Thoughts on the Indians' Alex White's MLB debut

We got to the Carolina Ale House right at 6 p.m. on Saturday. Sat in the bar area. Asked the waitress to change the channel to the Cleveland Indians game. The opening lineups were announced. I couldn't hear them, but I could see them. The Indians' starting pitcher was shown.

Alex White. No. 1 pick in 2009. Top prospect. Live arm.

 I was giddy. I looked it. I pumped both of my fists as White threw his warmup pitches. The waitress smirked at us. To put down any concerns the waitress might have had—that I was drunk; that I was high; that I was drunk and high—I explained: "I know that dude. I grew up with him and caught him some and he just made it to the majors and this is his first game ever and it's just crazy."

No clue if she knew baseball. If she knew that by "caught him" I meant I was his catcher.  if she was thinking that meant he fell a lot and I was good at, well, catching him. But in the spirit of waitressing, she turned with what seemed to be genuine excitement. Read his name off the screen. "Alex White." Said, "Wow, that really is insane." 

Yeah. It was. I ordered a beer. If ever an occasion called for spending 300 percent more than what a beer should cost, this was it. 

The waitress took our orders and left. Katie grinned at me. I grinned back. "I can't believe it," I said. The TV showed Jim Leyland, the Detroit Tigers' manager, watching White throw. "He's getting eyeballed by Jim Leyland right now!" I said. Or maybe practically shouted. "He's sharing a dugout with Sandy Alomar, Jr.! He was like, my favorite catcher awhile back!"

I felt like I was 10 years old again. Only, you know, with beer.

The first pitch came and Alex threw a strike. I pumped my fist. I would pump my fist a lot. I laughed when Alex shook off the signs from the catcher. Laughed loud. I've trained myself, as a professional journalist, to watch games with objectivity. Well, eff that. This was a kid I grew up playing with and against. This was the kid my younger brother hit a bomb off of in Little League. This was the kid doing, right here and now in Cleveland, exactly what all of the rest of us kids had dreamed about ever since we learned what baseball was. 

Later, the on-screen info showed a funny little stat about him: 18.0 PPG in high school as a guard. 

The very, very, very first piece of sportswriting I ever wrote was about Alex White. He was a junior in high school, playing basketball for D.H. Conley in Winterville, NC. It was my first assignment as an intern with DownEastSports.com, a long-since-defunct recruiting website started by one of my dad's friends. Conley vs. city rival J.H. Rose. I was there to assess White.

I was so clueless, I didn't even think to get a tape recorder for the post-game interview. I asked Alex a couple questions. Painstakingly wrote down, as close as I could to word-for-word, exaclty what he said in reply. As you can imagine, this took awhile. After the second or third question, he apologetically said, "Man, I gotta go be with my team. I'll be back in a few minutes." And then he was gone into the locker room. 

My dad's friend, Kevin, grinned at me. "Wal-Mart sells some good digital recorders for like twenty bucks." 

"Thanks."

A few minutes later Alex was back. We finished the interview. I was there to ask about what he saw himself playing in the future, basketball or baseball. He said that he loved basketball, and wanted to always play, but that he knew his odds of actually getting somewhere were way better with baseball.

I went back home, typed something up, emailed it to Kevin. I don't remember it word-for-word, but it went something like this:

In a game where intimidation is lethal and presence means everything, players often try to become something more than what they are for the sake of getting an edge. This usually has the opposite impact on their game, making them ineffective and easily beat. We knew, though, if we looked in the right places, we could find a guy who had that intimidation, had that presence, and made it look natural. Alex White is one of those guys. 

A summer later, he was drafted in the 16th round. I played on the Pitt County Post 39 American Legion team with him that summer, alternating between catcher, first base, and DH. Usually, Alex's catcher from high school, Landis, caught him. In the first round of the state tournament, though, Landis went down with a migraine. I came in from first, changed into my gear, and got behind the plate.

Alex wasn't on that first inning. He threw one ball away. Gave up another hit. Gave up a couple runs. Got the last out of the inning—I think; it was one of the last two outs, anyway—on a ground ball to third. I ran down the line to back up first. We got the out.

I looped back around, leisurely passing by the opposing dugout. They were talking the expected s--- when you're catching a draftee. "He's got nothing, catch." "He's losing it, 21." "He can't handle us, Sneed." 

"You better hope so," I shot back. 

He ended up with, I think, 16 strikeouts that afternoon. We retired something like 10 in a row at one point. Struck out something like seven in a row. Fastball-slider-fastball-slider-slider-fastball. Just those two pitches, over and over, one or the other. And he wasn't shaking me. In the fifth or sixth inning, after he'd struck out the side, he came up to me in the dugout and slapped his glove to my mitt and said, "They don't have a f------- clue what's coming." 

We ended up going into extra innings—after tying the game 2-2; they never did score again off of him—and Alex was still hitting 95 mph in the 10th inning. 

I remember talking with our coach, Coach Mullis, about Alex earlier that summer, after he got drafted. About his mechanics, how natural they were. About his athleticism, how well he played the field. Alex could hit too, now. Dropped a few bombs for us. But mostly, Mullis raved about his arm. "When he was born," he'd say, "God touched his right arm and said, 'Son, you will throw the baseball, and you will throw it very, very well.'" 

It was the single most fun 10 innings of catching I ever had in my life. I've had some great memories with guys like Kramer, my brother who's pitching for the Charleston RiverDogs in the Yankees' organization now, and Brandon, my best friend since junior high. Won the state championship in high school with them. Caught Kramer all through college and got to see him get drafted. 

But as far as pure, simple, raw fun—that game with Alex was it. 

Fastball, outside corner. Boom. 94 mph. Fastball in. Boom. 95 mph. Slider away. Oh, snap. 88 mph, swing and a miss. 

Over and over and over. 

On Saturday, I saw flashes of that again. And I saw the future for hitters in the AL Central. Alex White will be throwing the baseball, and he will be throwing it very, very well.