Kirk remembers to pinch himself
VIERA, Fla. — When you Google “blood infection,” as Kirk Nieuwenhuis did from his hospital bed last Sept. 27, the phrases at the top of your screen include: “One or more organs fail.” “Leads to a life-threatening drop in blood pressure.”
“I was shaking,” Nieuwenhuis says six months later, sitting in the Mets’ dugout, revealing this previously unknown scare. “I was like, ‘this is not good. I don’t know if this is it for me, but this is not good.’ ”
A few miles away at Citi Field, his pal Lucas Duda was wrapping a walk-off homer around the right field foul pole, his 29th of a breakout season. Teammates gathered at home plate, jumping and cheering. Nieuwenhuis was in his hospital bed in Manhattan, a darker version of Major League’s Lou Brown, missing the party and wondering if he was going to die. His wife was rushing across the country to his bedside.
Nieuwenhuis’ fortunes have since turned upward. Out of minor-league options, the eventempered and long-tenured Met will earn a job on the bench this year, and an opportunity to define himself in a new role. This, two years after he was supposed to be on the outs. Close friends such as Ike Davis and Josh Satin are gone, but Nieuwenhuis is still here at 27.
Roster drama pales when compared to a staredown with mortality. That whole debacle began last season, when Nieuwenhuis was playing for Triple-A Las Vegas. It was 115 degrees one afternoon — just an awesome place to play baseball, Vegas in late summer — and the players were hitting off a curveball machine.
The trainer shut down the BP session, deeming the heat unsafe. During the game, Nieuwenhuis began to feel ill. Later, on a flight to Sacramento, the issues intensified.
“I felt like I was going to die,” he says. “So much pain. Fever.”
It turned out he had kidney stones, and was passing them — well, we’ll let him tell it, while the rest of us wince. “Basically, it was coming out little piece by little piece.” Lovely.
The doctors in Sacramento provided enough antibiotics to last until the team returned to Las Vegas. But the Mets summoned Nieuwenhuis to Miami before then, and he never finished the treatment.
Playing outfield in Atlanta later in the month, Nieuwenhuis was once again jolted by sharp pain. He winced, laid his hands on his knees, and rode it out. A few nights later, he spent an entire night in a Washington hotel doubled over. Back to the emergency room.
The ER doc in D.C. told Nieuwenhuis that his kidney stones were gone — but once again, on the flight back to New York, he felt ill. Then, in his Manhattan hotel, it got worse.
“I was freezing, but I was sweating my (face) off,” Nieuwenhuis says. “It was two o’clock in the morning, and I was miserable.”
He reported to work the next day, but said he couldn’t play. Soon, he was in the hospital, diagnosed with a kidney infection and blood infection, his wife hopping on a flight from Seattle, Sandy Alderson heading over to visit.
“They gave me some morphine, and an hour later I was like, ‘I still feel horrible,’ so they gave me a double dose of
morphine,” Nieuwenhuis says.
That was the worst of it, finally. After three days, the hospital discharged him, the season was over and a new opportunity presented itself: A spot on the Mets’ bench in 2015, a final shot to be a part of the team’s next phase. Niewenhuis’ 8-for-28 (.286) performance as a pinch-hitter in 2014 led the front office to suspect he could succeed in one of the game’s most difficult jobs.
Nieuwenhuis has a shorter, more compact swing than he once did, which suits the role. And he has been around long enough to know how to prepare and bring more confidence to his at-bats.
“It does take a different mindset to pinch hit,” he says. “If you don’t get the job done, you can sit there for three days and think about that. It’s like being a starting pitcher, but you get two seconds to do your job.”
It is a tricky and important role, and a way to keep Nieuwenhuis around. He has outlasted Davis and Satin, his longtime spring housemates — everyone from the 2008 draft but Eric Campbell, with whom he now lives. And this, after it once seemed that his Met moment had passed.
“You do wonder,” Nieuwenhuis says. “You do think, maybe my time with this organization is up. I’m glad they (kept me), because I’m excited to see where this thing is going.”