A.J. Burnett's post-baseball mornings will begin at 5:50. Burnett was a notorious early riser during his career, preferring to complete his workouts at dawn, but now he has another reason. A 5:50 alarm means he spends the morning with his two sons, 14-year-old A.J. Jr. and 11-year-old Ashton, before the school bus picks them up at the end of the driveway at 7.
"And then I'm sure Karen's going to try to get me to go to some gym class with her," Burnett said of his wife.
This is the retirement Burnett has envisioned. He declared the 2015 season, his 17th in the majors, his last. He chose to spend it with the Pirates, taking a pay cut to do so, and made his first All-Star team. In a ceremony before the final game of the regular season, he took the microphone and pointed to his teammates. "Every one of you," he said. "That's why I came back."
Burnett's influence on the Pirates in the three seasons he spent with them, 2012, 2013 and 2015, extended beyond his 3.34 ERA in 87 starts, or his 532 strikeouts in 557 innings. He joined the Pirates at a time of transition, imbuing the team with a measure of toughness and counseling a young clubhouse.
"There's just nothing that any one of us in this clubhouse are going through, or are going to go through, that he really hasn't been through," said starting pitcher Jeff Locke, a close friend of Burnett.
That friendship began with a conversation at batting practice in the Citi Field outfield Sept. 27, 2012. Locke began a start a night earlier with two scoreless innings against the New York Mets, but five runs and eight hits in the next two innings quickly ended his outing.
"He asked me some of the things I was thinking about, trying to help me gain and keep confidence a little bit," Locke said. "Allowed me to feel that I can trust my stuff."
Burnett advised Locke and the rest of the pitchers to emphasize their strengths, the pitches or locations they executed best, rather than worrying too much about exploiting an opponent's weakness.
"Sometimes his sequences aren't that complicated _ he throws a fastball down and away and a curveball in the dirt _ and he'll make you try to figure out which one it's going to be," starter Gerrit Cole said. "But oftentimes you do get caught in situations where the hitter knows what's coming and you know what's going, and you have to out-execute the pitch, and you can't be afraid to go there if it doesn't work out the first time."
Burnett found opportunities for instruction even moments after stepping off the mound. He exited a July 20 start one batter after surrendering a home run to Kansas City third baseman Mike Moustakas and sought out fellow sinker-baller Charlie Morton in the dugout. He didn't want Morton to make the same mistake Burnett did with Moustakas.
"That's what you don't do with the sinker," Morton remembers Burnett telling him. "You see what I did?"
Now 38, Burnett said he never realized the way he rubbed off on teammates would be more important than his individual accomplishments until he joined the Pirates, in a trade from with New York Yankees before the 2012 season. Cole said Burnett holds him accountable for his mound presence. Locke, who lived across the street from Burnett in spring training, would show up at Burnett's house at 4:45 a.m. for a ride to Pirate City and an early morning workout.
Burnett set the tone in the clubhouse _ catcher Chris Stewart said Burnett ensured players weren't distracted, lowering the volume of the music and halting pregame rides on the team's electric scooters _ but he had as much fun as anybody. When the team dressed in costumes for a flight on a road trip, he participated, dressing as Batman, with Locke as Robin.
"The trip that we had, he was all in," second baseman Neil Walker said. "Usually those types of trips with costumes and things like that are reserved for rookies, and to have guys like him and Aramis (Ramirez) on board for stuff like that makes you realize how much fun the guy is, but at the same time how good of a teammate he is."
His baseball career had its bumps: the displeasure when manager Clint Hurdle picked Cole rather than Burnett to start Game 5 of a 2013 National League Division Series, the cuts on his palms from slamming the Yankees clubhouse door in a start in 2010, his dismissal from the Florida Marlins at the end of the 2005 season.
It also had its high points. He finished 31st on the all-time strikeout list with 2,513, more than Christy Mathewson, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. He went 164-157 with a 3.99 ERA and started at least 30 games in eight different seasons.
He threw a no-hitter in 2001. He won Game 2 of the 2009 World Series _ when he outdueled Pedro Martinez by allowing one run in seven innings _ and won two World Series rings, in 2003 with the Marlins and 2009 with the Yankees.
"The almost no-no in Wrigley," said Hurdle, referring to the July 31, 2012 game when Burnett lost a no-hitter with two outs in the eighth. "Just the way he handled himself, the way he navigated the lineup, the objective in mind, the attention, the edge, and then the reaction after it didn't happen and the way he was able to finish. For me, that would be the one moment, that whole experience, that I'd put at the top of the list."
Burnett pointed to his final regular-season start, when Hurdle removed him after a home run and two walks in a game the Pirates eventually lost. The crowd roared for Burnett as he came off the mound, then again for a curtain call. After the game, at home, Karen asked him, "What do you think? What are your emotions?"
"I'm like, 'I lost, are you kidding me?' " Burnett said. "The first thing I said.
"Not a lot of times other things take priority over that, but that night took priority _ I hate to say it _ over winning and losing."
Burnett said he wants to use his newfound free time to win the right fishing tournament and qualify for the Bassmaster Classic. He loves fishing _ one of the benefits of early morning spring training workouts is free time in the afternoon to fish _ and has a small pond on his property in Maryland. But he hasn't fished there in the summer. He hasn't had a summer free, he guessed, since he was 5, between playing summer baseball for his father or high school ball, until 1995, when the New York Mets drafted him.
He and Karen might eventually travel _ Paris, Rome, Greece _ but not yet, not with Ashton playing soccer and A.J. Jr. running cross country, and both playing basketball and baseball. Now there is plenty of time to fish.
"I joke around and tell a lot of people that I'm really a good fisherman," Burnett said, "and baseball's just a hobby."
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