One last step-up to the pitch
Adam Greenberg was set to face pitcher RA Dickey in an unlikely match-up, the manner of which neither player could have ever dreamed possible seven years ago.
In July 2005, Greenberg was stepping up to the batter’s box for his first time with the Chicago Cubs. The first pitch he faced was a 92 mph fastball from the Florida Marlins’ Valerio De Los Santos in the ninth inning of that game. The ball cannoned of his helmet and his night was over without ever really starting. It felt like his head exploded, he would later say.
To watch him now, writhing around in agony, is a tragic sight. He woke up the following morning with concussion symptoms and struggled to regain the form that saw him get that one and only chance. The Cubs released him in June 2006 and although he got opportunities at lower levels, he would never come up to bat again in the Major Leagues.
That was until last night when the now Miami Marlins club, inspired by the petition of a Chicago filmmaker, decided to grant him at least one more at-bat in the big leagues.
(Of course, for the sake of accuracy, official baseball statistics only show that Greenberg was given a walk to first base for being struck by the ball and therefore never recorded an at-bat, simply a “plate appearance”.)
“Life’s going to throw you curveballs or fastballs in the back of your head,” Greenberg told reporters.
“I got hit by one of them. it knocked me down and I could have stayed there. I had a choice... I chose to get up and get back in the box.”
With the Marlins season having been a confirmed disaster as much as two months back, manager Ozzie Guillen was even threatening to start him in left field but since thought better of it when realising how the story had grabbed the imagination around the country. Of course it doesn’t help that Guillen’s own tenure during the first season of the revamped Miami set-up has been rife with player dissatisfaction.
“As a manager, as a person, it goes 50-50,” Guillen said. “Some people will say I’m the greatest man to let this kid do it, some people will say I’m an idiot to make that happen. Hopefully the players out there don’t mind either. I know one guy will say ‘yes’, another will say ‘no’, another will say ‘we don’t care’. I expect the team to treat this kid well, respect him, and enjoy the couple minutes he’ll be with us.”
Greenberg will donate his day’s wages of just over €2,000 to a charity that deals with head trauma.
“I’m no different or more special than anyone else,” Greenberg said. “It just so happened that my story was the Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN and it was the first pitch I ever saw and I got hit in the back of the head. Tragedy for me but it’s part of the game.”
Mets manager Terry Collins said his players would be applauding the arrival of Greenberg when he comes out to bat.
“I think it’s a wonderful story,” Collins said. “I know there’s some pros and cons ... He was good enough to get there at one time. Had he not got hit in the head who knows if he wouldn’t have been a star today … Unfortunately he’s going to have to face RA (Dickey).”
Dickey pitching gives this story an added little twist. Around the time that Greenberg was uncertain about his playing future in 2005, Dickey was at the sort of crossroads encountered by most pitchers: waning power and diminishing career opportunities on the wrong side of 30.
That winter, coaches decided he should try his hand at the knuckleball pitch, a slower throw that belies its wild unpredictability and frustrates batters like you wouldn’t believe. Dickey is also a survivor of child sexual abuse which he recounted forthrightly in a memoir earlier this year. That and a critically acclaimed documentary about the knuckleball all served as a backdrop to the greatest season of his career.
Dickey will be 38 in the midst of the World Series, the play-offs for which begin on Friday with a pair of one-off wild card games sure to launch a string of unpredictable storylines. Baseball moves at its own pace but there aren’t many other sports where the end can be so sudden and the comeback more glorious.
Contact: * john.w.riordan@gmail.com Twitter: JohnWRiordan
