Ten Pitches with Cole Young

A late inning at-bat that stayed with me, even after a loss

Cole Young stepped into the batter’s box representing the tying run in the bottom of the ninth, the Mariners trailing 5-3 to the Yankees with two outs. It was a Wednesday matinee game, a wet and cold day in Seattle, and the crowd was protected from the elements by the closed roof at T-Mobile Park. For the third time on our seven-game homestand, I was able to get down to the ballpark and take it all in from the stands.

To that point, it hadn’t felt like much of a game. A smaller crowd than had been at the ballpark for the first six games of the year, many of whom wore Yankee pinstripes, watched the Mariners hitters labor their way through at-bat after at-bat against stellar Yankee pitching. It felt like the type of early-season loss you start to accept before the game was even over. But after scoring two in the eighth inning and another in the ninth, the Mariners faithful were starting to get pulled back into the possibility of a win. Young, a second-year player who has gotten off to a strong start, sat with the weight of that crowd’s hopefulness on his shoulders as he stepped into the box.

He took the first pitch down in the zone, but it was called for a strike. The next pitch, a splitter, he fouled off into the seats. In what seemed like an instant, the young second baseman found himself down 0-2.

For a moment, it all felt like it might end quickly. Thankfully, Young took the next pitch, and just like that, the at-bat began to slow down. First 1-2, then another ball off the plate made it 2-2. He fouled off the fifth pitch, then the sixth, getting just enough bat on each of them to keep the possibility of a miraculous comeback alive.

Something began to change in the thinning-out crowd. The way a jet slowly revs up as it begins to make its way down a runway. Not an eruption of sound, but a gradual build of the energy necessary to move. The crowd seemed to mimic that as people stopped heading for the exits and turned their eyes towards Young as he battled through the at-bat.

The next pitch missed low, and suddenly, the count was full.

While nobody wants to say it out loud, it’s impossible not to start visualizing the possibilities. A walk can keep the game going. A ball in the gap changes everything. A ball into the seats would tie it up, and we’d essentially be starting the whole game over. The inning that felt destined for a somewhat quick completion suddenly didn’t feel close to finished, like it still had more to offer.

Young fouled off the next pitch, and then another after that. The at-bat seemed to become a battle of how long Young could stay alive. Could he do so just long enough to get the perfect pitch to hit?

On the tenth pitch, a fastball on the inside corner of the plate, Young swung, and the ball shot off his bat into right-center field. Off the bat, it carried just enough to draw a gasp out of the crowd as everyone stood at once. For a brief second, it looked like it might have enough on it to reach the seats in right field.

But the cool April Seattle air held it in the park. Aaron Judge drifted over to his right and settled underneath it to make the catch.

Ballgame.

The crowd quickly began filing out, the mood in the ballpark not nearly as dark as the weather it was walking into. For most of the afternoon, the game had felt like a loss.

But Cole’s at-bat at the end didn’t feel like that at all. Immediately falling behind two strikes, nothing seemed to speed up. There was no chasing of bad pitches off the plate, and at least from the crowd, no apparent sense of panic. The moment hadn’t gotten too big for him. He just hung in there, pitch by pitch, refusing to give it away easily.

Cole Young’s battle at the plate felt different to me. Not because his fly ball to right field almost left the yard, and not because the outcome was in any way changed. The Mariners still lost the game and the series to the Yankees. But for those ten pitches, he was able to control the moment. There was nothing rushed, and nothing forced. Just hanging in there, pitch after pitch, long enough for all of us to believe that things might just turn.