TORONTO — As the Toronto Blue Jays opened up their three-game series with the Chicago White Sox, it only took a minute or two of watching the visitors on defence to whisk the mind back to memories of players like Steve Sax, Chuck Knoblauch, Mackey Sasser and Dale Murphy.
They all had it, and it certainly appears as though White Sox catcher Geovany Soto has it, too.
Left knee down, right knee down, glove hand on the ground and then a weird-looking overhand light toss to the mound, with the throwing hand coming down into the dirt, spreading some around the area encircling the plate.
Those are the machinations Soto went through every single time he threw a ball back to the pitcher in Monday night’s Blue Jays win.
Some call it the yips, some call it Steve Blass disease, but most simply refer to it as “The Thing.” Quite simply, it’s a distinct inability to throw the ball where you want to, when given enough time to think about it.
It seems pretty clear that Soto has this mystifying mental block, that “Thing,” and the only way he can throw the ball successfully back to the mound is to go through that checklist of moves, sort of like that infielder who has to pound the ball into his glove three times before letting it go. It’s baseball’s version of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Soto won’t really talk about it. When asked by the Chicago Sun-Times, he said the falling forward is an outgrowth of recent knee surgery and that he wipes at the dirt around the plate to keep it smooth so that there won’t be any bad hops. Of course, because the area around home plate is where so many bad hops are generated, and that doesn’t explain the whole brace yourself with the glove thing, as well as the extreme choreography that seemingly must be followed every single time.
It generally comes out of nowhere, and no one knows why or how. Steve Blass was an all-star starter with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He was 2-0 with an ERA of 1.00 in helping the Pirates win the 1971 World Series, and finished second in Cy Young voting the next year, going 19-8 with a 2.49 ERA. At that point, Blass had 100 wins at the age of 30 and a career walk rate of three per nine innings in more than 1,500 major league innings.
In 1973, Blass issued 84 walks in 88 2/3 innings, hit 12 batters and threw nine wild pitches and by the next year he was out of the game.
“The Thing” claimed Chuck Knoblauch, too. A four-time all-star when he went to the New York Yankees as the centrepiece of a five-player trade following the 1997 season, he had a strong debut season for the Yanks but then things went off the rails. Knoblauch made 13 errors at second base in ’98, but that number doubled to 26 in 1999. The following season, Knoblauch made 15 errors in half a season, and he spent the remaining two years of his career as a left fielder.
Mackey Sasser was supposed to be the next big thing as far as Mets’ catchers were concerned, but a couple of years into his pro career he started to have all kinds of trouble making that simple throw back to the pitcher. Borderline Hall-of-Famer Dale Murphy had the same issue, starting out his career behind the plate. The Braves moved him to the outfield and he blossomed into a two-time MVP and perennial all-star. Sasser wound up in the outfield as well, but couldn’t hit enough to stick.
We saw it here in Toronto with Russ Adams, the much-maligned first-ever first-round pick of J.P. Ricciardi’s, who had issues so major throwing the ball to first base the Blue Jays had to move him off shortstop. It may well have happened to Ricky Romero as well, but there were also some serious injuries he was dealing with, leading to at least three different surgeries.
What causes it and how to deal with it are among the great mysteries of baseball, and good for Soto finding a way to keep himself in the game, and for giving us something fun and interesting to watch.