Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [80]
My only baseball thought focused on the first pitch. And after I delivered that, every next pitch became the first pitch. The thermometer read 96 degrees, humid enough to grow orchids. That sun wasn’t dispensing any healing warmth, either, you know the kind that swathes a weary body through a day of heavy work. No, it was one badass coach gone frenzied with a bullwhip, lashing our backs out on the field. Had someone tossed me a bar of Irish Spring, I could have bathed in my own sweat.
Under conditions that grueling, your environment becomes as daunting an opponent as any hitter. Something I learned pitching in the hellish climes of Venezuela. Sucking in too much air too slowly and too deeply will sear your lungs. But if your breaths race too fast and shallow, you risk hyperventilating. Only a middle course will do. So my body acclimated to the surroundings. I remembered something the great sensei Suzuki wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: concentrate on your exhale. My breathing turned rhythmic and measured, slowing my heartbeat and dropping my body temperature.
Once I established relative comfort, my concentration turned to minimizing all effort. When you face major-league hitters, one pitch sets up the next. For example, even in my youthful prime, the Bill Lee fastball was never torrid enough for anyone to refer to it as a heater. But I might buzz two semi-hard ones deep inside the kitchen of a slugger like Reggie Jackson—so far in there, Number 44 could never put good wood on them—just to back him off the plate a hair. Once Reggie started looking inside, setting himself to cream any pitch that traveled in that zone, I would drop a changeup over the outside corner to catch him off balance. If he tried pulling that ball, I would have a lazy pop-up or a grounder, maybe even a strikeout if Reggie came to work that day juiced and overeager.
That is the only way to attack a dangerous professional slugger. When you confront a lineup of amateur hitters, though, your approach radically changes. The whole idea in that situation is to avoid setting up anyone. Waste six or seven pitches on each batter when you are throwing to both sides and you will have nothing to pitch with come the fourth inning but a blood-dripping nub. So the strategy for this game arrived out of need: I would give the hitter the optimal opportunity to fail by seducing him into thinking he could succeed.
This required me to be a quick study. Before the game started, I stood near the batters’ cage watching the players from both sides take their cuts. Want to know what a hitter looks for at the plate? Examine his stance. Watch how he sets his feet. Observe what kind of pitches he lustily offers at and which he lets pass or swings at with indifference. Combine all your data and try to intuit the type of pitch he likes to whale. Then use his strength to destroy him.
Before I could do that, I had to persuade each hitter to swing as early in the count as possible. So the first time through the lineup I allowed nothing but “show ’em” at bats. I started each batter with a sinking fastball over the plate. If he took it and tried thinking along with me, he would look in a different location on the next pitch. So he got a second fastball, same spot. Once the count reached two strikes, I became the executioner. The batter received a nasty 12 to 6 curveball. Strike three.
That pitch made a psychological impact. Once those hitters realized they could not touch my major-league-quality bender, they eagerly swung at the first straight pitch no matter where I put it. This greatly reduced my workload while allowing me the opportunity to get inside the batter’s head.
For instance, that afternoon one outfielder came to the plate with the left-handed stance of Jason Giambi: coiled, aggressive, seething with testosterone. A classic low-ball hitter who