Don't Ever Forget What This Feels Like

The 13th Inning

The bullpen gate swung open, and I ran toward the mound in the top of the 13th inning with the score tied and the season hanging on every pitch. It was the last night of the 2011 regular season. The Atlanta crowd had been on its feet for hours, riding every swing of a back-and-forth fight with the Philadelphia Phillies, and now the noise followed me all the way to the rubber.

Four innings earlier, the game had felt finished. We carried a one-run lead into the ninth and handed the ball to our closer, Craig Kimbrel, the most dominant young reliever in the game. Three outs, and we would be headed to a one-game playoff against the St. Louis Cardinals for the National League Wild Card. Instead, the Phillies worked three walks, and Chase Utley delivered the tying run. From that moment on, the job was simple and brutal: keep them off the board and give our hitters one more chance to walk it off.

The bullpen had done exactly that, inning after inning. And everyone in our clubhouse believed we would win. We believed it so completely that our bags were packed and sitting by our lockers, ready for the late-night flight to meet the Cardinals. Win tonight, and the only thing left to think about was the road to the World Series.

As I took the mound, the anticipation and the nerves hit at once. Adrenaline surged through me, and I told myself to put every ounce of it into three outs. I could already see the picture: a clean inning, a big hit in the bottom half, the whole team spilling out of the dugout to celebrate. That was the vision. But first, I had to do my job.

No-Man's Land

The inning started with a walk. A ground ball moved the runner along, and we intentionally walked Utley to set up the double play. Runners on first and third, one out, and Hunter Pence stepping in: a feisty free swinger and one of the toughest outs in the league.

I ran a fastball in on his hands and got exactly what I wanted. His bat shattered on contact, and the ball floated weakly toward the right side of the infield. Right off the bat, I felt good about it. That is an out nine times out of ten. But with our infield playing back, the ball died in no-man's land between the pitcher's mound and first base. Pence never stopped running, and he beat it out. The runner from third crossed the plate, and the Phillies had the lead.

I turned and stared at Freddie Freeman at first base in disbelief. In all my years on a mound, I had never seen a ball like that fall for a hit, and it could not have come at a worse time. I got the next two hitters, and we jogged off the field needing one run just to keep breathing.

It never came. We started a short rally in the bottom of the 13th, and it ended just as quickly, smothered by a game-ending double play. In the space of a few seconds, our season was over.

The clubhouse was silent. Men who had talked and laughed their way through 162 games sat at their lockers staring at nothing, those packed bags still at their feet. For several minutes no one said a word. Then Michael Bourn broke the silence.

"Don't ever forget what this feels like," he said.

I didn't. Those words followed me through the entire offseason and into the next spring.

Rewriting the Script

That October, I watched the Cardinals seize the Wild Card we had let slip away. They rode their momentum through every round and won the World Series in a dramatic seven-game series. Every highlight felt personal. I could not shake the feeling that something had been stolen from us. We were supposed to win that last game, take the Wild Card, and march through the playoffs.

So I made a promise to myself: put 2011 behind me and start over. The disappointment became the chip on my shoulder, the fuel to go back and rewrite the script. I wanted a happy ending. I wanted my career to close with a celebration, not with self-pity and the silence of a losing clubhouse. That is not how it was supposed to end.

In a twist of irony, I reported to spring training the next year wearing a St. Louis Cardinals uniform. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I joked. The move made sense on several levels, and I believed this season would erase the memory of the last one.

Then my shoulder gave out late in the spring. Any vindication I hoped to find would have to wait. I spent the first two months of the season on the injured list, working to get back to form and help my new team chase a second straight title.

One night in early June, I sat at my locker after a game I had watched from the dugout instead of the bullpen, where I belonged. I felt a tap on my shoulder and was called into the manager's office. The club needed to call up another pitcher and could not afford to wait any longer for me to get healthy. I was being released.

I understood. It was the business, and it was the right call for the team. But understanding did not dull the sting. The comeback I had counted on to heal the old wound had become one more setback, laid right on top of it. I accepted another defeat and started the long drive home to Texas.

The Writing on the Wall

The questions rode with me the whole way. What were my options now? How would I get back on a major league mound? How long would it take?

Weeks turned into months, and hope faded a little more with each one. Eventually I had to read the writing on the wall. I was 36 years old. My shoulder needed surgery, and surgery meant more rehab with no guarantees at the end of it. My kids were in school now, and I did not want to be absent for such an important stretch of their lives.

I knew my career was over. What I could not accept was that my last memory on a big league mound would be that loss in Atlanta. But it was. And now I had to find a way to live with it.

At first, I tried to bury it. I had pitched in roughly 600 major league games, so I told myself to crowd out the bad memory with all the good ones. Think about the big outs, the wins, the friendships. But it was always still there, underneath. Worse, the anger and resentment I carried only made the wound deeper. It shouldn't have ended like that, I kept telling myself.

I deserved more.

A View from the Mount of Olives

Closure came from a place I never expected. Months later, on a trip to Israel, I stood on the Mount of Olives and looked down over the Garden of Gethsemane. Standing where so much suffering had led to so much meaning, I began to see my own life from a different angle.

I had so much to be grateful for. I had reached heights I never imagined I would reach, and I had shared them with people I never would have met otherwise. Was I really going to trade all of those memories and relationships for the bitterness of one lost game? Would my life truly have been different if we had won that night in Atlanta and gone on to win the World Series? Is this life only about trophies and triumphs?

I knew the answer before I finished asking the questions.

What the Loss Taught Me

What I have discovered is that our expectations are rarely met in the way we want them to be. My career did not end with a dogpile on the mound. It ended with a broken-bat blooper that found the one patch of grass where no one was standing. I cannot change that, and I no longer need to.

Growth comes from the struggle and the pain of defeat. I have learned far more from not getting what I wanted than I ever would have from getting what I thought I needed. Victory tends to confirm what we already believe about ourselves. Failure forces us to ask better questions: who we are when the ending goes wrong, what we are grateful for, and what we will do next. Pain has a way of revealing a beauty we would otherwise miss, and it prepares us for the trials that are still to come.

Michael Bourn was right. I have never forgotten what that night felt like. But its meaning has changed. It is no longer a wound I try to cover up. It is a story I can tell, one that is real and relatable to anyone who has come within inches of a goal and watched it fall just out of reach.

So here is what I carry with me now. Say thank you. Count your blessings. Be content with what you have, not with what could have been.