LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- It was just one inning.
Just one inning on the 6th of March.
Just one inning against Hiram Bocachica and Phil Hiatt and a bunch of semi-anonymous people claiming to be the Dodgers.
But to John Smoltz, this was far more than just one inning.
It was the beginning.
|  | | Says Tom Glavine: "Getting (John Smoltz) back is like signing a big free agent. ... That's what he means to us." |
It was the beginning of the rest of his career. After 157 wins, one Cy Young award and one deep-fried ligament in his elbow, this was where it all began again:
With a 25-pitch, two-run, two-walk, two-whiff inning against those men in the Dodgers suits -- 11 months, one week and four days after Dr. James Andrews transplanted a brand new ligament in his elbow.
The good news for Smoltz was that nothing hurt, his fastball crackled at times, and he threw every pitch in his repertoire except his fabled knuckleball -- and only because his catcher, Javy Lopez, "just demanded that I not throw any knuckleballs," Smoltz revealed. "Too bad. It would have been a great wind for a knuckleball."
The bad news was that he struggled with his control, got a fastball up and away to Chris Donnels and watched Donnels launch it up into the wind tunnel for a two-run homer. Oh, well. At least history won't record that inning, because Grapefruit League numbers still float, thankfully, beneath the Baseball Encyclopedia's radar screen. But John Smoltz will remember it -- probably for the rest of his life.
"I could have given up 10 runs," Smoltz said after it was over, after he'd remembered to breathe again, after he'd washed the "cotton mouth" away. "Or I could have gone six-up, six-down. It wouldn't have changed the feeling -- just, finally, it's over. Step one. Let's go on."
And he will go on. To a second spring start Sunday against the Marlins. To three or four more spring starts after that. To a real start four weeks from now against the Mets in Atlanta, where he'll "probably be as juiced up as I'm going to be all year," he said.
But you can't take those next steps until you took that first step. And this was a first step a year and a half in the making.
Before Tuesday, the last time Smoltz had taken the mound in a true competitive setting was Oct. 27, 1999 -- Game 4 of the '99 World Series, 523 days and one lifetime ago.
"How long ago was that?" Smoltz mused.
Oh, to be technical, he did go to the mound last spring, too. But that was different. He was in such agony when he walked off the mound that day, five outs into his afternoon, he wasn't thinking about how he could whittle down his 16.25 Grapefruit League ERA.
He was wondering if he'd ever throw another pitch.
He spent the next five hours dealing with so much pain, he said, that when the MRI results came back and they told him he'd completely torn his medial collateral ligament, "I was almost relieved."
"At least then I was able to know what I'd be dealing with the next year, year and a half," he said, "instead of fighting that feeling I had every time I went to the mound, knowing how much pain I was in. It was no fun."
For almost four full seasons before that, he'd been doing his best to disguise the torture that shot through his arm every time he threw a baseball. But there were days that doing that required him to be a better actor than Tom Hanks.
"There were times," he confessed Tuesday, "when I'd stand on the mound and try everything I knew not to show it. But there were times I couldn't help it."
When he started dropping down into that Byung-Hyun Kim sidearm delivery in '99, because it hurt too much to throw over the top, that was one tip-off. When he started throwing knuckleballs down the stretch that year, because he needed something -- anything -- he could throw to offset his fastball, that was another sign.
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could have given up 10 runs. Or I could have gone six-up, six-down. It wouldn't have
changed the feeling -- just, finally, it's over. Step one. Let's go on. ” |
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— John Smoltz |
But through it all, he never said one word in public, never complained, never made excuses, because that's not him.
"I hate complainers," said John Smoltz.
"It was not something I talked about, because people would just have taken that as another excuse," he said. "So I never said anything, because no one understood what I'd been through. ...
"I fully accept responsibility for everything that happened on the mound because I went out there voluntarily. They paid me to pitch, so I pitched. But there were times I wanted to sit there and say (to the media), 'I was very limited today in the things I could do on the mound. So considering the situation, I pitched extremely well.' But I never did."
He did break down and tell a few of the people he was closest to -- Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, his manager (Bobby Cox), his trainer (Dave Pursley).
"But that's where it needed to stop," Smoltz said. "Why should I let the other team know, give them any ammunition at all?"
Not telling the truth meant listening to a lot of critics, especially in 1997, when he followed his 24-8 Cy Young season with a 15-12 downer of a year.
Not telling the truth meant sucking it up to go 17-3 in 1998 despite two trips to the disabled list that limited him to just 26 starts.
"That year I went 17-3 was one of the most miserable years I ever had," Smoltz said. "I went 17-3. I was third in the league in ERA. And my arm was ready to fall off. Looking back now, I don't know how I did it. And looking back on '99, I don't know how I got through that year. I just got used to the pain, used to dealing with it."
As spring training approached in '99, Smoltz remembered, he almost dreaded the thought of starting the agony all over again.
"I was pretty down on myself," he said. "I was trying to get ready for another spring training, and it really hurt. I was so miserable, it was starting to affect my family. Imagine you knew what the next 240 days were going to be like. You knew the pain you were looking at. So by the time I got here, I didn't care if I played."
And then he got a jolt of perspective. The news rippled through the clubhouse the first day of camp that their friend and teammate, Andres Galarraga, had cancer.
"I heard the news about Andres," Smoltz said, "and from that point on, I looked at my elbow and said, 'Big deal.' "
So he clenched his teeth and made it through another year, finishing it off with an astonishing World Series start against Roger Clemens: 7 innings, 5 hits, 11 strikeouts.
But by the time he reached spring training last February, he wondered if he could even go on. He thought seriously about retiring, at age 32, because it was starting to beat the alternative.
"As far as where my arm was and at my age, I didn't really need baseball," he said, "not the way I needed it five or six years ago."
But the more he learned about Tommy John surgery, the more he saw a light gleaming at him off in the distance. He even sought out John himself to learn all he could about what was ahead of him. John told him he was exactly the same age when he became the first pitcher to have this operation -- and he wound up playing 13 more years.
So Smoltz attacked his rehab program with the fire he usually reserved for those career-defining games in October. And now here he is, less than a year removed from the operating table, looking as if he can make it all the way back.
"Getting him back," said Glavine, "is like signing a big free agent, like adding a Mussina. That's what he means to us."
On a team in which the pitchers are the clear-cut leaders, his presence will be noticed in every inch of the locker room, even on the four days he doesn't pitch. But on the days he does pitch, no one can safely predict that he will be the Smoltz of old -- at least not this fast.
He knows most pitchers take a year and a half to make a full recovery from this surgery. They need to train their new elbow ligament to take the baseball for 35 starts a year and grind through all the innings and the side sessions that comprise the marathon. They need to recognize there will be days down the road where they hit a wall.
"But if this is how he'll throw when he hits the wall," said GM John Schuerholz, "I'll take it. I'll take the wall."
For John Smoltz, the uncertainty won't be easy. But it will be better than the pain. It will be better than the months of rehab. It will be better, Smoltz said, than trying to ignore "the coarse jokes" in the clubhouse all last summer -- the suggestions that he was "just a coach" or "just here to play golf."
It will be better than sweating out the final guaranteed year of his contract, wondering if the Braves would pick up his $8-million option, wondering whether he would have to make this comeback somewhere else.
When you've looked down the highway and seen nothing but a dead end, new beginnings have a way of changing the way you feel about everything around you. And Smoltz is no different.
"I've always had a great appreciation for what I do," he said. "But now it's a newfound appreciation. I dealt with a lot, but I'm not a complainer. I hate complaining. I hate people around me who complain. It's too easy to get negative in this game.
"So whatever happens to me now, I have nothing to complain about -- whether I pitch one more game or three more years."
Well, he got the first game out of the way, anyway.
It was just one inning -- an inning that whooshed by so fast, "it seemed like five seconds," he said. But it was an inning that closed one door and opened another for John Smoltz. And no one could understand what that meant more than him.
"I don't get excited about many spring-training games," he said. "But I had a good reason to get excited about this one."
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com.
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