60 feet, 6 inches

One of the best quotes I ever read about pitching went something like this - if you have one pitch working for you in a game, you'll keep your team in the game. If you have two pitches working well, you'll give your team a chance to win. And if you have three pitches going, you'll dominate. Seems like the most true thing I ever heard. The cool part is that I created a metaphor from that for life. A metaphor, in my opinion, much more fleshed out than the first time I tried this. Think of your three pitches as the three aspects of college life - your school/work, your interactions with others, and your free time for yourself.

Your school and work is your fastball. You know it's going to be there, everyone else knows it's going to be there, and you absolutely have to establish it early in the game. Throw strikes, pound the zone, and everything will work off your fastball.

Your interactions with others can be thought of as your curveball. Not in the sense that life throws you curveballs - I prefer to stay on the pitching side of curveballs, as opposed to the batting side. The curveball is something you can throw in as a wrinkle, something to offset the fastball. It's just something to keep the hitters honest, in the same way that everyone needs some form of social interaction after long enough.

Finally, the changeup is your free time for yourself. The overlooked, yet crucial pitch in any repertoire. With the free time you have for yourself, you can use it so much to your advantage, that you can get by with a fastball and a changeup. Throw in the curve every now and then, and you'll keep hitters off guard. Changeups set up the fastball - using some free time for school work sets up the fastball to be that much more effective. And there's nothing wrong with a changeup that's supposed to start as a ball. We all need a pitch with low expectations every once in a while. At the very worst, it's a setup pitch for the next one.

So there's your arsenal. Three pitches that you can work together into a successful outing. And once you get into a rhythm of pitching, the next pitch almost seems to call itself - after an inside fastball, a changeup off the plate might be good. Pitching, like college, is all about the mindset, and the execution once the mindset is strong.