Who knew the Cubs even had a radar gun?
What’s the current word for it? Heat. Velocity. Cheese. It is the most magical of baseball virtues, raw speed. Oh, sure, control is very nice. Absolutely essential.
And tossing up geometic riddles toward home plate can be amusing. You have to have command of all the pitches, but only one of them grabs the gut, takes the breath away. Only the fastball.
It is stareable. Is that a word? It is marketable. I know that is a word.
The fastball is nature’s gift; everything else is repetition.
When the legends of pitching are recalled, from Cy to Big Train to Rapid Robert to Gibby and Sandy, to Nolan and the Rocket, discussion always starts with the heater.
Four words stamp the special ones.
He can bring it.
And now Kerry. Kerry Wood. Too bad the nickname Tiger is taken.
Thank God he gave up that hit. If it had been 20 strikeouts on top of a no-hitter, he is suddenly a very young man at the top of a very old mountain.
A kid has to have goals.
How quickly this will go from gape-jawed awe to doubt. That’s the way of things. The natural order of questions goes from Did you see that? to What else you got? Nothing can be scarier than context.
Before a dreary Wednesday in Wrigley Field, Wood was all potential and promise, allowed his youth and his failures. Today he is seated with kings, with Koufax and Carlton, Seaver and Ryan.
Whether he knows it or not, Wood is about to be the next Fernando, a genuine national baseball curiosity.
No pitcher has come along like this since Dwight Gooden, maybe not since Valenzuela. Hideo Nomo caused a special stir, but for different reasons.
The carnival is being put together right now, in news rooms and production meetings. This is Tara Lipinski territory. Go see if this kid is real.
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Kerry Wood’s choices, as defined by the Great Fame Machine, are these: phenom or fluke.
The last time anything remotely like this happened in Chicago was when Wilson Alvarez pitched a no-hitter in his first game with the White Sox.
You could hear the buzz all the way through the fifth inning of his next start.
This is bigger than that, of course. Bigger than the Cubs, bigger than Chicago, big enough for all of baseball.
Baseball certainly can use any new hero it can get, especially a pitching hero, someone who will make every appearance an event. Who is there right now anyone would go out of his way to see pitch?
Pedro Martinez? I guess. Randy Johnson? Maybe. Roger Clemens? Not really. Greg Maddux? Too efficient.
Wood has the edge on all of them. He has it because he is new. The first time around is full of fresh curiosity and shared discovery. It never will be quite the same again.
I am always reminded of the power of curiosity by Jennifer Capriati’s tennis debut. Baseball was on strike that spring and an unhappy baseball writer was detailed to cover Capriati’s first tournament.
He steamed and raged at the idea of having to pay attention to a child.
“I can’t imagine a 13-year-old hitting against Nolan Ryan’s fastball,” he fumed.
To which Pam Shriver replied, “She’s almost 14.”
This is almost like that. This has exactly the same appeal, the magnet of something astonishing being done so young. How is it that Kerry Wood can strike out 20 major-league batters at the age of 20?
Well, he is almost 21.