The Visceral Appeal of Hitting Things Hard
Hitting things is a lot of fun. The harder you hit them, the more fun it is.
This is a simple truth in life. People who deny it just haven't ever hit anything hard enough to know this.
I'm not talking about hitting people, though a certain base part of me understands why that has a certain charge to it. (Why do you think Fight Club was such a popular movie? And don't give me that Brad Pitt nonsense. You didn't see people flocking to Meet Joe Black, did you?) Heck, even being hit, if you're hit the right way, can give you a charge.
But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about hitting things. And the thing I like to hit more than anything else is a ball. Golf balls. Kick balls. Cue balls. Mostly, baseballs.
I know I'm not alone in having this need to hit balls, because there are massive businesses set up for just that purpose: to hit balls. People carry their golf clubs around just on the off chance they'll happen by a driving range. Sometimes, you just get the itch to go hit something.
That's what happened to me today. I was at my computer, and lunchtime rolled in. Rather than write something, I got the itch.
The itch to hit.
Five minutes later I was standing in a batting cage marked "Minor League", already sweating under an ill-fitting batting helmet and clutching a well-worn 32-inch Easton hardball bat. I dropped my token in and hit the button. I waited as I watched the arm swing slowly around. It started facing me, at the three o'clock position...then six...then it picked up the ball at nine o'clock, sharp, and hurled it at me at high noon.
I got 15 pitches per token, and I had four tokens in my pocket and one in the box. It had been too long since I hit a hardball pitch; a summer's worth of inept softball hitting had robbed me of my quick hands and my ability to drive the ball. It was time to reacquaint myself with what it felt like to turn on a fastball.
I began to work my minor league pitching machine like the washed-up has been he was. He had nothing-I was spraying line drives all over the cage. Then I turned on the power. It's hard to say how far my drives would have gone, since I was in a cage, and since I wasn't hitting real baseballs. Batting cage balls are a unique breed, uniform yellow rubber balls that have dimples like an oversized golf ball, and are heavier than a real baseball. But I was getting good solid contact, and the pitcher knew this. He kept looking to the dugout-"Better warm up the pen, coach!" But there was to be no relief. I threw the bat against the cage wall in triumph after I ended my power exhibition.
Clearly, these bush leagues couldn't contain me. Somebody was going to get hurt, as hard as I was hitting the ball. I called myself up to the "Major League" machine for the good of the community. If you're going to hit something hard, do it at the highest level you can. That's my motto.
I put my token in and stepped up to the plate. I had worked up a good lather, and I was ready for the best in the business. The arm looked in for the sign while resting at three o'clock. Fastball. He started the windup. Six o'clock...nine...getting closer...BAM!
The noise I heard was the ball hitting the rubber mat that hung behind the hitting area. It seems this pitcher had a little more juice than the last pitcher I faced. But I was still in control. For all the pitcher knew, I intentionally took that pitch as a way to gauge his stuff, Wade Boggs-style. And it appeared that this pitcher did indeed have a Major League fastball. I needed to update my scouting reports.
No sweat. Just needed to start my swing a little earlier, that's all. Well, technically, I had to actually swing, since I didn't really have time to do that on the first pitch. He looked in for the sign again. I knew he was going to come with that fastball again. Six...Nine...BAM!
OK. I was a little behind that one. Baseball is a game of adjustments, though. I told myself I would simply adjust, swing even earlier, and then we'd see who was King Of The Cage. He peered in for the sign. He was going to try to punch me out with the fastball...Six...Nine...BAM!
What the hell was that? This pitcher had more than a standard fastball, it seemed. One of the cruel realities of the batting cage is that the balls are not all exactly uniform. At high speeds, even slight variations in a ball, like an abrasion, an uneven weight distribution, or (as I suspect based on the movement of the last pitch) a foreign substance like Vaseline or saliva can cause the ball to do things. Unnatural things. Thus, what was initially a healthy challenge to catch up to a quality fastball is now an exercise in unpredictability and fear, compressed into about a half a second.
You see, I had no way of knowing where this ball was going to go, and very little time to figure it all out. A real baseball will look a certain way, based on the pitch that is being thrown. This is because of the presence of the red seams on the white ball. A fastball will appear to be pink, if you watch it closely enough. A curveball will appear to have a large read circle on it as it approaches you, because of the spin of the pitch. A slider will have a little red dot on it at either the 10 o'clock or 2 o'clock mark, because of the tighter rotation. (I wish I'd known these things when I was actually playing baseball, or I might have had a chance to play beyond the age of 16.)
But this uniform yellow ball? It wass just yellow. It was yellow while it was screaming past my bat on a straight line at 90 mph. Yellow when it snaped off like a Roy Halladay knuckle-curve. Yellow while it dipped at my feet like a Fernando Valenzuela screwball. Yellow when it did things I can't describe, and shudder to contemplate. Yellow all the time.
Yellow and too goddamned fast. I was seeing so many yellow tracers I felt like I was in the Millenium Falcon as it went into Hyperspace. Real pitchers have to take a little something off the ball when they throw a breaking pitch, but not the Robo-Nolan Ryan I was facing now. He was toying with me. I had seen three pitches, and I'd have had better luck trying to hit a housefly with overcooked vermicelli.
Even the real Nolan got tired eventually
I dug in (to the asphalt), and wiped my brow. I was sweating profusely now. Far from hitting things hard, I simply wanted to make contact. I had 12 more pitches to go, and I was going to switch it up, trying to hit from both sides of the plate.
Well, OK. No worries. I couldn't get those 15 pitches back. They were done. But this wasn't a one-game stand, my friends. It was a series. That's right, I dropped a five-spot on my itch to Hit Somehing Hard. I had thus far spent one on the Minors and one, uh...tuning up for the Majors. After careful consideration, I decided that I might need a bit more Minor League seasoning. After a series of hard hits from both sides of the plate on pitches that seemed to be moving slower than Democracy in Iraq, I promoted myself again to the Majors. I had 30 pitches to prove to myself, the world, and Robo-Nolan that I had the right stuff.
I'll say this for Robo-Nolan: He didn't seem to get tired. He was still pumping gas, and mixing it up with a variety of pitches that defied the laws of gravity, physics and good sportsmanship.
And then I heard it. It happened on the 13th pitch. It was beautiful. I nearly wept at the sound: The soft 'ping' of my aluminum bat hitting the ball. I had just realized The Visceral Appeal of Hitting A Foul Ball. Three more pitches, including a nastly slider-curve-screwball-palmball-splitfinger-knuckler, and three more foul balls. This continued for 14 more pitches. He couldn't put me away! I was scratching, clawing, anything I could to stay alive. I'm even switch-hitting during this marathon 16 pitch at-bat. There could be only one victor.
This was it! The pivotal at bat of the game and the series! It was all riding on this, the last pitch of my day. Robo-Nolan stared in for the sign while at the three o'clock position. He started the windup. Six...Nine..."PING!"
It was a chopper up the middle, past Robo-Nolan, who had zero mobility and no glove besides. A clean hit! I threw the helmet down and exulted in my last-pitch heroics.
I turned to leave the cage and saw four girls no older than 10 sitting at a table just behind the cage and eating ice cream. I had been oblivious to their presence while locked in battle with my nemesis. They were staring at me as I stood in my khaki Dockers and work shirt, covered in sweat and breathing hard. I realized they just witnessed me swing at 30 pitches and hit only one in fair territory.
Yeah, like they could hit Robo-Nolan. No autographs today, girls. I've got work to do.
1:43:41 PM 
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