Incredible Peace

Last month, Dan Quisenberry, the best American League relief pitcher of the 1980s, had surgery to remove almost all of a malignant grade-IV brain tumor, the worst kind.

For nearly a month, baseball heard nothing but silence from one of the funniest, gentlest and yet most competitive players of his time.

How was Quiz--jokester, amateur poet, five-time save leader and scrawny modest Everyman-As-All-Star--taking the rotten news?

Quisenberry recently held a news conference in Kaufmann Stadium in Kansas City, while holding his wife’s hand. “My kids take me for rides, so I feel like a dog,” Quisenberry said. “I get to stick my head out the window and let the wind flap my ears. I love it . . . . Little things really make me happy.”

Sometimes, Quisenberry sees a little boy on a bicycle, standing up as he pumps for more speed. Joy sweeps over him. Sometimes it’s the taste of water that amazes him. “It’s really wonderful.” Sometimes, he talks to his old center field buddy Amos Otis on the phone and just listens to the delicious Cajun tang in his speech. “Every day I find things to be thankful for . . . . It’s hard to explain.”

It’s a strange time in sports when any reason to talk about a person like Quisenberry, even an awful reason, seems welcome. The ‘80s Royals prided themselves on their normality. Quiz set the tone with his sharp ego-deflating humor. Once, he said of bombastic Reggie Jackson, “He swung so hard I thought he might hit a ground ball to China.” Not a home run, mind you. Just a button-busting groundout on Quisenberry’s submarine sinkerball.

Those Royals put no distance at all between themselves and their fans--or between each other. Quiz wore jeans and sneakers. Hal McRae favored fatigues. Frank White was classy, but subdued. They were a team of friends. Even after Quiz signed a lifetime contract for millions, you couldn’t tell him from the rookies. So nobody ever resented him.

Last week, Quisenberry, 44, said, “I want to thank you because there are so many cards and letters and phone calls coming. I discovered I got caught being nice sometimes.” Part of the power of such comments is their contrast to much of the rest of the news in sports recently. The same day Quisenberry made his remarks, the No. 2 baseball bulletin was quite different.

The home of Seattle shortstop Alex Rodriguez was burglarized. What was stolen? A cashmere trench coat and Giorgio Armani suits worth $43,000, two Rolex watches, three bottles of Remy Martin cognac worth $1,270 each, $2,500 in cigars and $25,000 in cash. Rodriguez is 22. Does he wear the cashmere trench coat over the Armani suit with a Rolex on each wrist as he smokes a cigar, sips cognac and counts his money?

If you learn to make cashmere and cognac the baseline for your pleasures, how do you go back to finding joy in the sight of a boy pumping his bike or the sound of an old friend’s voice? Maybe it can be done. But you’re not making it any easier on yourself. When you distance yourself so radically from common experience, don’t you risk losing something?

Quisenberry hasn’t lost that connection and, to the degree anything can, it’s serving him well now. “It’s humbling to be thought of like this (by so many people). It’s probably more than I deserve . . . . It’s been a long time since I had a good year,” said Quisenberry, who had seasons of 45, 44, 37, 35 and 33 saves with ERAs like 1.74 and 1.94 while working twice the innings--usually 130--that most top relievers even attempt these days.

Naturally, Quisenberry’s thoughts have turned back to his old manager, Dick Howser. In 1985, they won the Royals’ only world title together. In 1986, Howser fell ill with a malignant brain tumor. You won’t find many Quisenberry quotes on Howser from that period. The player known as the quickest quip in baseball didn’t say much. The subject was too real.

Quisenberry and Howser were too alike in temperament for the pitcher to get much distance on the tragedy. Both were mild-mannered men of limited gifts who were told they’d never make the majors, much less leave a name in the game’s history. Both covered competitive intensity with an unassuming pleasantness. Nice outside, but, under pressure, ice inside.

Howser came through in the clutch in one of the hardest ways life offers. He had to die slowly in public. He’s remembered as an inspiration, never an object of pity, though many a tear was shed for him. He tried to manage again in the spring of 1987, a floppy hat over his bald head and his uniform hanging on him like sheet.

“I remember Dick coming to spring training . . . he was such a feisty, leader guy. And then he was this mellow man, saying, “Don’t worry about this stuff on the field. Do your best because winning and losing takes care of itself.’ That was so strange to hear,” said Quisenberry. “I didn’t really know how to process those words. Now here I am and I understand what he was saying.

“It’s like getting new eyes. So, in a way, it’s a gift. The peace is incredible.”

Howser left spring training after a few days. Just too hard. He died five months later. However, that was 11 years ago. Research has come light years since then. New treatments emerge more rapidly. “I know the prognosis and the statistics that go with that. But other things are part of the recipe,” said Quisenberry. “Each one of us is uniquely made. Anything can happen . . . We are zapping the bad cells (with radiation). Today they were sizzling . . . .

“I’m full of hope.”

“These are some of the hardest weeks of our lives, quite honestly,” said Quisenberry’s wife of 21 years, Janie. “But they have also been the very most sweet weeks. I’m really thankful that we share a really neat love . . . . It’s teaching us to take each day at a time.”

Because sports loves a comfortable cliche, some want the old joking Quisenberry to emerge and soothe their pain at sharing his. He won’t go that far. “I don’t joke with God too much,” he said. “But I’m not dour. There have been some real hard times the last few weeks, but it’s also been a lot of tender mercies. But hilarity might be going too far.”

As the news conference ended, the Quisenberrys were still holding hands. He’d laughed. He’d also cried and not wiped away the tear. Nothing wasted, not even pain. It’s hard to understand, though we all grasp it just a little; these new eyes, this not-so-tender mercy, this terrible price for incredible peace.