How to Frame Pitches
- Nov 21, 2023
- 4 min read
by Lucas Hubbard
Magic isn’t real. No one can witness a thing that isn’t there. Unless, at some marrow-deep level, they want to. The catcher is not a liar but a helpful usher, escorting the umpire along the narrow corridor of their biases and blind spots to the destination they always hoped to reach.
1.Two-seamer, belt-high
First, mark your calendar when Maddux is on the mound; only on Maddux Nights will Dad let you have a Barq’s after 7 and lounge on the couch past 9. Thank the lord for TBS. When Dad points it out, don’t bristle, but follow the demands like the good student you are: No, not at Greg, look at the catcher. (He is afraid to try and pronounce “Javy.”) Study the setup, the glove hand parked inches beyond the corner. The playful extension of the trailing leg, a cat-stretch back towards the plate. Why? In a second, you’ll see, right when Javy’s positioning means the ump doesn’t. Follow the ball as it misses the plate and, somehow, in his mitt, is transposed onto the outside edge for strike three. Question reality, fairness, and the whole visual world, just like Fernandez is doing in his fuming march to the dugout. Demand a replay, some proof of the alchemy that has just occurred.
The next day, bug Dad for a Rawlings. Slide your hand into the padded hide at the store; refuse to take it off, even at checkout. The glove is part of you now. Restructure your life, your hours. Free time is framing time. Let your classmates study girls as you study things more scrutable and tangible: mitt angles, the science of illusions. Work to find any gains, the slightest leg up. Especially those so slight they are not visible. Embrace game theory. Learn how the zone at 2–0 is unrecognizable from that at 0–2. Be sure to read about Berra, Yaz, Berg. The catcher was a spy? No shit, you think. Like he could’ve ever been anything else.
2. Waste pitch (chin music)
Play properly, with a high game IQ, as Dad implores. Then, summer before senior year, go in for one week of tutoring on the local college campus. When he picks you up in the Audi, break the news: You’re done framing. Say it more stridently, though: You are morally opposed to framing. Sit there as he nearly crashes the car from laughing. Let him bristle with each passing minute of silence. We’ll talk later, he says, pulling through the entry gates.
Maintain your composure when, on your dinner plate, he piles neither pasta nor rice but arguments. Explain, he says, how you are going to make all-conference without framing pitches. Listen as he frames it — ha — not as a question but as an inconsistency, an impossibility. It is obvious to him that if you want to get into Princeton like Berg, like him, like your late grandfather whose memory you are disgracing, you’ll be framing some goddamn pitches. Apparently it is known that everyone frames pitches to get into Princeton. Hear the meaning behind his words. How he has worked hard to make things easy for you, and how you are now choosing to make things hard for yourself. Don’t overlook the pleading in his voice, the beat of the bloodline applying pressure. You and me, he says, come from a family of pitch framers.I don’t love it. But is there any other way to protect what we have?
Wait for him to answer his own question. Wait a little longer to turn 18, then leave.
3. Backdoor curve
Pick up the phone when it rings at 3 A.M. Find yourself wide awake seconds later, your safety net in a coma. The next flight home is at 6. Dig up Mom’s death certificate, make some cosmetic changes. Spend the drive to the airport arguing with customer service. Enjoy the free ride.
Arrive at the hospital. Allow the nurse to tell you he’s doing great, sugar, and try not to think how she looks exactly like one of your clients — though that’s the wrong term, you chastise yourself, as your work is not so transactional. Hear his reflexive rebuttal in your head, and smile. Not transactional, or do you just not make money?
When he wakes, don’t cry, or feel guilt about the fact you can’t. Don’t think about the two decades of clipped calls and soft power struggles. Don’t dwell on your request for a guarantor that turned into an outright mortgage, or the nonprofit job with the streamlined interview process.
Throw yourself into the caretaker role. Ask questions, like: Why isn’t this floor better staffed? Couldn’t he be closer to the window? And, this final one pains you, but you are desperate: Do you know who he is?
Try to find a topic of conversation that doesn’t end with you were right. Say what you need to say, and when he still hasn’t said anything in return, just turn on the Sunday night game. Two decades since you’ve even considered the sport, and the lineup has changed. Gone are the lengthy breaks, the pickoffs, the mound visits. Most absent are the umpires, replaced by unblinking robots. Watch a 3–2 delivery whose late break parallels the plate’s outside edge. The catcher’s neat frame, pure habit at this point, can’t fool the robot ump, and the hitter trots to first.
Times changing. His voice is croaky, but unmistakable. Damn shame. Sit in your relief for a second, or however long you need. By the time you’re ready to talk, to think about what he’s said, just know that you’re already nodding.
Lucas Hubbard is a North Carolina-based writer whose work has appeared in MicroLit Almanac, Defector, Maudlin House, Microfiction Monday Magazine, and other outlets.
