Curveball : The Year I Lost My Grip (9780545393119) Read Online Free PDF

fastball, two-seam fastball, cutter, change.
    When this has gone far beyond unbearable, I go to the favorites folder. “Favorites” is a pretty ironic word for what’s in there. What I have is a set of maybe a dozen web pages about an injury called osteochondritis dissecans: my injury. I know you probably haven’t heard of it. I hadn’t, either, until the doctors broke the news to me after several X-rays and an MRI. Basically, I should have told my parents about the stupid pain in my elbow. And because I hadn’t, because I had kept pitching when I should have stopped, I had worn out my elbow joint. The cartilage at the end of my upper arm bone had lost its blood supply, died, and cracked off. Then the surgeon had had to go in there, fish out the broken-off pieces that were jamming up the joint, carve away some more unhealthy cartilage, reshape the end of the bone, close me up, and hope for the best.
    â€œThe best,” as in, “You’ll never pitch again, but maybe you won’t have crippling arthritis in your arm before you’re thirty.”
    By the second week of school, I had such big bags under my eyes, I looked like a bad-guy alien from Star Wars . Or a rabid raccoon. Of course, our first assignment in photography class was to do a portrait of a partner. And naturally, I got assigned to the only other freshman in the class: Angelika Stone. Tidbits Girl.
    The school cameras had been fancy when they were new but were kind of primitive now, and we couldn’t use studio lighting or camera flashes because everyone was shooting in the same room. I knew my grandfather’s amazing lenses would work better in low light than anything the class had, but I would have felt a little weird bringing in his $1,500 Nikon with its $500 portrait lens. Anyway, I figured Angelika was so pretty, I’d get a good grade no matter what I did.
    When shooting time came, Angelika wanted me to pose first. I felt like the biggest idiot in the world sitting there with my shadowed eyes, in a grungy long-sleeved Philadelphia 76ers jersey, my hair spiking in random directions.
    I gave it a good effort, though. Angelika made posing fun by pretending this was a real modeling shoot.In fact, she was so loud about it that I thought the upperclassmen were going to smack her, or officially shun us, or something: “Work those lips, Petey! Really give it to me! Love the camera! Lo-o-ove the camera!” So I worked the lips. I really gave it to her. I lo-o-oved the camera. We were having a great time until Mr. Marsh came over, looked at Angelika’s photos in the camera’s viewfinder, and started critiquing:
    â€œAngelika, what do ya see in your mind when ya pic-chuh Pee-tuh? Ya need to know what ya want before ya shoot. I mean, you guys can edit the shots all you want aftah — you can work togethah on the editing, by the way — but it’s always bettah if yer raw material has a direction . Is Pee-tuh a serious person? Are ya goin’ for gravity — the Abe Lincoln effect? Is he gorgeous — are ya going in a GQ direction? Is he mysterious? Ya need to develop a concept ! Think about what ya want the world to see through your lens!”
    OK, it was cheesy, embarrassing, fortune-cookie-wisdom stuff, but I could handle it. Until Mr. Marsh started getting technical:
    â€œAnd then there are the, um, cosmetic issues. That hair” — actually, he said “hay-uh” — “are ya going Wild Man of Borneo on purpose? The skin — are ya gonna get rid of that shine in Photoshop afterward? We might have a filter that would help. It’s always easier to fix the image than to deal with the blemishes in processing. Oooh, and the glare from his glasses. Again, ya could go with a filtuh now, or …”
    I have to admit, I sort of tuned out the rest of the speech. In fact, I asked to be excused and headed for the rest room. By the time I got back, Mr. Marsh had moved