The baseball always travels rapidly from the players’ point of view. Even a young kid knows that the ball is moving fast and that it really hurts if the wrong parts of him get in its way during flight.
It’s natural to fear the thing, and he has to work through that fear and realize that getting hit by a pitch or knocking down a vicious short-hop in the infield only hurts for a little while and is usually worth the pain.
You play and watch the game, dealing with this fear as you climb the ladder through the levels of baseball. You can’t play afraid, pitchers will make a meal out of you at the plate and will not want you in the field behind them.
Yet, nobody is absolutely 100% fear-free. That would just be stupid. You have to maintain recognition of what that small object can do to your face and throat at high speeds, and I think the best way to do that is to play 90% to 95% fear-free. No reason to block a screaming line drive with your Adam’s apple or wear a 91 MPH fastball on your temple.
This is how I played and I was, for all intents and purposes, not afraid of the ball. Then I stepped behind an L-screen for the first time. As its name suggests, it’s a screen in the shape of an L, the missing part of the square being the space where your arm releases the ball. You “chuck and duck” behind one of these when you throw batting practice pitches to hitters from close distances.
Most L-screens feature netting on the inside and outside of the poles, making it impossible for a batted ball to travel through it and still have enough juice on it to cause any damage to you.
However, you are as close as you ever should be to batted balls, and are usually not wearing a glove. I think it’s perfectly natural to flinch or cringe the first few times a ball comes screaming back at you from such a close distance.
This will earn you neverending ribbing from your teammates, though, as no self-respecting man flinches behind a protective net. This extends to sitting close to the action behind the plate at a high-level baseball game, or watching a bullpen session with a chain-link fence and a catcher between you and a wild flamethrowing stud.
The ball is not going to go through the fence. So, NO FLINCHING!
It’s something you have to think through and decide to get over, just like every young kid has to do in order to play the game properly and well. Pretty soon, you’re studying the seams on that 105 MPH knuckleball the hitter just catapulted at your L-screen, and your face says that you’ve just bitten into a slice of watermelon on the front porch on a lazy summer evening. NO FLINCHING! Next pitch!
When the team I work for flew me back to the States for Spring Training, I was excited about the great opportunity, but also about the chance to get out of the cold weather of Japan for a few weeks. Warm weather greeted me as I walked into camp, but so did an awful flu that swept through every club in Phoenix.
I could hardly stand up and see straight, and I was supposed to be shaking hands, observing players, and talking baseball. A couple scouts and I were watching BP, leaning on the batting cage as is custom (although I needed the cage for support).
I saw a shadow whiz over my head and instinctively hit the dirt, and so did the scout next to me who was also delirious with the flu. We poked our heads up only to hear booming laughter from the rest of the scouts - we had narrowly avoided the wrath of a passing butterfly.
I really had thought it was an errant ball and made no apologies for letting instincts take over. As I was replaying the horror in my head, the batter fouled one straight back toward my face and…I flinched.
More laughter. The scout that had dodged the butterfly with me said with his Australian accent, “Man, ya cahn’t flinch!”
Little did I know what was happening around that time at another spring training camp.
Sitting four rows behind home plate at Maryvale Baseball Park, [San Diego Padres GM Kevin] Towers was struck in the upper lip after a foul ball busted through the protective netting.
Stunned and bloodied by the blow, Towers fell off his seat and required treatment from Padres medical staff on the scene, then departed the stadium to get further examination at the team’s complex.
The GM was lucid and was cleared to return to his temporary home. Trainer Todd Hutcheson said Towers sustained a chipped tooth but should be fine.
The foul ball registered at 95 mph on a scout’s radar gun.
Yowza. I think that incident is enough to change the flinching rule. While it’s instinctive for me not to flinch now, especially ten rows back at a baseball game, I will make no further efforts to preserve the macho image. Nor will I snicker at fans who cower at a softly tapped ball that I’d reach out and catch with my hand.
A group of American scouts was doing just that toward a group of Japanese fans who, to be fair, looked fresh off the tour bus as though they had won a sweepstakes allowing them to sit behind home plate for the night.
One scout spoke up with Kevin Towers’ story, and that was the first I’d heard of it. I can’t see any reasonable person hearing about that and ever giving anyone hell for flinching again. I’ll certainly do what I can to spread the word.