Perhaps Bobsledding or Skeleton? Not much too much physical going on there except for a little running.
Curling! I bet I could learn to be a great sweeper (or whatever the broom people are called) in the course of the year. I guess the important part is listening to the thrower (or whatever the…throwing…person…is called)?
jb_007clone - are you the current writer for Gil Thorp?
Why do you say that? 
Because, among other things, the strip has recently witnessed a high schooler mastering a splitter in one day, a high school pitching rotation with 4 seemingly unbeatable starters, two of whom have pitched no-hitters, and a freshman shortstop who is about 6’3" and weighs about 240 and hits at will.
Because, among other things, the strip has recently witnessed a high schooler mastering a splitter in one day, a high school pitching rotation with 4 seemingly unbeatable starters, two of whom have pitched no-hitters, and a freshman shortstop who is about 6’3" and weighs about 240 and hits at will.
Well sorry to burst your bubble bup, but no I don’t write for Gil Thorp. Or do I? No, really I don’t.
Poker is a sport now … ESPN says so.
How about Knuckleball pitcher?
In 1994 journalist Skip Bayless spent time with the Texas Rangers to see how he’d go playing left field for a month. He was at the time a fit 41 year old who had been all-city at high school. He was coached by Tom House, co-author of Nolan Ryan’s Pitchers Bible and Rangers pitching coach. Some excerpts:
House tells Bayless about facing Roger Clemens - “Against Clemens you got absolutely no chance. He throws a rising fastball and a breaking ball down and away. He also throws a split-finger that drops straight down and an off-speed pitch. But all you’ll see are fastballs. He’ll just try to blow you away. With Clemens, I want you to start your swing before you ever see the ball and swing as fuckin’ hard as you can. It’s always possible he’ll accidently hit your bat.”
House assesses Bayless’ ability to hit MLB pitchers - “So in 120 at-bats how many hits will I get?” “one,twi if your lucky. You’ll put the ball in play maybe a third of the time, but most of them will be weak grounders and popups.”
House assesses Michael Jordan’s prospects of hitting .250 - “It takes unbelievable skill even to put the ball in play at double-A, where the velocity of the pitching is often equal to the big leagues. But double-A is light years from the bigs. In double-A, most pichers can’t spot the fastball or the breaking ball, and most can’t change speeds. It takes years of repititions for a hitter to recognise an off-speed pitch. Given enough repitions Michael’s great genetics would take over.” “Remember Michael wants to play baseball against guys who have seen about 350,000 more fastballs and 200,000 more curves than he has in his athletic life - guys who have caught a million more flyballs and line drives and ground balls. Even for a great athlete, baseball takes years to learn.”
I was at the Blue Jays game tonight (Jays won 5-1) and let me tell you, if you can get close to the action and really watch them play… I’m not sure that a large percentage of the population could be major league hitters if they practiced their whole LIVES. The speed those men play at is like watching normal humans play baseball on a tape that’s been sped up to double normal speed. The hitters take full swings faster than I can take my initial stride.
Well, let’s consider a few things:
- Knuckleball is rather difficult to throw.
- You gotta have something to counter it with or batters are going to sit on it all day long.
- Mechanics
- I can think of exactly one even quasi-effective knuckleballer in the past 10 or so years (this being well after the times of Hoyt Wilhelm, Gaylord Perry, etc.), and that’s Tim Wakefield, who IIRC has a mid-90s fastball to mix in with his mid-60s knuckleball.
Hrm, there’s Steve Sparks, although he is, as you say, “quasi-effective”. There was also Tom Candiotti. Neither of those two were as good as the others you mentioned, though.
Gaylord Perry did not throw a knuckler. He threw a spitball. It just moved like a knuckler.
I think iampunha meant to say Phil Neikro, who of course was a very great pitcher.
I think we would have to concede Steve Sparks is certainly a quasi-effective pitcher, or else he wouldn’t have made the major leagues.
You sure you want to go on the record as saying there’s a pitch Perry didn’t throw?
But FTR I think I did mean Niekro … I get confused by all those pre-80s pitchers (now I guess someone’s going to come along and say “Yeah, but [pitcher you mentioned] pitched an inning of relief in 1981!”…).
I’ve never heard of Steve Sparks, and I didn’t know Tom Candiotti was a knuckler (didn’t really see him play a lot). And really the only reason I remembered Tim Wakefield is a knuckleballer is from his days with the Pirates. 1991 NLCS etc.
Spitball pitcher, of course, would be much easier to get paid to do, as long as you could get away with it.
That’d be me. Except it wasn’t an inning of relief in 1981, it was 210 innings and 32 starts for the Indians in 1986. And in 1985 he threw 220. And 1984 he threw 215…
His last year was 1987 when he threw 123.
Difficult, yes, but the kind of difficult that can be overcome with patience, effort, etc. It’s not primarily an athletic thing.
See #4
Remember, we’re not talking about great, just good enough to hold a roster spot. In these days of 12+ man pitching staffs, mightn’t a manager like a guy out of the pen who can give a hitter a different look? (Yes, its a bit risky putting him out there with men on base, so as a “situation” pitcher he’d be limited. But I might like to get Barry Bonds to face a knuckler for two ABs on Friday and hope to screw up his swing for the whole weekend)
Yeah, there are never many, but there are always some. ESPN.com: MLB - The hard truth: Fernandez must deliver for Reds
Several others have mentioned recent ones, though I amazed everyone’s forgetting Rough, Tough Charlie Hough
http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/9827/hough.html
(And if you can catch that poetic reference, a prize for you) Most of these guys throw the pitch 80-90% of the time.
And Tim Wakefield’s fastball is NOWHERE near 95! Most teams only have two or three guys who consistiently throw that hard: your perception is skewed because the fastballs you hear talked about (Schilling, Johnson, etc) are the the very best, and they hit 97, 98, and up. The average ML fastball (i.e., a fourth starter, a setup reliever) is low 90s, and there are some non-knucklers in the majors who top out in the 80s.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/caple_jim/1559580.html
Wakefield is even slower than that.
But you are right insofar as the “average guy” probably can’t even throw a 75 mph straight ball for strikes most of the time, which lots of knucklers have to do on 3-0 counts. Still, even if most guys couldn’t, I’d reckon a lot could.
In sum: Not easy; but less hard than any other way.