I had the Mid-Atlantic regional on Thursday night because that’s what August is for, and in the bottom of the third the broadcast cuts to a graphic that says WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT in a font I’d expect on a hospital discharge form. They pulled the kid. He’d thrown 47 pitches. He is twelve years old. He weighs what a turkey weighs. He looked confused, which is the appropriate response.
The coach jogged out, patted him on the helmet, and took the ball with the solemnity of a man retiring a thoroughbred. The kid handed it over, did the little arm-tap thing they all do now, and walked off to a standing ovation from a crowd of approximately forty people, half of them holding iPads. Somewhere in Cooperstown a bronze plaque sighed.
Coach DiMaggio used to make us throw bullpens between innings if he thought we were getting cold. He once told a kid named Mickey Vrabel to “walk it off” after Mickey took a line drive to the sternum. Mickey threw a complete game. Mickey is now a podiatrist in Scranton and his arm works just fine, thank you, and I have never once heard him use the words “pitch count.”
The replacement came in and did this whole warm-up routine where he windmilled his arms and then stood very still for what felt like a Geico commercial. The announcers explained he was “resetting his nervous system.” The kid is in the seventh grade. His nervous system is mostly Hot Cheetos.
I called Ray Kowalczyk during the commercial because Ray’s grandson plays travel ball in some league I can’t pronounce, and Ray told me the kid’s coach has a Google spreadsheet that tracks something called “acute-to-chronic load ratio.” I asked Ray what that means. Ray said it means his grandson can’t pitch on Saturday because he played catch in the driveway on Wednesday. I told Ray I was sorry. Ray said he was watching the same broadcast and had already poured a second beer.
They cut to the kid in the dugout and he had an iPad. He was reviewing his own outing. Twelve years old, watching tape on himself like he’s Greg Maddux preparing for a Game 4 start. The graphic on the iPad showed a heat map. A heat map. Of where his fastball went. To other twelve-year-olds. Who are also reviewing tape, I assume, on their iPads, in their dugouts, in their travel-team compression sleeves.
I knew a kid named Petey Corrigan who pitched both ends of a doubleheader the summer he was eleven because the other pitcher’s mom forgot to bring him. Petey gave up two runs in fourteen innings, ate a cheeseburger between games, and went home and mowed his uncle’s yard for five dollars. Petey is now an HVAC guy in Allentown. He has full use of his shoulder and a working knowledge of when to shut up, which is two things I cannot say about anyone currently broadcasting from Williamsport.
The booth crew kept talking about the “mound visit” like it was a state funeral. By my count there were three coaches out there, plus what I think was a team mom, plus a guy in a polo shirt holding a clipboard who might have been a sports psychologist or might have just been a dad who wandered down. They had a whole little symposium. The umpire eventually broke it up the way you’d break up a book club.
The kid they pulled, the original twelve-year-old, gave a postgame interview in which he said he was “proud of his process” and “locked in for the next opportunity.” Where is he getting this. Who is feeding a child these words. I want a name. I want an address. I want to send a strongly worded letter and a videotape of Bob Gibson.
Anyway, his team won. They mobbed him at the mound like he’d thrown a no-hitter, which to be fair, in 47 pitches across three innings, he sort of had. He cried. They all cried. The dad in the polo shirt cried. I might’ve gotten something in my eye, but I’m not telling anyone which one.
Denise is bringing chili tomorrow. She says it’s from a podcast. I’m going to eat it and not ask questions, which is the only workload management I plan to do this weekend.