The Lefty Who Drove Twenty-Five Minutes to Throw With Me

Here is the part of a comeback that nobody puts in the montage.

You cannot do it alone. Not the willpower part — the mechanical part. A pitcher needs someone standing sixty feet away with a glove, four or five days a week, for months. There is no substitute and there is no app for it. If nobody shows up, you do not throw.

In 2006 I was twenty, seven months out of a total hip replacement, and I had decided I was going to pitch professionally. I had no team. I had no coach. I had a surgeon who had said "you can do it if you're smart," a scar down my leg, and an enormous amount of time.

What I had that actually mattered was Michael Keyes.

He lived twenty-five minutes away

That is the whole thing, and I want to say it plainly before I dress it up in anything.

He lived about twenty-five minutes from me. When I told him I was trying to make a comeback, he started driving over to throw. Not once. Not when it was convenient. Whenever I wanted.

He was, for whatever reason, just always available.

We became good friends almost immediately. He loved throwing — genuinely loved it, the way some people love a sport more than the sport ever loved them back. He was a baseball nerd. And I think in his own mind he still had a shot, too.

He was another lefty. Of course he was.

What it cost him

Nothing, if you are counting money. He was not paid. There was no arrangement. Nobody was watching, because there was nothing to watch — a kid with a new hip playing catch on a high school field in Arizona is not a story yet. It only became one later.

But twenty-five minutes each way, four or five days a week, for months, is not nothing. That is a person choosing to spend a large fraction of a year on somebody else's improbable idea.

I got the innings back because he drove.

The thing I understand now that I didn't then

Years later, in the offseasons, Doc Larson threw with me in Phoenix — a chiropractor in his fifties who kept my arm alive between seasons for no reason other than that he wanted to.

I have written that one already, and when I did I thought I was making a point about generosity.

I was not. I was making a point about infrastructure.

A professional pitcher is a piece of equipment that requires a second person to operate. That is true at twenty and it is true at forty-one. Every arm you have ever watched on television was kept in working order by somebody standing sixty feet away who is not in any record of it.

Keyes is the version of that at the exact point where it decided everything. If he had not been available — if he had lived across town, or had a job with different hours, or just been slightly less into it — I do not throw enough in 2006 to be worth signing in 2007. There is no version of this where I will myself through that on my own.

Kickers

We called each other Kickers, which does not mean anything and never did. He signed off "kickers wings kickers." I still do it in my head.

We stayed in touch for a decade after. He went to Hollywood and ended up at a major agency, working with real actors, writing a pilot. I went to Illinois, Canada, Mexico, the Czech Republic. We would surface in each other's inboxes every few months — him telling me about a promotion, me telling him I was in Brno.

I have not been able to reach him properly in years, and I have tried more than a few times. That happens with people. It does not change what he did.

If you are the one being helped

Two things, and then I will stop.

The first is that you almost certainly do not know, in the moment, which person is the one your whole thing depends on. I thought I was being helped by a friend who liked to play catch. I was being carried.

The second is that the people who do this never present it as a favour. Keyes never once made it feel like a favour. He made it feel like he was getting something out of it, which he probably was, and which is exactly why it worked and why it lasted a whole year.

If somebody is doing that for you right now, tell them. I am aware that I am writing this to the internet instead of to him, and I am aware of what that says.

Kickers — it was you. Everything after 2007 is standing on the fact that you got in the car.