Embarrassed by the ceremonial first "pitch" he attempted on the opening day of spring training, Clearwater's mayor longed to make amends. Sunday was his chance.
By KELLEY BENHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published August 30, 2005
He sits at his desk tossing a baseball - tossing the baseball - trying to look casual, insisting he has a sense of humor about this. He's speculating about how all this started.
"Some fool politician probably helped pay for a baseball stadium, and in order to honor him they let him throw out the first pitch," he says. "It was a terrible decision."
Terrible for Frank Hibbard: investment officer, mayor of Clearwater, god-awful pitcher.
He's 6-foot-4. Athletic. Big, strong arms. The Weekly Planet ranked him one of the 10 sexiest local politicians, which makes him roll his eyes. He works out six days a week, played basketball and swam in high school. He's 38 now. He looks like he ought to be able to throw a ball. His mama never signed him up for Little League, though. That decision haunts him now.
He hasn't been mayor long, but he has learned that this pitching thing is part of the job. It has been almost six months since his first ceremonial opening pitch as mayor. He hasn't lived it down.
"I've got the fateful ball right here," he says. He tosses it. Catches it. Tosses it.
It was March 3. Opening day of the Phillies spring training season. At that night's commission meeting he apologized to the city for "the most heinous pitch at opening day for a mayor ever in the city's history."
He took smack from the commission, he took smack from kids at a Little League event, and he took smack from an 80-year-old lady at his church. He rolls the ball across the desk. Right there under where it says Rawlings, like a bad bruise, is the red clay and brown dirt of Bright House Networks field.
It would be easy for him to claim he's busy with larger concerns - downtown redevelopment, that pesky bridge to the beach - and just say no to ceremonial pitching, at least until next season.
But everyone who knows Frank Hibbard knows that he's a competitor. He wants another shot.
He threw one out at the Little League opening ceremonies, where the kids gave him pointers. He threw one out in Philadelphia, but no one around here saw it.
So on his calendar is Devil Rays vs. Angels, Sunday, Aug. 27. A major league redemption pitch.
He says he's not practicing. He acts like he's not nervous.
It is a sound public position.
***
March 3 He'd never pitched as mayor before. He had seen other people do it, and usually they just strolled up there somewhere between the mound and the plate and they kind of tossed it up like they were at the park with their dog. He thought he could do better than that.
No video exists of what actually happened. The Phillies claim they didn't have a tape in the camera that day.
"I swear to you," says director of Florida operations John Timberlake. "I would have handed it over in a heartbeat."
But the pitch has been described in some detail again and again, and it goes like this:
It was a gloomy, drizzly day.
"Not to make excuses," Hibbard says, "But it was."
Hibbard walked up to the mound and stretched a bit. He wound up and kicked his knee up in the air like maybe there were talent scouts in the stadium, and cocked back his arm, and -
"I wanted to throw it hard," he says. "Really hard. I wanted to hurl it in there."
So Hibbard clutched the ball in his hand with all five fingers like he wanted to choke it and he slung it toward the catcher, except he forgot to let go.
The ball slammed the ground so hard it bruised the turf.
Catcher Mike Lieberthal waited for the ball at home plate.
"Frank was about 60 feet closer to the ball than Mike was," Timberlake said. "And the mound is 60 feet, six inches from the plate."
Some put the throw at 10 feet. Some say the pitch approximated the spiking of a football. No one disputes that Hibbard threw it hard. Really hard.
The Phillie Phanatic mascot collapsed, clutching his furry green gut, laughing and pointing. He has seen thousands of first pitches, and though he can't speak, he indicated through his "best friend," Tom Burgoyne, that Hibbard's pitch was "legendary" for its awfulness.
"I couldn't talk to him for a long time," Timberlake said. "What are you going to say, "I've seen worse?' Because I don't think I have."
Hibbard let it be known he wanted another chance.
Told that Hibbard was set to pitch again, Timberlake groaned.
"He's asking for trouble."
*** Mary Repper saw Hibbard pitch from her season seat along the third base line.
"There was this second of absolute silence," she said. "It was one of those horrifying moments. People didn't know what to do. Should we laugh?"
A longtime baseball fan, Repper managed all of Hibbard's political campaigns. She knows his mind. Knows his ego. Don't all politicians have egos? She knows that he laughed it off like a champ, but that he suffered.
"I was mortified for him."
The problem with his pitching, she says, is not his arm. He's an overachiever, meticulous and demanding. And is that bad?
"Everything Frank does he wants to do in CinemaScope and Technicolor," Repper said. It doesn't surprise her that he grabbed the ball with five fingers, even though any Little League coach will tell you to hold it lightly, with two fingers and a thumb. "He's a control guy," she said.
Maybe it's silly, this fuss about throwing a ball. It doesn't have a thing to do with running a city. Hibbard began to see an inverse relationship between ball-throwing and good government.
So why do we require this of our politicians? The tradition goes way back, although no one can pinpoint the definitive origin.
Presidents have done it back to Taft. After Sept. 11, George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium to start Game 3 of the World Series. Bulletproof vest and all, he threw a clean strike.
It's patriotic and masculine and everymanly. It puts people in touch with their elected officials in a human way, Repper said.
People like to see politicians out there in their polo shirts, ties off. Even when they biff the pitch.
"It makes people know they're human," she said. "In fact, Frank probably went up in the polls that day."
Repper is now retired, but as Hibbard's political adviser, she would advise him to keep throwing. Also to practice.
"He'd better be practicing," she said. "Anybody in their right mind would be practicing."
Sitting there in the stadium that day, Repper decided to go ahead and laugh. She laughed and laughed.
As his political adviser, good pitch or bad, she would advise him to do the same.
***
Sunday.
It was a beautiful day, bright blue sky and puffy clouds, not that you could tell inside the dome of Tropicana Field.
The mayor insisted he was not concerned. He asked if he could throw some practice tosses and the Devil Rays representative said sure, they'd find a catcher. Then Hibbard said no, never mind. He was going to do this in one shot.
So they gave him a nice, clean, bright white ball and he waited with his wife, Teresa, through the speeches and pregame festivities. He waited while Dwayne Staats, the Rays broadcaster, threw the first first pitch, a straight bullet from the mound. Ouch.
Then it was time.
Hibbard strolled toward the mound with Teresa whistling at him and waved to the crowd with his left hand, mayorlike, and held the ball lightly in his right, as if it were a baby bird, and then he swerved just short of the mound like he didn't want to get his loafers dirty, and then - did he even stop? did he slow down? - he tossed the ball at the catcher, like he was at the park with his dog, and it was kind of pretty if you don't know anything about baseball, and it went - plop! - into the glove.
He strolled easily back toward his wife, who was wolf-whistling now, and he was smiling, like, See, that was nothing! In and out, back to urban planning or whatever.
Just like that, like, Why are you people still looking at me?
"Did you hear me whistle?" Teresa said.
"No I did not," the mayor said.
The thing the mayor knows now, that he did not know before, is that any ceremonial pitch that makes it to the plate is a good pitch.
Then, because the competitive thing is hard to shake, he said, "Dwayne pitched from the mound, the smartass."
Teresa gave him a smooch and they walked up the stairs to their seats.
A few rows up, a fan he'd never met caught his attention.
"Nice throw," she said.
"Thanks," he said. "It's over."
High five.
-- Kelley Benham can be reached at 727 893-8848 or benham@sptimes.com Times staff writers Robert Farley and Aaron Sharockman and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
