I humbly request that you watch the following home run three times. During your initial pass, I merely ask that you permit yourself to marvel at the power of Pete Alonso. Exclaim, should you feel so moved. This level of ferocity certainly merits stiffer punctuation than a period can provide.
The second time you take it in, allow yourself to focus on the reactions. Catcher Dalton Rushing and baserunner Brandon Nimmo offer an illuminating interplay. Nimmo cranes his head toward the heavens and prepares to tag up on the play in spite of the fact that the ball goes on to land some 900 feet past the left field wall. Rushing recognizes at once that the ball has attained escape velocity, and he reacts by lifting his hands with enough suddenness and precision to send you searching the web for the phrase “rude Italian hand gestures.” A couple behind the plate provides a master class in the Long O sound:
SHE: Whoa.
HE: [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Nooo.
SHE: Ohhhh!
On your third pass, please focus exclusively on pitcher Ryan Loutos as he crumbles into dust. The young pitcher’s delivery is a study in contrasts. He’s all elbows and knees as he drops and drives, but he finishes with such rotational force that his follow-through twists him all the way around toward first base, torso first, arms and right leg swinging forward in neat arcs to catch up. He’s linear then rotational, angled then curved, herky-jerky then smooth.
On the pitch in question, however, the world crashes down on the rookie’s head before he’s even finished with his follow-through. The nonchalance with which he normally raises his glove hand is transformed midstream into a limp, aw shucks fist pump. The centripetal force of his finish requires him to take his eyes off the ball, then whip his head all the way around to reacquire it like a spinning ballet dancer. His shoulders sag, then his whole upper half slumps forward. His head stays upright longest, that his eyes might track the flight of the ball, but the various kinds of gravity win out quickly enough. Loutos lowers his head a full 3.1 seconds before the now-oblate spheroid finally touches down in the outer reaches of Dodger Stadium.
As you behold Loutos supporting himself with his hands on his knees, the pressure pushing down his pant legs until his shins are a shaggy slalom course of gathered fabric, the truth becomes too clear to ignore: The pitcher should have a chair.
Surely, no one deserves to feel the way Loutos felt in that moment without the grace of a quick sit. This is a human being whose very soul is telling him that in order to persevere through the shock that it has just suffered, it must acquiesce briefly to the demands of gravity. He looks like the world’s saddest basketball player, or maybe like someone who lost has their contact lens while dry heaving, or perhaps simply like what he is: a man who has just surrendered the most enormous home run the human mind is capable of processing. Loutos is far from alone in reacting to such devastation in this particular manner.
Pitching is challenging enough, even before considering the dozens of cameras recording your every blink. Some of us would sooner sink to the ground and disappear than feel the eyes of another upon us, even when we haven’t precipitated a home run launched at such frightening velocity that it threatens to add an extra crater to the moon.
Where am I supposed to stand? What constitutes a neutral facial expression? Is anyone in this post office laughing at me? Such anxieties can dominate our thoughts even during placid times. When we feel the weight of judgment upon us, when we recognize the sudden need to affect composure while our soul is riven with embarrassment and shame, we have room for little else.
For the rest of us, in that first instant when something goes wrong, slouching or sagging or slumping may well suffice to make the burden manageable. A professional pitcher posterized by the Polar Bear deserves a true respite. As the eyes of those in the arena track the ball, the rest of the world observes for the slightest sign of weakness. Untold thousands of words have been written already about pitchers reacting to the home runs they have surrendered.
What if, instead of demanding that pitchers pretend to stoicism and grading them on the verisimilitude of the facade, we give them permission to feel how they feel? The circumstance calls for a moment to take a load off, literally and figuratively, to unburden themselves by surrendering to crushing reality and marshaling their remaining strength. Surely, Simeon Woods Richardson would prefer relaxing to capering nimbly when his work day comes to this:
And for those moments, a chair would be nice. Nothing too cumbersome. No one wants to see a Barcalounger back there swallowing up line drives in its pillowy depths. Then again, the chair can’t be too small either. A little kindergarten chair tucked right behind the mound would run little risk of interfering with batted balls, a real mark in its favor. However, the pitchers who avail themselves of such a chair, their adult-sized rears hanging off each side and peeking through those three vertical slits in the blue plastic, might be subject to snickering. The chair is there specifically to provide solace for the pitcher, not to subject them to further indignities when they’re already feeling like this.
Something simple and straight-backed is called for. Or maybe a wooden stool. Just behind the pitcher’s mound, in case of psychic emergencies. Even if the pitcher never uses the chair, it may still act as a balm. “As long as we feel safely held in the hearts and minds of the people who love us,” wrote Bessel van der Kolk, “we will climb mountains and cross deserts and stay up all night to finish projects.” Here we find ourselves with the opportunity to express to pitchers quite clearly that in their darkest moments, when the Pete Alonsos of the world are smashing their ambitions into a thousand jagged shards, we’re thinking about how to get them through it. Sometimes, you just need to sit.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com