SPORT REPORT : Man Vs. The Machine

Caged, I face a machine proficient at launching hard rubber balls toward me at 107 miles an hour. I aspire to hit them. I stand back, flip a switch and swing. The bat clips the empty air, my elbow knifes into my ribs and Joe Ballard, my batting instructor, observes my form, which stinks. He shakes his head.

I swing another dozen times as the balls howl into the backstop every eight seconds. It’s a punishing sound, softened a bit, like all sounds here, by giant swags of nylon netting that drip around the batting cage of Grand Slam U .S. A. in Pasadena.

I just want to hit a ball before I wet my pants out of sheer embarrassment. Just one good whack. But all I manage are strikes, every eight seconds; more balls pound the backstop.

Ballard steps into the cage. He has coached Pasadena Little League for 15 years. He looks like Hoss Cartwright. He tells me to put down my Louisville Slugger, which I’m holding in a death grip, and runs me through drills to improve my bat handling and my stance. My favorite is the Wyatt Earp. We pretend we’re dueling cowboys. At the count of three, we pivot and shoot with our fingers. “That’s where the power is, in your hips,” says Ballard, placing the bat back in my hands. He says I’m ready to face The Machine again.

The Machine is a black hole about 50 feet ahead of me. Off to my left, gears whir as the balls are sucked up and then racked in an aluminum conveyor that takes them back to The Machine. The sounds seem orderly, civilized and nearly polite--compared to the violence I have in mind.

After a few more misses, I manage five decent hits. Then the unexpected happens.

I swing, make contact and send the ball screaming in a straight line down The Machine’s black throat. It feels like a miracle, something that Harmon Killebrew would have done. I blink. Ballard lets out a whoop, shaking the netting with his bear-paw hands.

The Machine coughs out the next ball. It drops wounded, like a gumball to the floor. I feel something open up inside, something that feels like I can do anything.