High, up above, in the lights of Comiskey Park, the nighthawks glided, flapped rapidly, twisted, fluttered, swung to the left, feeding on the varied bugs attracted by the lights, glided but did not relax, ascended, dove down, refused to accept the ease of flight and fought the air, flapping, for every inch of motion, did so in a fashion, well, best described as, perhaps, arrhythmic, that is arrhythmically–without rhythm.
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Jack McDowell is a pitcher with checkpoints but no rhythm, like a dance student so intent on the steps that he forgets the music. He reminds us that complexities reside within even the simplest pitching motions. Batting is simple, at least in form; swinging is a natural act. Throwing may be natural to the human animal–harking back to prehistoric, rock-hurling days–but the overhand toss is not natural to the human body, thus the elbow problems and rotator-cuff tears that typically afflict the modern-day pitcher. And, of course, to add the little bit of speed, to add torque to the curve or slider, to provide that artifice necessary to craft, there is the pitching motion, a winding, leaping jumble of arms and legs unlike the cricket bowler’s run or the tennis player’s serve (while resembling both) and for that matter unlike anything else in sport. McDowell’s motion couldn’t be simpler. Tall and lean, he stands atop the mound cradling his gloved left hand against his upper chest in the manner of a young, new father who has remembered to burp the baby but has forgotten how. His hands join (checkpoint one), they rise and cross over the head (two), return as the left knee rises to meet them at chest level (three), then a stride–not a kick–down the mound (four), whereupon the arm rises and follows the body (five–release point), and the ball is delivered to home.
So if it’s so simple, why is it so complex? How does the magic of throwing strikes suddenly so utterly disappear?
McDowell is not a natural athlete. He is gangly; he reminds us that a smooth pitching motion is necessary precisely because, once mastered, it transforms the prospect into a star just as an ugly duckling is transformed into a swan. In the third inning, McDowell stooped on the run for an errant throw and, tripping, almost came up lame. In the fourth, with the bases loaded and one out, he got ahead of Julio Franco by starting him a curve, then throwing the fastball past him–both for strikes. Franco slapped the next pitch right back at McDowell, who confronted it the way an executive confronts a bee that has flown into his office, slapping at it and shooing it toward Carlton Fisk at the plate, who then threw to first for the double play.
Still, watching Maddux pitch is one of the joys of the season. He gets a guy on a curve and keeps throwing it to him. A fellow slaps the fastball into center, and next time up he gets a steady diet of curves. His pitching makes sense. His motion is fluid and easy. Yet even here, even with Maddux, the mysterious ailments can come from nowhere, the fastball can lose its hop and go grinding up to home plate like an old jalopy, the curve can fall off the table before it gets to home plate, and the pitcher can look to the sky and wonder.
