sensation in his elbow. He figured it was nothing, just some midseason dead-arm to work through. It felt like there was a rubber band in his arm, pulling and stretching. He took anti-inflammatories, but it continued to bother him through his next three starts, all losses. If anything, his elbow was getting worse.
Then came that fateful July night in St. Louis when it felt like something had snapped. And the taut words to Cholly in the dugout: “I can’t throw.” And the trip to California to see Dr. Jobe, while Ruben was prematurely telling the media the Moyer career was over. And the trip to the Dominican, to pitch for Moises Alou, only to have the flexor pronator and ulnar collateral ligament come clean off the bone.
Certainly, this was it. The end of a singular, improbable, thrilling career.
Wasn’t it?