A quick Jose Lima story: It’s winter ball in Mexico, and Lima has just surrendered more than a mere home run. He has given up a bomb.
Mendy Lopez watches Lima, his old friend, from the opposing dugout. Lima looks furious on the mound. He is years removed from his 20-win, All-Star season with the Astros and no longer in the big leagues. He trails the hitter around the bases like a mad man, yelling all the way to home plate.
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“Holy s—,” Lopez thinks, “they’re gonna fight.”
When the bomb-masher steps into the dugout, Lopez rushes over: “What was Lima saying to you? Why didn’t you fight? Lima was aggressive!”
The guy shakes his head. “No, no,” he says. “He was just saying that that was a great bomb!”
That was Lima Time.
Another quick Lima story: It’s the late 1990s, and Scott Ward is sitting in the front row at an Astros spring training game in Florida when his friend Bruce from Baltimore calls.
Bruce asks Ward what he is doing, so Ward, a random fan from Florida, says he’s about to watch Jose Lima hit. Lima is at the peak of his career: a regular on the Jim Rome Show, a fan favorite, the subject of a Sports Illustrated feature. When Lima hears his name, his head snaps. He is only a few feet from Ward in the on-deck circle.
“Who are you talking to?” Lima asks.
“Just a friend of mine from Baltimore,” Ward says.
“I want you to tell him that my fastball is jumpin’ today, man,” Lima says.
“Bruce, Jose Lima wants me to tell you that his fastball is jumping today,” Ward says.
“Bulls—,” Bruce says.
Ward passes along Bruce’s message. Lima tells Ward to put the phone up to the net. “I want to tell you my fastball is smokin’ today like nobody ever saw,” Lima crows to Bruce from Baltimore, to the delight of Ward and everyone around him. “They can’t see it, they can’t hit it.”
That was Lima Time, too.
More essence than brand, more worldview than gimmick, Lima Time was singing merengue before games and signing autographs long after them. It was languid days on the golf course and hot nights at the club. It was comebacks and miracles and a million changeups — all shorthand for one of the most improbably unforgettable careers in baseball history.
“It wasn’t an act,” says John Buck, one of Lima’s former catchers. “It was full-blown passion.”
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Lima sang a song called El Mambo de Lima and line-danced to Randy Travis. He fired an imaginary gun at hitters after strikeouts and shouted at the Mini Jose Lima that he claimed lived in his glove. And on the days he started, when most pitchers are serious and reserved, he put on a clubhouse show unlike anything his teammates had ever seen: strutting, singing, joking, dancing.
“And a lot of times,” says teammate Brad Ausmus, “just in a jockstrap.”
A child of the Dominican Republic, Lima made his debut for the Detroit Tigers in 1994 and pitched for five teams across 14 years. He dazzled at times, was a meatball king in others, and always stayed true to himself. When he threw his final major-league pitch in 2006, he had a career ERA that hovered above 5. But Lima Time never stopped. He went to Korea. He pitched in independent leagues in California and New Jersey and Canada and kept the dream alive.
He died in 2010 at the age of 37, likely of cardiac arrhythmia, according to a Los Angeles County coroner, leaving behind his wife, five children and a million stories. The night before his death, he went out dancing.
“He was one of the best teammates I ever had,” says third baseman Chris Truby.
“One of my favorite teammates ever,” says catcher Paul Lo Duca.
“He was one of the true characters of his time,” says pitching coach Guy Hansen. “There was no doubt about it.”
Question: Does anything stop Lima Time?
Jose Lima to The Windsor Star: “Nothing stops Lima Time.”
Lima hasn’t even made it through three full innings when he gets pulled from a game in the Dominican. After Lima exits, Mendy Lopez goes into the clubhouse to check on his friend. To his surprise, he finds Lima dressed in nice clothes, about to head out.
“Lima, what are you doing?”
Lima says he has a gig that night.
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Lopez can’t hide his disbelief: “Lima, you just got crushed!”
“I know,” Lima says. “That’s the game. They killed me tonight; I get them next time. But I’ve got to go sing.”
If you want to understand the worldview of Jose Lima, it’s best to start with July 19, 2001. Lima was 28 years old. He owned a 6.90 ERA. He might have been the worst pitcher in the majors. He had allowed 48 home runs the season before and permitted 24 earned runs for the Astros in April alone. He was traded back to the Detroit Tigers, where he continued to bleed runs at an astonishing rate.
“There was a game where he gave up eight runs in what felt like two minutes,” says former teammate C.J. Nitkowski.
But then on July 19, 2001, Lima Time returned. He threw a complete game against the New York Yankees in Detroit. He allowed one earned run. He danced and sang and drove his opponents batty. His ERA was 6.18 … and the flight after the game was a party.
Lima popped bottles and pounded drinks. He pestered Nitkowski about his pregnant wife. (“I hope the baby doesn’t look like you,” he said.) He held court and jabbered with teammates for hours.
“When he had that good one,” Nitkowski says, “he acted like he was the greatest pitcher in the world.”
That was Lima. He understood failure was part of life and refused to let bad performances diminish Lima Time. He celebrated the highs and moved past the lows, and he made teammates such as Nitkowski envious in the process.
“You never knew he had a bad day,” Nitkowski says.
When he gave up six runs in his MLB debut, he thought about how proud his family would be that he made it. When he was shelled by the Braves in 1999, allowing 10 hits and seven runs, he came out of the shower and witnessed a scrum of reporters, looking nervous and apprehensive.
“You guys scared of Lima or something?” he said. “It’s just a ballgame, guys. Don’t be scared of Lima. Come on, talk to Lima.”
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In the end, he had one abiding belief: As long as he had a jersey with his name on it, as long as he had a ball and a game to pitch, he was happy.
“I don’t care if it’s here, the Dominican Republic or Russia,” he said early in his career. “I just want to play.”
Question: Is it possible to have too much Jose Lima?
Jose Lima to The Galveston Daily News: “Too much Lima? Are you kidding? Are you tired of Lima, my man? Lima Time is fun time. Sit back and enjoy it, my man.”
Lima is pitching for the Edmonton Capitals in something called the Golden Baseball League. Every time the Capitals go on the road, Lima puts on a golf visor with a fake blonde mullet flowing down the back.
The Capitals fly commercial, and at the airport people recognize Lima with his familiar goatee. Still, when they approach him, he acts confused.
“No, no,” he says. “I throw bags at this airport. I’m the baggage handler. I’m just on lunch break.”
Or he tells the people he gets that all the time, then mimics Jose Lima’s windup.
The part that kills teammate Joey Gomes: The people who come up to him know he is Jose Lima. Jose Lima knows they know he is Jose Lima. But he never breaks character.
When Jose Lima was 21 years old, he threw a no-hitter for the Toledo Mud Hens. He struck out 13, called his own pitches and carried a lucky rock in his back pocket. When the performance was over, he fell to the ground in joy, leapt to his feet, skipped over the first-base line and jogged to the edge of the stands, where he signed autographs for 20 minutes.
“These people might be watching me in the majors someday,” Lima said then, “and I want them to remember that Jose Lima is a nice guy.”
Lima never stopped signing autographs and interacting with fans, no matter what level of baseball he was at. When he pitched in Houston, he posted up on the corner of the dugout, scurrying back to the clubhouse in the minutes before first pitch. When Lima played in Edmonton at the end of his career, he posted up in the parking lot after games, drinking beers with local fans.
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Late one night after a game in the Dominican Republic, Mendy Lopez walked back to his hotel in Santiago. The city was dead, the streets quiet. As he walked, he came across four or five guys sitting on the sidewalk. One of them was Jose Lima.
For a second, Lopez was worried. Maybe Lima was in trouble. So he stopped.
“Mendy, come here!” Lima yelled. “These guys want to talk! Let’s talk!”
Question: What is Lima about?
Jose Lima to The Galveston Daily News: “Lima is all about having fun. You’ll hardly ever see Lima not having a good time, and that’s what it’s all about.”
John Buck is a prospect with the Astros who takes himself seriously — “too seriously,” he admits. He is trying to make the 40-man roster, trying to prove he is good enough to be in the big leagues, when one day in spring training he gets jammed, bad.
From his own dugout, he hears Jose Lima’s voice boom across the field: “Peanut butter and … jaaaaam!!”
Everyone in the Astros’ dugout laughs. Buck is embarrassed at first, but he never forgets that moment.
Jose Lima stuttered when he was a boy in Santiago. Not many people knew that. He sang in clubs when he was 11. He took music lessons as a teenager. He showed off his voice before crowds of thousands. But sometimes, he stuttered in his native Spanish.
When he signed with the Tigers for $2,000 at age 17, he came to the United States and started to learn English. He started with the only thing that made sense: Music.
“He would listen to songs on the radio,” says Mike Lumley, a former minor-league teammate. “He would sing them to remember the words, and that’s how he started learning to speak English in the minor leagues.”
In time, Lumley realized something.
“In English,” he says, “he never stuttered, ever.”
Lima sang everywhere: the clubhouse, the field, the cage, at clubs on off days in New York.
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Lima’s speaking voice was a human drumroll, rapid fire and on beat. He sang with flair. Sometimes it seemed like he was talking and singing at the same time.
“His favorite thing was when a hitter got jammed,” says Gomes, a teammate from Edmonton. “He would almost wait for it to get quiet and then go: ‘Jaaaaaam! Ooooh, jaaaaaaam! Oh that was a jaaaam!’ Like he was singing a show tune.”
Jaaaaam. It was musical, it was funny, but it was also an ethos, as much a part of Lima as Lima Time. It’s why Buck calls the day he got jammed as a young prospect a “core memory,” something that still gives him goosebumps to talk about.
“Because of what it meant and what it did,” Buck says. “Like, hey, don’t take yourself so seriously. Let’s have fun.”
And one thing about Jose Lima: He never stopped having fun.
“He is sorely missed,” Nitkowski says.
“I was blessed to have Lima as a teammate,” says Mendy Lopez. “Like, blessed. I cannot thank God enough to have a guy like him.”
One final Lima story: Lima is pitching for the Edmonton Capitals. It’s 2009.
Joey Gomes is at the plate. In the dugout Lima predicts that Gomes will go “Jumanji” — Lima’s word for a massive home run.
Right on cue, Gomes hits a massive home run. Full Jumanji. Lima is the first one out of the dugout to greet Gomes. There are hardly any fans at the ballpark, just a smattering of polite applause. Lima is a long, long way from the big leagues and his peak, but in the dugout he is ecstatic. He still has a jersey with his name on it. A teammate takes a video, and Lima looks right at the camera, delight in his eyes, his words running together:
“You know, sometimes you got to call the s—, you know what I mean? That’s the way it is in this business: You call the s—, the s— happens.”
Then: “Jaaaaaaaaam!”
(Video courtesy of Matt Ceriani)
(Top image: Sam Richardson / The Athletic; Photo: Tom Pidgeon / Allsport via Getty Images)