Beating Randy Johnson and the Trouble with David
Once upon a Monday night in August, I accidentally got to pitch in the big leagues. I buttoned up a red pin-striped jersey and threw a baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies. I was playing for the Braves Triple-A team at the time, and the Phillies purchased my contract off the waiver wire. I was supposed to be sent to Philadelphia's Triple-A team, but some crazy rule in the wavier process forced Ed Wade, the Phillies' general manager, to send me to the major leagues for at least a day. Because the Atlanta Braves minor league system had seen enough of my act the previous two years, they peacefully let me go with a handshake.
I will never forget that call.
After a few days of hanging out in limbo and holding hands with my overly calm wife in our cozy Richmond, Virginia, apartment, Mr. Wade called and said, "One of our pitchers got hurt yesterday. Congratulations, you're going to the big leagues." Then he chuckled and followed with, "You're going to get one start on Monday night against the Houston Astros and Randy Johnson. After that we have no idea what's going to happen."
I was in shock. My wife, Kym, was in shock. And as my two toddling boys, Grayson and Colby, pulled at my blue-jeaned pant legs, I realized that I had just gotten called up to the big leagues by some cosmic mishap -- and in three days I was going to have a gun-slinging showdown with one of the greatest pitchers of all time. Confusion, joy, fear, thankfulness, anxiety, and all sorts of other claustrophobic emotional nouns seemed to take turns licking my brain senseless. Part of me wanted to compete and immediately grab a ball and hit the catcher's mitt to take down Randy Johnson and the Astros -- and the other side of me wondered if this is what a man on death row feels like days before he's going to be executed.
On Monday, before I arrived at the stadium, Terry Francona, my new manager, asked a few players in the locker room what he should expect from me, but to his disappointment none of the hitters remembered facing some guy named Byrd. Nevertheless, Terry still decided to give me one start for my new team in hopes of seeing what I could do. My entire career was on the line that night and I tried to stay positive. I continued to fight back against the creeping feelings of fear and possible failure. The fact that I had to face Randy Johnson only made me take longer and deeper breaths.
Randy is a giant of a man who over the years has earned the nickname "the Big Unit." He stands about six foot ten with gangly arms and long legs that come flying at the hitter as his pitches sometimes reach the strike zone at around one hundred miles an hour. He is so tall that his body cuts down the distance to home plate giving his pitches the effect of a greater velocity than the simple numbered score of a radar gun. I had never seen a major league hitter literally fear a pitcher until the 1993 All-Star Game when John Kruk, a Phillies hitter, stepped out of the batter's box after one of Randy's pitches went sailing over his head. Kruk smiled a sigh of relief that the pitch didn't hit him and after a few more tense moments was happy to strike out and walk back to the dugout unharmed.
In 1998 the Big Unit began a four-and-a-half-year stretch of total dominance over the National League that the modern era of baseball had never seen before. He crushed and chewed up big-league hitters like a dog inhales treats. I sometimes wonder if he even tasted them. During this time, he amassed 91 wins, 1,533 strikeouts, a minuscule ERA, tons of innings, and a World Championship. Every possible statistical column that had to do with pitching was jaw dropping.
So in 1998, when the Phillies claimed me off waivers and gave me that fateful start in Veterans Stadium, not one single sportswriter gave me a chance to beat Randy Johnson. And they shouldn't have. To be honest, I was just happy that they spelled my last name correctly in the paper and actually mentioned that I would be pitching too.
I told my friend John Deatrick, a Catholic priest from Louisville, that I wanted to throw a shutout and beat him one to nothing. He said that he didn't have enough holy water in the state of Kentucky to make that happen and I should just go out and have fun.
When I did arrive at the stadium, Terry Francona was the first to shake my hand. Then he nodded and told me to "relax and have fun." Greg Jefferies, a new teammate of mine, started laughing when I made my way back to the underground bat room and picked out a smooth Louisville Slugger with someone else's name on it. He said, "I don't like your chances at the dish [home plate] tonight." Then he told me, "Pick a light bat and don't forget to go have some fun."
As I grabbed a smaller bat, I remembered Goliath, the giant Philistine champion from Gath, who stood over nine feet tall and walked in front of the armies of Israel chanting and screaming at them to send him one man to fight for their freedom. For forty days he strutted across a ridge with heavy armor and yelled, "I defy the armies of Israel today! Send me a man who will fight me!" Similar to my upcoming battle with Randy Johnson, where I had only one chance to prove myself, a great deal of me felt like the deeply shaken Israelites.
I smiled a rich grin when I thought of the words of David, the little brash red-haired shepherd boy who stood up for God, as I walked over to my new locker and read the story again. One of my favorite lines of the entire Bible comes from David who as a young boy says with regard to Goliath, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine who dares to defy the armies of the Living God?"
When all the toughest men of Israel didn't want to get in the batter's box with Goliath, David did. He wanted to walk up to the dish.
David, in his youth, told King Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; I am your servant and I will go and fight him."
The king of Israel responded, "You are not able to go out and fight this giant Philistine; you are only a boy, and he is a warrior who has been fighting from his youth."
Again, the boy replied, "When I tended the flocks of sheep on the hillside and a lion or a bear came and carried one off, I took my sling and went after it. Then I struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When the lion turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the Living God. The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine."
Saul said to David, "Go, and the Lord be with you."
The giant Philistine Champion approached David on the battlefield and looked him over, seeing that he was only a red-haired little boy with flushed cheeks. Goliath despised David. "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the giant cursed David by his gods. "Come over here," he said to David, "and I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!"
David said back to the Philistine, "You come at me with a sword and spear, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. Today, I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give all into our hands."
When Goliath moved closer to attack the red-haired boy, David ran quickly to the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag, he pulled out a smooth stone and with his sling threw the hard rock perfectly into the forehead of the giant. Goliath fell facedown on the ground and David ran over to him drawing the Philistine's own sword from his scabbard and did what he said he was going to do.
I looked up from my locker and was still. I had no animosity for Randy Johnson; as a matter of fact I admired him. I didn't want to cut his head off, I just wanted to beat him on the hard Veterans Stadium Astroturf and get a chance to continue pitching in a major league uniform. For someone like me who had always been looked at as too short and not very talented, it was a big deal to get a shot at beating a legend in the making.
I usually don't pray to God asking for victories, trying to leave room for his sovereignty by asking him to live his life through me so that I might somehow bring glory to him through competing, but that day I prayed differently. No. Instead, I prayed hard that I would beat him one to nothing without holy water and without a metal sword. I feel I matured right there in front of my locker and grew past mimicking a rehearsed prayer where I said words I thought God wanted to hear. I felt hungry. I wanted a win and I asked him for it.
After strong and focused conversation with God, I pulled up my socks and took the field to do battle and have fun.
God answered my prayer. It was a yes.
I beat Randy Johnson that night four to nothing, throwing a four-hit shutout. The most unusual part of the evening came early in the game when I drove in the game-winning run by getting a hit off the Big Unit. I swung off the mark at what I thought was one of his fastballs but as I extended my barrel of grainy wood across the plate the ball broke sharply toward it and somehow ended up dancing through the air over the shortstop's head. I ran to first base in the midst of what felt like a dream as many cheering fans came to their feet. My first-base coach, Brad Mills, took my batting gloves from me with a smile.
"His fastball is unbelievable! I can't believe I hit it. It moves so much," I said between heavy breaths. I learned the next day that I had actually hit a hanging slider.
I walked to the plate in the eighth inning to a standing ovation while the theme song from the m...
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
