Bill “Spaceman” Lee had an Eephus pitch (the Leephus) that he threw to Tony Perez in the 1975 World Series:
OUCH
Of course he did.
I was walking on Lansdowne St. during a game, once. I heard people cheering and saw a ball come over the netting. It landed either in a parking garage or out on the turnpike. I really should have gone looking for it.
Wow. To throw one in a World Series game and that be taken deep. Just, wow.
Nice to hear Curt Gowdy’s voice again. And who else was that, Tony Kubek?
I thought the point was to get a big arc and have the ball enter the plate at a weird angle, like the pitch in the OP. The last two in the thread seem fairly normal, but slow. Makes sense they’d get crushed out of the park.
There’s probably no way to know (although baseball does keep statistics for everything) but I’d guess that of the players that make it to MLB, over 90% did some pitching in high school. You have to be a stud to make it to the bigs and pitchers are studs. No doubt about it. And you’re right about hitting too. Pitchers could no doubt hit in the big leagues if they had the chance or need to practice.
As an aside, Johnny Bench is from a small town not far from me. He was also one of the best high school pitchers that this area has ever seen. (And this is hardcore baseball country.)
Maybe, maybe not. A common quote by batters who make from even AAA to the Bigs is how scary good the pitchers are. Pitchers say the same thing about the batters they now face. There seems to be a break in the skill gradient when you get to the major leagues.
I remember one time late in the season when the roster had been expanded to 40, some guy in his first major league game, first time at bat, hit a home run off of Randy Johnson. I thought, “No matter how the rest of his career goes, he’s going to remember that moment forever.”
So will Randy Johnson. Along with the bird.
The bird will never forget, but that’s not quite the same thing as always remembering.
Or, if not in high school, at least in Little League or some other pre-high school league. My understanding is that, particularly for kids, it’s often the best overall athletes who wind up pitching, as they’re the ones who have enough talent to be able to consistently get the ball over the plate.
Any pitching experience at below the high school level is going to be completely irrelevant at the pro level, though, instead of just mostly-irrelevant.
Binger OK. Yep, been there. And, that doesn’t surprise me.
That’s the one. Unsurprisingly, there’s also this.
I wish I’d have known it was there. I would have wanted to go.
I just knew I had a pic of me by that same Binger sign. I found it. This was back in Dec 2009.
