Hey, two posts in one week! By my recent standards, that’s an almost Shakespearean rate of output! We play Sunday at La Guerche, a field that will always hold a fond spot in my heart as the site of my first official game in France. As always, we’re short on players, but this persistent problem […]
Hey, two posts in one week! By my recent standards, that’s an almost Shakespearean rate of output!
We play Sunday at La Guerche, a field that will always hold a fond spot in my heart as the site of my first official game in France. As always, we’re short on players, but this persistent problem has been exacerbated this week due to all the players on vacation, Aldo’s work schedule, and Vincent’s recent ankle injury while playing soccer. The Vince injury really kills us, because it not only costs us a body (and right now, we’re at 8 for the weekend) but robs us of his 6-8 innings on the mound as well. The last time we were without him was at Toulouse, and after a heroic effort in the first game, we got fairly whupped in the second because we just didn’t have any pitchers left. It gets to the point after we’ve thrown Quentin and Matt where you look around and wonder how we’re going to get through another six or seven innings.
Of course, there is one pitcher whose arm injury has kept us waiting a while for his triumphant return, namely me. The big news for the week was that I was going to try to throw normally on Wednesday, and after taking the bus up the hill from our new apartment in Rouen (surely deserving of its own post, perhaps next week), I warmed up and got ready to let ‘er rip.
There’s a famous line about pitchers from George Plimpton. “The pitcher is happiest with his arm idle. He prefers to dawdle in the present, knowing that as soon as he gets on the mound and starts his windup, he delivers himself to the uncertainty of the future.” With all due respect to George, I’ve never felt that way. If I’ve thrown well, I can’t wait to get out there and knock a few more guys down, and if I’ve gotten shelled, I can’t wait to get back on the mound and get the earwax taste out of my mouth. In my entire life, though, I have never been as eager to get back on the mound as I am right now. I’ve been playing well, hitting in the high three hundreds, I’d guess, stealing my share of bases and playing competently in the field, but I know that this team needs me on the mound, and it is no exaggeration to say that every day I haven’t been able to pitch this summer has been significantly more painful than the explosions of agony in my elbow that have prevented me from doings so. So with great excitement and a little trepidation, I pulled Aldo aside and started to throw. He set up about 70 feet from me and threw me a pretty good heater, one with a little zip on it.
“Whoa, buddy, a little closer, huh?” I wasn’t quite ready to air it out right away.
I palmed the ball a little bit in my glove, and thought about what I had to do. No dart throws, I thought- just pick it up and let it go and hope to hell that it doesn’t hurt. I turned sideways, pulled it back, and lobbed it back to Aldo.
Not bad, I thought. No pain, although it hadn’t been a perfectly normal movement. I didn’t throw it dart-style, but it wasn’t a full-extension throw, either. Receiving it from Aldo, I let it go again, and again, and again, my confidence growing each time from the lack of pain in my elbow and the surprisingly normal feeling in my body. It felt like a homecoming of sorts, like tasting Mom’s pork chops after six months of living on Big Macs.
So that’s the good news. I threw, I threw normally, with enough power to throw it on a line from third to first, if need be. I threw without pain, and while I didn’t ever throw it at absolutely 100% velocity, it would be enough. In the days following, I’ve iced it up and applied my joint balm, and while it still feels tender, it doesn’t feel like I’ve re-injured it.
The bad news is that the brain’s fear of re-injury hasn’t entirely been conquered, and as a result I had absolutely no idea of where my release point was on any given throw. Baseball requires the highest degree of proprioception (knowledge of one’s body’s position in space) of any sport I know, and the difference between a called third strike on the outside corner and a hung slider that slides only off the upper deck can be three inches’ difference in release point or arm angle, due only to a microseconds’ lapse in focus. Because my brain is still preoccupied with the possibility of re-injury, I can’t find any sort of consistent release point, and as a result have no idea where the ball is going to end up: a problem for an infielder, a death sentence for a pitcher.
Moreover, I still can’t make the ball cut or run. I threw the most gentle cut fastball in the world, a slider minus the wrist snap, and immediately upon release, I got the clear and persistent message from the elbow: “Hey buddy; don’t even f’ing think about doing that again.” I threw two curveballs, and while the message wasn’t quite as direct, there was definitely some resistance. With that persistent tenderness in the elbow, I didn’t even bother trying to throw a yellow hammer or a splitter, because those are the toughest of my breaking pitches on the elbow.
Where that leaves us is pretty good. I won’t be pitching this weekend, but I can at least zing the throw across the infield as necessary. After this La Guerche game, we’ll have another four weeks off, during which one can only hope that my (insert vulgarity in language of your choice here) elbow will finally allow me to step back on the mound and get a pitching line as a Woodchuck. One critical component of my recovery was unfortunately thwarted today, as I had made an appointment with Dr. Auguste, the same doctor I saw about a month ago. He wanted to do three mesotherapy sessions (cortisone shots without the cortisone) before I pitched again, and so I headed to his office this afternoon for my 3:15 appointment.
Now, who in the hell gets stood up by a doctor? How is it possible to show up 15 minutes early for your appointment and find the place closed down like a ghost town? What kind of doctor stands up his patients?
My kind of doctor, I realized, that’s who. After I got past the frustration, I realized that I hope Dr. Auguste is on the 14th hole by now, having decided to blow off the working stiffs and people complaining about shin splints and hit the links with a few cold ones in tow. God bless you brother; I like your style.