Sunday, March 25, 2007
Head Trip - N.Y. Times
The moment possessed that rare, rapturous feeling of a dream come true. Adam Greenberg knelt in the on-deck circle, awaiting his first at-bat in his first major-league game.
...
Then Greenberg stepped to home plate. ...
A major-league fastball takes less than half a second to travel the 60 feet 6 inches from a pitcher’s hand to home plate. This one was moving at 91 miles per hour, which isn’t particularly brisk as such things go. And yet the ball’s errant path toward Greenberg’s head seemed so utterly unavoidable that it was as if the pitch had been misaligned by some magnetic force, the foreknowledge of its menace allowing time for only the slightest twinge of fear.
As he instinctively spun away, Greenberg was hit behind the right ear, with part of the impact on his helmet and the rest on his skull. An imprint from the curved stitching of the baseball would remain stamped on his skin for days. His eyeballs floated upward, but he didn’t lose consciousness; in fact, he remained alert enough to worry for his life. He was sure his skull must have split open, and as he rolled on his back with his knees in the air, he held his head between his hands, trying to keep anything from leaking out.
...
Fate was in a nasty and perverse mood that evening, and that one throw of a baseball, that single amalgam of variables within the mechanics of pitching — the fingers exploring the braille of the ball’s raised thread, the hurried windmill movement of the arm, the angle of the launch, the density of the air, the deflection of spin as a smooth circle pushes through the emptiness — glided inches awry and changed everything. Adam Greenberg’s biggest moment lasted only a half second. ...
The moment possessed that rare, rapturous feeling of a dream come true. Adam Greenberg knelt in the on-deck circle, awaiting his first at-bat in his first major-league game.
...
Then Greenberg stepped to home plate. ...
A major-league fastball takes less than half a second to travel the 60 feet 6 inches from a pitcher’s hand to home plate. This one was moving at 91 miles per hour, which isn’t particularly brisk as such things go. And yet the ball’s errant path toward Greenberg’s head seemed so utterly unavoidable that it was as if the pitch had been misaligned by some magnetic force, the foreknowledge of its menace allowing time for only the slightest twinge of fear.
As he instinctively spun away, Greenberg was hit behind the right ear, with part of the impact on his helmet and the rest on his skull. An imprint from the curved stitching of the baseball would remain stamped on his skin for days. His eyeballs floated upward, but he didn’t lose consciousness; in fact, he remained alert enough to worry for his life. He was sure his skull must have split open, and as he rolled on his back with his knees in the air, he held his head between his hands, trying to keep anything from leaking out.
...
Fate was in a nasty and perverse mood that evening, and that one throw of a baseball, that single amalgam of variables within the mechanics of pitching — the fingers exploring the braille of the ball’s raised thread, the hurried windmill movement of the arm, the angle of the launch, the density of the air, the deflection of spin as a smooth circle pushes through the emptiness — glided inches awry and changed everything. Adam Greenberg’s biggest moment lasted only a half second. ...
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