Trevor Bauer: Eccentric or just smarter than the rest of us?

It was the summer of 1998 in Santa Clara, California when Trevor Bauer threw his first pitch. A first-year player in what was largely a second-year team, his team’s starting pitcher had worked himself into a base-loaded, zero-out situation and the 7-year-old kid from North Hollywood was called upon to get out of the jam. He remembers standing on the mound prior to warm-ups thinking to himself, “So, I have to throw this thing over there, huh?” He doesn’t recall if that first pitch was a strike. He doesn’t recall if a run or two had crossed the plate. But he knows that he managed to work his way out of the inning and would live to throw again. Fourteen years later, Bauer finds himself in a cooler climate — having played in southern California, UCLA, and the ranks of the Arizona Diamondbacks — with similar pressures. Sure, the base paths are no longer cluttered with 7-year olds, but he has gone from one of the top prospects the game has to offer to being traded by the team which drafte...