by Tyler Kepner
———. Splendor on the Diamond. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000.
Will, George F. Met at Work. New York: Macmillan, 1990.
Williams, Ted, with John Underwood. My Turn at Bat. New York: Fireside, 1988.
Wright, Craig R., and Tom House. The Diamond Appraised. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
Illustration Credits
1Icon Sportswire
2AP Photo
3Courtesy of the Houston Astros
4Reuters Photographer/Reuters Pictures
5Bill Kostroun/Reuters Pictures
6National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
7National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
8Library of Congress
9Icon Sportswire
10National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
11AP Photo/Matt Slocum
12National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
13AP Photo
14Reuters Photographer/Reuters Pictures
15Icon Sportswire
16Getty Images/Elsa
17National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
18Sports Graphic Number 46
19Icon Sportswire
20AP Photo/Charles E. Knoblock
21National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
22National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
23Reuters Photographer/Reuters Pictures
24Courtesy of Sharon J. Wohlmuth
25AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
26National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
27AP Photo/Pool, Steve Green
28Courtesy of the Pittsburgh Pirates
29Icon Sportswire
30AP Photo
31Gary Hershorn/Reuters Pictures
32Icon Sportswire
33Icon Sportswire
34Icon Sportswire
35National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.
36Courtesy of the Texas Rangers
37AP Photo/Paul Benoit
38Icon Sportswire
39AP Photo/Mel Evans
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tyler Kepner started covering baseball as a teenager, interviewing players for a homemade magazine that was featured in The New York Times in 1989. He attended Vanderbilt University on the Grantland Rice/Fred Russell sportswriting scholarship, then covered the Angels for the Riverside Press-Enterprise and the Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He joined The New York Times in 2000 and covered the Mets for two seasons, then covered the Yankees from 2002 to 2009. Since 2010 he has been the Times’ national baseball writer. He lives with his wife and four children in Wilton, Connecticut.
Steve Carlton warms up near the first base dugout at Veterans Stadium. His peerless slider helped make him the first pitcher to win four Cy Young Awards—and the last to work 300 innings in a season, in 1980.
Bob Gibson started nine World Series games, completing eight and going 7–2 with a 1.89 ERA. He set a single-game strikeout record in the 1968 opener, with 17.
That’s eight—count ’em, eight!—baseballs in the mighty right hand of J. R. Richard, whose overpowering fastball and slider still inspire awe in those who faced him.
A perfect game flipped Randy Johnson’s famous scowl into a smile in 2004. Eddie Perez, who struck out to end it, insists the final fastball rose.
Brad Lidge, whose topspinning slider baffled hitters because it never had a telltale red dot, strikes out Eric Hinske to win the 2008 World Series for the Phillies.
“My favorite pitch,” Cy Young said, “was a whistler right under the chin.”
Carl Mays closed out the World Series for the Red Sox in 1918. Two years later, with the Yankees, his errant fastball killed the Indians’ Ray Chapman.
Walter Johnson, greeting President Calvin Coolidge at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., “was so great that he almost belongs in his own Hall of Fame,” said Bob Feller.
Two of baseball’s greatest power pitchers, Bob Feller (left) and Satchel Paige, were teammates on the Indians’ 1948 championship team.
With the Angels in 1973, Nolan Ryan set the single-season strikeout record (383) while going 21–16 with a 2.87 ERA and 26 complete games, including two no-hitters.
Madison Bumgarner embraces Buster Posey after baiting Salvador Perez with a high fastball for the final out of the 2014 World Series in Kansas City.
Many claimed to have invented the curveball, but only Candy Cummings gets credit on a Cooperstown plaque: “Pitched first curve ball in baseball history,” it reads.
Sandy Koufax (left) and Jim Palmer shake hands before Game 2 of the 1966 World Series. Palmer, age twenty, threw a shutout. Koufax, age thirty, never pitched again.
Mike Mussina—shown as a Yankee at Camden Yards, his old home with the Orioles—earned 270 victories with an ever-evolving array of weapons.
The Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright learned his signature curveball from his older brother at age ten.
The Cubs’ Mike Montgomery charges across the mound in joy after his curveball won Game 7 of the 2016 World Series in Cleveland. Yes, he got his glove back.
“He was just a crusty old dude,” Andy Pettitte said of Hoyt Wilhelm, the Hall of Fame knuckleballer who later coached in the Yankees’ farm system. “I loved him to death.”
Shigeru Sugishita, known as the God of Forkballs, inspired generations of Japanese pitchers to use the splitter.
Phil Niekro, a 318-game winner, knuckled his way to a staggering 5,404 innings pitched, the most of anyone born after 1887.
For Bruce Sutter, 1979 was a bittersweet year: he won the NL Cy Young Award but lost his mentor, Fred Martin, who taught him the split-finger fastball.
Christy Mathewson’s fadeaway and Three Finger Brown’s curveball were early-century marvels. This was the final career game for both, with Mathewson beating Brown, 10–8.
The screwball might have caused Carl Hubbell’s notorious inverted pitching arm. It also earned him two MVP awards and a spot in Cooperstown.
Warren Spahn, throwing a ceremonial first pitch before the 1999 World Series in Atlanta, earned 363 victories, a record for a lefty, with a screwball that helped him thrive into his forties.
The irrepressible Tug McGraw twists his throwing hand inward, just as he would on his screwball, for the cover of his children’s book in 1981.
Fernando Valenzuela, whose screwball captivated baseball in 1981, presents Clayton Kershaw with the first of his three Cy Young Awards in April 2012.
The sidearming Grover Cleveland Alexander won 373 games with a sinker that “bore in like a lump of lead,” according to a rival.
Fergie Jenkins—the first pitcher ever to finish with more than 3,000 strikeouts and fewer than 1,000 walks—delivers the ceremonial first pitch before a 2008 playoff game at Wrigley Field.
Kent Tekulve, the yellow submariner, helped the Pirates win their last title in 1979. When he retired 10 years later, he had made more relief appearances than any other pitcher in history.
Among them, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Greg Maddux earned 648 victories and six Cy Young Awards for the Braves.
Pitchers for the 1967 Tigers—including changeup master and future coach Johnny Podres (second from left, hand on hip)—get a spring training lesson from the great Johnny Sain.
Armed with a changeup he learned from Johnny Podres, the Twins’ Frank Viola (right, with teammates Kirby Puckett and Juan Berenguer) lit up the Metrodome by winn
ing twice in the 1987 World Series.
“His hands were just ridiculously long,” Curt Schilling said of Pedro Martinez, his Red Sox teammate, shown here in the shadows at Angel Stadium in 2003.
Jamie Moyer tosses a changeup for the Rockies in 2012, the year he turned fifty.
Stephen Strasburg, with his dominant index finger on the side of the ball, delivers a changeup for the Nationals in 2012.
The last legal spitballer, Burleigh Grimes, won Game 7 of the 1931 World Series for the Cardinals after his father brought him his favorite slippery elm bark from Wisconsin.
Adjusting his cap—or loading up for a spitter? Gaylord Perry always kept hitters guessing.
An anguished Bob Stanley, moments after his wild pitch helped doom the Red Sox in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. He said it wasn’t a spitter; the Mets still aren’t sure.
“All of a sudden it’s over, and it’s kind of like, ‘Well, now what?,’” said Roy Halladay in 2017, recalling his emotions after his playoff no-hitter. “You want to keep going.”
Mariano Rivera, whose cutter made him a legend, earned a record postseason 42 saves—matching his hallowed uniform number.
