E60: The RA Dickey Story

the best stories and sports this is an es 60 feature presentation swing and a Miss he struck it out the only knuckle baller left in the major leagues r.a.dickey throws pitches that float and flutter dart and death when his nut lers working it's dancing for Dickey today it's nearly unhittable when it's not it gets crushed hitting it is a challenge throwing it is an act of faith a knuckleball is very unpredictable although the movement is chaotic and severe if you throw it right it's a beautiful thing and that's how I view my life for Dickey at 37 life has been chaotic and severe even now the memories are painfully vivid for decades the darkness that consumed him could not be lifted although I was victimized I felt like I played a part in it somehow it and all the while you know you've got had eight years old you start having demons that start haunting you from early on you know and they continue to do their work over the course of your life growing up in Nashville Robert Allen Dickey loved playing catch with his father but by 1983 when he was 8 Dickies parents had split up his father had moved out and his mother was sinking into alcoholism one night that summer a 13 year old girl babysits alone together in a bedroom she tells deke to take off his clothes what did she do to you um she took off uh articles of her clothing and you know she she told me to get in the bed and then it was and then then it kind of goes dark I remember what it smelled like to be that close to another human being and being in places that were dark and and just confused credibly confusing over the course of the next few months deke says he was repeatedly molested by the babysitter why didn't you say anything fear and fears the emotion that dread to me most you just fear like in some way it's it was your fault or you know you're gonna be alienated because of it you know you're not gonna be loved because of it I felt like less of a human being that's what it comes down to I felt like less of a human and that it's hard to feel like that we're eight years old yeah hey yeah yeah here's all it was also during the summer of 1983 that deke spent a day out in the country playing ball near a shed on his grandparents property he was approached by a teenaged boy my first thought was oh yeah I'll throw on the ball you know and he took me behind that dilapidated shed and I just remember him undoing his belt and unzipping his pants and you know holding me down and you know and I do remember maybe yelping or saying something but I mean I was in the backyard and there's some land there I mean I don't obviously no one heard and I just closed my eyes and I remember probing and parts of the body that I could I could identify you know touching me and and you know like trying to penetrate and I knew right when it was happening that I would never utter a word of it and I knew I had a place to put it and stuff it away when you think about that eight-year-old boy out there you know in the country what happened to him what would you want to tell him now if you could if I could go back I don't know if I want to tell him anything I think I just want to hold him you know and say it's gonna be all right you know it's I think I just want to sit with him I certainly know that in that moment what I had hoped for and it was for somebody to come and just hold me and say you're not damaged you know it's awful what's happened and we're gonna get through it and it's okay to talk about it and you know I mean you don't think about vengeance you don't think about retribution you don't think about you think about how can I be healed from this how can i how can I get to the other side of this to fill the void he was feeling at his core dickey immersed himself in sports in high school in Nashville he was a star quarterback and pitcher in college at the University of Tennessee he focused on baseball it was named an all-american if you don't eliminated for the word in the summer of 1996 he pitched for Team USA at the Atlanta Olympics he was also expecting to be selected in the Baseball Entry Draft his plan was to spend some of his bonus on an engagement ring for his high school sweetheart and there's a lot of hope put in that draft especially when he had done so well and you know you're seeing your buddies get their million dollars and he was really excited on cruise control at that time like why wouldn't it work out in the drafts first round the Texas Ranger selected Dicky 18th overall they offered him an eight hundred ten thousand dollar signing bonus but a routine physical raised concerns about Dickies elbow and he was sent to see renowned orthopedist James Andrews when the MRI was done it didn't show another collateral ligament in other words the ligament didn't show up of course when you throw a baseball that's where the stress goes it's the main key to the elbow in the throwing act Andrews had never seen anything like it either Dicky had been born without an ulnar ligament or long ago it had atrophied and disintegrated the Rangers rescinded their offer the analogy that I sometimes give is it's like when in the lottery and losing the ticket I spent a lifetime dealing with the with with a feeling of feeling like I was damaged and here I was actually being called damaged goods you know and there was a it was a metaphor for other parts of my life that I was never you know revealing to anybody eventually the Rangers would make Dicky and offer for only $75,000 he took him then he embarked on a baseball Odyssey that would see him spend most of the next 12 years in the minors together he and Anne who had become his wife just scraped by as they built a family there definitely is a pattern throughout his career evokes good Oh crash oh that's good Oh disappointment by 2005 when he was 30 Dickey had lost so much of the velocity on his fastball that his future as a pitcher it seemed was all in the past his only hope was a pitch that he threw only occasionally a pitch the Rangers called the thing well we decided as an organization that you know our a as a conventional pitcher is probably not going to be make it back to the big leagues but then we talked about we have an idea and the idea is we'd love for you to become a knuckleball pitcher would love for you to take a shot Dickey committed himself to throwing the nut ler and in 2006 the Rangers rewarded his commitment by naming him one of their starters his debut in the rotation was historic historically bad on April 6th and three and a third innings against the Detroit Tigers he gave up six home runs equalling the modern-day record back to the minors he went again I was tormented and a lot of pain because the one thing that I felt had given me a lot of my identity I felt like was on the precipice of coming to an end it was also at this time that Ann discovered RA was having an extramarital affair she kicked him out of the house found out that he wasn't this man that I put all this trust and hope in and everything that I thought was a certain way got ripped out from under my feet you know quickly and shared it you know about the abuse with anybody and so I was in a real place where it wasn't I didn't feel like there was much to look forward to you know I hated the broken human being I had become I hated the fact that I felt like I would put a certain face on in one place but I was really somebody completely different now having reached his lowest point Dickey decided to start seeing a psychotherapist soon and took him back then on a road trip to Omaha in June 2007 he decided the time was right to follow through on an idea he'd been drawn to for years he would attempt to swim across the Missouri River I was unhealthily looking for some validity and some way to feel like I I was worth something the current was so strong it forced Dickey to turn around midstream it took all his strength to avoid drowning I remember getting out and really wanting to embrace the mentality of how could I live in the moment well whether it was on the baseball field as a husband as a father as a human being as a friend reborn in the river a few months later Dickey finally felt secure enough to reveal to his therapist the secret he'd kept for 24 years there's a lot of Tears that day there was a lot of grief a lot of anger you know he was angry with himself he was angry with his God he was angry you know with his with his parents he's angry with the abusers a lot of anger at him I've been hiding the truth for so long and been dishonest about a lot of things and so if I was going to live differently and I needed to tell the truth and there was just something more childlike were playful more naive and genuine and sincere about him after that day when I started to risk talking about this stuff in my past it freed me up to take risks as a professional from 2007 through 2009 Dickey continued to develop his knuckleball learning to trust it and throw it for strikes at an age when most major leaguers are winding down their careers Dickey was still growing I would be myself with it I would throw it harder I would change speeds with it and knowing that I had something to offer the pitch and had my own personality with the pitch things started to turn the corner the breakthrough came in 2010 when he joined the New York Mets struck him out in his first season in New York he was one of the most effective starting pitchers in the National League he won 11 games with a 2.84 er a at 35 r.a.dickey and arrived over the last two full seasons Dickey was 11th in the majors in ER a he signed a two-year contract worth seven point eight million dollars this offseason he continued his journey of healing first by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds to combat child sex trafficking then by publishing his brutally honest memoir wherever I wind up being sexually abused does not define who I am and for a long time it did you know and and now it doesn't Romi your knuckleball nice for Dickie at 37 a father of four life seems in some ways just to be beginning thanks to the nut ler which foots almost no strain on a pitcher's arm his major-league career might be just beginning - how does the pitch that you are mastering reflect the life that you're leading it's been a journey that's been up and down and sideways and but at the end of the day I really have the hope that it's going to end up in the right place like a well from a knuckleball

Channel: espnamerica

Views: 341,857

Rating: 4.8594437 out of 5

Keywords: R.A. Dickey, mlb, abuse, pitcher, knuckleball Baseball

Id: 6k57yPfh1c4

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Thu May 03 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/_rand_mcnally_]

holy shit. that was intense.

this is a good read

[u/[deleted]]

Very interesting. I also watched "Knuckleball!" the documentary after the trade went through. I feel like we're not just getting a ball player, we're getting an interesting human being too.

That said, I hope Rogers doesn't insist on doing one of these tell-all interviews with him as well. That looked (understandably) painful for him to recount on camera.

[u/TheIsotope]

This was hard to watch. So much suffering for this man. You can tell how sincere and dedicated he is. Dickey is the real deal and I have no doubt he's going to tear the AL east apart.