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........................................ 266 | Matt Torra warms up in the bullpen on August 12, 2008, trying to feel strong. He is pitching for the Tucson Sidewinders on a warm and windy night in Colorado against the Sky Sox. He is barely twenty-four, but at times he feels much older. The path back from shoulder surgery has been far tougher than he thought. At first, when that “giant knot” in his shoulder had been diagnosed as a labrum tear just weeks after he turned pro in 2005, he thought he could power through it. Sure, it was shoulder surgery, serious business, but wasn’t Matt the “horse” everyone had said he was earlier in the year when all those scouts flocked to UMass games? Didn’t they gush (even as some cringed) when he maintained his ninety-three-mile-per-hour fastball deep into games, twice throwing at least ten innings, once reaching a whopping 149 pitches? Wasn’t he the guy “with more helium than anyone in the draft”? Wasn’t he a first-rounder who got a million-dollar signing bonus? And wasn’t it just a “small, small tear,” worthy of only a couple of arthroscopic cuts and three dissolving screws? How bad could it be? Four months after the surgery in January 2006 in Tucson, the Diamondbacks let him pick up a baseball once again. Under the watchful eye of head trainer Greg Latta, Matt was allowed to make a few tosses from thirty feet. He had been throwing a ball all his life; nothing had felt more natural. Now it felt as if his shoulder were locked in vise. It would be months still before he was game ready. Ultimately he managed to pitch just twenty-five innings, his fastball plodding along in the mid-eighties. After a vigorous off-season workout regimen, Matt was hoping that 2007 would mark his return to glory. He would be able to pitch a full season with no restrictions. He was assigned to the Diamondbacks’ high-A team, the Visalia Oaks. It proved to be a humbling, dispiriting season. Despite a solid 12–10 record , he posted a 6.01 ERA, third worst in the league. He couldn’t blow the ball by hitters anymore, and the “power curve” just wasn’t as sharp. Many a night he would call his dad, Jim Torra, back home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts , letting down his guard and admitting his doubt. “I got my butt 20 “Just Hoping to Have It Be Over” Colorado Springs, Colorado “just hoping to have it be over” | 267 handed to me,” Jim would hear his son say. Or, “I just want to crawl and hide. I don’t know if it’s the injury, or if the competition is just that much better.” Matt knew the Diamondbacks weren’t quite ready to give up on him. They had invested in him, after all. High draft picks have more room to fail; that’s just the way the game works. Still, he knew their patience was not infinite. There were new draft picks every year in the States. Then there were hungry players from Japan and Korea, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, all yearning for a shot. Throw in trade possibilities and free agent signings, and he knew he would have to perform. If not now, then soon. Real soon. ● Going into 2008, Matt came to a hard reckoning. He was never going to be a power pitcher by major league standards. He was going to have to rely on finesse. He had always had great control. The fastball might not blaze the way it once had. The power curve might not have that wicked northsouth drop. But he would develop a slider, work on his changeup, learn not just to pitch but to, as the scouts liked to say, “become a pitcher.” Through the first half of the year, the results were encouraging. The Diamondbacks had given him his first promotion to the high minors, at Double-A in Mobile, Alabama, and Matt had gone 5–5 with a nifty 2.85 ERA. On June 15 they promoted him to the Sidewinders. For Matt, this was thrilling news. For almost two years he had been dating a woman named Jessica Reed, whom he had met during his rehab in Tucson (where she worked in human resources for the Diamondbacks).1 The Sidewinders had also recently called up Matt’s friend Frank Curreri, who used to catch him...

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