PORT ST. LUCIE — Every thing around R.A. Dickey shouts permanence now. His locker at Digital Domain Park sits in the main row of Mets pitchers, right alongside Mike Pelfrey and Jon Niese and Johan Santana. He is armed with the first guaranteed multi-year contract of his professional life. He is a solid piece of the Mets’ foundation.
“It’s a different feeling for me,” Dickey said with a laugh yesterday. “You send me into a swamp full of gators and tell me to fight my way out, I’m on it. I’m used to fighting for everything I’ve ever gotten in baseball.”
Perhaps nothing is a greater indicator of how far Dickey has come than this: On March 24, he will be granted permission to fly home to Nashville to witness the birth of his fourth child in person. The last time he and his wife, Anne, were expecting, Anne went into early labor with Eli, their son. Dickey discovered this just as he was walking to the bullpen in Round Rock, Texas, to warm up for the Oklahoma City RedHawks.
“I listened to the delivery over the phone,” he remembered, “then I went out to warm up for about 10 minutes, pitched a complete game and flew home right after.”
So, yes, this is all very different for Dickey, who was the best story to emerge from inside the Mets clubhouse in years in 2010. He was an early exile from camp, went to Triple-A Buffalo, pitched so well there the Mets had little choice but to give him a shot, then became the Mets’ most reliable starting pitcher at age 35, with 11 wins against nine hard-luck losses, a 2.84 ERA (seventh-best in the National League and a 138 ERA+ (eighth-best).
“I will always look at 2010,” Dickey said, “and remember, ‘That’s when everything started to go right for me.’ ”
It is a great story and proof that sometimes good things do happen to good people.
And it is even more useful as a harbinger for the Mets.
Because so much of what the Mets hope to accomplish this year rests on large segments of their roster having Dickey-type seasons. Not all of that means falling out of the sky and capturing the city’s attention, though in the cases of Chris Young, Chris Capuano and, say, Lucas Duda or Daniel Murphy, that surely could be the case.
But the same theory applies elsewhere. As manager Terry Collins put it, “I think Jason Bay will hit 20 homers and drive in 90 runs. If he hits 30 and drives in 125, well, that’s something special.”
It could mean Jose Reyes and David Wright having career years. It could mean Carlos Beltran having a bounceback season in a contract year. It could mean an army of relief pitchers congregating to form a “No-Name Bullpen” that we will be celebrating in June, coronating in July and finding a nickname for come August.
Is it a long shot that all of these things play out? Sure it is. But spring is for believing in long shots, for formulating big ideas and crazy plans. Who had Buster Posey driving the Giants to the playoffs last year? Who had Cody Ross
powering them home once they got there?
And who had R.A. Dickey in their office pool this time last year, penciled in as a possible ace? Is the notion of Jason Isringhausen, reliable setup man, really that much more far-fetched?
“You know what wouldn’t be awful?” one Met told me late last season, after the death spiral was over. “If we somehow found two or three R.A. Dickeys next year, guys who give you no reason to believe in them and then suddenly give you every
reason to believe in them.”
Dickey takes no offense from that, by the way.
“Hey,” he said. “Doing it the way I had to do it makes a better story, right?”
It’s a wonderful story, a surreal story, a 12-month whirlwind that began with the disappointing exile to Buffalo and will end with a brief paternity leave, that included a season so successful and so surprising that it culminated with his name on the trophy of the Tennessee Pro Athlete of the Year, a trophy that’s belonged to Peyton Manning and Eddie George in the past and was shared in 2010 by David Price, Matt Cain . . . and R.A. Dickey.
Maybe this won’t happen for any of the others the Mets need to have it happen for.
But here’s proof that it can
happen.