Change-Up

Nope, not changing my mission, as big a relief as that would be. Evening runs without the speakers strapped to the baby jogger blasting the Sox.* Freedom to flip between Bravo, Food Network, and HGTV, and not just on NESN commercial breaks. Going to bed before 11 pm. Ahhhh.

Snap out of it, Pinkhat. You're watching game 16 of 162. That means 146 more to go!

Okay, Off-speed. Circle change. Dead fish.** I'm not listing mobster monikers here. I'm talking about the illusive pitch, the change-up. It's apparently the slowest pitch most pitchers throw, but when done right, it can be the hardest to hit.

According to Jerry Remy in Watching Baseball Smarter, the arm action, speed of the arm, and the angle of release are the same as for a fastball. That's what makes the change-up so tricky for batters. They think they're getting a fastball, so they swing way too early.

Throwing a change-up is all about grip. A fastball is whipped towards the batter with spin put on it from two fingers at the top of the ball. A change-up is slower than a fastball because it is released from deeper in the palm with fingers covering more of the surface of the ball. A circle change-up has a different grip then the change-up. The thumb and pointer finger make the okay sign.

Former Sox Pedro Martinez won three Cy Young awards due much to his circle change-up. At one point in his career he threw 95-97mph fastballs and change-ups in the neighborhood of 75mph.

Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz threw some nasty change-ups tonight. I tried to tell the difference in his pitches, but I guess I'm not there yet. I only know they were nasty because Dave kept screaming "Did you see that change-up?", thus inspiring this post.

Before that I was going to blog about the recycling emblems on the Sox jerseys in honor of the 40th annual celebration of Earth Day. I was concerned about the environmental implications of jerseys that would be worn only once, so I have about eight browser windows open with google searches like "do the Red Sox wear new uniforms every game?"

All searches are pointing towards no. And to a documentary I would love to track down about Red Sox laundry,** although my suspicion is this documentary has to do with the colloquial dirty laundry rather and not dirt-stained jerseys and pants.

If I happen to find out that the Sox are a bunch of greenwashers, I'll let you know. Maybe we'll even start a pinkhat campaign to get the Sox to change-up their ways.

*Don't believe anything I say. That only happened once, and it was only about a mile.

**Dave's never heard of a dead fish. Have you?

***If this isn't a documentary, remember it was MY idea, but I'll sell it to you for a mil or two.