Quin is drawn further into a story

I'm starting to read a book by Donald Miller that is asking the question how would we need to live our lives so that they are stories.... Today is the conclusion of the practice and Quin being drawn into the story of being a coach....

He arrived at the mound just in time to hear, “OK now coach Holsten will show you what a real delivery looks like, and teach you how to throw batting practice.  Draver warm the coach up, the infield will bat first, outfielders shag flies.”

Pitching batting practice is a good discipline for a pitcher to learn, it helps their accuracy and it helps them remember that baseball is a team game. A pitcher instinctively wants to keep the batter from hitting the ball, but in batting practice his job is to make his pitches as hittable as possible, so that his teammates can hone their swings.

Quin had always passionately hated throwing batting practice. Whenever he had done it at Appendix and at Stanford his teammates had invariably complained that he was throwing too hard. He was very tempted to simply jog off the field and leave Jack to explain to his team that Quin had not agreed to be “Coach Holsten.” But, before he could seriously entertain the idea, Draver was in position and telling him to fire it in there. He did a few of the warm-ups that he had had the pitchers do, and then he began to try to throw with a little bit of heat. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was still pretty accurate and that even as he approached forty he could throw the ball with some pace. He knew instinctively that he was not throwing as hard as Mullen had been, but then he was at least throwing strikes.

While he was warming up somewhere from deep within himself an unbidden thought came, “Quin you’re becoming part of a story.” As quickly as the thought came it was pushed back down and drowned, by a thought much closer to the surface, “Oh, no I’m not because I’m not ever doing this again after today.” He pitched batting practice without much effort, and felt a bit of sympathy for Preston, because with the possible exception of the Catcher Draver, there was not a whole lot of hitting talent on the team. He was surprised, though by how well they all seemed to field.

After the last batter had taken his swings, Jack said, “OK, we’re going to play three quick innings. Team two take the field behind Coach Quin. Team one you’re batting.

By this point in the practice Quin was completely accustomed to Jack making pronouncements about what he was going to do without consulting him. Once again a thought from the deep of Quin’s soul came with bass melody “You’re excited that you get to throw hard now. You wonder if you still have it. He’s pulling you in. You’re a part of this now.” The surface thoughts responded quickly again. “If I am excited that’s pretty damn pathetic, I’m throwing to a bunch of teenagers, and I’m not doing it again.”

He struck the first batter out on four pitches, and  felt alive each time the ball left his hand. He struck the second batter out with a beautiful change-up. Team two was hooting it up behind him. Encouraging him and making catcalls to the two batters he had struck-out. Draver was on deck, as he struck out the third batter on three pitches. The strike-out pitch was a nasty curve that had buckled the poor kid’s knees before hitting the mitt for a strike.

The kids from team two managed two hits off of Jack, who was pitching for team one, in the bottom of the first, but they didn’t score. In the top of the second Draver, fouled off the first pitch, a fastball, and then took the next two pitches for balls.  Quin decide that he wasn’t going to even let anyone put the ball in play, so he semi-intentionally threw the next two pitches way outside walking Draver. Then he struck-out the next three batters. He felt a little bit like a chickenshit, but mostly he felt good. Once again team two got a couple of hits, but didn’t score.

Quin struck out the first two batters in the top of the third. The third batter finally put the ball in play grounding out weakly to second. In the bottom of the third practice inning his team managed to push a run across the plate with three singles Quin got so caught up in the moment that he yelled, “Dig, Dig Dig,” like a madman as the winning runner rounded third and headed for home.”

As Jack and Quin jogged very slowly back to the locker room after the practice, Quin’s lungs burned again and his shoulder was very sore, but even he had to admit that he felt somewhat happy.

Towards the end of the very slow jog Jack said very conversationally, “Now that was fun wasn’t it coach.”

Quin replied between gasps, “Jack if I weren’t so tired I would kill you.”