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Missed this earlier in the week.
Mets’ Dickey Has Visions of Hurling Knuckleballs From on High
By DAVID WALDSTEIN
Published: April 2, 2011
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — During the baseball season, R. A. Dickey’s job with the Mets requires ascending a hill only 10 ½ inches high, a modest summit from which he surveys the field and throws his knuckleball to batters.But Dickey’s ambition before next spring training is to climb a far more majestic mound, one that rises 19,336 feet above sea level, a snowy summit from which he will be able to gaze at the African continent below.
In a quest to satisfy a curiosity that dates to high school, and to raise awareness and money for a charitable cause, Dickey plans to lead a small group up the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, Mount Kilimanjaro.
Ever since Dickey read “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway as an 11th grader in Tennessee, the snow-capped mountain on the border of Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa has captivated him. Now, with his recent success as a pitcher, he has the means and visibility to take on this latest challenge.
The story by Hemingway, which depicts the agony of a failed writer suffering from gangrene as he and his wife await help at the foot of Kilimanjaro, is at the core of Dickey’s interest in the mountain. But he was also intrigued by documentaries about Mount Everest and the feature film “K2,” about climbing the second-highest peak in the world.
“I always had the interest in the back of my mind but forgot about it for years and years,” he said. “I don’t know what I can attribute the reason to. It just started popping up in my mind from time to time, as things do from your past. And the pieces started coming together.”
Since December, Dickey has been researching and planning his trip — which will take place in January — including arranging flights, hiring porters and guides to lead the expedition, and scouring his Mets contract to make sure he is allowed to pursue this endeavor.
Dickey will be joined by a group of athletes, including Kevin Slowey, his former teammate with the Minnesota Twins; Dave Racaniello, the Mets’ bullpen catcher; and John Zajac, the Mets’ physical therapist.
Although scaling Kilimanjaro is a demanding physical challenge — according to Dickey’s research, 30,000 people set out for the summit each year but only 18,000 make it — it does not require any technical climbing. It is just an exhausting eight-day trek upward, where altitude sickness can thwart the attempts of even some of the hardiest climbers.
Dickey looked over his contract and found he could not do any technical rock climbing or spelunking. But the route up Kilimanjaro is basically a highly demanding hike, and he found no prohibition against traveling to Africa and climbing one of the world’s highest peaks to raise money for charity.
“I haven’t felt the need to ask them,” Dickey said. “I looked at my contract at the restriction clause, and it’s not in there.”
The charity Dickey has chosen to promote and donate to is the Red Light District Outreach Mumbai, which is part of the Bombay Teen Challenge. It is an organization that rescues girls from enslavement in the sex trade and fights human trafficking. Dickey and his wife, Anne, have been involved with a similar organization, the International Justice Mission, and they felt the Red Light District Outreach Mumbai would be the best recipient.
“Human trafficking is a huge problem in that part of the world,” Dickey said, “and having two young daughters myself, I thought of that as just a riveting cause. My wife and I thought that would be the thing that we would most like to do to help.”
He has one prominent corporation ready to donate, and Dickey plans to make appearances and do autograph signings in the weeks leading to the expedition. He also intends to recruit individuals to donate according to how high they actually climb toward Uhuru Peak.
In Racaniello, Slowey and Zajac, Dickey has found three sturdy companions. Zajac’s career is fitness, and last year, Racaniello demonstrated his mental and physical resolve when, on a dare, he rode a bicycle to spring training from Stamford, Conn., to Port St. Lucie, Fla. Slowey, of course, is a professional athlete. But even that does not guarantee success. The former tennis champion Martina Navratilova, 54, encountered altitude sickness and a stomach infection when she attempted the ascent in December and had to be taken down the mountain on a stretcher.
“There is some risk involved that we won’t summit,” Dickey said. “There is oxygen asphyxiation, there can be rock avalanches, boulders falling. Someone could fall and break a wrist. All of those are attributable factors for why people don’t summit. But I don’t anticipate those will be problems for us.”
The group will leave from New York in January and fly to Tanzania. There they will be joined by the porters and make what Dickey expects to be an eight-day ascent, and a two-day descent. In all, he expects to be away 12 days, and hopes to realize a dream he has held dear for so long.
“It will be awesome and something I can check off a list,” he said. “But I want the main emphasis to be how can we support a really great cause. What we will be able to do for the Outreach will mean far more to me than the actual summiting.” |
Dickey aims to be the first person to achieve the ascent without an ulnar collateral ligament.
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