The Switch Pitcher

by W. Leon Smith

  After the first round, the season halfway complete, the Pups had a 3-1-1 record, having lost to the Toads in the opener, defeating the Colts, Wildcats, and Ravens, and tying the odds-on-pennant-favorite Ponies in the last game of the first half of the regular season, a nail-biter. Hermie’s pitching was holding up well, which continued into the first part of round two.

  This time the Toads fell, as did the Colts and Wildcats. It looked like the Pups might have a shot at the league title, as the team was tied with the Ponies, two games remaining — the finale to be the Pups vs. the Polley Ponies.

  The Ponies were well known in Central Texas as egotists, perennial league winners, and betting favorites to win the local championship trophy. Polley was a pothole town about eight miles away from the much more populated Hall City, which hosted all the rest of the teams. The kids in Polley played baseball all year long, ignoring basketball, football, track, and tennis. These kids lived baseball and it showed. Their only problem element was numbers — they barely had enough players to field a team. Unfortunately for them, a flu epidemic and a player trapped during a family vacation storm in Florida had cost them their first game of the season, a forfeit. Coupled with the Hall City Pups’ first loss, and the initial Pups-Ponies tie, these two teams were now tied for first place.

  But the Pups had to get past the Ravens before taking on the Ponies, which most players on the team thought would be easy, since the Ravens were 0-8 and “didn’t have much,” especially when it came to offense. They couldn’t hit.

  It was Saturday morning prior to Monday’s Ravens game. John Brubaker yelled across the yard to his son, who was throwing horse apples, “I said, come on! You can throw later!”

  Hermie was agitated and did not want to go. He was throwing hotly, nearly all good strikes, and hard. He was in his element. But he gave in and threw one last pitch before scurrying to the car whose occupants, his father, mother, and younger sister, had been impatiently waiting — in the blistering heat and not too happy sitting in a hot car while he tarried to join them. It was an angry, sweaty ride in an un-air-conditioned car to a small, very old cottage about a mile into the country. The vacant flagstone house that soon lay before them on the dusty dirt road was dilapidated, the cow troughs were overgrown with bugs and lizards crawling up the sides, and blades were missing on the leaning windmill behind the house.

  “That’s like the tower of pizza,” said Hermie pointing at it in the distance.

  During the drive, Mr. Brubaker had explained that this might be the family’s new home, out in the beautiful country where they could get back to nature and maybe raise a few chickens. They were here to inspect the premises, to go inside their potential new home and look around prior to making a decision. What he didn’t say was that, to rent it, he would save $15 a month over their current rental in town.

  Hermie thought the place looked disgusting and, as per his usual inclination, he hurriedly opened the car door, jumped outside, and paraded boldly with big steps toward the front door of the ancient old shack, leading the way like a locomotive as the others were barely emerging from the car. When he reached for the front door handle, it happened. A yellow jacket landed on the back of his right hand and proceeded to bury its sharp tail into it. Hermie was stung and cried out in pain, quickly reversing his journey back toward the car, where he met his mother, a shapely woman in her early thirties, who carefully studied the sting.

  “We’ll put something on it when we get back home,” she said, moving her blonde locks away from her face.

  “But it stings like fire,” said Hermie.

  Mr. Brubaker, who had been drinking some iced tea out of a blue plastic tumbler, reached inside and pulled out the biggest slippery ice cube.

  “Here,” he told Hermie. “Hold this on it, right on top of the sting,” which Hermie did. Although the cube was fast to melt, its coldness lessened the sting…a little.

  The tour proceeded, with everyone taking note of the hidden yellow jacket nest near the door in order to avoid it. There were several additional nests in the upper corners of the porch walkway, each teeming with wasps. After entering through the back door, which was safer, and examining the six interior rooms, where grimy wallpaper was torn and sliding off in each of them, and noting that the foundation of the house was in bad shape, the group toured a chicken coop and a barn, then headed for the car and for home.

  “It’s a step down in quality, but a step up in elbow room,” said Mr. Brubaker on the way back. Nobody commented and Mrs. Brubaker only frowned.

  Hermie kept opening and closing his sore hand. “Still sting?” asked the father.

  “Not too much,” said Hermie. “It kind of does when I stretch my hand, though.”

  “Then stop stretching your hand.”

  By the time they arrived in Hall City and pulled into their driveway, Hermie’s hand was beginning to swell, with a small hump between his thumb and forefinger, the region of impact. He went back to his makeshift pitcher’s mound beside the house and tried a few throws. The ball just did not fit correctly into his hand, so he stopped and went inside. He asked his father what he should do. The hand kept getting bigger. The entire back of his hand was now swollen and his knuckles were losing definition.

  “Put some ice on it. That’ll bring it down.”

  By evening, his knuckles had completely vanished. The swelling was intense. Hermie constantly replaced the melted ice up until the hour he went to bed for the night, and by morning the sock containing the ice was warm, the hand about twice its normal size.

  Hermie’s running mates at Sunday School that morning described the hand as marvelous, like a giant would have and complimented him on how “brave” he was. “I don’t have much feeling in it,” said Hermie, “but the sting hole feels like a pin prick when I open my fingers. I just can’t close my hand much because it’s so swollen,” he added.

  After eating a hamburger for lunch, Hermie told his father who was maneuvering a French fry through a pond of catsup on his dish, “I’ve got to try to pitch today.”

  “No,” said Mr. Brubaker. “Definitely not. You need to rest it — and keep ice on it. We should have carried ice to Sunday School.”

  Hermie’s mother was putting on eyeliner in front of a mirror in the adjoining room. She reminded her husband that the family was due at the Kincheloes to play croquet and dominoes in about fifteen minutes. It was time to go.

  “Can I stay here?” asked Hermie, the bill of his baseball cap pointing downward as he accomplished a pitiful expression. “I need to take care of my hand. It would hurt too much to hold a croquet mallet. My not being there will give someone else a chance to win,” he bragged, sadly.

  It worked.

  As the car backed out of the driveway, three occupants in tow, Hermie looked through the window, to ascertain their being out of sight. He then went outside, to his pitching area, and tried to throw a baseball with his right hand. He could barely hold the ball, much less utilize his specialized grip, so the pitch was very high and inside. He would have beaned a right-handed batter on the skull. The next pitch was just as bad, as was the next. He thought it felt like blood rushing to his fingertips every time he released the ball, and that prick on the back of his hand felt like a doctor’s injection each time he let the ball spin loose. A higher degree of numbness on that hand had also set in.

  “I need to throw some pitches,” he thought. “I just have to throw some pitches.”

  He pulled the glove off his left hand and dropped it to the ground, thinking, “My right hand is almost like a glove, it’s so big.” He removed his wristwatch and put it in his jeans pocket, picked up a horse apple with his left hand, concocted a wind-up, and threw the fruit hard at his target. It approached the plate like a bowling ball. So he tried again. This time it was closer to the strike zone, but still bounced on the way there. Next came experimentation with different arm positions prior to release and a shifting of “chutes” in his mind’s eye. Better, sometimes.

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nbsp; He soon had 20 pitches under his belt, perhaps one strike among them. He reached for another horse apple, his last one. It was about the size of a grapefruit, or softball. He was getting more comfortable with the opposite side wind-up and step-off, and this time reached for the highest mark in the chute, thinking the ball would arc downward. It didn’t because he released too early and threw too hard. The grip was weird. The horse apple crossed the chain-link fence beyond the target and waltzed across his front lawn, across the street, and into a neighbor’s yard. Uh, oh.

  “So be it,” thought Hermie. “Too big anyway.” Now all that remained for this go-round were baseballs, the real thing, which he was determined to lurch into. The first pitch was a soft strike. The second pitch was a harder one, and the third was even harder. Then he started to backslide, coming close, but no pay dirt, and some of the intensity was coming off the ball since his arm was tiring. But he kept throwing.

  He was finally down to the last ball, so he decided to make the last pitch with his right hand. He put the glove back on his left hand and proceeded with his usual wind-up, and “Ouch.”

  As he rounded up the scattered baseballs and horse apples, he thought to himself, “This ain’t good. I’ve got to do better.” He dragged the basket of balls to rest adjacent to the mound and began wiping his hands on his pants. Some of the horse apples had begun to ooze a milky substance, which, if left alone, would likely dry. They usually did, to a point. But he needed to get the icky substance off his fingers. As he reached into his pants pocket for his handkerchief, he pulled out the watch and studied it. “I’ve got at least an hour before they come home,” he thought. “I ought to be able to do another round without getting caught.”

  He began left-handed, with horse apples, mocking his right-handed throw with its slight side-arm approach. On the first pitch, his shoulder popped and the ball went far to the right. Not good, plus after the toss he noticed that his left hand was trembling some when he relaxed it. Not good either.

  Hermie decided to instead of worry about power, he would focus on his grip. He would try a curve ball. He assumed the grip, uncomfortably, and threw — the horse apple barely making it to the plate. “Okay,” he thought. “Now a fast ball.”

  The throw was hard but went to the right, strike zone height.

  “My chute is off,” he thought, “so I will shift it.” He thought carefully about what the intended path should be and slowly faked some throws to find that slot. He soon found it in what could be described as an exaggerated overhand, almost in front of his face. His release of the ball would have to be at a slight angle to the outside of a right-handed batter, but his wrist could control the output of the ball, somewhat.

  “This is kind of like overhand bowling,” he thought, putting some spin on the ball to make it move as it neared the plate. He systematically threw the remaining horse apples in this manner, testing various areas of the imaginary chute to gain accuracy in placement. Not bad. He had a slight peripheral view advantage throwing sidearm with his right hand, something that did not exist in the left-hand overhand throw, so the chute was harder to gauge, but he could do it.

  Next came the baseballs. One after another, he was making strikes in placement. He utilized medium strength on most of the throws, but when he decided to occasionally throw a hard one, it obeyed.

  He was down to one baseball. “My arm’s killing me,” he thought, “but I’ve got to make the last one count.” It went exactly where he wanted it to go. “I’ve got to memorize that chute,” he thought as he was retrieving the balls. “I am now ambi-disasterous.”

  He again checked his watch. Maybe there was time for one more round. He had seen a major league pitcher on television explain how to throw a knuckleball. Since a curve was out of the question, he would give the strange pitch a try. With care he placed the ball in his left hand and dug his first two fingernails into the ball, just below the seam on the horseshoe segment. The idea was to throw by pushing off with those two fingers and not allow the ball to spin. It was difficult. The ball dropped right in front of him on his first try. So he tried again and again, as the ball advanced closer to the plate each time. After he had exhausted his corral of balls, he tried the horse apples. There was no seam in these lime green fruits, but his fingernails dug a little deeper into the thick peel and the heavier ball traveled farther. He had located a chute that worked and he guessed he was throwing strikes. The ball tended to advance toward the strike zone, but suddenly drop. He wanted to experiment further, but his parents and sister would arrive at any time.

  When his family returned, Hermie was watching television with an ice-pack on his right hand. He had consumed a full bag of barbecue potato chips and was downing the last drops of an orange soft drink.

  He yawned at them when they entered the room. He was lying on the couch watching Mr. Ed, the talking horse, on TV. “I must have dozed off,” he said. “What time is it? Where am I?”

  They all smiled.”

  Chapter 3 —

  The Benchwarmer

  When he examined his swollen hand the next morning, he was semi-pleased. It was smaller than the day before, but still big. His grip remained strained. After his father carefully scrutinized the appendage, the pronouncement was made that Little Albert will be the starting pitcher against the Ravens tonight and the team will “hope for the best.”

  “But my swelling’s going down,” said Hermie. “We’ve got to win.”

  “We’ll see how it is at game time,” said his father. “It wouldn’t hurt you to spend a little time on the bench anyway. Call it a reality check.”

  Hermie was growing tired of changing the ice packs, but the swelling was subsiding — very slowly. His father had gone to work. Hermie ventured to ask his mother whether he could go outside and “just throw a few pitches” without her telling Dad. She said no.

  It was now 2 p.m., four hours away from game time.

  “I’m taking Carla to piano lessons,” said Mom. “Be back in about 45 minutes. Why don’t you empty all the trash cans in the house. Tomorrow’s garbage day. And get rid of those horse apples. They’re coming apart and making a mess. The ones in the fridge are taking up too much space, so toss them, too.”

  As she drove away with his kid sister, he had an idea. He would toss them. He took a plastic garbage can, emptied it into the big metal can, rounded up his horse apples, and strolled to his throwing area. He positioned the empty plastic can as his target and proceeded to throw the horse apples into it, one by one, complete with a wind-up and with careful attention to his newfound left-handed chutes. His arm grew tired after four pitches, but if he let it rest briefly, he could throw another pitch unhindered, and another, and another. He dared go three rounds with the horse apples before hearing the car shut down in the driveway.

  “Garbage is ready to put out, horse apples are gone,” he announced to his mother. “Where’s that craft kit?”

  “Which one,” she asked.

  “The one with the leather strings,” he said.

  “In the living room cabinet. Just don’t make a mess, and pick it up when you are through.”

  It was a western kit, designed to make leather purses or billfolds. It had not been opened. His sister was more into beads these days and he was simply not interested in girly crafts.

  Hermie took it to his bedroom, turned on his desk lamp, dug out his pocketknife, and tried to come up with a quick plan to alter his glove so that it would work on either hand. After a lot of thought, he determined that all the glove really needed was an extra thumb slot and a pocket on the opposite side, which would be nearly impossible for him to design. He did not want to be scolded for ruining his new glove, but he needed to make it usable in the event he needed to pitch with his left hand during a game. Finally, he decided that the current finger holes were bigger than he actually used anyway, so he would just have to “make do” by turning the glove a little sideways — for now.

  By 5 p.m. the swelling in his right hand had s
ubsided considerably. With intense scrutiny he could make out his knuckle bones, a noticeable improvement. In front of the mirror of his bedroom he pretended to throw a right-handed pitch, but it still did not feel exactly right. He put on his yellow Pups shirt that featured an ironed-on dog carrying a baseball bat in its mouth on the front side, then he straightened his yellow baseball cap that carried the blue letter “P” on the front crease. He was now ready to sit on the bench, unless he could persuade the coaches to reconsider.

  “Look,” he said excitedly when his dad returned from work to get a quick bite before the game. “My hand’s back to normal.”

  “Still looks a little swollen to me,” the man said. “We’ll rest it tonight. You need to be ready for Polley later this week. No need in tempting fate.”

  Hermie was distraught. Here he was, a would-be benchwarmer in his last year at this level, only two games to go. He didn’t even rate being a batboy. How embarrassing.

  Chapter 4 —

  The Pups vs. The Ravens

  It was game time. The usual second-string pitcher for the Pups was vacationing with his parents in Colorado but would return in time for Friday’s game against the Ponies. The third-stringer, Little Albert, who usually played right field and had a good arm, would be pitching. He was chubby but could run fast. His main problem was control at the mound. He had pitched two innings in a game earlier in the year and both he and the coaches had decided that pitching was not in the cards for him. If he began throwing outside, the rest of his pitches followed suit, same for inside, high, and low, few strikes. A batter had to swing at a wayward pitch to strike out. His advantage was that if a batter did hit the ball, it was usually a grounder since his strikes tended to barely touch the edge of the zone.