The Blooper Pitcher

One of the baseball diamonds at the Rincon Valley Little League in Santa Rosa, CA.

My two boys played in the Rincon Valley Little League in Santa Rosa for five seasons.  They were both on the same teams until their final two seasons when my older, larger son was drafted "up" to the "Majors" division.

This was the division where the managers were all under the delusion they were Joe Torre or Tony LaRussa, the games were played with an intensity and seriousness that would have put a Major League World Series game to shame and where if you weren't one of the top guns, you would only play your minimum required number of innings in the field and get your minimum number of at bats; even if the game was a 12-2 blow-out.

The entire culture and ethic of this league - where he played on one of the top teams - was enough to drive my oldest son out of baseball after two years of this crap.  I couldn't blame him.  He was twelve years old.  Another Life lesson learned.

My younger, smaller son, however, would wind up playing on a motley team of baseball misfits in the "Minors" division, lovingly drafted by a man who was a baseball fanatic.  Unfortunately, if you're only goal was winning, he cared more about everyone having a good experience playing baseball and getting a chance to play each position and have different people as teammates (he always seemed to draft any girls available and both years we actually were the only team with two girls on the roster - both good players).  All and all, I think it was more fun to play and coach in this lower "Minors" league.

Somehow this Manager recruited me as one of his assistant coaches.  I never played the game at a high level or coached baseball at any level.  I figured my job was to show up and coach first base and let the kids know when to run, slide and stop.  Pretty simple.

Our team seemed to get pounded each season.  Opposing teams would rack up incredibly lopsided games against us.  And if a game was close in the late innings, they would start to panic and bring in their top pitchers to shut us down.  There wasn't a worse fate to opposing teams in the Minors than losing to our team - the Indians.

But somehow, with the baseball gods taking pity on us, miraculously, we managed to squeak out a win or two each season.

My youngest son was a huge part of one memorable victory the second season.  Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how this happened, he developed a "blooper" pitch with the coaching and encouragement of his Manager.  I don't recall if he saw my son throw it a couple of times in a game or practice or if he taught it to him.

My son could throw a slow, high arc pitch that was almost like a high lob pitch in a Sunday afternoon softball game.  It was a "blooper" pitch.  The trick was that he could throw it for strikes.  Some of the umpires wouldn't call it properly because it started off so high, but most of them would call it as a strike if it came over the plate between the batters' knees and chest - which it usually did.

The first time my son faced a new opposing team from the pitcher's mound, the opposing batters didn't seem to know what to think of it.  They were inclined to just let it go by.  And if the umpire was paying attention and called it a strike, well, then they kicked their cleats down in the dirt and tried to take a closer look at this thing.  But it was deceptively tough to hit.

But here's where things got interesting.  You see, not only could my son throw this high, slow "blooper" pitch all day long - his motion was so relaxed when he threw it that there wasn't any stress on his arm  - but he actually had a regular pitch, his version of a fastball, that he could usually throw right down the plate for a strike.  It wouldn't have appeared fast compared to other pitchers or been effective by itself, but it really threw batters off after watching two or three of the "blooper" pitches going by.

Our Manager called the pitches from the dug-out and had an excellent sense of which pitch to throw to keep the batters off stride.  After each pitch, my son would walk towards the catcher and retrieve the ball, take a look into the dug-out on his way back to the mound and get the signal for the next pitch from the Manager.  He would usually nod and sometimes he would crack a sly smile.  I think the Manager took his hat off if he wanted the "blooper" pitch.  It was pretty simple.

So the misfit Indians were nearing the end of the season with nary a win.  My son started one of the final games of the season on the mound and was throwing his "blooper" pitch and his fastball quite well.  The umpire was calling the blooper pitches strikes if they went through the strike zone.

The first time through the order, my son kept the batters off balance enough that most of them struck out or grounded out weakly to an infielder.  This was Little League, so there were always errors and miscues on the simplest of plays, but we were doing pretty well after two innings.

Now he had to get through the order a second time and the opposing players had seen a lot of this pitch.  They had slowed down every reaction and motion in their body to hit this pitch.  If you were ready for it and patient, you could hit this pitch over the fence, but that was a rare occurrence.  It was a huge adjustment for a 10 or 11 year old to make.

My son made it through the third inning - the games were six innings - and we were leading at the halfway mark in the game.  We had an excellent, hard-throwing relief pitcher - the Manager's son - if my son could just get through one more inning.

You could sense the opposing team's players - and most prominently their parents - starting to get a little restless as the game moved along with the lowly Indians in the lead.  My son was starting to tire a bit and struggling with his control.  We really needed him to get through this inning.

There was supposed to be a pitch count in Little League, but we never even kept track when my son was pitching because he didn't throw that hard and there wasn't any stress on his arm.  He just mixed speeds and threw strikes.  And this was his final outing of the season.

The Manager called "time" and asked if I would like to go out to the mound and check on how my son was feeling.  As I walked out to the mound, some panicked overzealous Mom on the other team yelled at me that he was already over the pitch count.  Really?  It's the second to last game of the season and you're keeping track of the pitch count for the opposing team?  I just glared at her and yelled, "Lady, gimme a break!"

I walked up to the mound and asked my son how he was feeling and if he thought he could get through this inning.  I told him not to worry if they hit the ball.  Just change speeds and throw strikes.  Let the fielders do their work.  He nodded and I walked back to the dug-out.

You could read my son's determination on his face as the next batter stepped into the batter's box.  He crouched down low and looked intently at the catcher, his pitching arm swaying limply by his side, just like he was a Big League pitcher.

He threw a couple of "bloopers" for strikes and then threw his fastball towards the plate.  The batter hit the ball, but not hard because he was off balance after the two previous "blooper" pitches and grounded out to second base.  My son smiled as he returned to the mound.

"Blooper," fastball, "blooper" and another batter grounded weakly out.  He just needed one more batter.

The next batter was able to foul off a couple of his "bloopers" and it was obvious my son was getting tired, but he hung in there.  He threw a fastball just off the plate and then reared back slowly with one last "blooper."  It seemed to hang in the air forever - tantalizing any batter who could wait on it long enough to hit it cleanly - and the batter swung in an awkward arc and missed.  Strike three.  My son had made it through four innings and kept the lead.

The Manager now put his son out on the mound.  His son was quite small, but a skilled and talented baseball player (he now plays high school ball).  If he was on his game, he threw the ball hard from the mound.

The first batter walked to the plate, undoubtedly relieved he didn't have to face that stupid "blooper" pitch any more, and dug in to beat the Indians.  And then the Manager's son went in to his wind-up and fired a real fastball right down the plate.  "Pop!"  This was like looking at Randy Johnson after batting against my son for the last four innings.  He just mowed them down for the next two innings.  The opposing parents and coaches got more and more talkative and antsy as the game dwindled down to the final outs.  They were going to be the underperforming team of the season that would lose to the lowly Indians.  And that kid's stupid "blooper" pitch.

We won the game and the kids got to charge the mound after their victory for the first and only time that season.  They had earned it and savored it.  It was a thing of beauty.  It was more fun than anything my other son experienced in the "Majors."

Thankfully, that was my boys' final season of baseball.  My wife and I had wanted them to play something other than hockey during the summer, and to have some actual time outside of an ice rink, but Little League had shown its true colors by that point and had come up wanting.  We had all seen enough.  It was slow, poorly coached and had little team chemistry.  But mostly, it just wasn't hockey.

But I think there was a lesson to be learned there.  Strikes come in all different sizes, shapes and speeds.  The best pitcher isn't necessarily the one who throws the hardest, but the one who can throw strikes and change speeds.  It's much easier to throw the ball by someone if they don't know what's coming and are off balance.  That's how brains beat brawn in baseball.

And that's a valuable lesson to learn.