The Most Dangerous
Pitch
by
BJ Neblett
©
2007
Blood dripped onto the hard,
cracked, sun dried earth, creating puddles of crimson mud. This was the first
time I’d been hit and unable to complete a play. That’s what made me the
maddest; that and the fact that we were ahead, winning. I was pitching a
shutout into the fourth inning: no walks; a couple of strike outs. The nine
guys behind me were doing a great job of handling the ball. And our opponents,
a team made up of tough, young Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, were no slouches
in the field.
I was still standing when the first
player reached me. I think it was Jose from the other team. He’d been on second
base. Bent over, my blood pooling at my feet, I felt the comforting touch of
his strong hand on my back.
“Easy, take it easy.”
My hand cradled my swollen right
eye. It felt as if it would pop from its socket. Adrenalin still surged in my
body as my good left eye desperately searched the infield around me. “Where’s
the ball… where’s the damn ball?”
Someone hollered to stop the play.
“He’s hurt,” they shouted, “It’s a ground rule double.”
A double, which would mean Jose
would score. I cursed silently and then caught myself, asking for God’s
forgiveness; and to save my sight. By now my eye throbbed, swollen shut,
swelling to nearly the size of the softball that struck it.
“Damn,” I repeated out loud as my
team mates began to crowd around. Shock and concern showed through their
troubled cries of, “Oh, God,” and “Wow!” Then again, head and face wounds do
tend to bleed a lot. You’d have thought someone spilt a quart of red ink into
the parched dirt just behind the pitcher’s mound.
As a pitcher, you have an invisible
target painted on your chest. You are fair game for every line shot, bouncing
drive, and screaming grounder that burns its way up the middle. On the mound
you have two responsibilities: pitch the ball, and get set. Or, better put,
catch the ball without getting killed in the process. In baseball, you are
sixty feet, six inches away from the batter, and raised ten inches. Softball
plants you on the same plain as the hitter, some forty seven to fifty feet from
home plate. And the extra feet can make all the difference, the difference
between a hit and an out; between a bad bruise and a career ending injury.
Baseball rookie for the Cleveland
Indians, Herb Score led the American League in strike outs each of his first
two seasons. In 1957, during a game against arch rival New York, Score was
struck in the eye by a line drive off the bat of Yankee Gil McDouglas. His
comeback lasted five frustrating seasons. But the one time overpowering pitcher
never again posted a winning record.1
While waving to a relative during
warm ups at Washington’s Griffith Stadium, Julius ‘Moose’ Solters was struck in
the face by a thrown ball. The veteran American League outfielder fought back
from the injury, but it eventually caused him to go blind.2
Being known as possibly the first
and only person ever blinded during a softball game was not a distinction I was
interested in carrying.
No one intentionally tries to hit
the pitcher. That would be stupid. Chances are you’d be thrown out at first;
maybe out of the game if your intentions are known. It just happens, more often
than many people realize. Hairline shin fractures, battered knee caps and
dislocated fingers are a part of a pitcher’s life. I should have known better.
I have the experience, and the scars, to prove my point.
In slow pitch softball, after
release, there is an easy two and a half to three seconds before the ball
reaches the plate. There’s plenty of time for a hitter to adjust himself in the
batter’s box, and more than enough time for the pitcher to get set. Freak
accidents do happen. But there is no excuse for any player not to be ready.
Getting sloppy on the mound can
shorten your career considerably. A combination of recent victories, plus
having avoided being seriously hit for some time, conspired to make me
careless. Instead of watching the travel of the ball, estimating where the hit
ball would travel, and getting set, I found myself remaining planted on the
rubber, no better than a spectator, after the pitch.
To compound matters, I’d been
working on a new pitch. The past couple of weeks, while honing my curve ball, I
discovered a sharp downward breaking ball. During batting practice, the new
pitch proved devastating to right handed hitters, and frustrating for lefties.
Cutting sharply inside and dropping with a wild spin, no one seemed to be able
to strike the ball squarely. The best efforts of some of the most skillful
hitters resulted in a bouncing hard grounder or a low line drive. A few were
able to get the ball in the air. When they did, it usually went straight up for
a short pop fly.
Because of the propensity of even
pull hitters to send the pitch back up the middle of the infield, I jokingly
dubbed my new weapon my ‘come back pitch.’ During practice I threw out several
surprised opponents at first base. My come back, often as not, came back right
into my waiting glove.
I worked on perfecting my new pitch.
Slow pitch softball is far from an exact science. Tossing the oversized sphere
at the proper height and arc, the ball falls victim to the slightest breeze.
Sometimes you can make the wind work for you, bending an outside lob right into
the face of an unsuspecting hitter, or cutting the edge of the plate. That is,
if you are lucky. Otherwise, the best you can hope for is a corner plate
strike. Knuckle balls, spinners and curve balls can also be used to thwart
hitters, but are difficult to master. My ‘come back’ pitch had the added
advantage of a fast, tight spin, making it extra difficult to place squarely on
the bat.
One of my heroes of the old time
players is a pitcher for the hapless Washington Senators, nicked named ‘the Big
Train.’ From around 1900 through the ‘20’s, Walter Johnson terrorized hitters
with what most consider to be the fastest fast ball in the major leagues, then
and since.
How fast was Johnson’s fast ball?
Consider Ray Chapman.
Chapman once took first one, then a
second blazing fast ball from the Big Train, Johnson. Stepping out of the
batter’s box, the stunned hitter headed towards the dugout only to be reminded
by the umpire he had another strike coming. Chapman continued on his way, calmly
calling back over his shoulder, “Keep it. I don’t want it.”
Perhaps the ill-fated Chapman should
have taken the event as an omen. On October 10, 1920, while up at bat, Ray
Chapman was struck and killed by a fast ball from pitcher Carl Mays.3
We jumped out to a quick two run
lead our first at bat. I managed to set down three of the four batters I faced
in the bottom of the first, including a strike out. Our team went three up,
three down, as did the opposition, in an uneventful second inning. We went up four
to nothing with two more runs scored in the third off of left fielder Ron’s
triple. The last of the third started off innocently enough with a routine pop
fly. Then the bottom fell out. A single up the middle, a misplayed grounder
followed by a line shot, and the bases were loaded. And the top of their lineup
was coming to bat.
It was time for some fancy arm work.
It was time to try out the ‘come
back.’
The first pitch caught Alfredo, a
good hitter, by surprise. Looking at first like it would fall short and
outside, the ball veered sharply inside, slicing the edge of the plate. The
look on his face was priceless.
Ok… strike one…
So far, so good...
I gave him two junk pitches to think
about, then another come back. It tipped off the edge of his bat and rolled
harmlessly towards the mound, right to me. A quick throw home for the force and
there were two outs.
Franco wouldn’t be so easy. After a
couple of called balls and a come back called strike, I gave him a sharply
curving breaking pitch, thanks to a friendly cross breeze. He swung hard. But
the backspin sent the ball straight up. It was caught by the catcher. Out
number three and we were out of the inning. The come back had done its job.
Our fourth inning produced a couple
of hits but no runs. Then it was their turn again. And their three best
sluggers were coming to bat.
Jimmy is a strong pull hitter. He
had managed a double and a triple off of me in other games. He wouldn’t bite on
a short lob which fell ineffectually in front of the plate. My second pitch, a
come back, he sent past me to my right. Our short stop bobbled the hard hit
bouncing grounder, but managed to throw Jimmy out at first.
Next was Jose, the team’s cleanup
hitter and a threat to send one out anytime at bat. He’d gotten a deep
dangerous fly off of me in the first inning which thankfully turned into a long
out. I toyed with him best I could, giving him nothing to swing at until the
count was three and two. Then he saw my come back. He not only saw it, but
lined it like a rocket past me, the short stop and the infield for a double. My
come back was earning its name. Those two shots should have told me something.
They didn’t. I was still standing flat foot on the rubber.
Bugara hits the ball probably as
hard as humanly possible. His drives jump to the outfield before anyone has a
chance to react. He once hit three tape measure homers over center field in
three consecutive at bats in one game. I didn’t have the time or the
inclination to foll around with him. Not with Jose at second and only one out.
Even a sacrifice fly to the outfield would result in a run scoring. I took a
deep breath, let it out, and tossed a come back.
And it did…
As best I can figure, the ball came
off his bat and tipped off my glove in about half a second. That works out to
something like 75 or 80 miles per hour.
And there I stood.
I raised my glove, but not quickly
enough, not far enough.
Victims of automobile accidents
often report that at the moment of impact time seems to move in slow motion. I
now understand what they experience. For one protracted fraction of a second
time stood still. The din of the spectators faded to a distant thunder in my
ears. My gloved hand crept skywards. It paused motionless in front of me about
nose level. The dull white leather clad ball balanced precariously on the edge
of the mitt’s webbing, frozen in space. One thought replayed in my mind over
and over, like a stuck 45 RPM record: I’m not going to catch this.
And then someone hit fast forward.
The speeding projectile tipped off
my glove, mercifully slowed slightly. It slammed into my face, catching the
cheek bone and upper eye socket squarely with a brain jarring, sickening thud.
I was helped off the field, still
holding the bloody wad of tissue someone provided, against my eye brow. It is
interesting and strange to note that I never experienced any major pain,
especially considering the seriousness of the injury. At the time of the
impact, I felt as if punched by a gloved boxer, more surprising than painful.
After, a dull, achy throb and a feeling of pressure against the eye ball were
the main discomforts. By morning, and for several weeks, the entire orbit
around my right eye remained extremely tender, swollen and sore.
It’s never a good sign when your
attending physician grimaces at your injury. The swelling and discoloration
were severe. For others it made looking at the damages more painful than the
actual experience. After tolerating an hour of ice, the gash just below my eye
brow was cleaned and stitched. A comprehensive exam commenced including x-rays
and a lot of discomforting prodding and poking. The doc said keeping the badly
swollen and bruised eye socket well iced may have helped saved my sight. I was
released with anti-biotic and strict orders to keep my eye iced constantly for
the next twenty four hours. Two days later an optimistic optometrist said he
could find no permanent damage, thank God. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet.
He told me it would be weeks, maybe more, before the long term affects of such
an injury could be determined.
In the ‘60’s, Tony Conigliaro was
well on his way to a hall of fame career. Joining the Boston Red Sox in 1964,
in just a few seasons, the twenty two year old right fielder hit an amazing 104
home runs, running up 294 RBIs, with a .276 average.
On August 18, 1967, Tony C came to
bat in the fifth inning against California Angel’s pitcher Jack Hamilton. A
fast ball, estimated near 100 MPH, struck Conigliaro in the left cheek bone.
The impact shattered his eye socket and permanently damaged his left eye.
Conigliaro was carried off the field
on a stretcher. It wasn’t immediately known if he would survive the injury.
Tony survived and returned to the Red Sox in 1969, moving to the Angel’s in
1971. After three disappointing seasons, it was evident the damage done on that
August night on 1967 was too great, and he retired.
Tony C suffered a massive heart
attack and stroke in 1982 which left him in a vegetative state. The one time
Cooperstown bound slugger passed away shortly after his 45th
birthday in 1990.4
Sunday, October 14th. It
was too soon. I knew it was too soon. The days were growing short, the air
chilly. Softball would be ending. I wasn’t about to spend the winter wondering
how it would feel; wondering if I would pitch again; if I could pitch again.
Outwardly, my eye was healing
quickly. All that remained was some discoloration and a forming scar where the
stitching of the ball cut me.
But that was on the outside.
The pressure on my eyeball subsided,
returning from time to time. And my depth perception was nearly normal. At
least that’s what I told myself. But I was starting to be bothered by sparks of
light, flashes they are called, and they can be harbingers of more serious
problems to come.
Still, I was determined; stubborn.
For the first time in my life,
nervousness and doubt accompanied me to the mound. Doing my best to shake the
feeling, I steeled up some counterfeit courage and took my warm up pitches.
Not bad…
Not good either…
Then again, a four week layoff will
rust up anybody’s arm. Even without a batter to face, I found myself purposely
avoiding the pitch that had nearly blinded me. It’s too soon I rationalized.
Just stick with the basics.
It did little to easy my churning
stomach.
The first hitter of the game dug
into the batter’s box. A familiar, reassuring voice reached me from left field.
It was my friend Ron. “Give ‘em the old ‘come back,’ Billy!”
And so I did.
Elkton,
Ohio
October,
2007
1.
Cahan, Richard and Jacob, Mark, The Game That Was, p. 230
2.
Cahan, Richard and Jacob, Mark, The Game That Was, p. 231
3.
Cahan, Richard and Jacob, Mark, The Game That Was, pp. 24, 138
4.
David Eisenthal, davideinsenthal.typepad.com
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