CHAPTER 4

FIRST PITCH

8:02 P.M.

Every guy has a different routine for the hour before game time.

On the night of Game Seven, players like Kris Bryant and some others jumped in the cage to hit, but I skipped BP like I normally did. The locker room had a good vibe to it. Guys were doing their own thing, playing Mario Kart or getting something to eat. I am a nibbler before games so I wasn’t hungry.

As I sat in front of my locker and got dressed in my game uniform, I allowed myself to reflect on the moment and realize how thankful I was. I really appreciated that World Series patch on the left sleeve. That doesn’t come around very often. After I got dressed, I headed out to the field and down the right-field line to play catch with bullpen catcher Franklin Font. A sold-out crowd in excess of thirty-five thousand was expected at Progressive Field and at least half of the fans seemed to be rooting for the Cubs. I could already feel the energy and excitement of the crowd. I looked for my wife, Hyla, in the stands—Cubs families sat behind our dugout, near home plate—but I didn’t see her. (I found out later Cole still wasn’t feeling well so they hadn’t made it to their seats.)

There was a calmness in the dugout before the game. There wasn’t much rah-rah; everyone was excited and ready. Everyone seemed locked in. It was like, “Here we go, boys.”

Dexter Fowler, take a bow.

Dexter, our leadoff hitter, opened Game Seven of the World Series with a solo home run off Cleveland’s Corey Kluber in the top of the first inning.

The left-handed hitting Fowler, on the fourth pitch of the game off the right-handed Kluber, socked a sinker over the center-field fence and past the glove of a leaping Rajai Davis to give us a 1–0 lead. It was a historic swing: the first-ever leadoff home run in a Game Seven of the World Series.

Our dugout exploded. Everyone was jacked up by Fowler’s blast. I was happy, too, but not jump-up-and-down happy. In fact, I’m not even sure I moved. I was expressionless on the outside, only because I was such a wreck inside. I didn’t want to take the fun out of the moment, but my emotions were so high that I think I would’ve passed out if I cut loose. The past month had drained me emotionally, with everything that had gone on surrounding my last season and not knowing when it would all end.

In a way, however, it was probably better that I kept cool. I was eaten up in 2015, absolutely miserable after we fell just short of making it to the World Series. We’d fought our way back in 2016, rallying from a 3–1 deficit in the best-of-seven series, and now it was Game Seven. I was so wound up, stressed, and focused on winning that I didn’t really react to Fowler’s home run.

I remember looking over to the Cleveland dugout as Fowler rounded the bases. The home run took the wind out of the Indians and their fans. We knew we had to get an early lead against Kluber, especially with Indians reliever Andrew Miller fresh on three days’ rest. Kluber had won the Cy Young Award in 2014, and was looking to become the first pitcher to win three starts in one World Series since Detroit’s Mickey Lolich in 1968. For his part, Miller already had a league-record 29 strikeouts in 17 innings of pitching in the 2016 postseason.

Fowler’s home run was a big moment. All season long, when we had established a lead early in the game, we’d been a tough team to beat.

The 2016 World Series between us and the Cleveland Indians was the 112th edition of Major League Baseball’s fall classic. And this one was linked to history like no other. The two teams had the distinction of having the longest World Series droughts in the big leagues when they entered the best-of-seven series. Cubs fans had long been conditioned to expect the worst through the decades of disappointment and near misses. The Cubs hadn’t won the World Series since 1908 (the longest drought in American sports history), while the Indians hadn’t notched a championship since 1948.

In my first year with the Cubs in 2015, we won 97 games and made it to the National League Championship Series, where we lost to the New York Mets. We entered the 2016 season as everyone’s favorite to win the World Series and sweep aside the Curse of the Billy Goat, the black cat, and the memory of Steve Bartman. Our manager, Joe Maddon, repeatedly said he wouldn’t hide from those expectations.

We followed Joe’s lead, and it couldn’t have gone any better. We were a young team—we entered the season with the third-youngest opening day roster in the major leagues behind the Houston Astros and the Milwaukee Brewers with an average age of 29.9, according to MLB.com. We had eight position players who were 26 years old or younger, including starters shortstop Addison Russell (22), outfielder Kyle Schwarber (23), third baseman Kris Bryant (24), first baseman Anthony Rizzo (26), and outfielder Jason Heyward (26). But we had the oldest starting rotation at 31.6 years and, of course, the backup catcher, yours truly, skewed the average with my thirty-nine years.

Turns out I wasn’t the oldest player in the Major Leagues to open 2016. New York Mets starting pitcher Bartolo Colon, forty-two, had that honor, and was one of six forty-plus-year-olds on opening day rosters. I was one of four thirty-nine-year-olds. How about that? I had waited all my career to be in the top 10 of something!

You’re only as old as you feel, right? And I felt good. The Cubs finished the regular season in 2016 with the best record in baseball at 103-58 and won our first National League Central title since 2008. We spent 180 days, including off days, in first place, won our division by seventeen and a half games, and never played under- .500 baseball. We reached the 100-win mark for the first time since 1935, and reached the World Series for the first time since 1945.

All the team’s achievements in 2016 were especially poignant for me because I knew it was going to be my last season as a player. Following the 2015 season, I had made the decision that the next season, my fifteenth in the major leagues, would be my last. In November 2015 I was on MLB Network Radio on Sirius XM and I told the interviewer “it was time to be a dad.” And it was. I played in 1,366 games—483 in the minors and 883 in the majors. I had worked hard, did the best I could, met some wonderful people, and had a lot of fun along the way.

Baseball afforded me a great life. But everyone measures success differently. Once you have the means to buy an expensive car, or buy everything else on your wish list, you still have to consider the things that money can’t buy: love and happiness. If you are the kind of person who thinks counting dollars is the path to contentment, hell, you’re never going to have enough. When is enough enough? If you call yourself a family man as I do, at some point you have to put your name and money where your mouth is.

Could I have played in 2017? Sure, I believe I could. In 2016, I was in the final season of a two-year, $5 million deal with the Cubs, and I probably could have made more money than I ever had in my career in 2017 with all the things that happened to me. But, you know what? Family matters more. And I always tried to put my family first.

Our 2016 Chicago Cubs team was a family, too. We were well aware of the Cubs’ history and the long suffering of our fans. We listened to their stories and we were always thankful for their passion. We knew where they were coming from! But we also had to tune a little bit of that out because the 2016 season wasn’t just about breaking a curse, or anything like that. If we started to get caught up in the nostalgia, it would’ve been impossible to do our job. That was what was great about our team. We never got caught up in history. It wasn’t about the history. What I learned in Boston in 2013, when we won the World Series, is that you pulled into the stadium parking lot every day and did your job the best you could and to the best of your ability. I learned that if you started to look ahead or behind, you were in trouble.

Still, it was hard to keep the fans’ excitement at bay. The main thing we heard about the stories from Cubs fans in 2016 was the tone of their voice, the nervousness and excitement. It was like a voice was constantly whispering in our ears, “They have to win the World Series.” Well, that was our goal, to win the World Series, but we weren’t focused on winning the World Series. We were focused on playing today. The more we won, the louder that voice grew.

Through it all, our team stayed really tight. A lot of credit for that is due to manager Joe Maddon. Joe doesn’t have a whole lot of rules. I think that’s the one thing that Joe has nailed and I think you will see other teams following suit. On other teams, the coach says “Okay, we’ve got early work today, we have this tomorrow, and so on.” Joe wasn’t like that at all. He didn’t believe we needed to take batting practice every day. I believe batting practice is one of the most overrated things in baseball. (Maybe that’s why I am a career .229 hitter!) The way Joe sees it, the last feeling you had at the plate is the one you want to take with you on your next at-bat. If you are hitting the ball well, why take more batting practice?

It’s easy to slip into bad habits—or try too hard at the plate. I had my best year in Cincinnati (2006/.255 batting average, 21 home runs, and 52 RBIs) and I took the least amount of BP. I’d get in the cage and take a couple of swings to get loose and I’d be out of there. I was playing a lot—a career-high 112 games in 2007. Some days I had to fight through BP, when making all those adjustments might not actually help.

The brain is a powerful thing and sometimes it can work against you in baseball because you fail so often. The standard BP routine includes swinging for hits, bunts, hit-and-run, advancing the runner, and so on. With all those different scenarios, you begin manipulating your swing. For me, it was difficult enough just to hit the ball in a game when it’s careening at you at 90 miles per hour. For me, obsessing about all those little adjustments didn’t make sense, and Joe understood that. My strength was bunting, and Joe gave me the freedom to focus on that—the thing that mattered, in the heat of the game moment, was simply getting that runner to second or third base. Joe focused on your strengths and not your weaknesses.

Joe’s laid-back approach didn’t just eliminate needless practice. It also helped create a wonderful culture in the clubhouse that enabled players to enjoy their jobs and strive for success. Joe allowed you to be yourself as long as it didn’t hinder others. He gave us complete and total freedom to be ourselves but we had to do it in a way that respected your teammates and respected the game. One of Joe’s favorite sayings was “Respect ninety.” That meant every time you hit the ball, you were going to bust your tail the ninety feet from home plate to first base. As a manager, Joe stayed out of the Cubs’ locker room. He loathed meetings. He gave us, as players and as adults, the freedom to be ourselves. He allowed us to grow without getting in our way. Joe’s belief was he only interfered if it was absolutely necessary.

In spring training in 2016, Joe met with the veterans (known as the lead bulls) and we discussed team policies, from dress code to who we wanted to allow in and out of the clubhouse. Joe said it didn’t matter to him; he had his own office. He sat in first class on our charter flights, he was married, he didn’t have kids who traveled with him, so he thought, Why would I want to make up a bunch of rules that I don’t really need, that wouldn’t really necessarily apply to me anyway? Joe told us to tell him what we wanted. And when that was done, he wanted to make sure we understood that we, as players, enforced them. Not him. So, when new players arrived in our locker room, regardless of their personality, it was our responsibility to make sure they understood everyone was held accountable. That there was right and there was wrong. So it was that player’s responsibility to choose the right way. Joe felt that the greater freedom he gave the locker room, the greater respect and discipline management received in return.

My faith has also played in this process. I think when you have faith in God and a higher being, you are held accountable. It gives you that sense of I am accountable to somebody that is greater and it is a solid foundation when things go awry. At the end of the day, I am trying to be the best I can be and that’s a hard enough job. To do what I think is the right thing by my faith and to be sure I am being the best person I can. I think that strength rubs off on others who might not be in the same boat.

We dressed up for road trips—and I am not talking suits, ties, and wingtip shoes. When we dressed in these crazy themed outfits for road trips—one trip, we had to paint our toenails if we elected to wear shorts and flip-flops—we all did it together. Nobody thought they were too “cool” to partake in the fun. Coaches, front office employees, everyone dressed up. The goofy outfits on road trips, the late batting practices on game days—even no batting practice on game days at times. It was about us. Joe really was good at making sure everyone shared in this little atmosphere of fun. It didn’t feel like a workplace—more like a club that you loved being a member of.

Sometimes we just had to laugh at the whirlwind going on outside our little cocoon. We did a good job in 2016 of not letting those distractions creep into the clubhouse.

It was an amazing collection of people in the Cubs organization—not just the players—who made the 2016 season run smoothly. They allowed players to worry about nothing but baseball. It’s a cool thing to know every person in the organization has your back.

The simple things make all the difference. Say if a player’s “Aunt Sandy” was in town for a game, she requested an autographed ball from Anthony Rizzo. I simply went up to one of the clubhouse personnel and said, “Hey, can you give me a ball by Rizz?” Sure enough, boom, the ball was in your locker later that day and “Aunt Sandy” was thrilled. Sometimes it was even more basic. I was always pleased that the clubhouse guys made sure to have Starbucks iced coffee waiting for a few of us “old guys” every day.

Our protective cocoon worked so well almost nothing could rattle us, even Bill Murray. One night during the playoffs the actor/comedian suddenly rolled through the locker room. And then Vince Vaughn appeared, too. We had lots of big-time celebrities in the locker room. The thing was, Joe allowed folks like them to visit during the regular season. So it wasn’t anything new. We took selfies with Bill Murray, and he told jokes. Vince Vaughn quoted his character from Wedding Crashers. You know, Rule 178: Never give up. Singer Chris Stapleton came in during the year, and country group Little Big Town visited.

All sorts of cool people came through the locker room. You might be thinking, Aren’t these celebrities a big distraction? No. It was quite the opposite. They helped us forget about the far bigger distraction outside the clubhouse: the hopes and dreams of a few million Cubs fans.

DAVID’S iPHONE JOURNAL

2/23/16

Pretty cool day today. Last day before full squad, was light day for me. We did a warm-up with Bussy, a fun throwing drill in our catchers early work, catchers chat session, caught [Jake] Arrieta, and took BP. Had a great lunch with my host family from my first year (98) in Yakima Washington, Sharron and Homer Applegate. We talked a lot about that season and were trying to think of everyone’s name. I reminded her about making me cinnamon toast after games because everything was closed. They were a great host family and helped me get my career started. Finished the night with a “show” dinner with Demp, Wally, Lack, Lester, and all the wives. Was a great night of food, drinks, and stories! I really love those guys, they have taught me so much! Really excited for full squad tomorrow, can’t wait to hear Joe’s speech.

Joe Maddon paid a great compliment to me after the season. “I want to know who mentored David Ross,” he said, “because whoever taught David Ross to be what he was in our locker room deserves a gold medal.” Well, here’s the answer, Joe: I am blessed not just to have a single mentor or two. It was a culmination of positive influences in my life that turned me into the guy you saw in the Cubs clubhouse. It started early in my career and centered on the people I looked up to the most. My dad is a positive, don’t-focus-on-the-negative type of guy. I never once remember him raising his voice at my mother. The older you get, you see flaws in people that weren’t apparent to you as a child. The truth is, I can’t name for you a flaw in my father. Another big childhood influence was my high school baseball coach, Jeff Hogan, and I had some wonderful college coaches, too.

But the people who stand out for me as having the biggest positive impact on my outlook as a player are a group of guys I encountered during my fifteen-year career in the big leagues. Guys like Dave Roberts, Shawn Green, and Robin Ventura when I was with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2002 to 2004. They taught me how to keep things loose, about having fun. Robin Ventura deserves a special mention. He never took himself too seriously. And here was a guy who was a two-time All-Star who played sixteen seasons in the big leagues.

Another highlight was my time in Atlanta from 2009 to 2012. After spending a few years on losing teams, where the morale could be low—and in turn, make players selfish—Atlanta was a big step for me in my development as a player, person, and teammate. Atlanta showed me what a good clubhouse culture was like.

I have to salute catcher Brian McCann. I get all emotional about that dude—he’s just a quality human being to the core. Brian never says a bad word about anybody, even in private. After one early road game in Philadelphia he invited me to come hang out. I knocked on Brian’s hotel door and he said, “Hey, come on in. I’m going to order room service.” The postgame spread was sometimes terrible, so from then on we fell into a habit of ordering room service and talking baseball. Pitcher Eric O’Flaherty and first baseman Eric Hinske would show up, too, and we’d all sit around and talk about the game—and about life. Those little get-togethers made such a difference, especially on long road trips away from your family.

Pitcher Tim Hudson, my college teammate at Auburn, was in Atlanta, too. He’s a great, great guy and friend. And I can’t overlook manager Bobby Cox, a tremendous influence on me. Bobby knew how to get the most out of everyone. Atlanta was the first team I played for where the front office didn’t tell its players how to act. Other organizations sometimes tell players this is who you should be and this is how you should do it. Atlanta was different. We didn’t have a stretch time before games—it was the only organization I was in that didn’t have a scheduled stretch time. It was the greatest thing ever. Bobby was like, “You’re a professional and a grown man and you should know how to get yourself ready to play. I’m not going to tell you how to get ready.” If I needed to stretch before a game, I went out and stretched. If you needed to take batting practice, you took batting practice.

Bobby expected you to look and act like a professional. We had a uniform we had to wear on and off the field. Bobby wanted you in slacks. That was about the only thing players hated about Bobby. We had to be dressed in slacks on the road with a collared shirt—the total opposite of Joe Maddon’s philosophy! But the thing was, nobody in Atlanta complained about the dress code because Bobby allowed us to come and go as we wanted. There wasn’t a curfew. He expected us as grown men to stay out of trouble, do things right, play hard.

When I returned to Boston in 2013, I saw what a winning organization looked like and what winning players believed in, what they did with their nights and downtime on the road. Some nights one of the guys might take out a guitar and we’d all hang out and have a beer together in the room—usually the suite of the player who made the most money! We’d have a few beers, play video games, talk. Dustin Pedroia, Mike Napoli, Jonny Gomes. Those guys invited me to their room to talk baseball. We talked strategy and how our team could get better. It also was an opportunity to get stuff off your chest, maybe even talk about your manager and a move he made in the game that night. These guys taught me how important open communication was in creating a good atmosphere and a winning ball club.

DAVID’S iPHONE JOURNAL

2/26/16

Busy last few days, lots of dinners, golf, and hanging with the boys. Got Dex [Dexter Fowler] back yesterday, everyone was excited. Lost [Chris] Coghlin, I think he will get a great opportunity in Oakland. I’m getting a lot of attention about retiring and what great things my teammates are saying about me. Don’t know why these guys love me so much but it sure feels nice. We are into live BP and the pitchers I caught look great. Feel ok in the box, BP is much more consistent. There are a bunch of great young kids in camp. The catching group has a bunch of great catchers.

My journey in professional baseball began with the Los Angeles Dodgers. I was drafted in the seventh round out of Florida in the 1998 Major League Draft and made my major-league debut in 2002 at the age of twenty-five. Only three of the fifty players the Dodgers drafted in 1998 played for the big-league team four years later: first-rounder Bubba Crosby, fifth-rounder Scott Proctor, a product of Florida State in my hometown of Tallahassee, and me. I played in my first MLB game on June 29, 2002, pinch-hitting for Shawn Green and striking out in the ninth inning of a 7–0 loss to the Angels. Two months later, I doubled for my first major-league hit on September 2, 2002, at Arizona, off Eddie Oropesa. Later in the same game, I hit my first home run in the major leagues, off first baseman Mark Grace, who pitched the ninth inning in that game. We were beating the Diamondbacks 18–0 and Grace, a thirty-eight-year-old left-hander, volunteered to pitch the ninth inning. Grace retired Jeff Reboulet and Wilkin Ruan on fly-ball outs before I smacked a 396-foot home run to left field.

It’s fun to reminisce about that at-bat. An ESPN story by Jesse Rogers in June 2016 recounted the historical moment with me and Mark, who still gives me grief to this day:

GRACE: I remember I got Jeff Reboulet out on a fly ball. I got Wilkin Ruan on a fly ball, then David Ross comes up. I never heard of the freaking guy. I figured he stinks.

ROSS: He threw a batting practice fastball, and Reboulet took it and he ended up getting him out. Then he did the same thing to the hitter in front of me. So I’m thinking to myself, if he lobs that in to me I’m swinging.

GRACE: Sure enough I threw him a 68 mph fastball down the middle and he tattooed it a long, long way.

ROSS: So he lobbed it in there and I hit it, man. I really hit it. I still have the bat. It’s a Pro-Stock M110. You know, all these guys have their names on their bats and I have a Pro Stock from the minors. So I’m sprinting around the bases and I hit first base and I hear him start screaming at me.

GRACE: I cursed at him all around the bases, then I realized after it was over that this poor son-of-gun waited his whole life to hit a home run in the big leagues, and of course he hits it off me in an 18–0 game.

ROSS: He’s cursing, “C’mon man you’re stealing my thunder.” I’m keeping my head down like, oh my gosh, this guy is going to kill me. I was so nervous.

GRACE: I got a bad scouting report. I was told he was a good fastball hitter, so I threw a bad fastball and he still hit it a mile.

ROSS: It was over pretty quick, but the next day I got a request for a radio interview with him. I remember I was laughing the whole time and I let him talk. He was letting me have it. I probably didn’t say five words.

GRACE: If I’m David Ross, I don’t know if I wanted it any other way. How many guys can say their first big league home run was off a guy who threw one inning and was a position player for 16 years?

In 2003, I became the Dodgers’ backup catcher behind Paul Lo Duca when Todd Hundley underwent back surgery. I spent the final five months of 2003 on the big-league team, and 19 of my first 34 major league hits went for extra bases, including 11 home runs. According to Dodger Insider, I am the last Dodgers catcher with at least 100 plate appearances to slug above .500, so that’s pretty cool. In 2004, I moved into the starter’s role for the first time when Lo Duca was traded to the Florida Marlins on July 30.

I struggled at the plate that year, but one highlight of that season was my first walk-off home run. I hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the tenth inning off Steve Reed in a 4–2 win over the Colorado Rockies at Dodger Stadium in a game that clinched a tie for the National League West title. In the National League Division Series against St. Louis, I went 0-for-3 with a walk in a backup role behind veteran Brent Mayne. On March 30, 2005, during spring training after nearly seven years in the Dodgers organization, I was sold to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Just when I thought I’d caught a break in getting promoted to the starting role, I had to pack my bags. Professional sports can be like that. As I headed off to Pittsburgh, I had no clue I was embarking on the start of a zigzag journey that would feature stops in Pittsburgh, San Diego, Cincinnati, Boston, Atlanta, Boston again, and, finally, Chicago.