BASEBALL'S SLOWEST PITCHER

A Summer’s Mythic Baseball Happening

Muley Mulholland had two pitches: a fast ball and a change-up. His fast ball was not what sportswriters might describe as a lightning bolt, No, but at least you could be pretty sure it would eventually arrive at the plate. On the other hand his change-up, or what opposing players called his snail ball, took forever to reach the batter. Time stopped when Muley threw that snail ball

Batters got unnerved watching Muley wind up his elongated frame in preparation for the delayed release of one of his tantalizing teasers.

The faultless flinger’s body seemed composed entirely of elbows and knees supporting a tiny head with flyaway ears that sometimes flapped in a high wind, and a beaky schnozz, whose magnificent protuberance he employed as an aiming device as he peered down its sloping grandeur at the batter.

The suspense of waiting for Muley's reluctant horsehide was unbearable. Batters could bend over and tie their shoelaces while awaiting his tardy toss.

How the big fight happened

On the fateful day I am about to show in its full horror, Muley was pitching against the Menlo Park Crusaders, who hadn’t lost a game all summer. The Crusaders were not ballplayers, they were a mob, a gang of street fighters and bad boys with brass knuckles in their pockets.

The Menlo Nine had never seen Muley’s stuff before. On that hot summer day it was astounding the agony those poor batters went through just waiting for one of Muley’s pitches to arrive at the plate.

The big fight started in the top of the ninth with the Menlo Crusaders at bat. We were ahead one to nothing and they had two outs with a runner on second.

Ferdinand Osrowski, Menlo's big cleanup hitter, was their last chance to score. The Menlo Park slugger hadn’t been able to touch Muley all day and I knew trouble was coming when he strode up to the plate with two away and one on. His red eyes flashed under his heavy dark eyebrows. I knew he figured for sure he had Muley’s change-up timed and was ready to jump on it.

But I’d seen what Muley’s leisurely lobs could do to these cocky power hitters. It was the waiting that drove them nuts.

Ferdinand Ostrowski’s teammates hollered insults and taunts from the dugout, razzing Muley, trying to rattle him. “Hey, Snail Nose! Put some mustard on that ball. We ain’t got all night!. Your Mom’s prob’ly still waitin’ for ya to get borned. This ain’t baseball. What’re you throwing out there, marshmallows? This is flat embarrassin’. Ya shoulda throw’d that pitch last Tuesday - maybe it’d be gettin there by now.”

On that dusty afternoon in the glare of the July sun I crouched at shortstop and waited for Ostrowski’s blast, Sweat streamed down and burned my eyes. I edged over to Freddie, a short, round little kid playing third base. I told Freddie, “I’ve seen this guy swing a bat. He can knock it downtown, but if he gets a hernia swinging at Muley’s change-up , there’s gonna be trouble. When the fight starts, I’ll create a diversion. Then you run around and grab all our equipment so it don’t get lost in the fracas. Grab our bat, the bases, everything.”

“Okay,” said Freddie. “I know the routine.”

Hubba, hubba, hubba,” yelled Miles Lang, the tall redheaded kid in center field.

“No batter no batter no batter," yelled Bent Nose Bozzo crouched behind the plate.. It all became a roaring in my ears, made me feel a little dizzy. I shook my head, splashing sweat in the dirt.

Muley wasted a fast ball, high and outside. Ferdinand Ostrowski calmly studied its approach for a long moment, then leaned back on his bat and inspected his nails as it floated toward Bent Nose Bozzo’s mitt.

“Swing, batter, swing,” screamed Bent Nose.

“Ball wuun!” cried the ump.

Ostrowski regarded the angular pitcher with disdain and spat in the dirt. “That the slowest pitch you got, you pin-headed creep? Lemme see that change-up of yours, I’ll show you what a ballplayer can do to it!”

The imperturbable flinger went into his elaborate windup, which took a couple of minutes right there, and delicately released one of his snail balls.

Spellbound under the cessation of time, we waited as the ball drifted like a child’s bubble toward Ostrowski. Red-faced, veins pulsing in his bull neck, the enraged batter pounded on the plate and stamped his size fourteen high-top brogans in the dirt sending up a cloud of dust.

Would Cosmic Forces intervene?

Now I actually feared that the Celestial Keepers of Right and Wrong - ever alert to any violation of the immutable laws of baseball - would move in and take over, perhaps to strike should their intervention be required to balance out the steady progression of Earth's happenings.

In the trees, birds ceased twittering and hopped about frantically, aware that all was not right in their avian universe. Gophers dived down their burrows.

Ferdinand Ostrowski drew back his terrible bludgeon ready to unleash forces unknown to mortal man’s primitive grasp of physics. The very universe seemed to hold its breath.

“Swing, batter, swing!” yelled Bent Nose Bozzo, pounding his fist into his glove.

In great suspense we waited. Out in centerfield, Miles Lang, whose eyesight was not that great anyway, adjusted his bifocals, brushed his red hair from his eyes and drifted back until he bumped his head on the fence and dropped to the grass momentarily stunned.

In the blazing heat of that mid-summer day, Muley Mulholland’s challenge against the eternal laws of space and time drifted toward Bent Nose’s mitt,

In the timeless vacuum, puzzled neighborhood dogs ran in circles, barking and panting in protest against they knew not what. The drone of bees altered to a higher pitch. Out in center, Miles propped himself up on an elbow and held up his glove to shield his eyes from the sun,or perhaps to protect his head against a line drive.

In the hot corner at third, unable to stand the suspense, Freddie’s nerve broke. He deserted his base and hopped over the foul line out of the line of fire.

Now Ferdinand Ostrowski’s nerve broke too. Dead set on crushing the ball into eternity. and unable to wait any longer, he hopped and scuttled toward the mound to meet Muley‘s tardy offering, Still he couldn’t reach it. Cursing and waving his bat, the muscular Crusader continued hopping his clodhoppers closer to the mound until, at last, the change-up crawled within reach.

“Swing, batter, swing!” screamed Bent Nose Bozzo.

“Now I got it,” roared Ferdinand. He drew his bat back, back, back until his bones popped, then cut loose at the ball in what I feared would be the game-winning wallop.

But no! His timing off, he was a little out in front of the ball. The friction of his swing set the air on fire. Smoke curled over the field and darkened the sky. Terrible forces of nature cried out in protest against the vacuum created by the passage of his weapon. Masses of displaced sir slammed back together to fill the void, producing a sonic BOOM!

The force of the swing tore the blackened and smoking Louisville Slugger from his grasp. What was left of the bat hummed through the air like a child’s toy and crashed through the left field fence into Mr. Smither’s backyard. I saw old man Smithers waving the smoking remnant over the top of the fence.

“You booyys,” I heard him faintly screaming. “Balls you hit over here break my windows. Then you trample my flower beds. Now you throw baaats and try to set fire to my fenncce!”

“Steerike wunn,” cried the ump.

Ostrowski grabbed another bat and pounded it on the plate, preparing for what I feared would be a cataclysmic blast.

But Muley’s next offering fooled the Menlo bomber too. Instead of the expected change-up, it was Muley’s fast ball that now rushed toward the plate at a few feet per hour faster than his slow pitch. And Ostrowski, not recognizing the rapidity of the pill’s flight, glared his contempt at the pitch and spat in the dust. He turned away and strolled over to the water fountain for a drink.

To his teammates hunkered down in the dugout sharpening their spikes, he growled, “When that poor ball gets here I’m gonna knock it clean into the next county!”

But the Menlo bomber had badly misjudged the velocity of the ball. Just as he stepped back into the batter’s box there was the soft plop of the ball nestling into Bent Nose Bozzo’s glove.

“Hey,” he said, scratching his head. “How’d that ball get here so quick? I was only gone about a hour.”

“Steeriike two,” hollered the ump.

Ostrowski buried his head in his broad shoulders. Smoke poured from his ears. He dug his spikes in deep. He seemed to grow from the earth like some massive stone flung there from outer space. His howling mouth was larger than his face. He pounded his bat on the plate in a frenzy of anticipation. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Actual tears of rage splashed on home plate.

“Throw me that creepy pitch of yours again,” he howled. “I dare ya. And I ain’t leaving till it gets here neither!”

I waved everybody back until nobody was left in the infield but me and Muley and Bent Nose Bozzo. The rest of the guys were lined up against the fence. With a look of scorn, Muley went into his windup and released the slowest pitch of his career.

Inch by inch the ball crept toward home plate, gently shoving aside stubborn molecules of air. From the field, our guys hollered "hubba hubba" and "hum-baby" and "no batter, no batter, no batter!"

Neighborhood dogs, baffled by this warpage of time in their finely structured world of "Come and go, sit and beg, fetch and return," ceased barking and began howling at this new mystery in dogdom.

Meanwhile in rage and frustration, the veins popping on his neck, Ferdinand Ostrowski crouched lower at the plate, pounding his bat, hitching up his pants, jamming his cap down over his ears, readjusting his jock.

Blackness descends on the field!

Dizzy, my head spinning in a world gone black, I pounded my mitt and backed up another couple of inches. I couldn’t understand why the infield was so dark until I realized I was holding my breath and my brain had simply shut down from lack of oxygen.

Meanwhile, the umpire, his knees wobbling from the prolonged period of stooped attention behind the plate while peering through his sweat-blurred eyes at the ball’s leisurely approach, suddenly rolled up his eyes and tumbled forward over Bent Nose Bozzo and sprawled across the plate, out cold from heat stroke.

Ferdinand reached down with one hand and dragged the unconscious arbiter off to the side and dropped him in the dirt like a pile of dirty laundry. He jumped back in the box and banged his Louisville Slugger on the plate.

“We don’t need no ump,” he bawled. “I don’t care where this next pitch is, it’s gonna get outta here!” His barrel chest heaved with the effort required to suck in enough oxygen to support his prolonged preparation for the historic swat. His voice screeched like a rusty door. “Oh, when that ball gets here I’m gonna do somethin’ awful. Oh, just wait!”.

The built up pressure of the delayed rip became so great he could no longer delay the assault. His back, already twisted so far around that the barrel of the bat was pointing at Muley, now got torqued around one more notch. At that impossible angle it looked to me like his back was sure to break.

Now once more Ostrowski began his grim sideway hop, eager to meet the approaching horsehide. Teeth clenched, spitting saliva, panting with desire, his size sixteen spikes stomping in the dust, he howled his evil intention. “I got it! I got it now! Look out, World!"

I knew what was happening: a voice in his head was telling him "NOW! NOW! NOW IS THE MOMENT!"

Our youthful diamond drama was almost played out!

The mighty Menlo bomber swung. The earth moved. Trees bent to the ground. Neighborhood dogs ceased howling and crawled under their houses to shiver there in the dark. Housewives slammed their kitchen windows. Far north in Canada a moose - its jaws full of dripping lily pads - lifted an inquiring head. What new disturbance was this?

Something had to give, and what gave was Ferdinand’s back. I heard a loud pop! and the Menlo slugger dropped to the ground. “My back! Oh,my back,” he cried out. “Did I nail it, guys? Did I get a piece of it?”
Now’s when the fight started

Ferdinand’s teammates poured out of the dugout and charged Muley, which stone-faced stalwart calmly removed his glove and put up his dukes to defend himself against the approaching mob of bat waving assassins from Menlo Park.

As it turned out the big slugger had indeed gotten a piece of the ball. I had watched the object of his hate shoot straight up until it was a mere dot in the blue; it continued to rise until it vanished. On that summer afternoon, although it is unrecorded in the books, the Menlo bomber had hit the highest popup in history.

As the melee swirled in the dust around the stiff-punching figure of our master of the delayed delivery. I suddenly shouted a command: “Stop! According to the rule book, the play is still in continuance!”

This formal-sounding quotation stopped the fight. The Menlo hoods whirled around to me. “Huh? Whaddaya mean? You can’t stop no fight with some dumb rule. Ain’t you got no historical perspective?”

I pointed skyward and calmly stated: “The ball is still in play. Rule X-19, (revised 1902) clearly states that ‘Play shall continue until the flight of the ball is arrested by a celestial object or until it returns from outer space.’”

Dumbfounded by this official-sounding interruption of their historic right to strike back at the forces of evil, the Menlo Park mob smacked their brass knuckled fists in their hands and waved their bats. They gathered on the mound and squinted upward, shading their eyes while searching the blue vault of heaven for their teammate’s historic clout.

Having distracted their attention, I reached into the mob and yanked Muley out to safety.

Meanwhile, Freddie and Bent Nose raced around grabbing our equipment. “What about my ball,” Freddie complained. “It didn’t come down yet!”

“Never mind that,” I said. “We’ll get it later. Trust me.”

Carrying our equipment, all four of us raced to centerfield, alerted our teammates to the happening and leaped over the fence.

Recorded for all time!

Today, two brass plaques immortalize that incident of our youth. Chiseled in the first plaque embedded behind the pitcher’s mound are the words:

From this spot Muley Muholland delivered the slowest pitch in history. It never arrived at the plate.

The second plaque, sunk in the ground at the spot where Ferdinand Ostrowski took his final rip, states:

From this hallowed spot, Ferdinand Ostrowski hit the world’s highest popup. It never came down.

Actually, that second plaque is not quite accurate. The ice-coated baseball came down next morning and I was there to catch it for the third out. Besides, we needed Freddie’s ball for the rest of the season. ##