The battery is charged

Folks, many moons ago I used to play baseball. In high school I played first base and spent one year at shortstop.

However when I tried out for the baseball team at college, the coach made a catcher out of me.

Back in those early days the home plate umpire would announce, "The battery for today’s game is so-and-so pitching and so-and-so catching."

Today I am going to tell you about the battery of Lam and Brubaker.

Fels Lam was the pitcher and "yours truly" did the catching.

Now Lam was an excellent pitcher! He had a good fastball, a decent curve and an excellent knuckleball. He also had excellent control.

We were playing Kenyon College the day Lam struck out 23 batters in 10 innings. His knuckleball was zigging, zagging and floating all over the place. As I squatted behind the plate, it was fun to watch the Kenyon batters weave back and forth as the baseball came towards the plate.

I would signal for a fastball every so often just to keep them off balance.

Of course neither Lam nor I knew just what that knuckleball was going to do. This being the case I couldn’t catch many of them. This meant I had to throw the batter out at first base if I didn’t catch that third strike. However a lot of times I would signal for a fastball after Lam got two strikes on the hitter.

Be that as it may, it was a banner day! As far as I know this is still the record for strike-outs by a pitcher of Ashland College.

I just talked to Fels, this week as he celebrated his 87th birthday. So the battery is still charged!

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