Senior Year Box Set

I looked over at their bench and spotted Alan, my ex-best friend, keeping stats. I still had a hard time wrapping my head around how quickly our friendship had died once Jeff had drowned. If you had asked me two years ago if the four of us, including Tami, would always be best friends, I would have said yes without hesitating. I still didn’t fully get why Alan had turned into such a little shit.

While I contemplated why my friendship with Alan had ended, Mike got rocked. He’d done enough to piss off not only me but many other people at Lincoln High, so I expected our team might be a little more focused. I was sad to see him pulled after we had gone up 6–0 with no outs.

When Mike left the bench and his teammates to face their defeat alone, I just shook my head. I suspected it was because he didn’t want to have to shake hands after the game. It was hard to believe that I’d ever liked the guy.

◊◊◊

For the championship game, we were facing Washington. They’d survived the St. Joe gauntlet by beating all three of their teams. Moose pulled me aside before the game.

“I know you already pitched today, but do you think you can give me a couple of innings?”

Was he serious? Of course I would pitch. What competitor would back down from a challenge if it was presented? The only reason I would have said no would have been if my arm felt tired. I’d thrown less than fifteen pitches in the first game this morning.

“I can do it,” I assured Moose.

“Okay, go talk to Coach Herndon to get a game plan.”

“Yes, sir.”

I grabbed Tim, who would be my catcher, and we found Coach Herndon in the bullpen, waiting for us.

“Stretch out and then ease your way into warming up. I’ll talk to you when you feel you’re ready.”

Tim and I shot the shit while we prepared for the game. We did some soft tosses to start, and then I began to throw with more authority. Coach Herndon came over when I felt I could start uncorking my fastball.

“This morning, I wanted you to bring the heat and be a closer. For this game, I don’t want you to do that because I need you to last more than a couple of innings.”

When someone uses the phrase ‘bring the heat,’ they’re talking about a four-seam fastball. There was no trick with this pitch. You simply threw it hard and dared hitters to try to make contact.

A lot of closers throw this pitch because they only need to get a handful of batters out. The problem with the pitch is that it doesn’t move much as the ball approaches the plate. Hitters eventually will be able to time the pitch and make contact. I personally loved to hit this pitch. Some of my best home runs came from hitting the four-seamer.

“When you take the mound, I want you to throw only the four-seamer when you warm up. I want Washington to focus on hitting a fastball that they haven’t seen very often. Then when the game begins, I want you to throw the two-seamer, changeup, and curve. Save the split-finger for your strikeout pitch.

The two-seamer was a slower pitch. In professional baseball, most pitchers throw the four-seamer in the mid-to-upper-90s range. The two-seamer crossed the plate in the 88 to 92 mph range. It was referred to as the sinker because it dropped down, like a mini-curveball, as it traveled through the strike zone.

As a pitcher, you tried to throw it low in the strike zone to take advantage of its downward movement. If a batter did hit it, he’d beat it into the ground, resulting in a grounder that your infielders could handle.

When I played shortstop, I loved it when our pitchers threw a lot of two-seamers because it meant I was going to be busy. The pitcher had an advantage when he could force the opposing team to hit ground balls. You could get through an inning with many fewer pitches than when trying to strike the batters out.

The changeup was designed to be thrown with the same arm motion as the two- and four-seam fastballs. You just held it differently so that it was about 10 mph slower than your fastball. It could be devastatingly effective, yet a lot of pitchers failed to utilize it enough. It relied solely on deception rather than movement. Hitters tended to get fooled and swung too early, which caused them to either foul the pitch off or have a weak hit if it managed to stay in play.

Basically, a curveball amounted to putting spin on a ball that caused it to break, or curve, through its flight path. It was also 10 to 15 mph slower than your fastball and threw off a hitter’s timing. Sometimes you would see a hitter’s knees buckle at the plate. That happened when the ball came out of the pitcher’s hand looking like it was coming straight at the hitter before breaking into the strike zone.

The last pitch I planned to use was the split-fingered fastball or splitter. The reason I no longer threw it much was that it could be hard on your elbow. I needed my arm for both football and baseball, so I’d made a conscious decision not to throw too many of them, even though I loved the pitch.