Rodney embraces another home
FORT MYERS, FLA. — Fernando Rodney chose to play his home games in Minnesota this season. His younger self would never have believed it.
Rodney is the oldest player on any 40-man roster this spring training. He signed his first professional contract in late 1997, for $3,000 with Detroit, and then left the Dominican Republic for spring training in Lakeland. After two years, he was assigned to a Class A team in Grand Rapids, Mich., where the average low temperature in April is 4 C. Rodney was miserable.
“I said to him, ‘Hey, the cold’s mental, man,’” said Ramon Santiago, Rodney’s roommate then and a Detroit Tigers coach now. “He said: ‘Mental? It’s not mental, it’s cold!’ ”
Rodney laughed about it here the other day, in the spring training clubhouse of his ninth major league team.
“You come from the Dominican, you go to Florida — and then you go to West Michigan!” he said. “All those little towns around there were cold. But I think about it: ‘You have to stay here.’ I said, ‘OK, I’m going to try.’ I started my career like that.”
As Rodney approaches his 41st birthday, on March 18, his career is not slowing down. His fastball has held steady, at 94-95 m.p.h., more than 10 m.p.h. harder than his signature changeup. He converted 39 of 45 save chances last season, helping the Arizona Diamondbacks reach the playoffs, and he signed with the Minnesota Twins for one year and $4.5 million.
“He’s what we needed,” said LaTroy Hawkins, a special assistant to baseball operations for the Twins and one of their former pitchers. “If he can do what he’s done the last few years, it’ll be a lot of fun.”
Hawkins was the majors’ oldest player when he retired in
2015, at 42. Bartolo Colon now holds that distinction, but Colon, 44, signed a minor league deal with Texas and is trying to make the Rangers’ staff. The Twins, who made a surprising appearance in the playoffs last year, are counting on Rodney.
After struggling last April, Rodney had a 2.38 ERA the rest of the way for the Diamondbacks. The Twins join Detroit, the Los Angeles Angels, Tampa Bay, Seattle, the Chicago Cubs, San Diego, Miami and Arizona on Rodney’s career itinerary.
Last season, Rodney became just the fifth pitcher to earn 30 saves after age 40, joining Hall of Famers Dennis Eckersley and Trevor Hoffman, as well as Mariano Rivera and Doug Jones. Rodney has 300 saves in his career, and with four more, he will pass Jones and move into the top 25 on the career list.
Rodney could never have imagined this future as a boy in Samaná, a mountainous beach town in the Dominican. He did not consider a future in the game until his late teens, when a friend signed a professional contract, and Rodney started pitching only about a year before he signed, at age 20.
Rodney was pitching for Class AA Erie when his father died of cancer in April 2002. Just three days later, the Tigers promoted Rodney to the majors. He lost his debut — on an unearned run at the old Metrodome in Minneapolis — and soon decided to wear his hat askew, as his father had done.
That tribute remains part of Rodney’s inimitable style, along with his bow-and-arrow celebration after closing out wins. Rodney devised that in 2012 with the Rays, gathering with teammates on the mound and pointing to an imaginary landing spot for the arrow.
Derek Falvey, the Twins’ chief baseball officer, said he was struck by Rodney’s authenticity — “This guy cares very deeply about people,” Falvey said — and his physical condition. Rodney is listed at five feet 11 inches and 230 pounds, much of that weight in his legs, shoulders and upper back.
“Look at his body, man,” said Hawkins, who is six inches taller than Rodney but weighs less. “He’s built like a tank. He’s not that tall guy like I was. He’s a cinder block.”
Rodney, who had Tommy John surgery in 2004, said he has stayed strong by working with a weighted ball in the winter, emphasizing shoulder exercises and eating healthily. While younger flame-throwers increasingly dominate bullpens in the steroidtesting era, Rodney has never been implicated in scandal.
He has pitched in every major league city, closed out the 2013 World Baseball Classic and pitched in all four of Detroit’s losses in the forgettable 2006 World Series.
“You want to be around Fernando Rodney because he’s going to be the same guy every single day,” said the New York Mets’ Jose Reyes, a Dominican teammate in the WBC. “Great attitude, big smile, he always has a joke — and he’s always going to do something weird.”