TORONTO — He stood on the bottom of the mound looking to his right, hoping against hope that the worst was over, that this time something good would come out of something bad. That somehow Ben Revere would catch up to Alex Rios’ line drive in the second inning.
When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen and the ball was approaching the wall with pace, R.A. Dickey did a little bend with his knees and tilted his shoulders, using a desperate bit of body English to urge the hit to stay in the park, just this one time.
It didn’t. It kept sailing as Revere gave up chase. The Blue Jays were trailing 5-0 before they’d even taken their second turn at bat, and all Dickey could do was abruptly turn to Russell Martin, hold up his glove and ask for the ball again.
Four pitches later he plunked Royals infielder Alcides Escobar, putting yet another base runner on. By then Blue Jays manager John Gibbons was already on the phone in the dugout, calling down to the bullpen for reinforcements. Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker was convening meetings on the mound to give Liam Hendriks time to get properly loose. When Dickey walked Lorenzo Cain, he knew the gig was up.
“I knew once I walked Cain, if I didn’t get him I had Liam coming in behind me,” said Dickey afterwards, holding court in a pair of tights, explaining his worst moment to a crowd five-deep.
“You’re at the stage of the game where you know it’s going to a short leash, you just got to get your team as deep into the game as you can and I failed to do that today.”
Just like that Dickey’s day was over. At 4:47 p.m., 39 minutes after he took the mound and about 37 minutes after Ben Zobrist took his third pitch of the afternoon over the left-field fence to stake the Royals to 2-0 lead before everyone had got to their seats, Gibbons did his John Wayne stroll to the mound, took the ball from his starter, patted him on the ass and sent him into the dugout where he sat, cap off, looking straight ahead with the vacant, pained stare of someone who’d approached a big project with best intentions and failed miserably, and publicly.
“It’s tough anytime you lose a playoff game,” he said. “In Utopia you win every one, right? It’s tough anytime, whether you lose on a walk-off or 14-2. It’s equally as painful because you’ve worked so hard to get here and it’s sad when you can’t perform on the level you’re capable of and you don’t get the result you hope to get.”
There is no one who appreciates a story with a pleasing ending more than Dickey, who can tumble words as effortlessly as his signature pitch seemingly floats to home plate.
He is a believer in narrative, the idea that it’s not just what happens that matters, but how what happens is influenced by what has come before and shapes what comes next, creating a coherent web of meaning out of otherwise random events.
So when Dickey made his post-season pitching debut against the Texas Rangers in the ALDS last week, he wasn’t starting Game 4, he was coming full-circle in storybook fashion.
Texas was the team that drafted him. Texas was the organization where he failed as a starting pitcher, and Texas was where he turned himself into a knuckleballer. And it was at Globe Life Park in 2006 where he tied an MLB record by giving up six home runs in his first start with his unconventional pitch.
Returning to start his first post-season game after 19 years of professional baseball was more than just taking the ball with a job to do.
“It’s funny how it’s come full-circle for me personally, having learned the knuckleball [in Texas] …” he said before that ALDS Game 4 start. “It’s poetic, is what it is for me. It’s a neat narrative.”
That story didn’t end perfectly, as most remember. Dickey was sailing along through four and two-thirds innings and the Blue Jays leading 7-1 when Gibbons — who has never given the impression of being fully invested in the capriciousness of Dickey’s knuckler, even after he went 8-1 after the all-star break — pulled him in favour of David Price. Price nearly fumbled the ball and while the Blue Jays won the game, Dickey didn’t qualify for his first career post-season win.
He handled it graciously, and Tuesday he had yet another chance to write a great story from the mound at the Rogers Centre. With their suddenly shaky bullpen — Gibbons used his horses Mark Lowe, Aaron Sanchez and Robert Osuna to nail down (sort of) Toronto’s 11-8 win on Game 3 — Toronto desperately needed Dickey to go deep into Game 4.
The story was there to be told: Coming off his snub in the ALDS, Dickey proves he can be trusted deep into games when the stakes are highest. It was a narrative Gibbons would have autographed before the anthems.
But it wasn’t meant to be. When Dickey throws a whole bunch of things can happen, some of them good, a fair number of them terrifying. Even he can’t guess exactly what’s coming.
“I felt great, I had a great knuckleball,” he said. “Russell [Jays catcher Russell Martin] was having trouble handling them it was so good in bullpen. And when I got out there I threw some great knuckleballs … but at this stage of the game, it can happen very quickly with a team like that who is really good at putting the ball in play.
“You play this game long enough you’re going to have outings like that,” he said. “The thing to do is to try to turn the page as quickly as possible. It hurts a little worse that it was on this stage, so you have to deal with that, right? But we’re all grown men here.”
They’re little boys at heart though, and Dickey remains hopeful of dramatic plot twist where the good guys win in the end. And another chance at being the hero? He’d take that too.
He pronounced himself ready to pitch in relief in Game 5 or beyond.
“I’m begging [Gibbons],” he said. “I hope I get another chance. I’ll be available to do whatever we need done.”
But what he really wants is another chance to start. Dare to dream.
“If I start that means we’re in the World Series, right?”