What started out as some back-and-forth trash talking has turned into quite the bet, one that could ultimately get my arm amputated.
Sportswriter Josh Krueger and myself are always arguing: be it about Michael Vick, the dominance of the Patriots or who's going to win next year's state football championship.
So it was just another run-of-the-mill day when Josh and I were debating which sport is cooler to play in a league: volleyball or wiffleball. Josh is a member of a Tuesday night volleyball league in Newport, while I play wiffleball on a team in Portsmouth.
I told Josh that I had a pretty good pitching arm for wiffleball (OK, I said "rocket arm," and the rest of the discussion (verbatim) goes like this:
Josh: What would happen if you tried to throw a baseball now? Would your rocket arm fall completely off, since a baseball weighs about 1,000 times more than a wiffleball?
Scott: If I warmed up my arm, I truly believe I could get high 70s
Josh: You're on crack. You'd hit 55 on the gun and throw out your arm in the process. Your wiffleball career would be over.
We decided on 75 as the target. I'm not sure where or when this little showdown is going to happen (hopefully Saturday), but it will happen. I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous about getting up that high, but as a former pretty crappy Division III college baseball player, I have to believe 75 isn't that fast in the grand scheme of things.
To anyone reading this, chime in and let me know what you think. Will I hit the 75-mph mark and win the bet, or end up needing Tommy John surgery?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I think you underestimate how fast 75 mph really is for people with our level of baseball talent (which I would categorize as minimal, at best). I talked to Dave Ulmschneider, the former Portsmouth High School and current R&R Construction American Legion baseball coach, about this little wager. (He's going to hook us up with a radar gun to settle this.) He told me that a very good (not great) high school pitcher will occasionally touch 80 mph. Last I checked, a "pretty crappy Division III college baseball player" is not equal to a very good high school pitcher.
My other main point of contention is that Scott seems to think pitching in a wiffleball league has given him a live arm. I have no doubts that he's an outstanding wiffleball pitcher, but compared to a wiffleball, a baseball is going to feel like a shot put.
Guys in the on-deck circle in a baseball game aren't warming up by swinging a wiffleball bat. They warm up with weights on their bats so the bat feels lighter when they get to the plate.
Again, I really have no clue how this is going to turn out. I trust Dave U., but I know that when I was a 15-year-old, 125-pound kid, I was throwing in the mid-60s. Or at least the gun at Canobie Lake Park said I was.
Now that 16 years and 75 pounds have been added to my life, that I could squeak out 10 more miles per hour on my blazing two-seamer.
Body parts and muscles sort of deteriorate with age not magically get better. My opinion? Scott might hit 60 mph. Might.
Scott, your wiffleball pitching talents are slightly exaggerated.
Easy for Mr. Anonymous to say how my pitching talents in wiffleball are exaggerated. Easy indeed.
last time I played wiffle ball was 7th grade gym class
Post a Comment