Throwing The Screwball….

Alan J. Schwarz
6 min readJun 13, 2021

It was an unusual sight at Alexandra Park. A team of virile nineteen year old guys where trying to get a hit against the pitcher they were facing and they were having absolutely no success. The pitcher was sixty one year old Noah Ganz.

Noah’s Grandson Aaron had asked him to play with his team because he knew about Noah’s unhittable sinker riser screwball. Noah sat on the bench in the dugout most of the game, but he was the closer. He came in the game for the final inning to retire the opposition’s side.

One of the girls in the park who was dating one of the players recorded Noah’s amazing ability and posted it to Tik Tok. Millions of people clicked on it, and most thought it was some kind of edited prank.

DeShaun Long was intrigued. DeShaun was the Coach of the minor league ‘’Red Rockets’’ and through the girl who posted the video on Tik Tok found Aaron who provided his Grandpa’s information.

At first Noah refused the overture to pitch for the Red Rockets. He was playing because he loved being with his Grandson, he wasn’t interested in taking his game to a professional level. DeShaun was persistent and he offered five hundred dollars to Noah to come to a try out. If he made the team the Red Rockets would pay him two hundred dollars a game. Noah thought about it and said if he made the team all the money that was to be paid to him would instead be donated to Breast Cancer Research. DeShaun agreed and they arranged a time and place to see if Noah could make the team.

DeShaun had his five best hitters show up and they laughed when they saw a bald, paunchy Noah take the mound. He did some kind of weird stretching exercise and took the mound. He threw a total of fifteen strikes, retiring all five guys, They were all in amazement. Not only couldn’t they get a hit, they couldn’t touch the ball which danced all around the strike zone.

As a Coach and General Manager DeShaun had seen thousands of players but nobody demonstrated the control and the ability to make the ball move around the strike zone like Noah did. He put knuckle ballers to shame.

Before he signed a contract for the last ten games of the season, Noah made sure that it was written into the agreement that he would throw no more than forty five pitches a game. He would need at…

Alan J. Schwarz

Alan Schwarz loves life. He is the founder of JAMS Productions, a television production company based in Toronto . His passion is writing.