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Episode 82—The Language of the Gods
126 Plays7 years ago
Hey, there CNFers, Happy New Year. It’s 2018 and we’re gettin’ rollin’ here for the biggest, baddest year for The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And what is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast? It’s the show where I speak to the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction: leaders in the worlds of narrative journalism, documentary film, radio, essay and memoir, and tease out the habits and routines so that you can apply their tools of mastery to your own work. I’m Brendan O’Meara. And to kick off the New Year, I’m actually not interviewing anyone because I’ve been traveling around creation at significant personal cost to see family and friends on the East Coast. So Episode 82 is me reading “The Language of the Gods,” my essay for Chris Arvidson’s and Diana Nelson Jones’ collection of baseball essays in “The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans.” The essay does have some footnotes, something I used to love, but am starting to have mixed feelings about, so when the footnotes appear, you’ll hear me say FOOTNOTE and I’ll read it followed by END FOOTNOTE. They’re not too disruptive. This is gonna be a big year, so if you dig the show, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, share it with a friend, and leave an honest review on iTunes. I’m extending my offer to edit a piece of your work up to 2,000 words and an hour of my time just for leaving a candid review. Just send me a screenshot of the review when it posts and I’ll reach out.
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Transcript
Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Hey there, CN efforts. Happy New Year. It's 2018 and we're getting rolling here for the biggest and baddest year of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Are you new to the show? What is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast?
00:00:21
Speaker
It's the show where I speak to the world's best artists about creating works of non-fiction, leaders in the world of narrative journalism, documentary film, radio, essay, and memoir, and tease out the habits and routines so that you can apply their tools of mastery to your own work. I'm your host, Brendan O'Mara.
00:00:43
Speaker
and to kick off the new year.
Exploring 'The Language of the Gods'
00:00:46
Speaker
I'm actually not interviewing anyone because I've been traveling around creation at significant personal cost to see family and friends on the east coast. So episode 82 is me reading.
00:00:58
Speaker
The Language of the Gods, my essay for Chris Arvetson's and Diana Nelson Jones's collection of baseball essays in The Love of Baseball, essays by lifelong fans published by McFarland.
00:01:16
Speaker
The essay does have some footnotes, something I used to love but I'm starting to have mixed feelings about. So when the footnotes appear you'll hear me say footnote and then I'll read it followed by end footnote.
Call to Action: Subscribe and Engage
00:01:30
Speaker
They're not too disruptive but let's just give you a heads up.
00:01:35
Speaker
It's gonna be a big year. So if you dig the show, subscribe wherever you get your podcast, share it with a friend, and leave an honest review on iTunes. I'm extending my offer to edit a piece of your work up to 2,000 words in an hour of my time just for leaving a candid review on iTunes. It doesn't even have to be a nice one. Just candid, send me a screenshot of the review when it posts, and I'll reach out.
00:02:00
Speaker
I think that's gonna do it. So here's my essay, The Language of the Gods.
The Sounds of Baseball
00:02:09
Speaker
Quote, the sounds of the game are really kind of cool. Something that doesn't get talked about a lot. They really do resonate. Everybody remembers sounds. End quote. PJ Pilateer, hitting coach for the Trenton Thunder.
00:02:28
Speaker
You don't need eyes to know if a ball traveled 450 feet, just a keen sense of ears and a sense of wonder. People often talk about the sounds of the game of baseball in field of dreamy terms, crack of the bat, ball on glove, sliding into second, etc.
00:02:47
Speaker
These are lowercase sounds. I'm talking sounds. Even smells. Sensory inputs that make Peter Gammons, the famed baseball writer, say that Ted Williams, Don Mattingly, and Mark McGuire spoke the language of the gods.
00:03:05
Speaker
I remember an anecdote around the 1999 All-Star game, the one at Fenway Park, the one Williams was torrid around in a wheelchair. When someone finally parked him in the center of the diamond, the best players of the day huddled around the man, many called the greatest hitter that ever lived, like he was God.
00:03:28
Speaker
Williams pulled Maguire down to his level. Maguire had just come off his record setting, though Andro enhanced 70 home run season for the Cardinals. Williams asked him, have you ever smelled the bat burning?
00:03:43
Speaker
McGuire, happy that Williams even knew who he was, said he had. It's the perfect confluence of elite power on power. A no-name-taking four-seam fastball must whip in with a little bit of rise. It should scream in somewhere north at 95 miles an hour. But this isn't an exact science. Next, a batter with world-shaking bat speed, someone like McGuire, must make contact and foul the ball straight back to the screen.
00:04:12
Speaker
It's the firmest, most aggressive contact you can make without hitting the ball to the deepest, most remote recesses of a ballpark. It's impossibly frustrating to be that close to such contact, but if struck just right, the seams burn the wood. Only the guys who whipped that lumber have smelled it," Williams said. I always wanted to call malarkey when I heard that, but who was I?
00:04:40
Speaker
My career ended with a whimper in the hallways of UMass Amherst, cutting my sophomore year. I had come across several ballplayers I might call elite. While in high school, I remember standing at my native shortstop when one of the opposing players hit a ball my way. The ball sounded like a bottle rocket as it approached this beautiful, liquid hiss. I could barely regain my bearings to throw the ball because I had never heard anything come off a bat like that.
00:05:09
Speaker
Footnote Taking one of these suckers off the chest, shin, or nethers is one of the more memorable experiences you'll have as a ballplayer. Nothing like seeing the stitches of a ball imprint on the tibia. End footnote.
Trenton Thunder Game Experience
00:05:23
Speaker
Late in the summer, when the heat's edge dulls, the leaves start to turn, and the best teams gear up for the playoffs, I decided to put this sound of the game to the test. I used to live five miles from where the Trenton Thunder, a AA affiliate of the Yankees, call home.
00:05:41
Speaker
I sent an electronic email to the Sports Information Director, SID, wondering if I may catch batting practice and maybe speak to the hitting coach. I looked up the coach, PJ Pilateer. He had a modest career in the minors, reaching AAA ball. He has the sturdy, fullback build you expect in a catcher. Broad shoulders, the brick wall torso of a backstop, and his energy for all things hitting and baseball is childishly charming.
00:06:10
Speaker
Few people use words like inertia, kinetic chain, and nasty hammer with such glee. When I first arrived at the ballpark on a quiet pregame afternoon in early September, I took sight of the surrounding ephemera, banners, and signage. At Arm and Hammer Park, you're first struck by flags with Derek Jeter, David Eckstein, and Chase the Batdog. Jeter's time at Trenton was relegated to a rehab start, but the Trenton thunders he fit to boast his presence.
00:06:40
Speaker
Minor League Baseball is all about reaching the next level, and selling minor league baseball to fans makes use of this kind of curriculum vitae. Look who played here. Maybe you'll see the next jitter out here today. SID responds quickly to my text message and coaxes me into the ballpark. Armand Hammer Park is so empty, like a church before Mass.
00:07:02
Speaker
We stand in the press box, which is a line of chairs at a counter overlooking the field about 15 to 20 feet in height above home plate and 100 feet behind, give or take. Were it not for the backstop, a wicked wood burning, so I'm led to believe, foul tip could whip straight back and knock out a MacBook Pro.
00:07:21
Speaker
S.I.D., who also moonlights as a broadcaster for the team while substitute teaching in the area of schools, is in his late 20s, and if he hasn't, quote unquote, made it by the time he's 31, he's finding a new line of work. He knows what a drag journalism can be, and he's had about enough. You can see the sullen look in his eyes.
00:07:44
Speaker
But he perks up when he talks about the team, namely Dustin Fowler, a young, physically unassuming lefty, who's known to hit the ever-living shit out of every pitch that comes his way. SID looks out onto the field. We don't have practice jerseys with last names, but Fowler's about 5'10", a lefty can run, and doesn't look like a power guy.
00:08:05
Speaker
He hit a ball the other night that went over the light tower and right field, SID says, nearly needing to wipe the drool off his freshly-shaven chin. You'll know when he hits the ball.
00:08:16
Speaker
The American flag out in center field blows from left to right at a gentle pace. It's what you might call a perfect day to be at the ballpark.
Dustin Fowler's Batting Practice
00:08:24
Speaker
Thatting practice will start soon, but in the meantime, I look around the stadium to see more banners of former players. Andrew Brackman, Chase the Batdog, and Derby, Chase's younger successor to the mantle. The keg of baseballs gets wheeled out to the mound about 30 feet from home plate.
00:08:43
Speaker
The pitcher will stand behind the L screen so as to avoid death. Keeping the distances short allows this pitcher to throw hundreds of pitches while not straining the old rotator cuff too much. He can throw relatively easy and the ball will still arrive at the batter and the time that won't completely fudge with his timing when the opposing pitcher takes the hill from 60 feet 6 inches away.
00:09:04
Speaker
There are a few lefties who seem to match the build of SID's description of Dustin Fowler. One steps in and takes a crack at the pitch, and it makes that nice crisp sound you want to hear. I wouldn't call it explosive, but it isn't pedestrian either. This has become my frame of reference, seeing as, you know, all these guys are pro players, with most still eyeing the possibility of cracking a big league roster. Here, each player gets six pitches before switching out. They'll rotate through about five times.
00:09:33
Speaker
each getting somewhere around 30 total swings. The six at a time keeps the focus sharp and everyone limber and free from boredom. Round after round comes through the cages. A few of the guys put some hefty charges into the ball, finding the gaps or the gaggle of pitchers who found the one hundred square foot area of shade way out in right center. There they gather like grazing cattle.
00:09:57
Speaker
The final group of batters enters the cage. By this point my ears had been numbed to the respectable crack of the double-a hitters. The next batter approaches the plate and taps it with the lumber. I mean, it's all well and good, and I heard nothing that was all that memorable. The pitcher delivers. In fact, they're making contact that I once
00:10:20
Speaker
What the hell was that? Made myself. No, not even close. Contact I made myself. No, no way. Not even close. That ball left the park on a truly terrifying vector. That ball left the park on a truly terrifying vector.
00:10:36
Speaker
and the sound of the bat was nothing like I had ever heard before, this close to the field. His hands were high, loose, just over his right shoulder, ready to launch as the next pitch came in, and what is the meaning of this? Footnote, PJ says,
00:10:53
Speaker
That's exciting from a coaching perspective. Say you have someone that can make that sound. Those are the guys we need to really lock into. You try to find as many of those guys that can produce that sound as possible. And your job as coaches is to make that sound come out more. You know what I mean? Once they make that sound come out more consistently, then we've got a major league player. You know what I mean? And footnote.
00:11:17
Speaker
The next bit of violent contact may have stayed ten feet above the ground, yet he had enough sheer mass times acceleration, which is to say Newtonian force, behind it, that it might have cleared the fence a foot over the 330 number on the right field corner, right above the peace of mind bank of choice advertisement.
00:11:37
Speaker
PJ says, it's really neat as a coach because I know there's things mechanically we can do to make swings more efficient and shorter to produce louder sounds, to produce higher exit velocities, to produce more bass hits. End footnote. He proceeds to hit another three balls out of the park in the first round of BP. This is Dustin Fowler.
00:12:01
Speaker
Fowler has a gentle rock to his lower body, something limber, like fine architecture that moves with the gentle pulsations of the earth.
00:12:09
Speaker
As the pitcher brings the ball up to his right ear, Fowler begins to load the spring. He shifts a quorum of mass onto his back leg as he steps forward with his right foot, starting to move his weight through the moment of impact. At this point, the back leg punches his hips through the pitch as he clears his iliac and opens it toward the Delaware River, 100 yards clear of that formality of a fence in right field.
00:12:34
Speaker
By this time, the hands up over his left shoulder, supple on a swivel, sense the impeding recruitment from the lower body, and drop down on a 45 degree angle. The better to chop through the ball and reverse its pitcher-delivered topspin side spin, and impart his own anti-spin, which is to say backspin, to give the ball the proper
00:12:56
Speaker
Oh my god, when will it land? Lift, the proper lift. To send that motherfucker from home plate to where nobody, and I mean nobody, shagging balls even moves as the ball nearly takes out a light bulb on the 100 foot tall light tower, 350 feet from home plate, and yet the ball keeps going and vanishes into an unassuming deciduous tree beyond the fence. Footnote.
00:13:23
Speaker
PJ says, I was having a conversation with Fowler last week about it. Think about where you were last year and think about how much shorter your swing is now. Think about the results and the success you've had this year. They go hand in hand. From a sonic perspective, that's the job, to get it cleaned up and get that thing really humming out there. End footnote.
00:13:44
Speaker
And his swing looked so easy. Not like former Major League greats like Gary Sheffield and Barry Bonds, whose swings were so violent they needed a state-issued permit to carry such a firearm. Footnote, PJ says. Getting into a loaded position early enough so I can take my bat straight to the baseball with no wasted movement.
00:14:07
Speaker
Guys you see who have this loop in their swing and start hitting the ball this way, or guys that start to lose their hands away from their body. A guy like Dustin, for example, he'll be in this position and he'll get to touchdown and he'll be directly to the ball. Bang, bang. Short. No wasted movement. No wasted inertia.
00:14:27
Speaker
Some people will say you're not breaking the kinetic chain. It's boom, boom. I don't like to talk about it like that. That's a little much at times. But we think of it as short, direct, simple, A, B. My hands are A, baseball is B. I gotta get there fast. I think an easy, simple way to describe it is you're not going to produce that sound that you're looking for by being strong.
00:14:51
Speaker
If I can get from A to B with speed, fast and quick, that's going to produce that loud, loud noise. End footnote. Fowler sort of waddles out of the cage like a penguin and leans against the bat and stands in the on-deck circle, watching his other teammates hit the ball. It's hard to even classify what the others do as hitting after watching Fowler go nuclear on about 20 of the 30 pitches he saw.
00:15:14
Speaker
Fowler then scratches his rear end, puts down his helmet, and leaves the field. All the while, standing, with his lumberjack formed on the cage, was P.J. Pilatier, the conductor of the Symphony of Sound. Pilatier remembers a time when he was about eight years old, going to the 1989 All-Star game at Anaheim Stadium. He and his dad were walking along the stands and right field near the foul pole where the bullpen was.
00:15:41
Speaker
They sat down and Pilateer heard this explosion, this eruption. He told me, Dad, what is that? Is that a car backfiring?
00:15:50
Speaker
The two looked down into the bullpen and it was Nolan Ryan and his final all-star game warming up. This was the Nolan Ryan who had already been in the league for 23 years and he still generated some serious vinegar. Pildir told me, so that sound for me is an eight-year-old catcher that put me through the roof.
00:16:11
Speaker
I want to make that sound. You know what I mean? That part of the glove is where you get it from." He ran into his office and grabbed his catcher's mitt, put it on his hand, and punched it. He pointed to that part of the mitt that corresponds directly to the terminal end of the second and third metacarpals, the part that will, over time, get increasingly calcified by receiving grenades from pitchers like Ophirion's ilk. But to hear that noise Peltier told me.
00:16:37
Speaker
I can still hear that noise right now, standing here talking to you. That's how loud it was and how resonating it was, and I think that put me over the edge. You know what I mean? He also said some pitchers create such a whip on the ball that their fingers sound like Velcro coming off the seams.
00:16:53
Speaker
And Pelletier said that catching the ball there just south of the webbing, thus eliciting that bang, is an earworm for the hitter. It gets into the hitter's head. As if the hummingbird hiss of the ball wasn't enough, that explosion in the mint can add five miles an hour to the ball in the hitter's head.
00:17:11
Speaker
make the pitcher seem like he's throwing faster, make you think you have to gear up your swing that much sooner, and maybe force the hitter out on the front foot of a nasty change, and flutter a ball behind third base, or miss it entirely. So I had to ask him about this, quote, language of the gods. Is it true that wood burns if a hitter fouls a ball straight back?
00:17:34
Speaker
Piltier contended that he never had quite the bat speed to smell it off his own bat, but he knows it's true, and here's the kicker. If a guy fouls one back, I mean a real screamer that would seem to tear the backstop a new one, guys will put the barrel of the bat right up to their face. Their smell in the burning wood, Piltier told me, which is habit for some guys, superstition for some guys. It's a pretty cool smell.
00:17:59
Speaker
It must
Giancarlo Stanton's Power Hits
00:18:00
Speaker
be. It must be nice to be bilingual in English and the language of the gods. Now more than two weeks later, my wife and I went to a game between the hapless Marlins and the equally hapless Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. We went early so we could see batting practice and maybe catch a home run ball for a five ounce keepsake.
00:18:23
Speaker
Giancarlo Stanton, the Marlin slugger and 350 million dollar man, would be taking BP. Stanton made a reputation for hitting the ball not just far, but perilously far, with exit velocities north of 100 miles an hour. He's a video game in real life. He's also 6'6 and 245 pounds. Throws right, that's right, plays right field.
00:18:47
Speaker
His body is the bulging musculature of an Adonis. Honestly, he doesn't belong in a baseball field. He belongs in a museum. He took hold of his bat and stood in a cage. He looked comically large. Too much like Thor. In the first ball he swung, I hit the L screen. I nearly came out of my shoes. The ball triggered the most jarring, most electric, most sonically charged bat of contact I have ever heard. And I was standing 329 feet away in the front row of the outfield bleachers.
00:19:16
Speaker
This being the first round, he was hitting the ball up the middle. And to right field. And the speed of the ball was cartoonish in its velocity. The sound echoed after contact. This in a place of 1.15 million square feet. By the time he started pulling the ball to the left field alley, an army of people came to the left field bleachers because it was inevitable that he'd hit balls that would reach us in about 2.8 seconds after impact. And while I never caught a ball, they flew out with near-lunar predictability.
00:19:46
Speaker
to the upper deck overhead. Time after time, Stanton's contact was what PJ Pilateer tries to coach out of his players, players like Dustin Fowler. Stanton put on a symphonic clinic of hitting. Each time he swung, we braced for impact. One person standing a few rows behind me said to his friend after Stanton crushed the ball, it sounds different, doesn't it? I looked at my wife and she looked at me. Then the man a few rows back added, that's just stupid.
00:20:19
Speaker
That was fun, wasn't it? Wasn't it?
Podcast Production Insights
00:20:24
Speaker
This episode, like all others, was produced and edited by me, Brendan O'Mara, at Brendan O'Mara on Twitter. Feel free to follow and ping me there if you like.
00:20:34
Speaker
By all means, share this episode and others if you dig the show. If you benefit by reading other people's reviews on other podcasts and elsewhere across the internet, consider leaving one for this show. I've been doing that for a lot of shows that quote unquote don't need anymore because what kind of guy would I be to ask you for reviews if I don't have the guts to leave my own? So that's my reason.
00:21:02
Speaker
I also have a monthly newsletter where I send out my monthly book recommendations and also what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. If you're into that kind of thing, go visit BrendanOmera.com and sign up. You'll get the next one. Once a month, no spam, can't beat it. It's gonna do it. Happy New Year and I'll see you right back here next week. Thanks for listening.