He'd seen that pitch 10,000 times from this boy, and once from his father. Sullivan stepped back in, adjusted his helmet, dug deeper. Countdown. Pitch two of three. Wesley knew what Sullivan would do.
A hitter of that caliber doesn't get fooled twice by the same pitch. Sullivan's brain had calibrated to 71. His timing would adjust. Same fastball again, and Sullivan would connect. So Wesley changed.
The cutter. Same arm slot, same windup, same release point. Identical in every way a hitter's eyes can detect, until the last 3 inches, when the ball breaks laterally, sliding away from a right-handed bat like a door closing in his face. Wesley wound up. Same motion.
Deliberately identical. Because the cutter's power is not in the pitch, it's in the lie it tells. It says, “This is the fastball you just saw. Trust your eyes. Commit.” Sullivan trusted. He committed.
His swing was violent, full torque, hips rotating, hands driving through the zone with the force that had sent 412 career home runs over outfield walls. The ball was cut. 3 inches outside. 3 inches doesn't sound like much. In baseball, 3 in is the distance between a home run and humiliation.
Sullivan's bat passed through the space where the ball should have been, but wasn't. The barrel missed by the width of a finger. Strike two. Half the crowd was on its feet. This was no longer a spectacle.