One-pitch wonder’s glory day

Published 6:35 pm Sunday, May 13, 2018

{{tncms-inline alignment=”left” content=”<p><strong>Scooter Hobbs</strong> covers LSU athletics. Email him at <span class="text_link link_wrap type_eml" data-link-target="shobbs@americanpress.com" data-link-type="EML">shobbs@americanpress.com</span></p>” id=”0049f961-9756-4022-8956-fafb29749de4″ style-type=”info” title=”SCOOTER HOBBS” type=”relcontent” width=”half”}}

BATON ROUGE — With all due respect, I have not been avoiding the media. I just figured it was best to let the boom-buzz around the baseball world subside to mere mushroom clouds before commenting publicly.

It is, after all, now being referred to as The Pitch Heard ’Round the World.

It’s far too easy for hyperbole to take over in the midst of such knee-jerk reactions.

But the baseball lords have had a proper interval to digest it all now, so I guess it’s safe to come clean with the backstory.

It all began, as most fiascos do, with me perfectly minding my own dadgum business.

Ronnie Rantz, a former LSU pitcher and now the president and CEO of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, called and asked if I would mind throwing out the first pitch at an LSU baseball game.

American Press sports editor Scooter Hobbs, second from right, and LSU broadcaster Lyn Rollins, second from left, threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the McNeese State-LSU baseball game Wednesday night at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge. Hobbs and Rollins will be inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame on June 30 in Natchitoches.

Special to the American Press

He assured me that it would be largely ceremonial and shouldn’t have any effect on the McNeese-LSU game that would play second banana to the Big Event.

Why? He couldn’t really explain. Something about promoting the Hall of Fame.

He said Lyn Rollins, a good friend whom you probably know as the folksy voice on most of the Tigers’ televised games, would also being chunking one in there, both of us for something like posterity.

Well …

Let’s just say I had some reservations.

Mainly, I’m kind-hearted — to a fault, I guess — and didn’t really want to show up Rollins side by side.

For another thing, it had been roughly 25 years since I’d tried to throw much of anything.

Long story on that one, but what began as a simple attempt to hang Christmas decorations on a roof above a solid-concrete driveway led to four surgeries to repair the damage and three metal screws to hold my right elbow together.

For that matter, more recently, my last attempt at catching a baseball — a (very hard) softball, actually — ended up with me in a Texas emergency room with a black eye swollen up the size of an RV.

I was quarantined for a month for that one, lest any neighborhood children be unduly traumatized.

But Rantz was pretty persistent.

Finally, what the hey? Besides, I’m used to embarrassing myself, been doing it most of my life. What can I say. It’s a gift. After a while, it becomes part of your personna.

So last Wednesday dawned with me praying for rain on a beautiful day for McNeese-LSU baseball.

But I recalled that the attending surgeon for the elbow mishap had explained to me, in grave tones, that if I had been a baseball pitcher, my career would be over, and, furthermore, “You fell off a roof!?”

Well, I thought (all these years later) he doesn’t know the grit and determination he’s dealing with. The human spirit. The will to make a fool of yourself is sometimes more powerful than any medicine.

So rub a little dirt on it.

There was an upside.

My niece Elizabeth and her husband Nathan showed up and brought their 9-year-old along to see Uncle Scooter make a fool of himself.

The ploy backfired.

I made some arrangements to get them on the field for the big event. Let’s just say, if I say so myself, that Graydon has himself a new hero for life. He’s in that phase where he’s all about baseball. In fact, he had a game later that night, but first spent about 45 minutes in a dream world hanging out just outside the LSU dugout during pregame warm-ups.

A stray ball rolled up to him and — he’d brought along his glove just in case — he picked it up and hummed it back to a Tiger, who pointed at him like “Good peg, you fella.”

He could be best described at that moment as One Big Smile.

But the moment the midweek crowd had come for was approaching.

Rollins suggested that we do some pitch-and-catch to warm up. Not me. I was going cold turkey. There might only be one pitch left in that old, broken elbow, and I couldn’t afford to waste it. Graydon stepped in instead.

“I’m not going all the way to the mound,” Rollins told me, pointing at a spot about twothirds the way that he deemed as the perfect spot for our debut pitches.

Me? I wanted to “toe the rubber,” stand crouched on the “slab” and scowl toward the plate before unleashing the mayhem.

But, OK, Lyn, if you want to throw from the ladies tees, we will. I won’t show you up.

There were proper introductions on the stadium p.a. — which if you’re standing on the field and maybe a bit nervous, sounds like talking at the drive-thru at Taco Bell.

But two LSU players were enlisted to catch our throws, and as I peered in to get the sign, all I could think of was, “What in the world did these two players do to get this deep Paul Mainieri’s doghouse?”

Women and children and small house pets were cleared from the home plate area.

So here’s the windup and …

At the last second, I decided to give them my “three-seam changeup” and somehow it bent in there in same area code as my catcher.

Some radar guns had it “touching” 25, maybe 26 mph.

“Hope I didn’t hurt you hand,” I told the catcher as he returned the now-famous ball (Cooperstown has been calling for it) with a manly handshake.

“Hope this gets you out of the Mainieri doghouse,” I said in parting.

Soon enough I was back in my comfort zone, the press box.

And something had changed among my comrades therein. They looked at me a little differently, somewhat awkwardly.

After, that was one of their own down there on the actual battlefield having to prove his mettle.

The new looks on their faces as they stole side glances at me during the game suggested that they thought the whole thing had been flat-out hilarious.

Just jealous, I guess.

But after the game, during the normal postgame interview with Mainieri, I was, frankly, a little disappointed that he made no comment about The Pitch.

So finally, I blurted out, “What’d you think of my pitch?”

“Your what?”

“My pitch.”

“What pitch?”

“Yeah, I threw out the game’s first pitch. Kind of ceremonial, I know, but …”

“Oh, really. I didn’t see it.”

Well, like they say … He can’t hit what he can’t see.

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com