If you didn’t catch it, you should by all means check out this feature on Kerry Wood, the one-time can’t miss flamethrower whose awkward mechanics and unfortunate professional relationship with renowned pitcher destroyers Jim Riggleman and Dusty Baker turned his shoulder into laffy taffy. A friend from France (Miklos, who deserves some recognition for letting […]
If you didn’t catch it, you should by all means check out this feature on Kerry Wood, the one-time can’t miss flamethrower whose awkward mechanics and unfortunate professional relationship with renowned pitcher destroyers Jim Riggleman and Dusty Baker turned his shoulder into laffy taffy.
A friend from France (Miklos, who deserves some recognition for letting me crash at his place in the Marais when I was doing those insane weekend-long jaunts to Paris) sent the article my way, and it came at a surprisingly poignant time in what can somewhat dubiously be called my “career.” For those not keeping track, that no-no I threw against Bois-Guillaume in my last game in Savigny after being fired that resulted in my hiring by BG also unfortunately resulted in a partially torn UCL, or ulnar collateral ligament. When that ligament tears all the way through, the only recovery is the dreaded Tommy John Surgery. In my case, I managed to dodge the scalpel, but the pain in my elbow left me throwing with an ugly dart-style delivery from second base and allowed me to pitch just one inning for the team that signed me largely based on my pitching.
(Pause to reflect wistfully: One lousy, stinking inning. Sigh.)
Anyway, I’ve been rehabbing the elbow since then, with enough progress that I could play company softball at my summer job just well enough that people joked that I had made up ever playing in France. I could throw overhand, with a normal delivery, and put a little zip on the ball, although there’s still a lot of mental uncertainty about my release point. It’s like I lack true proprioception; I don’t know exactly where my arm is in space. A lot of that is probably just coming from fear of re-injury, to be overcome only with time and practice, but it is nonetheless frustrating. Ever since I was eleven years old, I’ve known more or less intuitively where my arm is supposed to be at each point in the pitching motion, and for the most part I could make it go there, the occasional tape-measure exceptions notwithstanding. Suddenly that’s gone, and part of me wonders whether I’ll ever get it entirely back.
It’s a moot point for this summer anyway. I spent just 8 weeks in Boston at a summer job, and now I’m back in Chicago for another 8 before the school year starts. Neither stint is long enough to find and develop the rapport with a team necessary to justify going out and playing at less than full strength. Besides, the doctors I spoke to made it clear that pitching was basically out for all of 2008, and only in 2009 should I even consider trying to throw off a mound again.
None of that really bothered me, as I could still feel the discomfort in the elbow and had resigned myself to taking the year off. I found other ways to pass the time, like playing golf and ice hockey, both exceptionally badly. It didn’t bother me, until a few weeks ago, when I read that article.
As the baseball season went on, and I read that article on Wood, and I kept receiving evite invitations to my old team’s games in San Francisco, I realized how much I missed the combined intellectual and physical challenge that pitching provided. It allows you to be as clever or as crass as you care to be; you can either get fancy and try to keep hitters off balance, change locations, change speed, or just go heads up and try to overpower them. I started to feel this sense of longing to step back on the mound, and realized with some trepidation that there’s a legitimate possibility that it will never happen again. It only got stronger when my Dad suggested that maybe it was time to close the book on my pitching career and focus exclusively on staying healthy by playing in the infield.
In the end, I know I can’t quite give it up yet. I’ll give the elbow another 10 months or so to recover, and bit by bit, I’ll try to throw 10, then 15, then 20 pitches off a mound to see if I can’t give it a go. I may have to change my whole approach, maybe develop a changeup and stop throwing the slider and yellow hammer, which can be tough on the elbow. I may have to change my arm angle to 3/4, or maybe I’ll have to start throwing exclusively knuckleballs. But I’ll give it a shot, either way.