Forum: Baseball is my son’s love language; we speak it fluently

By Cory Armstrong-Hoss / Herald Forum

My son, Cole, was pitching for Kamiak High School against Arlington High School’s JV team back in March, a few innings in to a game. His team was scoring. Arlington wasn’t. No hits. No walks. The Kid, my kid, was holding them.

His love language is baseball. Sometimes it seems like his only language.

And what a language it is.

Ever since he was 3, we’ve spent hours on bleachers around Snohomish County, learning the lexicon of America’s pastime. That afternoon at Arlington High the Kid was dealing, tossing, throwing, firing, hurling. If his fastballs were cooking — in the mid- to high-70 mph for a freshman — he was throwing heat.

He was tossing mostly strikes, so he was attacking or pounding the zone. If the batters were missing big — swings with no prayer of connecting — his pitches were filthy, dirty, nasty.

The Kid has a fastball or “heater,” and a curve, with an occasional change-up, but he might add another pitch, maybe a two-seam, slider or splitter. Maybe he’ll try out a screwball, knuckleball or forkball. He could mimic The New York Mets’ Kodai Senga, the Mets’ Japanese righty who throws a “Ghost Fork,” a pitch so nasty it makes bats trained to hit the baseball seem to disappear, wood turning to vapor.

Big League managers like the Seattle Mariners’ Scott Servais talk about pitchers having good stuff, a mythic combination of speed and movement. Against Arlington, the Kid had good stuff, and was taking a no-hitter into the sixth.

You might already know: a no-hitter or “no-no” is something you don’t talk about while it’s happening, one of the storied superstitions of baseball. My wife and I exchanged “Is this really happening” looks, we shrugged off the compliments of fellow parents with anxious humility, and I kept pacing near the bleachers and looking at my son’s pitch count on the GameChanger app.

I couldn’t contain my nervous energy, so I sent a text to my friend George, a former high school baseball player and eminently rational human, except when it comes to sports. His response was pure George: “Dude! When somebody is pitching a no-no, you don’t talk about it! I don’t think you’re supposed to text about it either!”

We knew: in a flash of a bat, it could all be over. One of the Arlington kids could hit a homer, a dinger, a tater, a gonner, a blast, a bomb, a moon shot. They could go yard, and poof! It’d be a good game, a great outing for the Kid, but not one for the scrapbook.

The Kid was dealing. Sometimes at the start of a player’s at-bat, he threw inside — what my father-in-law calls “chin music” — to jam up the batters, get them to step out. He “climbed the ladder;” starting off throwing low in the zone then raising his pitches, baiting them to swing at the “high cheese,” or pitches up and out of the strike zone. He painted the edges or dotted the zone, hitting the corners.

In the bottom of the 7th, four batters in to the last inning, the Kid threw one last pitch and the game was over. He threw a no-no in his first JV start, backed by clean infield and outfield play by his teammates. After the game he got the ball, dated and signed by his coaches.

He threw 61 pitches that day — and notched 50 strikes — fanning or retiring 13 batters. He tossed a complete gGame (all seven innings, in high school) and a shutout (no runs scored), but not a perfect game because he hit one of the batters with a pitch in the bottom of the 7th, sending one of the Arlington players on the team’s only trip to first base.

I still think about that game.

Now, when I drive him to practice or games, or to an AquaSox or Mariners game, and he’s in the front seat, it seems like we can’t always talk about his classes or girls or friends or college. But we can almost always talk about baseball, at least for another year, until he gets his driver’s license and we lose him a little more.

“What’s happening with the Mariners?”

“I don’t know what happened. They were doing so well, then they got killed by the Yankees. I like their young guys though, their pitchers: Gilbert, Miller. I like George Kirby. I’d like to get his jersey. He’s got great control and he attacks the zone.”

Cory Armstrong-Hoss is nonprofit guy, father of three and community volunteer. He is director of the Carl Gibson Senior Center for Volunteers of America.

Cole Armstrong-Hoss attends Kamiak High School. When he’s not in class or playing basketball or baseball, he’s watching YouTube videos about baseball, listening to Talkin’ Baseball by Jomboy Media, playing “MLB: The Show” on Xbox, watching the Mariners, or playing whiffle ball with his brother and sister in the backyard.