DJ Carrasco with his mother Tresa Emanuelson in 1992.
DJ Carrasco with his mother Tresa Emanuelson in 1992.
A former Major League pitcher visits Greymouth to find out what happened on a rafting trip 17 years ago.
For a career that largely flew under the radar, DJ Carrasco's eight-year stint in Major League baseball ended in a spectacular blaze.
Injuries were catching up with the 35-year-old New York Mets' relief pitcher by mid-2012. A torn rib cage muscle and badly sprained ankle had bedevilled him ever since he'd signed a $US2.4 million ($3.16 million) contract with one of baseball's glamour clubs. By his own account, he'd pretty much "sucked" as a Met, so he knew the wolves were at the door when he was called up to face the Milwaukee Brewers in a key game.
DJ Carrasco pitching for the New York Mets in 2011. Photo / Getty Images
Sure enough, Brewers star Rickie Weeks clubbed him for a huge home run. Carrasco's next pitch drilled the Brewers' best player, Ryan Braun, on the arm. Worried his own superstar might be hit in retaliation, Mets manager Terry Collins removed All Star third baseman David Wright from the game.
Wright objected and a huge row with Collins ensued. Carrasco was ejected by the umpires, with the blame for a bust-up between Wright and Collins at least partly directed at the struggling reliever.
The following night, after giving up another monster home run, Carrasco was pretty much sacked on the spot. The relief was immense.
"It is not fun getting your butt handed to you every day," says Carrasco. "It wasn't a hard pill to swallow. I hit the ground running. I was so excited to be done."
He had things to do.
Five months after leaving the glaring lights of New York's Citi Field behind him, Carrasco and his wife Autumn Lopez wound their way down the South Island's West Coast to Greymouth in a campervan. They visited the Greymouth Star, and searched its archives, before making their way to Wild West Adventures.
The company offers tours into the hinterland; thick native forest littered with caves and bisected by a multitude of glistening rivers and streams.
The white water rafting and black water tubing excursions are designed to be adventurous, fun, confidence-building, but not dangerous. Nobody is meant to get hurt.
Nobody is meant to die.
So the young man behind the counter is taken aback when Carrasco begins to ask if he knows anything about what happened to his mother, Tresa, 17 years ago. There must be some kind of mistake, he says, but he'll call his dad, the company's owner, and check.
"Put him on the phone," Paul Schramm says immediately to his son.
Schramm was driving the support vehicle on October 21, 1995, when, to mark the last day of a three-week holiday around Fiji, Australia and New Zealand, Tresa Emanuelson and her friend Gayle Ledgerwood embarked on a kayaking trip.
After a morning of flat water training the novice kayakers, with a third client and three guides, made their way carefully down the Taramakau River, a largely benign body of water that was at its busiest 150 years ago during a gold rush. They stopped before each section of grade two rapids to discuss the dangers and plot their route. By mid-afternoon the group reached Rocky Point, where they stopped to warm up with a cup of Milo and discuss whether to go on. All three tourists opted to continue. At the next section of river a log protruded from the right bank. The plan was to stick to the left. Tresa stopped paddling halfway down the rapid and drifted to the right. Her kayak hit the log and became trapped. The water poured over Tresa. A frantic effort to free her took eight minutes, by which time she had drowned.
A coroner's report ascribes no blame for the accident. Things could have been done differently, but that wouldn't necessarily have changed the outcome.
With Schramm as his guide, Carrasco retraced his mother's final steps. The experience was cathartic for both men.
"These things, they are with you forever," says Schramm. "It is something that changes the way you think about everything."
While Carrasco could sense Schramm's burden lifting, for him the journey recalibrated a view of a place he had associated only with loss.
"I had this picture of New Zealand - I didn't know the country existed at the time - it's the place that took my mum. It wasn't necessarily a hate, but I don't know the place, I picture it in my head but I don't know what it looks like, anything about the people there."
Knowing that Tresa's last day had been spent surrounded by such natural beauty meant a lot him.
"All of the places she went were just gorgeous on that West Coast."
Carrasco vowed to return. Like so often in his life, baseball provided the opportunity. For the past month he has been touring the country, spreading the baseball gospel through a series of clinics for aspiring players and coaches. He might lack the profile of some of the baseball stars who have visited but in many ways Carrasco is the perfect man to inspire what is still a fledgling sport here.
Kiwis may have celebrated John Holdzkom's stunning journey from unheralded, unwanted Diamond Blacks pitcher to a Major League playoff appearance with the Pittsburgh Pirates last year, however Holdzkom is US born-and-raised. No New Zealand-born player has ever cracked the big leagues and the odds of one doing so are massively stacked against them. It's a scenario with which Carrasco identifies.
Drafted in the 26th round and boasting a funky arm action that many scouts hated, Carrasco was a huge long shot to make the major leagues. But he was tough and smart, imbued with a can-do spirit drilled into him by his mother.
DJ Carrasco of the New York Mets pitching against the St Louis Cardinals. Photo / Getty Images
Safford, Arizona, is a town of less the 10,000 people. It's where a 16-year-old Tresa gave birth to Daniel Jose Carrasco. Two years later she moved to California, chasing dreams for herself and her son bigger than tiny Safford could provide. She became a highly successful software salesperson, gained her pilot's licence and skipper's ticket. Then, at 35, she took a holiday to New Zealand from which she never returned.
"It was dark man," says Carrasco. "There was such a dynamic relationship there where she was my best friend and my mom, my supplier and provider.
"I dropped out of school, got into some stuff. It was a real tough time in my life."
He returned to Arizona, got himself together, recommitted to baseball. "It was her dream for me to be a ball player so I was like 'I got to get back on the straight and narrow', do the things that are going to make my mom proud and do the best for me. Baseball was an outlet in a troubled teen's life." It was also a potential career pathway. "I saw baseball as an instrument and treated it like that. It needed to be a business for me as well as the team owning me."
But baseball is a brutal business and Carrasco had a problem. He considered himself as a hitter but scouts were only interested in his pitching arm. He was drafted, discarded, re-signed, traded and eventually re-drafted before finally getting a shot at the big leagues with Kansas City.
He had his moments, including pitching a complete game victory over the multiple world champion San Francisco Giants, but he was never a star, more often than not serving as a stop-gap measure at the five MLB clubs for which he played over parts of eight seasons.
He toiled hard, survived, won more games that he lost and earned over $US4 million ($5.27 million) as a major leaguer, most of which came in that final contract with the Mets.
He fulfilled Tresa's dream, even if he never quite fulfilled his own goal of becoming a successful hitter.
Having spent most of his time in the American League, where pitchers don't bat, or as a relief pitcher, he swung the bat just 15 times in his career.
He hit the ball hard a couple of times, but straight at fielders, his lone regret being that he can't lay claim to a major league hit.
"He's an amazing guy when you get to spend some time with him," says Schramm, who wasn't surprised to learn Carrasco was back in the country spreading the baseball gospel, doing his best to inspire others.
