I was the team’s long relief man. A nonglorious pitching role designed to protect priority pitchers. If the starting pitcher broke down or the game got out of control, I came in to clean up so the bullpen wasn’t exhausted. Despite feel-good semantics supplied by the organization, my main job was mopping up lost causes. Why waste a talented pitcher when there was a perfectly useless guy for the job? I could pitch five innings in a blowout or face one batter in the seventeenth inning. Put it this way: if I could have done any other role successfully, I wouldn’t have been the long man.
I had been struggling all year, inadvertently serving as the league’s batting practice thrower. I floundered as a starter and was demoted. Then I brought the kind of relief that made starters moan, “Jesus, I could have given up my own runs—no need to bring in this guy!” The way the season was shaping up, it would take a witch doctor to resurrect my career.
I didn’t pitch very often, which didn’t bother me at all. I knew I couldn’t make it to the big leagues if I didn’t get out on the mound and show the world what I had, but, at the time, I didn’t feel I had much. All I could think about is how bad things could go, even worse than they were.
It’s hard to pitch with fear. It was as if baseball’s Grim Reaper was watching every time I took the mound. Most of the time he’d show up in little incarnations, like a black cat or a double that landed exactly on the foul line just when I thought I was going to have a clean outing. Lately though, it seemed as if the Baseball Reaper had season tickets for front row seats to every park I played in. He never missed me pitch, sitting silently in the stands, sipping a Red Bull while waving a foam finger that said #1 Fan! From the way he looked at me, I knew he couldn’t wait to reach out and snatch my baseball career.
Maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but I had never struggled before. I imagine a lot of guys who get drafted aren’t used to struggling. I always knew it would happen eventually, but I envisioned it to be more like turbulence than a fiery plane crash.
The only solution I had was to bear down and work through it. I spent hours on the practice mound refining my delivery. I tried to bend my breaking ball, hasten my fastball, and change my changeup. I even tried sports meditation, which had me standing on the mound with my eyes closed visualizing myself pitching better. I’d picture myself standing on the mound in the heat of battle, with my hair being tussled by a breeze blowing purely for the sake of making me look sexy. At my feet would be the corpses of dragons, ninjas, and Chuck Norris. My pecs would barely fit into my uniform, and I would pitch with a huge sword strapped to my back. I would laugh at batters as they feebly limped to the plate, my voice deep like thunder. I would crush the hitters, see them driven before me, hear the lamentations of their dugouts. I enjoyed the visualizations, maybe a little too much, and would stop only when I felt I’d centered myself—or after one of my teammates hit me in the nuts with the rosin bag while my eyes were closed.
Come the second half of the season, things were still going bad. My voice was no deeper, and it was all I could do to keep the Baseball Reaper’s blade from my neck. The only positive note was that all the team’s prospects were promoted to Double-A. A fresh pack of less talented replacements were promoted, filling in vacant spots and allowing me to blend in.
In our first month together, the new squad fell apart. We tumbled from first place in the league all the way to dead last on a twenty-game losing skid. Our manager tried every combination to reverse the streak, but we thwarted them all. We lost on errors and home runs, in extra-inning heartbreakers and first-inning blowouts, and on bad calls and blown saves. We even managed to walk in the winning run. Sometimes it was bad luck, other times we looked like the Lake Elsinore circus.
Fans stopped sitting down the first baseline because the shortstop threw so many balls into the stands. The pitching staff agreed we might as well pitch to the backstop since all our efforts ended up there anyway. We hit so badly you’d think the batting coach had Tourette’s. Mix in a lion tamer and a tightrope, and we could have put a tent over the place.
Other guys began to see the Baseball Reaper as well. Haunted and paranoid, we strugglers took refuge in the rear of the bullpen discussing what we’d do after being released. I told everyone I was going to join the circus because it’d remind me of life in the minors. Another guy said he was going to become an executioner because at least he’d feel like he was getting even.
No matter how badly we did, we were still on course for the playoffs. We looked forward to it like a root canal. The second half of the season was a disaster we couldn’t wait to see end. Instead of looking at the postseason as a chance to win some jewelry, a chance for redemption, it was extra days of ass-kicking. We were phonies who hadn’t earned our own playoff berth being rewarded for the efforts of the first-half guys who weren’t even around anymore.
When we arrived in our first playoff series, the most amazing thing happened: we won. My only explanation was that we had nothing to lose. We hit well, we pitched well, and we made fewer mistakes than the other team, which was unheard of. Suddenly, we were a brand-new team.
The only negative to be mentioned was during the last game of the first series. Our starter got hurt. About the third inning, he stopped pitching, grabbed his arm, and began to cuss under his breath. The trainer and the manager ran out to assist him. I don’t know how, but he had incurred a stress fracture in his wrist from throwing. I, as was my role, came in to replace him. The team held the lead and won the game. We swept the Lancaster Jethawks and clinched a spot in the championship series versus the San Jose Giants.
After the game on the bus back to Lake Elsinore, the air was alive with music and celebration. The front office furnished us with enough booze to hammer an elephant. You would have never guessed that a few days previous none of us wanted to be a part of the postseason. Everyone was brimming with confidence and excitement. Someone peed on my backpack, and I still don’t know who it was.
On came the Giants, and we won the first two games with the same ease with which we swept the Jethawks. After the second win, the coaches pulled me aside to tell me Luke, the starter who got hurt, would be out for the remainder of the season. They said I, being the long man, would fill in for him if there was a game five. Then they slapped me on the back and told me not to worry about it, as if it were some piece of trivial fine print. They said if we kept playing the way we were, we wouldn’t need a game five. We immediately blew the next two games.
The night before game five, the biggest game of my pro career, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, sleepless. There was nothing I could do to prepare; it was too late. I thought about standing on the mattress and doing some blind visualization, but my roommate was already convinced I was nuts because of my conspiracy references to the Baseball Reaper. I do some of my best thinking when I’m in bed, but all I wanted to do that night was turn my mind off. A river of anxiety was running through my brain. Sleep would be an escape from the lashing of anxious thoughts. Finally, during the dark, forgotten hours of the morning, I went under. I dreamed I was Captain Ahab chasing a big, white, baseball-shaped whale. And I was naked.
The day of game five, my teammates repeatedly approached me asking if I was ready. What a stupid question, of course I wasn’t ready. How could I be? I was tossed into this role about forty-eight hours ago, expected to pitch a gem after hurling nothing but turds the entire season! I didn’t say that though; I just looked my inquirers in the eye and in my confident, competitor’s voice, said, “Oh, you know it, baby.” They’d smile, kneed my shoulders, or slap me on the ass, then tell me we were going to get ’em today. It made me wonder if they were faking it too.
I used all my cellular minutes talking to any positive voice that would pick up. I prayed every panic-induced prayer I could think of, being sure to remind God of each and every nice thing I’d ever done. Then I panicked and prayed for something wonderful to happen, like Armageddon, so the game would get postponed. I wrestled with the event I was about to spearhead until I had explored all possible contingencies and I was still feeling nauseous.
By the time I walked out to warm up, I was a mental and emotional ruin, and I hadn’t thrown a pitch yet. The stands were packed, and sure enough, there was the Baseball Reaper sitting