K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner. New York: Anchor Books, 2020.

Summary: A New York Times sportswriter writes about ten different pitches in the repertoire of pitchers, how they are thrown, what they do, the pitchers who threw them, and how they worked or didn’t in famous games.

When I first saw the title of this book, I thought the book would recount ten pitches thrown in pressure situations in important games that made the difference between a win and a loss. I wondered how one would do that. Instead, the book tells the story of baseball in terms of ten different kinds of pitches various pitchers have used with greater or lesser success.

In truth, this is at the heart of baseball, the duel between a hitter, often quite skilled at “reading” a pitch and a pitcher whose success rides on fooling the batter enough that the ball either makes it into the catchers mitt or is hit as a playable ball for an out. So much depends on what the ball does in the last 15 feet of its 60 foot 6 inch journey. Over the history of baseball, pitchers have developed different ways of throwing the ball to make it do different things, and if they are good at it, not giving it away in their motion or the way the ball comes out of the pitcher’s hand.

The ten pitches Tyler Kepner discusses are: slider, fastball, curve ball, knuckleball, splitter, screwball, sinker, changeup, spitball, and the cutter. It all comes down (except for the spitter) to the placement of fingers in relation to the seams of the baseball, and the action of fingers and wrist in the release of the ball. Kepner walks us through how each pitch was thrown and famous pitchers who used it. One of the stories that comes up over and over is how mastery of a particular pitch either elevated an average pitcher to greatness or prolonged the career of a pitcher who had lost his blazing fastball.

The slider was what turned Ron Guidry into a Cy Young winner. For Don Sutton and Bert Blyleven, it was the curveball. The knuckleball kept Hoyt Wilhelm and Phil Nierkro in baseball forever. Bruce Sutter couldn’t throw a slider without hurting his arm. The splitter, which looked like a fastball until the bottom dropped out, turned him into a dominant pitcher and saved his arm. Warren Spahn, who won 363 games, the most for a lefty, pitched into his forties using the screwball. The sinker saved the career of Dan Quisenberry. A coach’s advice to not give up on the changeup turned Frank Viola into a winner. For Mariano Rivera, the cutter was the out pitch that was key to his record 652 career saves.

Kepner combines stats and stories with enough of each to lure in any baseball afficionado from the stats geek to the one who loves remembering Bill Mazeroski’s home run in game seven of the 1960 World Series making the Pirates World Champions. [Ralph Terry recalls the pitch as a high cutter]. We learn that the record fastball is 105 mph and in years to come, pitchers will need to throw 97-98 and touch 101-102. Yet hitters adapt to the fastball, no matter how fast. That’s why movement, and other pitches are crucial.

We’re also reminded of the brutal toll pitching takes on many arms (unless you are Steve Carlton, who learned to pitch without hurting his arm). That’s why figuring out how to deceive batters without burning out one’s arm is so crucial to success and longevity. Of course there is the spitter or the scuffed ball, making the ball’s trajectory unpredictable–as long as the pitcher doesn’t get caught. We learn that most pitchers stay mum about how they did it because one shared his secrets lost a chance at the Hall of Fame.

All of this is great fun, and it is great to understand how a particular pitch works when a sports announcer talks about it. Kepner’s book takes us into the incredible combination of athleticism, mental discipline, and training that makes a major league pitcher. We even learn how pitchers use strings to learn how to throw a particular pitch to a particular location. Tyler Kepner has done what the great baseball writers do–to deepen our love for the game. I wondered who would take up the mantle of Roger Angell. It just might be Tyler Kepner. I was delighted to learn that this was not his most recent book, which was The Grandest Stage published in 2022. That just might be my baseball book for next summer!