Life as a story and Baseball/Or Quin assesses Mullen's pitches

One of my growing convictions is that we were meant to really live, but many of us live half-lives. As I re-read this it is obvious that the main thing I'm working to do is to draw Quin into a story where he is really alive. Baseball and helping Preston Coach are two of the primary things that draw Quin back towards life. So I spend some time on baseball stuff, but as I re-read I wonder if I spent a little too much...

The seriousness, sincerity and confidence in this tall gangly kid with intense eyes startled Quin. He wished again that he had believed what he said. He was momentarily speechless, but quickly recovered and lied with a chuckle, “Well thank you Mullen. I really do love what I do.”

“Your passion is evident.”

Quin thought, “Well his powers of perception aren’t great,” but the confidence of this kid and the immediate depth of this initial conversation struck him, and the kid’s eyes were so penetrating that Quin half thought the kid knew he was lying. He put himself back in charge of the conversation with his favorite weapon, humor. “Well thanks again, Mullen. Hey you know I’d love to talk lit – ur - a – chure with you, but the boss wants us to work on your pitching, so let’s see what you can do.”

“OK coach,” he said with a big smile and his eyes burned with more intensity.

“All right burn it in here, now,” Draver yelled.

Mullen reared back and let it fly. His wind-up motion and delivery were truly dreadful, but nevertheless the ball left his hand like it had been shot from a cannon. It was high and off the plate, and when Draver caught it his mitt popped loudly. Quin could see him grimace. “That was pretty damn hard,” Quin thought admiringly, but he said very calmly, “Good pace Mullen now put one over.” It was no wonder that Jack liked this kid. Quin knew even without a radar gun that the kid was throwing harder than he ever had.

Mullen fired ten more pitches at Draver all rockets and as Draver had predicted all wild.
The first few times he had watched his motion it had seemed so jumbled that Quin had had no clue where to begin. The more he watched, however, he was beginning to tick off things in his head that needed to be changed about Mullen’s delivery. Before he started tweaking anything in the kid’s delivery, though, he wanted to see some of the off-speed stuff.

“OK, that’s good Mullen. Let’s see you’re curve and your change.”

“All right coach, but they aren’t pretty.”

“They don’t have to be, let’s see them.”

The kid hadn’t been lying. The first pitch which Quin was pretty sure was supposed to have been the Curve simple floated up towards Draver and Quin thought, maybe, just maybe broke ever so slightly before settling softly into Draver’s glove. One thing that could be said for the pitch unlike all the others, it was a strike. Which meant if it were a game that ball would have most likely landed somewhere out beyond the leftfield fence. In short it was a terrible pitch.

“Again.” Quin said calmly.

He watched Mullen’s motion very carefully. There was no doubt that he was trying to throw a curve.

“Again.”

He had Mullen throw about ten “curves.”  Then he said, OK, let’s see the change.”

Mullen threw and his motion looked different, but the result looked very much the same as the curve. He had him throw about ten off those also.

He was just about ready to start making some suggestions when he heard, Preston calling the entire squad back to congregate around the pitcher’s mound. Quin's thoughts raced as he walked towards the mound. There could be no doubting that the kid had an electric arm, but there could also be no doubting that his delivery was terrible, and that if he continued to throw that way he would permanently injure his arm. Beyond that he would also walk almost every batter he faced.

The entire baseball assessment Quin had concluded quickly and coolly. What made his head spin was the idea that he might get caught up in helping this kid. Preston had already committed him verbally.  The idea was enticing to him, but before he was at the mound he had firmly decided not to help. He began steeling his resolve to tell Jack that this had been his first and his last practice. Jack, however, had a few more surprises in store for him.