CATCH- 23 : Valerie Finley Is on Receiving End of Southern Section Softball History

When Michele Granger, the phenomenal Valencia High School pitcher, arrived at the Placentia campus as a freshman in 1984, bringing her zipping, jumping 65-mile-per-hour pitches with her, it signaled a certain resurgence for the Tigers, who had gone 1-22 the previous season, with the only victory a forfeit.

There remained one problem, however: Somebody was going to have to catch the things.

Valencia had one-half of an all-world battery, and as anyone who has ever stood in the vicinity of home plate when Granger is pitching can inform you, you might need to search the world over to find a volunteer for the other half.

Meet Valerie Finley, foolhardy catcher.

Debbie Fassel, Valencia coach, surveyed her prospects in October of that year, selected the quickest among them and asked her to give it a shot. It probably helped that Finley had considerable softball experience, had played with Granger before and was also a freshman. No need to train someone who wouldn’t be in it for the duration.

Finley, who had played every position but one--catcher, naturally--in her already lengthy career, figured it was a challenge, and that was good enough for her.

“I was gutsy enough to try,” said Finley, now a junior.

There is ample testimony as to just how gutsy that may be.

Fassel, once a catcher herself at Fullerton College, won’t catch Granger.

“I’ve caught when she was 100 yards away,” Fassel offered.

Nor will John Seeley, or at least not ever again. Seeley, a former assistant coach of the Valencia football team and a former catcher, decided to catch Granger one day and promptly took a pitch right between the eyes.

The closer someone sees those pitches, the less likely that person will offer to catch them. Thursday, during Granger’s perfect game against Western (the Southern Section record-setting 22nd no-hitter of her remarkable career), plate umpire Ed Marion stepped back to the screen to offer an unsolicited comment.

“I wouldn’t try it, and I used to be a catcher,” he said. “You don’t want a 65-mile-an-hour pitcher with a 35-mile-an-hour catcher.”

Indeed not. That could get messy.

Yet there squats Finley, with no more protective equipment than any other catcher, save a little extra foam in her mitt. She has caught every one of Granger’s high school games, which now include 23 no-hitters, six of them perfect games. Granger threw a perfect game Friday against Fullerton in the first round of the Woodbridge tournament.

With any other catcher, Fassel said, Granger would have to hold way back on the velocity of her pitches. But over 2 1/2 seasons with Finley behind the plate, Granger has gradually come nearer and nearer to throwing at her top speed. Now, Fassel said, she is very, very close.

“Without Valerie, we would be in a lot of trouble,” Fassel said.

Catching is not Finley’s only specialty around the plate. She has led the team in hitting each year, batting around .300--a good mark in this pitching-oriented game. This season, she is batting .296.

Behind the plate, the speed of the pitches Finley must catch is only part of the difficulty. There is also movement to contend with. The intensity of these factors is amplified by the shortness of the distance to the plate--40 feet, which is two-thirds of the distance between the rubber on a baseball mound and home plate. We’re talking minimum reaction time.

“I kind of know where they’re going to move, but every now and then one goes the opposite way. I just have to play heads up,” Finley said. “(Pitches) do move unexpectedly. Sometimes the riseball will come in higher than I think it will.”

The riseball is Granger’s bread-and-butter pitch. Although Granger almost never shrugs off Finley’s signals, there is a reason. It is almost always the same: Four fingers down: Riseball.

“It’ll start farther out,” Finley said. “Then it will rise gradually and just jump.”

And Finley has to jump with it.

There are other subtle variations to contend with.

“At times, I can predict. If she goes high and high and high, the third or fourth, I know is going to be low or flat,” Finley said.

If the riseball and the fastball happen to be off, Finley will have Granger throw more junk pitches. For Granger, that can mean a curve--not what most pitchers consider junk. On occasion, Granger will flub a pitch, releasing it too early, causing it to skitter toward the plate at about ground level.

“The ones that roll,” Granger jokes, “are changeups.”

It has not been an easy journey to the success Finley now enjoys. In the beginning, her hands hurt so badly that she thought she had broken her fingers.

“The first year, she hadn’t learned to get her right hand back. She was catching the ball with two hands like a fielder, not a catcher,” said Virginia Finley, Valerie’s mother. “The next year, it was her left hand. The middle fingers were bruised.”

But the bruises and soreness in the hands, brought on by the speed of the pitches and the mechanical flaws of a beginning catcher, have subsided. It seems that all that is left for Finley to do in high school is see just how many no-hitters and perfect games she will catch, and perhaps through her hitting, help boost Valencia (2-0 in the Orange League and 10-5 overall) to a record more consistent with Granger’s pitching prowess.

Other than that, she just keeps catching the ball--a feat more difficult than it sounds--and noting whatever minute problems may mar Granger’s mechanics--the elbow out too far, her step not quite right.

“She picks up Michele’s flaws,” Fassel said. “But there’s not a lot she has to tell her.”

Finley said: “Michele knows what she’s doing. But it’s a challenge, and I like to do the best with a challenge that I can.”