Now two weeks from opening day and the first pitch of the Ohio State baseball season, a look back at how times, and things, have changed.
I found a box this week with a stack of yellow legal pads – notes and some old photos from my experience as a college baseball player as a Buckeye from 1971 through 1975.
In it, I found a copy of the letter written by my American Legion coach in Troy, Ohio – Frosty Brown – written in the summer of 1970 to then Buckeye pitching coach Dick Finn, urging Finn to see me pitch when I got on campus in the fall and winter of 1970.
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I found some old clippings from my hometown paper, detailing how as a freshman I participated in the Rose Bowl that year with the Ohio State Marching band, and…”he plans to try out for baseball.”
How different from now. I’m pretty sure that a hand-written letter from Frosty Brown wouldn’t cut it, anymore. No one shows up sight-unseen nowadays and makes a Division I college baseball team. No history, no Prep Baseball Report, or showcase exposure? No chance to play college baseball at this level.
And yet, after the 1970 football season and that trip to the Rose Bowl I showed up in Finn’s office at St. John Arena and asked him if I could throw for him at French Field House, where the Buckeyes worked out indoors during the winter. He found the letter from Frosty Brown, buried deep in a pile of correspondence in his file cabinet, read it, and then passed it across the room to head coach Marty Karow.
Dick Finn was the pitching coach when I walked on in 1971. He later replaced Marty Karow as head coach when Karow retired in 1975.
“It couldn’t hurt, Dick,” said Karow. “He might throw strikes. Or, we might need someone to play the fight song.”
And with that, he got up and walked out.
“Be at French at 3 this afternoon,” said Finn. “They’ll give you some gear downstairs.”
And that’s how it happened. I threw on the sidelines three times the first week before Finn put me in during a live-bat scrimmage at French against varsity hitters.
I did not throw hard. As a senior in high school I might have hit 82-84 on a radar gun, had we had radar guns in those days. But I could make the ball move, and I could throw the breaking ball for strikes. And that’s what I did. Instead of throwing batting practice fastballs, I threw an assortment of curveballs for strikes and quickly learned that college hitters are no different than high school. Throw strike one with a breaking ball and they’re going to take it. Hitters want to hit the fastball.
But if you can get ahead with the breaking ball, now they have to swing…and they might swing at a fastball out of the strike zone. Former big leaguer Harvey Haddix, who played with my high school coach Jim Hardman in Springfield, Ohio – and coached in the big leagues forever – once described it as hitters getting themselves out. “Just get ahead,” he would say. “And see if it doesn’t go your way.”
It went my way well enough that by the end of winter workouts Finn came to me and told me that I would be making the spring break trip to Coral Gables, Florida. They wanted to see some more. It still went well, I pitched twice that week, about six innings, and actually beat Miami-Dade College. I did well enough to get some varsity innings when we got home.
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They had a junior varsity team in 1974, and I quickly got more opportunity against Division III varsity teams that would schedule Ohio State’s JVs. I beat Marietta College, one of the best Division III teams in the Ohio Athletic Conference, and finished with about 25 innings that first year.
The point is, I would never have gotten such an opportunity today.
One, there are no players in the Big Ten who play in the marching band, which I did for three years.
Two, unknown walk-ons are unheard of in modern college baseball. If there’s no record of you on PBR (Prep Baseball Report), or Perfect Game, you might not get into the baseball office.
My last start as a Buckeye, a 7-5 win over Michigan State in May, 1974.
And three, if you are on one of those websites you’d better throw better than 85 miles per hour, a fact that haunted Dick Finn and Marty Karow.
Forced to use me over the next two years, I pitched, and I won, but I never threw the ball harder than maybe 86 or 87, even as I grew bigger and stronger.
Finn would tinker with my mechanics, trying to squeeze out more velocity.
Karow once told me that the Big Ten was a fastball league, and that it was embarrassing to get people out throwing “soft”. “I don’t need cunny-thumbers,” he insisted.
And, “You have to throw more to get stronger,” he said. “You need to throw every day.”
And I tried. Lord knows I tried, because I loved baseball and the challenge of pitching and would have tried anything. I threw so much, at Karow’s directing, and tried so many things that I eventually had arm trouble and barely pitched my senior season.
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Today, I marvel at the young pitchers who show up at Bill Davis – their velocity, their opportunity, and their dream of conquering the next level of baseball, wherever that might lead them.
It’s also why I don’t doubt anyone who wants to pitch, believes he can, and works to find a way…even if he doesn’t throw it 90 miles per hour.
And I see them do it. Because, there comes a time when you realize that regardless of how hard you throw hitters at this level are going to time you and make hard contact. You have to have an alternate pitch, and you have to use it confidently. What Haddix used to say, “You have to learn to pitch, instead of throw.”
That said, I’m always enthusiastic to see the next arm, the next heart, and the next result.
I always acknowledge that every pitcher on the roster has more talent than I had in 1971.
And I remember, too, that what I threw to Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor (Minnesota, and future hall of famers), Jim Sundberg (Iowa, and Texas Rangers), and Steve Swisher (Ohio Univ. and the Cubs) works the same now as it worked back then. I think I ended up winning nine games over four years, a stat that still amazes me as much as Mindy staying married to me for 43 years – a baseball widow.
Some things just work out.
Baseball then, and baseball now.
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