Doherty Is What A Baseball Player Should Be All About

We have a problem. We’ve had a fight. We have fallen out of love with the sport that used to define us, and now baseball has come back, holding flowers, asking for forgiveness.

This will not come quickly. For some, it may not come at all. I begin to make my peace the way I knew I would once I arrived here, at the hotel, for today’s Detroit Tigers opener.

I call John Doherty’s room. At 9 a.m.

Sleeping.

I call at 10.

Still sleeping.

I call at 11. Already, I’m weakening.

“Hel … lo?” says the groggy voice.

“Nice of you to get up.”

“Huh? … Ummmzzmt… . I’m up, I’m up.”

You look for reasons to give baseball another chance? John Doherty is my reason. Here, under the covers of another road-trip hotel room, is a majorleague pitcher who still acts like a kid. He still looks like a kid. He still talks like a kid. Lord knows, he still sleeps like a kid. Sometimes I think John Doherty is part of a Disney movie that wandered off the set.

“Something to drink?” the waitress asks when he finally plops down at the table, just after noon.

“Chocolate milk,” he says.

Chocolate milk?

John Doherty is 27 years old, he pitches majorleague baseball - has a fastball that moves better than most - and this is how much he cares about money: He has never seen his bi-weekly paycheck. It gets sent home to his mother and father on Long Island, and he trusts they will take care of it.

He has no expensive habits, no house, no fleet of cars. He doesn’t even have a bank card for cash. He lives pretty much off the envelopes they give him for per diem - $62.50 a day - and even that, he has left over.

“Look at me, I mean, whadda I need?” he says, in a Long Island accent as thick as the Hershey’s syrup in his milk. “I wear sweatpants every day of my life. I don’t own any $2,000 suits. If I’m running out of money, I tell my fiancee to bring some when she comes to visit me.

“I just wanna play baseball, you know?”

We thought we knew. We kidded ourselves into believing the game was the thing, that players were just happy to be there. We found out otherwise. We learned of unions, free agency, revenue sharing, lockouts. Baseball became a board room, contracts replaced the bat and ball, and in the most recent confrontation, the players walked out and took away the World Series.

John Doherty went home to Long Island, to his bedroom in his parents’ house. And he slowly went nuts.

At night he would go out with his old friends and play darts at a bar, and all the competitive juices would flow. “Take it easy,” they would say, “it’s just darts.”

During the day he would drive his uncle, who lives upstairs, back and forth to work, or do some shopping for his mom. Day after day, he would go to his high school gym, and throw pitches to his old coach, a former minor-leaguer named Dom Cecere. It was Cecere who used to parade among his players howling, “You gotta love this great American game of baseball!”

Now Doherty would throw to him, a major-leaguer just looking to break a sweat. One time he began to zone out, imagining himself back in The Show, ninth inning, three-and-two count …

The ball began to hum. Then zip. Then hurt.

“Yeoowch!” Cecere yelled, shaking his glove. “What are you tryin’ to do? Kill me?”

“Sorry,” Doherty said. “For a second there, I thought I was back.”

Now, of course, they are back. The Tigers open tonight, against the Angels. The games count. But it still feels artificial. The anger remains. It takes some getting used to.

So I concentrate on Doherty. I listen - as he gulps down eggs and toast, the breakfast menu, even though it is lunchtime - and he talks about how he flew to spring training early, because he was “pumped up,” and how he asked whether he could ride to the airport to pick up Alan Trammell and Kirk Gibson, and how he has been wearing the same glove the last few years, a Cal Ripken model he bought at Herman’s Sporting Goods for $45.

My definition of a great ballplayer is now one who loves the game the way he should love it. John Doherty is that player.