The Switch Pitcher

by W. Leon Smith

  THE SWITCH PITCHER

  W. LEON SMITH

  Copyright © 2014 by W. Leon Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying form without written permission of the author or the publisher. The exception is brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the author.

  Published By Smith Media, Inc.

  1503 W. 11th St., Clifton, TX 76634

  http://www.smithmediainc.com

  Second Edition

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, unless otherwise noted. Some of the short stories are non-fiction, based on actual events.

  Although every precaution has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information contained herein, the author and publisher assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for damages that may result from the use of information contained within.

  ISBN: 978-0-9969006-3-8

  INTRODUCTION

  What happens when a young baseball player, out of necessity, learns to pitch both right- and left-handed? This novelette explores his techniques and the challenges that erupt on and off the field when he becomes “ambi-disastrous” on the mound.

  Although written with a younger readership in mind, baseball fans of all ages find The Switch Pitcher thrilling, as they do with the five bonus short stories.

  Aldo Vidali, an 84-year-old collaborator of one of cinema's greatest directors: Federico Fellini, wrote a review of the first edition of The Switch Pitcher, and urged it be made into a motion picture. “Children, parents, and grandparents would flock to see such a movie,” he said.

  Among the bonus features is a short story about a sunflower living in a keyhole garden that literally “comes to life.”

  The second short story is a non-fiction account of an encounter with a UFO wherein the subject about thirty years later recounts details of the event while under hypnosis.

  In the feature entitled ROD & REEL SNAPSHOTS, the author recounts unique fishing expeditions.

  Another non-fiction entry is about growing up with a magical teddy bear named Fleddie Peddie.

  The fifth short story, entitled PERIPHERAL ACCELERATON, is about an elderly man who is a perfectionist. He shares his extreme attention to detail with a friend, proving, for instance, the idea that it is extremely intelligent people who become carsick. He also recounts what it is truly like to be a time traveler.

  PREFACE

  As a youth, I played baseball and enjoyed every minute of it, even the practices. I was usually the first to arrive and the last to leave.

  It was always a challenge to learn new techniques and to join my friends on the field to take on the next opponent.

  As an adult, I taught my daughters to play softball, an experience that is filled with fond memories.

  My father was my coach for many years, both in the field and at home. This book is dedicated to him and to youngsters eager to learn the intricacies of the sport where teamwork is king.

  The hero of this book, George Herman Brubaker, is modeled a little after me and a lot after my teammates decades ago. We felt we could set the world on fire, and quite often we did. Switch pitchers are rare but they do exist. In fact, just about every player has a special talent. There’s no place like baseball to develop it.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my father,

  James W. Smith,

  and to youths everywhere who are

  eager to learn the game of baseball.

  Table of Contents

  THE SWITCH PITCHER

  INTRODUCTION

  PREFACE

  Chapter 1— Hermie Misses A Fly

  Chapter 2 — The Stinger Of Fate

  Chapter 3 — The Benchwarmer

  Chapter 4 — The Pups vs. The Ravens

  Chapter 5 — The Pups vs. The Ponies

  Chapter 6 — And The Winner Is…

  Chapter 7 — Hermie Knuckles Down

  Short Story Section

  The Triffidzoid

  UFO Encounter A True Story

  Rod & Reel Snapshots

  The Legend Of Fleddie Peddie

  Peripheral Acceleration

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY W. LEON SMITH

  Chapter 1—

  Hermie Misses A Fly

  John Brubaker flinched in the wooden stands as his son George Herman Brubaker, age six, attempted to catch a fly ball in the outfield at Kiwanis Field. Young Hermie was a substitute, as were most first-year pee-wee baseball players who seemed more interested in collecting spear-grass to throw at a teammate than paying attention to a game that was slow-moving and offered little excitement, especially in the right field corner outside of the baseball diamond. Hermie was bored. He was spending more time waiting than playing. Taking “the pose” on each pitch was getting monotonous. Before putting his hands on his knees he would first pound the interior of his dad’s hand-me-down leather Nokona glove with his right hand, and then wait…and wait….and wait.

  A new batter was at the plate, a youngster who usually struck out. Hermie chomped on his bubble gum and was trying to remember which LA Dodger was featured on the new baseball card in his pocket. “Maybe it’s Charlie Hough,” he thought. He had just blown a new pink bubble, the biggest yet, when he glanced up from his oil-stained glove and noticed his coach frantically waving his arm upward and yelling near the home dugout in the distance. An aerial sphere, a/k/a a fly ball, had been hit in Hermie’s direction and the faces of the infielders had turned toward him. He looked up to where the coach was pointing to find the grass-stained baseball high in the air, arching upward, so he began to move quickly in its direction. As he ran forward, the ball sailed over his head. He promptly stopped as it landed on the ground behind him and was quickly rolling toward the outfield fence. With great speed he followed it, grasped the ball tightly as he picked it off the unruly turf, and threw it in the vicinity of the first baseman as the runner was nearing third base on the opposite side of the infield. A home run lay in the wake, scoring a run for the opponents.

  When the four-inning game was complete, both teams claimed victory. Nobody kept an official score as this type of contest was simply an introduction to team baseball, a learning experience where coaches often lit the field to provide personal instruction. This took time and added to the boredom for the other players. Dripping in sweat at the conclusion of the contest in the late-afternoon 100-degree heat and red-faced, each player was congratulated on a great game and was treated to a rainbow sno-cone.

  ***

  Four years later, Hermie, having just turned ten, owned three baseballs. They were all in play in his back yard. John Brubaker, a young dark-haired man with a dirty blue work shirt, was the catcher and Hermie, who was blond, slim, average height, and had a determined look with a serious brow and bright blue eyes, was the pitcher. He was dressed in black cloth sneakers, blue jeans, a slip-over blue shirt with a pocket, and of course, a blue baseball cap with a long bill, something to make a duck proud. It was just the two of them and instruction was under way. Mr. Brubaker was obviously getting tired of chasing balls that missed the vicinity of his catcher’s mitt at home plate, and his knees were complaining about getting in and out of that painful squat.

  “If you are serious about pitching,” said the father, “I’ll get us some more balls — and me a bucket to sit on.” Hermie smiled and nodded vigorously.

  Father’s plan was to secretly walk the fence lines that surrounded the diamonds at Kiwanis Field and pick up any strays first, and then, only if necessary, buy some.
Hermie was astounded the next day when his father came home from work. The mentor had accumulated six balls, three new, each in a flimsy colorful box, and three that had been scuffed, the faded red threads of the seams compromised with tiny rips. A cheap metal bucket with a wire handle was in tow, too.

  For Hermie, the month’s extra pitching practices at home were grueling and intense. He loved every minute of it. Baseballs propelled into the strike zone were becoming more plentiful. His fast ball was more accurate when thrown with the ball moving at a slower gait, but speed with accuracy was growing each day. He had begun to learn how to throw a curve, too, but controlling it was something else. The team’s assistant coach, who just happened to be Mr. Brubaker, decided to pave the way for Hermie to have an engagement on the mound in an upcoming game. He assumed that his son had now reached second string pitching capability, just a shade above third string. Normally, Hermie played third base, where he fielded pretty well and had a good arm when it came to hitting the first baseman’s glove with the throw. Few grounders went between his legs.

  Dad’s promotion of Hermie to the mound had finally succeeded in a game the Pups were leading. It was a night game, artificially lighted, the field dusty. The grassy up-shoots had not been adequately watered and contained brown tufts. The lead pitcher, whom the kids called Mighty Mo, was able to elevate the fifth-inning score to 7-1 for the Pups, so the coaches decided it was safe to let Hermie finish the last two innings of the seven-inning battle.

  On his first pitch, Hermie, a lanky right-hander, slammed the ball into the left arm of the batter on a wild pitch. It was a younger player, in some ways a stranger to the plate, who usually sat on the bench hoping to play. His wish was answered with a tearful trot to first base. Herman felt badly for the injured tyke. Coach Brubaker’s predominant chant as the next two batters faced Hermie’s catapults was “Throw strikes!” It didn’t happen.

  With the bases quickly loaded, Hermie’s next pitch resulted in a distinctively loud swat — a hard grounder that scampered past the second-string third baseman who was filling in for the novice pitcher. Two runs scored, with two runners left on base, no outs.

  The next batter, on the first pitch down the middle of the plate, hit a home run, the score now at 7-6, no outs.

  Hermie was pulled, the game ultimately ending, 7-6. Back to the drawing board for Herman.

  Chapter 2 —

  The Stinger Of Fate

  Throughout the fall, winter, and early spring Herman pitched in his back yard. When his dad was not there to catch for him, he used a box, or anything handy, as a target. Occasionally a friend caught for him, but usually this simply evolved into just playing catch, farther and farther apart until they were each throwing as hard as they could, ultimately shooting for over-the-head dominance at a great distance.

  Hermie collected old baseballs to reduce the number of journeys from his makeshift mound to his target where he would retrieve them. It constituted an armload to try to fetch without dropping until he found an old wicker basket that he converted into a drag-along carrier. By winter, he had collected 26 baseballs, usually making trades for them with his friends.

  “I’ll give you my map colors for that baseball,” he told one.

  “That ball’s kind of over the hill. I’ll trade you my yoyo for it.”

  “Look, I’ve got a giant grasshopper. How about the grasshopper and my lucky rabbit’s foot for that baseball?”

  As he was breaking in his new Spalding glove, a birthday present from his mother and father, he began throwing upwards of 50 pitches a day, but quickly advanced that number to 100, then 150, then 200 — nearly every day. When it rained hard for 24 hours, he would mope and feel that the day just wasn’t complete.

  Since Mighty Mo had graduated from that little league age group and was now a runt at the next level, Herman climbed into the lead slot to pitch in what would be his last season with the Pups. His arm had gotten stronger, his accuracy improved dramatically, and his attention to the plate had grown intense. His goal was to prove he was better than Mighty Mo ever was.

  Herman’s father, however, was displeased with Hermie’s partial sidearm throw. “The umpires look to see where the ball hits the glove,” said Mr. Brubaker. “You aren’t hitting the catcher’s mitt behind the plate often enough.”

  “But the ball crosses the plate,” Hermie would say. “It hits the corners and that’s all that matters.”

  “The ump has to see it that way, though,” said the father. “It’s chancy. Most of our officials are umpires in name only. They have no clue what’s really going on.”

  Hermie did, however, take his father’s advice when it came to wind-up. “Stare at the catcher’s mitt a few seconds, then turn to the side, look off into the distance, bring the glove and ball to your chest, then kick toward the plate as you turn and deliver, staring again at the mitt and not paying attention to anything else, including the batter. It’s just you and the catcher’s mitt. Nothing else exists.”

  The young pitcher also added a twist to his father’s advice. When Hermie practiced by himself beside the house in his perfectly arranged alley, an area separate from where he played catch with his father, he felt “in his element.” This spot was near the side of the house close to a corner chain-link fence, like a 60-foot-long by 15-foot-wide alleyway. Here, he did not have to go far to retrieve the balls that gathered at the base of the connecting fence after a round of throwing, and, strangely, the nearby “walls” — fence and house — on each side of him were somewhat like a chute. As he delivered the ball, he definitely focused on the target, but peripherally, he could detect on delivery of the ball exactly where his hand was situated during different stages of release, using house windows as subliminal markers since the house was to his right. As he practiced more and more, this visible guide was blurred away and he began to imagine a set of independent chutes that would match where his hand should be to deliver the ball to a specific location. He just had to stay within those grooves and, in a way, the mitt or target no longer mattered, at least not as much. This promoted further his slight sidearm approach. Soon, he envisioned markers within these guides, an even more detailed approach to pinpoint exactly where the ball would find a home.

  Uniquely, he had added bois D’arc horse apples to his baseball collection. These light green spheres resemble an orange fruit in basic texture, with small bumps all over their surface. They were, for the most part, slightly heavier than baseballs. The horse apples varied in size, some larger than a baseball, some about the same size, but all definitely heavier. Hermie had determined that horse apples were easy to grip what with the bumps and helped strengthen his arm due to the added weight. They provided a little variety in size to go along with what he had recently learned about baseballs — that not all baseballs were exactly the same weight, some having a cork center and some having a rubber center. He knew this must be true, since a few of his baseballs were lighter than the others and produced a different sound when struck by a bat. He and a friend had unwound the multi-colored string on a baseball after it had lost its cover and found a cork center inside, so this proved it.

  Often, out of his 200 daily pitches, 20 of these were with his left hand, usually with horse apples, at least as they remained available and until they were demolished into mush, which happened frequently. Dried-up horse apples lasted longer. But throwing left handed was usually very uncomfortable and his accuracy lacked substance. He even went so far as to try to develop southpaw “chutes” which worked if he would stay within them on release. It was difficult to “find that groove” for his left arm, however.

  A friend once asked him, upon witnessing the left-handed display, why he even bothered with his left hand. Wasn’t that wasting throws? Hermie explained that it was a confidence builder, for when he returned to throwing right-handed, “it was soooo easy to put the ball” exactly where he wanted it, and, too, his left-handed toss was improving….a little.

  He pictured himself like an old wes
t gunslinger, with guns on both hips and the ability draw and pull the trigger with either…or both at the same time. Bang, bang, bang.

  The new season soon started. The Pups lost the first outing 1-0. Hermie pitched a near-perfect contest except for that odd infield single in the ninth inning that his teammates bobbled on two attempted throws in advance of the runner that missed, allowing the sprinter to make it all around the bases on the hit.

  The Pups didn’t have a hit the entire game, although five players walked. Hermie was not the best of batters, but he did know how to switch hit, both right- and left-handed. The problem was this. When he batted right-handed, he could hit the ball very hard. But hitting the ball at all was the setback, since his left eye was stronger than his right and he would, for a split second, “lose” the pitched ball when it was about halfway to him. When he batted left-handed, he could see the ball all the way to the plate and could hit just about any pitch — inside, outside, high, or low — but the power was limited and usually resulted in an out before he could get to first base. Tonight he was batting left-handed. The opponents’ second baseman each time was the recipient of his would-be hits and the throw-out to first base was a given. Hermie kept thinking, “My timing is perfect, toward center field. I just need to hit it over his head, not on the ground.”

  The opening season loss had been a Saturday game, to kick off the season, which involved speeches by the organizers, more concessions than usual, and the display of colorful banners and flags. A newspaper photographer lined up players on each team and photographed them, obtaining names and correct spellings on the spot. It was very much like a festival. The rest of the games would be more basic and be played on Mondays and Fridays, barring postponements due to rain-out or threatening lightning strikes. The teams played each other twice, once as the home team and once as the visiting team.