PEORIA, Ariz. – This isn’t how you want to retire.
Not quietly. Not in street clothes. Not in early March of spring training. Not with your arm in a sling. Not if your name is Norm Charlton.
You want to leave with sweat on your brow and a scowl on your face. You want to walk away on your terms, not nature’s. You want to leave striking out the cleanup hitter with the bases loaded, two out and your team leading by a run in the top of the ninth in the seventh game of the World Series. You want to go out celebrating a world championship.
Not this way. Not dressed in jeans and cowboy boots. Not talking about a gloried past and an unclear future.
But that was Norm Charlton one morning this week. He’d come to say his career was finally over.
How long did it last – 19 years?
Over in a flash. Or so it must have seemed.
It always goes fast when you’re having fun. And Norm Charlton had a ball.
“A long career that had its ups and downs,” said the hard-driving left-hander. “More ups than downs.”
He’s sitting on a bench inside a pitching facility at the Mariners spring training complex. He’s dressed in a baseball cap, shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He wears sunglasses. His face carries a little stubble. His left arm is in a black sling.
The day is warm and sunny. The morning workout is over. The only sounds are birds singing.
A quiet adieu to baseball. At least to playing.
There should be fist pumping. There should be cheers. There should be Stormin’ Norman spinning his glove on his fingers as he walks off the field. There should be high-fives and back-pounding for a job well done. There should be champagne and fat cigars.
Not this. Not quiet conversation. Not looking back or looking ahead.
Not talking about goals off the field. Goals like being able to go fly fishing without having the shoulder hinder him. Or being able to throw a ball for his dog to fetch. Or being able to raise his arm above his head without feeling pain.
“It’s got to be over sooner or later,” he said.
Yes, it does. But not so sedately. Not so politely.
It should end with a storm, not a silent spring.
You keep waiting for him to wink and chortle, “It ain’t over. I’ll be back.”
But it is over. And he won’t be back. Another shoulder surgery made sure of that.
What now? How do you replace that “high” you get from striking out a big hitter in a big moment in a big game?
“Good question,” he replied softly.
He doesn’t play golf. And card games aren’t much of an adrenalin rush.
“I don’t know. Come talk to me in 10 years and I’ll tell you how I replaced it.”
He did some coaching in the M’s minor league system last year. That might again be an option.
“I think I’ll find a way to channel that drive and that competitiveness into something else. Try to be one of the best coaches I can be.”
An M’s executive asked him last summer what he wanted to be when he quit playing. And Charlton said that he’d given some thought to becoming a general manager.
“I think I’m a pretty good judge of character, a pretty good judge of talent, a pretty good judge of people’s work habits and stuff like that.”
He knows the game but he found out last summer how much he didn’t know about the front office: “How scouting is run, how the draft is run, how the minor leagues are run.”
He might make a good GM, but he might have a tough time being a manager.
Asked how he’d motivate someone, he said, “I might have trouble with that because if I had a guy on my team in the minor leagues or college and he didn’t want to give everything you need to play this game, I’d just as soon get rid of him.”
It puzzles him how anyone with the skill to play in the major leagues can waste it with a lack of effort. After five years in the big leagues, a guy can be set for life financially. “If that isn’t motivation, I don’t know what I would tell a kid to motivate him.”
Nobody ever had to motivate Charlton. You don’t play as long as he did without wanting to be out there on the mound. That’s been his summer home since he started down in West Palm Beach in 1984.
Baseball has been his life, but he could have done other things. He graduated from Rice University with a triple major in political science, religion and physical education.
Interesting guy, this 41-year-old lefty.
Interesting career. He was a set-up man on the 1990 Cincinnati team that was supposed to get beat in the World Series. The Reds swept the Oakland A’s in four games.
That was the first of his three biggest thrills in baseball. The other two happened in Seattle: The M’s late-season charge to the AL West title in ‘95 and the record-setting 116-win season in 2001. “Most people in their careers don’t get to do one of those things,” he said.
There were people he admired – Steve Carlton, the late Tug McGraw, and Lou Piniella, his manager in Cincinnati and Seattle. “He was like an adopted dad, and I had tons of respect for my dad.
“Lou’s one of those guys who wanted the best for all of his players,” he said, “and was willing to fight for it.”
Though he’s unsure what the future holds, he knows there’ll be some fly fishing contests with his good friend and former teammate, Jay Buhner. “He wins them all,” Charlton smiled. “Jay’s a really good fly fisherman.”
And what does he want his tombstone to read? “As a guy who gave his all at everything he did,” he said. “I feel I left everything I had on the field.”
No one could ask anymore.
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