The last physics class I took was a memorable one. It wasn?t a memory of a new and exciting knowledge and a crystal clear grasp of how mathematics, quantum theories, nuclear themes and how meteorological factors can impact the delicate balance on our daily existence. I exited the classroom in haste. I was a mere freshman and needed to navigate my way to my next classroom for more of this secondary schooling. Besides, several of my new pals had things timed just right to make it to my 1961 Volkswagen between classes for liquid wisdom and still have 45 seconds to sprint to our English class.
I would enjoy no beer between the classes on that day because when I burst into hallway and found my older brother engaged in mortal combat with his biology teacher. I was so proud I stood transfixed on his wrestling maneuvers as he bashed his instructor?s head against the student lockers and the instructor soon began to succumb to the famous Hamilton fury.
My brother was, and is to this day, a famous angler and a veritable gangland knife fighter when it comes to dissecting anything with a heartbeat. The simple argument on this particular day was how best to take a frog apart. His scientific teaching methods were metaphorically dissected.
Darryl unleashed his ?inner teacher,? and since he did the crime and then he did the time. He dissected 30 frogs in 90 seconds, then ate a few of them to make his point more convincing.
Of course Darryl was hauled away after this insubordination and for his physical assault on his learned superior.
As I recall, my mother spent considerable time pleading with the current principal to negotiate a three-week suspension. He got off with what was essentially a light sentence considering that none of the parties involved knew of my teenage breeding hobbies with the vice-principal?s daughter.
I forever dedicated myself to the natural sciences, which brings me, finally, to the sports part of this mess. With the occasional anomaly, like the Yankee outfielder Curtis Granderson, most left handed batters flail like blind senior citizens waving at those dreaded invisible floating pterodactyls they suffer from until their long-awaited cataract surgery.
As a visually challenged hitter, I understood hitting a curveball was tantamount to Robert Johnson selling his soul for some over-used blues-guitar licks, yet when thrown by a southpaw I stood a better chance of breaking the Mendoza-line - an unofficial mark of .200 (even though his average actually reflected a robust career number at a truly despicable .215).
As noted, my own eyes had dimmed at an early stage, forcing me into becoming a left-handed hitter as a teenager. I had yet to suffer through a physics class to determine the how?s and why?s of hitting southpaws and it was worse than having an evil monkey living in your closet. Leftie versus leftie was a theory that no physics teacher could show you. You have to experience the futility first hand. Believe it or not the PS3 system features a baseball game entitled The Show and even on a video game leftie hitters are lost.
It?s entirely about the breaking ball and how it moves away from the hitting zone as a leftie faces a southpaw chucker. As a near blind right handed hitter, when a righty threw me a breaking ball its arc carved its way into my power zone turning weak grounders into scorching line drives. By my second year of Pony League, I was an all-star third baseman having solved this equation. This Big Bang theory, and as my eyes finally forced me into switch-hitting things began to make more sense.
By the end of my second year, I was a legend - flashing leather like Brooks Robinson and hitting baseballs like they were the size of beach balls. Unless of course the one southpaw on any given day happened to be the equivalent of a David Price or Clayton Kershaw or, as much as it pains me, Cliff Lee. He owns a fastball that can make you wear Depends your next time to the plate, chew your fingernails and pray to gods you haven?t heard of yet. Give me Jesse Litsch to hit off of and I?d be in the MLB today.
To make matters worse, along came a variation of those other ungodly freaks who had suddenly taken things to another level and had evolved their breaking pitches. Our own all-star Don Wilson could make a baseball do everything except float up to the plate and recite a few Dickens? quotes. Glen Kozy had the proverbial 12-6 curve: that I speak of and beating them in the ?69 provincials was like outsmarting Anthony Hopkins in the Silence Of The Lambs. His hair fell out and his hopes of pitching turned to dreams of becoming a mail carrier.
Sure at the time, I swallowed my tongue, but eventually I took his curveball and hit a 360-feet screamer off the fence in the power alley.
Today we call it a 12-6 curve ball that doesn?t bend as much as it simply drops and as a victim of many bed-wetting episodes, I have started a Twitter page to make such pitches illegal and scorned by all. The rare double threat of a 95 MPH splitter is thankfully limited to pitchers with fingers as long as those of piano protégées. My middle son was just that lethal. His curve ball was had abrupt 12-6 downward death spiral and he complimented his un-nerving gas with a full effort change-up that faded away from right handed sluggers.
He threw 95 per cent fastballs with pinpoint control, so when his wrinkle showed up hitters looked like poorly coached Watrous AA wannabees. Bats that didn?t break flew into the stands. Change-ups are another pitch that should be banned from the game. His defiance in throwing his 94 MPH two-seam fastball - utterly un-hittable to lefties - prohibited his emergence as an MLB star and worse than that, he is enrolled to teach physics as of this fall.
As usual, another sad Hamilton tale transpired where my derelict brother actually became a science teacher and my middle son demolished his golden throwing arm by inadvertently running over a rutting white-tailed buck in an Acura. I write for charity, my brother tries to teach science to teenagers who can only translate his classes into grow-ops in the Qu?Appelle Valley and my middle son can?t even strike out his baby brother in a slo-pitch league.
Learn anything? Didn?t think so. The change-up is the right-handed swing and miss pitch that stifles a right-handed hitter because it drops low and away. Like falling off of a table, as Buck Martinez would say. He ought to know. His lifetime stats suggest he was an announcer waiting to happen.
Just for proof, let?s look at one of a thousand leftie sluggers. Jim Thome, a certain future Hall of Famer, provided a classic sampling of my theory when he chipped in with another normal year in 2006 by hitting 42 dingers in less than 500 at bats. He hit .321 with 36 homers against right-handers and a measly .236 with six round trippers against lefties. Like Granderson, he admits to any and all success to hitting southpaws by simply keeping his eyes crossed.
Take my word for it, 90 per cent of left-handed hitters will feast on right-handed pitchers and the stats prove it to be so. Most leftie hitters also allude to having an issue with the release point and consequently not picking up the ball as quickly from southpaws. The ball appears to literally swoop across their bodies.
Hard factual science is taxing on us stroke victims and yet hitting a baseball is not.
Another example is Barry Bonds, who typically hit three times as many homers against right handed pitchers and more than 20 to 30 points higher in batting average. Maybe he was injecting the steroids in the wrong cheek?
