In the leagues that I coached when a pitcher is left on the mound and struggles, keeps treading water with his nose just above the water line, having a rough go of it - without any sympathy from the bench, we’d called that … "A Long Bus Ride on a Hot Day with the Windows Up and Sitting on a Spring"
Watching the Red Sox play the Yankees last night (08/03/2014) and witnessing Clay Buchholz take " A Very Long Bus Ride…" reminded me why so many don’t make in this business. Buchholz has - to be as polite as possible, one of the greatest 1000 yard stares in all of professional baseball.
To leave a man out there for the time he was, says a lot to anyone wanting a career in professional baseball. And it happens more than you think in the Affiliates… and definitely in the Indy’s.
I gotta give Clay credit where credit is due, he kept hammering away, sweating his brains out and busing his cahoonies, through a tough lineup.
Back in the day, this used to be called “taking one’s turn in the barrel”—a phrase often used by the Yankee pitchers. From time to time a pitcher would start a game, and he just didn’t have his stuff—fastball lost its hippity-hop, curveball hung, slider was flat, knuckleball refused to knuckle, the strike zone was jumping around like a jackrabbit on steroids—the pitcher was getting belted around from here to Timbuktu and back, and the others let him go that way for seven innings or so, in large part because the bullpen was absolutely exhausted. Things haven’t changed; however one wants to call it, we see this at times. The fact that this happens so often with Clay Buchholz is a clear indication that he’s just going to have to step back and start relearning how to pitch. :baseballpitcher:
Having a bad day at work with a jerky boss who refuses or is unable to assist and having to work in less than ideal conditions…this is not unique to baseball. I think this is called working for a living.
So it goes.