A REMARKABLE INTERVIEW: THE STORY OF NELSON FIGUEROA: PART I

Retold by Jeremy Mand 

                                    

On Thursday, February 28^th, Nelson Figueroa, the former long-time Major League Pitcher and SNY studio analyst, agreed to do what I initially thought would be a brief interview on his career, the game of baseball, and of course the Mets, for the Mack Mets blog. As this was my first interview of a former big-leaguer, I did my homework on his career and had a general sense of the topics I thought I would be writing about beforehand. 

Nelson though, blew up any preconceived notions I had formed about how I imagined an interview like this would go; and from reading his Wikipedia page, listening to his takes on SNY, or browsing his stats on baseball-reference, I realized very quickly that there is more to his story than what you can find on google. 

Nelson, the human being, is in my opinion, the real life major league version of Forrest Gump. Not that he bears any similarity to Tom Hanks’ iconic character – the similarity is that, just like Forrest Gump, he seemed to have been or done everything, everything a baseball player could do over the course of two decades+, without anyone noticing how remarkable it was. Unless of course you were paying attention.

Nelson played baseball all over the world, threw the first complete game shut out for the Mets at Citi Field, would not give in to injury or self doubt throughout his 20 year career pursuing his dream, and even inspired the legendary poet, Martin Espada, to write about and commemorate his pitching during the 2013 World Baseball Classic. 

Below is part I of my interview with Nelson:

Where are you living now?

“I am currently living in Weehawken, New Jersey, with my wife and daughter”

How has COVID impacted your life?

“Covid has been really challenging being stuck inside and only getting to see a small circle of people. I actually got COVID back in September; my wife, daughter and most of my immediate family also got it. My wife still has lingering symptoms as she still doesn’t have a sense of taste. She has to eat with plastic utensils.”

What team did you root for growing up?

“I always appreciated the scrappy players, the Keith Millers, Wally Backman-types but my favorite hitter was “HoJo” (Howard Johnson); and my favorite Pitcher was obviously “Doc” (Dwight Gooden)”

Who was the best player you played with early in life, before college or pro ball? Who was the best player you played against in college?

“The best player I played with in high school was a kid named Ruben Cardona. (Ruben was drafted in the 49^th round of the 1995 draft by the St. Louis Cardinals) He was the fastest guy at Lincoln high school, where I went to school. At Lincoln, at the time I played, we had a baseball field that sat on top of the football field and was adjacent to the school, and he would hit these towering home runs onto the roof of the school which was amazing. As a senior, we won the PSAL championship at Yankee Stadium.

How did you realize you were going to be a pitcher?

“I went to Brandeis College and I played for a man named Pete Varney. Varney was an amazing coach, he was a Major League Catcher, who had been drafted 6 times by 5 different MLB teams, but turned down to pursue football, until the 7^th time he was drafted in the 1^st Round by the White Sox. He was a really smart guy –went to Harvard. He had done everything. Despite his acclaim, he was extremely humble. 

So, despite all this I fought with him all the time. I actually didn’t want to be a pitcher, I WANTED TO PLAY EVERYDAY. Coach Varney explained to that in the Major Leagues, there was “only 1 Shortstop, or only 1 left fielder” but there was 12 pitchers, and the best track to the major leagues was as a pitcher.” 

Varney, made a few calls, and was able to get me a spot in the Cape Cod League pitching for the Wareham Gateman; apparently a few of the kids had signed with ML teams and dropped out of the league, and the Gateman kept me as the 25^th guy. 

I ended up pitching well, got my fastball up to 90-91 mph, made the league All Star team, threw back to back to back shutouts in the playoffs, and won a championship. After that, my name was on the map. I was a skinny 128 lb pitcher from a division III school, but after that performance, I was drafted by the Mets."

I went through your game logs, and I saw that the perhaps the best game of your career was a complete game, 4 hit, shut-out of the Houston Astros in 2009. What was working that day?

“This is an interesting story. It was the last game of the season. Throughout my baseball career I had pitched the last game of the season on many occasions. At the major league level, especially on teams not going playoffs, a lot of players didn’t want to pitch or play on the last day. But I had something I felt I needed to prove, which I’ll get to in a moment, so I took the ball for that game. But as you said we were playing the Astros, and I knew their hitters well, and I also knew that on the last day of the season players were often eager to finish the year and they would be swinging early in the count, and were going to be overly aggressive. I used a big slow curve ball, changed speeds, spotted my pitches, and was able to be successful. The interesting part of this story is that I had been following some of our star pitchers in the clubhouse around, picking their brains, learning what I could. Players like Santana, Pedro Martinez, and K-Rod, and I was also so competitive, and I thought if they could do something great, why couldn’t I? For this particular game, I thought here was an opportunity to do something special before they could. I actually went into that game hoping to achieve what I did, a complete game shutout. I wanted to be the first player to throw a complete game shutout at Citi Field, and I did it!”

There was a break in your career between 2004 and 2008; what happened there? Injuries? You don’t see it too often a player willing themselves back to the majors after age 30. 

“In 2004, I was playing for the Pirates, and Jason Kendall was my catcher, and I threw a fastball all the way to the backstop. He came out and the coaches came out to see if I was OK. I said I was, went back and threw 7 more sinkers to get out of the inning. When I went back to the dugout, I gave my teammates high fives, but my arm wasn’t as high after the inning as it was before. There were 12 games left in the season and we weren’t in Pittsburgh, so I didn’t get examined for several weeks afterwards. When I did, I failed my exit physical. 

The doctors in Pittsburgh said I had a partial tear of my rotator cuff. It would be a 6-9 month rehab. I went to get a second opinion – because this was my career on the line – so I saw the Dodgers Doctor, Neal El Attrache, who had handled the surgery for some of their draft picks, but he had only done a few surgeries, so I went back to Pittsburgh to get the surgery. The day of the surgery, I got a call from the Pittsburgh GM, and he told me they were releasing me, not putting me on the 60-day DL, it was an outright release. I was shocked. 

I went ahead and got the surgery, and after a few months it was clear that it was still not right, I couldn’t lift my arm above my head, so I had to go back again and re-do the surgery. The second time it worked -- my shoulder was brand new, I felt like I had a shoulder of an 8-year old boy, problem was…I had the shoulder of an 8-year old boy. I had to rebuild the muscle. The second problem I had was that I had no team, because the Pirates released me. 

After my rehab, I latched on in Winter Ball in the Mexican League with a team called the Toros, for the final stretch of the season. I pitched 7 times in 17 days in relief, and my arm couldn’t take it. During one of the games, I faced Johnny Gomes , and I threw him two fastballs at 81, and I get him to pop-up on the infield – he was out in front of my fastball. 

He came up to me afterwards and said nice job with the back-to-back change-ups, and it was a bittersweet compliment because I threw fastballs, not changeups, my arm was still not right, so I went back to rehab. 

Because I had pitched in Mexico, I was no longer considered injured, so I lost my workman’s comp, and lost my income. I didn’t get a paycheck for 5-6 months that year. 

I finally got an opportunity playing for the Long Island Ducks in 2006, only did 2 starts, but my shoulder [strength] was back. I was then signed by Washington and invited to spring training in 2007 by the Nationals, but got cut and decided to go down back to Mexico. 

I threw 11 straight complete games. In one of the games, I threw 153 pitches, gave up four earned runs by the 8^th inning, but I wasn’t coming out of the game. I think I gave up 20 hits that day, but I wasn’t coming out. 

When I finished there, my life changed again, I got a call to play in Taiwan, so I took it, and I ended up pitching there. They had two good and one not so good pitcher, so I took the not so good pitchers' spot, and I went 7-0, helped the team win the championship; I became a bit of a folk here there, they called me “Figelo.” After that, I came back to the States and still had no offers. 

So, I again go back to the Mexican League, first game out of the shoot, I strike out 13 batters, most for a starting pitcher that season. I pitched so well that I ended up winning the MVP, and won games 1, 5, 8 of the Championship Series, which we won. In 2007, I threw 285 innings in 4 leagues, and finally I got a call at the beginning of 2008 to come to Mets camp.” 

What hitter did you hate facing the most? Who had your number?

“Jim Edmonds. I could never get him to hit the top of my sinker, he was always able to lift it. (Edmonds went 7 for 14 for 3 HR against Figueroa)”

What hitter did you own? That you always got out?

“I held Chipper Jones hitless (he was 1 for 11 with a single against Figueroa) and I also was very successful against Pujols (he went 3 for 16); I was also very proud to have struck out Barry Bonds.” 

Who was your favorite catcher to throw to?

“I always enjoyed throwing to the back-up catchers. I didn’t get a whole lot of time to work with the starting catchers, so when I threw to the back-ups, they knew my ins and outs, what worked for me and what didn’t. If I were to name one catcher I would throw to, it would be Sandy Alomar Jr.”

Part II of our series will be published next week. Please stay tuned.