As a pitcher on the Mingus baseball team, Peter Calandra had a chance to finish the athletic portion of his high school career on a positive note after the football and basketball teams he was a part of had subpar seasons earlier in the school year. The COVID-19 shutdowns kept Calandra and his teammates from having that chance as the baseball season was canceled only a few games in. Despite that, Calandra doesn’t want people to feel bad for himself or his Marauder teammates.
He recalled Mingus’ game against Greenway on March 5, a 6-5 win for the Marauders in what ended up being the season’s penultimate game and his last. In that game, Calandra went six innings and spread out seven hits and three walks, allowing three runs [one earned] and picked up the victory.
While Calandra didn’t know it would be his final outing as a high school pitcher when he took the mound, he pitched as though it was. Because of that, he’s happy with the way his time on the Mingus team ended.
“I don’t want people to think that we got robbed of our baseball season,” Calandra said. “We wish that we could have played all season. But at the same time, you’re supposed to play every game like it’s your last. Against Greenway, I played like it was the last game I’d ever play. I went out there and gave everything I had.”
While the win over Greenway was the final game Calandra played as a high schooler, it was not his final competitive game. Calandra is still figuring out where he wants to go to college, deciding between Gateway Community College in Phoenix, Penn State Schuylkill and Illinois Valley Community College. Wherever he goes, Calandra is playing baseball.
And in five years when people look back at the Class of 2020 and see Calandra’s name, he hopes that people recognize it as “the guy that’s playing in MLB right now.”
If Calandra does reach the majors, he’ll do so with a style of pitching that he describes as more finesse based than overpowering. Calandra’s favorite pitch is his slider. He noted that while he gained some miles per hour on his fastball as a senior, it was well below average as a junior. As such, he developed his slider better, using it in situations where most other pitchers will generally opt to throw fastballs.
Calandra’s favorite memories in football and basketball both involve team outings. In football, it was the summer camps in California, where he got a chance to bond with his teammates. In basketball, it was the long road trips and “going out to eat with the boys” after the game was over.
In baseball, Calandra’s favorite memories were different.
“In baseball, it’s the intensity,” he said. “Most people think baseball is a boring sport because it’s slow. But I find ways to make it intense. When I’m on the mound I try to have a violent mentality, saying ‘I’m getting you out and there’s nothing that you can do about it.’”
And with that mindset, how does Calandra’s attitude change if someone gets a hit?
“I try to keep my head in the right place,” he said. “If someone gets a hit off of me, I just think to not throw it there to that guy anymore and next time I’ll strike him out.”
Long term, Calandra hopes to attend graduate school at the Arizona State Business and Law School and has aspirations of a career in a sports field. In the more immediate future, Calandra hopes to play baseball in the big league.
As for the legacy he and his fellow class of 2020 athletes will leave the younger Mingus students, Calandra hopes that they made things easier for them.
“I’d like to leave a nice legacy for myself and help the guys that were on the football, basketball and baseball teams and hope they did better than we did this year,” Calandra said. “In all three sports we didn’t do very well.”
“I hope people see our class as the ones that helped the lower classes, the underclassmen,” he added. “I want them to be better than we were. I know the seniors last year thought pretty highly of themselves. My class didn’t really like that. I want the lower classes to do better than me. I want them to go on and win.”
