“Mom,” my son calls from his darkened bedroom, “Was dad a two seam pitcher or a four seam pitcher?”
“Cabell, I have no idea,” I answer. “You can ask him when he comes up to tell you good night.”
I get into my pajamas and lie down on my bedroom floor to exercise and stretch out from the day. Frank comes in and lies down beside me, feet propped up on the bench at the end of our bed. “Did you tuck in the children?” I ask. “I think Cabell was exhausted after baseball camp today.”
“They both looked pretty sleepy,” he says.
“Did Cabell ask you about whether you were a two seam pitcher or a four seam pitcher?”
“He did,” Frank answers, “I told him I threw four seam pitches. Although, in little league I guess I mostly threw two seam pitches because it’s easier to hold the ball that way.”
“What does that all mean?” I ask.
Frank hops up off the floor and says, “Here I’ll show you.” He disappears into his closet and returns with a softball. “Cabell must have taken all of my baseballs,” he says, “But this will do.” He returns next to me on his back on the floor and holds the softball above us.
“A fast ball is a four seam pitch,” he says, placing two fingers across two seams of the softball. “I threw my fast ball like this. The ball would take off from my fingers with a backward spin across all four seams of the ball. The irregular surface of the seams with that spin would send the ball tailing upward as it reached home plate.” Frank adjusted his fingers to lie along one seam and said, “Now this was my curve ball. As I let it go it would spin forward across all four seams and fly down and out at home plate. The spin of the ball coupled with the thread surface determines the flight of the ball. It’s baseball physics.”
I am impressed. “Did you figure all that out on your own?” I ask.
“Coaches,” he says. “Years of coaching.”
“All coaches and pitchers know all of this?”
“Well, sure. And there are all sorts of variations. With the knuckle ball you flick the ball with the top of your fingers as you let it go to counteract the backward rotation. The ball doesn’t spin at all and it just flies unpredictably along on the air currents to homeplate. The change-up works because it comes off your fingers just like a fast ball. It shows the four seams to the batter just like a fast ball, but it is off speed.”
“Batters can see the seams when the ball is coming at them ninety miles an hour?” I ask. “Batters know about spin and seams, too?”
“I guess it’s hard to see with really fast pitches, but, sure, batters know about seams. That’s why a pitcher has to hide the ball at the wind-up because if the batter can see how the pitcher’s fingers are placed, then he knows what pitch is coming.”
I lie on the floor amazed at this secret side of a game I know fairly well. “Do you know,” I say to my husband, “That I would guess that most women have no idea that the seams on the baseball are so important. When we were growing up no one was handing down this body of knowledge to us. It has been there for men all these years handed down coach to player, man to boy. Now, I know things like how to get panty hose on without ending up with a pesky twist at the thigh and I can tell the difference between Midge, Skipper, Tammy and Barbie, no sweat. But I never thought about the seams of a baseball before.”
The next day at three o’clock I walk to the Averett baseball field to pick up my eight year old son. The twenty boys in baseball camp are lined up single file beside one coach who yells “GO!” One at the time they run the twelve yards down the grass outside the first base line toward the head coach. As each boy approaches, the big guy yells, “GET DOWN, SLIDE ON YOUR BELLY!” Each youngster throws himself arms out belly first into the wet grass and slides into a makeshift base head first. The head coach uses the sprayer hose to wash each boy down as he scrambles up and runs around to get back in line.
My son makes three passes while I watch. He returns to me wet through to his underwear with grass clippings inside his ears, in his mouth and around his neck. “That’s my favorite slide,” He says. “I like it better than the bent leg slide or the straight leg slide.”
Hurling spheres, hurling bodies. Men to boys, so goes the oral tradition of baseball.