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R.A. Dickey

March 28, 2012 by · Comments Off on R.A. Dickey 

R.A. Dickey, New York Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey opens up in a revealing new biography, and he’s ready for whatever comes next. In “Wherever I May Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball,” Dickey writes about being sexually abused by a female baby-sitter multiple times when he was 8 years old, and also by a 17-year-old male on another occasion.

He writes about contemplating suicide six years ago, and finding a syringe in a clubhouse bathroom when he was the Texas Rangers in 2001.

“Anytime you put yourself out there and you are transparent with what happened to you, you run a risk,” Dickey said Tuesday. “I knew that when I wrote the book. … I had to get to the place where I was OK with whatever reaction was going to come.”

Dickey, who pitched for the Mariners in 2008, wrote the book with New York Daily News reporter Wayne Coffey. It’s scheduled to be released this week, but an excerpt is included in this week’s Sports Illustrated.

Dickey put together the best two years of his career after the Mets gave the journeyman right-hander a minor league deal in December 2009. He became one of New York’s most dependable starters after he was promoted in May 2010, going 11-9 with a 2.84 earned-run average in 27 games, and was rewarded with a $7.8 million, two-year contract.

“I started writing the book in 2005, and it was too painful then to write it, so I put it down for a few years,” Dickey said. “Sure, it’s been difficult, but I feel like I’m OK.”

Dickey said he had shared the personal details of his past with only about a dozen people before opening it up for the public to read about in the book. He doesn’t plan to address it with his teammates unless they ask him about it.

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