Last
night, the St. Louis Cardinals used good pitching to defeat my team, the Texas
Rangers, in game one of the World Series. This reminds me of something George
Will wrote about in his book celebrating baseball—MEN AT WORK. Among those he
profiled, Will wrote an interesting piece on the Los Angeles Dodger (and
current ESPN broadcaster) Orel Hershiser.
Regarding
pitching Hershiser believed, “There are two theories of pitching. One is that
you try to convince the batter that a particular pitch is coming and you throw
something different. The other theory, that you don’t hear as much, but that I
use, is that if the batter expects a particular pitch, you throw it, but you
throw it in a place where he can’t hit it.”
Listen
to Doug Cecil compare Hershiser’s pitching philosophy to the Devil’s philosophy
of temptation, “Isn’t that the way the Enemy works in our life? He knows just
what kind of pitch that we are a sucker for and then throws it our way. But, it
is just a little higher or just a little bit more outside than where we like
it, and most likely we will bite on it every time. After all, it looks so good.
It feels so right.”
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