The events of last October remain foremost on Barry Zito’s mind,
but not the ones you might think. He isn’t obsessing over the
Giants’ decision to trim him from all three postseason rosters and
reduce him to a spectator for the World Series. Instead, Zito’s
daily thoughts remain with his 82-year-old father, Joe, who is
making a slow recovery from a cardiac episode he suffered on Oct.
12
— the day after the Giants clinched the NL Division Series at
Atlanta.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.
The events of last October remain foremost on Barry Zito’s mind, but not the ones you might think.
He isn’t obsessing over the Giants’ decision to trim him from all three postseason rosters and reduce him to a spectator for the World Series. Instead, Zito’s daily thoughts remain with his 82-year-old father, Joe, who is making a slow recovery from a cardiac episode he suffered on Oct. 12 — the day after the Giants clinched the NL Division Series at Atlanta.
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In late January, after a three-month hospitalization, Joe Zito moved to a rehabilitation center in Southern California. He remains confined to bed, where he is relearning to sit up.
“It was definitely a very challenging time for me, all things considered, both familywise and careerwise in October,” Barry Zito said in a wide-ranging interview with the Bay Area News Group. “But it also causes you to take joy in the things you’re doing and just enjoy life more. I’m constantly in that pursuit just to enjoy being with the guys, laugh, go out there, work hard and be your best and be satisfied with that, instead of always needing life to bring you something to be happy.”
The Giants will receive their World Series rings on April 9 — a joyful moment for players, coaches and fans. Zito will accept his ring and celebrate along with everyone else. But he knows it will be a challenge to tamp down other feelings that might be welling up inside him.
“I would like it to be (joyful),” he said. “I’m sure there’s going to be some feelings in there—a feeling like I didn’t contribute as much as everyone else. But at the end of the day, it was what it was, and I have to move on. I went through all that stuff and it’s always going to be a certain part of my life. But now it has to be in the past.”
Giants manager Bruce Bochy said he’ll probably talk with Zito about last season’s decision at some point this spring. But he isn’t concerned that his left-hander, who remains a vital member of the rotation, will harbor any lasting grudge.
“This guy gives you everything he has. He’s a pro,” Bochy said. “We don’t get to the postseason without Barry Zito. He’s a big part of the rotation. We were in a tough situation and we went with our four hottest pitchers. He understands that.”
Zito wouldn’t have become a major league pitcher without his father’s hands-on guidance.
Joe Zito spent his working life as a classical pianist, composer and arranger for artists including Nat King Cole. When Barry showed aptitude as a teenage pitcher growing up in San Diego, his father, a baseball novice, sought all the information he could about the kinetics of throwing off a mound. He hired high-profile coaches to work with his son, including former Cy Young Award winner Randy Jones. And Joe Zito had his own ideas, too, using a metronome to teach Barry to throw with a musician’s rhythm.
Even in his condition, Joe Zito hasn’t lost his ambitious, outsized personality.
“Physically, he’s got some things to overcome,” Barry Zito said. “But his spirits are really good. He’s there mentally, which is great.”
In a sense, dealing with his 82-year-old father’s health crisis gave Zito some valuable perspective. He also lost his mother, Roberta, in November 2008. Both experiences deeply affected his outlook.
“I just wanted to simplify my life, you know?” Zito said. “Not that it was overly complicated, but every year that goes by I try to eliminate more things that don’t nourish me on a deep level, whether that’s extraneous people in my life that I don’t resonate with or activities that don’t really feed me.
“So I just made everything I did this offseason more fulfilling: working out, being with my lady, a lot of music, visiting my father in the hospital—all that stuff. There are things that fill you up and things that empty you out. I just kept doing the things that fill you up.”
Zito had to resist the urge to overhaul his mechanics as a result of being left off the postseason roster. He was 9-14 with a 4.15 ERA last year, but he also notched 19 quality starts—the most since he threw 20 for the A’s in 2006.
“Those are important to me,” he said. “I had to look at things like that to understand it’s going to take a couple tweaks, not hitting the panic button.”
In previous springs, Zito, 32, always had to explain why he was a slow starter. But last year, he was 5-0 with a 1.49 ERA in his first six starts. It was the second half in which he tailed off; most notably, he was 0-8 in 13 road starts after May 5.
Zito said he lost his focus in the second half because he tried to do too much, including his Oct. 2 start against the San Diego Padres in which he issued two bases-loaded walks in the first inning.
It was his chance to pitch the Giants to an NL West-clinching victory and earn a lasting place in franchise lore that didn’t include mention of his seven-year, $126 million contract. Instead, it was the performance that knocked him out of the playoff rotation.
“Of course I wanted to be the guy to bring it home, for the team and the city,” said Zito, who is entering the fifth year of his contract. “But wanting it too bad can have an adverse effect. You get away from being pitch-to-pitch. The older you get, the more you realize that this game is played in the moment.
“I guess you could say that about life, too.”
— Story by Andrew Baggarly, San Jose Mercury News
