They Haven’t Seen My Curveball: The Best Advice I Ever Heard
Baseball & life both ask us to challenge the odds when the odds are most challenging.
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Once during a YES network (the Yankees network) broadcast, the announcer team in the booth was discussing pitching strategy. One of the people doing the game commentary that day was one of my favorite Yankee pitchers, 5x World Series champ, David Cone.
The question was: if a batter is known for hitting a certain kind of pitch well, do you even throw it during their at bat? An example given was if he can hit a curveball.
After some debate, Cone chimed in and said: “He may be able to hit a curveball—but he hasn’t seen my curveball.”
And this is the quote I come back to more than any other in my life. Because it’s a constant reminder of how unique we all are and how that creates a world of possibility.
As someone who was diagnosed at a young age with a growth hormone deficiency, I was always significantly shorter than most of the boys, and many girls, from middle school forward. The condition essentially means your pituitary gland isn’t producing the amount of growth hormone that is considered normal for the rest of your body and genetics. This is especially important during the several expected growth spurts children and teens go through.
I felt, and occasionally still feel, wholly left out of a tenet of adolescence and masculinity. I would read books for teenagers about our anatomy, and the authors would always discuss growth spurts for boys around 16-18 as if it were a given—while my bones had essentially set by Freshman year of high school. In high school, boys would hit their growth spurts, and girls would comment how ‘mature’ their male classmates were getting, as said men mooned oncoming traffic.
Unlike Lionel Messi, who had the same condition, I did not get the medication in time for it to work properly. Doctors actually predicted—with treatment used when it is meant to be, before and during growth spurts—I would be his height. So with that knowledge—of what could have been— I carried a feeling of a ‘walking incomplete’ for many years after. I felt as if there was always a trace over my head, outlining where the top of head could have been had I grown to my natural adult height. Not tall, just an acceptable short.
I also thought in order for girls to be interested in me, I would have to do everything. And the advice I would hear didn’t help this mentality. People would tell me: “Well, look at Prince!” Prince plays and invented like 38 instruments. Gone double platinum. I love Prince; he is one of my top 5 artists periodt. And the way Prince demonstrates a spectrum of masculinity has always been meaningful to me. But I don’t think many, perhaps well-meaning people, understand what they’re saying when they make these comparisons. They are framing this as: ‘here is the standard, the things you can do, that could validate your appearance to others.’
And that’s if people think there’s even an issue at all.
There’s always the chance of the double punch of “it doesn’t exist” or “it’s not a big deal” (whatever your ‘it’ is: height, weight, facial features—or not just societal, but legit systemic prejudices such as race and gender) and then going into the world and being reminded of “it” everyday.
The inner work for me to feel more comfortable in my skin I knew would be a lifelong battle. And in order for me to be ‘seen’ by women and seriously by society as a whole, I essentially needed to constantly do tricks. Learn to play instruments; become a world renown artist, actor, athlete, or comedian. After all, “Kevin Hart is short, too!”
Because knowing that is gonna help me through HS, college, and dating while being an office assistant.
Or—as I told myself —‘just be an alien; be in your own category.’ This wasn’t a great feeling or the perfect message. But I was getting closer to the mindset that would help. That we’re all variables.
This world has over 8 billion people. There’s so many people you don’t know. And that’s a good thing. A professor once told me upon graduating: “I want you to see the world as a place of possibility.”
The more people who don’t know you, the more experiences you haven’t had, the more possibilities there are and people you’ll meet who haven’t made up their mind about you, put you in a box. And once in a while, you might even break open the boxes they once had.
Because whatever that aforementioned “it” is that you carry, still, nobody has seen your version.
On today’s Yankees, one of my favorite players is starting pitcher, Marcus Stroman. He loves being a Yankee; he grew up a Yankee fan and even comes to the stadium in old Yankee shirts. He hugs his teammates. Smiles with them constantly. Sticks up for them. And he also is short. He still would be taller than me, but for baseball, he is significantly shorter than average. And he’s one of the shortest pitchers in baseball history.
But he’s strong. He never backs down. He wears his emotions on his sleeve. He knows there will also only be one “Stroshow” in the history of Major League Baseball. With a splitter they’ve never seen (sometimes, literally).
It doesn’t matter what the ‘definition’ in people’s minds of a major league starting pitcher is; what a baseball player is; what an athlete is—because, in truth, no matter what that definition is, it will now always have an appendix featuring Marcus Stroman. And Ozzie Albies, and Jose Altuve, and Muggsy Bogues, and Messi. And there are women who are going to add to the appendices, too. (See Kelsey Whitemore, Olivia Pichardo, and Mo’ne Davis).
These examples aren’t here to show you that you need to be a professional athlete, or professional anything, in order to be sufficient. In your work and in your being—in masculinity or any gender. The proper way to frame successful exceptions to societal expectations is that these people show they are a variable. Being a variable doesn’t mean you’ll be universally liked and appreciated for who you are and what you represent. But, as in math, a variable is an unknown that always has a value—an absolute value. It’s something that you can’t anticipate, and once it’s there, its value demonstrated, you can’t deny it.
More variables mean more change, more unknowns. Time, place, personal development are all variables. All create something different, something new.
And as fellow Bronx native Tracy Morgan said, “happiness is something to look forward to.”
The booth also asked Cone “what about location?” “What if he likes the high pitch—the high fastball?”
Cone replied: “Then, you throw it higher than high”
Higher than they can catch up to.
Don’t be afraid to throw where others can’t get to. It just means their world aint big enough. But yours needs to be. It’s the only way you can get to your success. Your best you.
Throw your pitch with conviction; after all, it’s one in 8 billion. And for the sake of possibility, what life is about, those are the perfect odds.
Powerful piece Evan!
I’m a lover of analogies and appreciate the way you weaved together your journey, baseball and the principles required to be oneself in both.
I fw this so hard. The variable analogy is wonderful, and helps me think more healthily about the “look at XYZ celebrity and what they could mean to you as a ‘different’ man” discourse. Thanks for this.