R.A. Dickey Saws Off Dexter Fowler Just to Feel Alive

The life of a knuckleballer is different than most lives, but it is still a life in the end. It starts, it stops, and the middle is spent exclusively thinking about how it will stop. Some other stuff also happens.

R.A. Dickey has had some stuff happen. Some heavy, some uplifting. Some may say he is in a good place, now. He plays a game for a living. Sure, but only once every five days. The rest are spent sitting, watching, thinking about how it will all stop. He does make a good deal of money, yes, but soul currency is what he’s most interested in — trading goods or services for enlightenment. He wrote an acclaimed book, but writing books comes with sad little details like dealing with publishers and literary agents. His book may have been optioned into a movie, but he has little say in that. He just gets to deal with movie agents, which are just literary agents with better haircuts.

And so here he stands, getting paid in foreign money to play a game in an enormous room on fake grass in Toronto — Toronto being an old Huron word for “shitty New York.” All this and how this all will stop is on R.A. Dickey’s mind. He is not real. He is a phantasm tasked with haunting his own consciousness. He is not human. He is not dancer.

He needs to feel alive again. This will happen at the expense of Dexter Fowler’s bat.