Chapter 4

That was it ... I’d had it; He’d gone and done it, stepping on my last nerve!

I had just shaken his sign off again, for the second time ... and damned if my fucking idiot catcher (who also happened to be my hapless roommate) didn’t drop down that same fucking finger for Number One – again! I’d already thrown my lame fastball that I called a changeup twice in a row and now the moron wanted me to chuck it down over the plate a third time. That was beyond stupidity and was just begging for disaster! I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or charge down the mound to strangle the moron right behind home plate. I debated the issue for a long moment – right until that damned timer buzzer blew off its warning right at the small of my back, where that also thrice-damned vibrating contraction was taped.

Buzzzzzit!

“Hey asshole! For the twentieth time I don’t fucking have a fucking Number One!” I screamed at my battery mate at pretty much the top of my lungs.

“And fuck you too Randy ... I can see you smirking and get your fucking hands off that vibrator remote!” I then added, right after throwing my delivery to the plate about ten feet right over my catcher’s head – deliberately. That was his requested ‘fastball’, delivered high for ball four, but I didn’t give a fuck and didn’t even spare a glance towards the batter as he trotted down to first. This was just the usual intra-squad Red vs Blue morning practice game and the score didn’t really fucking matter anyway ... besides we were up by four runs in the top of the seventh anyway and we’d be done for the morning in just two more outs. Someone else could now deal with closing this snooze-fest of a game out, because it wouldn’t be me – Randy was ambling out towards the mound and he’d already signaled for Jamison, a lefty middle reliever to close out the game in a non-save situation. He fucking needed the work anyway, considering that during the first three full weeks of camp that he was running close to an eight ERA.

As for me, since mine was still below three, I didn’t need much more than 40-50 pitches to feel that I’d gotten my allotted work in. I’d already done four solid innings this morning, and my arm strength felt better than it had in years already. Hell, I’m not sure my arm after three straight weeks of throwing had ever felt this good! No pain, no twinges, no ‘what the fuck did I just do’ moments of post-delivery regret.

“Over eighteen seconds ... you know that,” Randy sighed at me, holding his hand out for the baseball.

“Oh, definitely,” I agreed, “and it will take me just a fraction of that same time to squeeze Wade’s neck so hard that his eyes pop out and fly all the way back to Kentucky!”

“Can’t do that,” he reminded me for perhaps the fourth or fifth time, “‘cause he’s Denver’s bonus baby, sent to us for tender loving care.”

“In which case, I’ll throttle the bastard slowly, carefully and with the utmost reverence and consideration for his exalted high-draft status ... please! Just for a little bit?”

Randy sighed again and poked my rib as a blunt reminder for me to cough-up the bean, so I handed over the baseball with a grunt and shuffled my way back to the dugout.

“My place, right after lunch,” Randy muttered in something of a tone that suggested that it wasn’t quite a suggestion.

“When and if it’s convenient...” I grumbled back, but largely under my breath so that he couldn’t have possibly heard my retort. Randy was already as-good-as inscribed with ink on my Cooperstown ‘thanks to the people that got me here’, part of my HOF acceptance speech. Largely by being the biggest bastard of a pitching coach I’d ever worked for! Whatever I did, Randy could find some subtle deficiency that still required improvement, and truthfully, I couldn’t disagree.

Now that my arm didn’t ache, twinge, or outright hurt for the first time in perhaps three or four years, I was having to relearn my entire throwing mechanics, and also pitches, techniques, and delivery strategies that I hadn’t even thought about since my junior college years. Pitches like the slider, splitter and knuckle-curve, which had caused me discomfort since perhaps A-ball, were slowly returning to me as old friends. More importantly, they were being thrown for strikes with a surprising accuracy that should have astonished me. It made for a richer pitching variety to offer too, other than my previous standards of sinker, forkball, weak-ass fastball, and my change-up.

Sometimes, even constantly changing speeds and locations isn’t enough to baffle a quality hitter – as I had discovered in AA-ball. More different looking pitches = more uncertainly in the mind of a batter, especially if I could throw them all for strikes!

Clark, Randy’s assistant pitching coach, gave me a satisfactory nod of approval for my outing and stopped me from my trek to the showers long enough to detach the much-hated pitch-timing vibrator from my back. The device was a remote-controlled sex toy, ordered from Amazon, and affixed with duct tape to whoever was currently pitching. While the gizmo might have been great when used for its original purpose, that is, vibrating one’s girlfriend delightfully in some awkward very public situation, but it also served its purpose as an attention-getter on a pitching mound. Paired with a stopwatch, the coach could warn you in an instant if you took even a second too long to deliver the ball to the plate.

This was Randy’s current obsession with my delivery to the plate – that I took longer than the league average pace of 22 seconds to make my delivery. Two weeks ago, I had a deadline of 20 seconds to receive the ball, agree upon a sign from the catcher, check runner(s), if needed, and deliver the fucking ball to the plate. This week, I was under task to do all of this in 18 seconds, and largely succeeding. Next week would be stricter still, being not more than 16 seconds, but this was very achievable. Mentally, I’m already striving for 10-12 seconds – well above the MLB average!

Randy’s theory (and entirely a simple, believable and logical one), was that fielders play better behind pitchers who work more quickly. Statistical evidence for this claim is still mixed, but it does appear that such an effect might exist.

MLB is always trying to speed the game up and executives, players, umpires, and fans alike all collectively groan when there’s constant game delays while pitchers wander around the mound, scratching themselves, and talking to the ball all the time.

“Quick workers get more strike calls!” Randy reasoned, citing one sabermetric research study conducted last season. A very limited data supply, to be sure, but the results were interesting, I had to admit. Umpire’s seem to enjoy a ‘fast worker’ on the mound and in some cases, this might lead towards a tendency for a slight favorable bias – getting that borderline strike call in the late innings on a get-away night, when even the umpire has a plane flight to catch in just a few hours.

Also, Randy insisted, “There is a direct relationship between the quickness with which a pitcher works and his effectiveness,” a fact which he stated he’d witnessed during his own playing career. The pitcher who works slowly will often cripple his defense, quite unnecessarily. Baseball is a game that demands a high level of concentration, especially for your defensive infielders, and this is very difficult to do behind a pitcher who works at a slow pace. A leisurely, deliberate pitcher creates for himself more defensive errors and hits that might have been prevented by a much more alert fielder.

“The mind tends to wander when you’re waiting impatiently on a slow, deliberate worker, so be quick! Get the ball and be ready to deliver it while your infielders are just getting into their defensive crouch. That way they stay at the highest level of focus and then maybe that ‘seeing-eyed’ single hit through the gap gets scooped up instead and it’s an out, or even a double-play, instead of a runner on-base or worse, a two-run RBI.”

More to the point, he wisely added, “The man upstairs didn’t gift you with a 90+ fastball,” you’ve gotta give yourself any other little advantage that you can find. A very quick pace will also make your slow fastball seem much faster when it comes to the plate.”

He wasn’t wrong ... but damn that vibrator was annoying!

It was still a bit early for lunch, especially since right after I left the game, Jamison had quickly delivered up a fat gopher-ball to send my baserunner home with a two-run dinger, and then pretty promptly loaded up the bases, prompting another urgent pitching change. Our ‘Blue’ team closer, Franco did the job and the game finished up a tie at the end of seven-innings and Randy and Ernest called the game ‘done’ right there. Seven innings was respectable enough for spring training games and nearly every pitcher was still on a pitch-count anyway. Since there was a second, similar, game again this evening, everyone in camp – all sixty-two of us between the two teams, were getting our necessary work in.

Everyone split for the showers, but I had time to get to the pool and get in my daily thirty minutes of laps without much in the way of company. After lunch, I’d do an hour or so on a stationary bike, but at a mostly leisurely workout. Much of a pitcher’s strength comes (or should come) from their legs – even junk-ballers like me. Any pitcher Randy or Clark saw just standing around was likely to get sent to the bikes. The more endless pedaling we did, the better, they believed.

I’d come to camp without the spare tire around my waist that I’d developed while I was hurt, and now, once my daily workout routine had become well-established, the old fat layer had been replaced with more hard muscle than I was used to seeing in any locker-room mirror. Late spring training was nearly done, officially finishing up here early next week, and by the time I reported back to my regular minor-league assignment I was going to look absolutely ripped! Just one look at me and the coach was going to make me go and piss in a bottle for testing. I could predict the chorus of ‘steroid’ jokes and not many people were going to take it as gospel that this was all down to clean living and a healthy lifestyle!

I ate enough at lunch for two hulking first-basemen (as usual), but I’d had another quality outing, about four innings pitched with only one earned run charged to me (thanks for nothing, Jamison!), and felt I’d earned my meal. I’d started one game, and pitched in relief in four others, each game with a slightly higher allowable pitch count. Another couple of outings and I thought I’d be ready to pitch a full major league length game as a starter. Randy would have other ideas about this – as he was fully cognizant of my lengthy injury history, and he was still treating me cautiously – that another such setback wasn’t going to happen under his watch!

As directed, I went over to Randy’s house after lunch but didn’t see anyone around downstairs. It was already getting warm, even for just early May in Arizona, but the downstairs A/C was off. That suggested that he was upstairs on the roof sunning, perhaps with his ‘daughter’ Leah, and that turned out to be exactly the case. Both were sunbathing entirely in the nude, but in Leah’s case, this only added to her already considerable appeal. I hadn’t seen much of her lately as she had (according to player rumor anyway) been slowly sampling the buffet of spring training arrivals. The growing smile she offered me when she saw me approach suggested (strongly) that she had been missing our earlier encounters.

“Peel off and pull up another deck chair,” Randy called out, not bothering to even take off his sunglasses or even turn his head to better face me. It wasn’t the worst idea for spending part of an early afternoon on a nice late spring day, and I peeled down to skin without the least bit of hesitation and joined them, pulling up a lounge chair next to Randy.

Leah’s smile seemed to grow broader and it wasn’t my earnest cheerful face that held her attention either. She winked at me and blew a very slight kiss before adjusting her own sunglasses and rolling over on her stomach, so she could more easily feign not paying further attention to me. I wasn’t fooled ... and neither probably was Randy, but that wasn’t why I was invited up here.

“You’re doing much better about the quicker delivery to the plate,” he admitted, “and I wanted to give you credit for that. I know you’re having trouble with your battery mate and some of that ... well, honestly, all of it, is my fault. His club is pushing me hard to work out at least some of his issues and kinks, especially improving his receiving work with a pitcher. That’s why you got him for your roommate, and also why he’s your designated catcher every time you touch the mound.”

“Well that’s all nice and shiny, but he’s driving me nuts! He hasn’t a clue about how to call an actual game and I’m beginning to think that he’s just rolling dice around inside his head and then throwing down a random number of fingers, just so he can try to be ‘unpredictable’. That kind of mentality, I can sort of understand, because I throw enough weird different pieces of junk at different speeds, from different arm angles, and to different plate locations that being wildly unpredictable does screw up the head of the batter. The bit that makes my balls want to creep back up inside my groin for protection is that he can’t get his head around the fact that I don’t throw a real fastball ... just some low to mid-80’s piece of crap that I call my change-up. If some moron catcher calls that piece of shit pitch two or three ... or more times in a row, I’m going to end up throwing batting practice!”