Another day of Pitcher’s Fielding Practice, or PFPs. We do roughly four-billion hours of PFPs in spring training to prepare us for the five or six real plays we’ll get during the year. Many pitchers are of the opinion this is just busy work. That’s because most pitchers are athletic. I’m not. I pitch, and that’s about the extent of my athletic prowess. Essentially, PFPs are just four-billion great opportunities for me to embarrass myself. We all lined behind the field four mound, while a coach, one of the few I did not know, hit grounders back up the middle to us after we went through a fake delivery. Some guys wound up in overexaggerated Japanese-style deliveries, whereas others didn’t bother to bend over before heaving their ball of make-believe. When my turn came up, I wound in my own mechanics and delivered a nasty sinking, invisiball, which induced a chopper back my way. The ball took a late hop off the dirt. I missed it, the ugly kind of miss where the fielder pulls his glove up in expectation of a hop that doesn’t come, the ball darting between the legs.
