PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Anne Dickey dreaded late March. Baseball teams shed the excess from spring training rosters around then, and too often her husband was swept up with the debris. Life as the wife of a baseball player can be a logistical nightmare. At this time of year, it can just be cruel.

In 2008, his third full year as a knuckleballer, R.A. Dickey appeared to have sewn up a spot in Seattle’s bullpen. Anne booked a flight from Nashville, Tenn., to be with him when the season began. “Sure enough,” she said, two days before Opening Day, the hurler learned his spot with the club didn’t exist. His wife flew to Seattle anyway. Then they drove 35 miles south and searched for a place to rent near the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma, Wash.

“It was just so hard, and emotional,” Anne Dickey said.

She punctuated stories like this with rueful laughter as she drove her two sons home from a park in Nashville. Her eldest son Eli's light saber poked out of her Toyota Sienna. A "Star Wars" aficionado, R.A. Dickey calls the minivan their Millennium Falcon. His wife calls it "our big splurge" after he inked his $7.8 million contract with the Mets last winter.

The contract represented the first concrete foothold of fortune for a family that had chased a decade-old dream. The Greeks used a word that could well describe the last year of R.A. Dickey's life: kairos, when long-desired opportunities become apparent and a man must take advantage.

At dinner last week, R.A. Dickey, 37, referenced this “kairotic moment.” In January, he scaled Mount Kilimanjaro. On Thursday, his memoir hits bookshelves. Next month, a documentary featuring him debuts at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The fanfare occurs as his family settles into a life of hard-earned comfort. No longer does a car in need of repair or a felled tree branch set off stress. No longer does his wife book plane tickets for herself and her four children with the worry that her husband might be shipped elsewhere.

“The practical side of it was just relief,” Anne Dickey said. “You could just take a deep breath. Even still, now, I’ve just been pinching myself. Like, ‘Oh, yeah, isn’t it great?’ ”

STAYING HUMBLE

One day last week, R.A. Dickey offered a hand and slid into a restaurant booth. “What can I get you to drink?” a waitress asked.

“Sweet tea?” R.A. Dickey said.

“Sweet tea? It’s raspberry.”

"Can I taste it?" he asked. His tone was pleasant, almost sheepish. "And if not, I'll just swap it out for lemonade or something."

The tea came a few minutes later. He took a sip. Lemonade it is, he decided.

This is R.A. Dickey’s time, the moment of his entrance into the national sporting consciousness. He arrived at the Palm City Grill on St. Lucie West Boulevard after an off day filled with interviews. He spent the morning speaking to ESPN cameras, then flinging knuckleballs at Jeremy Schaap. His publisher, Penguin, has sold an excerpt of his book, “Wherever I Wind Up,” to Sports Illustrated.

R.A. Dickey understands the reason he has gained prominence as a writer is his competence as a pitcher. He led the Mets’ starting rotation with a 3.08 ERA the past two seasons. Manager Terry Collins considers him ballast for the rotation.

“It settles the whole staff,” Collins said after R.A. Dickey threw one-hit ball over six innings Thursday, “knowing that even nights when you’ve had to burn your bullpen a couple nights in a row, he’s going to go out there and take the baseball.”

R.A. Dickey achieved that status after five years harnessing the knuckleball. In turn, he established a modicum of consistency. That, he says, is what has changed most for him. His lifestyle as a major-league millionaire resembles his lifestyle as minor-league striver.

After he ordered a 6-ounce filet — with a baked potato, extra butter — Dickey drifted back, briefly, to his childhood. “My family of origin is such that. ...” His words hung for five seconds. “I’ll say things were humble for us.”

“So I come from a place where I know I can eat peanut butter and jelly for a month straight and be fine,” he said.

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That sensibility transferred to his adult life. The first baseball cruelty he suffered is well-told: After the Texas Rangers selected him 18th overall in the 1996 draft, a physical showed his right elbow contained no ulnar collateral ligament. His bonus plummeted from $850,000 to $75,000 — or less than what R.A. Dickey believes he would have received had he signed out of high school as a 10th-round pick with Detroit.

He and his wife learned to strike a balance. She joked that if she were fully in charge of the finances, the family would be broke now; if her husband ran the show, their money would “be buried in a can in the backyard.” Some winters, he worked odd jobs — painting, assisting in a physical therapy lab, anything for a little extra cash. After he became a father, R.A. Dickey traveled to Venezuela and Puerto Rico for winter ball, earning money “in case some emergency happened,” he said.

Baseball does not pay its players like paupers. In 2004, when 28-year-old Dickey earned his first full season of service time, his salary was $337,500. But the expenses can still pile up. If a family wants to stick together during the season, his wife said, it needs to find a place near the team, in addition to the permanent home in Nashville.

So they kept a tight budget and tried to avoid debt, ever mindful that his career could end at any time. An opportunity came their way in 2007. R.A. Dickey came close to walking away that year before he latched on with Milwaukee, which housed its Triple A affiliate in his hometown of Nashville. Each year thereafter presented enough progress to continue.

After 2010, when R.A. Dickey finally established himself as a bona fide big-league pitcher, he opted for stability over future earning potential. He struck his deal with the Mets, which features a $5 million club option for 2013, in January to avoid arbitration. Then he flew to New York for his physical and some meetings with publishing houses. He learned he’d passed his physical while inside his literary agent’s office. “It was all I could do not to weep in front of her,” he said.

With his coffers suddenly flush, he bought the minivan. He snagged a pair of iPhones. He paid some debts. He bolstered his children’s college funds. And he felt a long-awaited sense of relief.

So after many years of turmoil, his life has settled. That’s why he reaped the opportunities before him. He had been writing his book for years — now he could find a publisher. An Ernest Hemingway story about Kilimanjaro captured his imagination as a boy — now he could summit the mountain and raise money for charity.

The obvious question: What comes next? Anne mentioned taking their two girls to India this year. R.A. Dickey intends to pen short stories. He does not know if he'll have the time. Better yet, he isn't worried if he has the time.

"I don't feel like I have anything pressing that I really need to do, or have to do, or even want to do," he said. "I just want to be a good baseball player."

He grinned.

“Which is hard enough.”

SWEET REWARD



The other day, Anne Dickey ran into an old acquaintance, and they got to talking about her husband because most everyone asks about him these days. She mentioned the book, the most obvious emblem of his success.

“I’ve always been so proud of him,” the acquaintance said. “He never gave up.”

“It was just so nice to hear,” Anne Dickey said as she wheeled the Millennium Falcon toward home. “And nice for me, as his wife, to say, ‘Yeah, I really am, too.’ I don’t want that to ever get old.”

Andy McCullough: amccullough@starledger.com; twitter.com/McCulloughSL