Candid approach helped pitcher heal
Dickey feared how teammates would react to abuse revelation
TORONTO – It is only coincidence that R.A. Dickey is on the cover of Sports Illustrated during the week of his trade to the Toronto Blue Jays.
Dickey and Olympic judo gold medallist Kayla Harrison share the cover photo because both were sexually abused and ultimately “refused to be silent victims,” as the magazine observes in an issue devoted to 2012’s “inspiring performers.”
Dickey, the National League’s top pitcher last season, revealed his abuse in an autobiography published earlier this year.
During a conference call Tuesday to discuss his trade from the New York Mets, he was asked about his teammates’ reaction when his book came out.
“Honestly, I had a lot of fear about releasing a book like that because it wasn’t necessarily a baseball book,” he said.
“It was much more a book about life and darkness and redemption and a lot of other things. So, I had a lot of fear about baring my soul, to not only my teammates but the world. I’m thankful that the book was received the way it was.”
Dickey was sexually abused by a 13-year-old female babysitter when he was eight years old and later by a 17-year-old boy. The book also covers his turbulent childhood with an alcoholic mother, his infidelity to his wife and his contemplation of suicide as his life spiralled out of control.
His fellow players gave nothing but positive feedback, he said. Some found comfort, as well.
“I even had other teammates share similar stories with me that they had never shared with anybody,” Dickey said.
“So, that made for a very rich experience. I’ve never had anybody come up to me and express anything outside of encouragement or how it might have impacted them in a positive way.”
He said he hopes the book will contribute to creating “a forum for us to be able to talk about things that are very difficult to talk about.”
The book — called Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, written with New York journalist Wayne Coffey — details how he found personal redemption, as well as a new career as a knuckleballer after enduring years of mediocrity as a conventional pitcher.
Those two elements of his success are interconnected and writing the book helped him to understand that, he said.
“It was very cathartic,” he said.
“It allowed a sense of freedom that I had never experienced as a human being or a baseball player. So, I felt like it really freed me up to be who God had authentically created me to be.
“Part of that was really embracing the knuckleball. A very neat thing to take away from that whole experience was that my personal life and my career really paralleled each other from a growth perspective. The book was instrumental in that.”