One afternoon late last month in Goodyear, Ariz., Reds pitcher Mike Leake, making his first-ever spring training start, found himself staring down from the mound at Ken Griffey Jr., his boyhood idol. Leake—a spindly righthander with brown shaggy hair and a small scruff on his chin—is a command pitcher who paints the corners of the strike zone with the precision of a miniaturist. But on an 0-and-2 count against Griffey, he unfurled a slider that scudded inside and nailed the Mariners’ future Hall of Famer on the right ankle. After the game, Leake’s brother, Ryan, the pitching coach at UC San Diego, asked Mike if he lost control because he was facing a player whose posters covered the walls of his childhood room. “No way,” Leake snapped. “I was trying to strike him out. I should have struck him out.”
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