The Wood Curve

The phone rings incessantly in the kitchen. Granddad can’t hear it. At the moment, he looks like a two-year-old playing Twister in his rose garden – left foot around the Marigold, right hand behind the Texas Yellow Rose. I hear the phone’s chime reverberate off the back porch’s screen door. I don’t tell my Granddad. As a retired accountant who’s ever really been retired, he hates missing calls. According to him good accountants never swear, never miss a tee time, and always root for the team that’s playing against the Yankees. Besides, the phone is only going to ring twice more, and he would need at least eight to make it inside to the receiver. Ignorance is bliss.

Before I left my Grandma’s famous “Volcano Eggs” half eaten on the kitchen floor, Granddad showed me the day’s schedule. He had neatly sketched it out in black ink on a napkin. Item number one, eat breakfast, already had a perfectly drawn check by it. Apparently I was finished eating. Granddad grabbed the banana that Grandma had left for me, and headed out back. I followed.

I couldn’t be late. Not today. Generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to make Harry Wood tardy in any capacity at any point in time, but today it was especially pivotal. I didn’t even mind giving up my Grandma’s breakfast to keep in step with his schedule. As he wobbled and shimmied inside his rose garden, I gave his schedule another once over. Item 2, feed the plants, already had a small check leaning against its left side. I never understood why Granddad marked things off his lists right before he did them as opposed to right after he had done them. Was it ego or self-reaffirmation?

The phone rang in the kitchen. I barely heard it.

Item number 3 on the list captured the entirety of my attention – “Teach Wood Curveball.” It was a surreal moment. The legend of the Wood Curveball runs deep into the annals of baseball history. My father had told me it was an untouchable pitch with an angle and a velocity that gives the illusion of a rising two-seam fastball when, in fact, it’s a slow one-seam curveball. I once heard my Granddad tell my Uncle Ray that the Wood Curve stuck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig swinging on six straight pitches.

Over the years I had come close to capturing the legend so many times. The roadblock was always the same. I was born right-handed. I write with my right hand, eat with my right hand, and, yes, throw with my right hand. When Great Great Great Uncle Charlie invented the pitch, he designed it for left-handers because, well, he was a lefty. To put it plainly, the mechanics of the Wood Curve are not such that a pitching coach can simply flip everything from left to right. I was born right-handed, and for 17 years it has been my curse.

But today I was to lose my handicap. Item number 3 on the list proves it. Visions of World Series rings danced around in my head. Before I could get to the finish line of my daydream, where I’m holding the Commissioner’s Trophy in one hand and the MVP trophy in the other, my granddad called me over to the old oak tree. For the first time in my life Granddad didn’t look like an accountant. He looked like a baseball player.

A navy blue and red Boston Braves cap rested perfectly on the bump of his comb-over. His beer belly seemed to solidify inside of his plain white pearl snap shirt on top of the makeshift pitcher’s mound. As he applied some eye black, only under his right eye, the crow’s feet disappeared from under his bottom eyelids. As an accountant Granddad looked an elderly 83, but as a baseball player he would blend in with his own two sons.

Under the shade of the oak tree Granddad put a baseball in my hand. He made me swear I would never repeat the secret of the Wood Curve unless it was to my own son or grandson, or if it would save the life of a family member.

The phone rang again, but I didn’t say a word. He put his fingers over mine against the ball, and showed me, step by step, how to throw the greatest pitch known to man.

That was the closest thing to a hug I ever got from Granddad. In the end, the pitch didn’t translate well from left-handers to right-handers. The mechanics weren’t the same, or the angle of release was off, or some other reason. I didn’t care. The pitch worked a different magic for me. It gave me a relationship with my Grandfather that didn’t deal in time schedules. It was just him and me with a baseball in between.