BRIAN T. SMITH ON McCULLERS’ PRE-START RITUAL.
How does one of baseball’s best prepare for a start? For McCullers, it’s video games and a trip to the movies
On the same night he owns the mound inside Minute Maid Park, he’ll spend the morning sitting in the back row of a movie theater, shadowed in the beauty of darkness and lost in the endless allure of the silver screen.
When he’s in New York, Boston or Seattle, he’ll do the exact same, perfectly planning his day so a three-year ritual remains unbroken.
Lance McCullers Jr. is the hottest pitcher on the best team in baseball. And when I tell you that a 23-year-old righthander with a 22-inning scoreless streak goes to the movies a lot, I mean that McCullers goes to the movies A LOT.
Religiously. With total devotion. On every day that he starts, whenever possible, and sometimes watching the same film again.
Before McCullers threw seven innings of two-hit, one-run (unearned) ball against the Angels on May 6 in Anaheim, Calif., he caught “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2” for the first time.
When McCullers struck out seven Yankees and didn’t allow a run in five innings during a May 12 win at New York, he added “The Wall” to his cinematic history.
And before McCullers struck out five Tigers in a one-hit, fiveinning win Tuesday at Minute Maid — the Astros’ No. 2 starter hasn’t allowed an earned run since May 1 — he doubled up on “Guardians.”
“I liked it better the second time. My wife saw it for the first time and she really, really liked it,” said McCullers, who’s 5-1 with a team-leading 65 strikeouts and ranks seventh among all MLB starters in ERA (2.43). Pregame rituals
Superstition has long been an accepted fact in Major League Baseball. McCullers’ big-screen commitment isn’t that and has much more to do with his sincere love of superhero flicks, which normally explode in the warm months and aren’t the same on smartphone screens.
“When you get a good movie, one that you’re anticipating, you just get lost in that time,” said McCullers, whose pitching-day movie sessions date to 2015 and his time with Class AA Corpus Christi.
“I was missing all the movies during the summer that I liked,” he said. “All the Marvel movies, all the DC Comics, etc. … Baseball, you do have free time. But you’re never thinking, ‘Hey, let me go watch a movie.’ ”
McCullers was. And he now has his moviegoing experience down to a science.
The night before a start, the third-year Astro will play “Call of Duty” with his “clan.” Five are in the group; three or four get in the game; a group text message sets up the video-game convergence.
“What time are we saving the world tonight?” a text will read.
McCullers joked that his wife, Kara, won’t break up his prestart reunion because she knows that, “He’s got to pitch well, so he’s got to play ‘Call of Duty.’ ”
Then it’s time for the real show.
McCullers relies on two local theaters, planning his late morning and early afternoon around an ideal show time before he arrives at the ballpark.
“‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is like two hours and 20 minutes, so I need a 10:45 (a.m.) showing,” he said.
I’m a movie nut — don’t get me started — and have always loved matinees. But do nonbaseball pitchers go to the movies that early?
“You’d be surprised. There’s still some people there,” he said. Got it down to an art form
Does he ever get recognized as the Astro who’s starting that day?
“Sometimes you’ll see someone look at you and look to a significant other or whatever, and they’ll start whispering and look back at you,” McCullers said. “And then I’m looking at them and they’re looking at me and it’s really awkward. Just come and say hi if you want. A lot of times people are cool.” Candy? Popcorn? Soda? “I get the tallest water they offer, whatever it is,” he said. “I just drink it throughout the movie and I try not to go to the bathroom.” Where does he sit? At the top, where he can view everything unfolding in front of him and keep an eye on anything suspicious in our unpredictable world.
“I’m kind of paranoid now,” he said. “I sit in the very back and make sure no one can sit behind me. I don’t know. It’s kind of nerve-racking now, anywhere you go.”
But he always goes. With his wife when she’s in town, by himself when he has to.
“I’ve been to plenty of kids’ movies, animation movies all by myself,” McCullers said.
The road is more challenging. Seattle’s easy, thanks to a nearby theater. But Los Angeles can require a 20-minute Uber ride and even more contemporary planning.
McCullers also is devoted to drinking a health juice on his pitching days. Which means that he sometimes must turn to Yelp to find a theater, then search the app again to locate a juice bar near his road screen.
“I don’t get locked into my pitching mode until I’m putting on my uni,” said McCullers, who begins researching movie times and new releases as soon as the Astros leave Houston. “I understand that I have my job to do, and I know what I’ve got to do. And so I try to keep it just light and don’t think about it too much, don’t get locked in too early.” A movie connoisseur
More into TV’s new golden age than Hollywood? Don’t worry: The meticulous McCullers has your back.
“I binge-watched ‘Game of Thrones’ last year, all six seasons in probably three weeks,” he said. “I mean, I was watching it on the bus to the fields, before the game, after the game. I got into it really hard.”
Sunday will be different. It’s a 1:10 p.m. start for the finale of the Astros’ 10-game homestand, which means McCullers was scheduled to be limited to “Call of Duty” on Saturday night and that’s it.
But he already knows that Tom Hardy has been cast as Venom, is eagerly awaiting “Wonder Woman,” “Justice League” and the revamped Spider-Man, can break down where “Batman v Superman” and “Suicide Squad” struggled, and proudly promotes the unique strength of “Doctor Strange.”
“Some people didn’t like it that much,” McCullers said. “I loved it.”
And that’s really all it comes down to. He’s the hottest arm on the best team in the game. And on the days he pitches, McCullers loves to start his walk toward the mound by seeking out the dark and watching life shine on the screen.