The Arm (37 page)

“About thirty-two,” the coach said. “But you can do it in thirty.”

“If you say I can do it in thirty,” Coffey said, “I'm-a do it in thirty.”

He did it in thirty, and by the third sprint, Coffey sucked down breaths with ravenous thirst, his hogshead chest heaving. As he went for round four, another coach marveled at Coffey's toothpick legs somehow supporting his torso in defiance of the laws of physics.

On the way back to the minor league clubhouse, as Coffey walked by a truck for Ellie Lou's Brews & BBQ that said “We'll Rub You the Right Way,” a fan asked him to autograph some old baseball cards. For the moment, Coffey felt like a big leaguer again. “You don't know what you miss 'til you're out. You really don't,” Coffey said. “Does it suck? Yeah, it sucks ass. Can I do anything else about it? No. It is what it is right now. But I've always made my own opportunities.”

On March 7, in the Braves' fourth game of the spring, Coffey was summoned from minor league camp for an inning. He struck out two. His fastball hit 94. For most of the game, Coffey hung on the bench with former Braves star Fred McGriff, who had retired the year before Coffey's debut. They talked about how players are too soft these days. “I am such a fucking old man,” Coffey said.

Five days after the first outing, Coffey was summoned again in a more precarious situation: first inning, bases loaded, two outs. He allowed a two-run single, reloaded the bases with a walk, and escaped with a flyout. For the next ten days, Coffey waited for another shot with the big league team. He kept his arm fresh in minor league games until the Braves summoned him once more March 23. Coffey allowed two runs on three singles. “Was actually happy with it, even though I gave up two runs,” he said. “They were the types of runs I like to give up. All ground-ball hits.”

Concerned with the lack of major league action, Coffey asked coaches and others what they thought about his stuff. Coffey does this with such sincerity, such an earnest disposition, it's damn near impossible to tell him the unvarnished truth. It's almost as though Coffey's optimism is a contagion that causes white lies. While Braves officials assured Coffey that his stuff was good, the private reports differed. Neither the sinker nor the slider moved like it once did. “Flat,” one scout said. And with the average fastball for a reliever approaching 93 miles per hour, whatever speed advantage Coffey once had, had been nullified by the velocity revolution.

He whiled away his days with a light morning workout, a minor league game in the afternoon, and trips with Jennifer and Declan to one of the four nearby Disney parks at night. Coffey stomached “It's a Small World” more times than he could count. Declan, now two, rode through the Haunted Mansion and started clapping at the sight of someone hanging by his neck. It was like every other day in the last two and a half years: the same thing, over and over, with one goal in mind. And even though Coffey hadn't spent a full day in the major league camp, when asked where he expected to start the year, he said: “I think a big league spot. There's no doubt in my mind that I'm going to Triple-A if I don't have a spot in the big leagues. I've been ninety-three to ninety-four. Just the way they've pitched me and treated me. I've gotten regular work.”

By April 1, it had been more than a week since Coffey had pitched in a major league game, and his assignment was indeed a joke: the back fields in Lakeland, Florida, pitching against Double-A kids from the Detroit Tigers system. It was a strictly friends-and-family affair, fields with no seats and benches so uncomfortable Coffey preferred to stand. He wore number 99 on his back and a fuller mustache on his face. “I'd feel weird if it weren't there,” Coffey said.

He trotted to the mound in the ninth inning. The first hitter chopped a 91-mph sinker off home plate for a single. The next grounded a 90-mph sinker into a double play. And after his velocity came back against the third hitter—Coffey said his arm finally loosened up, and he started with three straight pitches at 93—it took a slick catch by the Braves' top prospect, second baseman José Peráza, to end the game. Coffey didn't know if he got a save. He wasn't paying attention to the score and jogged off the field and out of the heat quickly.

“Want some water?” a coach asked.

“Nah,” Coffey said. “I don't believe in it. Water's for the weak. Tequila. Real man's drink.”

Both laughed as Coffey packed his bag. He hauled it over his shoulder and headed toward the bus. Parked adjacent to it were four car haulers stuffed with trucks and SUVs, Audis and Lexuses. The apogee of automotive excessiveness sat atop one of the eighteen-wheelers: Tigers starter Alfredo Simon's Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG, covered front to back in chrome. It shined like a beacon.

“Just another reminder,” Coffey said. “It's where you want to be. Where I deserve to be right now. Get out there with no adrenaline and throw like that? Get me into the season, it's gonna be harder, better.” He grew up loving the Braves, and even if the team looked like it was going to stink, he could make up for the time he missed last season, maybe even close a game or two if the Braves traded All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel, which they did within the week. Coffey was convinced everything was coming together, that this wouldn't be Seattle 2.0, that outings like the one on April Fools' Day would convince the Braves of his worthiness.

Before he got onto the bus, Coffey reached into his glove and flipped the game ball to me. “Your first save,” he said.

I thanked him and made sure to keep it in a safe place. I figured he might want it someday.

W
HEN THE PHONE IN THE
bullpen rang, Daniel Hudson's body tensed up. Being a relief pitcher means being ready to throw at any moment, pushing the arm from zero to 60 in supercar time. On May 23, 2015, a day after he threw two perfect innings, the dugout summoned him once more.

“Get Huddy ready for the next hitter,” the instructions went, and off went the training wheels once and for all. Two years of being babied, coddled, and nursed back to health disappeared with one phone call. It was like Hudson was just another pitcher: summoned for one out in the eighth inning of a tight game,
throwing on back-to-back days, testing the fortitude of his arm. Following a pair of changeups to Chicago Cubs outfielder Chris Coghlan, Hudson reached back—far back, like he always would, bad habits so hard to break—and threw a baseball harder than he ever had thrown it.

The only time the radar gun lies is when it spits numbers onto stadium scoreboards. On occasion, they add a mile or two or three per hour, whether it's to oblige the psyche of the man on the mound or excite fans. And those guns once said Hudson was flirting with triple digits, which was all well and good, if not entirely truthful.

This pitch to Coghlan was tracked by three cameras—one behind home plate, one in center field, one down a baseline—that followed the ball from the moment it left his hand to when it crossed the plate. It drifted 5¼ inches away and spun 1,995 revolutions per minute and crossed the plate for a strike at 98 miles per hour. And for someone who long wondered whether he was supposed to throw a pitch again, he couldn't have asked for a more definitive answer.

Around baseball, people watched Hudson with great interest. Other Tommy John survivors' futures were tenuous. Stephen Strasburg couldn't seem to stay off the disabled list. Matt Harvey went through his innings drama. Jarrod Parker, a little more than a year removed from asking Hudson what it was like to come back from a second UCL reconstruction, collapsed to the ground during a rehab start. He suffered an avulsion fracture in the medial epicondyle, the same injury seen in the Japanese children visiting Naotaka Mamizuka's baseball clinic. Parker needed another surgery. No major league pitcher had ever returned from a pair of Tommy Johns and a broken elbow.

“You want to not feel anything in your elbow ever again?” Hudson said. “Just don't throw.”

Hudson's arm scare during spring training turned out to be nothing more than triceps tendinitis. He was offered a chance to
jump into an MRI tube to confirm the diagnosis. He declined. Hudson gobbled anti-inflammatories for five days, rested, and returned for one final spring start in which he threw seventy-two pitches. When he woke up the next morning his arm felt fine.

“Honestly, at this point, if I just sat there and thought about my elbow, it would start aching,” Hudson said. “I swear to God. I feel like it would. I don't know if I'm just wired weird to where, once I get on the mound, I don't think about anything else except throwing the baseball. I don't know if I'm just wired differently than other people.”

Mike Harkey assured him his future was in the rotation, and Hudson even made a spot start in May after a line drive brained rookie starter Archie Bradley and sidelined him for a week. Bullpen work suited Hudson well, though, the short, high-intensity bursts allowing him to better monitor his delivery, which too often got out of whack and started resembling his presurgery motion. His hand stayed on top of the ball better and his arm didn't wind up behind him quite as much, but the basics were too ingrained. He threw how he threw. He'd throw how he'd always thrown.

And when it blew—an elbow like Hudson's, it always is a matter of when, with the hope that it's a decade and not a year—he could call it a good career and not be lying to himself. Baseball was going to end at some point, and the two years away had given Hudson a far better sense of what life was going to look like when it did. He liked what he saw.

In Hudson's bedroom, two oversized nightstands abut his bed. Sara spent two years convincing her husband the room needed them. At five thousand dollars apiece, they were an extravagant purchase, ridiculous in Hudson's mind, but Sara was convinced they were important.

When Hudson goes to sleep, his right arm flexes into the air, almost like he's cocking it to throw a baseball. The second his eyes open, he focuses on his right arm and straightens it slowly. And
when it's fully extended and no pain shoots through it, Daniel Hudson will roll over, hunt for the open wooden spot on the nightstand next to the mercury-glass lamps, ball up his fist, and knock twice, thankful for at least one more day his arm is still capable of wondrous things.

O
N THE MORNING HE WAS
released, Todd Coffey didn't even have time to change into his uniform. He showed up in the Atlanta Braves' minor league clubhouse, a space cramped with twentysomethings that smelled like hangover and Axe body spray, and was summoned immediately to meet with Jonathan Schuerholz, the assistant farm director and the son of the Braves' president. He said Coffey did not make the Triple-A roster and that he wished him the best of luck wherever he ended up. It was quick and painful.

Coffey cleared his locker and bolted out. He wanted to go far away but ended up at Epcot instead because his kids were in town and they wanted to go. He didn't understand. This wasn't like Seattle, the difference between Triple-A and the major leagues. He couldn't even crack a minor league roster.

“I'm baffled beyond baffled,” Coffey said. “If I'd have been sucking, I could read the writing on the wall. I'm pretty honest with myself.”

Because every other team spent its spring paring down rosters in the same fashion as Atlanta, Coffey found no immediate suitors. He refused to consider the independent leagues, the standard home for MLB vagabonds seeking employment, or the Mexican League, where an old friend offered him a job. He would wait and find other things to occupy his days. “Guess I can get back to extreme couponing for a short time,” Coffey said.

Back into the routine he went: up at 11:00 a.m., off to the gym, throw in the afternoon, home for dinner, play with Declan, help Hannah with her homework, and avoid baseball at night.
“It's almost physically painful to watch some of these guys throw shit up there and get their asses handed to them,” Coffey said. “Like, in my chest. It's nausea. Honestly, I could pitch in the big leagues tonight.”

And he believed it. He really, truly believed it, every word of it, and that was the essence of Todd Coffey. When I suggested it might be his age, he pointed to older pitchers. And when I hinted at his weight scaring off teams, he noted there were worse bodies in the big leagues. And when I alluded to the two full seasons since his last major league outing, he blamed Seattle.

When Coffey stared in the mirror, a major league pitcher stared back at him. “I know my arm is good,” Coffey said. “I know I'm ready to pitch. That's what sucks. I was going to have a better year than I did last year. I know I was.”

May rolled around. Jobs opened up. Nobody called Coffey. He spent his days going through the motions, his nights with his fish tank, waiting until the LED shut down at 11:00, shining his flashlight, watching the show, going to sleep, doing it all again. He thought about retiring. He thought more and realized he couldn't. Maybe if his sinker wasn't hitting 93 and 94 in bullpen sessions.

He so badly wanted to be in the 80 percent that made it back. For himself and Jennifer, for Hannah and Declan, for Rutherfordton and the donor's family, even if they never wrote him back. Coffey spent more time than Daniel Hudson trying to return to the major leagues, and he refused to say it was for nothing.

Coffey started to consider independent ball and Mexico. Jennifer wanted to know the history of pitchers coming back to the big leagues from Mexico. The closest comparable to Coffey was Seth McClung, another big, red-haired, right-handed reliever with six major league seasons. He spent one year in Mexico, pitched well, and never played again. Only two players in the previous five years had made it to the major leagues after pitching in Mexico: Jean Machi, the San Francisco Giants' mop-up reliever,
and Rafael Martin, who debuted with the Washington Nationals five years after he last pitched in Mexico.