Sullivan East's Greer Pitches Through The Nerves

BLUFF CITY, Tenn. – Sullivan East junior pitcher Desmond Greer stepped off the mound. He adjusted his hat, smoothed out his Patriots baseball jersey and shook his ungloved hand. Then Greer paced around the rubber, stealing time and slowing the game down while a Daniel Boone hitter waited for a pitch last Wednesday evening at McKamey Field.

Greer looked nervous.

He was.

He was pitching.

“If I’m nervous, [my coaches] say, ‘Good. Keep that same feeling.’ ” said Greer, a 5-foot-8, 150-pound lefthander.

Greer pitches nervous. He plays nervous. He walks into the ballpark nervous and takes the field bundled in nerves and anticipation.

Apprehension is action for Greer. The edge is a straight line.

“For some reason, I don’t do as well whenever I’m not nervous,” he said.

So Greer gives in to his anxiety. He harnesses the energy. And he trades busy thoughts, a tight brain and an overworked psyche for success.

Greer is 4-2 with a 3.06 ERA and 24 strikeouts in 30 innings for the Patriots (5-6, 2-5 Big Nine Conference). He’s also hitting .367 with four home runs.

Greer’s strong numbers stand out. But his biggest achievement is the confidence he instills in his Sullivan East teammates. Greer is shorter and smaller than most of his Patriots brethren. On the mound, Greer looks downright tiny when compared to some of the big kids swinging big bats in the Big Nine. But Greer plays above his height and beyond his size.

“If you watch him play … he’s kind of a little kid,” Sullivan East coach Mike Breuninger said. “But he’s effective.”

Greer has risen fast. He was a fill-in outfielder who fought for and eventually earned a starting spot as a nerve-racked sophomore. The nerves still remain a year later. But Greer’s ability to battle with the best Northeast Tennessee has to offer has made converters out of his Patriots teammates.

East believes in Greer. Greer believes in East. And Patriots senior shortstop Tyler Gaby said the red-white-and-blue know they can win any game they play when Greer holds the ball and stands on the mound.

“Des gets the team pumped up,” Gaby said. “When he’s on the mound, we’re so confident.”

The search

Greer’s asked and he’s honest: He wasn’t very good.

Greer started playing ball when he was 5. He played with “Tennessee High guys” – Cody Snyder, Aaron Bishop, John Ellis Davis and Taylor Harmon.

Most of the Tennessee High guys started finding their way early. But Greer was still looking for an answer by the eighth grade. He wanted to pitch. He knew he could pitch. He just didn’t have a pitch.

So Greer started looking for a curve. As a trial, he began picking up a ball and just throwing it.

Nothing.

Greer kept trying.

Nothing.

He was still searching for his pitch midway through his freshman year at East.

“Coach was still kind of iffy on me,” Greer said.

Then he found it. The curve. The pitch. The ball he could depend and rely upon. The ball jumped and sank, calmed his nerves and made him stand taller than 5-foot-8.

But Greer still had to prove he belonged.

The breakthrough

Greer’s breakthrough came late in his sophomore season.

He was batting. He swung hard and made contact. Then he started running. Normally, he’d stop running when the ball found a glove. But this time the ball kept going. So Greer did, too. By the time
Greer’s shot flew over the fence for a home run, he was rounding second base and running toward third.

He eyed Patriots coach Breuninger. Breuninger was beaming. And Greer had found the spotlight.

“It was crazy,” Greer said. “I was so nervous trotting around the bases. I saw coach Breuninger’s grin over there on third base. I was, like, ‘Yeah. I can’t believe it, either.’ ”

But it was true.

And it was just the beginning.

“I always tell the kids, ‘You never know when you’re going to get a chance,’ ” Breuninger said.

Greer made the most of his.

Soon, he was a starter. Soon, he was making a name. Greer’s nerves remained. But his confidence grew. And as East’s coaches pushed Greer to believe in himself and maximize his talent, the small,
unsure Patriot began to dream of bigger things.

‘Knowing how to pitch’

Greer pulls his hat down. He locks in. He shifts his weight backward, kicks a leg up high and pauses. Time stops. The batter waits. Then Greer unloads. The ball zips through the air, shifts, dives and drops. Swing. Miss. Strikeout.

Greer’s just thrown a nasty curve to a Daniel Boone hitter. He’s recorded another K. And he’s momentarily cooled his nerves.

“It’s hard because we have a little park,” Greer said. “I get so nervous that a little hanging curve ball … they’ll hit it 400 feet.”

So Greer mixes his pitches up. He’s always curve-heavy. But over-the-top and sidearm benders are disguised and blended with fastballs and changeups.

Greer admires Cole Hamels, the Philadelphia Phillies hurler and 2008 World Series most-valuable player. Like Greer, Hamels is a southpaw. Hamels also mixes pitches and disguises his fastball with off-speed offerings to toy with hitters.

Looking up to Hamels is great. But Greer has his own ideas.

This is how he sees it: It’s better to take every hitter in a lineup to 3-2 rather than serve up a fat one that’s clobbered out of the park.

So Greer nibbles. Sometimes he paces around the mound and makes hitters wait. Sometimes he wastes pitches. And sometimes his wasted pitches end up beyond the reach of East’s catcher, slamming against the backstop. But Greer keeps the ball in the park. He keeps racking up victories and Ks. And he keeps cooling his nerves.

“It’s about being smarter, hitting spots and knowing how to pitch,” Breuninger said. “He’s not overpowering.”

But Greer is a winner. And Breuninger said East is a different team when Greer is on the mound.

Opportunities

Greer still has a year before things get crazy. Before the nerves really start to pound.

He wants to play college ball. Partly because he loves the game of baseball. Partly because he thinks it’s his best chance to attend college.

“That’s probably the only way I might go,” Greer said. “We’re not rich or anything. That’s something that I really – that’d be a dream for me.”

Gaby, East’s senior shortstop and Greer’s best friend, recently received a baseball scholarship from Milligan College.

Breuninger said Greer has the talent to follow in Gaby’s steps and move to the next level.

“Definitely,” Breuninger said.

Greer also has another reason he wants to play ball in college. His father, Mike, played sports in high school but was forced to give everything up when he took a job to support his family. He never attended college.

“I never realized the opportunities that were there,” said Mike Greer, 46, a sales consultant at Bill Gatton Imports and a resident of Bluff City.

Now, he wants his son to experience the things he never could.

Mike Greer attends every East game he can make it to. He cheers on his son and the Patriots. And he dreams of the possibilities that await.

Greer said he would not have anything without his father’s support.

“He gets me pumped up,” Greer said. “And if I get pumped up, it seems like the team does, too. I love having him there; he backs me up.”

As Greer continues to rise and dream of bigger things, so do the Patriots. East has saved a season that began in disarray, knocking off Daniel Boone, Tennessee High and Jefferson County in the last month of action.

Meanwhile, Greer keeps firing away. And calming his nerves.

“I never thought this season would turn out like it would,” Greer said.

btsmith@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2569

At a glance
Name: Desmond Greer
Team: Sullivan East Patriots
Year: Junior
Position: Pitcher/outfielder
Number: 19
Pitching: 4-2, 24 strikeouts, 3.06 ERA, 30 innings
Hitting: .367 batting average, 4 home runs