Armed And Dangerous

Last week I made an illmatic play on a ballfield. Can I tell you a story?

I never wanted to be a pitcher. But from the age of 12 or 13, I could throw a baseball really hard and with near-pinpoint accuracy and so my coaches always pushed me onto the mound. The rule of thumb these days is that a pitcher’s day should end after they’ve thrown 100 pitches or so. I swear that when I was a teenager, there were games in which I threw in excess of 200 pitches. Damage was surely done.

I wanted to play shortstop every day. I earned my way into that position on every team I ever played for. But I always had to pitch too. Eventually, I came to love pitching because I felt like I could control the game. I liked being involved in every play. I enjoyed the physical challenge of pitching but the psychological aspect of it was fun too.

Off the field, I liked to show off my throwing arm when the opportunity to do so presented itself. I could wow people with a ball or a rock or a snowball. It felt a bit like having a superpower. There was also something a bit scary about it - knowing I could seriously hurt or maybe even kill someone with the power of my right arm.

Then I moved to France. What was it? 2002? There’s no baseball in France. Can’t even throw a rock in Paris. My superpower went to waste for six years.

Now we fast-forward to - I don’t know - 2007 or so. I was touring across Canada by bus with Cadence Weapon and Skratch Bastid and cast of other characters. Situation tour. Somewhere in British Columbia we stopped at a scenic lookout spot in the mountains. I spotted a nice, round, flat rock on the ground and announced my intentions: “alright, y’all, check this out”. I was going to throw that rock over the goddamn horizon. As the rock left my hand, I felt a pop in my shoulder.

For years after that, I couldn’t throw at all. Most of the time, I couldn’t raise my arm above horizontal. Just lifting the bedsheets off my body would send a bolt of lightning through my shoulder. My superpower was gone.

I came up with a plan. With a tennis ball and a brick wall, I attempted to teach myself to throw with my left hand. I made pretty good progress but eventually decided that maybe I should look into whether a physiotherapist could do anything for me.

After some tests and scans at a sports clinic, I was set up with Dr. Fuller. His area of expertise is tennis. There were pictures on the wall of his office of him with Roger Federer and other top pros. I doubted he was the right guy to fix my particular problem but I really liked his vibe and so decided to stick with him. During my second or third appointment with him, he said something along the lines of, “before long, I’ll have you throwing harder than you ever have”. That was what I wanted to hear.

I’ll never forget the day - after many months of work with Dr. Fuller - that I threw a baseball with ’snap’ for the first time in years. In baseball speak, we call it “letting it eat”. It wasn’t 90 miles per hour but it was hard and I knew I was well on my way. Tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t wait to see Dr. Fuller again to thank him. After another year or two of rehab and hard work, I was back to playing competitive baseball and pitching.

My comeback was completed in the summer of 2022 when I was named MVP of the Canadian Men’s Senior Nationals (the same week King Of Drums was released). I pitched all week and gave up only one hit.

After winning nationals, I decided to retire from competitive baseball and since then, I’ve been playing softball which has been enough for me to keep the juices flowing. That brings us to last week.

It was late in the game and the score was close. Two outs. I was playing shortstop. A big lefty batter who had already hit a couple of bombs in the game came up to bat. I had already noted that he was wearing a brace on each of his knees. I reminded myself that if a ground ball was hit in my direction, I’d have time to make a play because he probably wasn’t a fast runner. Being a left-handed hitter who pulled the ball with power earlier in the game, I shaded close to second base, expecting more of the same.

A few pitches into the at-bat, he took me by surprise by hitting a ground ball in the 5.5 hole (between me and my third baseman). The ball was hit firmly, but not super-hard, which is to the hitter’s advantage, especially in softball (the bases are closer together so you can get to them quicker). I broke to my right. Hard. After three steps, I thought to myself, “I’m not getting to this ball”. After another step, I lunged. I didn’t want to leave my feet because I knew I wouldn’t have time to make a throw if did. Stretching as far as I could, I snagged the ball in the end of my glove. At this point, my back was to first base. The transfer of the ball from my glove to my throwing hand happened so fast and clean, I don’t remember it. Total muscle memory. I calculated that planting my feet or attempting a jump-throw might cost me a fraction of a second I couldn’t afford and so I opted to throw on the run, off-balance. By the time I let go of the ball, I was behind third base. I threw with every ounce of strength I had. Bullet. Right to the first baseman’s chest. The batter was out by half a step. Inning over. We went on to win the game by a run or two. To give you an idea because it might be hard to visualize based on my description, it looked kinda like this:

Any time I have to call on my superpower now, I think of Dr. Fuller. You probably know me as a hip hop guy. But to anyone I’ve ever played ball with, I’m the guy with a rifle for an arm.