When trying to come up with a name for our firstborn son,
Bart and I decided on "Aaron" as his middle name in honor of Bart's
childhood hero, true home run king and outstanding human being Hank Aaron. Little did I know just how much our family
would embrace this sport, although Jay's first word ("ball") should
have given me a clue.
Jay gravitated towards Chipper Jones as his sports idol
and while I won't argue with Chipper's on-field performance, he doesn't quite
provide what I'm looking for as an away-from-baseball role model for my
sons. (Mr. Jones is a nice guy and
appears to be a good dad. But he seems
to have the off the field emotional maturity of an adolescent boy. And I don't mean that as an insult, but when
your own 10 year old is struggling with the emotional maturity of an adolescent
boy, you want to shield him from idolizing men who still seem to struggle with
it.)
We were at an end of season baseball party for Will's
team at UT's Lindsey Nelson stadium when I noticed RA Dickey's name on the wall
of honor as a three time academic All-American.
This was in the spring of 2012 as Dickey was starting to get a lot of
media attention for his pitching, his memoir, and for putting his major league
contract with the Mets at risk to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in order to raise money
and awareness to fight the sex trafficking of young women in India. Smart and compassionate former Volunteer who
was a professed Christian, Star Wars fan and pitcher of note? We could work with this!
But he was famous for throwing a knuckleball, a pitch
many consider simply a novelty or trick.
Aspiring pitchers (including the one in my family) want to throw hard
and fast, they don't want to rely on a "gimmick" like the
knuckleball. But I like to encourage
thinking outside the box, so I learned more about the knuckleball and those who
have "mastered" it.
To a batter, a knuckleball looks like it should be pretty
easy to hit. It is much slower than a
standard pitch so hitters think they have time to swing hard and crush the
ball. But a well thrown knuckleball has
no spin, which makes it look like it is "floating" or hovering up and
down as it approaches the plate. You'll
often see hitters smile or laugh as they strike out because each pitch looked
so hittable until it wasn't.
The interesting thing about throwing a knuckleball is
that once you become proficient at the mechanics of the pitch you have to
surrender to it. The more a pitcher
tries to "control" a knuckleball, the more hittable it becomes. And sometimes, even when a pitcher is doing
everything right he may still give up a lot of hits. Fans, and sometimes even coaches and
managers, love the knuckleball when it works but are quick to dismiss it
as soon as a pitcher gives up a few hits. Those who
understand the knuckleball tell you that you just have to ride out the bad
times and wait patiently for it to get better.
It provides such a great template for running, as well as for life. Master the mechanics, understand that there
will be peaks and valleys and be prepared to ride them out.
It is interesting that the first ten minutes of a run
are excruciating and I am always so tempted to quit. The first ten minutes should be the easiest,
right? I’m rested and haven’t started sweating
yet, the hills don’t come until later on in the run. But if I ride out that initial physical
discomfort and mental frustration, I am rewarded later on (usually after the
first or second hill) with both my body and mind relaxing and starting to enjoy
the run. I won’t call it a “runner’s
high” because it isn’t a euphoric feeling, it's more a place of contentment. The feeling lasts longer on some runs than
others but I can always count on it to be there for some of the run.
Finished the first official week of half marathon training and am very excited to see what happens in the coming weeks. Still a little bit sore, but it is a happy sore, one I feel like I've earned.
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