Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball (25 page)

In 1979, Tanana hurt his throwing shoulder and missed almost half the season. He never threw as hard again and had to learn how to pitch all over again. Instead of getting hitters out with power, he learned to get them out with finesse. Pitching with a fastball that rarely got into the high eighties, he had a second career in Texas and Detroit—his hometown—that kept him in baseball until 1993, when he retired with 240 career victories.

The line used most often to describe Tanana’s career was “he threw in the nineties in the ’70s and in the seventies in the ’90s.” It was very close to being true. Because he pitched for so long, he had the unusual distinction of being one of two pitchers (Rick Reuschel was the other) to have given up home runs to both Henry Aaron and Barry Bonds.

Now, at fifty-nine, Tanana lived back home in Michigan and was part of something called the Pro Athletes Outreach group. That meant he spent quite a few Sundays in ballparks like Fifth Third giving his testimony. Sitting among the fans as Tanana talked were a handful of the Mud Hens, in uniform. They all knew who Tanana was, even if he hardly looked like someone who had once overpowered major-league hitters.

As Tanana spoke, the dichotomies of minor-league baseball were evident all around him. Down the left-field line, the Bats players stretched, going through their Sunday pregame routine. Sunday is never a day of rest in baseball, but it is often a day with no batting practice, which means players can report to the ballpark later than normal. On the scoreboard behind Tanana, various future promotions were repeatedly flashed, including—most notably—Jamie Farr bobblehead night, which was twelve days away.

All in a day’s work in the minor leagues.

As Tanana was winding up his forty-five-minute talk, another ex-pitcher was drawing a small crowd himself: out on the concourse, Denny McLain was signing copies of his autobiography,
I Told You I Wasn’t Perfect
.

That might have been one of the most understated book titles in history. McLain was baseball’s last thirty-game winner, having gone 31-6 for the Detroit Tigers in 1968 with an ERA of 1.96. A year later he won twenty-four games. After that, his life pretty much crashed.

In 1970, he was suspended twice by baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn—the first time after revelations that he had been involved in a bookmaking operation, the second time for carrying a gun onto a Tigers team plane. Later that year, he filed for bankruptcy, apparently having lost most of his money gambling. He was traded to the Washington Senators—a deal that, for all intents and purposes, destroyed baseball in Washington. He spent the entire season fighting with Washington manager Ted Williams while going 10-22. He also hurt his arm during the season, which ended with the Senators leaving Washington to become the Texas Rangers.

He bounced from Washington to Oakland to Atlanta and last pitched in the majors in September 1972 at the age of twenty-eight. He had been so good at a young age that he had 131 career victories—114 of them by the age of twenty-five. His post-baseball life had been filled with arrests, drug issues, and several stints in jail, most notably when he spent six years there after being convicted on charges of embezzlement, mail fraud, and conspiracy. His weight had ballooned to a reported 330 pounds, and while he didn’t look quite that heavy anymore, he still had to weigh close to 300. His 1968 baseball card listed him as six feet one and 185 pounds.

Now he was sixty-eight and still able to make some money through various media outlets in Detroit and by trying to sell his book. Fifth Third Field was a fairly typical McLain stop. He signed books for a while and then appeared on the Mud Hens’ TV pregame show, which was on local cable television.

While Tanana was testifying and McLain was signing and fans
were making plans for Farr bobblehead night, the team was currently preparing for Toledo Fire Department Night. All in a day’s work in the minor leagues.

This was a fairly complicated operation since it involved fire trucks and firefighters; one firefighter rappelling down a rope behind the right-field fence and then jogging the game ball into the pitcher’s mound; several mascots and the two teams—who were expected to be on the field when the festivities climaxed with the singing of the national anthem.

Shortly before six o’clock, the fire trucks came rolling down the third-base line. One carried the mascot for the Toledo Fire Department. Another carried Muddy and Muddonna. Trailing them was yet another mascot called BirdZerk!, who appeared at various minor-league parks as part of the entertainment. Firefighters were everywhere. The players appeared, poking their heads gingerly from the dugouts. The firefighter rappelled; the ball was delivered to starting pitcher Casey Crosby; and, with just about every inch of the field covered by people and trucks and mascots, the anthem was played.

Finally, it was time to play baseball.

As the Mud Hens’ PR staff settled back to announce the game-time temperature and slip into the routine of a baseball game, their walkie-talkies crackled. It was the marketing assistant who had been in charge of the on-field activities.

“What in the world,” she asked, “am I supposed to do with all these fire trucks and mascots?”

MORE THAN NINE LIVES

Brett Tomko was on the field with the rest of the Bats during the pregame tribute to firefighters, mascots, and rappellers. To him, this was just another day at the ballpark. At thirty-nine, he had pretty much seen it all.

He was in his eighteenth season as a professional baseball player and had pitched in twenty-five different cities—ten in the major leagues; fifteen in the minors. That didn’t count two stints in the Arizona Fall League. He was scheduled to pitch the following day for Louisville, and he knew there was a possibility it could be his last start. Even though he had a respectable ERA of 3.43, his record was 0-6, and he knew that the Cincinnati Reds, the Bats’ parent club, might be thinking about giving him his release. He didn’t believe the way he had pitched merited that kind of treatment, but he also knew that stranger things had happened in baseball.

“I’ve been done [finished] in this game so many times I don’t worry about it anymore,” he said, sitting in the dugout, wearing the kind of bright smile that isn’t seen that often in Triple-A—especially from someone who has won a hundred games in the major leagues. “I’m way past sitting around being bitter—maybe because I’ve been able to play for a lot longer than I ever thought I would play.”

He smiled. “Last year, when I was pitching in Round Rock, we went to Omaha on a road trip. I was scheduled to pitch against Jeff
Suppan. Now, think about it, we’ve both been around forever and had a lot of time in the major leagues. But here we are in
Omaha
getting ready to pitch against each other. The night before we pitched, we were talking and he said to me, ‘BT, I may never get back up and you may never get back up. For now, right here in Omaha tomorrow, we’re pitching the seventh game of the World Series. That’s the only way to look at it. Otherwise, why be here?’

“That was a good punch in the gut for me. He was right. We were both in Omaha because we
wanted
to be.”

Suppan has won 140 major-league games and in 2006 was voted the MVP of the National League Championship Series while pitching for the Cardinals—who went on to win the World Series. And both men
did
make it back to the majors after their talk in Omaha—Tomko later in the 2011 season, Suppan in 2012.

As much as he loves baseball, Tomko didn’t set out necessarily to become a baseball player. Growing up in Euclid, Ohio, he actually thought his best sport in high school might be basketball … until he encountered someone named Tess Whitlock one night. “I had scored fifty-five the game before,” Tomko said. “They put him on me and said, ‘Stop him.’ He did—completely. Late in the game he had the ball on the break, and I got back to try to stop him. He just jumped right over me and dunked. At that moment I thought, ‘Maybe I should start taking baseball more seriously.’ ”

His dad, Jerry, was the sports fan in the family. In fact, Jerry Tomko was responsible for naming Cleveland’s NBA team, the Cavaliers. In 1970, when Cleveland was granted an expansion team, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
staged a contest to name the team. There were eleven thousand entries, and readers voted to select one of the five finalists. Cavaliers won.

“My dad got an autographed basketball and a one-year season ticket,” Tomko said. “That was it. And that season they won fifteen games and lost sixty-seven.”

His mom was more artistic. In fact, she insisted that Brett take an art class as a teenager, and he got hooked. To this day, he brings drawing materials with him on the road and almost always spends some
time working in his hotel room before bed. “Great stress reliever,” he said.

He also has talent and has sold a couple dozen pieces through the years. It’s something he wants to spend more time on when he’s at home more often—after baseball is over.

“If you’ve spent any time in the majors, there’s no point lying to yourself about where you are,” he said. “The postgame spread in a Triple-A clubhouse might be the same food as in a major-league clubhouse, but it doesn’t
taste
the same. In the majors you stay at the Ritz or the Four Seasons. Here …” He paused and pointed at the Park Inn, looming over the left-field wall at Fifth Third Field. “You stay at the Park Inn, and it’s just fine. You have a roommate, and that’s just fine too.

“But there are moments when it hits you. Earlier this season we were up against some pitcher I’d never heard of, and we couldn’t touch him. Willie Harris [another veteran major leaguer] says to me in the dugout, ‘That dude is nasty, really nasty.’ I said, ‘Dude, he’s pitching in Triple-A. If he was
that
nasty, he wouldn’t be here.’ ”

For most of his career, Tomko was one of those pitchers described as an “innings eater.” He rarely dominated or overpowered anyone. In 266 major-league starts he had thirteen complete games and two shutouts, the second one coming in the game in which he badly hurt his shoulder in 2009. But he consistently got his team into the sixth or seventh inning with a chance to win, which kept him around for a long time with a lot of different teams.

“The not-so-funny thing, looking back, is I was pitching about as well as I’ve ever pitched when I got hurt,” he said. “Not just that day, but the whole time I was in Oakland that summer—which was only six starts. It was such a strange feeling that day. There I was throwing as well as I ever had, and I threw a 3-2 fastball to Chris Davis and felt something pop near my shoulder bicep. I remember thinking, ‘Please don’t be something serious.’

“I tried to throw another fastball, and I think it got halfway to the plate. I called Kurt Suzuki, who was catching, out and said, ‘Just call
curveballs.’ Somehow, I got three outs. I think I threw ten straight curveballs. When everyone came out to the mound to celebrate, all I could think was, ‘Is this it? Am I done?’ ”

The A’s were celebrating the hundredth win of Tomko’s career. A major milestone. But Tomko was in no mood to sit back and enjoy what he had accomplished.

He went back to the hotel and had a drink with Nomar Garciaparra, who was in town broadcasting the game for ESPN. “I was holding the drink in my hand, and suddenly it felt very heavy,” he said. “I had to put it down.

“I went to bed hoping it would feel better after ice and with some rest. I woke up about five in the morning screaming in pain. I sat up in bed with my arm up against my chest and waited as long as I could before I called the trainer. I was crying by then I was in so much pain.”

He had fractured the biceps muscle in his shoulder. The doctor in Texas gave him painkillers so he could fly home to witness the birth of his twin sons, who were due to be born on September 18—four days after he was injured. “By the time they were born, I couldn’t move my arm,” he said.

He had surgery soon after that and then had to decide if he wanted to put himself through the rehab process to try to pitch again. “Part of me was thinking this was the time to stop,” he said. “I’d just become a father. I had made pretty good money. But every time I was ready to make up my mind and retire, I’d think about that day in Texas and the memory wasn’t happy, it was bleak. There was this black cloud because of the injury and the pain.

“My wife and I talked about it, and she said, ‘You have to see this through until you
know
it’s time to stop.’ ”

He had not yet reached that moment. Every time he thought it might be time to go home, he thought about something he had read years earlier. “You’re an ex-ballplayer for a lot more years than you’re a ballplayer,” he said, smiling. “So I stuck with it and here I am.”

In spite of his god-awful (7.52) ERA during his stint the following year at Stockton, early in 2010, the A’s moved him up to Triple-A
Sacramento, where he pitched marginally better, but not well enough to merit a new contract at the end of the 2010 season. “My ERA in Sacramento wasn’t a lot better than in Stockton, but I can honestly say it was deceiving,” he said. “The first time I pitched there I didn’t get anybody out. I got blasted. But after that I actually did get a little better.”