After watching Virginia effectively ice their rainout win over Brown last night by scoring nine two-out runs in the first inning, the intensity of the game was completely sapped. I decided to venture out of the press box and mingle with the people -- all 10 of them that actually showed up in weather more fit for a Seattle Mariners diehard. For two innings plus the 30-minute rain delay, I kept company with a pair of injured pitchers that man the radar gun behind home plate every game, Jeff Kamrath and Mike Ballard.
"Team Tommy John," as proclaimed by Kamrath, has been together all year while rehabbing their surgically-repaired elbows torn a little over a week apart from each other last season. Kamrath, the senior right hander, and Ballard, last year's freshman phenom southpaw, were the team leaders in ERA when they went down in 2003. Rather than rush through rehab in hopes of pitching this year, both opted to take 19 months to fully get back to pre-surgery form.
For Kamrath, sitting in the stands is about absorbing the intricacies of the game, which coaches are paid to disseminate and impart upon their pupils.
For Ballard, it's about hot dogs ... and Coke, pretzels and hot chocolate.
Maybe it's the difference two years of maturing makes. But it could be that Ballard is really just a 12-year-old kid in a man's body.
Foul balls are the currency of choice at Davenport Field. Catch one, and you can return it for a Coke, hot dog or something more if you have the same powers of persuasion as Ballard. He has taken it to a new level: the baseballs-for-food trade. I watched from the box as the golden-haired retriever fetched five -- in only four innings of play.
Overall this season, he's gotten enough balls to reach the mid-30s, he told me. That's athletic ability.
"I enjoy chasing them down, and the little kids never get them before me," Ballard said. "I just enjoy the thrill of a good ball hunt."
After having the interview interrupted by a ball careening over the third base-side netting, I turned to the more serious half of Team Tommy John -- Kamrath. While Ballard prefers to stay home when the team is on the road due to the limit on players that can travel, Kamrath drives to every game he can reach by car. He is a student of the game in every sense of the word.
Sitting next to Kammy at a game is educational, to put it mildly. Every at bat, I have my own personal Joe Morgan next to me to break down the situation -- what's in the pitcher's mind and what the batter is probably thinking.
Not that Ballard isn't committed to his rehab and coming back strong
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