Colin Harris:
This is a story about redemption.
Early high school Colin was not a cool guy. I was a “pick-me” boy, which in terms of grade school personas is only marginally better than a “where my hug at” guy, both of whom are bottom of the barrel persona-wise. Due to my parents never forcing me to play sports growing up and my aversion to trying new things, sports was just never something I did, or even a part of our family. As a child I don’t think I could name three NFL teams or tell you what a safety was. The only quarterbacks I knew were Tom Brady and of course Peyton Manning, because I’m from Knoxville.
I’ve wrestled my entire life with the fact I wasn’t a sports guy and to be honest, yeah, I felt left out a lot as a child. I couldn’t join in on the team talk or compare players, and I felt out of place trying to hoop or run a play. I think as a coping mechanism, I turned my disinterest in sports into a marketing opportunity to set myself apart from “the jerky jock guys.” Thus begun the “I’m not like the other guys, I don’t like sports” era of my life, something I look back on with great disgust and disdain now.
That Colin is dead and gone today, and though I have yet still to ever play an organized game of anything other than pickleball or frisbee, I don’t use that as a selling point, I see it as a growing point. This is the year that I’m stepping out and trying new things, and it starts with trying sports.
This Sunday, I got to spend a couple hours on a baseball pitch with fellow writer Tristan Kluck, who also happens to be a sports aficionado, and Ethan Orwig, a pitcher for Union University’s baseball team. He took a fish like me under his wing and tossed me a few pitches, letting me throw in return. We warmed up first by playing catch, the last time I had being more than a decade before with my dad. It was honestly such a restorative experience. I see how guys can do it for hours to unwind and just turn their brains off.
Orwig tossed me his pine-tar covered helmet and I stepped up to the plate, he to the mound. Confession time: I’ve never swung a bat once in my life. Before I could even blink a fastball zinged into the top right pocket of the pitching net. I sheepishly told him we’d have to ease up to that. I embarrassingly swung and missed at some freebies before knocking one good one center right, sprinkling in some foul balls here and there.
Then he hit me with his fastballs, 80-90 mph of death, or that’s what it felt like. Needless to say, I didn’t hit a home run, but I made contact at least once. I’m content with that, having never swung a bat. My pitching was much of the same. We never clocked it but I would be astonished if I threw past 60 mph. I was wildly sporadic and it was a miracle no one was hurt, but I think I sunk one or two in the strike zone pockets.
Like with anything in life, with context comes appreciation. Having actually swung a bat and pitched a ball myself, the sheer discipline it takes to be even remotely competent astounds me. Maybe it’s because my senior year in college is sneaking up on me, but I’m feeling unusually contemplative and remorseful about experiences I haven’t had yet.
Most boys swing their first bat in little league when they’re 7 years old, I did when I was almost 22. Am I just eons behind? Maybe, but life is always about learning and growing and trying new things, and I for one am excited to spend the rest of it chasing them.
Tristan Kluck:
Sports has always been a big part of my life. It’s been a beautiful point of connection between my family members and myself, as well as providing opportunities to meet new people. Sports connects people who would have no normal connections to each other, which is in my opinion the funniest part about it.
At the collegiate level, the athletes that play for Union teams are really good at what they do. Sometimes the record may not indicate that, but individually the athletes that Union brings in are incredibly good at their sports.
My roommate for the past two years was a Union soccer player, and the first time I played pick-up soccer with him I was taken aback by how much better he was than the rest of the guys playing who weren’t collegiate players.
I had always wanted to play baseball; I became a fan of the sport in high school but never played (a regret of mine). A good friend of mine, and roommate freshman year, is a pitcher on the baseball team, and I wanted to see if I could get a hit off of him.
Ethan Orwig, senior right-handed pitcher and journalism major, agreed to throw Colin Harris and I a few pitches to help give us a better idea of how hard it would be to hit a fastball.
When I got to the baseball field, Ethan was already rolling tarps back and setting up nets. He stressed to us the importance of keeping track of all the balls we used. The field was pristine and very green, it felt like a baseball field should. Because opening day was this past Thursday, Ethan had the St. Louis Cardinals game on a small speaker he had brought. He was softly mumbling his comments about the game, which to me is the ultimate sign of a sports fan.
Ethan’s knowledge of the game and of pitching was incredible. He walked Colin and I through different pitching grips and how he had to adapt to throw them with his unorthodox arm slot. He even explained the way that different pitched have evolved over the past few years.
As I stepped into the batter’s box with an aluminum bat and a helmet covered in pine tar, I didn’t know what to expect. I had been watching baseball for years and had seen countless videos on how to swing a bat, but I knew it wouldn’t be easy.
Ethan started with a few slower pitches, and then ramped up the speed. As the pitches got faster, I began to realize how hard it was going to be to get the bat around in time. I sat there knowing a pitch was going to be hittable, but as my brain messaged to my body to swing the bat, the ball would whizz by me and into the net behind me. Middle-middle.
The sports that we watch every day are hard. And the athletes who perform in them are special.
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