If you have read earlier blogs, by now, you know that I am a baseball fan. I have been accused of riding around at night looking for lights. I rarely miss a Lamar University home game. Along with a group of friends that share my baseball passion, we make several road trips each year. Last year included about 15 games at the Southland Conference tournament in Corpus Christi and the NCAA regional tournament in Ft. Worth (Seen above) where Lamar was eliminated by host TCU and Baylor.
While we are not root, root, rootin' for the home team, someone is always looking for a practical joke to play on the others. We have drawn body chalk outlines on the surface where one friend fell the day before. Paid an unknown kid to give a ball to another buddy who is always chanting, "Give that foul ball to a kid" Any many other jokes, pokes and/or "smack" talk.
(The culprits: Richard Placette,George Fortune,Bill Waugh
Jay O'Neal, Gilbert Garza and Jim Wright)
This year it was my turn. It just so happened that our home opener was on the 28th anniversary of my 39th birthday. I was informed at our preseason kickoff supper that it had been arranged for me to throw out the first pitch on opening day. I told them I wasn't going to do it but after shaming me on what was involved to set this up, I reluctantly agreed. It wasn't that I didn't really want to do it, but that I might not do it well. That is, bounce the ball as so often occurs. Several years earlier I had rotator cuff surgery to repair two torn tendons in my throwing shoulder. I still have five anchors in my shoulder and don't have 100% range of motion in my throwing arm. I know that if my throw came up short and the ball bounced, I would be booed by my friends and ridiculed for the remainder of the year.
I wasn't sure if I could use a full overhand throwing motion or I would have to "short arm" the throw. When I got home that night, I found one of those stress balls and threw it down the hall.. Ouch!! A full-windup over hand throw was out of the question. I took a couple of short arm tosses and it didn't hurt. So I knew that was the throwing motion I would use, but, could I throw it the distance?
I took a ball to work and thought about throwing it, but decided I only had one throw and was going to save it for the first pitch.
Game time: Ten minutes before game time The LU rep escorted me to the dugout. I started to get nervous standing there while the National Anthem played. The PR guy handed me the ball and pointed to the mound. I started to walk to the mound and realized it was a lot further from the pitchers mound to home plate than it was down the hall in my house. I had decided I was going to stand on the front of the pitchers mound to make the throw shorter. (Most other first pitches are thrown from that spot). As I got into position to make the pitch, I could hear one of my buddies hollerin', "get on the rubber". I remembered my son telling me to "aim high", that it would be better to hit the backstop than for the ball to bounce in front of the catcher. I waited for the catcher to get set and in an instant it was over.
The 82 mph fastball popped the mitt of LU catcher, Joey Latulippe, knee high on the outside corner of the plate.
THE YEAR IS MINE!! I have already picked up 2mph on that fastball and by the end of the year it will be an 88mph slider on the black. Baseball, You Bet!!
