Remainders

I have a longer post re. a concept known as "pitching to contact" in baseball which is a skill that many older pitchers (or those reinventing themselves post injury) must master. Rather than striking a batter out and thus winning by overpowering the offense, the pitcher throws the batters pitches he knows they can hit (hence pitching to contact) and relies on the seven men playing defense behind him to make the appropriate out. It is an orientation that requires a great deal of trust -- there are after all seven people covering a lot of ground in whom you must have absolute faith -- and it is especially difficult to adopt if your former approach was to mow down batters at the plate. The latter is the control freak approach (effective, if you have the talent to manage it), the former is the wise and more accessible approach. Using the former, you don't need to be a once in a lifetime talent to get what you want, you just need to be alert and astute and have a little faith.

So, my theory is that I need to learn to "pitch to contact" so to speak. I will never get what I want trying to control the whole game. I don't have that much talent. Very few do. It is a lot easier to accomplish the same thing by simply putting pitches out there and letting things progress.

Working on it. Currently caught up in a wave of nostalgia. My past has come back to me in so many different forms. Some complimentary. Some creepy. All educational, I suppose. Mostly in that I think that -- for me -- there isn't as much unfinished business out there as I thought. I feel like maybe I am on the precipice of a breakthrough, but I never quite seem to be able to break through. I can turn a boy's head, but I can't ever seem to get him to stick around. This doesn't make me sad as it once did. It just leaves me puzzled. I am utterly without even the first idea as to how I am to close the deal and convince someone that being seen in public with me on a regular basis is a good thing. I suppose that when the right fit comes along then it will all just work itself out. But as I am not getting any younger and my expiration date grows ever closer, I figure it doesn't hurt to be proactive.

Pitch to contact, indeed.