The Complete Game

by Darling, Ron

• ISBN13: 9780307269843
• ISBN10: 0307269841
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-31
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

Ron Darling has been beloved by Mets fans since he helped his team win the 1986 World Series. Today he is considered one of the most articulate and insightful broadcasters in baseball, bringing the game to life in ways that few can match. Now he gives us an engaging, sophisticated, practical, and philosophical exploration of the art, strategy, and psychology of pitching. Darling takes us inside the pitcher's mind, illuminating the subtler aspects of the game and providing a deeper appreciation of what happens on the field. He explains why the position of pitcher is uniquely strategic and complex and explores the various tactics a pitcher uses in different scenarios, including the countless factors in deciding what to throw and how he bounces back from a tough inning. Throughout, we get a glimpse of what it feels like to stand alone on the mound, the center of attention for tens of thousands of fans. While there are technical books on pitching, there is no other book that examines the position in such compelling depth asThe Complete Game.Filled with captivating, real-life anecdotes, it will do for pitching what Ted Williams'sThe Science of Hittingdid for battingand it will be an essential book for every fan and aspiring player.

Author Biography

Ron Darling was a starting pitcher for the New York Mets from 1983–1991, and was the first Mets pitcher to be awarded the Gold Glove Award. After a short stint with the Montreal Expos, the All-Star pitcher finished his career spending five seasons with the Oakland Athletics. Since 2006 he has been SportNet New York’s game and studio analyst, and he won an Emmy Award for best sports analyst in 2006. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and attended Yale University, where he was a two-time All-American. He currently lives with his family in Manhattan.

Excerpts

Chapter 1

Pregame


Let’s Get It Right Today


Give me the damn ball!”

That’s been the rallying cry of major league pitchers since the turn of the last century. The ball. The pill. The rock. Call it what you want, it’s the only equipment we need—our badge of honor, our point of pride. It’s basic, as weapons go: a rounded piece of cushioned cork layered with a fine coating of rubber cement and wrapped in a tight winding of gray and tan wools and a thin poly-cotton thread. Then, another fine coating of rubber cement and two strips of cowhide, bound together with eighty-eight inches of waxed red thread— hand-sewn in the small farming village of Turrialba, Costa Rica, with 108 stitches.

But, of course, it’s not only about the ball. It’s about the act and art of throwing it, and the responsibility that goes with the privilege of doing so for a major league baseball team. For most of us who have taken the pitcher’s mound at the professional level, it’s the weight of carrying the fortunes of your teammates, the sweet burden of being on point, that sets our role apart. If we don’t execute, there’s no hiding it out there on that mound.

Everyone who plays a sport likes to think he or she is pivotal, but with pitchers this is not an arrogant or self-aggrandizing view. The game rests on our shoulders. We stand apart from our teammates and set the tone. All eyes are on us. The game is in our hands. The hopes of our teammates are pinned to our chest. Sure, the outcome of any one game might turn on a remarkable effort in the field, a mighty swing of the bat, a gutsy play on the bases, but everything that happens on a ball field—everything!—flows in some way through the pitcher. It has every damn thing to do with us. That’s how we feel, and the reason we feel this way is because it’s been drummed into us over countless starts, countless innings, countless pitches with the game on the line.

Tom Seaver, one of the greatest pitchers ever to take the mound, and certainly the greatest to do so in a New York Mets uniform, had a cutting way with words. If he liked you, he was one of the most generous souls in the game. If he didn’t ... well, not so much. We played together, briefly, in 1983, when I joined the big club for a late-season cameo. It was Tom’s second tour with the Mets, and he was cast as a conquering hero, a favorite son turned elder statesman. He had a not-so-flattering nickname for the Mets trainer, “Fifty-Fifty”; I couldn’t figure why. After I’d been in the bigs for a couple weeks, I got up the courage to ask Tom how he came up with the name.

“He’s not the best trainer, kid,” said Tom, who himself was known as “the Franchise.” (How’sthatfor a nickname to confirm my point?) “And he’s not the worst. He doesn’t help you, he doesn’t hurt you. Fifty-Fifty.”

I’ve thought about that moniker a lot over the years, and early on I hoped it never applied to me as a ballplayer, affectionately or otherwise. Over time, however, I realized there was no avoiding the tag. Sometimes you justify the faith your teammates place in you, and sometimes you don’t. If you come through more often than not, you’re doing okay. And yet, in success and in struggle, getting the ball on game day has to be the greatest rush in professional sports. The game acknowledges this, in its own way. There’s a certain amount of ceremony to the “anointing” or assigning of pitching duties, like a transfer of power. It used to be that pitchers knew they were getting a start only when they arrived at their locker to find that day’s pristine game ball sitting in their glove. The first time I heard about that, I was already in the bigs, and it struck me as a fitting tra

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Excerpted from The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound by Ron Darling, Daniel Paisner
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.