Try to throw that way to the same lineup more than once a game and big league batters will quickly learn to take advantage of the one-dimensional break.īut Thorn makes another claim, that "underhand is much less strain." A bold statement in a era when pitch counts drive starters from the game ever earlier and Tommy John surgery sidelines pitchers for full seasons. So what used to be the only style of pitching has now become valuable in its rarity. "As a relief pitcher, you have the tremendous advantage of five or six innings of having been thrown to conventionally by someone else so your new-fangled delivery is quite a change and it’s very hard to adjust to," Thorn explains. For the most part, this has to do with the fact that, these days, almost all submarine pitchers are relievers. This is in opposition to softball underhand in which the ball is lobbed while remaining upright.īack to the question at hand. Submarine pitchers lean their whole upper body down towards the ground but keep their hand typically on top of the ball. If early pitchers knew a higher delivery granted them a competitive edge and that in practice it adds an extra dimension to your curveball, then we have arrived at our first question: why does anyone bother to still pitch submarine style?Ī quick word on submarine pitching, although I have been using it interchangeably with "underhand": there is actually a slight difference in the modern version. "At the collegiate and Minor League and Major League level, curveballs break in two directions-both laterally and down." It breaks laterally, not down," Thorn explains. "Your curveball with the underhand or sidearm delivery tends to be the schoolboy curve, which any Little Leaguer can throw. What's more, throwing overhand allows for more sophisticated breaking pitches. But as the space between the mound and home plate increased from 45 feet before 1880 to the current 60 feet 6 inches, new pitchers found that the overhand style made it easier to control the ball over a greater distance. Not everyone switched their style right away. Another concession by the League presidents allowed for straight pitches from the shoulder until 18 when all restrictions on pitching style were abolished in the two leagues. But given a few inches, the pitchers took, well, a few more inches and continued to raise their release points in opposition to the written rules. In 1872, the rules caved to accommodate the trend and began permitting a side arm release. Of course, it didn't take long for pitchers to realize that by inching up their release points past the legal limit they could give their team a competitive advantage. His purpose was the serve up pitches that the batter would then put in play, because what the audience liked to see was fine fielding plays and lots of base running." "He was not regarded as someone who was in mortal combat with the batter. "The pitching motion was different because the role of the pitcher in relation to the batter was different," Thorn says. If you think that sounds unfair to the pitchers, who were forced into a relatively unnatural throwing motion, you'd be correct. Straight underhand until 1872," MLB's Official Historian John Thorn says. "The rule was that your arm had to be perpendicular. It was any year before 1872 and it wasn't because our ball-playing forefathers had yet to master the more masculine-seeming motion, but rather because it was written into the rules. And why shouldn't they be? An overhand windup is not only iconic and powerful, it's also the natural movement when playing catch with a ball.īut there was a time when all the pitchers threw underhand. Submarine pitchers, whose release point is so low their knuckles practically scrape the ground, are a rare breed in Major League Baseball. If you're even a casual baseball fan, that second question-why don't more pitchers throw submarine style?-might seem preposterous.
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