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OT: Greatest Pitch of All-Time?

I remember Andujar's meltdown in the 1985 World Series. He was a nut but he had some great quotes:

• “It’s great to be alive because when you’re dead, you can’t drink beer.”
He's definitely got a point!
 
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Got to be Greg Maddux's Circle Change. That was absurd.
 
The boys and I decided to go the Limelight in Atlanta after a game....1984 or so.
I was talking to the prettiest girl in the place until Claudell Washington of the Braves told me that girl I’m talking to is a guy....lol
 
The boys and I decided to go the Limelight in Atlanta after a game....1984 or so.
I was talking to the prettiest girl in the place until Claudell Washington of the Braves told me that girl I’m talking to is a guy....lol

I know the feeling....this is Bangkok.
 
The boys and I decided to go the Limelight in Atlanta after a game....1984 or so.
I was talking to the prettiest girl in the place until Claudell Washington of the Braves told me that girl I’m talking to is a guy....lol


We were in Central Park at the Diana Ross concert and a buddy of mine started talking up some attractive women when a cop strolled over and whispered in his ear. He turned a pretty good shade of red.
 
In my defense...the girls all get prettier at closing time.
Oops
Yup. That has a way of happening.

For years, I thought beer goggles worked by getting sloppy drunk and drooling all over pretty girls. But it wasn't working. I finally figured out that I need to get the pretty girls sloppy drunk and drooling. Gotta hand out the beer goggles, not put them on myself.




Okay, I never *really* thought it worked that way. I just think that version of the story is funnier than the truth. What really happened is I wanted to get sloppy drunk AND have some success with pretty girls. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. And what I really figured out is that even drunk women prefer guys to not be sloppy drunk and drooling. Go figure. 😀
 
Koufax's curve & his fastball
Guidrey's slider
Score's curve & his fastball
Pascual's curve.
Burdette's spitter
Reynolds fastball
Cuellar's scrugie
Spahan's scrugie
Face's fork ball
And on it goes
 
Gooden’s 1984 fastball or curve, pick either.
85 just as good. Impressive more because they were insane pitches with great control at such a young age.
BTW- Cone had himself a great splitter.

I’m trying to remember- lots of great pitchers over my lifetime, I didn’t get to see Koufax great run but in my book, Pedro may have been the most dominant I had seen over a long stretch. But not sure what I would say was his “out” pitch
 
Maybe not the greatest, but one of my faves:


My absolute favorite. I think Rizzuto once called it 'The LaLob'. That was NOT one of those 'eephus' pitches either. He completely follows through on the delivery. That makes that pitch way more difficult to throw. I worked on that pitch in the empty lots we'd play in all the time. Full follow through.

When your friends knew it was coming but you were so good at it you could put it in the spray painted box strike zone and get them anyway was an awesome feeling.
 
Talking about knuckleballers I looked up the White Sox Wilbur Wood and he had an interesting 1973 season.

24-20 (led the league in wins)
GS - 48 led league
IP - 359.1 led league
#5 in Cy Young voting

but did not make the AS team!!!

Dick Allen was voted a starter but was hurt and the White Sox only rep was journeyman OF Pat Kelly.
Makes you wonder if Dick Williams had something against him.
 
Seems like a good time to bring up this Rutgers related baseball story from long ago. John Harkins pitched for Rutgers in 1882 and 1883. In fact, he became the first player in the area to throw a curve ball. He went on to become the first Rutgers player to play in the Major Leagues for the Cleveland Blues, Brooklyn Grays and lastly, the Baltimore Orioles. This article looks back at the big pitcher's duel he was involved in with a future Hall of Famer, Charles Radbourn.

Source: September 27, 1916 Daily Home News

August 15, 1884 Providence Grays 3 Cleveland Blues 2
at Messer Street Grounds, Providence, RI

Note: The National League Providence Grays went 84-28 and then swept the American Association’s New York Gothams in three games at the Polo Grounds in New York to win the first World Series. In one stretch they won 28 of 29 including a 20 game winning streak that was the major league record until the New York Giants broke the record in 1916. This was game seven of the 20 game winning streak.

“John Harkins, of this city, former league pitcher and now sergeant-at-arms of the district court, was one of the pitchers in 1884, who failed to stop the Providence team, which won the National League pennant that year, and which established the first record of twenty straight victories. This record has just been broken by the New York Giants. Mr. Harkins was then the star pitcher of the Cleveland team and opposed Charley Radbourne, who won eighteen of the twenty games in a row.

The game was played on August 15, seven days after Providence had started its winning streak against New York, Philadelphia and Boston. It was the first game between Cleveland and Providence and Harkins was chosen to oppose the great Radbourne, because of his previous excellent performances. The game was a thriller, and Harkins forced Radbourne to the limit to win by a 3 to 2 score. Big league teams in those days never had more than two pitchers, and Moffatt divided the pitching work with Harkins.

The batting order of the Cleveland team in that game was as follows: Phillips, first base; Hotaling, center field; Pinkney, second base; Muldoon, third base; Smith, shortstop; Burch, left field; Henry, right field; Harkins, pitcher; Baschong, catcher. The Providence team batted as follows: Hines, center field; Carroll, left field; Start, first base; Irwin, shortstop; Farrell, second base; Radbourne, pitcher; Gilligan, catcher; Denny, third base; Radford, right field.

The Providence team of 1884 won not only the National League pennant, but also the first world’s series ever played. They took four straight from the Metropolitans, then the champions of the American Association. During that season it was the wonderful winning ‘streak’ of the Providence team that won the pennant. Beginning on August 7, they scored their first victory over the New Yorks and they took twenty in a row up to and including the game with Cleveland on September 6. Charley Radbourne, who never has been excelled as a pitcher, won eighteen of these games, working in all of the innings without relief. Conley pitched in the other two contests. There were some powerful teams in the National League that year, including the Chicagos, managed by Adrain C. Anson. But Providence, with the wonderful Radbourne in the box, carried off the flag and made the record which the Giants surpassed in today’s double header with the St. Louis Nationals at the Polo Grounds.”

 
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Best pitch? 3 of 'em in the classic opening 8-minute, single take scene from Robert Altman's The Player. Great flick. And the first pitch is Buck Henry, playing himself, pitching "The Graduate - 2" which is extra funny, since he wrote the screenplay for the original Graduate.



Also, how can Nolan Ryan's fastball not be in the original list? I was also partial to Jim Palmer's curveball, too.
 
Best pitch? 3 of 'em in the classic opening 8-minute, single take scene from Robert Altman's The Player. Great flick. And the first pitch is Buck Henry, playing himself, pitching "The Graduate - 2" which is extra funny, since he wrote the screenplay for the original Graduate.



Also, how can Nolan Ryan's fastball not be in the original list? I was also partial to Jim Palmer's curveball, too.
I’m guessing Satchel’s fastball when he was in his 20s was over 100.
My dad warmed up Ryan in 1967, he said Bob Feller threw harder.
Palmer’s straight over the top curve was a great pitch, but in my experience the curves where the release point is not so straight over the top are harder to hit.
Really knitpicking here, Palmer is a HOFer
 
Sick!

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I can remember Gus Triandos as a Catcher for the Orioles.

I read an instruction book/article about how to catch, because he was considered one of the best defensive catchers in MLB.

I considered it a point of catcher's honor to never use a catcher's mitt with a break in the mitt. You couldn't backhand a pitch with a no break mitt. Had to shift your entire body. Anything in the ditch was supposed to bounce off you square back in front of you so the runner couldn't advance.

Then Hoyt came along and he was setting records of passed balls. Then Paul Richards invented the oversize catcher's mitt to snag the balls.
 
Rivera’s cutter used to make great hitters look bad.
Rivera's cutter is the greatest pitch of all time.....NO DOUBT! He threw it almost all of the time. Hitters knew it was coming. And yet, it made him the first and only unanimous member of the HOF.

Nuff said.
 
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