The Sporting News
September 26, 2012
NEW YORK—On the corner of 71st and York, parked next to a puddle of undetermined sludge, stands one of the city’s finest eateries. It’s a food truck serving up Jamaican cuisine, and with one deep inhale Andrew McCutchen knows what he’ll be having for lunch.
He orders jerk chicken with sides of creamy mac and cheese and greens, takes the feast over to a nearby bench and digs in. Nobody gives him a second look. He’s wearing a $40,000 ring, with enough diamonds orbiting the edges to cause temporary blindness, but on this afternoon he’s just another hungry tourist who has ventured uptown to eat from a Styrofoam plate next to sewer drains oozing steam.
Andrew McCutchen is the centerpiece of the Pittsburgh Pirates, a franchise desperate for all things positive. (AP Photo)
“Totally worth it,” he says.
In a couple hours, McCutchen, a 25-year-old center fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, will head out to Queens for another night of working at the greatest job in the world. He still has an outside shot at winning the National League MVP Award, trailing only the incomparable Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants and Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun in the race. Though the Pirates have slipped from playoff contention, he still has plenty of reasons to approach every at-bat with a smile more dazzling than that ring.
Before every game, McCutchen thumbs through his phone until he comes across the picture that makes his throat clutch. In the photo, McCutchen is shaking the hand of a very sick young boy, maybe 6 or 7. The boy is so weak, the father must prop him up by holding onto his shirt. The boy’s brother is in a wheelchair, barely able to move.
It’s a picture that will stay with McCutchen for as long as forever.
“If I go 0-for-4 or have a bad day, I think of it. If I have a great day, I think of it,” he says. “There are kids who are going through such awful things. They didn’t ask for the hand they’ve been dealt. I don’t know how anybody can be in the position we are, as professional athletes, and not want to make a kid’s day a little brighter by laughing with him just for a second.”
There might be other players having more fun than McCutchen, but maybe not. He does drop-dead impressions of Cleveland Brown from Family Guy, easily mimics Eddie Murphy’s classic guffaw and sometimes rocks the keyboard in the clubhouse before games (he taught himself).
When times are rough—when, for instance, a late-summer slump puts a dent in his tremendous first half and parallels the disintegration of the Pirates’ dream season—he flips through his own bank of images and draws strength.
From them: the memory of living as a young child in a house cramped with love and bodies, his mother and his aunt and grandmother and a bunch of cousins, and then moving to a trailer park in Bartow, Fla., with his parents—they were still in high school when McCutchen was born—and his father working in the phosphate mines and coming home late at night just drenched in mud from exploding pipes, and sharing a room in the trailer with his baby sister but that was cool because he liked the idea of protecting her.
In the ways that count, it really was the American dream.
“I had everything I needed or wanted,” he says. “I didn’t know anything different. I learned to be a hard worker. I learned that things aren’t going to be given to you on a silver platter.”
He had a natural talent and a sprinter’s build, and by the age of 11 found himself playing on teams and in baseball camps with boys who were teens. Drafted by Pittsburgh in 2005, he’s now the free-spirited face of the Pirates, a team that for decades has craved a bit of joy.
Ask McCutchen to envision his future—surely he’ll mention an elusive trip to the postseason, more All-Star games, a heap of batting titles, maybe even someday a Triple Crown—and his answer knocks you back.
In the place of personal goals he instead talks of a desire to be the sort of player who never tosses his bat or helmet in anger, who can’t pass up the chance to speak to a wide-eyed child, a player who laughs often and remains positive even through struggles.
“I always want to remember where I came from and the good things in life. I’d rather have that than be someone who hits .370 or whatever and is just miserable,” he says. “I’ve learned that the more relaxed I am and the more fun I’m having, the easier it is to play the game.”
July must have been a blissful month. He hit a jaw-dropping .446 then, played nearly flawless defense and sent the city of Pittsburgh into frenzied visions of baseball in October. The hallucinations have tapered, as McCutchen has settled into a rhythm that still has him leading the NL in hits and runs scored while the Pirates strain for their first winning season since 1992.
The club’s grim, star-crossed history has hardened and even crushed the souls of plenty of players who have gone through the Pirates' clubhouse, but not McCutchen. In the spring he signed a six-year, $51.5 million contract extension, and to celebrate he bought the watch that shimmers as he eats with a plastic fork food made from a truck on the curb of a New York street.
While others might kvetch over another typical Pittsburgh swoon, he sees only grand things on the horizon. The MVP trophy and a wild-card berth might be out of reach, but McCutchen isn’t inclined to lament what might have been.
He describes the delight he witnesses in the eyes of the kids who line up early to watch batting practice, and who could complain after seeing that? He speaks of his dad, Lorenzo, now a youth pastor, and his mother, Petrina, still a case manager at a juvenile center, and how they could retire in luxury now that their son has made it, but they still believe that a hard day’s work is the essence of living, and how could he not honor that?
“I’m not going to forget what got me here,” he says. No matter how the final days of the regular season spin, here’s an athlete who’s always going to treasure the blessed hand he has been dealt.
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