One Wild Pitch All But Ended Adam Greenberg's MLB Dream

Well, that was quite a first day of baseball playoff action, and I sure would love to see the Tigers eliminate the Astros today. As we wait for the Yankees to get back into action Saturday, here’s a story for you that I wrote several years ago in a book I wrote called “31 Days in October” which was a day-by-day remembrance of the the 2012 MLB playoffs. I hope you enjoy it

MIAMI - As the 2012 regular season was winding down, there were meaningful games being all across the country on the night of Oct. 2.

In Los Angeles, the Dodgers were trying to stay alive in the NL wild-card race, while in Cincinnati, the Cardinals were looking to secure that final berth and send the Dodgers into the offseason. In New York, the Yankees were efforting to clinch the AL East, while in Tampa Bay, the Orioles were hoping to extend the wild card race to an improbable final day. And in Oakland, the A’s were continuing their quest to steal the AL West title away from the slumping, surprisingly vulnerable defending AL champion Rangers.

Meanwhile in Miami, there was nothing on the line when the Marlins hosted the New York Mets, two teams anxious to finish their respective abominations of seasons. Yet for a grand total of 33 seconds in the bottom of the sixth inning, a nation of baseball fans were fixated on what was taking place at shiny new Marlins Park.

“It was magical,” Marlin-for-a-day Adam Greenberg would say to a phalanx of reporters following Miami’s 11-inning 4-3 victory over New York. “The energy that was in the stadium is something I’ve never experienced in my life, and I don’t know if I’ll ever experience it again. It was awesome.”

No, he never would because Greenberg stepped into the batters’ box for the second and final time of his truncated major league career, seven years and three months after his first at-bat.

He struck out on three R.A. Dickey knuckleballs, then floated back to the Miami dugout with a big smile on his face to be hugged by his teammates while being serenaded by an emotional standing ovation from a crowd of 29,700 that wouldn’t have been nearly that populous if not for his presence.

“I grew up in this game, from when I was a kid until now,” said Miami batting coach Eduardo Perez, the son of former Cincinnati Reds great Tony Perez, “and that single moment was one of the greatest moments I’ve ever experienced on a baseball field.”

With at-bats so meaningful in several other places, none was as meaningful as this one, and baseball took a timeout from the tension in New York and Tampa and Los Angeles and Cincinnati and Oakland so that a feel-good story could be authored in decidedly laid-back Miami.

Back on July 9, 2005, in the venue where the Marlins used to play their home games, Dolphins Stadium, the Chicago Cubs were in town, and in the ninth inning of a game the Cubs would go on to win 8-2, Chicago manager Dusty Baker sent Greenberg - recently called up from Double-A Tennessee - to the plate to pinch hit for pitcher Will Ohman in what would be his first major league at-bat.

Miami pitcher Valerio de los Santos reared back and let fly with a 92-mile-per-hour fastball and the first pitch the 24-year-old Greenberg was confronted with struck him in the helmet. He went down at the plate as the crowd gasped in horror, was eventually helped off the field, and he never played in another major league game.

Until this night.

“Life throws you curveballs,” said Greenberg, originally a ninth-round draft pick of the Cubs back in 2002. “Mine threw me a fastball at 92, and it hit me in the back of the head. I got up from it, and my life is great.”

Well, it wasn’t great for a long time as the native of Guilford, Connecticut battled two years worth of post-concussion symptoms, double vision, and bouts of vertigo, not to mention the sadness of seeing all his hard work to get to the major leagues rendered worthless.

Greenberg returned to the minor leagues about a month after being hit, but it was obvious he wasn’t ready. Diagnosed with positional vertigo, he would get dizzy bending over to tie his cleats, and sometimes he’d have headaches that would last two days, but he felt he had to press on if he ever wanted to get back to the Cubs.

“Every day I wasn’t playing, it was an opportunity lost,” he said. “I was 24 years old and I was on the Cubs. What could be better than that? So I rushed myself to get back.”

The Cubs released him in November 2005, re-signed him in January 2006, let him go again in June, and he was signed by the Dodgers a week later, finishing that season with a cumulative average of .209. The Royals picked him up in 2007 and with help from a sports psychologist and trainer, he increased his average to .266, and then to .274 in 2008 when he split time in the Royals and Angels organizations. But the Angels let him go in November, and that was the last time he was affiliated with anyone.

Until this night.

Greenberg spent three years in the independent Atlantic League in his native Connecticut with the Bridgeport Bluefish, and he batted .248 in 2009 and .258 in 2010, before enjoying his best season in 2011 with a .259 average, 12 triples, 10 home runs, 44 RBI, and 27 stolen bases. And in his very first at-bat that year, would you believe the pitcher for the Long Island Ducks was none other than Valerio de los Santos? Greenberg ripped a single to left, later calling it, “the biggest hit of my life.”

By now Greenberg was married, he was making a pittance playing ball, and he figured it was time to get on with the rest of his life. But fate intervened in the form of a Cubs fan and documentary filmmaker named Matt Liston. Liston became intrigued by what happened to Greenberg so, with Greenberg’s permission, he made it his mission to get Greenberg into a major league batters’ box one more time.

Only one other player in major league history had a career cut short after one pitch, Fred Van Dusen of the Phillies, who was beaned on Sept. 11, 1955 by the first pitch he saw from Braves pitcher Humberto Robinson at Milwaukee’s County Stadium. Van Dusen was well enough to take first base, but he was left stranded, and never got into another major league game.

Liston couldn’t help Van Dusen who was 75 years old in 2012, and later died in 2018, but he thought he could help Greenberg. He started the One-At-Bat campaign, creating an online petition to support the cause, and began calling major league organizations to see if they were interested. The Cubs, apparently failing to see the full-circle beauty of this story, didn’t return his call, but the Marlins did.

In an on-air interview with Miami’s local CBS television affiliate, Greenberg explained how the campaign came about.

“I didn’t have a relationship with Matt,” he said. “He went out of his way just out of the sake of being a true fan of baseball and sports and imagined himself being in my shoes. That passion came through the phone that first conversation he and I had back in February when he told me what he wanted to do. Now, I thought it was a crazy idea and I was like,”Go ahead, knock yourself out.’

“I wasn’t going to stop somebody and turn their passion off. That’s exactly what it’s all about: believing in something to the core. He believed in this to the core of his being and that passion rang through to all the thousands of people that signed a petition and the work, the energy and the effort that went into making this happen.”

Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen didn’t quite know what to expect from Greenberg, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea at first, but his opinion changed as soon as he did some research and met Greenberg.

“I’m very surprised how this has meant so much to baseball, and people in general,” said Guillen. “I’m very proud of the kid; he’s a hard worker and he made me realize how lucky I was to play so many years. You know what went through my mind? I said how lucky I was to get 10,000 at-bats in the big leagues.”

Guillen sent Greenberg to the plate in the bottom of the sixth inning to pinch-hit for left fielder and lead-off man Bryan Petersen. The crowd rose to its feet and gave Greenberg - wearing a No. 10 Marlins jersey in which he would later pose for a Topps trading card photo - a standing ovation as Aerosmith’s “Dream On’ blared over the stadium sound system. On the mound was Dickey, the Mets’ baffling knuckleballer and 20-game winner, a man who had authored his own remarkable comeback story in the past couple years.

Never mind that Dickey threw three knuckleballs, one that Greenberg took for a strike, two that he swung at and missed. “It was a truly great experience,” Greenberg said.

“I was up there ready and aggressive and the fact I was leading off an inning and it wasn’t the end of the game was good because I did get to mentally prepare for what my approach would be against Dickey,” he told the CBS station. “If he threw me a first-pitch fastball, I was going to jump all over it. I didn’t want him to sneak one in there and get ahead of me by any means. And when he threw that first knuckler and it dropped the way that it did, I got to see it, I got to track it and it was good.

“Obviously the next two pitches were totally different than the first one and that’s what makes him so great is he’s able to put some on and take some off of his knuckleball. Some are going to drop three feet and some are just going to accelerate and dive out of the zone, and the second pitch, that’s exactly what it did. It started middle of the plate and looked like a good pitch to hit and by the time it crossed the plate it jumped right off the plate. That was a great pitch and the next one he threw was just like the first one, at least out of his hand. It started high and just accelerated and almost cut back in towards me, and it didn’t drop.”

The 37-year-old Dickey, who was close to being out of the game before learning how to throw the knuckleball, agreed that Greenberg’s story was a great one, and when Greenberg stepped into the box, Dickey said, “I wanted him to have his moment. For sure, I tried to give him as much time as I felt like I could before I got on the rubber. I think the story far transcends the result of the at-bat.”

Greenberg was energized by the whole experience, and he made it clear that he would love to get an invitation by some major league club - preferably the Marlins, he said - to give him one more chance in spring training 2013 to prove he could play at the big-league level.

“I want to show what I can do, and you can’t do that in one at bat in baseball, especially against a pitcher like Dickey,” he said. “I’m not out there as a sideshow. Hopefully, this is the start of Part II of my career.”

In a wonderfully fitting gesture, the Marlins flew Van Dusen into town so that he could meet Greenberg, and throw out the first pitch. Van Dusen was only 18 when his major league dream died that September day in 1955, and he later battled alcoholism and depression before settling into his life without baseball.

When asked about Greenberg joining him as the only major leaguers with a one-pitch career, Van Dusen quipped, “I didn’t like sharing it.”

For seven years and three months, he had.

Until this night.

• Oct. 2, 1963: In Game 1 of the World Series, Sandy Koufax struck out 15 batters at Yankee Stadium, setting the stage for a four-game sweep of the Yankees. Koufax, in the midst of one of the most dominant six-year pitching stretches in the history of baseball, threw 130 pitches and allowed six hits and three walks to outduel Whitey Ford 5-2.

  Four days later, he threw 115 pitches and beat Ford again as the Dodgers completed the sweep with a 2-1 victory at Dodger Stadium. In this game, he struck out eight and clinched the Series MVP award. His 15 strikeouts lasted only until 1968 when Bob Gibson of the Cardinals fanned 17 Tigers in Game 1 of the World Series.

• Oct. 3, 1995: The Yankees played the first wild-game in MLB history, thus becoming the first team that did not finish first in its league or division, to play in a postseason game. And in the first playoff game of Don Mattingly’s career, they defeated the Mariners 9-6 at Yankee Stadium.

  Wade Boggs and Bernie Williams led the way for the Yankees, combining for six hits and four RBI in the series-opening win. As for Mattingly, he went 2-for-4 with a double, a run scored and an RBI. The next night, the Yankees took a two-game lead with a dramatic 7-5 walk-off win on Jim Leyritz’s two-run homer, a game where Mattingly had three hits including a home run that nearly brought the old stadium down.

  Alas, the series switched to Seattle for the final three games, and the Mariners won them all to eliminate the Yankees.