MiLB LIFE: Pitchers' Batting Practice

Holy smokes! That one landed in the outfield, atta boy Rocker!

Young ballplayers, I urge you to avert your eyes - it's time for Pitcher's BP. Over the next ten minutes, the entire pitching staff will makes its way into the cage one by one to try their luck at blasting one over the wall, and I gotta tell you - it's embarrassing.

After watching these guys compete on the mound night after night - after admiring their fluid motion and the ease with which they're able to fling a ball 90-plus MPH - you can't help but expect more. But no. Nothing. In most cases, you could honestly walk down the street and compile a more capable lineup with the first nine guys you run into. Their ineptitude is actually quite amazing when you think about it - how could a professional athlete look so helpless, so unnatural, while playing his own sport?

The whole experience is what I assume it would be like watching Shaq shoot free throws for ten minutes straight.

You begin by laughing, enjoying the struggle, refusing to believe someone so close to the game could actually achieve such levels of futility. He's just warming up, shakin' off the cobwebs. But after a few minutes pass and no progress has been made, the laughs die down as the entire stadium is engulfed by second-hand embarrassment. Poor guy, has he always been so uncoordinated? You begin to reflect on how miserable a lifetime of baseball must be while possessing such laughable command of a bat, and suddenly, you're sympathy turns to wonderment. This guy has played baseball his whole life - how could he be this bad? He had to have hit at some point right? What, was he getting DH'ed for in tee-ball?