Free Wherever I Wind Up by R. A. Dickey Page A

Coach Fred Forehand and his colostomy bag. He has a smile on his face and the game ball in his hand, and a single tear running down his right cheek. I walk over to him. Now I have a tear running down my cheek. I give him a hug and hold on to him for a long time, and say the only thing I can think of:
    I love you, Coach.

     
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2011
Port St. Lucie, Florida
Boys will be boys, and ballplayers will always be arrested adolescents at heart. The proof comes in the mid-afternoon of an early spring training day, when 40 percent of the New York Mets’ starting rotation—Mike Pelfrey and I—hop a chain-link fence to get onto a football field not far from Digital Domain. We have just returned from Dick’s Sporting Goods, where we purchased a football and a tee.
We are here to kick field goals. Long field goals.
A day before, we were all lying on the grass stretching and guys started talking about football and field-goal kickers, and David Wright mentioned something about the remarkable range of kickers these days.
I can kick a fifty-yard field goal, Pelfrey says.
You can not, Wright says.
You don’t think so? You want to bet? You give me five tries and I’ll put three of them through.
One hundred bucks says you can’t, David says. This is going to be the easiest money I ever make.
I am Pelf’s self-appointed big brother, always looking out for him, and I don’t want him to go into this wager cold. So I suggest we get a ball and tee and do some practicing. We get back from Dick’s but find the nearby field padlocked, so of course we climb over the fence. At six feet two inches and 220 pounds, I get over without incident, but seeing Pelf hoist his big self over—all six feet seven inches and 250 pounds of him—is much more impressive.
Pelf’s job is to kick and my job is to chase. He sets up at the twenty-yard line, tees up the ball, and knocks it through—kicking toe-style, like a latter-day Lou Groza. He backs up to the twenty-five and then the thirty, and boots several more from each distance. Adding the ten yards for the end zone, he’s now hit from forty yards and is finding his range. Pretty darn good. He insists he’s got another ten yards in his leg. He hits from forty-five, and by now he’s probably taken fifteen or seventeen hard kicks and reports that his right shin is getting sore.
We don’t consider stopping.
Pelf places the ball on the tee at the forty-yard line: a fifty-yard field goal. He takes a half dozen steps back, straight behind the tee, sprints up, and powers his toe into the ball … high … and far … and just barely over the crossbar. That’s all that is required. I thrust both my arms overhead like an NFL referee.
He takes three more and converts on a second fifty-yarder.
You are the man, Pelf, I say. Adam Vinatieri should worry for his job.
That’s it, Pelf says. I can’t even lift my foot anymore. My shin is killing me.
We hop back over the fence, Pelf trying to land as lightly as a man his size can land. His shin hurts so much he can barely put pressure on the gas pedal. He’s proven he can hit a fifty-yard field goal, but I go into big-brother mode and tell him I don’t want him kicking any more field goals or stressing his right leg any further. I convince him to drop the bet with David.
The last thing you need is to start the season on the DL because you were kicking field goals, I say. Can you imagine if the papers got ahold of that one?
The wager just fades away. David doesn’t mind; he gets a laugh at the story of Pelf hopping the fence and practicing, and drilling long ones.

     
     

CHAPTER FIVE
     

    VOLUNTEERING FOR DUTY
     
    T en years is a long time, but it’s not so long that I forget the babysitter. The summer after I graduate from MBA, I’m gearing up to enroll at the University of Tennessee when I make an impromptu visit to see my mother’s family. Next thing I know the babysitter and her mother are walking through the front door.
    It takes a