CHAPTER 9
JUST CONTINUE TO BREATHE
9:30 P.M.
Cubs Lead, 5–1
Thirty minutes before Game Seven, MLB Network producer Danny Field asked if I would wear a live mic for the game. Danny has helped produce Major League Baseball’s World Series documentaries over the years and is really a good guy.
I got to know him in 2013, when I was with the Boston Red Sox and we won the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals. I had worn a live mic before in other games during my career, and I never minded it. You really kind of forget it is there. Plus, I trusted that Danny would not embarrass me or the team—they promised to edit the tape before it was aired. So I said okay.
In the top of the fifth, the network caught a wired-up exchange between first baseman Anthony Rizzo and myself and aired it as part of its “Sounds of the Game” segment during the game broadcast. That allowed viewers at home to listen in on our conversation (a few minutes after it occurred) in the dugout.
Second baseman Javier Baez had just homered to right-center field on the first pitch of the inning off Cleveland starter Corey Kluber. Baez’s home run extended our lead to 4–1. Rizzo, with his left arm draped over my left shoulder as I stood in front of the dugout railing, told me he was an “emotional wreck” and in a “glass case of emotions right now.” It probably was the first time a professional player quoted the 2004 movie Anchorman during a World Series—Vince Vaughn was one of the stars of that movie and had visited our clubhouse during the 2016 season—but Anthony was being honest about the moment.
Here’s the full exchange:
ROSS: Talk to me.
RIZZO: I can’t control myself right now. I’m trying my best.
ROSS: It’s understandably so, buddy.
RIZZO: I’m emotional.
ROSS: I hear you.
RIZZO: I’m an emotional wreck.
ROSS: It’s only going to get worse. Just continue to breathe. That’s all you do, buddy. That’s all you can do. It’s only going to get worse.
RIZZO: I’m in a glass case of emotion right now.
That three-run lead turned into a four-run lead later in the fifth inning, thanks to Rizzo.
The Indians replaced Kluber with left-handed reliever Andrew Miller following Baez’s home run. Kluber threw 57 pitches, 36 for strikes, but didn’t have strikeouts, compared to the 15 he fanned in his first two starts of the Series.
Dexter Fowler greeted Miller with a 1-2 single to left field past a diving Francisco Lindor at shortstop. Kyle Schwarber grounded into a 6-4-3 double play, but Kris Bryant followed with a great at-bat. He drew a walk on the ninth pitch of his at-bat that saw Andrew throw six consecutive sliders.
That brought up the “emotional” Rizzo. Despite the volcano of feelings inside him, Rizzo, a left-handed hitter, worked a 1-2 count before lashing a single to right field. Kris took off on the pitch and scored easily from first. Rizzo advanced to second on the throw to home plate. Ben Zobrist then hit a long fly ball into center field and Rajai Davis made a running catch a few steps in front of the wall for the third out.
DAVID’S iPHONE JOURNAL
4/18/16
Opening day was not as cool as I was hoping for. Was just happy to get the season started. We played well, and I had a good game the second game. Is always nice to get that first hit out of the way. Was cool to start my last season at the same place I got called up and got my first at-bat. Got a cool story about Bubba, the clubhouse manager in Anaheim. He didn’t make guys who made their debut with him pay dues. But you had to sign his debut ball and date it. He still had the ball and had me sign the sweet spot for my last year. What a great guy! We had an off day back in Arizona yesterday and beat the Dbacks tonight. We may have lost Schwarber. He got tangled with Dex in the outfield. So I am catching Hammel tomorrow. Should be fun. Looking forward to getting home and seeing my family. Can’t wait to see Wrigley rocking. Miss my kids and wife bad. Need some family time.
Rizzo was selected by the Boston Red Sox in the sixth round of the 2007 MLB draft out of Stoneman-Douglas High in Parkland, Florida. Theo Epstein, general manager and executive vice president of the Red Sox, traded Rizzo to San Diego in 2010—but with the promise he’d see him again. Anthony made his major-league debut on June 9, 2011, against the Washington Nationals. But, as promised, Epstein, who had left the Red Sox for the Cubs in 2011, traded for Rizzo in January 2012. He’s been a fixture in Chicago ever since because of his incredible talent and personality.
I watched Anthony Rizzo as closely as I watched anybody when I sat on the bench. I expected a lot out of him. He is my friend. I know what he’s capable of, and I was probably hard on him because I can’t even imagine what he’s ultimately capable of as a player. He was consistently one of our best at-bats. His two-strike approach is the best I have seen in my career.
In our last regular-season game of 2016, however, against the Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley, Rizzo didn’t go to his two-strike approach when he led off the bottom of the eighth inning against Reds reliever Blake Wood. We led 3–2. Rizzo fell behind in the count 0-2. On the fourth pitch of the at-bat, he strikes out swinging. It was his normal swing, one without any of the adjustments he normally made with two strikes. He didn’t choke up on the bat. He still used his usual high leg kick, and he didn’t move on top of the plate to better see outside pitches.
I noticed all this from the bench. I had planned to give him a great big bear hug and congratulate him on a great season after his at-bat—he was the first Cubs player in franchise history to hit thirty-plus home runs over three consecutive seasons. But I probably didn’t give him enough time to collect his thoughts when he returned to the dugout. He was at the bat rack, taking off his gloves, when he saw me walking toward him. He looked at me and said, “What!? What!? I didn’t want to go to my two-strike approach.”
I walked up to him and, without any emotion on my face, hugged him and said, “Hey, man, congratulations on a great year.” He was real quiet, and I just walked back down the dugout and sat on the bench. A few seconds later, Anthony walked down and said, “Hey, man. Sorry.” He didn’t have to apologize. But he knew what he did, and he knew that I knew what he did. He knew that I was watching him, too. I told him, “Don’t apologize to me, bro. It’s your career, not mine.”
I told the truth to Anthony and I was on him because I love him. He is the guy everyone is watching. He sets the tone for our team. Veterans don’t talk to guys they don’t care about. I learned that early in baseball. Young players would wonder, Why is this dude always on me? Veterans give younger players a hard time when they like them. When veterans are not talking to you, watch out. They probably don’t like the way you are acting.
With Rizzo it was like a big brother–little brother relationship—he’s twelve years younger than me. But I rode his ass when I needed to. On the afternoon of Thursday, September 17, 2015, we were playing in Pittsburgh and had the bases loaded with no outs against Pirates right-handed starter Charlie Morton. Dexter Fowler singled, Kyle Schwarber singled, and Chris Coughlan reached on a fielding error to open the game. Rizzo, in the cleanup hole, was up. With a 1-1 count, Anthony rolled over a pitch and hit into 4-6-3 double play.
I was always on Anthony about having a quality at-bat. I know I wasn’t a great hitter, so criticizing Rizzo or a Kris Bryant on their batting was a little bit out of my league. But I had watched how the great ones worked their at-bats, and I also knew when there was a teachable moment. And that swing was a teachable moment. We had Morton on the ropes in the first inning, but I thought, “This dude [Rizzo] didn’t come to play.” I watched Anthony like a hawk and I was on the bench pissed, fuming. A few innings later he asked me what I thought, and I just laid into him. I said, “You want the truth?”
And he said, “Yeah.” Anthony’s such a nice kid, but I let him have it.
“You’re telling me Charlie Morton gets you to roll over on the first pitch? I watched your at-bat. You’re not locked in today.”
I couldn’t believe he didn’t punch me in the face after that! Well, later, in the fifth inning, Anthony unloaded on Morton and smacked a two-run home run to erase a one-run deficit. As soon as Anthony hit it, he looked directly at me and pointed in the dugout like, “Fuck you.”
When he came in the dugout, he was in my face. I told him that if he needed me to yell at him every game to make him better, I’d yell at him every day. That was the kind of relationship we had. We were honest with each other, and we got really close.
Look what he achieved in 2016. He won his first Gold Glove (superior fielding) and Silver Slugger (best offensive player at each position) awards. He finished in the top five of the National League MVP voting after hitting .292 with 32 home runs and a career-high 109 RBIs. (Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant was the runaway MVP pick with 29 of a possible 30 first-place votes, with the only other vote putting him in second place.)
I told Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated for a July 2016 story he did on Anthony that Rizzo was “probably the most important player we have on our team,” and I meant it. It wasn’t just his skills on the field, it was also his attitude. “Every time you’re around him, whether you’re on the field or out to dinner or any place, he wants everybody to have a good time,” I told Tom. “He’s more worried about everybody else and puts himself second. Whether it’s his at-bats, batting practice or anything, he’s quick to take a backseat to others. That’s unusual for a superstar.”
Jonny Gomes, one of my good friends and a teammate of mine on the 2013 Boston Red Sox, once called me a chameleon because I knew how to fit in any situation. He said I could make friends in a room full of strangers. It was something I had to do all my life, but I always felt comfortable in my surroundings. You adapted or you got left behind, right? I thought the same thing of Anthony. He was a chameleon. He kept tabs on everyone on the Cubs team during my two seasons. If you didn’t have family in town, he’d fire out a text inviting you to dinner. He wanted to make sure everyone was included. He was the heart of our team.
DAVID’S iPHONE JOURNAL
4/10/16
First road trip in the books. The boys went 5-1 and had a chance to win the one loss. Jake went deep in his second start against Arizona. Lester and Lack have to buy him a watch per their bet for the first pitcher to hit a homer. Mark Grace and the Dbacks did a nice video for me. Going to send him a thank you when they come to see our place. We did lose Schwarber for the year with a knee injury. That really sucks. Super excited about the home opener. Keep thinking it’s going to be like the playoffs last year. It was so electric. I get to catch Jon, which is really cool too. Last home opener may be the best one since getting my ring in Boston. I AM SO EXCITED TO SEE MY FAMILY!! It has been way too long. Kids are changing fast. Pretty sure wife could use a break, haha.
Rizzo is a special dude. Most know he beat cancer, too. In May 2008 he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He went through chemotherapy for six months, and in November 2008, his doctors told him “he could live a normal life.” He hasn’t stopped living, either. We connected immediately and I know the guy knows how to have fun. Sometimes at my expense, too.
It all started because of my own self-deprecation when it came to admitting how old I was. I made fun of myself a lot, especially in 2015, when I signed with the Cubs and was the team’s clear elder statesman at thirty-nine.
One night during spring training in 2016 I was at dinner with Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and a few other guys and we started talking about Instagram, the social media app. I always made fun of them always checking their phones and stuff posted on those sites, mainly because I had no idea how it worked. (Keep in mind, when I started my professional baseball career, people were still using dial-up Internet!) So, Rizzo and K.B. were like, “We’re going to start an Instagram account for you.” So the very next day we were in the locker room and they showed me an Instagram account dubbed “Grandpa Rossy.”
They never called me grandpa, but it was the name they came up with. I joked that the guys were treating me like I had one foot in the grave, but they said they wanted me to feel special. The Instagram account was a fun way to say they cared about me and were going to miss me. They wanted to take some photographs and get some videos of me and have some fun with the account. The first three pictures on the account were one of me posing at a sporting goods store with a Cubs shirt and mitt in one hand, and pants, batting gloves, and knee pads before my “last first day”; another one of Rizzo, Bryant, and me at a Phoenix Suns game; and a black-and-white baseball card of me from when I was with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Anything those whippersnappers touched was gold. The next thing I knew the “Grandpa Rossy” account had hit 24,000 followers. It was still the first day, February 21. Within a week I couldn’t go to a game without being called “Grandpa.” People in the stands were like, “Grandpa, Grandpa.” John Lackey, a year younger than me at thirty-eight, asked, “Are you going to let them call you grandpa?” But what could I do? The thing had taken on a life of its own.
At one point during spring training, some of the guys presented me with a motorized scooter “to help me get around.” “At first, we kind of felt bad calling him grandpa,” Bryant acknowledged to a Chicago Tribune reporter. “He’s like 38 years old. That’s pretty young for a normal person. He’s enjoyed it.”
The younger guys loved it because it got me so much more attention when we were out and about. We’d go to dinner and people would come up and ask for a photo or an autograph. I’d never taken so many pictures or signed so many autographs in my life, including when I’d won the Series with Boston in 2013.
One time a guy yelled across a restaurant, “Hey Grandpa!” when I walked in. The guy had to have been fifteen years older than me. I started looking around like, is this guy talking to me? I’d be out to dinner with Hyla and the kids, and people would ask for pictures. It got so crazy that I had to ask my family if they were okay with me having my photograph taken while we were out. They’d say, “That’s fine, Dad, as long as it doesn’t take forever.”
The “Grandpa Rossy” phenomenon started to get press attention, and eventually the Cubs organization got into the action, too. An official Grandpa Rossy T-shirt was designed and the Cubs started selling them at Wrigley. It was crazy.
The Cubs also produced a series of videos with me to help generate All-Star votes for my teammates. In one, I—as Grandpa Rossy—use a rotary phone to implore fans to dial “#votecubs” and call in their vote. In another, I encourage them to fax in their votes.
One of my most vivid memories from the Series is what Rizzo did after we fell behind the Indians three games to one. Rizzo wanted to fire up everybody, as well as ease some of the crazy pressure we were all feeling. So in the clubhouse before Game Five at Wrigley Field, Rizzo started playing Rocky movie quotes over the speaker system. Rocky is, of course, the rags-to-riches 1976 movie that starred Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, a boxer who overcame long odds to get a shot at the world heavyweight championship. Rizzo also had these other movie speeches on his iPad, like Al Pacino’s from Any Given Sunday.
Anthony played these speeches as he walked around and beat his chest. Everyone was like, “Oh, it’s just Rizzo.” When the theme song from Rocky came on, he was full-monty theatrics. He ran into the locker room naked, jumped up and down, and shadowboxed his way around the entire room. He kept saying, “It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get up.” The place erupted; everyone was laughing. But we won Game Five, 3–2.
For Game Six we headed back to Cleveland and Rizzo did the same thing. Naked, jumped up and down, shadowboxed, saying, “It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get up.” And we won that game, too, 9–3.
So it was a given that the same routine would happen before Game Seven. This time Rizzo ended up on a coffee table in the locker room. Just then one of the players thought he’d be funny and took a can of shoe cleaner and sprayed Rizzo. Rizzo was pissed, but he didn’t want to show it so he went straight to the shower and washed off.
After Rizzo had been gone about five minutes, his saying popped into my head: “It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get back up.” After the spraying incident, the vibe in the locker room had immediately changed, so I walked toward the shower area as Rizzo was toweling off.
“You all right, man?” I asked. He still was pissed and ready to light into the player, but I said, “It’s not how many times you get knocked down…”
Suddenly he looked up and flashed a grin at me. “You’re right, you’re right,” he said. And then he proceeded to drop his towel and run back into the locker room and start his whole routine again. I could only stand there and laugh.