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PLAY BALL
----------------------> By John "P-LUV" Golembiewski
| | :: Sports ::Award-winning sports journalist offers sports insight. From the basics of throwing a ball to more advanced tips for the novice athlete. He'll also feature pointers from professional athletes!
Baseball can be a funny game to play. What other sport allows you to mess up seven out of ten times and still be considered good? A solid Major League Baseball player hits around .300, which means as a pitcher, you must be on top of your game to get hitters out 70 percent of the time. Below are a few pointers on making that perfect pitch from your first throw in Little League, to getting that final out in the ninth inning when you get older.
BASIC THROW
Ever throw a snowball? Ever give someone taller than you a high five? Ever use a hammer or cast with a fishing pole? Essentially, these all use the same whipping arm motion you’ll need to throw a ball.
Start by picking up a ball. Your grip doesn’t matter at this point except that you want your thumb on the bottom and any other fingers on top. Pick a target. If playing catch with a friend, stand 10 feet apart and pick a spot above that person’s glove or toward the center of his or her body. If you’re right handed, put your left foot forward. If you’re left handed, put your right foot forward. Now raise your hand like you have a question in class but not straight up. There should be some bend in your elbow and like you are slightly reaching back. You are going to whip your arm forward from this position and follow through to your opposite hip. You may have to practice just this motion before you actually start releasing the ball.
Once you have the motion down you can pick a spot in the motion where your hand is above your head to release the ball. The idea is to pick a spot where the trajectory or arc of the ball will go to where you are aiming. This might takes several tries to even come close to where you are aiming. Even Professionals have to practice through trial and error to get their accuracy the way it needs to be. As you start to get the hang of it, start moving farther away until you are about 60 feet apart. For precaution you shouldn’t throw for more than two hours or your arm will be very sore the next day.
LOCATION
Once you’ve figured out how to throw where you are aiming, start picking different spots to throw to. A good game to play with a friend is for them to move their glove to a certain spot and you have to throw it right to the glove. If playing alone, find a spot on the backstop wall or fence and throw to it. Major League Baseball pitchers like Gregg Maddux of the Padres and Tom Glavine of the Mets don’t throw all that hard. They get batters out with good location and deceptive pitching, but you can’t be deceptive if you can’t put the ball where you want it. It takes time and practice. For every type of pitch and angle of your arm, you’ll have to figure out the point of release of the ball.
TYPES OF PITCHES
Most pitches get their name either by the type of grip used on the ball or how it travels to the plate. Below are some examples of the most common types of pitches and the grip you would use to hold the ball. I can’t stress the phrase “most common” enough. Different people use different grips and different types of releases to get the desired effect. What is right for some people isn’t necessarily the best way for you to do it.
Four Seam Fastball
Baseball’s most popular pitch is the fastball and the most common variety of this pitch is called a Four Seam Fastball. In fact, one of the fastest pitches ever thrown was a four seam fastball by Braves pitcher Mark Wohlers at 103 mph. Your index and middle fingers go together on the long side of one of the horseshoe seams. Your thumb goes underneath on one seam while the side of your ring finger knuckle goes underneath on the other side. This is a power pitch that should travel straight when thrown because of the limited amount of ball rotation. You really want to reach back like you’re grabbing something behind you and let her rip with this pitch. Establishing a four seam fastball will set up all the other pitches in your arsenal. It is such a powerful pitch that those who have it may be successful with nothing else except a hard fastball.
Two Seam Fastball
The two seam fastball is so named because instead of gripping the ball across the horseshoe seam, you spread your index and middle finger inside the middle of the closest seams, your thumb should be directly underneath touching the middle of the horseshoe seam, while the ring finger knuckle is off to the side. This fastball tends to have a sinking type motion to it because of the index and middle fingers’ pressure on the ball at the point of release. I’ve also known pitchers to place both those fingers together to really make the ball sink when thrown.
Split Finger
Bruce Sutter is probably one of the game’s all-time greatest split-finger fastball pitchers, although, Curt Schilling and Roger Clemens have also used the pitch to great effect. Instead of holding the ball with your index and middle finger on top of the ball, you spread them even farther apart to the sides of the ball. You use the same motion as a regular fastball for this pitch. The splitter, as it is also known, is more of a change-of-pace pitch. It has more movement than a two-seam fastball but is also slower. It is a good pitch to use to throw off a batter’s timing. One of the best ways to learn this pitch is to practice the grip and throwing motions with a softball. The larger size of the ball will make the uncomfortable grip a little easier to handle with the smaller baseball.
Cut Fastball
A cut fastball, or cutter, is almost thrown like a four seam fastball. The idea here is to give the fastball side-to-side movement without throwing a curve or slider. In order to do that you need to offset the four-seam grip from the middle of the ball towards more of the side of the ball and place your thumb under the middle of the ball. For greater effect, pitchers throw this with a hard snap with pressure from the middle finger. New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera is able to throw this pitch so it moves away from right handed batters and in on left handed batters.
Slider
The slider is not recommended for players under the age of 21 because of the damage it can cause in the forearms of young pitchers. It is only mentioned here so you can know what it is. It is thrown by holding the ball like a two seam fastball, but offset to the farthest of the horseshoe seams so you are holding only a third of the ball. On release you do not twist your wrist or elbow like a curve. Instead you use your fingers to generate the spin using the motion you would use to loosen a screw. It will look like a fastball or cutter delivery, but move slower and will break late in the opposite direction of a curve ball.
Curve Ball
The Little League World Series discourages the use of curve balls by youngsters to prevent irreversible damage to growing muscles and bones. Of all the pitches discussed, this is the one that causes the most damage even to trained professionals. As a batter, the easiest way to recognize a curve is that it starts closer to the pitchers ear and their arms are bent at the elbow at a 90-degree angle. Place your middle finger right next to one of the seams that are closest together. Now place your index finger right next to the middle finger. Your thumb will go under the ball and the side of your ring finger knuckle will go off to the side. As you throw the ball from your ear you are going to twist your wrist like you are twisting a door knob, but with a snap to it like hammering a nail off to the side. This will generate a lot of spin on the ball making it drop and move away from a right handed batter. You can also cross your middle finger over the index finger when placing the fingers on the ball. This makes the middle finger really snap on the seam for some added spin. Depending on the angle it is released, it will have what is called a 12 to 6 drop (like the numbers on a clock), or a more angular side-to-side drop. Both can make even a Major League hitter look foolish, if they aren’t expecting it, as they jump out of the way of what ends up being a perfect strike.
MY CURVE:
Change Up
The change up is an off-speed pitch. It is thrown in conjunction with a fastball to really throw a hitter off. Say for example you’ve thrown a fastball that the batter fouled off because they were being over aggressive. Throwing a change up in this situation should make the batter swing way to early, either missing the ball entirely, or having it hit closer to the tip of the bat. There are two main types of change ups, the “ok” circle change and the three-finger change.
The circle change involves the index and thumb touching on the side of the ball like the hand gesture for “ok”, while all the other fingers rest on top of the ball. The three-fingered change has the index, middle, and ring fingers spread over the side seams of the horseshoe while the thumb and pinky touch underneath. Both are thrown just like a fastball. Both will be much slower. It is deceptive because the pitch looks and acts just like a fastball right up until the batter realizes it hasn’t reached the plate yet.
CHANGE UP:
CIRCLE CHANGE UP:
Knuckleball
The knuckleball is an odd pitch. First, there is no standard way to grip the ball. The only reason it has its name is because the first one documented was gripped with the knuckles by that particular pitcher, Eddie Cicotte. Other knuckleballers since such as Phil Neikro and Tim Wakefield hold it with just the tips of their fingers. Some use two fingers while others use three or four. Some put their fingers on the seam and others swear by purposely putting the fingers anywhere but on the seam. Some flick their wrist to give it a knuckle curve kind of spin while others simply flick the ball toward the plate and let it float. The truest knuckleballer attempts to not put any spin on the ball. You kind of push it towards the plate without forcing it there. There is no stress to the arm. What happens to this slow moving non-spinning pitch while it gets to the batter can be amazing or it can be disastrous. Essentially no one, not even the pitcher knows exactly what the pitch will do. The air pockets around the ball guide it down and side to side at severely varying degrees of speed, meaning the ball could kind of wobble in midair. As you can understand this kind of movement will give both hitters and catchers fits trying to predict where the ball will be. Of all the pitches, this is by far the toughest one to learn and throw. That is probably why there are so few pitchers that can throw it effectively and why they have formed a sort of fraternity passing on the pitch to future generations.
Eepuhus Pitch
The Eephus pitch is thrown overhand like most pitches, but is characterized by an unusual high arch and slow velocity, looking more like a slow-pitch softball lob than a traditional baseball pitch. The pitch was named by the first pitcher to use it in a game. It is a trick off-speed pitch because in comparison to other pitches, it appears to move in slow motion. Hitters typically get very anxious, swing wildly and ground out. The most famous use of this pitch came in the 1946 World Series as Ted Williams faced off against Rip Sewell. In the game, Sewell had been very successful against the American League hitters with this pitch. Everyone was waiting to see how Williams, one of the greatest hitters ever to play the game, would handle it. Williams missed it the first time and taunted Sewell to throw it again. Sewell overwhelmed by his success decided to throw it again. Williams took a slight running start and smacked the Eephus pitch into the stands for a homerun. That was the only homerun Sewell ever gave up using the Eephus pitch.
Despite most Major League Baseball pitchers being successful in getting batters out 70 percent of the time, most of what you see on your sports highlight programs are big hits and home runs. That’s why as a pitcher, you must work extra hard to keep batters off balance
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