You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The 1st Pitch.
It’s nerve racking.
Standing on the mound, 5,000 eyes staring at you, the Public Address Announcer blaring.
You have one chance to throw a pitch that doesn’t bounce in the dirt. Bounce it in the dirt and you will get laughed off the infield in disgrace, your manhood tucked between your quivering thighs.
My challenge Saturday night is to keep my manhood manly.
It begins with me signing autographs prior to the Oklahoma City Red Birds Vs. Nashville Sounds triple A baseball game.
I’m at a small card table by the front gate. It’s jersey night and the line is around the stadium because the first 1000 kids get a free Sounds Jersey.
As the gates open a kaleidoscope of people pass by the table. They look at me like I’m a chimp in a zoo. Will he throw his excrement at us, the passers by wonder to themselves. Keep your hands away from him, he might bite I hear a mother tell her small son.
A few minutes into this sign-a-thon, a woman named Dottie approaches. She is in her 50’s and dressed in a Sounds jersey.
She tells me that she is a huge fan and she wasn’t coming to tonight’s game, but then she saw the morning news when they promoted that I would be there and she said it changed her whole day.
“Really?” I say, somewhat startled. “You came to the game tonight to meet me?”
Her smile is ear to ear.
She will tell me that she enjoys my style of reporting and apparently she likes the look of my face.
Awkward!
I will pose for pictures with Dottie and sign an autograph for her misspelling her name at least one time.
I typically don’t like public appearances. I don’t consider myself a local celebrity. That’s for anchors, I have said all along. But it is good to do this once in a while. What it does is remind me that I am reporting news for people like Dottie. I get so involved in the chase, the acquisition, the hunt for facts and getting it on the air, I often forget that my product is ultimately consumed by real life people with real lives.
At 6:20 pm the team G.M. leads us down to the field. I am one of four men who will throw out the first pitch. I am with a fellow news 2 anchor and another man who has brought his young son onto the diamond. He tells me that he coaches little league and he is going to throw the ball as hard as he can.
“My friends told me if I don’t go for the full wind up and pitch it hard, it doesn’t count,” he will say to me smiling, his young son in tow.
There is an anonymous fourth guy. He looks like human wall paper. He is blah. He is white and tall and his features are invisible to me. He is like one of those tiny dots of paint that make up the the background of a Monet painting.
Mr. Invisible goes first. It is laughable. He is introduced, but the loud speakers are directed at the crowd and it is a bit garbled.
He throws a lolly pop. The ball goes up in the air and then lands in the dirt. The crowd chuckles. I would have booed. Get off the field anonymous white man.
My channel 2 co worker is next. He is a ham and loves this stuff. He smiles and throws the ball. It gets there but scuffs the dirt around the plate.
He waves to the crowd and will later tell me that he is not thrilled with that performance.
I don’t blame him. You want to complete the task, toss the ball in front of friends and family over the plate and safely into the catcher’s mitt.
It’s a test. Where I come from, if you don’t pop the glove, you fail.
Now the question is, what do you actually fail? that’s debatable? In my book, anonymous man failed the whole manhood question. Does he get to check the box: scrotum? Debatable in my book. He threw the ball like a girl. A sea lion at the zoo can throw better and it doesn’t even have hands.
Super Dad is up next. The scene around the mound is confusing. Noise and people and photographers and family members. You can sense the crowd staring at you like you are a circus freak.
Suddenly Super Dad winds up and throws a blistering fast ball. The catcher may be a semi pro ball player, but he was not ready for this laser.
Apparently Dad jumped the gun and he just let loose a bullet. He has an arm all right. His pitch was moving at high velocity. Problem was, nobody was quite ready for it. The catcher leaps out of his crouch and snags the ball out of thin air. The camera man, who is directly behind the catcher, who was about to get a new concussive mark on his noggin, breathes a sigh of relief as he pulls his face away from the view finder.
“Hey hey hey hey,” the catcher says with an angry look.
It’s hard to hear what else he mutters, but he is pissed. Obviously this is not the way it is suppose to work during the pre-game ceremony.
The dad looks at me and says, “Is he mad at me?”
I laugh. “I think so, dude. You about ended his major league career.”
A young woman wearing a Sounds jersey steps up to us. “You need to wait till the introductions are over.”
I laugh. Introductions. It sounds like ice being blended at a Margarita convention out here on the field.
“Your next she says to me.”
I get in position. I feel a twinge of adrenaline. I am nervous, but also in a vacuum. I sense the crowd and the people all around me, but I decide to phase it all out. I find the catcher and take a deep breath. I hear my name, and something he says about 3 time local Emmy award winner. I exhale. I wait a moment and let the Star Wars like warp drive moment of calm envelop me. I feel like I am inside a protective bubble of concentration. I see the catcher. He sees me. Everything else is blurred. He motions me with his glove. I relax and do what I have done ten thousand times in my life; throw a baseball.
Problem is, I usually warm up before I throw. I usually warm up without my name announced. I usually warm up without my name announced without 5,000 eyes, including my youngest son sitting in the stands watching me.
I’m nervous. Oh yeah, I’m nervous. Deep breath dude. I gather myself. No times for nerves, dude. Not now.
I rare back and let the repetitive mechanics of learned athletic behavior take over. Before I know it my arm is moving, I feel the ball beside my ear. My two fingers are on the seem. The ball is new and hard and feels wonderful like sunshine on a summer day long ago. My leg is slightly elevated, not in a full kick and deliver kind of way, but in a pitching from the stretch motion. I’ve got just enough torque, in my mind, to get it there.
I feel the mechanics, the trained memory of movement signal my fingers to let go. The ball rolls off my finger tips with a kind of energized pop.
The ball is loose. It is free. It is a spheroid picking up speed, defying the pull of the Earth, accelerating toward a destination roughly 55 feet away. (they wouldn’t let us stand on the mound)
Sometimes its hard to tell where the ball is going to go. Not this time. It is on target. If this was a NASA launch, Houston Control would have said “You’re in the “Glide Path.”
It only takes a second but I watch as the ball moves in a straight, beautiful line over pristine green grass toward the orange chert of the batter’s box.
Everything has slowed down. I see the catcher’s glove open. I see the camera man focus his lens. I hear the murmur of the crowd as they sense the delivery of the pitch is authentic, manly, professional.
Then in a moment it is over.
POP.
What a sound. It’s American as apple pie and Chevy.
Its the sound of leather meeting leather in a violent collision of accomplishment.
Baseball safely nestled into the deep, oiled pocket of triple A catcher’s glove.
One throw. One moment. One memory frozen in time.
Success.
I hear the crowd. OOOOOOHHHHHHHH.
Then a smattering of applause.
The catcher runs up to me and hands me the baseball.
“Nice throw,” he says quietly.
Those two words will mean more than anything else all night long.
“Nice throw!” From a potential major leaguer. It’s just cool.
We pose for pictures and smile for the cameras.
I’m shaking, awash with adrenaline.
One throw, one moment. But my body is actually prepared for much more. But the moment is over.
Me and Dad and the other channel 2 guy leave the field.
Perhaps the anonymous white wall paper man is with us. I really can’t tell. He might be in the crowd all ready, he could be beside me. I never really saw what he looked like. He was always just background noise in my brain.
I walk up the stairs and a few people smile and comment on my toss.
I get to my son and his 4 friends. “so, did you video it?”
They all snicker as 14 year old boys will do.
“Well, we tried to video it but….”
Four 14 year olds, all experts with an iPhone and nobody thought to video it.
Not a brain between them.
I smile. Whatever. I will always have this moment. Not many people get to toss out the first pitch. Fewer do it well.
I threw a bb that hit the mitt and created that leather tension that comes when velocity meets an abrupt vector change.
Sometimes it smells like burnt rope. It’s a beautiful smell that reminds me of growing up.
“You threw it hard,” a dad behind me will say. His wife nods affirmatively.
“thanks,” I will says getting all the validation I will need.
the first pitch.
Life’s Crazy™