“Watch how he turns here,” the shortstop says, pointing to El’s hips. The video plays at 25% slow-mo. “Now look at this one.” He flips the screen and we watch a different pitch, off-speed, a curve that doesn’t completely curve. “Look at the hips.” To the layman (me), I can’t see a lick of difference, but there are some other guys here—kid shortstops like the Dominican sensation Angel De Castillo and Akihito Okijima, and another guy—Carlos Estrada—who already has a solid rep with the glove, but came for something more. These guys respond like the shortstop wants them to respond. They nod and they grunt in affirmative ways. They point to the screen and dissect what they see.
The speaker is, of course, Edward Allen—the new Yellow Springs shortstop. He is a guy who’s been there and done that. He's a two-time All-Star and has a Puckett Award stuck in a closet someplace. He won a Diamond glove at the position back in his years with Vegas, and arguably should have won more. At 37 and despite having lost a step, he’s still considered an above-average glove—which is why he’s here, teaching.
In both cases, there is a ground ball. In the first case, the shortstop on the field (whose name will be withheld to protect the guilty) makes the play on a ball nearly right at him. In the second case, the ball shoots through the middle of the infield for a hit.
“It’s the same guy out in the field,” the shortstop says. “Watch when he breaks. See that? Same time in the swing.”
More nods. More grumbles of interest. De Castillo asks to see it again.
When the questions settle, Allen adjusts the screen to one with him in the frame.
“Now watch this.”
Two different pitches, two different swings. Two ground balls up the middle. Two outs.
The difference is something even I can see—that Edward Allen moves toward the middle of the diamond even before contact is made. It’s something I’ve never noticed before—but that makes sense because it happens too fast to see if you’re not looking for it. How does he do that?
“It’s more than seeing the ball off the bat,” Estrada finally says.
“Right,” Allen responds. “And it’s more than knowing the pitch. You gotta read a hitter. You gotta see what he’s doing. Understand who’s on the mound and what kind of inning they’re having. Watch their balance, and the way they shift their weight. Every at bat. Every pitch. You listen to what their swing is telling you.”
A few minutes later, the session breaks up. The kids run off to get their reps in. Edward Allen, 37-years-old, goes back to the video. “I got a lot of hours to get through,” he says. He’s been devouring video of every hitter in the JL Midwestern division, and using his “quiet time” of the last two weeks to dig into them. The last couple weeks will see that expand to the rest of the division.
“It’s hard, you know? I get it for the kids. It’s hard to get started because you don’t know nothing about no one. In a lot of ways I feel the same coming over here from the Frick League to the Johnson. But you gotta just do the work, you know?”
I do know. I know that I want to talk to him some more about his past, and about the years where he was posting studly zone ratings and not winning Diamond. I want to talk to him about what his future looks like from the eyes of a guy who is some 15 years older than the kid’s he’s teaching. I want to ask how it feels to come back to his first love, shortstop, after a season playing third base. But I get it, too. Edward Allen’s got work to do, and he’s itching to do it. So, rather than take his time now, I arrange to meet him later for dinner…which he agrees to and even pays for…and as I walk away from the video room, I see him bent in thought, staring closely at the screen.
Tomorrow he expects the kids will begin to give way on the field. Tomorrow he expects to spend time on the diamond at shortstop, which I later learn is like home to him--which I later learn is where he feels most comfortable in life, a place where the angles work out and where the world is understandable. A shortstop, he says to me, it baseball's glue. It's what makes the game what it is. A real shortstop, he says after a glass of wine, is half magician, half poet.
So, yes, I want to ask him all these things there in the video room. But I don't. Today Edward Allen has different work to do.
And as I leave him behind, he’s getting to it.