Chien-Ming Wang set for debut, armed with signature sink - 棒球

Chien-Ming Wang set for debut, armed with signature sinker
By Nathan Fenno
-The Washington Times
7:54 p.m., Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The storm had passed, so Chien-Ming Wang waited near a bog of mud and
gravel that doubled as the right-field line.

Rusting bleachers held water instead of fans.

Steam rose from the line of trees beyond Pfitzner Stadium’s outfield wall,
touting a free inspection from Dodson Pest Control.

Nerves fluttered through Wang, though you’d never guess from his impassive
face. The right-hander used a sinker that may as well have been a bowling
ball to win 55 games over five seasons with the New York Yankees. But wrapped
in the uniform of the Single-A Potomac Nationals two weeks ago in Woodbridge,
Va., for a game rain already canceled, Wang felt like a rookie, a baseball
beginner.

A coach fished baseballs from a battered shopping cart and lobbed them to
hitters in a cage used during games for the speed pitch. Each thwack of bat
on dirty ball echoed through the empty place.

“In my life, I’ve been hammered by some heavy blows,” Brooks and Dunn
wailed over scratchy speakers, “that never knocked me off my feet.”

Seven hundred-fifty-four days have passed since Wang’s last major league
pitch, served up for a long two-run home run. Seven hundred fifty-four days
of wondering if his body would fail him again, if his right shoulder would
ever feel normal, if his career was in jeopardy.

“I’m learning,” Wang said through his interpreter, John Hsu, “how to
trust myself again.”

After six minor league rehabilitation starts over the past month, Wang
starts Friday for the Washington Nationals against the New York Mets.
The worry he felt about discomfort in his shoulder is fading, like the
puddles he dodged in Pfitzner Stadium’s outfield that slowly seeped away.

Running the bases in 2008, Wang sprained the middle of his foot. After the
injury, he wasn’t the same. A stint on the disabled list for hip weakness
followed. When he returned, Baseball Prospectus estimated his release point
was 5 inches higher. That can ruin a pitcher’s statistics, arm or both.
By the time Wang’s last pitch was deposited into Yankee Stadium’s right
field stands by Toronto’s Adam Lind, Wang was 1-6 with a 9.64 earned-run
average. Later that month, surgery repaired a torn capsule in his right
shoulder.

Wang, a two-time 19-game winner, disappeared into baseball’s shadow world
of rehabilitation, extended spring training and instructional league at the
Nationals' facility in Viera, Fla.

“This has been a long process,” Nationals director of player development
Doug Harris wrote in an email, “but through it all he maintained a great
focus on the big picture, stayed the course daily with necessary attention
to detail and never fell into any of the mental peaks and valleys that can
come with a prolonged rehab.”

Wang defined by sinker

Last month, Wang threw 10 or so sinkers in his first rehabilitation start
with the Single-A Hagerstown Suns.

“What was that?” one Suns player asked pitching coach Chris Michalak.

“That,” Michalak replied, “was a big-league sinker.”

The pitch defined Wang’s five seasons with the Yankees, as much as his
idolization in his native Taiwan, where he remains the country’s most
popular athlete. Much of Wang’s comeback depends on the pitch - once one
of baseball’s best - that dives toward the dirt between 90 and 94 mph.
Batters pound the ball into the field. Sixty percent of the balls put in
play against Wang were on the ground.

The pitch was born on a lark, when Wang played catch on the side one day at
Triple-A Columbus in the Yankees‘ system. Catcher Sal Fasano tossed his
version of a screwball, breaking from left to right and sometimes sinking,
to Wang. Fasano, who now manages the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats,
showed Wang the grip. Wang threw it a few times before Fasano summoned
pitching coach Neil Allen. The makeshift screwball turned into a sinker.

“It seemed to be a perfect storm,” Fasano said, “And the right pitch for
him.”

A sinker solved a significant problem for Wang: Hiis fastball touched 95 mph
but was as straight as the first-base line. Thrown from the same arm slot as
a fastball, the sinker moved.

Allen shortened the landing spot for Wang’s left foot by a couple of feet.
Those inches allowed Wang’s arm to travel longer and his fingers to stay
on top of the ball. That provided the ball’s devastating sink. His 6-foot-3
frame and long fingers seemed made for the pitch.

The ball came off Wang’s right hand heavy, the sort of pitch that breaks
bats. Eight inches of movement in the 10 feet before the ball crossed home
plate became commonplace.

“His late life was astounding,” Fasano said.

Wang was quiet then, almost to the point Allen felt sorry for him. But each
time Allen spied Wang alone in the dugout, he was studying other pitchers’
mechanics. The pitcher, teammates recall, acted as if he had something to
prove.

“He’d do anything you asked, but he’s got to trust you,” said Allen, now
the Triple-A Durham Bulls’ pitching coach, in a voice something like a
father’s. “He was the easiest guy to grab hold of I ever had.”

In the six rehabilitation starts, Wang’s fastball velocity ranged from 86
mph to 94 mph. That doesn’t matter as much with the sinker. The pitch felt
a little better to Wang each game, as he allowed 28 hits and stuck out 17
over 28.2 innings. Locating the pitch most concerns him.

“It is the hard, late-bottoming action that makes it so effective,” Harris
wrote. “True sinkerballers, which Wang is, don’t have to manipulate as
much and have more consistent vertical sink that hitters have a difficult
time lifting.”

Taiwanese icon

At Pfitzner Stadium, a beam of sun fought through the dark sky and reflected
off the bog up the right-field line.

Two Kinston Indians players, with no game to play, spied a discarded pile
of dry ice by their clubhouse, shoved pieces into water bottles and scampered
away. Each explosion seemed to shake the small stadium.

Worried glances shot around 26 Taiwanese fans, unaware the game was canceled.
One couple flew from Orlando, Fla., to see Wang pitch. Another waved a red,
blue and white Taiwanese flag.

They clustered next to a rusted chain link fence, in No. 40 Yankees jerseys
and Nationals hats so new the bills remained straight, with cameras and
smiles snapping every time Wang moved. With two Taiwanese television crews
filming, Wang ambled over and signed gloves and hats and pictures protected
by cellophane sleeves.

The autographs finished. A cheer followed Wang as he walked away,
interpreter in tow. One cameraman set down his equipment and lit
a cigarette.

The storm was gone. The wait was over.

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