A 44-year-old from Sioux City has won his second start after being asked to return as a pitcher for Sioux City’s minor league baseball team.
J.D. Scholten, a state representative who works as a paralegal, has played pro-baseball for teams in seven countries, including a four-year stretch for the Sioux City Explorers. The hometown crowd gave him a standing ovation as he left the mound last Saturday.
“I’ve never experienced something like that in my life,” Scholten said. “…A great experience. I’ll never forget that.”
When he left the team in 2007, Scholten told the manager to call if they ever needed a pitcher in an emergency. Scholten got the call last Saturday as he was volunteering at a music festival in Sioux City.
“I was delivering ice in the VIP area and making sure everyone had enough water and…I looked at my phone and saw I had 10 missing calls and Mongo texted me and said: ‘Call me ASAP,'” Scholten said. “Part of me thought it was a prank. He said: ‘Can you come?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, my shift doesn’t get off until 5:30 and the game’s at 6, so let me see if I can get somebody to cover my shift.'”
Scholten made it in time, threw 100 pitches in six and a half innings and the team won that game. Scholten admits he had shaky start though, giving up a run in the first inning and then escaping a bases loaded jam.
“Younger J.D. would have panicked a little bit,” Scholten said. “I knew my sinker was moving and it was a lefty so I threw the sinker away and he rolled over it perfect and Daniel Linqua at second base make a perfect play and got out of the inning and I just felt like the pressure of everything just went away.”
The Explorers won that game 11-2 and won again last night in Fargo. Scholten threw again for the first six innings, allowing one run in the fourth inning striking out three and leaving with the score tied. Scholten pitched in a pro league in the Netherlands last year and added a new pitch to his rotation.
“I’m a sinker, slider guy. I’ve been that for a long time…then I have a change up as well, but that cutter allows me to do a lot more and it feeds off my sinker. My bread and butter is that my fast ball moves. It gets me out of jams quite a bit. It’ll give me a ground ball when I need to,” Scholten said. “I have enough velocity to keep ’em honest.”
Some of Scholten’s pitches during the two games this past week have been clocked at 87 miles an hour.
(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)