An 0-2 count: a situation any sane hitter dreads. Down two strikes, the pitcher can throw you anything in his arsenal, the nastiest of curves or the filthiest of change-ups. Major leaguers hit a combined meager .156 with an 0-2 count, and it doesn’t get much better 1-2 or 2-2 either. All the odds point to the fact the hitter should probably just get ready to grab some pine.
Maybe I’m not as sane as I thought, but I love hitting with two strikes. Everything about any two strike count brings out the best in me at the plate. It must be something about going into “battle mode” or “two strike [Personality]” as coach Raich puts it. And there is no way I’m going to let that pitcher beat me because with two strikes, it has nothing to do with skill: only will (no, not my name).
This absence of skill is what I love. When the only thing that matters is the amount of determination you carry and desire to get on base. In my entire Paly athletic career, it has never really been about just skill. I am proud to admit I have never been the “star” of our football or baseball teams. On the football field, Michael Cullen (‘11) and Kevin Anderson (‘11) still lay the most bone-crunching hits, and T.J. Braff (‘11) hits bombs on the diamond like nobody else. Anyways, I would prefer to stick to what I do best: hitting with two strikes.
I’m not exactly sure what my two strike batting average is, but I’m pretty sure it’s a little higher than the meager major league .156. Yet, the thing about facing slim odds like that is they become motivation. For anyone who saw ESPN’s fleeting “win probability” meter during the College World Series, they would agree that the “win probability” of the Palo Alto Vikings against the Centennial Huskies was a lot lower than 15.6 percent. And off the sports field, 15.6 percent is a whole lot higher than the acceptance rate for many top colleges we all had the “pleasure” of applying to. But these are only odds and predictions for a reason. We shocked Centennial, and students from Paly did get accepted into top universities. It could be a cancer patient fighting and eventually overcoming the disease, to an abused pit bull escaping the vicious cycle of dogfighting, to a orphaned child struggling to survive in a war zone. Compared to those situations, playing a game of baseball seems easy.
The unique thing about baseball is that it’s just a game, yet it can teach you so much about life. Just ask Paly assistant coach (and mentor/idol to everybody on the team) Dick Held about how baseball influenced his career with the FBI, and you will hear thrilling stories of intense situations where he had to “take a deep breath, relax, and simplify”, skills that are most easily learned by stepping into a batters box down 0-2.
It is only fitting that our season stood in an 0-2 count, needing to win two in a row against Wilcox for the league championship. After a clutch pitching performance by Graham Marchant (‘11) and another mammoth bomb by Braff, we were league champions. However, two games still stand between us and the ultimate goal, a Central Coast Section (CCS) championship. We have a chance to beat the best of the best in Division I, and I’m excited for the challenge. This is my 0-2 count for now, and I know I will have many more to face later in life, and they may not be as easy as playing a game of baseball. But if there is one thing I can take away from baseball, its that we all “hit with two strikes” in life, just in varying ways. And I’m not going down looking on a fastball down the middle.