Backed Up Sliders

Despite stemming from one’s shortcomings, 

backed up sliders symbolize baseball’s grace. 

Baseball is a failure-centric sport, you see; displayed by 

backed up sliders aspiring to be standard sliders. Standard sliders are pitches

pitchers pitch with a wrist flick which facilitates sharp spin and slicing break, surging through the strike zone and swerving past swinging bats—ostensibly. But

backed up sliders scarcely spin and seldom slice. Instead, its spin axis stalls 

once the baseball’s seams are released, causing spin to slow and the ball to “back up” on itself—resulting in said slider seeping inside the strike zone. Since this seems strenuous to visualize, instead of striving to, consider a car’s tire stuck in sludge. Despite how fast it spins, this tire’s attempts to unstuck itself are useless. In fact, spinning faster increases its stagnation. 

Backed up sliders are similar except the slider is the tire and the sludge is the, uh, 

surrounding atmosphere, I guess. Or is sludge the spin axis? Was this metaphor a mistake? If so, that’s serendipitous since

backed up sliders are mistake pitches. Pitchers only pitch 

backed up sliders as a consequence of them screwing up their standard slider’s 

sharpness somehow; perhaps by over-squeezing the baseball’s seams while seeking to increase their slider’s nastiness, thus suffocating said slider’s spin; by discerning a scout scouting from the stands and subsequently stressing out, sparking somatic mishaps; or perhaps some guys’ sliders simply suck (this writer’s slider sure did).

Surprisingly, it’s these sorts of mistakes which make 

backed up sliders fortuitous. Case: Despite seeping spin-less inside the 

strike zone, seemingly smashable, 

backed up sliders still can (and do) produce easy outs. 

Backed up sliders require 400 or so milliseconds to seep past home plate—short time 

for hitters to decide if swinging is wise. So when hitters discern spin they expect to slice slightly (since hitters are instructed to discern slight slices), but then this specific slider seeps instead of slices, their swing stalemates as the 

backed up slider oozes past their static bat for a strike. 

Surely no pitcher prefers to pitch a seeping, spin-less, 

backed up slider instead of a standard slicing slider, despite the static bat that

backed up sliders produce. But

backed up sliders don’t presume a pitcher’s sentiment is personal—especially since

backed up sliders lack sentience. If 

backed up sliders could speak (say, inside some parallel sliderverse), they’d 

surely assert that pessimistic pitcher perceptions are pointless, since

backed up sliders aren’t sensitive. Superfluous assertions won’t stop 

backed up sliders from seeping in to save the day when said pitcher screws a standard 

slider up by over-squeezing, over-stressing, or just plain sucking. In this way,

backed up sliders are similar to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (since Rudolph also 

seeps across the sky to save the day). Except in Rudolph’s case, the

backed up slider is substituted with a stout sleigh rider. 

Santa digression aside, a

backed up slider’s sheer disregard for assumptions is especially, uh, special, because 

baseball incites slim distinctions between success and despair. Pitchers, for instance, can spot an exceedingly sharp standard slider on the strike zone’s outside sector and their swinging adversary could still send this slider soaring past center field’s fence. Or these swinging adversaries can send sliders seething straight at the shortstop. Or shortstops can position themselves to secure a ball sent bouncing toward second base before it nicks a small rock and socks them in the scrotum. 

This is all to say that shit happens in baseball. Yet, 

backed up sliders illustrate the sport’s positive side: When a pitcher 

sends this spinless mistake seeping inside the strike zone, surely getting smashed, then isn’t, since the hitter’s swing stalemates from the slider’s absent slide. This shows that despite over-squeezing, over-stressing, simply sucking, or some other supplemental standard slider-slinging mishap, a backed up slider’s ensuing seepage still suffices in producing outs; solidifying the sense that, in spite of baseball’s status sometimes seeming somber, the sport can still surprise and delight those of us insane enough to stick with it. 

Hence why, despite stemming from one’s shortcomings,

backed up sliders symbolize baseball’s grace.

GRANT YOUNG  covers the New York Yankees and Mets for Sports Illustrated. He also covers the WNBA for Athlon Sports and Heavy. He played Division I baseball at the University of San Francisco for five years and has writing published by The San Franciscan, HAD, JAKE, and elsewhere. You can find him at his website https://grant-young.com and on social media @GrvntYoung.