Pitchers' Duel

He stood on the pitcher's mound with a baseball in his hand--a tall, gangling boy of 12 in a little-league uniform that was so small for him, the pants legs barely reaching his knees, that he resembled a stick figure. I remember he had a long face, and pale skin, and that his eyes were wide and unblinking, like those of a trapped animal.

He did not look like a pitcher, not even a little-league pitcher. He had to pause a second before each pitch to remind himself how to put his foot on the rubber, and then how to pump, and kick, and lunge, and follow through so that he was squared off against the batter now only a few feet away. And as he went through his motion, step by awkward step, he watched himself to make sure he got it right, watched himself with such simple concentration, in fact, his brow knitting, that he seemed to forget entirely about the batter. He had probably been recruited to pitch by his coach, the manager of a local supermarket, because he was so much taller than the other boys his age, and his coach had felt his size would frighten batters in a way his talent--or, rather, his lack of talent--would not. But he frightened no one. On this clear summer day, in full view of his parents, a few dozen fans and myself, already a little-league star pitcher at 12, he could not retire even the tiniest of batters. The fans laughed at him at first, and then they began to feel sorry for him. "He's trying so hard," said a mother in the home plate stands behind me.

With each succeeding base hit, the pitcher took more and more time between pitches, until he was virtually immobile on the mound, unable to deliver another pitch. He looked toward the bench for his coach, but his coach was bent over, his hands cupped around a match, lighting a cigarette. The pitcher's shoulders sagged and he forced himself to begin his mechanical delivery once again. The batter hit a ground ball toward the mound. The pitcher followed it with his eyes, but he could not make himself reach for it. The ball passed very close to his right foot and continued on into center field. The pitcher remained frozen in his follow-through for a split second, as if an idea were forming in his head, and then he fell to the ground, clutching first his left foot and then his right foot as he writhed in the dirt. His coach and his teammates rushed out to him and the umpire called time. They hovered over him for a few minutes--his (continued on page 118) Pitchers' Duel (continued from page 115) coach, down on one knee, massaging his right foot--and then he stood up. With his arms draped over the shoulders of two smaller teammates, he hobbled off the mound to the applause of sympathetic fans. That applause seemed to me then, as it does now, to have stemmed not only from the fans' sense of relief that the pitcher was not seriously hurt but also from their sense of relief that they would no longer have to witness his humiliation.

The fans' sympathetic applause began to build as he crossed the first-base line. Only I was not so sympathetic. I yelled out, loud enough for all to hear, "That's one way of gettin' off the mound!" The fans around me booed and hissed, and somebody shoved me in the back.

"You ought to be ashamed," a woman's voice said. But I wasn't. I knew, even then, that I was right.

•

It takes a certain kind of character to be a pitcher, to expose oneself to the possibility of such humiliation; and, while I recognized even then that that boy did not have it, I was positive I did. It was an easy assumption. I had been a pitcher since I was eight, and success had come swiftly. No-hitters. Strike-outs. Headlines in the local newspapers.

Success followed me into high school, and beyond, when I signed for a $45,000 bonus with the then Milwaukee Braves in 1959. Until that point, I had experienced only good moments on the mound, moments when I was so totally in command that I could see it all clearly, outlined and in slow motion, even as I threw. Those good moments were always the same. It was as if I were standing outside myself, watching me throw. I imposed nothing on my talent. It had a will of its own, and its will was to perfect itself. All I could do was watch in amazement: my arm passing above my head at precisely the same angle on each pitch; the ball as weightless as Styrofoam in my hand; my motion so smooth and mechanically perfect that it seemed all of a piece. It required no thought, no effort, just an aesthetic appreciation for its perfection.

The ball traveled toward the plate in slow motion. I could count every stitch, every rotation, even as I knew it was traveling at a much greater speed than it appeared to be. The batter was helpless, irrelevant even, not a part of all this, not even worthy of consideration, merely a foil for my perfect fast ball. He swung in slow motion, through my fast ball, as if the ball had decomposed before his startled eyes. He swung with such force that he dropped to one knee, as if to pay homage.

The ball recomposed itself in my catcher's glove with an echoing crack. The glove was fat and round, with a perfect pocket stained darker than the rest of the glove. With each pitch, that pocket grew larger and larger, larger even than the catcher, so large, in fact, that it obliterated everything--the catcher, the umpire, the batter--and all I could see was that I wanted to laugh. It was impossible for me not to throw the ball directly into that pocket.

That was the way it was before I went away to the minor leagues. It would never be that way again. I played three years in the minors, with diminishing success, until, finally, in the late summer of 1961, I found myself on a pitcher's mound in Tampa, in what would be the last professional game I would ever pitch.

By then, I had lost it all: rhythm, control, confidence, speed, everything. My pitching motion had become so confusingly complex--a box of spare parts I could not fit into a workable piece--that I, too, like that gangling boy of years before, had to pause a moment on the mound to remind myself how to put my foot on the rubber, how to pump, kick, lunge and follow through. But no matter how hard I concentrated on what had always been second nature to me--throwing a baseball--I could not remember how to do it. I could not impose my will on it, because it had a will of its own.

When I realized that, the helplessness of my position, on that mound, in front of a batter, fans, my own teammates, I felt panic. I could not swallow, and for one terrifying second I thought only of catching a breath. Terror-stricken, I looked toward the batter, began my pump, tried to remember but could not. Staring plateward, I saw at the end of a long, narrow, dark tunnel a minute fresco--the batter, catcher, umpire. I heard as if from a great distance the shouts of fans and the nervous shifting of my fielders behind me. Curiously, in mid-motion, I felt no exertion, was moving in a dream, without effort, disconnected, not even conscious of the ball leaving my hand and moving a great distance through that dark tunnel.

Moments later, sensing its return, I raised my glove and caught it without feeling. I began my motion again, caught the returning ball, began my motion again, caught the returning ball, and so on and so on. I was vaguely conscious of everything that happened around that pitch--the crack of the bat, the spontaneous roar of the fans, the batter moving toward first base, my fielders shifting en masse toward the ball--everything except the pitch itself.

Suddenly, I was aware of my catcher walking toward me with his mask tucked under one arm. There was a look of pity on his face. To his left, I saw a stooped old man, a comical-looking old man in a uniform that was too big for him, hop out of our dugout and begin walking in my direction. When he crossed the first-base line, he dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out with his spiked shoe ... my manager! I sighed, exhausted. I felt empty, filled only with air. Floating above things now. Not caring. Not a bad feeling. Nice, really. New to me. As the old man reached the mound, he was about to say something ("Atta boy, get 'em next time"), but I no longer needed to hear it. I smiled at him, looking strangely at me, shrugged, tossed him the ball and walked toward the dugout, knowing at that moment that I would never have to take the mound again--that finally the pressure was off, truly off, as it had been for that gangling boy years before.

I learned then, at 22, that despite my previous assumption and obvious gifts, I was lacking something, some intangible quality that would have made me a successful pitcher. What was it? I didn't know then, but years later, long after I had left baseball (the phrase I always use), I learned it was a certain kind of character that every successful pitcher must have if he is to conquer that pitcher's fear that rises in his throat every time he takes the mound in full view of fans, opponents and teammates alike. That fear can take various forms--fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of injury, fear beyond the game, fear, even, of success--but whichever form it takes, the result is always the same. It imposes almost unbearable pressures on the pitcher, who, alone, isolated on that small rise, is the catalyst around which the action swirls.

The truly great pitchers overcome that fear and its attendant pressures either by a fierce act of will or merely by surrendering to its whims, as if to fate. Moderately successful pitchers are indifferent to that fear; they postpone the (continued on page 200) Pitchers' Duel (continued from page 118) necessity of dealing with it, as if it were a bad debt that will vanish with neglect. But it doesn't, and sooner or later they will have to come to grips with it. And if they can't, as with all failures, they will be overwhelmed.

•

After eight years in the major leagues, Steve Stone, the Baltimore Orioles' 1980 Cy Young Award winner, was saddled with a reputation as a mediocre pitcher (he had a 78--79 career won-lost record) whose intellect (he is a published poet) and culinary talents (he is a gourmet chef and wine connoisseur) were more noteworthy than his pitching performances. Stone found that this reputation for mediocrity could be quite comfortable--as comfortable, say, as buying an inexpensive suit off the rack, rather than buying a custom-made suit with all its attendant and bothersome fittings. And the price was right. His mediocrity imposed on him none of the pressures that success would have.

"I was a journeyman pitcher," he says. "I began to believe it. I'd win one, lose one, win one, lose one. And it was easy to rationalize my poor performances. Finally, toward the end of the '79 season, I just refused to be unsuccessful anymore. I convinced myself I was going to win every time I went out to the mound. Instead of worrying about the batter, I began only to worry about my pitches. I wouldn't even think of the batter, because that would take my mind off my primary concern, making good pitches for nine innings.

"You see, Pitching is really just an internal struggle between the pitcher and his stuff. If my curve ball is breaking and I'm throwing it where I want, then the batter is irrelevant. Of course, every hitter presents a different set of problems. Take George Brett, for instance. He doesn't look for breaking balls or fast balls or change-ups, he just looks for the ball in a certain zone--say, low and inside. If he gets the pitch there, he'll hit it. Some batters look for a certain pitch. I remember a confrontation I once had with Dusty Baker. I had men on base and a 3--2 count on him, and I knew he was waiting for a fast ball. I threw him four straight curve balls and he just sat back there, taking this little half swing and fouling them off. He was defying me to throw a fast ball. I refused to give in. I threw four more curve balls and finally struck him out. It became a real challenge for me. I just flat refused to throw him a fast ball, even if it meant I'd have to throw him 15 curve balls in a row."

After struggling along with a 6--7 record over the first half of the 1979 season, Stone, armed with his new power of positive thinking, underwent a remarkable transformation. He finished the season with five victories without a loss, and continued his amazing success into 1980, fashioning a 25--7 record, the best in the majors.

Here is how Stone describes the process that brought about his remarkable metamorphosis: "I saw my subconscious as a blackboard, and the first thing I did was erase all negative thoughts. I reprogramed my subconscious with only positive thoughts. Two days before I would pitch, I'd put myself only in positive environments. I'd walk away from negative conversations. If my teammates were talking about how we weren't hitting, I wouldn't listen. That was destructive to my well-being. On the day of a game, I'd prepare myself mentally at home during a two-and-one-half-hour period. I'd program my subconscious for success. I'd envision the headlines the next day, 'Stone Beats Milwaukee.' Then I'd envision the hitters, the problems I'd face. I'd face every hitter four times in my home before I even got to the stadium. I saw myself getting the hitters out with this pitch or that one.

"During the game, it was the same thing. I'd see a pitch before I'd make it. I saw what would happen. Then I'd throw it and it would happen just as I'd seen it. And I wouldn't panic if it didn't work. I'd just keep seeing it and then throw the ball, and it would work. I won 14 games in a row in '80, and after ten of those wins, a lady told me I was due for a loss. I said, 'No, I'm not,' and won four more. Then I lost a game in Texas and won five straight after that.

"The media started to put pressure on me, but I wouldn't let it affect me. I won my 18th and 19th games of the season against the Yankees, and if I'd thought of the enormity of that, it would have scared me. But all I ever thought of was getting Willie Randolph out, and then Bucky Dent, and so on. This year won't be any different for me, either. When this story comes out, for instance, I'll be well on my way to winning my second consecutive Cy Young Award."

•

Tommy John, the Yankees' perennial 20-game winner, is strapped into a Nautilus Fitness leg machine in the bowels of Yankee Stadium and, as he pumps his legs, he is talking. John is always talking. He loves to talk, to fill the air with words, to show people that, by a mere act of his will, he has managed to control his once debilitating stutter. Mostly, though, he does not like to talk about his stutter. He would rather talk about his sinker ball, and how people underestimate it because it doesn't knock his catcher back ten yards, and how people underestimate him and his talents and are always waiting to put a nail in his coffin. "I try not to get upset," he says, "but even Jesus got upset. I mean, one time last year my record dipped to 15--5 and one writer asked me after a game if I'd lost it. I said, 'Gee, I must be 5--15, huh?' "

People have always underestimated John, and for good reason. For the first ten years of his major-league career, mostly with the Chicago White Sox, he was barely a .500 pitcher. His pitching coach, Johnny Sain, who was reputed to be the most astute in the game, once said of him, "He'll never be more than a 13--14-game winner. He's a momma's boy."

And, in truth, there was something soft and weak about John. It wasn't only his stutter--which exhausted his listeners as much as it must have exhausted him--it was all those things, and more, that gave one the overwhelming impression that John did not have the character to become a great pitcher, despite his having the same kind of ability as Whitey Ford, the Yankees' great lefthander of the Fifties. Like Ford, John was a southpaw with a big, chest-puffing, arm-wheeling delivery that masked a variety of soft, tricky pitches and a deceptive fast ball. The only apparent difference between the two was that Ford had a street fighter's tenacity on the mound and John seemed to have a preacher's deference that prevented him from becoming anything better than a mediocre pitcher.

Then, in the middle of the 1974 season with the Dodgers, John ruptured a ligament in his pitching elbow and underwent surgery. A tendon from his right forearm was used to reconstruct his left elbow. It was the first such successful sports surgery of its kind. It was hoped, afterward, that at least he would have some use of his left arm, that he would someday mow the lawn, or pick up groceries, or trim hedges with that arm. Few people expected him ever to throw a baseball again, much less throw one from a major-league mound.

When his arm was healed, John tried to throw a baseball. He managed to reach his wife a few feet away. After a few months of throwing to her, she was 60'6" away. Then he got a catcher, and threw harder and harder, until in 1976, he was back pitching for the Dodgers. He finished at 10--10, won the Comeback Player of the Year Award and the next year became a 20-game winner. He jumped to the Yankees in 1979, won 21 games that year and then 22 more in 1980.

The same people who once hinted that John did not have the character to become a great pitcher now talked about him as a "gutsy" pitcher, as if he had somehow acquired guts, just as even the most cantankerous people acquire a certain grace in the face of cancer. The question was, had John's injury brought out in him a quality that had always been there, or had he simply acquired that quality in the process of fighting his injury?

"It's fear of failure that stops a lot of pitchers from winning as many games as they should," says John. "It's not the pressure to win so much as it is the pressure not to make a fool of yourself out there, in front of all those people. After my injury, I wasn't afraid of anything. I mean, if it was meant for me to come back, then I would. I had faith in myself, my family and the Lord. If He wanted Tommy John to pitch again, then I would. If He didn't, I wouldn't worry about it. It took the pressure off."

•

Phil Niekro, the Atlanta Braves' 42-year-old knuckle-ball pitcher, is talking about his pitch. "Damned, but my life is tied up with that pitch. Sometimes I can't even separate the two. It's as if the pitch and my life were one and the same thing. I owe everything to that pitch. Everything. There were times in the minors when things were so bad I felt that the pitch was leading me by the nose. It had such control of my life there was nothing I could do to shake it. I began to wonder then whether this pitch everyone was calling a gift was not really a curse, after all."

To understand Niekro's uniqueness as a pitcher, one must understand his pitch. A knuckle ball is a serious and irrational pitch with more than a little madness in it. A pitcher does not throw a knuckle ball, he surrenders it to the elements, as if it were some wild and untrainable bird. Once released, the pitch has a will of its own. It does not behave with the obedient logic of a thin, precise little slider or an overpowering fast ball. It merely darts hither and yon, or wobbles like a ping-pong ball in the wind, or suddenly dives like a mallard shot on the wing. Sometimes it does all three things at once before it reaches the plate, and at other times it may do none of those but merely float as big as a grapefruit toward the batter's waiting bat. The value of the pitch lies in its unpredictability. No batter knows just what a knuckle ball will do on its way to the plate, but then again, neither does the pitcher who throws it. To flirt with a knuckle ball, then, is dangerous business, and a pitcher must ask himself if it is worth the risk. Few say yes. A knuckle-ball pitcher must be the kind of man who can surrender his will to forces beyond his control.

But for eight years in and out of the minor leagues, Niekro fought with his pitch. He refused to accept its dictates and tried to impose his will on it. They were frustrating years for him. At times, he abandoned the pitch and tried to become a classical pitcher (fast ball, curve ball, slider), but to no avail. When he returned to his pitch, it betrayed him in novel ways. One year in the minors, he was successful enough to be called up to the Braves. But after a few losing games, games he lost because his catcher, Joe Torre, could not hold on to the pitch, he was shipped back to the minors. John McHale, the Braves' general manager, who sent him out, told him, "To tell the truth, Phil, we're sending you down because we don't have a catcher who can catch you."

"I couldn't believe my ears," says Niekro. "He was telling me my stuff was too good for the majors. It didn't make sense. I wanted to apologize for having such a good knuckle ball. Then I cursed the pitch. At that moment, I hated the damned pitch that controlled my life."

Back in the minors, Niekro tried to prove he could get by without his pitch. But he couldn't. Finally, at the age of 27, he surrendered to it. "I decided not to worry about walking batters or passed balls or anything," he says. "I decided to just throw the damned thing and let it lead me wherever it wanted." He began throwing 90 percent knuckle balls, and soon he was back in the major leagues for good. He won 23 games for the Braves in 1969 and 20 games in 1974. Today, with 233 career victories, he is the winningest knuckle-ball pitcher in the history of the game.

•

Relief pitchers are to starting pitchers what mad poets are to prosperous novelists. They are ephemeral creatures more noted for brief flashes of brilliance--an inning, a batter, a pitch--than for long-range and plodding success: games, victories, seasons. Their success has more to do with their emotions than with their intellects (the Phillies' Tug McGraw, taking deep breaths, slapping his glove against his thigh while waiting to deliver the final pitch, a third strike, in the final game of the 1980 world series). Relievers are never given to long cerebral discussions of their craft, à la Tom Seaver and Steve Stone. Instead, they reveal themselves in the way the Cardinals' Bruce Sutter does.

"Sure," Sutter says, "I get excited in tense situations. I get jacked up, you know what I mean? But I don't think about it. The situation, I mean. I'm like a machine out there, just throwing pitch after pitch as quickly as I can. My mind's in neutral. I've got only one pitch [a sinking, split-fingered fast ball], so it doesn't matter who the hitter is, I'm only gonna throw my nasty s.o.b. And now that I have a rep [1979 Cy Young Award winner], the batters help me out. They're the nervous ones. They get overanxious and swing at bad pitches. Of course, it's not always like that. Sometimes you go so bad you want to hide, but the mound's not high enough. You don't feel right. Your pitching mechanics are all wrong, but you don't know why. You become conscious, thinking about things you never think about when you're going good."

Because relief pitchers usually enter a game at its most crucial point--runners on base, tied score--they have to compress all of their emotional energies into that short time span during which they work. As a result, they tend to view the rest of the game as dead time whose sole purpose is to be passed effortlessly. They rarely concentrate on the action at hand. Instead, sitting in the outfield bullpen, they roll up the sleeves of their uniforms, fling their arms over the backs of their benches and catch some sun while swapping anecdotes. Sometimes they get up and prowl around, like bulls in a pen (hence the name), passing time with fans leaning over the bleacher railing, flirting with young girls, maybe reading a magazine or a book or having a midafternoon snack (one major-league relief pitcher is famous for the outdoor barbecues he prepares in the early innings of a game; another is famous for the vegetable garden he cultivates in the bull pen).

All of those casual pursuits are designed to purposely distract them from the action at hand, so that their competitive energies are preserved for those moments when they are in a game. "When I'm not pitching," says McGraw, "I block out everything to do with the game. I save it all for the pitch I'm gonna make when I get in there."

Dan Quisenberry, the Kansas City Royals' young relief ace of the unorthodox, underhand delivery, is typical of relievers. His mind tends to wander during the first few innings before he begins to focus on the game at hand. "The situation I get into on the mound never makes me nervous," says Quisenberry, "because I try to envision it from the fourth inning on. That's the tensest time for me. I have this terrible fear of failure. I try to think what can happen by the time I get into a game. Somewhere in that maze, I start to see how I'm gonna get them out and I begin to relax. I see myself throwing low sinkers, and then, when I begin to warm up, it's almost therapeutic. When I get into a game, I'm the least nervous of all. I feel most myself when pitching. Like, at home, I'll play with the baby and all, but about three o'clock I'm ready to go to the ball park. I always go early. Sitting in the locker room long before game time is the most peaceful part of the day for me. A short reliever has to find ways of removing all the tension from his day, since he's going to be in tense situations on the mound. But I don't feel tense on the mound. I feel great. Pitching in those situations is great for the mind and the body. You void everything else out of your system when you're on the mound. It's refreshing."

Because relievers like Quisenberry, McGraw and Sutter appear in so many games per season--as many as 80, compared with a starter's 35--they tend to view their performances fatalistically. That is the only way they can survive under the constant pressure in which they perform. Says McGraw: "Sometimes you're gonna get lit up. That's it. You just gotta admit the batter did his job and forget it."

Sutter concurs: "You begin to worry about last night's bad game and it'll bring on a slump. You can't worry about that shit, it's not gonna change anything. You just gotta admit that some things are outa your control. That's why I don't ever feel any pressure out there. Hell, there is no pressure! Listen, what's the worst thing that can happen to you? Someone hits a home run. So what? Why should that worry me? When I was an eight-year-old kid, I didn't worry about a baseball game."

•

The last photograph I saw of him was taken a few years ago. He had just turned 40 then, a short, pudgy man with a bloated red face and thick-lensed eyeglasses. He was standing in the middle of a lettuce field on a farm in Stockton, California, and he was leaning on a long-handled hoe. Two young children were looking up at him. He was peering at the camera, just as he used to peer at batters--squinting through those eyeglasses with his perpetually dazed look. By the time the photograph was taken, he was a migrant farmworker and an alcoholic; but once he had been a pitcher of such enormous talent that The Sporting News referred to him as a living legend.

I had known about Steve Dalkowski in the Fifties and Sixties, when I pitched in the minor leagues and his was the talent by which so many young fast-ball pitchers gauged their own. We always came up short. He was one of the fastest pitchers who ever lived. He regularly struck out 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 batters in a minor-league game, while we, mere mortals, struggled to fan even ten batters.

But in those games in which he struck out 20, he also walked 20. He once pitched a no-hitter in which he struck out 18 batters, walked 18 and lost 8--4--which was why, despite his awesome talent, he never pitched an inning in the major leagues. He toiled mostly for Class D and Class C minor-league teams (San Jose, Pensacola, Aberdeen) for nine years and the best he could manage was a lifetime record of 46 wins and 80 losses. In 995 innings of minor-league pitching, he struck out 1396 batters and walked 1354.

Beyond those mere statistics, however, his career was a road map of moments, points on a graph, the stuff of which legends are made. He threw a fast ball that tore off a batter's ear. He threw a fast ball that knocked an umpire unconscious for 30 minutes. He threw a fast ball that hit a batter in the head and the boy was never right afterward. He threw fast balls through home-plate screens with such regularity that fans never sat behind home plate when he pitched.

His wildness wasn't confined to the pitcher's mound, however. He was equally famous for his drinking exploits off the field. Managers shuddered when he was assigned to their roster at the end of spring training. One such manager, with Pensacola in the Alabama-Florida League, used to he awake at night drenched in a cold sweat, waiting for the inevitable telephone call from some redneck sheriff who wanted to inform him that he had one of his pitchers in the drunk tank and wouldn't he, the manager, want to come and claim him?

The Baltimore Orioles, who owned him, tried every conceivable experiment in an attempt to tame his fast ball and his lifestyle, but nothing worked. So, finally, in the spring of 1966, they released the living legend. The reasons for Dalkowski's failure are many, and they are all conjecture. It was claimed that he was too easily led by carousing teammates (at Pensacola, he teamed with Bo Belinski, one of the wildest pitchers ever to take the mound or a barstool); that he was afraid to throw his fast ball near the plate since injuring that boy in Kingsport; that he wasn't bright enough to learn how to control his fast ball (the Orioles gave him the Stanford-Binet intelligence test and he registered in the bottom one percentile); that he really didn't want the pressure of success, so he never bothered to take his talent or himself seriously enough to discipline either; and that, finally, Dalkowski was a man controlled by a talent he neither sought nor wanted, a talent he actually feared, irrationally, just as a grown man can fear the snappings of a tiny anklebiting dog.

There is a lesson about this business of character in the story of Steve Dalkowski. It is a lesson that I didn't learn to apply to my own talent until it was too late.

In the summer of 1960, I pitched for the Quad Cities Braves in Davenport, Iowa, in the Class D Midwest League. One night, as I stepped out of the dugout to start a game against the Clinton White Sox, I heard my fellow pitchers in the dugout talking about the Sox' awesome hitter, Jim Hicks.

"You've gotta give him all breaking stuff," one pitcher said.

"Yeah, he kills fast balls," said another.

I looked over my shoulder at them, huddled there in fear of Hicks, and said, "He kills your fast balls, maybe, but the son of a bitch ain't gonna kill my fast ball."

That night, I struck out Hicks three times on fast balls. He swung through each one with such force that he fell to the dirt on one knee. He righted himself, like an old man, with his bat each time. All told, I struck out nine Clinton batters that night, even though I lost the game. It did not matter. I had proved I could throw my fast ball past Hicks. I lived for such moments, which is precisely why I never became a major-league pitcher. I did not have the patience--no, the character--to sustain such moments over an entire ball game, an entire season, an entire career. I was too easily satisfied by such brief, isolated, ephemeral moments because of pressures I imposed on myself.

I had a big ego then, but it was not the kind of ego a pitcher needs to fashion a successful career. My ego imprisoned me with its demands for immediate and visible satisfactions. Truly great pitchers, like Tom Seaver of the Reds, have the kind of solid egos that free them from self-imposed pressures. It is a hard, uncompromising, disciplined ego that is sure of itself and little tolerant of weakness. Seaver disdains those who abuse their talent. It is a weakness in character he cannot abide.

Of one such pitcher, who dissipated a promising career by drinking and by sloth, much in the manner of the hero of Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro, Seaver once said, "What a fool he must be, to throw it away like that! If you don't think baseball is a big deal, don't do it. But if you do it, do it right.

"If I couldn't pitch," said Seaver, "it wouldn't bother me much. But if I could and I wasn't, that would bother me. That would bother me a lot. Pitching is what makes me happy. I've devoted my life to it. I live my life around the five days between starts. It determines what I eat, when I go to bed, what I do when I'm awake. If it means I have to go to the park on an off day and throw alone in the bull pen because it's my day to throw, then I do it. I take a bucket of balls out to the bull pen and throw them into a screen until I've thrown my required number of pitches. If it means when I get up in the morning I have to read the box scores to see who got two hits off Don Sutton the night before, instead of reading a novel I might want to read, then I do it. It makes me happy to do it. If it means I have to remind myself to pet dogs with my left hand or throw logs on the fire with my left hand, then I do that, too. If it means in the winter I eat cottage cheese instead of chocolate-chip cookies in order to keep my weight down, then I eat cottage cheese. I might want those cookies, but I won't ever eat them. That might bother some people, but it doesn't bother me. I enjoy that cottage cheese. I enjoy it more than I would those cookies, because I know it'll help me do what makes me happy.

"I'm happy when I pitch well, so I do only those things that help me be happy. I wouldn't be able to dedicate myself like this for money or glory, though they are certainly considerations. But that isn't what motivates me. What motivates some pitchers is to be known as the fastest who ever lived. Some want to have the greatest season ever. All I want is to do the best I can day after day, year after year. Pitching is the whole thing for me. I want to prove I'm the best ever."

•

I have not pitched a game in more than 15 years, and yet, in my mind's eye, I am still a pitcher. I will always be one, because that is the first thing I can remember ever doing well. It was the first thing I ever loved to do. When I was good on the mound, when it all came together for me as it infrequently would late in my career, I liked the feeling of control I had over the game, the fans, the players, everything. Things revolved around me then. I was the center of the action; I controlled things, which is why, today, approaching 40, I have begun to pitch again.

I go to the small park near my home with a bag of scuffed baseballs and my son's glove. It is the same park in which I pitched all my little-league no-hitters and in which I saw that scared boy writhe in the dirt almost 30 years ago. I wait until the field is deserted, and when it is, I take the mound and begin to throw baseballs into the home-plate screen.

I warm to my work. Standing there, on the mound, in the center of an empty diamond, I must seem a strange sight to passing motorists. I can see their heads turn toward me as they pass, and then they turn back to the road with a little shake of the head at the sight of this demented, frustrated ex-jock trying to recapture his past. But it is more than that. I am at home with it now. The pump, the kick, the follow-through. No longer the center of the action, no longer controlling things, often feeling powerless in a world beyond pitching, I take comfort now in the act as it has finally become for me--free from all external pressures. There is no batter. No game. No fans. No teammates. No career. No rewards. No pressures, finally, to burden me.

I work up a good sweat, throwing for long moments until my bag of scuffed balls is exhausted. Then I jog to home plate, scoop up all the balls, jog back to the mound and begin throwing again. It relaxes me.

"It takes a certain kind of character to be a pitcher, to expose oneself to the possibility of such humiliation.

" 'You see, pitching is really just an internal struggle between the pitcher and his stuff.' "