I've Been to the Show

Imagine you're a pitcher, a bit past your prime. You spent a few seasons in the Majors, never a star, but a solid middle-reliever type. An injury cost you half a season and you've been working your way back through rehab starts in the minor leagues. You get encouraging text messages from some of your old buddies on the big league club as you begin the long climb back, hoping for one more shot at a ring. You decide to intensify your off-field workouts, so you go particularly hard in your P90X training one evening. That's when the phone rings. The big league club needs an extra arm, and since you've been pitching so well at the AA level, they want you to join the club the next day for a 6 AM game. (I know, but I need the game to be at 6 AM for my analogy to work). You get a decent night's sleep, but despite your best efforts, the game is already underway when you reach the ballpark. You barely have time to lace up your cleats when the starting pitcher goes down with a nasty blister and the skipper calls the bullpen, "that kid form the minor's ever make it here? Good, send him in."

You jump into the game, excited about being back with your old mates. You throw a heater past the league's leading hitter for a strike. But you feel yourself struggling to keep that fastball up in the low 90's. You back off, throwing sliders, and before you know it, you've gotten shelled. You barely make it through an inning, and as you pass the skipper on the dugout steps you say to him, "maybe I'm not ready yet, Skip." "Maybe not kid, but there was only one way to find out."

My running friends have already figured this one out, but for the rest of you, here's the translation. I'm the pitcher, cancer is my injury, the big-league club is a group of 7 runners, mostly my old crew and most of whom are under 40 both in age and 10k times, and the game was an 8 mile run they were all doing today. The inning was the second mile of their planned 8 mile run. My hope was to jump in at mile 1 and do a 6 miler with them. I made it one mile. Too fast a pace, too little recovery from last night's P90X workout, whatever the excuse, I ran out of gas.

I'm not ready to run with the big league club just yet, but I needed to see where I was, so I tried. I'll run with Adam this weekend and work on speed and stamina for a while before my next cup of coffee (more baseball talk, look it up). Now enjoy a scene from the best baseball movie not staring a cocaine addict as a wild relief pitcher.