Imperfect: An Improbable Life Read Online Free Page A

the top of his head, plate umpire Ted Hendry jabbinga finger at me, Kenny Lofton, Felix Fermin, and Carlos Baerga taking their turns, then nothing but the mitt.
    By then, the clubhouse had first cleared out and then was filling again with teammates, those in the starting lineup coming in from batting practice. Pitching coach Tony Cloninger, Nokes, and I met as a group for the first time that day. There was some gravity to this, a strategy meeting when the last start went so poorly, and against the same team. On the bright side, Indians manager Mike Hargrove swapped out a third of the lineup that had hit me so hard, including three guys—Paul Sorrento, Alvaro Espinoza, and Sandy Alomar Jr.—who’d combined for six hits and four RBIs against me in those 3 2/3 innings.
    Sometimes these discussions were about how to attack the hitters, other times they were about how to stay away from the hitters. That was always the philosophical debate, and it varied from pitching coach to pitching coach, from catcher to catcher. I didn’t really have enough different pitches to have a say. At some point—and this definitely was one of those times—I had to let go of all that and trust what it was I did best. Albert Belle’s strength might indeed have been an inside fastball. And, by “strength” I meant he might hit it five hundred feet or line it off my forehead. But, I was most effective throwing inside fastballs. In fact, to right-handed hitters, that was about all I threw.
    I was asking myself, as I often did, to trust it. When the world started spinning and wobbling, when the newspapers speculated about my job security and the ballpark leaned in to gauge the fight in me, I had to remember to trust what I did, to simplify when the game sped up, to throw every pitch with something even more than conviction. I’d fallen at times into a spiral of hoping for a result I hadno control over, though that understanding wouldn’t come free until the result was long over and settled. It was a career-long struggle, actually, forgetting the immediate past and concentrating on the immediate future—that course existing only in the ball in my hand, thinking of only the next pitch. But on that dreary Saturday in the Bronx I was not going to get beaten trying something different, or get beaten throwing a pitch the catcher wanted but I wasn’t sure of. I was going to carry the game or get carried off, either way, because of me.
    It made sense at the time.
    The T-shirt I’d worn beneath my road grays in Cleveland had been sacrificed to the baseball gods, left in a trash can at Municipal Stadium. Others had paid the same price over the years, so it was not a particularly solemn occasion. The new one went on under the Yankees pinstripes. I wore old-style stirrups, but only on the days I pitched. They felt like baseball, the way the uniform was supposed to be worn.
    Cloninger, one of the most genuine men I’d ever met, who always was squarely in my corner, accompanied me to the bullpen. Directly across from the clubhouse door, a narrow, sloping tunnel led to the dugout and then the field. That walk, from the moment I cleared the dugout and stepped onto the pebbly warning track, was the symbolic start of my game. That walk was a daily renewal. It stopped me every time, in fact. It was magical. I ran some in the outfield, enough to get my legs under me, then picked up my glove and found Nokes waiting in the bullpen. He was in full gear, set up on the inside part of the plate to an invisible right-handed hitter, my right side as I faced the hitter. That was my foundation, pitching inside, and the act of generating the arm and full-body mechanics to reach out anddeliver the ball to that spot. If I could get there with the fastball, everything else—curveball, slider—would follow. I felt good. My body felt good. My head was pretty clear.
    When I walked from the bullpen across the field, flanked by Cloninger and Nokes, I vaguely heard my name shouted