The Arm (26 page)

Remaking Daniel Hudson into Greg Maddux was not going to happen. Bad habits can be learned in a matter of hours. Hudson spent nearly a quarter century repeating his. He couldn't just deprogram it at the snap of Crank's or Arnie's fingers. Only a few cells in the human body contain more than one nucleus. Muscle cells are among them, and the body's ability to recruit nuclei to allow it to learn and retain movement patterns—to create muscle memory—is one of human beings' great wonders. It allows us to
walk and talk. Every movement we make comes from the symbiosis of muscles and the brain. Even when muscles shrink—as happens following Tommy John surgery—the nuclei survive in the atrophied fibers and, after rebuilding, they're anxious to reenact what they knew before. If Hudson tried to start from scratch, his body would rebel. He'd never have pristine mechanics. He just wanted lesser degrees of bad.

Hudson first looked at video of pitchers he respected. Diamondbacks video coordinator Allen Campbell queued up a lot of Justin Verlander, the Detroit Tigers' bell cow whose arm had survived eight straight two-hundred-plus-inning seasons with fastballs in the upper 90s. Hudson also watched Yu Darvish and Hiroki Kuroda, because he figured Japanese pitchers threw frequently and stayed healthy. Hudson zeroed in on their pitching hand in relation to their legs and the rest of their body, pausing and rewinding, pausing and rewinding, before split-screening his iPad to compare their deliveries with his.

“And it's like, ‘Jesus Christ,'” Hudson said. “Because you don't realize until you watch it slowed down.” He saw how far back he reached, like his arm was being pulled in the wrong direction by some delivery devil. “I always knew how long my arm actually was,” Hudson said. “You wouldn't send a video of my mechanics to a six-year-old kid learning how to pitch. I never really had pitching lessons growing up. That's what came naturally.” And it worked, which is what's so bittersweet. If Hudson threw like Maddux or Nolan Ryan or any other mechanical paragon, he might not wear a scar across his elbow. He also might never have played past high school.

Hudson resigned himself to changing his mechanics because it was the easiest potential solution. Nobody could tell him whether his old ligament and new tendon were structurally weak, the result of some bad genetic luck. And while usage might have worn down his original ligament, his second, with its low odometer, went just the same. Flaws hid even among the seemingly
flawless. Verlander missed the first two months of the 2015 season with arm issues and lost four miles per hour from his peak fastball, and Darvish's UCL soon blew.

What Hudson gleaned from watching translated almost immediately into an adjustment. During his throwing sessions before spring training, Hudson's arm took a less circuitous route to its loaded position. He would never throw over the top, but his hand position at release looked closer to the ideal. Crank gave him breathing exercises to build up his core. Inside the trainer's room, Crank ordered a half-dozen Diamondbacks to blow up balloons in a specific fashion that maximized their breathing. The tiniest movement patterns mattered. Hudson worked his internal oblique, the muscle that abuts the chest cavity, with nothing more than a light stretch done so much it became a part of his routine and muscle memory.

“Mechanically, the first time, I don't think he saw the need to change,” Crank said. “He figured he'd get it repaired and be good. He's done a tremendous job changing where he was. I'll let you know in a year or two if it works.”

Hudson tested his new delivery with Arnie on flat ground, where he could focus on its individual pieces and try to overwrite the memory embedded in his muscular and cranial hard drives. Standing ten inches up on a mound, atop the world, with someone sixty feet, six inches away, swinging a bat designed to punish pitchers who second-guessed themselves—that posed the great challenge. “We gave him one time where we kind of said, ‘All right, do it your way, Huddy,' and it was pretty damn good,” Arnie said. “He was ready to go back to the big leagues basically. And he blew out. Well, now we do this. Because it seemed like after one Tommy John, you might have to change.”

During Hudson's rehab in 2013 and 2014, four more Diamondbacks pitchers blew out: relievers Matt Reynolds and David Hernández, and starters Bronson Arroyo and Patrick Corbin. Arroyo was the epitome of durability, a fourteen-year career without a disabled-
list stint. Corbin was a mirror image of Hudson when he blew out: a twenty-four-year-old left-hander coming off a breakout second season. The injuries torpedoed Arizona and threatened the jobs of Kevin Towers and Kirk Gibson. Arizona found itself so hard-hit that a support group met daily in the trainer's room. Hudson, Reynolds, Hernández, and Corbin called themselves the UCL Club, and they spent far more time together than any would've liked, particularly Hudson, given the role that came naturally to him. “He's like the president,” Reynolds said. “Grandmaster. You have questions, you go to Huddy. He knows all.”

This made Hudson cringe; he preferred doling out advice on throwing changeups or approaching hitters. This was his lot, and he felt a duty to share his wisdom regarding how to deal with various Tommy John maladies, like differentiating between soreness and pain. “You get the sore days,” Hudson said, “and you're like, ‘Oh, no, am I broken again?' And then you come back the next day and it's fine.”

UCL clubs popped up around the league, preaching that coming back from a torn elbow ligament takes far more than twelve steps. “What makes Tommy John scary is the amount of time,” said Pittsburgh Pirates starter Charlie Morton, like Hudson a client of Andrew Lowenthal's and a 2012 Tommy John recipient. “The concept of a year. Being out a year, rehabbing for a whole year—that concept is overwhelming.” Together Hudson and his hobbled teammates worked, laughed, struggled, and looked forward to their expulsion from membership in the UCL Club. It wasn't ideal, but it beat the loneliness of having to do it all by yourself.

S
ILENCE AND TODD COFFEY RARELY
share the same space. There is always something to talk about, a story to relay, a question to ask, a laugh to elicit. If the shoulder internally rotates at 8,000 degrees per second, Coffey's mouth moves at least 7,999.

At three p.m. on May 14, 2014, an hour before his second showcase, Coffey vegged out inside Physiotherapy Associates in Phoenix, same as he'd done every day for more than a week. His easy smile in the days leading up to the showcase had changed into a grim countenance. Nothing—not kind words from his wife or pep talks from his agent—affected it.

“He's just extremely nervous,” Jennifer said. “He's like, ‘What if I throw eighty?' I'm like, ‘I don't think you're going to throw eighty.'”

“If he throws eighty, I'm gonna kill him,” said Rick Thurman, his agent. “That's what'll happen. He could run up to the plate faster than eighty miles per hour.”

Only eight teams RSVP'd for the showcase, which meant nearly three-quarters of Coffey's potential market wanted nothing to do with him even before he threw a single pitch. Of course, it was unrealistic to have expected more after his showing four months earlier. In any case, he had willed himself to a major league career before, and he could do it again, even if under tougher circumstances.

Following a treatment on his arm using a handgun-shaped Deep Muscle Stimulator and a liberal application of Hot Cheese, Coffey slipped out the side exit of Physiotherapy, walked onto the practice field, and started a soft toss, same as he had four months earlier. His arm felt great—legitimately so, and not as the product of a wish. Manual therapy and rest had cured his leg ailment, too, leaving him without excuses. The radar gun would be his judge and jury.

Scouts from ten teams actually showed. There were contenders like St. Louis and Baltimore, also-rans like Houston and Miami. Seattle wanted depth for its young bullpen and Atlanta backfill in case of further injuries. Detroit sent two sets of eyes: Scott Reid, its scouting chieftain, and his son, Brian, a Tigers area scout. Thurman engaged the group, emphasizing that Coffey's first showcase was to show he was healthy while this one better represented what he would take into a game.

“The first time was fine,” Thurman said, “but the second time is important because we want to show the progress.”

“And now he needs to get some innings,” Scott Reid added. “Did he just get out here today?”

“He's been here for about a week and a half,” Thurman said.

Reid nodded and jotted a few notes. As other scouts did the same, Coffey finished his warm-ups and crept through the netting and back to the mound filled with bad memories. Jennifer stood in a different spot this time, closer to the scouts and their radar guns. The first number would tell the story. If it started with an eight, he might as well start studying up on go-karts. If it started with nine, he would probably have a contract signed within a week. A couple of miles an hour: the difference between needing a wealth manager and Dumpster diving.

All the scouts poised their guns. Coffey fired a sinker. Every gun read the same two digits: 91

The next pitch came in at 92. Coffey threw fourteen more sinkers, all of them 91 or 92. The sixteenth pitch had heavy, late movement at 92. “That's gonna be hard to hit,” Brian Reid said. The twenty-fourth pitch was his best of the day, a hard sinker the catcher struggled to handle. Coffey threw one more pitch, a tight slider, and stepped off the mound. As the scouts put away their guns, Coffey ambled over to Jennifer and Thurman.

“Felt good,” Coffey said.

“Looked good,” Thurman said. “Nothing was under 91.”

Coffey grinned, his arm once again an ally. The scout from Houston asked a few questions about his readiness. Others listened in. Coffey radiated confidence. “I've got to face some hitters,” he said. “All I've faced is high school kids, and that's not a challenge.”

The scouts packed up their radar guns and notebooks, thanked Coffey, and walked toward their cars. One hung around: Mike Fetters, the right-hand man of Kevin Towers and a longtime friend of Thurman, dating back to their days as pitchers at Pepperdine University. Fetters spent sixteen major league seasons as a
relief pitcher and underwent Tommy John surgery at thirty-eight years old. He returned ten months later, fearful nobody would want a forty-year-old reliever, and lasted twenty-three appearances before retiring. He knew what a day like this meant. Fetters had postponed a lesson with some Phoenix-area kids at Physiotherapy to watch the showcase.

With a handful of quality big league relievers, plus Daniel Hudson nearing a return, Fetters didn't think the Diamondbacks were a fit. He promised to pass along a report to Towers, anyway. “I've got to get going,” Fetters said. “Got some young kids in there. Got to develop some young Todd Coffeys.”

Once Fetters left, Coffey started to wonder whether there would be more teams like Arizona, happy enough with their bullpens to pass on him. “We're gonna get calls,” Thurman reassured him. “You'll be fine, Todd.” Coffey wanted to know where he might end up. “Braves,” Thurman said. “But don't be surprised if Seattle makes a strong push. Their guy was here. I know him pretty well. He's brother-in-laws with my next-door neighbor.”

“I can't handle much more of this waiting,” Coffey said, and he wouldn't have to. Over the next few days, he would know which teams were feigning interest and which were serious, which were offering the best opportunities and the most money, which uniform he would wear when he sprinted in and finally did his 360.

Coffey and Jennifer jumped into their rental car, hooked a left out of the parking lot, and headed to the hotel, their first stop on his way back to the major leagues. He talked the whole ride.

A
ROUND THE SEVENTH MONTH OF
her pregnancy, when the rigors of carrying a child during a Phoenix summer started to take a toll on her psyche as well as her body, Sara Hudson just wanted a little old-fashioned romance.

“Dan,” Sara said, “how come you never stare at my eyes?”

“Because,” Daniel Hudson said, “your jugs are huge right now.”

She playfully slugged him and laughed. Romance might be missing, but Hudson's sense of humor—one of the reasons Sara fell in love with him in the first place—had returned after going AWOL for a couple of years. He tore his UCL the first time while they were still newlyweds, but their marriage had been tested by his being home twenty hours a day. The second surgery had solidified it. “You can't do anything,” Sara said of the first post-op period. “You can't go bowling. You can't go golfing. You can't do anything physically active. So we go from not seeing each other at all to me washing his balls. This is the shit that you save for eighty years old.”

Gone, finally, was the tension of uncertainty. Sara could laugh again at Hudson's overreactions, like when a dab of butter from a mishandled bagel ended up on his shirt and he went on an obscene minute-long rant. He rejoined her more fully in the marriage. “It's not about you anymore,” Sara said. “You've got a kid on the way to feed. And a bitchy, pregnant wife.”

Hudson took the one-day-at-a-time vow by which so many other athletes profess to live. It's a throwaway cliché for someone who hasn't slaved through the same rehab for two consecutive years. For Hudson, it was literal. If he felt anything in his arm, he stopped throwing immediately. No sense in pushing himself when his pace already more than halved Doug Brocail's return time. Between his cardio work and his improved breathing from the techniques and stretches Crank taught him, Hudson felt better than he had in years. He even stopped playing his avatar in the baseball video game, faux glory unnecessary when the real stuff was that much closer.

“I guess I'm just being smarter about it,” Hudson said. “I can't mentally do this again. I'm to the point now where if this shit doesn't work this time, I'm basically done. I'm going to ride this one out until it goes again. And hopefully it doesn't. Maybe I
have that thought in my mind, and I'm trying to get my body and mind stronger for this run.”