Читать книгу Rage. The Legend of "Baseball Bill" Denehy онлайн

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Three-quarters of the way through my American Legion season junior year, Bots and Charlie invited me to a Boston Red Sox tryout camp for high school juniors and seniors.

I was scheduled to pitch a game one night, but I wasn’t able to participate. Bots brought me out to the bullpen, and he told me, “Listen, I just want you to throw a little bit, not even hard, and I want to show you something.”

Bots said he didn’t think that I was getting the most of my ability by throwing straight overhand. He had me drop my arm angle down to three-quarters.

“Just throw across your body,” he told me.

“Take a pitching rubber and look at the third base side, where you’d place your push-off leg,” he said. “If you draw a line from where your toes are toward home plate, in order to throw across your body all you have to do is stand to the third base side of that line.”

I was getting instruction from a former major league ballplayer, and I tried to do as he said. My pitching problems had nothing to do with my motion or my release point. What the change in angle did was to set up more of a rotation and a closing-the-door effect—as opposed to my previous up-and-down motion. Once I moved my left leg toward home plate and to the left of that line he showed me, it opened up my chest and hips. The result was that I could be more of a power pitcher. It may sound complicated, but what he told me was actually very simple.