If I ever get back to stay, It’s gonna be another brand new day… -Jesse Fuller, San Francisco Bay Blues There’s something about a pitcher’s mound. So far as I know, it’s the only ground on any field in any sport that is raised so as to accentuate the singular control over the outcome of […]
If I ever get back to stay,
It’s gonna be another brand new day…
-Jesse Fuller, San Francisco Bay Blues
There’s something about a pitcher’s mound.
So far as I know, it’s the only ground on any field in any sport that is raised so as to accentuate the singular control over the outcome of the game possessed by the sole player who inhabits it. The goalie, the point guard, even the egomaniacal quarterback must stoop to the same altitude as their less glorified compatriots.
Not so the pitcher. He exists, quite literally, on a different plane than all the other players on the field. He floats above them, the captain at the ship’s helm, each delivery deciding the fate of those around him the way Zeus’ thunderbolts or Thor’s hammers did in legends of old. No other player is so similarly exalted with exclusive access to the field’s high ground, situated, somewhat paradoxically, on the throne in the middle of a diamond.
Of course, the saga of my summer in France has centered, by and large, on my physical inability to return to that place of stature. There was a time in April and early May when throwing caused such explosive pain in the elbow and forearm that the possibility of requiring season-ending Tommy John surgery seemed very real, calling very much into question whether I would ever get back there again. Forget France; I was worried I wouldn’t ever pitch a baseball again.
On Sunday afternoon, some four months, eighteen days, two hours and forty minutes after last stepping off the mound in Savigny against my (now) very own Bois-Guillaume Woodchucks, I climbed back up the hill and let it loose. It wasn’t spectacular… but it was worth the wait.
We were at the tail end of a pair of whupping as the hands of St. Lo de Bretagne, a team we should have beaten at their place back in May. (We lost in ten innings). We were down 8-2, and had already squeezed four innings of relief out of Eric, the former president of the team. Some day I’ll get to write at length about Eric, but suffice it to say that he’s a gamer. He’s pushing 35, has two kids and a house he’s trying to renovate, but he still manages to come out every weekend and sacrifice himself whenever we need someone to come in and, as I awkwardly translated to him, “arreter la hemmorhagie” (“stop the bleeding.”)
Asking four innings out of him was borderline criminal, but I didn’t really have any options, just like we haven’t had any options out of the ‘pen all summer. What’s that old line about being a general? You must love the army while being willing to sacrifice it? In any case, after he closed out the eighth inning, he said he was ready to handle the ninth, but I decided to give it a go. If not now, then when?
I warmed up cautiously, uncannily aware of the slightest tension or twinge in my arm. Doing my best impression of a Russian nuclear engineer firing up the uranium tubes the day after Chernobyl, I ran an exceptionally tentative systems check. Fastball? Ok, about 60%, maybe, but it doesn’t hurt. Slider? Can’t quite snap it off, but it’ll run a little bit. Curveball? I could turn it over but I was afraid to really snap the wrist and throw it hard. On the other hand, I tend to overthrow my curve anyway, so I made a note that it was probably going to be my best pitch and save it for when I needed it. Splitter? Surprisingly painless, moved OK. Couldn’t drop the yellow hammer, but I’d have to make due without it.
It’s worth pointing out that this was new territory for me. I have always been proud of my stuff, and with the Reds, I got by more on guts and decent stuff then on finesse. Suddenly, I found myself weaponless, bereft of velocity or my snapping 12-6 curveball, Popeye without his spinach.
Our half of the eighth passed, aided by one of the most horrible at-bats I’ve ever had, a strikeout on three pitches that I’d like to attribute to distraction on account of my fear of impending re-injury. After the third out, I hopped over the baseline and strode to the mound, trying to display a confidence I lacked. I’m not a particularly religious man, so it must have been all the impressive churches I had visited on my three weeks of vacation that made me look up to the Big Fella for a little bit of help.
I was a little bit high during my warmup tosses, which tends to happen when you haven’t pitched for a while (say, 140 days or so). I didn’t do my traditional backstop salute, a full steam fastball that ricochets off the backstop on the fly, only because I didn’t have the arm strength; it would have gotten there on a lob, which produces more hilarity than the intended intimidation. As the catcher fired the ball down to second and the batter entered the box, I turned away from him, pretending to adjust my jersey while in fact giving my elbow a good talking to.
“Come on, you (expletive) (really foul expletive.) Do what the (expletive) you’re supposed to do, just throw the little white ball into the imaginary square, don’t (expletive) (expletive) about it, and let me get through the next three outs without a whole lot of drama. (Gratuitous and unfathomably foul expletive).”
Apparently, it didn’t listen. I walked the first hitter on five pitches, and subsequently realized that I was facing the heart of their order, which had gone something like 31-for-40 against Woodchuck pitchers in a lot better shape than I. Aiming the fastball, I managed to induce a pop-up out of their #2 hitter, and then ran a sneaky little slider across to their #3 hitter. It wasn’t much, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had blasted it in the right-center gap, but instead he rolled over on it and grounded it hard to me on one hop. I couldn’t field it cleanly, so we only got the one out at second, but suddenly things were looking up. Feeling nervy, I started the next hitter with a curveball that broke more than either of us expected, and he waved at it feebly. I followed it up with a splitter away, which didn’t run in but sank, and he chunked it off the end of the bat, a can of corn popup into right field. Our right fielder and second baseman ran for ages but couldn’t quite get there, and I was faced with first and third with two outs.
The next hitter smacked a slider on the ground directly to Seb at shortstop, and I thought that miracle of miracles, I was out of the inning without any damage, but sadly, Seb accidentally blocked his glove hand’s descent to pick it up with his knee, which tends to happen when you’re tired from 18 innings in the sun. The ball squirted into left, scoring a run, but I got the next guy to ground out, and I walked off the field appreciative.
Overall, I was not particularly good. My fastball wasn’t on a lob, but just barely, and my slider was very flat. However, I was there, and that has to count for something. Most importantly, there was no pain, and even today it feels reasonably good after a long run, some ice, and some advil. I won’t really know until Wednesday, when I try to throw again, but for now, I’m cautiously optimistic.
There is so much, so much more that I have written, that I have yet to write, that I haven’t even gotten around to thinking about. Some day, I promise that I’ll get it all out there. This week, possibly tomorrow, I hope to put up a sort of “state of the blog address” type thing, both because I like using incredibly pretentious phrases like that, and because this blog will likely be very, very different going forward. There are things afoot, silly things, terrifying things, difficult things, and wonderful things, and it is going to be a hell of a ride. In the meantime, I’m going to go ice my arm and start to enjoy my last week in France. (My weak attempt at a cliffhanger…)
‘till Tomorrow,
-Ev