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The beauty of the four-seam fastball is the simplicity of it. You simply grip the baseball across the seam’s horseshoe with your index and middle fingers, thumb directly underneath the ball. Your index and middle fingers are therefore touching the seams of the baseball in four places. You do not manipulate the pitch; just throw the baseball normally, with your hand and forearm forming a 90-degree angle at the wrist as you reach the release point.
As you release the ball, your hand comes through with a powerful downward flick from the wrist. This allows you to stay behind the ball, creating a perfect back-spin on the ball when it is released, causing the rising effect when thrown properly. In my biased opinion, there is no better feeling than reaching back and throwing a hard four-seam fastball right by a batter. It’s my best pitch, but ironically most hitters would like to think it’s their best pitch to hit.
The two-seam fastball is a pitch that uses movement to get a hitter to put less than a perfect swing on it. The speed of the pitch combined with the movement of the ball makes it difficult for a hitter to hit the ball on the barrel of the bat. Unlike a four-seam fastball, there are many variations on how to grip a two-seam fastball.
The most common way is to place the index and middle fingers just inside or along the narrow part of the seams, usually where the trademark of the ball is, thumb underneath the ball. Neither finger should be across the seams, but rather they should be running with the seams. You then throw the two-seam fastball the same way as a four-seam fastball, letting the grip cause the movement. A properly thrown two-seam fastball by a right-handed pitcher will sink or run down and into a right-handed hitter, and a two-seamer by a left-handed pitcher will sink or run down and into a left-handed hitter.
To create greater movement, some pitchers offset their thumb underneath their index finger, causing them to stay inside the ball and creating even more movement. Spending the 2007 season with future Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux taught me that working with various types of fastballs is a never-ending game of trial and error. We pitchers are always tinkering on off days, searching for any little grip change that might make the ball dance and dart even more the next time we take the mound.
Broadcast legends Tim McCarver and Brent Musburger first met in 1959, when McCarver was a catcher for Keokuk and Musburger was an umpire in the Class A Midwest League.
THE CHANGEUP
TODD JONES ON HOW TO FOOL THEM
A few years ago, Dr. Joseph Chandler, an orthopedic consultant for the Atlanta Braves, asked more than 100 pitchers in the Braves’ organization for a recommended age for throwing a curveball. Most of them said not before 15. Yet if you watch the Little League World Series, the annual international baseball tournament for kids ages 10 to 12, you’ll see pitchers throw curveballs at an alarming rate: 40 to 60 percent of their total pitches. The short-term effect is lots of strikeouts. The long-term effect is permanent damage to elbows that are not mature enough to withstand the strain.
A safer and often more effective off-speed pitch is the changeup. Longtime major league reliever Todd Jones is one of its champions:
If I had to teach a 10-year-old how to throw a change, I’d tell him to grip the baseball like he’s throwing a fastball but split his index and middle fingers a little on each side of the ball. Then I’d tell him to throw that pitch as hard as he can.
The idea is for the unconventional grip to take the speed off the pitch. If that grip doesn’t work, move on to another grip and ask your catcher how the pitch looks coming out of your hand. You have to sell the changeup to the hitter. He has to believe a fastball is coming. If a pitcher slows his arm down, the pitch has no deception and becomes nothing more than batting practice.
The grip is everything, but there’s no one way to do it. You can also choke the ball back in your hand toward your palm. Or you can use your middle and ring fingers to apply pressure on the seams, rather than the index and middle fingers. That’s what many people call the circle change, because you make a circle with your index finger and thumb and let the ball come off the middle and ring digits.
Granted, the changeup doesn’t have the machismo of the fastball or the dramatic break of the curveball or the slider. Heck, it doesn’t even have a nickname beyond change of pace or change. But it does have pitchers like Jones, Trevor Hoffman, John Smoltz, and Johan Santana on its side.
The first official Little Leaguer to play major league baseball was pitcher Joey Jay, who made his debut with the Milwaukee Braves in 1953.
Baseball’s first fulltime strength and conditioning coach was Otis Douglas, a former NFL player who helped the 1961 Cincinnati Reds win the National League pennant.
PRIVATE QUARTERS
INSIDE DONOVAN MCNABB’S LOCKER
Have you ever wondered what the locker of an NFL quarterback looks like? Well, we have, and Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles was kind enough to show us around his locker area at Lincoln Financial Field. Pull up a chair, because it has a lot more than you might think:
When you start out, there’s not that much stuff in your locker. Then you get more and more shirts.… I have stuff the Eagles don’t want anymore, Christmas items. We moved over from the Vet—not that much room in your locker there. Over here, there’s a bit more space. I have a lot of exciting things in here.
Let’s start at the bottom. My Nike shoes are here. Up until two years ago, those shoes were Reeboks. Now I’m with Nike. So I have about 12 or 15 pairs of their shoes here.
Then we have my brand of protein shakes. Two exciting flavors, vanilla cream and cookies ‘n’ cream, because those are the flavors I got for free. Free is me; I love free. I drink these usually twice a day. Neuropath drink mix sends messages to the brain waves and vitamins into the system. I mix that into protein shakes once a day.
Then you have the CD collection, where I have some old-school music. I haven’t put any new CDs in for the last three years.
“I have my Billy Blanks Tae Bo workout tapes. They’re my secret weapon to prepare myself for the season. A little different workout—running, lifting, lots of Tae Bo exercises and instruction. I do these at home or back in the back room, where we have a quiet area with a small 13-inch screen. [Laughs.] Billy looks small.
In the next cubby, you have your body soap. I prefer the milk-and-honey and cucumber-melon scents to bring out the smells. You don’t want to smell funky coming in or leaving practice. Lotion is key—cocoa butter keeps the skin nice and soft. They give you soap here, but this way you have a little flavor, a little something different than anyone else.
Moving over to the shelf, I have my Bible. Next to it, my Syracuse hat and helmet because we definitely need the prayers to go out to Syracuse University. [Laughs.] For Bibles, I have the NIV and the King James Version. We have Bible study here once a week.
Next to the Bible, I have Tony Dungy’s book Quiet Strength. He’s done so much in his career, and, obviously, going through what he went through with his family and to be able to tell the world about it—it’s a great book. Number one on the bestseller list for a while, I think. I was fortunate enough to get it. The other books are a Johnny U bio and Noah’s Rainbow by Dave Fleming.
I have a couple hats up there on the shelf. Some free Planters peanuts. Whatever’s free, I have it. My Syracuse football. As you know, I went there, so I’m showing the love for my university around here. Shirt collection—Syracuse shirt, “Real Men Are Orange.” It was the Orangemen when I was there, but now they’re just the Orange. I have a shirt from the Rock, Dwayne Johnson—he sent a shirt to one of our strength-and-conditioning coaches and one to me. I got that four, five years ago, but he’s a great guy and I still wear it. I haven’t met him personally, but I thought that was cool.
The artwork was a gift sent to me in 2004. Someone made that when they wanted an autograph, and I like the picture. It looks like me mixed with a little bit of Dhani Jones. I thought it was creative, so I’ve kept it up there for a while. Definitely cool and different.
This is a letter sent to me by a fan, Ms. Pena. She was saying I inspired her and told me to keep on fighting. This was from 2004, when we had a great year. I’ve had it up there ever since. The other letter is from one of my former coaches, Leslie Frazier, now the D coordinator at Minnesota. It has some scriptures written on it.
I keep important things in my locker that mean a lot to me. But there’s also some stuff that I probably don’t need that has been here for years. I have this puzzle given to me by an old teammate of mine, Chad Lewis, who went over to Asia. I can’t do it right at all, but I keep it over here.
I have a lot of different types of pictures. This is the award I got with Harry Kalas, voice of the Phillies, and this is me with the Wanamaker Award. Here’s me and Tim Couch, number one and number two picks of the 1999 draft, working out on the field together. This is a picture and flag from the Marine Corps—we have some troops come out to practice during training camp, and we get a chance to thank them for what they do for us.
Up here, I have a flat-screen TV. When I’m in my locker sometimes, I throw something on so I can watch. Almost everyone can see it; there’s TVs everywhere, but not many guys can say they have a TV in their locker.
Tour over, McNabb was asked what three items he would take home from the locker. “My body-face soap and lotion—that’s one. My Bible. And my mother always said to have clean underwear, so I’d take that, too.”
TRUE CALLING
HOW MANY CY YOUNGS WOULD
CY YOUNG HAVE WON?
Denton True Young won 511 games in his 22 major league seasons (1890–1911), pitching 7,356 innings with an ERA of 2.63. So it’s quite fitting that an award was named after him, given first, beginning in 1956, to the best pitcher in the majors and then, starting in 1967, to the best pitcher in his respective league.
But that raises the question, How many Cy Young Awards would the man also known as Cyclone have won? By employing modern-day standards and preferences to the context of Young’s time, we can determine that he would have been a clear winner in 1892, when he pitched for Cleveland and led the National League in wins (36) and ERA (1.93); in 1901, when he won 33 for Boston with an AL-leading 1.62 ERA; in 1902, when he won 32 games and threw 41 complete games for the Red Sox; and 1903, when he had 28 victories, an ERA of 2.08, and seven shutouts (that same season, over in the National League, Christy Mathewson had better numbers).
Cy Young warms up for the Cleveland Naps, circa 1910.
Young had other outstanding seasons but probably would have lost out to the Giants’ Amos Rusie in 1893 (inferior ERA), to Baltimore’s Chick Hoffer in 1895 (inferior team), to Kid Nichols in 1896 and 1898 (inferior stats), and to Jay Hughes in 1899 (inferior winning percentage and team).
So there you have it: Cy Young would probably have won his own award four times. Or three fewer times than Roger Clemens.
SIGH YOUNG
THE WRONG DELIVERY
FOR A PITCHER
The Cy Young Award itself is an extraordinarily heavy plaque on which a silver hand holding a baseball rises up out of a baseball diamond. It’s weird enough to carry a curse—and it does. Ask Vern Law, Randy Jones, Sparky Lyle, Steve Stone, Pete Vuckovich, John Denny, LaMarr Hoyt, Mark Davis, Doug Drabek, Jack McDowell, Pat Hentgen, Eric Gagne, and Barry Zito, all of whom flamed out shortly after winning the award. Denny McLain lost both his awards in a house fire. And we know what happened to the Rocket after he won his seven.
Steve Stone, who went from 25-7 to 4-7 after winning the award in 1980, tells this story: “The day the crate arrived was going to be the greatest day of my life. I mean, this was the Cy Young Award, the culmination of all the pain and blood and sweat and tears. But when I opened the box, I pulled out the plaque and saw that they had sent me Steve Carlton’s Cy Young Award.”
SEVEN WONDERS
YOU HAVE TO BE THERE
TO APPRECIATE THEM
If you’ve got a little time—and money—on your hands, and you want a global view of athletics, may we suggest visiting these Seven Wonders of the Sports World, each in a different region of the world:
Asia: National Swimming Center, Beijing, China. Completed in 2006, the so-called Water Cube has such innovations as a Teflon-like panel exterior that allows the sun to heat the pools, a system for collecting and using rainwater, and a steel-frame undergirding that mimics the structural properties of soap bubbles and can withstand nearly any seismic occurrence. The Cube was apparently built to accommodate the unprecedented performance by swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals in the Cube at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Oceania: Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia. Built in 1853, the MCG is Australia’s largest stadium and one of the world’s premier cricket grounds. In the past, more than 120,000 people have crammed into the stadium for major events, but renovations and safety regulations now keep the capacity closer to 100,000 (98,000 seated, 2,000 standing). The stadium is known colloquially as the G and more soberly as the spiritual home of Australian sport.
Middle East: Ski Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Located in the sun-baked desert emirate, this 242,000-square-foot indoor ski resort boasts five downhill ski runs varying in difficulty (the longest is 1,312 feet with a 197-foot fall), a cross-country trail, a 295-foot quarter pipe for snowboarders, a chair lift, and the world’s largest indoor snow park (with tobogganing hills, a twin-track bobsled ride, a snowball-throwing gallery, and a snow cavern). While the outside temperature ranges from 50 to 118 degrees Fahrenheit, the ski area remains at 28 degrees, with 2 feet of snowpack beneath a layer of powder laid down fresh each night.
South America: Estádio do Maracaña, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The home field of the legendary Pelé, Estádio do Maracaña was built to host the 1950 World Cup finals. Its official capacity is 180,000, although a reported 220,000—the biggest-ever crowd for a football match—were on hand for the decisive game between Brazil and Uruguay. The mountain backdrop beyond the bowl’s rim reinforces the spectacular atmosphere.
North America: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Speedway, Indiana, United States. For sheer magnitude, nothing tops the Brickyard. It can host up to 250,000 spectators, easily making it the world’s largest sports venue. (Infield seating raises that figure to 400,000.) Built in 1909, it has expanded over time from its original 320 acres to 559. The 2½-mile oval was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987. If there’s no race, you can always play the nine-hole golf course in the infield.
Africa: Rift Valley Province, Kenya. This lush region has given rise to the impoverished African nation’s domination of distance running. World-class marathoners like Kip Keino, Mike Boit, and Moses Tanui made themselves into champions with a punishing regimen of training runs that saw them cover up to 175 miles in a week at elevations as high as 10,000 feet above sea level. Talk about a breathtaking experience.
Europe: Wembley Stadium, London, England. The 90,000-seat stadium, expected to be the centerpiece of the 2012 Summer Olympics, has undergone a significant renovation in preparation for the games. The signature 98.3-foot twin towers of the original Wembley have been replaced by a dramatic 436-foot arch, which will support 5,000 tons of the 7,000-ton movable roof. This design eliminates the need for pillars, which could obscure visitors’ views. The arch—visible throughout London—is the longest single-span roof structure in the world.
THE ROPES
GET A JUMP-START WITH
SUGAR SHANE MOSLEY
For most boxers, the workout begins with a length of rope. Skipping rope, or jumping rope, is a time-honored tradition in the fight game for a reason: There is no better way to get the blood flowing, the feet working, the hands moving, the joints jumping. And there may be no better man to teach you the ropes than Sugar Shane Mosley, a former lightweight, welterweight, and junior-middleweight champion known for his rope dexterity.
The proper size, around 8 feet long, can be measured like this: Drop the rope to the floor, step on the midpoint with one foot, and pick up the handle
s—they should come up to your waist.
I like to use a light rope, plastic, not a weighted one, so the rope moves fast. Some guys like a heavier rope to strengthen their forearms and grip, but I want the cardio aspect of it. I want to get into a rhythm, listen to the rope hit the ground, listen to the sound of the wind. It helps your rhythm.
So does music. Anything with a beat, but I listen to Lil Wayne a lot.
I typically do 10 to 15 minutes to start my workout, and I might finish with some more. I’ve been skipping rope since I was six, at Roosevelt Elementary in Pomona. We had a thing every year where we skipped rope to be healthy, and I’d see the girls doing double Dutch and stuff, and I wanted to copy that. I’ve also watched films of Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Robinson.
Other things to remember: The width of your feet should be a little less than your shoulders. Don’t jump too high. Land on the balls of your feet, not on your heels. Flick your wrists counterclockwise, let the rope skip on the floor under your feet, and repeat. Use your wrists only to increase your revolutions, to pick up speed and increase your heart rate.
As you get more adept with the rope, you might be able to pull off crisscrosses, doubles, and triples. Mosley sometimes flicks his wrists clockwise to freshen things up, and you’ll often see him do the alternate foot jump to double the number of skips.
In a gym, you can usually tell the novice boxer by the way he jumps rope. But Mosley doesn’t see a correlation between skipping and fighting. “Boxing is a mental game,” he says, “so even if you aren’t good with the rope, that doesn’t mean you can’t fight.”
Sugar Ray Robinson gets the jump in 1951.
STARTLING FIVE
STEVE HIRDT’S