Saved!

It finally happened. Last night, I recorded my first save in a Nashville Hounds uniform. I looked online and also saw that in my 20 years of professional baseball, this was my first save ever. I looked harder and saw that, in my 20 years of professional baseball, I have pitched out of the bullpen (regular season) a grand total of 6 times, none since 1994.

Fans will say, "Oh, he's certainly a great looking guy, maybe going bald, but he'll still be a real hottie when all we'll see on his head is skin."

You, as readers, will say, "What's the previous quote have to do with anything?"

I, as me, will say, "Helps my ego."

Back on point: Fans will also say, "He gets paid millions of dollars ($9 million guaranteed this year - I can't forget that), he should be able to do whatever they tell him."

Here's where you're right and wrong at the same time (I feel like I'm talking to my wife, the lovely Vanessa Scott). Yes, for the money they pay me, I should jump when they say "How high?" without asking any questions. Did that make sense? Let me rephrase for those of you playing the board game at home. For the wads of cash the team gives me to line my pockets made of gold, I should have the ability to pitch in the first, fifth or thirteenth innings, bunt a runner over to second base with less than two outs, or spit a macadamia nut casing up to six feet out of my mouth if they tell me to. Yes, fans, I should be able to do that.

But I can't. I'm a baseball player, and baseball players are screwy. A leadoff hitter has trouble hitting down at seventh in the order. The situations as a seventh place hitter are completely different from the situations leading off a game. Thus, the leadoff hitter freaks out and can't do it. The starting pitcher must pitch every fifth day. If you put him out there with three days rest, or six days, his mind is mud. He can't do it. The closer must come into a game with a small enough lead that he still gets the save, or the score tied. He can't come in with a 5-run lead and not give up 2 or 3. Likewise, he can't come into a game down by 10 and be expected to pitch a 1-2-3 inning. Our heads may be handsome, although in the intermediate stages of balding, but our minds are fragile, vulnerable, sensitive globs of goo. Don't ask us to do what we're not accustomed to doing. We'll fail 9 times out of 10.

So how am I adjusting to my new role as closer for a AAA minor league team when I've been a big league starting pitcher for the last 19 years? On the outside, I appear fully confident. I've said to friends (my mother's dog, Lando), family (my mother) and anyone else who's not a member of the press that "I'll do whatever it takes to help the team." I'm happy to have had the opportunity to spew the cliche out of my mouth. We all say it. We also say, "That's what we're paid to do," even though our minds are the aforementioned globs of goo when you ask us to do what we don't expect to be told to do. Like close games in AAA when you thought you'd be starting games in New York.

In other words, I'm trying to get my head around the fact that I'm being told (nobody ever asked, by the way) to pitch out of the bullpen this year. Yes, it's been almost a month since this stunning pronouncement by my favorite manager, Rick Churches. But you can't put a free man in solitary confinement and ask him to feel good about it after only 3 weeks.

I have needed help. My former shrink, Dr. Henry Cohegans, won't be my current shrink (hence the "former" attribute) because of the lawsuit he filed against me for breaking our confidentiality agreement. While we settled, he won't pick us up where we left off. So I've been searching for a replacement shrink. The big club gave me a list of local people (local to Nashville), but I need someone who can do it over the phone. I won't be in Nashville very long and don't want to develop a relationship with a new psychiatrist only to break it off after a short time. I'd think he or she would feel used.

Enter Dr. Carol Lindstrom-Oates. She's New Jersey-based and let me call her Dr. Lindstrom-Oates. A fine doctor of the mind, we had our first call yesterday:

Shrink - Tell me about yourself.
Me - I feel bad about the recession.
Shrink - It's a tough time in this economy.
Me - No, I mean my hair. It's receding.

She's a very serious doctor who's serious of doctoring. I told her of my problem dealing with my new "role" as a baseball player. Here's what she said:

Shrink - You mean they pay you all that money and you can't do it? What, are you nuts?

Dr. Carol Lindstrom-Oates is not my shrink anymore.

Meanwhile, I pitched a 1-2-3 9th last night. Maybe I simply cured myself.