Even I was shocked at the quick hook. Their manager came out of the dugout, and I was even more surprised when he didn’t challenge the umpire, but grabbed his player and marched him to the dugout. Later, Bob told me he’d overheard that Team Pony had been warned yesterday that they had to stop their outbursts. This was a carryover from that.
The organizers had made our team rosters small for a reason. They wanted to see everyone play, and you couldn’t evaluate a player if he never made it onto the field. That meant that our pitchers had to fill in if someone was either injured or, in this case, kicked out of the game. On our team, that wasn’t really a problem because we had Daz and Austin, each of whom was an everyday player back home in addition to being a pitcher.
For Pony, this was more of a problem. They had to insert a pitcher who didn’t have a good bat, putting a hole right in the middle of the top of their order. Normally a team relies on its third batter to help move the first and second batters around the bases with his bat. I threw two fastballs outside, and the replacement swung at both of them for an easy out.
After the first inning, I was feeling good about getting out of it, having only thrown six pitches.
Joe was up first, and their pitcher walked him on five pitches. Their pitcher took a moment to calm himself and made quick work of Mitch, getting him to swing at three straight offerings. Dave hit a shot down the third base line, but their third baseman made a spectacular play across the infield to throw Dave out at first. Joe was at second when I came up with two outs.
I took a moment to focus and remember each step I needed to do. The first two pitches were low and outside for balls. The third one was in the dirt and scooted loose from the catcher. I frantically waved Joe to take third. Their manager signaled to walk me at that point to take the bat out of my hands.
I trotted down to first and checked the signs; they said not to run. I think the coach wanted to see if this kid would walk Nick or not. It looked like he might when he threw two balls that weren’t even close. Nick had been signaled to take the next pitch to force their pitcher to throw a strike. Nick was sick when it was a fastball right down the gut.
On the next pitch, we were signaled to do the hit and run. I don’t imagine anyone thought we would try something like that this early in the game. You rarely wanted to take the bat out of the hands of a hitter of Nick’s caliber with a runner at third. The pitcher looked over at me and then at the plate. During that moment, I edged away from the bag another half step to give me every advantage I could get. He lifted his foot to go home and I exploded to second. I didn’t hear the crack of a bat, so I slid hard into second. The umpire called me safe.
Unfortunately, Nick struck out on the next pitch to end the inning.
For the next few innings, it was much the same. They were easy outs, and we struggled, leaving base runners in scoring position. This had carried over from that last game. Sometimes you just couldn’t seem to get them across. I began to worry because leaving base runners stranded was a recipe for disaster.
I’d run through their lineup once with just my changeup and fastball. It was time to break out the spike curveball. My normal curveball would break from one to seven on a clock face. The spike curve broke from twelve to six.
I also wanted to begin to move my pitches around in the zone. Up to this point, I’d pretty much dared them to hit my high balls down the center of the plate. I knew they’d be looking for that, and I would be in for a long night if I didn’t change things up.
Their leadoff batter was up again. Trent signaled he wanted the fastball low and inside. I think the pitch startled the batter because he laid off it for a called strike. The next pitch was the new curve. Trent had me throw it where I’d been throwing the fastball. I pumped my fist in the air when the poor kid’s knees buckled, trying to figure out what to do, and the umpire called it a strike.
On the next pitch, I threw the high hard fastball to get him to strike out.
From there, I was golden. I realized in the later innings that the new way of throwing the curveball wasn’t nearly as hard on my joints, especially my elbow. They did get a few hits off me, but no one got past second base.
Trent had hit a solo home run by the time we got to the last inning, so I was replaced by Kale who did what closers are supposed to do. I wasn’t sure there were many players here who could hit his fastball when he was on like he was today. I had my second win, and Kale had the save.
Coach Kingwood grabbed a bag of ice and an ace bandage to hold it on my shoulder. Everyone was tired and satisfied, so after ice cream and signing autographs, we called it a night.
◊◊◊ Thursday June 23
