Can't get water when the well goes dry

I made my high school pitching debut in Fitzgerald, Georgia. We were playing the Purple Hurricanes for sole possession of first place in our sub-region.

I wasn’t scheduled to pitch that day. I wasn’t scheduled to pitch ever.

Our starter for that game was supposed to be our ace pitcher and clean-up hitter. We called him Pudus even though we didn’t know what the word meant. He was a lefty and probably the best pitcher and hitter in the region when he didn’t have a separated shoulder. He got one of those two days before the big game. The doctor said he couldn’t play until he got his arm outta the sling.

That left us with out number two guy, Maxie. He was also a lefty and batted third. Maxie was a hoss and arguably the second best pitcher in the region.

The problem was Maxie was the biggest clown in South Georgia. The day before our game with the Purple Hurricanes we headed over to Jesup to play the Yellow Jackets. When we crossed into Wayne County two girls pulled up behind the bus and started making gestures that Maxie said was an assault on his manhood.

He quickly determined that the proper response to these insults was pressing his bare bottom against the back window of the school bus. I have never seen Maxie’s naked butt, but I imagine it was not a pleasant sight. Those girls evidentially took offense and called somebody at our school.

It turns out that pressing your bare bottom against the back window of a school bus gets you kicked off the baseball team and suspended from school. This reality left us without Maxie’s services.

After losing our best players, our coach opted to give our number four pitcher his first start in the season’s most important game. Big Tony was a sophomore and future college football All-Conference tackle at Georgia Southern. He could throw a baseball through a brick building. Hitting the building was his problem.

We were only down 3-2 and Big Tony was holding his own until Fitzgerald scored seven runs in the fifth inning. At the end of the inning Big Tony was out of gas. I could throw sort of hard so the coach asked me if I had ever pitched before.

Ever is a long time and I thought tossing a few innings in Little League qualified as a “yes” which is what I told him. That answer landed me on the pitcher’s mound.

My buddy Peanut was the catcher and he came to the mound before the inning to lay down the law.

“Just throw what I tell you and you’ll be alright,” he said patting my shoulder.

‘That ain’t gonna happen,” I snorted. “Now shut up and go catch what they don’t hit.”

The first batter I faced was a showboat so I hit him with the third pitch. He dodged the first two. The next guy knocked the ball up the middle for a base-hit, but was erased on a double play one batter later.

I hit another fella sort of unintentionally and then walked the next batter to load the bases.

That sent Fitzgerald’s clean-up hitter, Tommy Greenbow, to the plate. Tommy and I had gotten to be friends the summer before at a baseball camp. He could hit a ball a long way. I grinned at him when he stepped into the batter’s box. He growled.

Peanut signaled for a fastball. I shook my head “no.” He put down two fingers for a curveball. I shook my head “no.” We ran thru that sequence again before he flashed three fingers for a knuckleball.

Not to brag, but that knuckleball was the prettiest pitch I’ve ever seen in my life. It floated across the air and then dipped beneath Tommy’s bat as if it saw the swing in progress.

Peanut threw the ball back and gave the same signals as before. I shook my head “no” six times before he laughed and flashed three fingers.

The knuckler rose, dipped and dove into the dirt while Tommy swung hard enough to generate a gale force wind. I laughed and Tommy got madder.

Peanut called time and trotted to the mount.

“I know what you’re thinking and that third time ain’t always the charm Bubba,” he said trying to stop laughing. “You ought to give ‘em a high heater.”

“Go squat yourself behind the plate and catch what I throw,” I told him.
Peanut laughed, pulled on his mask and did as he was instructed. Our coach was hollering that for me not to the same pitch a third straight time. I assumed he was trying to decoy the hitter.

The sign said that the fence in the left field alley at Fitzgerald’s old baseball field was 355 feet from home plate. Twenty-five feet or so behind the fence was a railroad track. It was a good ten to twelve feet higher than the fence. Kudzu covered the vacant wooded lots ten feet from the tracks.

They say nobody had ever hit a baseball into that kudzu. Nobody that is, until Tommy Greenbow launched a knuckleball that didn’t knuckle into the Heavens. Those watching say it landed in the kudzu, but no one ever found the ball. I’m convinced that it burned up upon reentering the earth’s atmosphere.

Peanut strolled to the mound, took off his mask and watched Tommy make his home run trot around second base.

“Well, guess I was wrong,” he said. “Turns out the third time was the charm, just not for you. Want to try that thing you call a fastball up and in this time? Some idiots like swinging at balls in their eyes… or you could keep trying to draw water outta a dry well and throw another knuckler.”

The next batter popped out to third on the first pitch. It was a fastball up and in. We didn’t score twelve runs in the top of the seventh and the game and my pitching career ended poorly.

So there’s another great Peanutism for your daily living – “if you go to the well too often the bucket will eventually come up dry.”

Have a nice Memorial Day.