By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
In the movie “The Princess Bride”, swordsman Inigo Montoya uses the phrase, “I am not left-handed!” to stun his opponent as he switches his sword back to his natural right hand to continue the fight. For most of the movie, he fights left-handed, not revealing his true skill until late in the flick.
Cherokee High baseball pitcher Brett Gable has a similar secret — one that few people know. Even his coach, Marc Petragnani, didn’t know until after Gable led the Chiefs to a state championship this spring, that his ace pitcher is NOT left-handed.
In fact, pitching is one of the few things Gable does left-handed. So, how does a right-handed person throw a baseball 90 miles-per-hour left-handed?
Even he can’t explain that.
“The only thing I do lefty is pitch, shoot a basketball and play pool. Everything else, I do right-handed,” said our Senior of the Month for June. “I really have no idea (how to explain it) and everybody asks my dad, ‘did you force him to become a lefty when he was younger?’ And he really didn’t. I just took up lefty (throwing) for some reason, I don’t know why.”
“That’s the legend of Brett Gable, I guess, right? It’s an embarrassment of riches,” Petragnani said.
He’s not kidding, either. Gable, our Senior of the Month for June, seems to have it all — movie-star good looks, he’s an All-State pitcher, led his team to a state championship, and he’s going to Harvard, for God’s sake. Oh, and just for fun, he’s a concert-level violinist.
Yup, you read that right. A baseball player who derives enjoyment from playing a little Brahms from time to time in his bedroom and is part of the string section of his school’s concert band.
“He’s truly special. He made his commitment to Virginia Tech after his freshman year, but I never let Harvard slip from my mind. Everybody wants to send their kids to the SEC or ACC, but I always thought Harvard was a great fit for him. We had lots of conversations about it. We met at the field one day and talked for an hour about it, what he wanted, what would be the best fit for him. He took a visit to Harvard and fell in love with it. He called me the Saturday after Labor Day Weekend and told me he was going to Harvard. I almost fell to my knees in praise because I thought it was a tremendous fit for him,” Petragnani said. “He’s an unbelievable student. He was a “Gold Chief” recipient, which is one of the highest academic honors that Cherokee gives out. He’s a special kid. His brother comes to us next year and I’m hoping we can develop the same kind of relationship. It’s never a bad thing to have a Gable on your team. Their parents are very supportive of the program; their mom is our booster club president. Anything we need to be a better program, they are advocating for.
“We tried to get him to play the national anthem one time before he pitched, but he refused.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m an accomplished violinist, but I’ve been playing since third grade. I’ll be putting that down in college, though, just because I don’t know if there will be the time and effort to put into it. I found it interesting growing up and it was always a good diversion from baseball and academics. It was fun, it was a new world. Reading music is different than playing video games or reading a book. It’s like reading a book, but in a different language,” Gable said. “Practice-wise, I think it translated to baseball pretty well, just that repetition. You have measures in the music where it’s very difficult trying to map it out and it takes time. Over time, when you practice enough and get the right precision, you figure it out, and I kind of apply that to my pitching mechanics.
“This year we played some interesting music. We played Frank Sinatra with the jazz band, which was pretty cool with the string section. That was a cool experience, something I’ve never done before,” he explained. “I just did it for the school. There were opportunities to play for other organizations, but I never did that. I just stuck to the school, which was amazing. We have about 50 instrument players in the string section alone. We do a winter concert every year and that’s usually the bigger one with more challenging music, with an entire orchestra, then in the spring we have a concert where we do some more fun stuff.”
Gable is as humble as he is accomplished, both as a pitcher and a concert violinist. Talk to him after a game and he’ll praise the game that senior catcher Mason Kelleher called, or talk about the big hit that second baseman Brett Jackson got, or the double play senior third baseman Brett Chiesa turned to get him out of a jam in the fourth inning. It’s never about the 10 strikeouts he had, or the two measly hits he gave up.
Ironically, it was an injury that led him to where he is today. He grew up as an outfielder, but suffered a stress fracture in his back prior to starting his high school career. He knew he wasn’t going to make varsity as an outfielder on a loaded Chiefs team four years ago — one that went on to win a sectional title — so he concentrated on his pitching, knowing there would be more of a chance to see varsity time on the hill than patrolling right field.
“Over the past four years I really have had the opportunity to build such a great relationship with coach P. Him taking me on as a freshman and really trusting me to compete for the varsity team — that was such an honor. I’ve really gotten close to him and that’s another huge contributor to why we’re so successful. What’s that quote — baseball is 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental? I think we had that down, with the seniors being so close to this coaching staff, and the players being so close, it was a good mix,” Gable said. “I really pushed myself to be ready for (freshman) season as a pitcher. Getting the opportunity to pitch varsity in South Jersey is serious business. So to put myself in that category was huge, and I really build my confidence for the upcoming years.”
One thing about Gable, the son of a doctor, is he’s always had his priorities straight.
“It’s definitely hard balancing heavy school work schedules (with baseball), which is why time management and making sure I prioritize what needs to get done is so important,” he said. “My family has a list of things we prioritize — No. 1 is family, No. 2 is school and then No. 3 is baseball. School always came first. It was definitely a lot harder at the end of the year, especially this year when we were making that playoff run.”
Coach Petragnani has a routine of walking the couple hundred yards from the school to the field for practice, and toward the end of the year that walk gets pretty lonely. The upperclassmen typically drive their cars over to the parking lot closer to the field, and once the junior varsity season ends there aren’t too many freshmen or sophomores left on the varsity roster making the trek out to practice.
Four years ago, it was just coach P and a freshman named Brett Gable. They talked about a lot more than just baseball on those casual walks through the high grass and down to the field, and Petragnani got to know a kid who he won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
“I used to always walk to practice; it was like my five minutes of solitude before practice began. I think about whatever I have to do the rest of the day or what we’re going to do tomorrow. The varsity and JV practice together so when we’re all together a bunch of kids walk up. But once the playoffs started, it was just me and him. Instead of the book (by Mitch Albom) ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ I used to call them ‘Walk-ups with Gable.’ We would just talk about life, about different things, what the future holds. I expected him to be a captain as a sophomore because of his contributions as a freshman,” Petragnani said. “It’s bittersweet to see him go, but it’s time for him to be on his path to Harvard and becoming the adult he’s going to be. He’ll be missed. We’ll stay in touch and I’ll always check on him to make sure things are alright. I was writing him a letter of recommendation for a scholarship a few weeks ago, and you get emotional because you realize the time is coming to an end. But that’s high school sports, the kids move on.”
Gable will be moving on to bigger things as a Biological Sciences major at Harvard, but he’ll have a lot to look back on during his time spent wearing orange-and-brown.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better ending. It was a great way to cap off my four-year career,” he said. “I’ve loved this coaching staff and my teammates. There’s no better way to go out. I couldn’t have asked for a better ending, seeing coach walk out to the mound. I wanted Henry (Radbill, a senior Rutgers commit) to come in for at least an inning, he deserved that ending to close out his remarkable season and career.
“It was an emotional moment. I’ll remember that forever. The amount of fun I had playing in all these games, going out and competing against the top teams in South Jersey and succeeding with guys I’ve been playing with since we were 7 years old — I’ll remember that the most.”
