In life there’s two sorts of people:  Those who think there’s two sorts of people and those who don’t.  I’ve never thought there’s only two sorts of people.  I’m not even sure that people can be put into “sorts.”  There’s people and there’s the positions they play.

When I’m in one of those “two sorts of” moods, I just forget the people and think about positions.  There’s all sorts of people playing plenty of different positions.  For the sake of this post, I’m going to divide those into two primary ones: Pitching and hitting.

The pitcher is trying to get an out.  The hitter is trying to get on base.

Sounds simple.

Pitchers are the critics, the writers, those who take what someone else does, tries to find the holes and strike them out.  They want to prevent you from getting a hit.  They want to make you look foolish.  But, without them, there’d be no ball to hit in the first place.

Hitters are those who are trying to get ahead.  They want to get a nice fat pitch and knock it out of the park.  Be a success.  Reach base, stay in the game.   They never make the pitcher look bad so much as they make themselves look good.

It’s zero sum.  Pitcher wins or hitter wins.  No grey area.

Philosophically, I’ve always identified more with pitchers than with hitters.  But because life is National League rules, pitchers do have to sometimes hit.  In which case, I’m prone to striking out, hurting myself or laying down a sacrifice bunt.

And just pray I don’t have to run the bases.

But, basically, I’m a pitcher and we’re not paid to hit.  You don’t come to The Grumpy Owl to see me paint a picture.  You come here to see me call bullshit on one. You waste whole minutes of your life watching my high fastball, my sinking changeup, my unexpected curve and, on rare occasions, that slow, tantalizing knuckler.

You know that one.  The one that looks so good that you just gotta swing at it.  Then it either vanishes or you take it out of the yard.  That one.

Since I view life through this perverse, allegorical lens, I spend some time thinking about my favourite pitchers and what I can learn from them.  From Halladay, I learn routine; From Henke, sudden side arming;  From Dizzy Dean, aggression; From all of them, the importance of keeping the opponent off-balance.  Of unpredictability.

But the most valuable lesson that I’ve ever learned from pitchers is this:  It’s not what you do on your good days, it’s what you do on your bad days.

Roy Halladay on a good day.

The other day, Halladay went out and threw a perfect game.  An amazing, magical feat.  But that’s not what makes him my favourite.  It’s what he does when he’s not perfect.  It’s what he does when it all goes wrong and nothing is working.  He battles.

Roy Halladay on a bad day.

Some people will look to the dugout on those days.  Some, knowing they just don’t have it and are going to lose, will pray for the manager to come out and rescue them.

Others want to stay in and keep fighting.

I see a lot of that in the Jays’ youngster Rickey Romero.  It’s great when he gets the complete game victories but it’s even better to see him go on that mound with nothing.  Because, when that happens, you see why he does well when he has something.  He can have his worst outting of the season and still manage to last five long innings.  He wanted his bullpen to get rest.  That’s learning from Roy.

And that’s pitching.  It won’t show up in any stats either.

That’s why a guy like Brian Tallet gets hated on by fans and loved by Cito.  As a starting pitcher, he usually has nothing.  But when you have to field a pitcher with nothing, he’s the one you want out there.  He’ll give up an upper deck homerun on one pitch then turn around and throw the same one to the next guy.  It’s probably all he has.

Brian Tallet's socks.

pic nicked from here

I find that relatable.  Sometimes, you just gotta stand on the mound, throwing the same shit and hoping for the best.  Sometimes it leaves the yard, sometimes it gets an out.   And it seems like the more nothing Tallet has, the more outs he gets.

Tonight, fresh from the disabled list and a disastrous stint in the minors , he pitched a great game against the best team in baseball.  He did it when no one really wanted him to be the starter.  He lasted 5.2 innings, never gave up a run and did all that with Brian Tallet stuff.

I like that.

What I don’t like is the shit that Kevin Gregg pulled when asked to finish the game for him   He’s a closing pitcher and, for my baseball averse readers, that means he has one very simple and very difficult job.  He needs to get 3 outs when it counts the most.  At the end of the game with the game on the line.

Closers are a strange breed.  They thrive under stress.   They challenge hitters directly.  There can’t be a lot of fooling around and a lot of trickery.  It’s their best stuff against the hitter’s best swing.  There’s no tickling batters to death.  You come right at them and they do what they can.  It’s zero sum.

Closers throw strikeouts and they give up homeruns.

They do not walk hitters.  Even if they have nothing working, they better throw that nothing right over the plate.  Kevin Gregg walked five hitters.  He made an error, threw a ball into the outfield, and, basically, gave away base after base.  When he finally threw his nothing over the plate, it sent everyone he’d given bases to, home.

On his own way home, Gregg said something to the umpire that got him tossed out of a game he was already pulled from.  That’s when he had to be restrained.

That is not how you lose.

And it’s not how you win either.  You fight the batter, not the umpire.

I would have rather seen Gregg give up back to back to back homeruns.  And I certainly would have rather seen Gregg just sit down when he blew the save.   That tantrum was a childish and grotesque display by a pitcher who did not earn the right to one.  What happened in that inning was no one’s fault but his.  He needs to accept that.

But he still managed to teach a lesson:  If you can’t pitch right, you can still act right.

Too bad he didn’t.

And for that, I’d say it’s time to give one of the kids a shot.  It is a rebuilding year and I am a David Purcey fan.   And I remember him doing some damage to a pretty good Tampa Bay team not so long ago.  Wonder if he can do some more.

There’s one way to find out.