Personal Narrative: The Mechanics Of Baseball

Few people ever fall in love, and even fewer people remember when they did. I am not one of these people. The first time I fell in love was when I was 5 years old and my dad gave me my first ever baseball. I can still remember running my fingers against the seams and gripping the ball in a multitude of ways, imagining I was Nolan Ryan trying to select which pitch I would throw.

Unfortunately however, instead of learning to throw the greatest curveball known to man, my dad told me that I first, would need to learn the proper mechanics of pitching as well as the most instrumental—and most fundamental—pitch; the fastball. My dad instructed me that I was to watch this little blue cassette called “Teaching the Mechanics of the Major League Pitcher”

Lucky for us, our backyard was quite large and rectangular in shape. We had a back garage on one side—which my dad painted a white square on to resemble a strike zone—as well as a large tree on the other side, which helped in keeping the soon to be home runs in the park. I practiced my new mechanics daily, diligently following each of the various steps I had engrained to memory. Following months and months of practice in my backyard, the day finally arrived; my first ever game. I remember executing each of my pitches crisply and following every step of my game plan dutifully. I finished the game triumphantly for my dad in the stands and came back to a dugout full of high fives and pats on the back as the game came to a close. Unfortunately however, my dad’s hand was not one of these. “Pitching” he said sincerely, is not just memorization and application of techniques. It’s not just finger positions and arm placement. It comes from the

The team had lacked pitching for years before my arrival and on my first day I remember the coach handing me a binder with information on the mechanics of pitching as well as on the techniques of each grip. Given that I had already become accustomed to what all was in there, I began experimenting with the pitch grips in order to make things more interesting for myself, as well as the opposing batter. I rarely used the same pitch sequence twice, and if I ever threw the same pitch, it was never with the same grip. I realized early on that the beauty in improvisation was that it involved feeling as much as logic and theory. Different situations and different moods produced different results. Sometimes the fastball needed to be clean and beautiful in its simplicity, other times it needed to be complex and practically undiscernible in its delivery. The fundamental direction and technique remained the same however, even as the grip and arm angles