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Off Speed

Baseball, Pitching, and the Art of Deception
Dec 20, 2017PimaLib_NormS rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
As I write this, it has been weeks since the World Series, and spring training seems so far away, so it seemed to me that it is a good time to read about baseball. Terry McDermott skillfully weaves multiple baseball stories through his new book, “Off Speed: Baseball, Pitching, and the Art of Deception”. In particular, as a framework, McDermott uses a 2012 game between the Seattle Mariners and the Tampa Bay Rays, in which Seattle ace “King Felix” Hernandez pitched a perfect game (no runs, no hits, no errors, 27 up and 27 down). In each of the nine chapters, McDermott analyzes an inning of the game as pitched by Hernandez. There is more than just the story of the perfect game, however. Each chapter is titled with the name of a particular baseball pitch, as in, The Fastball, The Curve, The Slider, etc., and in those chapters, he informs the reader as to how to throw the pitch and what the batter sees as the ball approaches home plate. Also, he gives a detailed history of the pitch. And, if that is not enough, sprinkled throughout the text are anecdotes from his youth as a baseball fan and son of a ballplayer/groundskeeper for the hometown team in Cascade, Iowa. McDermott packs a lot into such a small book (less than 200 pages, including notes), but somehow he makes it work.