This 42-year-old Little League coach is throwing 101 mph

It’s 5:45 a.m. in Brick Township, N.J.

The alarm on Rob Semerano’s phone is sounding. He reaches over to turn it off, heads downstairs to the kitchen and makes himself a cup of black coffee. A few minutes later, his two boys -- 10-year-old Robby and 9-year-old Luca -- join him for breakfast before he drives them to school.

“Then, it’s a race against the clock,” said the 42-year-old single dad. “How much can I get done between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.?”

After returning from dropping off the kids at school, Semerano tends to the dishes and the laundry. It’s a nice day out, so he decides he should take care of the lawn, too.

As he gets to the backyard, he begins to mow around the pitcher’s mound he built for himself there. He has experience in building mounds -- he and his father own a business that produces them, in addition to a baseball academy they run together.

Semerano calls one of the players he works with at Big League Talent to come and catch for him. Already worn out from taking care of the kids, household chores and his businesses, he nonetheless wants to throw.

He’s always wanted to throw.

“By the time I get to my bullpen session, my legs are already in the seventh inning,” he said. “But I love it.”

Semerano tosses several warm-up pitches. Then he starts to throw harder. Eventually, his father, Bob, comes over from across the street. Semerano grunts with each pitch, now maxing out his effort. Following each grunt is the loud pop of the catcher’s glove that echoes all around the yard.

As Bob watches his son throw, he can’t help but think back to a memorable conversation that took place 20 years earlier.

That’s when Jeff Bittiger, a scout for the A’s, spoke with Bob about his then-22-year-old son, who was pitching for Fordham University.

“I’m looking at three kids on the East Coast right now,” Bittiger said. “Ross Ohlendorf out of Princeton, Justin Verlander out of Old Dominion and your son.

“Your son’s arm is the liveliest out of the three.”

Two decades later, Rob Semerano’s arm is livelier than it’s ever been. In fact, at 42, he’s throwing harder than he was at 22.

In 2004, Semerano’s fastball touched 96 mph. Now, it’s reaching 101.

But all these years later, he’s still never pitched in a Major League game.

A dream that goes back 50 years

Murray Cook is remembered most for his tenure as a general manager for three teams -- the Yankees (1983-84), Expos (1985-87) and Reds (1987-89). But before all of that, he was a scout for the Pirates.

In 1974, he came across a 6-foot-5, 205-pound right-hander who had a tremendous fastball.

“He offered me a contract for that year,” Bob Semerano said. “He said, ‘We’ll sign you right now.’ I said that I wanted to play college football and baseball.”

A sensible decision given that Bob could throw a football 80-plus yards.

The following year, Bob was drafted in the 22nd round by the Pirates, and this time, he signed.

“The first game I pitched while in Rookie ball was against the Cubs,” he said. “The starting pitcher for them was Lee Smith. I remember I pitched really well. I had some hopes of really doing something with baseball. And then, a couple of weeks later, my elbow started bothering me.”

Bob was shut down from throwing and the organization was very cautious with him from that point forward. He only appeared in one other game that year, and in it, he heard his elbow “pop.”

“The pain was excruciating,” Bob said. “I went to the doctor the next day, but they couldn’t read the X-rays because my arm was so swollen. So they sent me to Pittsburgh to see the Pirates’ team doctor.

“He told me that if he drained the swollen area and blood came out, it meant the bone was cracked. I remember the syringe filling up with blood. It was an Olecranon fracture.”

After rehabbing the elbow, Bob was back on the mound with Low-A Niagara Falls the following year. But then he was sidelined by a shoulder injury.

When he was finally able to throw again, he took the mound for a bullpen session. As his teammates around the batting cage heard the pop of the catcher’s glove and realized Bob was throwing, batting practice abruptly paused.

“The entire team came over and I remember their comments about how hard I was throwing,” Bob said. “The scout that was there said, ‘We got one of your pitches at 100 mph.’”

But the injuries were unrelenting -- continued elbow and shoulder problems derailed Bob the following season as well, and by 1978, with peers like Don Robinson, Rick Honeycutt and Pascual Perez eclipsing him on their way to the Majors, the Pirates released him.

Bob wasn’t ready to give up on the dream yet. And neither was George Steinbrenner.

“I get a phone call sometime in January from a local sportswriter,” Bob said. “He was contacted by someone who knew George Steinbrenner. He told me that he thought someone from the Yankees was going to reach out to me after reading one of his articles about me.”

As it turned out, Steinbrenner, the longtime and often controversial owner of the Yankees, had been roommates with a man named Chuck Salmon at Williams College in Massachusetts. Salmon’s father owned the newspaper in Port Jervis, N.Y., where Bob attended high school. Salmon had tragically died in an air accident while piloting a jet as a member of the famed Air Force Thunderbirds.

Bob’s pro career was brought to Steinbrenner’s attention by New York state senator Richard Schermerhorn. Steinbrenner wrote back to Schermerhorn in a letter dated Jan. 22, 1979.

“Maybe it’s just sentiment, because Chuck was killed …,” Steinbrenner wrote. “I will this day instruct my people to bring this young man to camp this spring and give him every opportunity to prove that he has a right to be in the Yankees organization.”

A little over a week later, Bob received a letter from Steinbrenner.

“I wish you every bit of good luck with the Yankees,” it read. “We’ll be watching your career with great interest.”

That career looked promising based on how well Bob performed that spring with the Yanks in Tampa. A couple of days before the end of Spring Training, Bob called his wife.

“I told her I had heard great news,” Bob recalled. “My pitching coach said he liked the fastball-slider combo. He said that it was going to be my ticket to the big leagues.”

That evening, Bob and some friends went for a boat ride off the Florida coast. As it got dark, the boat hit a large wave and an old football injury came back to haunt Bob, who suffered a pinched nerve in his neck.

“Two days later, I got released,” Bob said.

That was where Bob’s dream of reaching the Majors was dashed. But the dream remains alive for his son.

A second chance

Bittiger, the A’s scout, told Rob that he projected him to be a fourth to seventh round pick in the 2004 Draft. But much like his father 25 years earlier, he suffered a freak injury just as he was on the cusp of a major milestone in his quest to reach the big leagues.

“Right before the Draft, I sprained my ankle really bad,” Rob said. “I was racing a teammate, and as we got close to the dugout, he lost, and he kind of playfully shoved me. I was next to the stairs and I fell into the dugout. I landed on the side of my ankle and it swelled up.

“I had three pre-Draft workouts -- one at Yankee Stadium, one at Shea Stadium and one at Fenway Park. I showed up to all of them with an aircast on. I was still able to pitch, but in a lot of pain.”

Rob’s Draft stock took a hit after he maxed out at 92-93 mph. As a result, Day 1 of the Draft -- June 7, 2004 -- was emotionally exhausting for the Semerano family.

“We were told I was probably going to go somewhere in rounds four to seven,” Rob said. “And then nothing happened that first day. Eighteen rounds go by and my name hasn’t been called. It was pretty devastating.”

Rob needed to get away from the television and from his family. He needed to be alone with his thoughts. So he went to a place where he had done just that many times over the years.

As he made his way down into the basement, where he had spent hundreds of hours working out or throwing a baseball into an old couch, Rob’s mind was racing.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘What if I don’t get drafted?’” he remembers. “Everything I’ve dreamt of and worked for … and then the thought came to my mind: ‘What if I do get drafted? Am I really ready for this?’

“I started to pray. And at that moment, my dad opens the door to the cellar and yells to me, ‘Rob, Jeff Bittiger is on the phone -- the A’s want to draft you in one of the first two rounds tomorrow!’”

The A’s selected Rob in the 20th round. It was a second chance for a Semerano to reach the Majors.

But Rob’s journey continued to mirror his father’s.

In his second pro season, Rob had a 3.28 ERA with a 25% strikeout rate and 10 saves by mid-July. He was on the verge of being called up to High-A Stockton when he suffered a partial tear of his right rotator cuff.

Rob reached Stockton by 2007, but he tore his subscapularis muscle. On Jan. 4, 2008, he was informed by the A’s that they were releasing him.

Later that year, Rob signed with the Yankees. But he tore his right UCL and had to undergo Tommy John surgery. After a short stint with the Astros in 2009, he tried to keep his playing career alive with independent ball in the Atlantic League.

But then came the time to move on.

Baseball as therapy

Rob and Bob ran their baseball businesses together for the next several years. All the while, Rob kept himself in shape and continued to throw even though he didn’t have any big league prospects.

Then in 2021, he went through a separation and eventually a divorce. It was a devastating time emotionally. He was depressed and trying to process this jarring change in his life while simultaneously trying to put on a brave face for his boys.

He often couldn’t sleep. One sleepless night, he made a resolution.

“I was sitting in my chair, it was around 3 a.m.,” Rob said. “I just said, ‘You know what? I’m done with this. I need to show my boys that I can be strong in a real tough time like this -- take a tough time and turn it into a positive.'”

Rob began to train relentlessly, to the point of what he called “exhausting his body physically.” And the velocity on his fastball kept ticking up. By the end of that summer, he was up to 98 mph.

“I’ve always loved throwing the ball,” Rob said. “But when you go through a tough time like that, I really looked at it as therapy.”

That therapy would take his fastball to a place he never imagined.

It’s all in the wrist

“You’re using your arm as a whip,” Rob said as he endeavored to explain how he’s able to throw as hard as he does for as long as he does, even at age 42.

“You’re using the third-class lever of getting your elbow in front of you, as opposed to using your elbow as a crank.”

Using your elbow as a crank? It hurts just to type that.

“A whip can be cracked and cracked and cracked over and over and over again because it just doesn’t get tired,” Rob continued. “You’re generating the power from your bigger muscles and then your arm is just kind of going for the ride -- just snap it.”

Rob’s father had taught him to emphasize the wrist action in his delivery long before Rob met Don Mueller, a former physics professor who champions what he refers to as the “neutral wrist” method. Essentially, it’s what Rob had learned from Bob, but with Mueller’s help, Rob has been able to pitch without pain despite unleashing fastball after fastball.

“One thing I can for sure say it’s helped with,” Rob said, “is my ability to throw and throw and throw and throw and almost never get sore.”

"It's the script for 'The Rookie II,'" said Mueller, referring to the 2002 film "The Rookie," in which Dennis Quaid played Jim Morris, a high school baseball coach who made his MLB debut with a 98 mph fastball at age 35 in 1999.

Mueller says the "neutral wrist" approach originated, as far as he can tell, with Steve Dalkowski, who is considered an inspiration for the character Nuke LaLoosh in the film "Bull Durham."

"Most in baseball have never heard of Steve and his 110 mph fastball," Mueller said. "But he was real."

Dalkowski's fastball is the stuff of legend. He pitched in the Minors, mostly in the Orioles' system, from 1957-65. Unfortunately, arm injuries and off-the-field troubles prevented him from reaching the Majors.

While it's hard to say whether Dalkowski's velocity actually reached 110 mph given that radar guns weren't as reliable back then, Ted Williams said it was the fastest pitch he'd ever seen. There are other testimonials from the likes of Cal Ripken Sr., who caught Dalkowski in the Minors, and Davey Johnson.

Some 60 years later, word of Rob’s triple-digit velocity has made its way into some baseball circles. He threw for the Rangers last week and will soon throw for the Yankees.

But whether or not it leads to a chance to finally realize a dream that was born 50 years ago with his father, Rob says he’s not throwing solely for the chance to take the mound in a Major League game.

He just loves to throw.

“If every MLB team told me I’ve got no shot to pitch in the big leagues,” he said, “I’d still be doing this every day.”

A word from Satchel

Rob is used to hearing “no” when it comes to getting another chance at the Majors. And it’s always been a matter of age.

As far as his father is concerned, that’s one number that shouldn’t be a disqualifier.

“There is the idea that you’re able to play until a certain age,” Bob said. “But there are always guys who are the exception to the rule -- you can take Jim Morris, for instance, from 'The Rookie.' He was 35 years old and throwing harder than he ever did before.”

Whether Rob becomes the sequel to Morris’ improbable rise to the Majors 25 years ago remains to be seen. There's no doubt that parallels abound -- both were drafted before injuries derailed their pro careers, both became youth coaches and both discovered renewed velocity later in life.

Will Rob Semerano take the mound in a Major League game? No one can predict that. But his dad has a favorite quote that is apropos for the moment.

“Rob understands that what he has is a gift,” Bob said. “I remember reciting, when I was playing, something Satchel Paige used to say:

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”