Serendipity

When I was a youngin', I dreamt of baseball glory. I collected shoeboxes full of baseball cards. I watched every Cubs game I could to see my idols play and, more often than not, lose (this was the early '90s). I played pickup games with the neighborhood kids at the end of the street ("first base is that oil slick, second is the manhole cover..."), games that lasted until dark or until we hit a tennis ball into a car and had to scatter while the angry owner stormed outside to shut off a screeching alarm. On days when there was nobody to play ball with, I imagined 3-2 counts in the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, my Cubs down by three and battling the powerhouse A's in game seven of the World Series, then threw pinecones into the air and stroked them into the stands with my whiffle bat amidst the cheers of thousands of imaginary spectators.

So when I turned nine it was only natural that, like so many other nine year olds have done for so many years, I signed up for Little League baseball. And it was there my dreams died.

In retrospect, I really wish I'd stuck with the game. I still love baseball (more than ever, in fact), and who knows? Had I played past my awkward years, I might even have become a respectable ballplayer. But at the time, my eyesight was crap (corrective eyewear would change that soon afterwards), my reflexes at the plate were godawful, and I had this idiotic idea that, despite the fact that I probably weighed something in the neighborhood of sixteen pounds, I should be using a wooden bat like the big leaguers. To top it all off, I was in the North Mission Viejo Little League, which has won at least one Little League World Series title that I'm aware of. In other words, the kids around me were good, and I was not.

Put simply, I absolutely could not seem to hit. I carried a .000 batting average for the entire season (no, that's not a typo, and it's not defeatist hindsight). But when I walked (which was often, since even as a kid with bad eyes, I could lay off a pitch three feet out of the zone) or got hit by a pitch (also often thanks to those "reflexes"), I basically had an automatic triple unless there were runners ahead of me. According to league rules, runners had to wait until pitches crossed the plate before attempting to steal, and leadoffs were not allowed. But even at nine, I was fast. Hell, I even stole home once when I misunderstood a sign. The catcher was so shocked that he dropped the ball, and by the time he had picked it up again and shifted to his left to apply a tag, I was already under his glove.

Unfortunately, my Little League impression of an extremely patient Willie Mays Hayes did not endear me to my teammates, most of whom would probably have preferred to have me handing out bats instead of swinging them. But among the kids who never treated me any differently once it became obvious that I was nothing more than a track and field kid moonlighting in sliding pants and stirrups was David Aardsma.

David was, like me, a diehard Cubs fan who had to watch his favorite team lose from 1500 miles away. Unlike me, he was coordinated and talented. But our Cubs connection meant that we talked baseball a lot in the dugout and at school, and our moms caught on to this and started sitting together at games. But when I foolishly quit Little League after that one dismal season, I saw less and less of David, until he eventually moved away a couple years later.

Flash forward fourteen years. It was April 6, 2004, and I'd tuned in to a Giants/Astros game to listen to in the background while I did some chores when I heard a familiar name: David Aardsma was making his Major League debut in relief for the Giants. I abandoned my domestic plans to sit down and watch as a now 6'5", 200 lb David with a shaved head, a goatee, and one hell of a fastball pitched two solid innings and picked up his first big league win. To this day, I remember him getting that win against his childhood idol, Roger Clemens, though apparently it was Andy Pettite who started for the 'Stros. Perhaps my subconscious decided that absent-mindedly turning on a random baseball game on a random day only to see a childhood friend pick up his first Major League win in his first Major League start wasn't serendipitous enough; this memory had to be Hollywood caliber, and so naturally David would have had to face the Rocket.

Since that afternoon five years ago, I've followed David as he's bounced from team to team. He even landed with the Cubs for a while, during which time I got to see him pitch live for the first time since I was in third grade. But I slacked off a bit this season. I knew that he'd moved out west to pitch for the Mariners, but it wasn't until I stumbled upon an article over at The Baseball Analysts that I realized how good David has been so far in this young season. Dave Allen took a look at the expected run values of every pitch thrown by every pitcher in 2009, and atop the fastball list is David Aardsma.

Here's hoping that Aardsma can continue to keep his hits allowed totals down and cut down on the walks that have largely offset his solid K/9 rates over the course of his Major League career. Best of luck to you, David; you may be in the wrong jersey, but you've got at least one diehard Cubs fan rooting for you from the flatlands.