During the Covid lockdown, I found myself captivated by archival footage of “real human life.” I spent hours scouring the internet for any videos featuring Pedro Martinez, my all-time favorite baseball player, in action. Watching him pitch felt like rediscovering forgotten memories or experiencing something I had never known before. Luckily, the most memorable game of his career, which occurred on September 10, 1999, when his team, the Boston Red Sox, faced off against the Yankees in New York during that year’s playoff race, is now widely available online. This game goes beyond being just a baseball match—it is a masterpiece, a work of art in the form of a novel, an opera, a lyrical composition. Observing it is akin to witnessing Virginia Woolf crafting “Mrs. Dalloway” in real-time, right before your eyes.
Unsurprisingly, my viewing habits began to influence my own writing. I expressed this sentiment in my journal, stating, “This is how writing feels lately. It’s about pitch sequencing, sentence variation, and leading the reader through the paragraph. Fastball, curveball, changeup. Normal sentence, long sentence, short sentence. Declarative sentence, periodic sentence, sentence fragment. Keep the readers on their toes, keep throwing the ball past them.” I constantly contemplate the role that rhythm and movement play in my prose and in the works of my favorite authors. I adore how language can flow effortlessly from my mind to my fingertips, much like a curveball gracefully arcing from the hand of an All-Star pitcher. I studied Martinez, first as a baseball player, and then, ultimately, as an artist. I closely examined his techniques, just as one would analyze a Modernist writer. Surprisingly, Martinez turned out to be an excellent writing instructor—a notion that may sound absurd. His signature games serve as a master class in shifting registers, formulating strategies, and creating patterns and motifs. Through Martinez, I learned how to perform on the page.
The Yankee game begins with an air of peculiarity. In the bottom of the first inning, Martinez’s inside fastball brushes against Chuck Knoblauch’s jersey, allowing him to reach base. Similarly, a number of my favorite masterpieces commence with a touch of whimsy. For instance, Woolf wrote, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” What kind of pitch is that? It’s a confident and declarative opening sentence that stakes its claim—perhaps akin to a brushback fastball. “For Lucy had her work cut out for her.” At first glance, this seems like another fastball, but the initial “for” adds some spin, transforming it into a curveball on the outer corner. After Knoblauch is caught stealing, Martinez proceeds to retire the next four batters, before unexpectedly throwing a flat fastball to the Yankee slugger, Chili Davis. Davis seizes the opportunity and smacks a home run into the right-field bleachers, giving the Yankees a 1-0 lead after two innings.
Amidst the initial awkwardness of the game, one might overlook the essence of what is transpiring. In fact, many of Martinez’s greatest performances appear to be catalyzed by self-imposed constraints—an act of raising the stakes as a showman. (Take, for example, the game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in August 2000 when he instigated a bench-clearing brawl by hitting the leadoff batter, Gerald Williams, before proceeding to pitch a no-hitter for eight complete innings.) It’s as if Martinez’s pitching potential, his “stuff” as baseball scouts would say, is a potent yet unruly beam of light that he must refine and focus on as the game progresses.
Denial of responsibility! VigourTimes is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
