As soon as Cael stepped on the mound, he knew he wasn’t at home anymore. As he wound up and threw his first warm-up pitch, it seemed everything was out of sorts. The pitch flew high and wide. Why, in the biggest game of the season, did he feel so uncomfortable?
He looked down at the worn turf under his cleats and it began to come to him. After receiving the ball back from his catcher, he did his best to find a spot his foot would grab and give him a feel on he was used to on the mound. He focused in on his selected landing zone and hoped for the best.
But warm-up pitch two was no better. It skipped into the catcher’s mitt. What was happening? “At home, every pitch is true,” he mumbled to himself. At that point it hit him. His True Pitch Mound at home was designed to strict specifications. This road mound – in this big game – wasn’t true. It wasn’t just that it seemed so flimsy and slick. It was that it was too low. It was slippery in a way that made it tough to trust he could maintain his form. It prevented him from pushing off and planting like he was used to.
In short, it was nothing like home.
Cael managed to battle early in the game, giving up only a run on a walk and a couple seeing-eyed singles in the second inning. He battled out of trouble in the third, but in the fourth it fell apart. A couple walks, a double off the wall and a single to center put his team behind 4-1.
Cael struggled to square what was happening. He had breezed by this team at home. Six innings. Eight strikeouts. No runs. Was that just a stroke of luck? Were these guys really that good? Is this season going to end like this?
The racing of the questions stopped cold when Cael looked over to the dugout and saw his coach call for timeout and begin the walk out to the mound.
“How you feeling, bud?” Coach Carleton asked.
“I don’t know, coach. Something just doesn’t feel right. This mound doesn’t feel right,” Cael replied.
“I get it,” Coach said. “You aren’t used to throwing off a bump like that. But we need you to lock in and do what you can to keep us close. We will have to lean on the hitters to get us back in this.”
“Okay,” Cael said. “Okay.”
As Coach turned to walk back to the dugout, Cael slammed the ball into his mitt. Knowing his pitch count was climbing, he locked in and battled harder than he ever had before. No, he didn’t have his good stuff, but if they got through this game, they would have a shot at the state title. A game that would be played on their home field.
Cael managed to work through the fourth and fifth innings without giving up a run. His team tallied a run in the top of the fifth and a bases-loaded double gave them a 5-4 lead headed into the bottom of the last inning.
With just a dozen pitches left before he would have to be lifted, Cael coaxed a grounder, a fly and then got a called third strike to end the game and send his team to the state final.
From the bottom of the celebratory pile as he was mobbed by his team, one thing kept going through Cael’s mind. “There’s no place like home,” he repeated over and over, knowing that no matter how tough the competition in the state championship, he would have the ultimate secret weapon: His True Pitch Mound.