Radke puts aside pain to help Twins’ playoff chances

MINNEAPOLIS – For the past four days, Minnesota Twins pitcher Brad Radke washed his hair with his left hand and avoided throwing a baseball with his right. “Sometimes I make a sudden movement with my right arm,” he said, “and it brings me to my knees.”

Today, Radke will take the Metrodome mound in hopes of throwing 100 pitches with his damaged arm in the crucible of a playoff race.

“The key is when I wake up,” he said. “Some days I can tell things might be OK. Other days, I know I’m in trouble.”

How can a pitcher with a torn right labrum, a guy who can’t play catch, who knows he’s a handful of starts away from announcing his retirement, take the mound determined to pitch his team into October?

“He has gone through as much pain as anybody in this clubhouse,” Twins outfielder Michael Cuddyer said. “You would never know it. He keeps everything under the radar.”

All season, Radke has devised ways of getting his right arm through the season. He tried extra throwing and extra lifting before settling on his current routine:

Using his left arm to lather shampoo and pour milk. “Seriously, I can’t even play catch,” he said. “Maybe the day before a start, I might feel a little better, where I can throw maybe five throws, from 40 feet at most, before it really starts to hurt.”

So how does he throw 100 pitches to big league hitters? “I guess it’s adrenaline,” he said. “And what we’re going through here, fighting for a playoff spot. I’m doing everything I can.”

That was never more evident than Tuesday in Detroit. The Twins had just lost the series opener to the Tigers, had just learned that phenom Francisco Liriano needed more tests on his elbow, and Radke was forced to take the mound against baseball’s team with the best record, knowing his best fastball might lose a race with Liriano’s slider.

In the seventh, manager Ron Gardenhire went to the mound to take him out. “Rad said, ‘No way am I coming out of this game,’ ” pitching coach Rick Anderson said. “After that, Nicky Punto came into the dugout and said, ‘I have a new all-time favorite player.’ That summed it up for a lot of us.”

Radke got out of the inning and the Twins won 4-2.

Radke saw a recent letter in the Star Tribune that inanely suggested he betrayed his team by failing to have surgery last year. Had he done that, he might not have pitched in a big league game until after the All-Star break, and he’d probably still be rounding into form. “Surgery wasn’t an option, unless I was going to further my career,” he said.

Instead of going under the knife and collecting his $9 million salary from home, he has become the most poignant of the Twins’ success stories. On a roster of young, ambitious players, Radke is gritting his teeth and eying retirement.