Shut Out
I was just twenty when I pitched my last game. A star at Midwood High, I was recruited right after graduation only to discover that the wicked change-up that made me the most feared starter in the Southern Minnesota League was just enough to make me indistinguishable from the other young recruits in Double A. I pulled in $850 a month from the Nebraska Corn Weevils, shared a two-bedroom apartment in Omaha with five other players, and, when I was luckily, got to throw for two or three innings if the starter gave up a few runs in by the fifth, which happened more often than not.
I spent two years eating rice and beans and shaking hands with local middle-school athletes before I pitched my last game. One of our starters, Mitchem, threw out his shoulder, and the manager stopped me after practice. “Be ready to start tomorrow, kid,” he said as he walked past me into his office. And that was that.
The day before I pitched my last game, I was like a guy in a sitcom before the birth of his first son - I paced the locker-room until the other players told me I was making them nervous, then went and paced the bull-pen, hoping its well-worn familiar dirt and sod would help calm me down.
Just over an hour and a half later, I was seven innings into a perfect game. Not a shutout, not a no-hitter - nine outs away from a perfect game. In the twenty innings before my last game, I had walked 15 batters and struck out just five, but over the last seven innings I’d struck out twelve. I’d started the first inning feeling a bit shaky, but after the first two grounded out, I’d fanned the next four and things just seemed to cascade from then on out; every pitch hung inside when I wanted it to hang inside, curved when I wanted it to curve, rolled weakly down the first baseline or popped flaccidly towards the short-stop when I followed a fast-ball with an off-speed pitch.
As I walked to the mound at the top of the eight, I was scarcely able to breathe. Part of me was filled with the hope and confidence of the last impossible seven innings, that heady quasi-religious faith that baseball can inspire, the belief that that hitting streak will continue, that the batter will smash a walk-off home-run, that the team down seven to one in the bottom of the ninth will come back and win the game, that the minor-league Corn Weevil will pitch a no-hitter and get called up to the majors the very next week. Only a part of me, however, believed in the Field of the Dreams, the Boys of Summer, the Mr. October miracles. The rest of me knew that one badly timed sinker, one bobbled grounder or miss-called fly would end it all; there are, after all, seven ways to get to first base safely.
So I dusted my hands on the rosin bag, tugged at the brim of my hat, and I threw the ball.
I felt it the second the ball left my hand. The spin wasn’t right, the angle too shallow, and the ball hung up high in the box as the batter raised up his foot and swung. There was a crack as the bat found the ball - that crack, the one I’d been hearing in my head all afternoon each time I let loose with a pitch - and I turned to watch Jeremy in center field peddle back, back, back . . .
The ball never came down. We all watched it arc up into the hot haze of summer - the nine of us on the field, the batter and the next two guys in the line up taking their practice swings, both dugouts and the umpires, the two-thousand some people in the stands sweating along with us on the August afternoon. We all shielded our eyes as the small white sphere rocketed into the glare of the sun, lost it for a second, and then waited. There had been a collective gasp as the ball left the bat, people had jumped to their feet, the runner doing a little hopping jog down towards first as he peered out towards the wall, and then nothing. The ball never came down.
Two teams a grandstand full of spectators waited, breath held, unbelieving, bottles of beer sweating and half-eaten hot-dogs held aloft in puzzled hands. The runner jogged over first base then turned, confused, to the first base coach, who ignored him as he stared, like the rest of us, towards the outfield. I kicked at the rosin bag, one of the umpires dusted off his pants. We waited as the sun sank slowly towards the horizon; waited for the ball that never came back down, unsure what to do next; waited for a long time in an awkward communal silence that bordered on embarrassment. No one knew how to proceed or how the rules applied.
Eventually I walked off the mound and the players walked off of the field and the spectators walked out of the ball-park leaving unfinished beers and half-eaten hot-dogs on in the bleachers.
I spent two years eating rice and beans and shaking hands with local middle-school athletes before I pitched my last game. One of our starters, Mitchem, threw out his shoulder, and the manager stopped me after practice. “Be ready to start tomorrow, kid,” he said as he walked past me into his office. And that was that.
The day before I pitched my last game, I was like a guy in a sitcom before the birth of his first son - I paced the locker-room until the other players told me I was making them nervous, then went and paced the bull-pen, hoping its well-worn familiar dirt and sod would help calm me down.
Just over an hour and a half later, I was seven innings into a perfect game. Not a shutout, not a no-hitter - nine outs away from a perfect game. In the twenty innings before my last game, I had walked 15 batters and struck out just five, but over the last seven innings I’d struck out twelve. I’d started the first inning feeling a bit shaky, but after the first two grounded out, I’d fanned the next four and things just seemed to cascade from then on out; every pitch hung inside when I wanted it to hang inside, curved when I wanted it to curve, rolled weakly down the first baseline or popped flaccidly towards the short-stop when I followed a fast-ball with an off-speed pitch.
As I walked to the mound at the top of the eight, I was scarcely able to breathe. Part of me was filled with the hope and confidence of the last impossible seven innings, that heady quasi-religious faith that baseball can inspire, the belief that that hitting streak will continue, that the batter will smash a walk-off home-run, that the team down seven to one in the bottom of the ninth will come back and win the game, that the minor-league Corn Weevil will pitch a no-hitter and get called up to the majors the very next week. Only a part of me, however, believed in the Field of the Dreams, the Boys of Summer, the Mr. October miracles. The rest of me knew that one badly timed sinker, one bobbled grounder or miss-called fly would end it all; there are, after all, seven ways to get to first base safely.
So I dusted my hands on the rosin bag, tugged at the brim of my hat, and I threw the ball.
I felt it the second the ball left my hand. The spin wasn’t right, the angle too shallow, and the ball hung up high in the box as the batter raised up his foot and swung. There was a crack as the bat found the ball - that crack, the one I’d been hearing in my head all afternoon each time I let loose with a pitch - and I turned to watch Jeremy in center field peddle back, back, back . . .
The ball never came down. We all watched it arc up into the hot haze of summer - the nine of us on the field, the batter and the next two guys in the line up taking their practice swings, both dugouts and the umpires, the two-thousand some people in the stands sweating along with us on the August afternoon. We all shielded our eyes as the small white sphere rocketed into the glare of the sun, lost it for a second, and then waited. There had been a collective gasp as the ball left the bat, people had jumped to their feet, the runner doing a little hopping jog down towards first as he peered out towards the wall, and then nothing. The ball never came down.
Two teams a grandstand full of spectators waited, breath held, unbelieving, bottles of beer sweating and half-eaten hot-dogs held aloft in puzzled hands. The runner jogged over first base then turned, confused, to the first base coach, who ignored him as he stared, like the rest of us, towards the outfield. I kicked at the rosin bag, one of the umpires dusted off his pants. We waited as the sun sank slowly towards the horizon; waited for the ball that never came back down, unsure what to do next; waited for a long time in an awkward communal silence that bordered on embarrassment. No one knew how to proceed or how the rules applied.
Eventually I walked off the mound and the players walked off of the field and the spectators walked out of the ball-park leaving unfinished beers and half-eaten hot-dogs on in the bleachers.