He should have been on top of the world. 

Since as early as he could remember, he had wanted to play professional baseball. Now, coming off a freshman season at Brown that had seen him put up a 2.39 E.R.A. in eight starts, he was pitching for the Madison Mallards, of the elite Northwoods Summer League. In fact, he’d made the league’s All-Star Game, one of only nine freshmen selected. He was making his starts under the lights, in a 7,500 seat ballpark. He was pitching in front of fans — and scouts. And he would return to Brown in the fall as the ace of the staff, still only a sophomore. His dream of playing professional baseball seemed on track — more than on track. It seemed to be working perfectly.

He should have been on top of the world. But he wasn’t. Because as Christian Taugner tossed in the bullpen, a question lingered in the back of his mind. And as the pain in his arm worsened with every pitch he threw, he couldn’t focus on anything else.

What if something was wrong?

***

In a crowd, Taugner is not particularly memorable. At 6’3’’, he is perhaps taller than most of the people around him, but he’s no giant. He’s got short hair that’s blond, brown, or a light ginger depending on the light, and if you catch him on the right day, a short beard as well. Were you to pass him on the street, you would almost certainly find the meeting less memorable than if you’d passed him on the pitcher’s mound. But one thing does stand out, the same thing visible in figures as varied as Hank Aaron, Bob Feller, and Pedro Martinez. He is, it seems almost obvious even at first glance, a ballplayer. 

Taugner displays this in one way, but there are many in which he does not. He doesn’t have the ballplayer's face of David Wright, nor the classic ballplayer’s build of Craig Kimbrel or Mike Trout. His is a strictly intangible quality, neither good or bad but simply illustrative, one that manifests itself in demeanor as much as appearance. Taugner displays it openly.

From the beginning, his journey to baseball prominence seemed possible, if not probable. Taugner calls his childhood “the usual rise,” and perhaps it was, but it has certainly produced some exceptional results. 

“I started when I was three or four,” he says. “T-ball, in-house ball, then at ten years old I started playing travel ball with my friends. Then four years of high school, came here, and now I’m a senior. Pretty normal, I’d say.”

Pretty normal? He may be. Taugner loves fishing and playing cards, he was short in high school before he grew, and as a child, he developed an appreciation for Sammy Sosa, for his towering home runs and theatrical hops. On the surface, Taugner, sitting across the table from me, is just like any other kid from Roselle, Illinois, population 23,000, a small village West of Chicago within easy traveling distance of Wrigley Field.  

But there aren’t many kids from Roselle who have done what Taugner has. In fact, there may not be any. Starting from age three or four, Taugner was playing baseball — and playing it well.

At first, it was Taugner’s father, one of his most important baseball influences, who facilitated his baseball upbringing. When they weren’t watching the Bears or the Cubs, Chris Taugner Sr. was teaching his son the strike zone.

“He’s the one that helped me get so accurate, because if I didn’t hit him in the chest, I’d have to chase after the ball,” Taugner said. “I focused on playing catch with him, and really knowing where the ball was going.”

Dan Colucci, head baseball coach at Lake Park High School in Illinois, still remembers the first time he saw Taugner pitch. He was a sophomore, pitching against Glenbard East high school. He had only recently joined the varsity team. The 5’6’’, 130 pound freshman of the previous year was no more: Taugner had grown. 

“He threw a complete game, and had eight strikeouts and one walk,” Colucci said. “It was at that time that I told him he would pitch exclusively for the varsity team.”

Impressed with his mound presence and maturity, Colucci inserted him into the starting rotation. The move quickly paid off: Taugner went 6-0 that year, with a 2.57 E.R.A.

His high school career breezed by in similar fashion. Taugner’s 252 strikeouts, 1.50 career E.R.A., 24 wins, 12 shutouts, and one no-hitter are all school records. What’s more, he was still developing: by his senior season, he put up an E.R.A. of 0.80, and struck out 108 batters while walking only seven.

“Christian started out as a low 80's command pitcher,” Colucci said, “but ended up a high 80's command plus power pitcher.”

But by this time, his immediate baseball future had already been largely determined. Baseball recruitment happens almost entirely before the senior season begins, and collegiate scouts did not have a chance to witness Taugner’s senior season before making their decisions. Taugner came to Brown’s attention playing for his Summer team, the Illinois Sparks, when he was discovered by then-Brown recruitment coordinator Brian Murphy at a Perfect Game showcase in Georgia. Soon after, he received an offer — ultimately, his only one. 

“I did have a chip on my shoulder after junior year, because no one really reached out to me,” Taugner said. “My senior year, I had an even better year, better numbers, and I was throwing harder.” Despite vague rumors of a late offer from a Big-10 school, Taugner visited Brown in September of his senior year, and committed a few weeks later. 

Newly hired head coach Grant Achilles was seeing him pitch for the first time when the season began, but had talked to Taugner’s previous coaches about what to expect — and was excited. After watching Taugner pitch, he liked what he saw. “I saw a very mature pitcher, a very composed pitcher, someone who had confidence in everything that he was throwing,” Achilles said. “I immediately knew that he was a pitcher that was going to get outs at a high level.”

Taugner agrees on the role that his confidence plays in his success. “I’m generally a very confident player,” he said. “My first start was against South Carolina, they were number one at the time, maybe 6,000 people there. I was confident I would do well, I was confident I had good enough stuff, and the coaches were confident in me, in giving me a start the first weekend of our season. With their backing and my teammates’ backing, I felt very good going into it.”

Perhaps he was overly confident, but the results bely the accusation. His seven inning, one run performance ended in a 1-0 loss for Brown, but Taugner was the talk of the Ivy League. He earned a Player of the Week award, and, as the season continued, quickly became Brown’s ace. Taugner posted a superb 49/9 strikeout to walk ratio, and put up a 2.39 E.R.A. It seemed that he had nowhere to go but up. He had made himself the team’s ace as a freshman — now, he had three years to improve.

“Having been around the game as a player and as a coach, you always hope that somebody is able to replicate their best year,” Achilles said. Playing Summer ball after his freshman season, Taugner certainly looked the part — he was 3-1 with a 3.04 E.R.A. for the Madison Mallards, and made the Northwood League All-Star Team. But while he was posting quality numbers, a problem was growing — literally. Taugner’s arm was hurting.

“I got selected for the All-Star team, and my arm was killing me at that point,” Taugner said. “Then I threw a bullpen after a start, and I had very bad pain in my elbow, just something that I couldn’t deal with.”

Taugner left the team, and returned home for an MRI. It came back. It was clean.

***

“We have a really close bond,” Josh Huntley tells me. We’re sitting in a pizzeria as the snow and ice that have forced the cancellation of the next day’s baseball home opener pound the street outside. “It started the day we got on campus. He and I are best friends outside of baseball, we hang out all the time.”

Huntley, from Aurora, Colorado, is a senior, Brown’s starting catcher, and, along with Taugner, a team captain. Sitting across the table from me, my first impression is of a character, a concrete definition of an obscure set of ideas: Huntley, with his athletic face, winning smile, and short, dark hair, is not far from what comes to mind when I imagine what a baseball player should look like. He doesn’t have Taugner’s intangible ballplayer’s demeanor: his is the all-American look more reminiscent of Cowboy Jack Morris or Buster Posey. His mustache, which looks like it may be a new addition, might add to that image or take away from it — it’s hard to tell.

Although he’s a classmate and co-captain with Taugner, their careers have not followed the same trajectories. Huntley was not a star from the beginning. After batting .213 and .217 in his first two years, Huntley finally broke out his junior year, batting .313 with an OPS over .800.

He’s been catching Taugner since the two arrived almost four years ago. “The pitcher-catcher relationship is a unique bond,” he says. “Even as all of us as teammates are all brothers, we’re all family, there’s even a closer bond. You just click. It’s been a great relationship that I’ve been able to form with him.”

Having caught Taugner for four years, Huntley has witnessed his development as a pitcher — or rather, his conspicuous lack of it. But, he says, this isn’t a bad thing.

“He’s one of the smartest pitchers that I’ve ever gotten the chance to play with,” he says.  “He knows so much about the game, and coming into college, he was already developed. There wasn’t much learning that he needed to do.”

Huntley knows, perhaps better than anyone, how Taugner gets his outs. He saw the three pitches — the fastball, change-up, and curve — that Taugner commanded even as a freshman. He has since added a slider. “In order to be good, that’s what you have to do,” Huntley tells me. “Throw three pitches, whenever you want, wherever you want.”

Huntley also has noticed what is perhaps Taugner’s most important asset: his maturity and composure on the mound.

“Whether you’re up by ten runs or he just gave up five runs that inning, you wouldn’t know the difference,” Huntley says. “He acts the exact same way.”

When I talked to Achilles, he told me almost the same thing. “You could look at him and have no idea what the score was or what happened from pitch to pitch,” he said. “He was somebody that, every time he threw against an opponent, the opposing coach said ‘man, that kid’s just lights out. We never want to face him again.’”

Along with Achilles, Huntley was also on hand as Taugner struggled to recover from the elbow troubles that plagued him. His pain didn’t end with the clean MRI — far from it. At first, he attempted to give his arm a break. It didn’t work. Multiple times, the team attempted to shut Taugner down for rest. But ultimately, he gave in. Even as he rested, his arm simply didn’t feel right.

In late December, Taugner went in for another test. This time, it was an Arthrogram MRI, which injects dye into the ligament to search for problems. And right around Christmas, this test found a tear.

“It was devastating,” Achilles said. “It’s always tough when you see a player, especially a young player with such promise, endure that type of injury.”

Taugner took the news in stride. “It wasn’t a pitch that I threw, that was like ‘oh, that’s the one that snapped it,’” he said. “It was more of a progression, where a small tear became a larger one.”

He was upset — actually, he was devastated. “Heartbreaking,” he called it. But he also knew that there was only one option, unappealing as it was. If he ever wanted to play baseball again, his elbow needed to be fixed. Two days later, Taugner went under the knife for Tommy John surgery. Essentially, Taugner’s UCL was torn — and the only way back to the mound was to harvest a new tendon from his non-throwing arm, cut open his damaged elbow, and repair the broken parts. He would miss at least a year.

***

Heartbreaking though his may have been, as far as Tommy John surgeries go, Taugner was actually lucky. The process was as easy as he could have hoped. Through a network of friends built over a life spent in baseball, Taugner had a friend whose father was Don Paul, who pitched for the five Major League teams from 1988-1998. Paul referred Taugner to Dr. Gregory Nicholson, a Chicago White Sox team doctor, who performed the surgery. And perhaps most thankfully, it was covered by his health insurance. 

When I met with him, over the chatter of a crowded dining room in the background, Taugner described his rehab process to me. “You get surgery, then you’re in a splint for week or so, then you’re in a brace,” he said. “Then eventually you extend your arm, and it’s very basic movements. Eventually you start doing curls and push-ups, and after four months is the point when you start throwing.”

Taugner remained in contact with his coaches and the Brown training staff, but he was on his own. The rehab process was his to complete. It’s a daunting process even for professional ballplayers — for a college player with absolutely nothing guaranteed, it was the toughest challenge Taugner had ever confronted.

Even once a rehabbing pitcher has reached the throwing stage, recovery remains far beyond the horizon. Before setting foot on a mound, a pitcher must throw increasing distances, from 45 to 180 feet, over a five month period. Only then can they return to the mound — throwing at only 75%. Recovery takes a year at minimum, and often more. It’s a grueling process — mentally as well as physically. And what’s more, it’s no sure thing — often, even one Tommy John surgery can derail a pitcher’s career.

For his part, this bore heavy on Taugner’s mind. He was not an established player; far from it. He had never signed a contract; no one had invested millions of dollars in his arm; if he never pitched again, few people would notice beyond his family and friends. His teammates and coaches would support him as he recovered, but they could only do so much. There would be no consultations with Dr. James Andrews, no legions of fans rooting him on, no contract waiting for him. Taugner’s recovery, for the most part, depended on only one thing: whether he had the will to drag himself back, with no guarantee of success. 

Indeed, it was harder for Taugner than for most professional pitchers. In college, “everything is a hurry-up,” says Dr. Andrews, a leading orthopedic surgeon. “‘I’ve gotta be well by junior year in college so I push, push, push so I can enter the draft.’ If they finish college and haven’t gotten well from the surgery, what do they do then? They’re in limbo.”

So, the pressure was on Taugner to maintain his morale — but not push too hard. And as he’s always done, he met the pressure head-on. It’s more and more common, he told himself. Lots of people have had it — in fact, two of Taugner’s teammates had had it as well. He talked to them often during his recovery, and they helped allay the concerns that come with major surgery on a prized appendage. He would be back.

Often, it is said that pitchers can return from Tommy John Surgery even stronger than before. Indeed, Taugner fervently believed this as he rehabbed: the belief that he could return stronger than he’d ever been was sometimes all that sustained him as his recovery wore on. It is sometimes true; some pitchers are stronger after surgery, some continue as they were, and some are worse. But either way, it’s a procedure that all pitchers hope to avoid.

For one, having Tommy John surgery is effectively eliminating the last line of defense for a pitching elbow — the procedure has been found to be much less effective the second time around. After winning 25 games with a 2.47 E.R.A. in two seasons following his first Tommy John surgery, for example, longtime Atlanta Brave Kris Medlen developed a new tear, and needed the procedure again. In the two years since his return, his E.R.A. is 5.12. 

But perhaps even worse than the risk of a second, potentially career-ending surgery is the fact that sometimes, even one surgery may not work out. There are always risks, even if a pitcher has never had an arm injury before. Taugner usually managed to keep his spirits up, but this remote possibility entered his mind every now and then. “Those thoughts crept into my mind a few times,” he said. “There were times where I thought, ‘what if this doesn’t work? What do I do?’”

Taugner managed to avoid this — he had very few setbacks, and for the most part, recovered on schedule. But the recovery itself was no picnic. 

“It sucked not to be able to play that year,” Taugner said. “I had to sit on the bench and watch, and just rehab for those long twelve months, but now I can see it was worth it. It’s something to learn from.”

He did just rehab for those twelve months — and he rehabbed with everything he had. “I remember seeing him in the training room every day doing his exercises, day in and day out,” Huntley said. “The most repetitive type stuff, just to get the mobility back in his arm.”

“He made it easy,” echoed Achilles. “He was always around.”

Huntley, who himself has recovered from hip and knee surgery, told me how both he and Taugner powered through their exhausting recoveries. “We love the game of baseball,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. That’s what keeps us going.”

Even as he recovered, Taugner stayed with the team. Unable to throw, he attended practices and home games with a brace on his arm. While he couldn’t play, he could still lead.

“I tried to keep a positive outlook,” he said. “I just focused on what I could control.”

Achilles saw this as well. “A lot of the qualities that have made him a strong leader and a team captain were the qualities that he showed during his injuries,” he said. “He was always present, always trying to help players who were looking up to him as a leader on the team. Even though he wasn’t pitching, he was still a very vital part of our program.”

Almost a year to the day after his surgery, Taugner was ready to face live batters. Three months after that, he was back on the mound for his first game action in almost two years. He had thrown four intrasquad games during the preseason, and his arm had felt strong, but those didn’t compare. 

Taugner is open about his usual lack of nervousness. Before the first start of his college career, he told me, he’d been less nervous than before his first start on the varsity team in high school. But this was something different. He had not appeared in a game for almost two years. “I had a lot of nerves,” he said. For Taugner, this was uncharted territory.

He would face the Bucknell Bison. “Bucknell was a team that we knew was going to test him,” Achilles said. “Christian is the pitcher that we want facing the toughest opponent every time out.” 

It was the season opener. And Taugner, as he’s always done, shuttered his nerves in the back of his mind, and took the mound.

***

Taugner, at his core, is a baseball traditionalist: he loves baseball for what it is. He disagrees with Major League Baseball’s recent decision to eliminate the four-pitch intentional walk, and thinks that the instant replay system has removed the element of human error from the game, on top of the fact that it takes far too long. His favorite baseball movie, he says, is Field of Dreams; he is a die-hard Cubs fan; when he pitches, he brings his hands over his head, a maneuver which, among major league pitchers, went out of fashion decades ago. And he prefers the National League, because the pitchers hit.

What’s more, he loves the parity of the game. “Each team’s offense is in the other team’s hands,” he says. “It’s not like in basketball or football, where you can run plays and your scoring results from what you do.”

When he discuses pitching, his love for the game comes out for all to see. “I love the sense of being in control on the mound,” he says. “There’s no place like it. You’re out there on the mound, you don’t hear anything in the crowd even when you play against teams that bring in five or six thousand fans. There’s no better spot in sports.”

No better spot in sports. You need to be a true baseball fan to say things like that, let alone to play like you believe it.

But in his return against Bucknell, Taugner did. Bucknell’s baseball field has a capacity of only 500, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. Taugner didn’t hear any of them. He took to the mound and controlled Bucknell’s offense, and the game.

“To have him throw as well as he did, I couldn’t have been happier for him, I couldn’t have been happier for the progress he made,” Achilles said. “The way that he threw, I think he probably still had even more left in the tank.”

Taugner pitched eight scoreless innings, and helped the Bears to a 2-0 win. For his efforts, he was rewarded with an Ivy League player of the week award — his first since the first week of his freshman season.

In eight innings, he’d gone from uncharted territory to ace of the staff. All his reservations had vanished, his arm felt as strong as it ever had, and he was retiring hitters with ease. “I felt like myself out there again,” he said.

He felt like himself — and the numbers followed. In his return from Tommy John surgery, Taugner made nine starts. His E.R.A. was 2.79, and he won five games while losing only three. Far from slipping in his return from surgery, Taugner quickly retook his place as his team’s ace.

He wasn’t just recovering from surgery though — he had made mental improvements as well. Before games, he read scouting reports on his opponents, and learned how to beat the hitters he would face. He tested pitch sequences in practice, and applied them in games. “I was a smarter pitcher,” he said. “That had a lot to do with the success I had.”

Now, Taugner is focused on the 2017 season, most of which lies ahead. For the first time since high school, he has moved from one season to another without incident; the next step, he hopes, is a season even stronger than his last one. He’s put thoughts of the future, including June’s MLB draft, in the back of his mind: right now, he’s focused on two things. For one, there’s his application to Duke, where he’s committed to study towards a Masters of Managerial Services while pitching in his final year of NCAA eligibility (if he's not drafted or opts not to sign with a professional team, that is). That’s not exactly a paltry route — Fuqua Business School at Duke is the third-ranked business school in the United States, and sends crops of graduates to careers in consulting, finance, and technology every year. But first and foremost, there’s the Bears’ season.

At the moment, at least one thing has changed since the 2016 season: along with Huntley and center fielder Rob Henry, both seniors, Taugner has been elected captain.

“The three of us have a very good dynamic, because Rob is with the position guys, I’m with the pitchers, and Josh is the catcher, so he’s on both sides,” Taugner told me. Team captaincy is an elected position, and Taugner was proud to have earned the job.

“It makes me happy that I’ve made this much of an impact on the younger guys, and even guys in my class, to vote for me to be captain,” he said. “I just try to be a good guy, help out when I can, just do whatever I can to make people better, help the team win. So I was very happy and excited when I got the votes for that.”

According to Huntley, Taugner, true to his word, has turned his injury into a learning experience. Taugner now effectively runs the pitching staff. He fields all kinds of questions, from teaching freshmen to pitch to college hitters to advising longtime teammates on how to stay healthy. He also gets questions on his work ethic, Huntley says — and attempts to answer them by leading by example.

Taugner has always started seasons strong, and 2017 was no exception: in his first start of the year, the season opener against Nicholls State, he allowed just one run in six innings. But a week later, against Texas A&M, Taugner was hit around: in six innings, he allowed six runs, five earned, on nine hits. 

But when I texted Achilles after the game, he told me not to worry. “He was very good,” he said. Texas, he told me, was a very good hitting team. Taugner had executed his pitches — His opponents had simply hit them.

What about his command and pitch selection — two hallmarks of his pitching style? Were they working as well?

“Yes, he was on point,” Achilles said. “There was maybe one pitch that hurt him, and it wasn’t even a ball in play. It just changes the count. Even the home run was a good pitch.”

Huntley and Achilles agree: Taugner looks strong to start the season.

“He has another year of maturity since last season, he’s continued to build on what he did physically, and our guys expect the best from him,” Achilles said. “We’re excited about where this team is going to take him.”

Huntley, meanwhile, has caught Taugner twice this year. “He’s looked like the same guy,” he says. “His control is unbelievable, that’s what makes him good. We face guys throwing 95; he’s not going to be that guy who throws 95 past you, but you don’t know what’s going to come, because he can throw anything anywhere.”

Pitchers with strong command inevitably draw a certain comparison, and Taugner is no exception. When I asked for a professional player, former or current, to whom to compare Taugner, Huntley and Achilles both took pauses to think.

“You think of a Greg Maddux type player,” Huntley said. “He’s not going to overpower you, but he’s going to throw you a 3-0 curveball. Whenever you think you know what’s coming, something different is coming.”

Achilles’ pause was even longer. “That’s a good question,” he said. “Christian’s biggest quality that can translate to the professional level is his command. As a pitcher, control is throwing the ball in the strike zone; command is throwing it where you want it to be, in the strike zone.” 

So, I asked, what comparison do you think of?

“The pitcher who has the biggest reputation for command is Greg Maddux,” Achilles said. “Greg Maddux is a Hall of Fame pitcher. It’s very difficult to put that kind of expectation or pressure on Christian as a pitcher, a Hall of Famer, but he has the command of any pitcher that has sustained success at the major league level.”

Taugner may be more like Greg Maddux, or he may more resemble Corey Kluber, as he himself says, in motion and style, if not in velocity. But my most important question was a simple one — had Taugner’s recovery succeeded? Had his future in baseball, an opportunity to be drafted, a chance to play professionally, been preserved? Was the surgery hindering his pitching, even in the slightest? Was he now prepared for sustained success? Did he, in short, look like his old self again?

“No,” Achilles said. He paused. “I think he looks better.”

***

For much of the time I spent following Taugner, it seemed that I would have no chance to see him pitch in person, and verify everything that I had learned. My report would need to be completed before the team’s first home game of the season: it was a simple case of impossible scheduling.

When I talked to pitching coach Jonathan Grosse the Friday before the team was scheduled to play Lehigh at Seton Hall, I expected to discuss the finer points of Taugner’s rehab and pitching style. But Grosse has only been at Brown for a year, and arrived after almost all of Taugner’s rehab had been completed. On pitching style, there was nothing more for Grosse to say: most of my questions had already been answered.

But rather than offering arcane details, Grosse told me something far more important. The Seton Hall games, he said, had been cancelled. Instead, the team would play Bryant — at home. And as the first member of the weekend rotation, Taugner would pitch game one.

I arrived at Murray Stadium the next morning, a few minutes before the 11:30 first pitch, and chose a seat in the first row, toward the first base side of home plate. Over the offseason, the facility had been completely renovated: a new turf field had been laid down, and the stands and press box had been entirely rebuilt. The upgrades had also included improvements for players: the dugouts had been rebuilt, and bullpens and hitting tunnels had been added. In a story I wrote for the Brown Daily Herald in September 2015, Taugner had called the upgrades “great for the program, the players, (and) the school.” Now he was minutes away from entering the history books as the first pitcher in the field’s history.

The Bears took the field in their home white uniforms, with brown sleeves, socks, and caps. Bryant wore gray, with black underarm patches. As Taugner warmed up, pitching to Huntley, my first impression was one of surprise. Taugner’s motion, while for the most part conventional, seemed off. Perhaps I was watching from an unusual angle. He seemed not to bring the ball fully back; not to extend his arms apart, as all pitchers are taught from a young age. I watched, apprehensively, as Bryant’s leadoff hitter dug in.

I needn’t have worried. Taugner struck out the hitter looking, and the next two swinging, and walked off the mound, back to the dugout.

Behind me sat a man named Bryce. He wore a jacket and a winter hat, and was accompanied by an adult caregiver, possibly his father. Bryce seemed unable or unwilling to speak, but every play, regardless of the outcome, he bellowed in excitement, and stamped his feet audibly. When Brown second baseman Brian Ginsberg came to bat, and his walkup music, the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” played, Bryce and I boogied back and forth in our seats, two bad dancers enjoying a great song.

Somehow, I thought, Bryce was doing exactly the right thing. It was Opening Day — a meaningless preseason game, but still, the home opener. Everyone should have been this excited — and there’s no shame in showing it.

Taugner continued setting down Bryant: he didn't allow a hit until the third inning, or a run until the seventh. The poise that others had described to me was visible: as the score changed, Taugner did not display an ounce of emotion, nor did his delivery change at all. In the third, after allowing his first hit, a single up the middle, he began pitching from the stretch, but this seemed almost a courtesy move. 

“I’m doing this because I have to,” he seemed to say to the runner on first, “but we both know you’re not going anywhere.” Sure enough, even as Taugner ignored him, not making a single pickoff throw over his seven innings of work, a strikeout and a groundout left the runner stranded at first.

Meanwhile, the Bears were small-balling themselves into the lead. Against Bryant starter Steve Theetge, a lefty with a conventional motion who threw gas and a big, slow curve, they scored two runs in the third on a wild pitch and a fielder’s choice, and then in the fifth, after a Rob Henry RBI triple, scored again when Sam Grigo beat out a potential double play grounder and Henry scored from third.

Compared to Theetge, Taugner’s pitches seemed to float to the plate, but he continued to get the job done. He held Bryant scoreless through six innings. Doubt struck in the seventh, as Bryant led off with a single and a windblown double, but Taugner’s poise held: up by four runs, Brown moved its infield back, and two consecutive ground balls brought the two runs home, but were also the first two outs of the inning. One strikeout later, Taugner’s line was complete: seven innings pitched, two runs allowed, both earned, nine strikeouts. He did not walk a batter. He was also in line for the win. It was a truly masterful performance, even more so than the numbers indicate.

For a cold day in March, it seemed meant for baseball. While occasional clouds and blustery wind chilled the stands in the early innings, as “Build Me Up, Buttercup” played before the top of the sixth, the sun came out, and shined down on the field for most of the rest of the afternoon. Taugner left after seven, and was replaced by Calvin Farris, who pitched a scoreless eighth, as the Bears continued to lead 4-2. Farris, in turn, seemed to tire in the ninth, allowing consecutive singles to open the frame, but sophomore J.J. Sliepka came in to seal the win for the Bears with a strikeout. As the Brown team left the dugout, cheering, shaking hands, and slapping backs, I stood, stretched my legs, and took my leave, politely declining Bryce’s offer of a piece of his calzone as I did.

I don’t know how, when, or where Christian Taugner’s baseball career will take him: no one does, including himself. Just as, with a strong season, he has every chance of being drafted in June, and playing Major League Baseball within the next five years, he may also go to Duke, pitch while studying management, and emerge highly recruited, as a business manager. All careers must end sometime; all he, or anyone else, can do, is pitch his heart out, for as long as he can. 

Two months later, Taugner left his last start of the season with a 12-1 lead. He’d pitched seven innings, and allowed one earned run on only five hits. His season record stood at 4-4: his ERA was 2.70. Taugner’s final collegiate numbers: 11 wins, 11 losses, and an ERA of 2.64. With these numbers, Taugner may well have a good few years left in his baseball career. But wherever baseball may take him, Christian Taugner knows who he is, and who he’ll always be. Whether in high school, college, or in front of 50,000 fans, he is, and will always be, the ballplayer I saw that March afternoon, standing on the mound in the middle of the sunlit field, looking in for his catcher’s sign. He's not thinking about tomorrow or next week or next year, but only the batter at hand, just another kid pitching to his friend from the greatest spot in sports.