The Eric Bruntlett School of Writing
The Eric Bruntlett School of Writing
Until this past Sunday (August 23, 2009), Eric Bruntlett was a nearly anonymous reserve infielder for the Philadelphia Phillies. While his record shows that he’s appeared in seven major league seasons, he’s never accumulated more than 240 at bats in any one of those. . .and in six of his seasons, he has surpassed 150 at bats only once. (A player who’s a regular in the starting line-up will end a season with more than 500 at bats.)
This year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he’s struggled—struggled both to appear in a game, because he’s a middle infielder on a team featuring two of the best in the sport today, Chase Utley at second base and Jimmy Rollins at shortstop, and struggled when he’s appeared. His average this year is an anemic .158.
On Sunday, however, Philadelphia manager Charlie Manuel decided to give his regular second baseman, Utley, a day off to rest as the grueling major league schedule moves toward its last month, and gave Bruntlett a rare start—and he was having an even more rare good day, collecting three hits in the five times he came to the plate and in his final at bat, in the top of the ninth, he had been robbed of a fourth hit when New York Mets’ outfielder Jeff Francoeur made a diving catch of a sinking line drive Bruntlett had scorched into right field. At first, the umpire ruled that Francoeur had not made a clean catch, and Bruntlett stood on third base with what would have been only his fourth career triple. Francoeur protested, however, and the umpires reversed the initial call: the catch was good and Bruntlett was out. Television instant replays showed that the new call was correct: Francoeur had indeed made an amazing catch to rob Bruntlett.
In the top of the ninth inning, however, Bruntlett made two poor fielding plays on consecutive chances. The first, on a ground ball by the Mets’ Luis Castilla, allowed a run to score, narrowing the Phillies’ margin to 9-7. The second, on a ground ball by Daniel Murphy, put the tying runs on base and brought the winning run to the plate, in the form of Francoeur.
On a two ball, two strike count, the Mets’ base runners took off, attempting a double steal. Bruntlett moved toward second base in the event the Phillies’ catcher threw down there to attempt to catch the runner. Instead, Francoeur turned on the pitch, and hit a hard line drive up through the middle, over second base. If the runners had not been trying to steal, if Bruntlett had not been moving toward the base to cover it, the line drive would have skipped into centerfield, a clean single and a run scored.
However, since Bruntlett had moved to cover the base, he was there when the ball arrived. He caught it, simultaneously stepping on second base to double off Castilla and then tagged Murphy, coming up the line to second, for a rare unassisted triple play—only the fifteenth in the hundred-plus-year history of Major League Baseball; only the second to end a game.
For writers, Bruntlett’s lessons are clear:
1. We’re going to make mistakes as writers. Just as Bruntlett botched two consecutive ground balls, we’re going to have days of bad writing, days in which we wonder whether we’ll ever write well. Like Bruntlett, we’re only human.
2. However, like Bruntlett, we get the chance to redeem ourselves. For writers, it’s called revision: just as Bruntlett could erase the two mistakes he made in that single play, so can we use the delete key or the shredder to get rid of the poor writing we do.
3. The most important lesson, however, is that Bruntlett would not have been able to turn that rare unassisted triple play if he hadn’t been moving toward second base when Francouer sent his hard liner back up the middle. Like Bruntlett, we have to be in position. . .and for us that means sitting at our desk or going out to the café where we write. If we’re not there, we can’t ever write brilliantly.
4. As a corollary to that, remember that, although Bruntlett accomplished one of the most rare feats in baseball history, he wasn’t positioned near second base thinking, “I’m going to make history.” When he moved toward the base, it was a rather ordinary gesture—years of repetition had taught him to move, instinctively, toward second base when the runner on first attempted to steal. For Bruntlett, just prior to Francoeur’s hitting the ball, he was just doing his job, just as he had hundreds of times before in his professional and amateur career on the baseball diamond, in the Little Leagues, in high school, in the minor leagues, in the major leagues. .. he was just going to where he was supposed to be, not thinking greatness, just thinking: move, go where I’m supposed to be. If we move to where we’re supposed to be often enough, we may write something great. . .but we can’t if we don’t do our job, if we don’t go where we belong: at our desks.
