-Bess
Imagine standing in the middle of Fenway Park, just shy of the perfectly molded pitcher’s mound with your feet atop the plush, picturesque green grass. Imagine standing there, over 30,000 sets of eyes watching as you rub your hands down your sides, trying to dry the sweat off your hands as you go to pick up the baseball. Imagine standing there, your teammates eagerly watching you as the catcher settles in behind home plate just a mere 50 feet away. Wait, what? Fifty feet?
That’s right, just 50 feet from where I stood to home plate as I prepared to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Fenway Park this past Monday night, May 14, 2007. You see, the Northeastern Baseball team, which I am proudly a senior tri-captain of, was being honored for winning the Baseball Beanpot, which coincidentally was played on the same field just a few weeks prior. Now the Baseball Beanpot is certainly not the extravagant event that the hallowed, traditional hockey Beanpot has been. This is evidenced by the small crowd of 214 people that was fleeing for exits due to rain during our 2-0 championship win over Boston College this season. But it’s important to us, and it was certainly satisfying that the Boston Red Sox found it significant enough to honor us before Monday’s game against the A.L. Central leading Detroit Tigers. And lucky enough for me, I was chosen by my teammates to physically carry out what we were actually there to do: throw out the first pitch.
I found out on Sunday night that I was going to be the guy. Fellow senior captain and starting catcher Dan Milano sent me a text message telling me I would be throwing out the first pitch. It had come down to the two of us, and he said that since I had graduated back on May 5th, he would afford me the honor of actually making the pitch for our team. I would find out later on that he was actually too chicken-shit to make the pitch. He had disclosed to teammates that he feared hurling it off the backstop and thus relinquished the task to me.
Now any of you reading may be wondering how a Division I baseball player could possibly be concerned about tossing a baseball, something I do everyday, a mere 50 feet. Why don’t you ask Mark Mallory, the infamous Mayor of Cincinnati whose pitch arguably landed closer to first base than it did home plate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC1dLxYwWJc&mode=related&search=
Or how about “Mr. Ceremonial First Pitch Thrower Outer” from the “Real Men of Genius”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eDzJ_K9i_0
It was unsettling to think what nerves or pressure would do to me out on the field, and my biggest fear was embarrassing not only myself, but my team as well if I didn’t at least put the ball within an arm’s length of the catcher. But then again, I couldn’t do much worse than our aforementioned pioneers from the school of What Not to Do When Throwing Out the First Pitch.
So with that issue settled the next item to check off the list was what kind of throw I would make. I’m not talking pitch selection here, as we’ll get to that in a moment, but rather arm angle. You see, for the last season and a half or so I have been throwing sidearm when I pitch. In order to get better acclimated and comfortable with the motion, I have narrowed my focus of throwing strictly to that angle. So whenever I try and go back to throwing at a three-quarter or over the top arm angle, it often feels uncanny and tends to result in an errant and at times embarrassing throw. This left me with two options: embarrass yourself by dropping down to throw side arm and risk jai-alai’ing it into the Tigers dugout or go with a normal throwing motion that you haven’t done much of and risk spiking a divot on the green of the Par-3 17th. What a conundrum. Until I came up with Option Three. Keep it simple and easy by going with the Batting Practice Pitcher’s motion. The process is effortless and unproblematic. Just step into the throw, keep a short arm action down and back and release from the left ear. I had thrown my fair share of b.p. to some teammates this season, so I thought this might work the best.
The last issue to check off was the actual pitch. I could go with a fastball, but wouldn’t it be fun if I threw a hammer, or dropped in a knuckleball or honored Red Sox starter Daisuke Matsuzaka with a gyro-ball? No. Not only would it be idiotic and foolhardy, but I can’t effectively throw any of these pitches. So after ruling out anything off-speed, I was left with one option: a fastball. Now with this fastball, do I pump it in there? I mean what if I inexplicably pumped one in there at 97 mph and a Disney producer immediately came over offering to do a Rookie of the Year 2. Adrian Grenier would play a college graduate who wanted to give baseball one last shot, but little did he know that shot would last a lifetime. Hey, why not?
At about 6:15 p.m. our team was led down onto the field behind home plate. Initially we felt privileged and distinctively unique, until we realized that there were about a million other people down on the field, too. Apparently from what I’ve been told, bigwigs can dole out scores of cash from their bottomless coffers to be down on the field for batting practice. People are ushered behind man-made barriers along the backstop to give the players sufficient room on the field; there are also people that enjoy the pre-game routine from the triangle out in center field. At about 6:30 p.m. a large number of those people were cleared off the field, leaving us and a few other groups along with the grounds crew which was working fervently to get the field ready for the 7:05 p.m. first pitch from Matsuzaka.
But being down on the field afforded me the chance to see just how well organized, thorough and efficient the Red Sox front office really is. There were probably a million different pre-game activities scheduled, five to be exact, but it was impressive to see them bang one out then move the next group in immediately to keep the proverbial car in drive. From the “Fan of the game” to the “Blood Donor of the Game”, followed by the National Anthem, all that was left was the ceremonial first pitch aside from the token little kid that comes on the field to whisper “Play Ball” into the microphone. I swear you never actually hear the kid say it but the crowd still goes nuts. He could be whispering “Go Yankees” for all we know. In fact I can’t believe no parent has ever tried to pull that off, vicariously living through their five year old to spite the enemy Red Sox fans on their own turf. I digress.
Back to the first pitch. There were two on this night, and first up was the head coach of the Trinity squash team, which apparently has won 165 straight matches and nine straight national championships. I don’t care if we’re talking checkers, chess or Parcheesi. You win that much and not only are you doing something right, you’re doing something special. So out came Paul D. Assaiante, and his throw went as expected: an overhand lob that would have made Henry Rowengartner’s mom proud. It got there…in unimpressive fashion but kudos to him for not sailing or spiking himself into the pantheon of ceremonial 1st pitch choke artists. As soon as his pitch hit the mitt, we were immediately being ushered out onto the field. I led the way, joined by fellow captains Dan Milano and Josh Porter. Our head coach, Neil McPhee, was directly behind with the other coaches and my teammates all followed suit. I looked up onto the jumbotron, and like any other idiot fan, saw myself up on the screen but couldn’t figure out where the camera was or why it was showing the back of my head. I gave up and kept walking, refocusing on the pitch I was about to throw. Arguably the most important pitch of my life.
I settled in front of the mound, about ten feet in front of the rubber. The rest of the team assembled behind me, and I looked up to the see the ball boy crouched down next to the home plate. There were a couple things that bothered me about this: first is that it wasn’t Mirabelli. This guy is getting $750,000 to catch once every five days and sport a .235 career average; he hit a combined .191 last season between San Diego and Boston. The least he could do is catch the ceremonial 1st pitch every night to earn some of that paycheck. Plus, I had actually contemplated tossing in a knuckleball, regardless of how good it was, just to mock him. The second thing that bothered me is that the ball boy was the older brother of a player on our team. The kid just graduated with me on May 5th, and it was somewhat disheartening for all of us to see Chuck’s older brother decimated to wearing a pseudo-uniform that was fit for a 12 year old. I felt bad, but certainly appreciated him being a good sport even though his hand-eye coordination was equivalent to that of a “mentally challenged” cyclopse. But again, I digress.
I was now seconds away from making the pitch, the crowd was buzzing, cameras flashing and surprisingly, I wasn’t panicking or showing full moon sweat stains under my arms. I felt like I had been put on this earth to make this pitch, and I stood there just soaking in the surreal moment. Then I heard Carl Beane’s booming voice come on the loudspeaker.
“The Boston Red Sox would like to congratulate this year’s Beanpot champions, the Northeastern Huskies’ Baseball Team. Throwing out the first pitch will be Senior Captain….Tristan……Resse.”
Woah, wait a minute numnuts. Tristan Resse? But before I had enough time to complain, Red Sox personnel gave me the okay and I looked back at my team one last time.
I patted my right hand with the ball.
I turned my left foot towards first.
Then as I stepped towards home, well, just outside the left-handed batter’s box, my hands separated.
Everything was perfect, so far.
I wound up and felt my hand coming back towards my left ear.
Then boom. The pitch was in flight. I let it go and tried to put enough on it so that I didn’t look like I had a skirt on but didn’t risk hurting Chuck’s brother. As I watched it go, I could see that I had followed through a little more upright and towards third than I had hoped for. The ball was going to cut in. Oh sh*t. I panicked, but with only 50 feet between myself and home plate, I lucked out. The ball was about 40 feet away when it lifted its left wing and began a 45-degree descent towards the right-handed batter’s box. Thankfully, I had put enough steam on it that the pitch dropped in for a called strike, just off the catcher’s left knee. I gave a pump of the fist and turned towards my team, everyone elated and relieved that I had not only thrown the pitch, but safely gotten it in there for a strike. But before I could converse or communicate with anyone, we were quickly being ushered off the field. That was it. We were quickly being brought back from cloud nine to our insignificant, inconsequential lives. Julio Lugo said, “What’s up, guys?” as we made our way to the stands. I even got a pat on the shoulder and a thumbs up from some random old guy, approving of my throw. Thanks, buddy.
And so looking back, the whole thing probably lasted all of 60 seconds, maybe not even that long. But despite my nerves, my worries of rivaling Mark Mallory for YouTube hits or whether or not I’d get that professional contract and movie rights, I managed to do what I should have been worried about the whole time: “No news is good news.”
Oh and by the way, all the Red Sox could give us was standing room only tickets.
But thankfully for me, I went right back to work in the Red Sox radio booth with Joe and Glen, only to be promptly made fun on the air because Joe “clocked” me at 68 mph. So I guess I made some news, but I’m sure Jimmy Kimmel won’t deem it necessary to have me on his show for a second chance.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QjwFnfEVdgQ
-Bess
No comments:
Post a Comment