8 Plausible Reasons I Just Plain Forgot How To Throw My Legendary Unhittable Pitch, ‘The Big Special’

What part of 'unhittable' do you assholes not understand?

1. Athletic mastery is but a passing glance of God’s love and wisdom and God determines when and where and for how long that mastery shall remain. For me, I guess God determined that August 5, 1992, was the end of the line. That’s the last day the mortal world saw the Big Special.

2. My father convinced me to try pitching with my right hand, because he said left-handed it seemed to be too easy. The vanity of youth convinced me to listen to him. It wasn’t a completely unfounded idea—I threw a one-hitter pitching right-handed—but I went too deep and tried to create a right-handed Big Special, and that’s where everything went haywire.

3. Silvia Placido. I don’t believe I need to say anything more.

4. Our league banned the Big Special because it was unhittable—fucking socialist parents—and it made me depressed, and I hate to admit it but I just put that goddamned ball down. Didn’t even look at it. And when I picked it up again, tired and forty pounds heavier, I didn’t have any idea how to throw it.

5. My Uncle Ronnie finally went to prison. The obvious conclusion you’d make, and I’ll neither confirm nor deny it if you ask, is that all along I was pitching only for my Uncle Ronnie. Either way, fuck me, Ronnie did love the Big Special. He loved it like no one else did.

Ronnie, before prison

6. Oh, right. That back muscle I tore on South Padre, spring break ’93. They say muscles remember as much as brains. Or more.

7. I focused too much on developing my second unhittable pitch, The Bearded Sailor, and you can’t remember two unhittable pitches.

8. I got so drunk and sexually involved with the actual bearded sailor that I met—I sought him out for research purposes—that I not only sauced my brain to damn near lack of language capacity, but I also re-tore that muscle in my back.