After so much pain and frustration, Dustin McGowan has found a certain serenity.
Nearly three years have passed since he could do his job. He still cannot be certain that he will do it again. But the old anxiety is gone. He is in no hurry.
“In my mind, I don’t want a timeline,” McGowan said Friday. “I know this is basically my last chance to get right, and I want to do it the right way and make sure things go smoothly.”
Once a promising pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, McGowan has not appeared in a game since July of 2008, when shoulder pain drove him from the Rogers Centre mound. Since then he has endured three surgeries, two on his shoulder and one on his knee.
This is his last chance, he says, because if the familiar pain sears through his right shoulder again, he will not endure another surgery.
On Friday morning, as the Jays held their first full-squad workout, McGowan pitched from a bullpen mound for the third time this spring. His delivery was smooth. He estimated his velocity at 80%.
Afterward, he was smiling.
“Still a long way to go,” he said, “but everything felt good.”
He felt that way last spring too, and threw so effectively that some teammates who faced him in practice felt he might win a spot in the starting rotation. Then the pain returned. In June he underwent surgery to fix “a significant tear” in his rotator cuff.
That, he said, was the “low point” of three trying years. But he did not surrender to it, that would have been too easy. If the Jays were behind him, he would endure, he would continue.
“I felt so great to start with, and then all of a sudden the pain was just unbearable,” he recalled.
The Jays could have given up on him long ago, but as he persevered, so did they, not only because he once was a 12-game winner and once nearly threw a no-hitter, but also because of his character and determination.
John Farrell is getting his first close look at McGowan, but in an interview before spring training, the new manager said everyone in the organization speaks of the strapping right-hander in glowing terms.
“There’s not one player that’s probably being cheered on more by the medical staff, by the front office, to return to a career that looked like that of a dominant starting pitcher,” Farrell said.
McGowan, who turns 29 next month, appreciates the Jays’ unswerving support.
“I can’t even fathom just how great they’ve been to me,” he said. “Now it’s my turn to do my part — get back on the mound and help them out.”
A small-town Georgia boy, McGowan has spent so much time in medical rehab at the club’s training site in Dunedin that he considers it akin to his home. Throughout 2009 and 2010, each time he seemed ready to take his throwing program off flat ground and onto a mound, he suffered a setback.
Asked how he managed to keep his chin up throughout his ordeals, he smiled and replied: “A great wife, somebody that just keeps positive. I need that. A little baby girl to go home to. Takes my mind off baseball.”
He and his wife, Jilly, have a 21⁄2-year-old daughter, McKensy. Their home is in Tallahassee, but the whole family has been staying in Dunedin since November, when McGowan started his latest rehab program.
Some days, he says, he feels so good that he imagines throwing as he did on June 24, 2007, when he took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against Colorado and finished with a one-hitter. On other days, he is not so sure.
“It’s an adventure every day just to see what comes next,” he said.
But he is encouraged that between his bullpen sessions, he feels the right kind of soreness in the right places, the normal aches a pitcher experiences between outings.
And when he goes to the mound, he does not worry that his shoulder will betray him again.
“Not any more. I’m done worrying about it. I’ve done everything I can to make it better and get right.”
Farrell said Friday that he expects McGowan to start pitching in games “at the appropriate time,” a fittingly vague prediction given the pitcher’s history.
But the manager seemed to suggest he thinks McGowan might get into a game before spring training ends.
McGowan is out of options, so he cannot be sent to the minors without clearing waivers. He could open the season on the disabled list, and do a rehab stint in the minors if he continues to progress.
It has been a long ordeal, but especially over the past year, he has learned patience, he says.
“The worst thing to do is rush and try to get back at a certain point and overdo it. Just take it day by day and see how I feel and go from there.”
Like I said, it's not hard to root for him like he was my kid.
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