I first met Clay Buchholz before his world changed.
It was in the summer of 2007 in the locker room at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I., just a couple of weeks before he would pitch a no-hitter for the Boston Red Sox, a night that not only changed his life, but also our expectations for him.
He already was considered a great prospect then, one of those kids whose future address was one day going to be Fenway Park, one of those kids whose future was supposed to be about strikeouts and cheers on warm summer nights.
Yet there was such a small-town quality inside McCoy, from the way he called adults "sir," and the fact he still looked as though he could be walking down some high school corridor somewhere.
A couple of us were waiting to talk to him that night, but first he had to talk to his father, because that's what he always did after he pitched.
"He's always been my coach," he said.
The next day I called his father and he talked about when Clay was a kid he and his wife would take him out to some dusty Texas playground and one day he told Clay to look around and told him who else he saw.
"No one," Clay had said.
"That's why you're going to make it someday," his father told him. "Because you're the only one here."
It was a snapshot out of some timeless baseball story then. And that night at McCoy Stadium, it was Clay Buchholz's story. A story that could have come right out of adolescent fiction.
Three weeks later he no-hit Baltimore at Fenway and the world changed.
In retrospect, it all happened too soon, of course.
It put him in the middle of the spotlight. It raised expectations. It rushed everything, creating the impression that he was ready to be in the major leagues, that it was all going to be easy.
Until he showed he wasn't, not really.
That was last year, when he was sent down to Class AAA Pawtucket in June, and even when he later came back to Boston for a month he never got a win, and was sent back to AA Portland then, the Red Sox season going on without him.
There were several theories, certainly, one of the most prevalent being that he wasn't mature enough to be a major-league pitcher, the thinking being that the no-hitter had come too soon. Whatever the reason, it all seemed a long way from that magical night when he was the toast of Fenway.
"I've felt I've had a lot of weight on my shoulders just trying to be perfect," he said at the time.
Now it's all different.
And it's more than the fact that he started this year in Pawtucket, only this time was a dominant pitcher. More than the fact that he spent a month or so with his name being bandied about in the Roy Halladay trade rumors, his fate as up in the air as an infield popup. Even more than the fact that he has settled into the Red Sox, proving he now belongs in the major leagues.
It's that right now he looks like the No. 3 starter in the postseason, assuming, of course, that the Red Sox get there.
Go right down the list: Tim Wakefield essentially has been hurt since the All-Star break as his aging body continues to betray him. And Wakefield is problematic in the playoffs anyway, the vagaries of the knuckleball. Dice-K is a reclamation project, trying to resurrect himself from this lost season. Junichi Tazawa is a work in progress, only a year removed from pitching in an industrial league in Japan. Paul Byrd has spent the season out of the game, miles away from major-league hitters.
It appears Buchholz is the guy, if only by default.
Yet default's the wrong word.
His record is 4-3, with an ERA of 4.40 since coming up to Boston. Last Saturday he threw a three-hitter through 8 1/3 innings against the Blue Jays -- the Clay Buchholz we once were promised.
But it's more than just the record.
He has been what he was supposed to be a year ago, a young pitcher with a lot of promise, a young pitcher whose stuff is good enough to win in the major leagues.
Last week he said that he's learned to pitch and not just throw the ball.
"I'm a pitcher, and that's the biggest difference," he said.
There's no doubt that's important.
There's no doubt that's the lesson all young pitchers have to learn, even ones who pitched a no-hitter in their second major league start, as if it was all scripted back there when he was a kid and it used to be just him and his parents out there in the noonday sun in Texas, back when he knew he was paying his dues when no one else was seeming to, back when his story seemed to come out adolescent fiction.
Back when he thought it was all going to easy.
The lesson Clay Buchholz has learned.
The one that's made him better.
(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold(at)projo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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