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Show THE best pitched ball game Isn't always a matter of what the t pitcher figures, but what the opposing oppos-ing batter knows. For example, Joe DiMaggio has faced more than his ' share of great pitchers, including ( Bob Feller, Bob Grove, Tex Hugh-son Hugh-son and the pick of the National ' league. When I asked Joe the best pitched j( game he had ever seen, DiMaggio j hesitated about one-fifth of a second. sec-ond. "That's easy," he said. "It was the game Dizzy Dean pitched against the . - Yankees in the fl i A 1938 World Se-, Se-, M'-'1""" '' ries. Pitching K y ' " consists of four C ' Important details m ft- an arm, a ' head, a heart :s and control. The , . " : : ; arm is supposed to be the most ' ; I : important. I , " ',, guess maybe it ' - y is if you have i. v , mvA an arm like Wal- DizzyDean ter Johnson. Lefty Grove or Bob Feller. But in this World Series Se-ries game Dizzy had no arm. It was gone. We watched him warm up and he could just about get the ball up to his warm-up catcher. This was to be our day. We figured we ought to get about three hits apiece from that daffy-dill Diz was pushing over. It was something pitiful. "Well, anyway," DiMaggio continued, con-tinued, "here was our pushover. And we all knew that Dizzy Dean had been one of the great pitchers of all time. One of the tops. But he was a crippled duck now. He had no arm. Just 'Head and Heart' "So what happens? Here come these dinky-dinks floating up to the plate. No speed at all. Not much of a curve. Just a shot put. But they would come at tough spots. Low and inside around your shouldersjust shoul-dersjust balls you don't like. Balls that are hard to hit solidly. And we swing and pop up or go out and there's Diz grinning at us and getting by with only a head and a heart. No stuff at all. "And if those two Cnb infielders hadn't collided early in the game to give us two runs on a weak, dribbling drib-bling Infield roller, Diz would have had us shut out 3 to 0 up to the 8th and I think would have beaten us. "This game convinced me that Dizzy Dean was one of the greatest great-est of all time. Think what he must have been when he had his arm. I'm glad he was in the other league when he was right." More About Pitching At this point DiMaggio and your correspondent became involved in a discussion. "What do you figure the toughest ball to hit?" I asked. "What's your answer?" Joe said. "A low curve ball over the inside in-side corner," was my reply. "Any low curve ball," Joe said, "inside or outside. I hit on a level plane. So did Hornsby, Bill Dickey and Babe Ruth. vBut when you get one of those low ones around your knees, you have to swing in a different dif-ferent way. It's a great thing for the hitters that only a few hurlers can handle this type of pitch. For it takes perfect control to make this low throw. Here's a funny thing. A low curve breaks much faster and sharper than a high curve. Why? I don't know. But it does. After all we have to deal with facts, not with ideas. You know, Grant, from the pitching distance, that ball comes up to you in less than half a second. Johnson's speed was 130 feet a second. You don't have time to do much figuring in half a second. It's different with just a fast ball. You can time that. But you can't time a fast breaking curve around your knees." Strong Hands Needed You read In various gazettes the number of earnest and enterprising athletes who are now working to build up their legs and arms. Such men as Louis, Conn, Greenberg, Dickey, DiMaggio, Ted Williams, etc. But too many of these, and a great deal too many of the youthful competitors just getting under way, overlook a section of the body just as important. This happens to be the two hands. Hand strength and hand action play a big part in baseball, base-ball, football, boxing, golf, tennis, riding, basketball, fishing and other sports. Especially in baseball, boxing, box-ing, horse racing and golf. A pair of big, powerful hands was Hans Wagner's crowning glory. Jack Dempsey's two Iron fists, almost al-most never Injured, were a big help. Two of the strongest looking pair of ; hands 1 ever saw belong to Tommy Armour, the golf star, and Bill : Dickey, the Yankee catcher. ! It isn't everybody who happens to be born with Wagner, Dempsey, Ar- mour or Dickey hands. But this defect can at least be partially I cured by the right sort of hand ' exercise. One of the best methods is to use rather small, hard rubber balls, squeezing one in each hand |
