Blog

By: Rabbi Steve Schwartz

If you are a baseball fan, you know that the game has lost some of its subtlety in recent years. Today's baseball is largely about power, namely, power pitching, and power hitting. Pitchers routinely throw fastballs in the high 90's, and to see 97 miles an hour on the old radar gun has become routine. And hitters? Juiced ball or not, home runs are on a record pace this season. In a game in June between Arizona and Philadelphia 13 home runs were hit. 13! In one game! Baseball today has in large part become a question of whether power hitters can make contact with near 100 MPH fastballs. When they do, the baseball leaves the ballpark.

 

A few weeks ago my brother and I were at Citi Field watching our beloved Mets play the San Diego Padres. The Padres had a young power pitcher on the mound, and the stadium pitch tracker regularly reported pitches in the high 90's, many of them over 96 MPH. The Mets pitcher was Jason Vargas, a 36-year-old journeyman left-hander (since traded to the Phillies) who has played for six different teams in the course of his career. At 36, Vargas' arm doesn't have the 'juice' it once did. His fastballs were reaching the plate at a tepid 88 MPH. His curveball registered in the low to mid-70's. Yet somehow, inning after inning, Vargas retired the Padres lineup. When he left the mound in the sixth inning, he had given up zero runs, while the Padres' flamethrower had given up five.

 

There was one particular pitch by Vargas that caught my eye. After he released the ball and it settled firmly into the catcher's mitt, I checked the pitch tracker. 'Knucklecurve' was the pitch type reported by the tracker graphic. Oh, and miles per hour? 67.

 

The knuckle curve is a rarely thrown pitch, a weird hybrid of a curveball and a knuckleball, that somehow manages to both curve and float. Few pitchers have it in their arsenal, and only a crafty and grizzled veteran like a Jason Vargas will throw one in a game. In most circumstances, a 67 MPH looks to a major league hitter like the moon floating towards him, large, bright, easy to see and to strike. But a knucklecurve is a pitch of subtlety, not power. In its almost leisurely journey to home plate, it floats a bit, curves a bit, looks so tempting, so slow, but then at the very moment when you swing it somehow isn't where you thought it would be. To paraphrase the venerable Wee Will Keeler: "The knucklecurve is thrown where they ain't."

 

You see, that is precisely how Vargas pitched those six shutout innings. Rarely if ever hitting even 90 MPH on the radar gun, he painted the corners. He 'located' his pitches. He threw up in the zone when the hitter thought it was going to be low in the zone. He threw on the inside corner when they expected the outside of the plate, he threw his 88 MPH fastball when they were looking for the curveball. And he threw the knuckle curve when they were looking for anything but that.

 

It happens to the best of us. As we age, our bodies just can't work the way they used to. Forget about 95 MPH fastballs; we can't play tennis the same way, or hit the golf ball as far, or do quite as much yard work. We might not even walk the same distances with ease or drive at night with the same confidence. We reach for the reading glasses to glance at the menu, we spend a few moments stretching before we get out of bed. And that only takes care of some of the aches and pains. Even our minds aren't quite as quick as they used to be. What we never forgot we sometimes don't remember, at least not in that instantaneous way we once did.

 

The question is: have we learned to 'paint the corners' over the years? Have we added a knucklecurve or two to our arsenal? Do we appreciate life's subtitles, the quiet moments, the long-standing friendships, the small accomplishments, the moments shared with those we love? There are spaces in life that you only learn to fill as the years go by. They can't be charged through, or overcome with the blunt force of will. Over the years, accumulated wisdom settles in; the understanding of something's true value, what matters most, and of what, in the end, barely matters at all. When those lessons are learned, it is easier to relinquish that 95 MPH fastball and you begin to understand, as time goes by, how sweet that knucklecurve truly can be when it is throw in just exactly the right way.

 

This article originally appeared on Rabbi Schwartz's blog, The Human Side of the Coin, on August 12th, 2019.