Clay Buchholz makes no secret about the fact. He will be nervous when he takes the mound on Sunday for Game 3 of the Division Series against the Angels, a contest that the Red Sox must win in order to extend their season another day. Buchholz has good reason for his conviction about his nerves.

Buchholz has pitched in a win-or-go-home situation once before. In 2005, in the final game of his college career, he was the scheduled starter for Angelina Junior College in a regional tournament. And there seemed no reason to expect it would go well.

The lanky right-hander was amidst an absolutely dominant season on the mound, something that was surprising enough. When he transferred from McNeese State to Angelina, it was as a shortstop.

“Tells you how smart both he and I were at that point,” chuckled Jeff Livin, Buchholz’ coach at Angelina.

Buchholz also pitched a bit, and after a back injury, he worked to retool his mechanics a bit. The results were jarring. His fastball velocity and slider suddenly became not just good but dominating pitches (complemented at the time by the occasional curve and change), something that became apparent in his first appearance of the spring, which signaled the end of his aspirations as a position player.

“He threw to six hitters and none of them even fouled a pitch off. I sat back there and watched it, 94-97, he was just unhittable. It was perfection on the mound, if ever there was such a thing,” said Livin. “It was pretty easy to see he was head and shoulders above the rest of the talent you come across.”

The results in that 2005 season suggested as much. Buchholz would finish the year with a 12-1 record, 1.05 ERA and 129 strikeouts in just 85.2 innings, helping to lead the Roadrunners to the regional tournament to determine who would advance to the Junior College World Series.

With Angelina facing elimination in that tournament, Livin had every reason to believe that Buchholz would stave off his team’s elimination. But that perception changed as the pitcher readied for his start against Blinn College. 

The sultry, South Texas weather (and the pressure both seemed too much for the 20-year-old pitcher. Livin recalled that the day of the performance was humid, with a heat index around 100 degrees.

“Clay starts warming up, and all of a sudden, he keels over in the back of the bullpen and gets nauseous on me. I was like, ‘It looks like he’s overheating,’” Livin recalled in a phone conversation. “So we haul him back to the dugout and tried to cool him down real quick. It’s 10 minutes until gametime. Clay’s kind of emptying himself out between the dugout and the field.

“I’ve felt the butterflies before,” added Livin, a former pitcher. “They haven’t escaped me like that.”

Immediately, the sight of the ill pitcher forced Livin into action. With his starting pitcher enduring a state of gastrointestinal tumult just 10 minutes before the game, the coach would need to find an alternative to his record-setting pitcher for Angelina’s most important game of the year.

“Clay takes a look over there to see what’s going on,” said Livin. “He kind of got upset about the situation and said, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘Clay, you’re throwing up right now. We kind of need someone to help you.’ He said, ‘I’ll be fine.’ So I shut the other guy down, we get Clay in there and hastily get him ready to go.”

Buchholz lived up to his word. Once on the mound, the right-hander – who would be taken just weeks later by the Red Sox with the 42^nd overall pick in the draft – showed no signs of the illness.

“From the first pitch on, he was locked and loaded and there really wasn’t any problem,” said Livin. “Long story short, he throws a three-hitter, strikes out, I believe, 16, and he threw a complete game, 117 pitches I think.

“We found out after the game that the other team had picked up our signs, my signs, calling pitches to the catcher in the fourth inning. So not only did he strike out 16 people – they knew what was coming and he still struck them out. So I think he handled the pressure pretty well.”

So if Buchholz feels nervous prior to his Game 3 start, his team need not assume that it bodes poorly for their chances. That outing against Angelina showed a pitcher who is capable of using the anxiety of a pressure situation to his benefit.

“It went from mild panic to one hell of an outing. He showed me a lot that day,” said Livin. “Sometimes you can channel [nerves] if you’re a good athlete. Clay’s got a pretty good ability to do that.”