Braiden Paul loves to talk pitching.

The shapes of his pitches.

How his four-seam fastball, a bee-bee into the catcher’s mitt, sets up his two seam fastball that moves to the right, helping avoid the barrel of the bat and inducing soft contact.

How his curveball dips to the left, his change-up slipping off the table on the opposite side of the plate.

An 18 year-old who was born and raised in Espanola and was first introduced to diamond sports via some community softball league in the mill town, Braiden Paul fully dedicated himself to baseball at the age of 11, joining the Sudbury Shamrocks and making the near hour-long trek to the nickel city for practices and games several times a week.

A solid enough pitcher who also yields a better-than-average bat, Paul has mixed in playing time at both third base and first base along with his outings on the mound, all in the hopes of landing a spot on some post-secondary roster in the coming years*.

(*this past week, Braiden Paul confirmed that he had accepted a scholarship offer to join the Chesapeake College Skipjacks in Wye Mills, Maryland)

In the blink of an eye, last October, all of those hopes seemed dashed.

“I was in shop class, construction class, using a tool that I had used a hundred times before,” Paul recalled. “I wasn’t thinking and my hand slipped off the pusher, directly into the blade.”

“It all happened so fast.”

The end result was the loss of roughly half of his middle and ring fingers on his throwing hand.

There were, understandably, a million and one thoughts that raced through his mind in the hours and days following the accident. Still, Braiden Paul has a few very vivid memories that remain.

“When I was at the hospital the first time getting stitched up, it was me or my dad that asked the doctor about ever playing baseball again – and he told us about a 50% chance,” said Paul.

On May 2nd of this year, in the opening game of the PBLO (Premier Baseball League of Ontario) season for the 18U Voyageurs, Braiden Paul went 3/5 at the plate, scoring three times and driving in a pair as Sudbury outlasted the Ontario Yankees 17-16.

Later that day, he pitched an inning and a third of scoreless ball in relief, touched for just one hit while striking out three.

It has been quite the journey for the young man who did not even take a glimpse of what how his post-operation pitching hand looked for nearly six full weeks after the mishap. “I couldn’t get myself to look; I just couldn’t do it,” said Paul.

“My physiotherapist finally took a picture of them (the fingers) because I could look at the picture instead.”

While this anecdote might conjure up images of a an athlete with a clear disconnect with reality, perhaps slipping into a very dark place, the fact is that nothing could be further from the truth, from a big picture viewpoint.

“The first day or so was tough – but then I started insisting that I wanted to go back to school and out to practices, just seeing my teammates and my friends,” said Paul. “I was still around baseball, even if I couldn’t play at that time.”

Once snowfall hit, the Voyageurs lads retreated to convene at the Baseball Academy, working on their game a few times a week. Naturally left-handed in pretty much all aspects of life other than his baseball pitching, Paul dabbled with throwing as a southpaw.

“One day in January, at the Academy, I picked up a ball with my right hand and just threw it,” he said. “My hand was fully healed. Every day after that, I was throwing.”

Different but the same might be the best description of where Braiden Paul currently sits as a baseball player. Where most pitchers use two fingers along the seams of a baseball (or across), causing the ball to dance in various ways, Paul now uses three.

“Instead of using the upper part of my middle finger, I have my index figure in there (and ring finger providing support). I was just trying different grips.”

“My two-seam might move a little bit better, but everything else is pretty similar.”

In the batter’s box, things are even rosier. Some winter work on his pre-swing hand placement, moving up a little more above the hip, has resulted in an increase in exit velocity by as much as 15MPH – 20MPH at times.

“I used to like thin grips on bats but now I have had to change to thicker grips with lots of pine tar,” said the young man who, earlier that day, had driven a ball over the fence of the Terry Fox Sports Complex Field #1, his first ever home run at the diamond, driven deep to right centre.

Braiden Paul is back indeed – and seemingly as good as ever.