Well, folks, I've been doing this for a long time. A long time. I saw Hank Aaron play. I caught for Warren Spahn. I once struck out looking at a pitch I thought was a bird. And I am here to tell you — I have never, in all my years in this game, seen anything quite like what Jacob Misiorowski did to the Chicago Cubs on Friday night.
The kid threw a baseball 105.5 miles per hour. One hundred and five point five. I had to ask our statistician to repeat it because I thought maybe I'd had one too many brats before the game. He said it again. 105.5. I said, "Son, are you sure that's not the temperature on the field?" He was sure.
He worked seven innings against a Cubs lineup that came in hitting .270 as a team. He struck out nine of them. The ones he didn't strike out were hitting weak ground balls and mumbling back to the dugout. At one point in the fifth inning, a Cubs batter swung so early at a Misiorowski fastball that I think he was aiming for the previous pitch.
Seven innings, nine strikeouts, zero earned runs. The Brewers win. His ERA drops to 1.35. And somewhere out there, some poor radar gun technician is going to have to recalibrate his equipment because he's never going to believe his own readings again.
In my playing days, I threw batting practice at about 58 miles per hour and the guys still complained it was too fast. Misiorowski throws 105 and they put it on ESPN. Different times, I suppose. Very different times.
The Brewers are 48-29. The kid is 9-3. And every five days, this city stops what it's doing and watches. That's what great pitching does. It makes people stop. I'd know — I spent most of my career making people stop and stare for very different reasons.
Miz Day. Get used to saying it. And check isthemizpitching.com before you make any plans.