Looking at that 1924 WS footage, I am reminded that pitchers don’t wind up or deliverb like thatv now. When did it change, at what was the impetus?
It’s been a continuous change, and there were always a few pitchers who did it their own way (e.g., Luis Tiant, Livian Hernandez). The current style is due to a study of what has worked over the years, and pitchers have been taught to do it one particular way.
Paul Byrd used the full windup as recently as a couple of years ago. Seems like a waste of energy, though.
Baseball historian Rob Neyer, in a 2004 book about pitchers, claims the trend to streamlined deliveries started when pitching coaches started being hired in the 1940s. Now that baseball teams had specialists devoted only to pitching, they tended to decide those flamboyant deliveries caused too much wear and tear on the body. They advised pitchers to develop more streamlined. (Neyer notes there’s little real evidence is true.)
Did you mean Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez? Livan’s half-brother? He was the one who used to rub his ear with his kneecap during his windup.
The flamboyant windups help to decieve hitters. Besides being generally distracting there’s a lot of opportunity to change the motion along the way, making it more difficult for the to pick up the type pitch before the release. I wouldn’t be surprised if pitchers were using tactics like that in the very early days of baseball.