MORGANTOWN – Baseball history is filled with a strange breed of characters in the guise of pitchers and is about ready to welcome a new member in West Virginia’s Chase Meyer.

Over the years the sport has given us “The Bird,” Mark Fidrych, who would have conversations with the ball; “The Mad Hungarian” Al Hrabosky, who would walk behind the mound and give himself a strong talking to before facing a batter; and “The Spaceman,” Bill Lee, who was, er, simply from another planet.

They all probably have genes that started back in the early 1900s with Rube Waddell, an eccentric left-hander – aren’t they all — who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates among other teams and who had a strange fascination with fire trucks, which led to him to simply leaving the mound in the middle of games to go follow a fire truck when it went by the ballpark with siren screaming and bell clanking.

The truth is, the list is too long to go through completely, but take for example Zach Greinke of the Kansas City Royals, who in the midst of a game at a critical moment called for his catcher to meet him for a talk.

He met him halfway to the mound to discuss strategy … not for the game but for their fantasy football league, proposing a trade of a wide receiver he had for a quarterback his catcher owned.

Now there’s Meyer, who came out of the West Virginia bullpen on Friday night to throw 3.1 scoreless innings to earn his seventh victory against one defeat this season in beating Cincinnati, 3-2, in a game that had a controversial ending when he threw a nasty curveball that got the batter to swing and miss, the ball hitting him in the foot and rolling to the backstop.

The umpires and the Bearcats were unsure if the ball had struck the batter’s foot or gone off catcher Logan Sauve’s glove, a rather strong distinction, for if it had hit the glove and not the foot, the tying run would have scored from third base.

A replay was necessary to straighten things out, even for WVU coach Steve Sabins, who wasn’t exactly sure himself.

“I had no idea,” Sabins admitted following the game. “Everyone in the dugout seemed to know. Justin Oney, our pitching coach, was fired up. He was cheering as the ball was rolling toward the backstop and everything was going in slow motion for me. I was thinking ‘This is odd. I’m pretty sure the game is tied and the winning run is on first base.’

“But Oney is yelling ‘It hit him in the foot.’ And Logan was saying, ‘It hit him in the foot.’ So, then I was saying, ‘It hit him in the foot.’ I could tell from the dugout’s reaction. They were really calm, not begging for a call. The reason I felt that way was that Logan (Sauve) is the best blocker of balls in the dirt in the country.

“And Chase throws one of the best breaking balls and buries it consistently and you don’t even notice Logan. He blocks everything. So, I was thinking, it probably hit him in the foot and ricocheted off.”

This all took place just moments after Oney had paid Meyer a visit on the mound as he sometimes lets his emotions get the best of him.

“He came out and just tried to calm me down,” Meyer said. “The fans are loud, the dugout is clapping, they were chirping at us. That was probably the best time to have a talk because I threw two of my best curveballs after that.”

Meyer understands that he operates a bit differently than your normal pitcher.

“At times, being emotional has helped me. Also, it’s hurt me. I think it’s just knowing when you need that, when your team needs that. But also, it’s knowing when you have to be within yourself and just make a pitch.”

And the pitch he made this time was one of those nasty back-foot curveballs that spin down and into a left-handed hitter, looking like a strike to the hitter and like a strikeout to the pitcher.

“I heard it hit off his foot. I think everybody knows Logan is a great catcher and he just wouldn’t miss a ball like that. He’s caught me millions of times right there. I think I was just more worried about if our cameras didn’t work (for the replay) than anything,” Meyer said, referring to the TV cameras which would be used for the review of the play.

Meyer does sometimes let the emotion of the moment put him in its grasp.

“I think everybody on our staff knows that we’re all different pitchers, right? You don’t see many people who go out there with the emotion I have. For example, Bass (Reese Bassinger). He pitches super calm, makes his pitches, gets outs. Me, I like to yell. I like to get myself hyped.”

You can see the moments when Meyer is letting loose on the mound, punching the air after a big pitch or, as he notes, screaming out loud.

It isn’t, he says, as much mindset as it is attitude.

“I don’t think it’s really a mindset. We talk about what can progress us throughout the year and elevate every single day.”

Meyer comes in with the fire burning, understanding the role of the relief pitcher, especially one who wears No. 99 on his uniform.

“You are going in there to slam the door. You don’t want them to breathe. You want to take the life out of them as a reliever,” he said. “As a starter — I started this summer — it’s kind of like ‘Keep cruising, keep cruising’ and then when you are in the sixth you can show some emotion. Out of the pen it is like, for me, I have to be hyping myself up and I can’t be like a calm, collected guy.

“If I do, I kind of get soft and let them win battles they shouldn’t be winning.”

A 6-2 sophomore right-hander out of Daytona Beach, Fla., who played high school ball in North Carolina, Meyer had to learn to control both himself and the baseball as a freshman last season, pitching 13 times with a 1-1 record but an 8.38 earned-run average.

He upset hitters with 28 strikeouts but offset that by walking 24 in just 19.1 innings pitched.

This year he has turned that around, throwing 10 more innings to date, cutting his walks to 18 while ramping up the strikeouts to 44 while opposing batters are batting just .117 against him, having managed only 11 hits off him in 29 innings.

His seven wins match the best any two pitchers on the Mountaineer staff have combined for and in Thursday night’s opening game of the series, Sabins called on him at just the proper moment.

“I didn’t feel great about our bullpen just because it got taxed at Houston and at Marshall. Sometimes those midweek games you can throw some different arms, but we didn’t do that against Marshall and got into a really tight game where we needed to use the guys we usually rely on.

“That was Tuesday, so the bullpen had short rest and Chase hadn’t pitched since Houston and that was probably his worst outing of the season there. So, to be able to see him bounce back and overcome that outing, turn the page is a big mental growth moment for him.”