Life is good when you get to play baseball with fun dudes, solid men, and skilled players while under blue skies and temperatures in the mid-70’s.

This is especially ideal when you are a Pitcher hurling on a well-groomed mound with just the right percentage of clay. This is pretty close to Baseball Heaven.

I helped out my 45+ team, the Nationals, with an inning that qualified me to help in the coming playoffs. I coaxed two pop outs to 3B and a first pitch can of corn to CF, with a two out 0-2 oppo dunker to RF just to disrupt the attempted perfection.

I throw a scroogie, but what may more accurately be a sinker, a common 2-seamer, rarely a 4-seamer, a knuckle curve, and whatever is my latest grip on an attempt at a change up.

Like Clayton Kershaw, who NEVER got comfortable with a change up grip in his entire career, I have dabbled with a million grips over the decades and never gotten one to cooperate for more than a pitch at a time. If you throw a good one, then hang the next, then you do not have a good grip. With a change up, if you miss, you have to miss down, or perhaps away. If you miss fat, you will have teammates upset that someone smoked your easy meat past them at 3B, or over their heads in the outfield.

Joe warmed me up in the Pen today, and I had nothing. Didn’t feel any zip, no life on the ball, the shoulder hurt a bit as a residual of having to pitch on a dirt mound without metal cleats (a couple of months ago for a different team), as the school changed their rules and slipping on that mound actually hurt my shoulder. Luckily, it’s a weirdly isolated pain that does not actually affect my velocity or stuff. Still, I have never had a shoulder injury, and it aggravates me that I tried to gut out what I knew was a VERY bad idea by slip-sliding on that damned mound in turf cleats.

Still, I got on the hill today and it all came together. On the well constructed mound with the good clay, I was able to dig in, use my full windup–which includes lots of arms and legs–and execute each pitch.

The scroogie moved well into the righties, the knuckle curve had good break and accuracy, the slider had good bite and location, and even the change up came in at a good speed, looking enough like a heater, but unable to be squared up because of the velocity difference. I held today’s with the little finger and second fingers inside the narrow seams, clamping down on the little finger and the thumb, which was on the opposite side of the baseball. I also turn my wrist clockwise before the pitch to help take that much more off the pitch. The key here is that if it’s deep in the hand with that grip, you cannot possibly throw it hard, so you simply throw it with the same conviction as you would a normal heater, but it dives at the plate. Good hitters can see if you slow up your arm, so that’s a killer, I even see guys in the Bigs struggle with their change ups, slowing up their arms to try to get the pitch right. No chance for good success until you find the grip for your particular hand that allows you to throw the pitch as if it will come in as a fastball.

Maybe this latest iteration will finally be Change Up Nirvana for me!

So, there is the craft of pitching that is so fun for me, and then there is the camaraderie in the dugout, the needling, the baseball conversations about approaches to hitting, pitching grips and arm angles, training strategies, and then more ribbing and encouragement. You don’t joke with a teammate you don’t like, and most of my teams are filled with good guys, so this is rarely an issue.

Anything goes as teammates bust each other’s chops, and I could write a book on all the ‘shit talk’ going on in dugouts, on the field, before games, after games…that very human element, guy to guy, is what you miss when you are away from it. In relationships, guys often have to tiptoe around what they say and how they say it with their ladies. Not so in a baseball environment. Anything goes, nobody is holding a grudge or running off pouting, they just give it back, laugh it off, or show up the attacker by performing better. It’s a safe space for guys that has to be very refreshing versus how they must hold their tongues at the office or at home, for the most part.

Okay, now it’s time to start prepping for next week and doing your part to win another Championship. As the Blue Jays found out, there is small consolation in hearing that you were in a very exciting World Series and that you were SO close to winning it all.

SCREW THAT!

You didn’t win, it feels HORRIBLE, and, more than ever, you are hungry to get back into that position and prevail.

Anyone getting close to winning the Trophy knows the PAIN of losing.

It’s why we celebrate so zealously when we win it all, because it IS special, to be treasured, and memorializes that particular group of guys in that particular moment.

Each season is unique, each team is unique, despite identical uniforms and similar Rosters.

For example, the 2024 Dodgers were similar to, yet quite different from the 2025 Dodgers.

I often think of the pain the Dodgers felt in losing to the Yankees in 1977, then 1978, much like the many Brooklyn teams that succumbed to the mighty Yanks before finally winning it all in 1955.

Now, more that ever in MLB with 30 teams, winning it all is HARD, and I don’t blame any of those guys for acting silly with their champagne sprays in the locker rooms.

Everyone needs an outlet of some kind. I am so grateful for being able to play baseball most of my life, pitching for 33 years, enjoying the company of so many great teammates, including some former big leaguers, and working as a group to win it all and celebrate like kids.