FREMONT – Looking on from afar, the knuckleball is far from the most intimating of pitches.
Cole Druckenmiller
A 90-mile an hour fastball speaks for itself. A nasty curveball also carries with it a certain level of nastiness.
But perhaps no pitch plays with a hitter’s mind like a knuckleball. It looks eminently hittable: Slow and just floating toward the plate. Until you step into the batter’s box. Then it becomes death by a thousand paper cuts.
And Cole Druckenmiller loves it.
The Fremont Ross junior used the knuckleball to near perfection Monday night in the Little Giants’ sectional tournament opener against Lima Senior.
Druckenmiller kept the Spartan batters completely baffled by the tumbles of the knuckleball, mixed with his well-controlled fastball, holding Lima to just one hit in the Little Giants’ 6-0 victory.
“I could see it in (Lima’s) faces, they were like, ‘What is that?’” Druckemiller said.
“By the fifth inning, at least, I was really confident. I was like, ‘They’re not touching it.’ It was just coming easy then.”
Druckenmiller first saw the knuckleball used by R.A. Dickey, the journeyman Major Leaguer who used to knuckleball to come out of nowhere to win the Cy Young Award in 2012 for the New York Mets.
“I saw R.A. Dickey throw it, I was like, ‘I want to throw that,’” he said. “When I was younger I used to throw at the stairs in front of my house and I taught myself how to throw it that way.”
As difficult as the pitch is for hitter to get a hold of the pitch, it’s also difficult on Josiah Cook, whose job it is to catch it behind the plate.
Josiah Cook
“I actually have a bigger glove that I use when I catch him,” Cook said. “I’ve gotten used to it, because I’ve been catching him since I was 10 or 11 years old but, yeah, it can be tricky sometimes. It will look like it’s coming right to your mitt then it just moves.”
Druckenmiller’s pitch was moving Monday. He retired the final 19 batters he faced, allowing no base-runners after the first inning. He gave up one hit and no walks while striking out seven.
“Hitting a knuckleball is basically luck,” Cook said. “Especially one that good. All (Lima) did in that game was hitting right in front of the plate and pop it up, and that’s really all you can do with it.
“They were actually looking back at my signs. I’d hold down a fastball until they looked (away) then I’d call a knuckleball.”
Of Lima’s three hitters to reach base in the first inning, two came as a result of Little Giant errors, but just one reached second base. The rest of the game belonged to Druckenmiller.
“There’s not a lot of high school kids who can throw a knuckleball and he’s one that can throw it and throw it in the zone,” Ross coach Jared Cook said. “As soon as a high school kids sees a ball coming into the zone without any spin, it makes them freeze.”
While Druckenmiller dominated on the mound, Ross also had a nice day at the plate. The Little Giants produced consistent offense, scoring at least one run in every inning but the first.
Leading 1-0 in the third inning, Noah Hotz reached base on a walk and later stole second and third, two of his five stolen bases in the game. Druckenmiller then laced a base hit to right field for a 2-0 lead.
Lima’s defense committed a pair of throwing errors which, along with a balk by the pitcher, led to a two more runs for Ross in the fourth. Luke O’Brien added an RBI base hit in the fifth while Cook drove in a run in the sixth.
“After we scored that first run in the second inning, I told them, ‘Let’s get one or two runs every inning, and there is no reason we won’t win this game,’” King said. “I thought they had great approaches today, whether it was making walks or making (the pitcher) come into our zone rather than chasing into his zone.”
The victory raises Ross’ record to 7-14 overall and the Little Giants advance to face top-seeded Anthony Wayne Wednesday at 5 p.m.
“They’re one of the best teams in Northwest Ohio,” King said of Anthony Wayne. “We have to come in with the mindset that we’re ready to compete and that we can compete. Trey (Ickes) is going to get the ball and hopefully we can rally around him, which we have time and again this year. I think the biggest thing is not looking at their record and saying ‘Oh, crap,’ or seeing that they’ve had a few kids named All-Ohio the last few years. We have to play our game and the rest will take care of itself.”
2015-16 Hockey Players
| NAME | GRADE | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isabella Atkinson | 09 | |||
| Gabe Baker | 11 | |||
| Brett Bartson | 11 | |||
| Andrew Blodgett | 09 | |||
| Josiah Cook | 10 | |||
| Derek Desrosiers | 11 | |||
| Austin Estep | 11 | |||
| Nick Farrier | 12 | |||
| Jared Filby | 12 | |||
| Braelon McDaniels | 10 | |||
| Matt Moore | 11 | |||
| Victor Pena | 10 | |||
| Lane Plant | 09 | |||
| Zack Rusch | 11 | |||
| Zane Rusch | 09 | |||
| Sean Thurston | 10 | |||
| Lawrence Tompkins | 11 | |||
| Nathan Weltin | 10 |