The game of baseball is rife with all kinds of strange things. It is a game of stories and intrigues.
"Baseball, the best game." The Babe.
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We Teach The Major League Baseball Pitching Form
Our Pitchers Learn To:
Prevent Arm Injury
Increase Velocity
Throw Consistent Strikes
Change Speeds
Handle Mental Aspects
FOR PITCHERS OF ALL AGES and
ECCENTRICITIES
INSPECTING THE BALL
"It struck me how often the ball is inspected during a game, as if anyone
who touches it has to make sure the ball has not changed its properties.
If the ball disappears over the fence, another, like a youngster's
dream pinball game, emerges from a black sack at the umpire's side.
He looks at it and gives it to the catcher, who rubs it briefly, and after
a glance fires it out to the pitcher; he looks at the ball and rubs it with
both hands, his glove dangling from its wrist strap, and then, as he stares
down at the catcher for the signal, his fingers maneuver over its surface
feeling for the comfort of some response—yes, this time it will do
exactly as he wishes! Who has not seen a shortstop handling an easy ground
ball—two big hops and there it is for him to look down into his gloves
and seem to read (National League, Chub Feeney, Rawlings, whatever), before
plucking it out and zipping it across the diamond to the first baseman who,
of course, in turn inspects it. If the last out of the inning, the first
baseman lobs the ball nonchalantly to the first base umpire who cannot resist
taking a peek too, just to be reassured, before he rolls it out to the mound
where the opposing pitcher, emerging from his team's dugout, will stride
up the slope of the mound to bend and pick it up for his inspection and then
comfort his fingers with its texture."
From the book: The Curious Case of Sidd Finch, George Plimpton, 1987
714
Here is a bit of a coincidence.
Babe Ruth hit 714 career home runs.
Nolan Ryan struck out 5,714 batters in his career.
THE BASEBALL
"It weighs just over five ounces and measures between 2.86 and 2.94 inches in diameter. It is made of a composition-cork nucleus encased in two thin layers of rubber, one black and one red, surrounded by 121 yards of tightly wrapped blue-gray wool yarn, 45 yards of white wool yarn, 53 more yards of blue-gray yearn, 150 yards of fine cotton yarn, a coat of rubber cement, and a cowhide (formerly horsehide), exterior, which is held together with 216 slightly raised red cotton hand-stitched stitches. Baseballs are assembled and hand-stitched in Taiwan, (before this year the work was done in Haiti, and before 1973 in Chicopee, Massachusetts.
Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the
ideal in design and utility. It is a perfect object for a man's hand. Pick
it up and it instantly suggests its purpose; it is meant to be thrown a considerable
distance—thrown hard and with precision. Its feel and heft are the
beginning of the sport's critical dimensions; if it were a fraction of an
inch larger or smaller, a few centigrams heavier or lighter, the game of
baseball would be utterly different.
Hold a baseball in your hand. Feel the ball, turn it over in your hand;
hold it across the seam or just to the side of your middle finger. Speculation
stirs. You want to get outdoors and throw this spare and sensual object to
somebody or, at the very least, watch somebody else throw it. The game has
begun".
From the book: Five Seasons by Roger Angell, 1976
A ball thrown at ninety miles per hour
is traveling at
132 feet per second.
HOW DOES WEATHER EFFECT THE FLIGHT OF THE BALL?
Contrary to popular belief, a baseball travels farther in hot, humid weather. When the air feels “heavy” with moisture, it is “lighter”. Hot, humid air is less dense than cold, dry air, so a baseball that might not make it out of the park when hit on a cool day may have just enough “legs” on a hot, humid one to clear the fence.
PITCHING CONTRADICTIONS:
- The need to be aggressive without being emotional is just one of the many apparent contradictions that good pitching requires. Here are some others to keep in mind.
- You add power to your pitching motion by slowing down rather than speeding up.
- You pitch with your lower body as much as, if not more than, your upper body.
- Throwing hard requires a firm grip and a relaxed wrist.
- Velocity is the least important element of a good fastball and the most important element of a change-up.
- Perhaps the game's most effective pitch is a slow fastball thrown over the plate (a.k.a. a change-up).
- The less you throw a breaking ball, the more effective it can be.
- The less you try to make a breaking ball move, the more it will move.
- One of the best ways to take care of your arm is to throw.
DEBATE ABOUT THE BALL
DOES IT REALLY CURVE?
A fast ball is not the most difficult pitch to hit. Lots of players make a living hitting a good, major league fastball. The pitches that give most batters a problem are breaking pitching: curves, sliders, and split-fingered fast balls.
Baseball veterans often say they knew they had to retire from the game
when they couldn't hit the curve ball anymore. These baseballs don't
overpower batters like blazing fast balls; they hamstring players who helplessly
watch them dance across the plate—hooking, tailing, dropping, and twisting
in such unbelievable ways that some batters are convinced the sharp drop
of a curve ball is really an optical illusion or the result of the illegal
use of sandpaper to scuff up the ball.
Batters would like to believe that no human being could be talented enough
to cause a leather-covered, five-ounce sphere to follow such an erratic course. “It
just isn't natural”.
The curve-ball controversy has been debated so intensely that in 1941,
Life and Look magazines took stop-action photographs of curve balls to determine
if the baseballs really did curve. Life concluded: “evidence fails
to show the existence of a curve,” while Look discovered the opposite:
the ball does curve.
Even as recently as 1982, Science magazine commissioned scientists at
General Motors and MIT to conduct a modern scientific investigation into
the question. Once again stop-action photography was employed to show that
a curve ball's
curve is not an optical illusion but is based upon sound laws of physics.
K'S FOR STRIKEOUTS
Where did the use of k come from for strikeout?
WHAT MAKES A CURVE-BALL CURVE
TWO EXPLANATIONS
ONE
The speed of the air moving past the ball's surface
is the trick to a curveball. As the ball spins, its top surface moves in
the same direction in which the air moves. At the bottom of the ball,
the ball's surface and the air move in opposite directions. So the
velocity of the air relative to that of the ball's surface is larger on
the bottom of the ball.
The higher velocity difference puts more stress on
the air flowing around the bottom of the ball. That stress makes air
flowing around the ball break away from the ball's surface sooner. The
air then travels at the top of the spinning ball, subject to less stress
due to the lower velocity difference, can hang onto the ball's surface
longer before breaking away.
When a pitcher releases a curveball, the pitchers
grip will put a spin on the ball. As the ball moves through the air it
experiences a force called drag or air resistance.
If the ball isn’t rotating the drag will only make
it go slower. For a baseball, when it is rotating, the force of the drag
is different at different points of its path. The air friction is less
on one side of the ball and because of that the ball tends to curve.
Something else that helps a baseball to rotate or
spin is the roughness of the ball. If the stitches on the baseball
weren’t on the ball the ball would be really smooth. If that were the
case any of the special pitches such as the curveball wouldn’t be
possible. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So,
as the spinning ball throws the air down, the air pushes the ball up in
response. A ball thrown with backspin will get a little bit of lift.
"A major league curveball can veer as much as
171/2 inches from a straight line by the time it crosses the plate.
Over the course of a pitch, the deflection from a straight line
increases with distance from the pitcher. So curveballs do most of their
curving in the last quarter of their trip. Considering that it takes
less time for the ball to travel those last 15 feet (about 1/6 of a
second) than it takes for the batter to swing the bat (about 1/5 of a
second), hitters must begin their swings before the ball has started to
show much curve. No wonder curveballs are so hard to hit."
Ref: (The Science of Baseball )
TWO
Topspin of a curve ball causes air pressure on the
bottom of the ball to be less than air pressure on top, so the ball
sinks. This topspin causes air to flow faster along the bottom of the
ball than along the top. The faster-flowing bottom air is stretched
thin, causing greater air pressure at the top of the ball and forcing
the ball down. The curving force can move the ball down a foot or more
in flight. If there were no gravity, the curve ball would form a circle
two thousand feet in diameter. But, after all, the ball is moving on our
planet and not in outer space. So gravity affects the path of the ball,
too, pulling the ball toward the ground.
The force of gravity is a continuously accelerating
force. It makes objects move faster and faster over time. So the effect
of gravity is most pronounced in the second half of the ball’s
half-second flight to home plate. Combined with the curving force,
gravity makes an overhand curve ball appear to drop suddenly, as if it
had “rolled off a table” when in actuality the ball has followed a
smooth arc during its entire flight. So when batters say it appears that
the ball makes a sharp break right in front of the plate, they are
partially right. And when scientists say the ball follows a smooth,
circular path all the while, they’re correct, too. A pitch that takes
less than half a second to reach the batter drops only half a foot due
to gravity in the first half of flight, but in the second half it drops
more than two feet. It that a sharp break? If you’re a batter, you think
so. If you’re a scientist, heck, no, but you’ve never had a face former
curve-ball ace Sandy Koufax.
Trivia:
Bottom (reverse) spin causes a fast ball to rise or “hop”. Because the ball is spinning toward the pitcher, a fast ball’s lower surface will be moving against the wind, creating greater pressure underneath the ball than above it, so the ball rises.
Bottom (reverse) spin causes a fast ball to rise or “hop”. Because the ball is spinning toward the pitcher, a fast ball’s lower surface will be moving against the wind, creating greater pressure underneath the ball than above it, so the ball rises.
A “perfect” curve ball travels about a hundred feet per second, spinning at thirty revolutions per second.
Ref: Rainbows Curve Balls. An Other Wonders of the Natural World Explained, by Ira Flatow
POWER GENERATION AT LANDING
As a pitcher, you land on your front leg with six times your body weight. (A 200 pound pitcher generates 1,200 pounds of force when the landing leg strikes. Multiply your weight times six to see how much force you create when your front leg hits the ground).
Now there, I’ll bet it never occurred to you that you would see a discussion concerning 90 degree angles in any aspect of baseball, let alone pitching. Like you, when I first found out about this information, I was surprised. A bit of a quirk, I’d say.
So, to the angles:
Baseball players, as is the case with all athletes, perform at their highest level when they are relaxed. When an athlete's mind is clear his body is free to move freely. When a body is moving freely, he is able to perform at his highest level.
Baseball players, as is the case with all athletes, perform at their highest level when they are relaxed. When the mind is clear the body is body to move freely and easily. When the body is moving freely, the athlete is able to perform at the highest level.
ELVIS IN THE WORLD SERIES
Elvis Andres is the only Elvis to play in a World Series
As a pitcher, you land on your front leg with six times your body weight. (A 200 pound pitcher generates 1,200 pounds of force when the landing leg strikes. Multiply your weight times six to see how much force you create when your front leg hits the ground).
A mechanically efficient hurler--one who understands the four essentials
of pitching--translates that energy up through the entire upper body.
90 DEGREE ANGLES
AND THE PITCHING DELIVERY
Now there, I’ll bet it never occurred to you that you would see a discussion concerning 90 degree angles in any aspect of baseball, let alone pitching. Like you, when I first found out about this information, I was surprised. A bit of a quirk, I’d say.
To begin with, this information came by way of the book, I must tell
you where I got this information, COACHING PITCHERS, by Joe “Spanky” McFarland.
He is the only author who has written about this subject that I know about. As you can imagine,
I’ve read a few books on baseball pitching.
So, to the angles:
- When the pitcher is in the leg lift, or stride leg lift position, also known as the loaded position or gathered position, the pitcher must lift his lead leg to at least a ninety degree height. Any less and the pitcher gets less than the complete benefit of his stored energy for his delivery. Bring the lift leg at least waist high. That will get it done.
Illustration from the baseball pitching instruction book, DELIVERY.
- When the pitcher lands on his front foot, he must maintain at least a ninety degree angle. At the landing position, the pitcher is bracing up against that leg, effectively holding himself back so the top of the body can spin to throw the ball. If the pitcher goes beyond 90 degrees, the front leg will collapse. Think of a building toppling over.
Illustration from the baseball pitching instruction book, DELIVERY.
- When the throwing elbow starts forward, the elbow joint must be at least level with the shoulder joint. A bit higher is okay. At this point, the elbow is at a 90 angle with the torso. In this position, also known as the acceleration position, the elbow should never be less than 90 degrees. If it is it leads to arm drag, flat fastballs, injury. Well, you get the point.
Illustration from the baseball pitching instruction book, DELIVERY.
- As the elbow flies toward the plate like a spear, the elbow must be as high as the shoulder. At this point, the lead elbow creates a 90 angle with the torso. The angle can be less, but not more than 90 degrees.
Illustration from the baseball pitching instruction book, DELIVERY.
- During External Rotation, the arm lays back at least 180 degrees. Once again the 90 angle comes into play. The elbow is leading the hand at a 90 degree angle.
Illustration from the baseball pitching instruction book, DELIVERY.
Watching
these 90 degree angles sequentially come into play is an easy way to
see how a young pitcher is doing as he delivers a pitch. In this way a
coach or parent is able to see what the pitcher is doing as he pulls his
energy up, loads, spins and releases the ball. If any of those angles
are missing, the pitcher is throwing with
less than total command and benefit of his body.
And, very important, If a pitcher is not attaining all these angles, in proper sequence, some part of his body is compensating and if that is happening, an injury is in the making.
And, very important, If a pitcher is not attaining all these angles, in proper sequence, some part of his body is compensating and if that is happening, an injury is in the making.
Baseball players, as is the case with all athletes, perform at their highest level when they are relaxed. When an athlete's mind is clear his body is free to move freely. When a body is moving freely, he is able to perform at his highest level.
The question is, how does the athlete get to the point where he is
constantly and consistently competing at his highest level? In other words, how
does the athlete get to the point where his mind and body are completely clear
and performing at peak level?
One highly effective method is to use subliminal messaging software.
This conditions your subconscious mind to work with your body at its optimum
level. The technique is very simple, you just watch the proper subliminal
message program as recommended, and your subconscious mind learns to do the
right things, at the right time, automatically.
So now, mind and body are working together, and that is the formula for
winning. See links below for our special subliminal message programs that can
help you both as an athlete and a baseball pitcher.
As a
pitcher you are your own coach when you are on the mound. There
might be 50,000 people in the stands, or no one, with one bench yelling
encouragement while the other, discouragement, or not.
Whatever the case, you are alone, you are by yourself, with a job that must be done. It is up to you to get it done.
You must know what adjustments to make if you suddenly find yourself in a situation where the ball is not doing what you want it to do the way you want it to do it. This is an extremely important part of your job, of pitching. You must learn your game and know it well. At the same time, you must maintain a calm inner being. You must be relaxed.
Whatever the case, you are alone, you are by yourself, with a job that must be done. It is up to you to get it done.
You must know what adjustments to make if you suddenly find yourself in a situation where the ball is not doing what you want it to do the way you want it to do it. This is an extremely important part of your job, of pitching. You must learn your game and know it well. At the same time, you must maintain a calm inner being. You must be relaxed.
Learning
the art
of pitching takes lots of time, study, and infinite patience to be an
effective pitcher. If there is a perfect way to do something, it can be
learned. Learn the perfect way to pitch, and then practice diligently.
Learning how to maintain a calm inner being, being completely relaxed,
is easier than you think.
Scroll down for more information on both these pitching aspects.
Scroll down for more information on both these pitching aspects.
"If you want to be the best, you must do what the best do."
---Skip Murray
"That which you do not know, the doing will quickly teach you."
---Lao Tzu
Baseball players, as is the case with all athletes, perform at their highest level when they are relaxed. When the mind is clear the body is body to move freely and easily. When the body is moving freely, the athlete is able to perform at the highest level.
The question is, how does
the athlete get to the point where he or she is constantly and consistently
competing at that highest level? In other words, how does the athlete get
to the point where his or her mind and body are completely clear and
performing at peak level? Keep on reading, here is your answer.
One highly effective method is
to use subliminal messaging software. This conditions your
subconscious
mind to work with your body at its optimum level. The technique is
simple, you simply watch the proper subliminal message program as
recommended, and your subconscious mind automatically learns to do the
right things
at the right time. It is as easy as that.
So now, mind and body are
working together, and that, my friends,
is a winning combination.
Click on this text or image to buy the book, DELIVERY, for
a unique and simple way to understand and learn how to properly,
effectively and safely be a winning baseball pitcher. DELIVERY, the
book, is designed for you, the pitcher, and for pitchers of all ages, to
enable you to confidently pitch at the top of your game each time you
take the ball.
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